The Saving Graces (21 page)

Underneath the mindless pleasure of watching this game, though, I was worried about Lee and Henry. I studied their faces, but neither of them was showing anything except bland enjoyment. But how could they not be suffering? Like Rudy, I was glad when Lee had lost it a little, as much as she ever loses it, and opened up to us about her fears and her anger over their childlessness. Because she's the most self-sufficient, Lee uses the group for therapy less than the rest of us. So even though I'd known on some level that she was feeling all the ugly emotions of resentment and jealousy and fury and guilt, it was still a shock to hear her admit it. And now to watch Henry play so prettily, so sweetly with Jay, who's like this golden cherub, this epitome of Perfect Kid, this everyman's dream son-how could it not cut her to the heart?
But they're doing okay, I think. I hope. Deep down. Because these two really were made for each other. From the beginning, Lee's been amazingly frank with the group about her passion for Henry, and when you're with them you can actually feel it. Nothing blatant or overt-heavens-but I'm telling you, heat practically vibrates in the air between them. It's partly the way he looks at her, like she's the goddess of sex and he hasn't had any in a hundred years, and partly Lee's prim, buttoned-up manner. Watching them together always starts my imagination moving down a sexy path. Gets me a little hot, if you want to know the truth. - Before I made my early escape last- night, I wandered out on the deck for some air, only to find that Lee and Henry were already there, relaxing against the rail in a dark corner. "Oops." I almost mumbled an excuse and backed out. And they weren't even doing anything-he had his arms around her from behind and she was leaning back against him, her hands wrapped around his wrists. They smiled at me, then went back to staring up at the moon. My presence didn't bother them in the least, but I felt as if I'd walked in on a love scene. That's how intimate it was, that wall, that blur of tenderness they'd put around each other. When he leaned over and casually rubbed her cheek with his, slow and soft, a purely loving gesture, I had a lump in my throat. I said good night and got out.
Oh, I want what they have. I yearn for it. It's what everybody longs for, isn't it? Sweet, deep intimacy with another? And I know it's a chimera, a dream, it comes in flashes at best, it's hardly ever what it seems-I don't care. The way they blended into each other, the way they turned into one there in the shadows . . . what a well of loneliness that opened in me. Real or not, there are times when I would gladly settle for the dream.
*** "I'll really miss ballet," Sally said, sitting up to rub sunscreen on her legs. I looked at her blankly. "I was telling Lee," she said in a solicitous tone, anxious to include me. "I've got to drop out of our class. We just can't afford it anymore, too many other things are more important. It's the only activity I do just for myself, so it's hard. But what are you going to do?" Brave, plucky smile.
"Yeah, that's a shame," I said. Lee, I noticed, didn't say anything, barely looked at her. Hm. More of a strain here than I'd expected. And I'd been evading the one task Lee gave me, which was to be the buffer between her and Sally this weekend. I felt bad about that, but God, had she ever tapped the wrong person for the job.
I didn't see the Frisbee until it smacked me in the shoulder-caught the bone and hurt like hell. Henry came trotting over, sweaty and grinning, panting like a dog. "Sorry, Em. You okay?" "Sure." I handed it up to him with a good-sport smile. His red-white-and-blue-striped suit hung to his knees, baggy and uncharacteristically hip. He heaved the disk in the air, high over Jay's blond head. Mick flexed his knees and executed a stunning vertical leap that made his son shout with- approval. Shielding my face from Sally with the side of my hand, I stared at her husband. - - He'd definitely lost weight. He was too thin. I shouldn't have blamed her, but I did. Except for his forearms, he was nearly as pale as me. I wanted to touch that tender demarcation line on his biceps, white to golden tan, run my lips along it, my teeth. Everything about him stirred me, everything was exactly right. It felt illicit, practically taboo to look at him like this, stare openly at his thighs and his calves, the ribs in his sides, his chest hair, his collarbone. To see him run and bound, when before I'd only seen him walk or sit.
It was the fact that Mick and his legs and his long back and his hard stomach were forbidden to me that made them so unbearably attractive - I knew that-and yet he was beautiful, truly he was, no matter that he was too thin, too pale, his hair too short. "He looks a little bit like Daniel Day-Lewis," Isabel once said, a long time ago. I, of course, said nothing to that, but I remember thinking, Daniel should be so lucky.
But why do I keep obsessing about him? What is this doomed, lunatic, self-destructive need to keep him in my mind? Why can't I forget about him-why can't he forget about me?
In my case, it's because I just can't resist. Over and over, I find that my need (not my desire; I'm beyond that) is stronger than my discretion (not my conscience; we still haven't done anything wrong). I rationalize that our infrequent meetings are indiscreet; not immoral. They don't hurt anyone but me. And him.
Oh God, that's the dangerous, seductive part, the chance that he feels what I do. I think it's true. He's not very good at disguise-I'm much better-so he doesn't hide his gladness when we're together, and he isn't cool or suave on the phone. Our conversations get more and more personal. In the last one, I started to tell him about the last time I saw my mother, and ended up describing my childhood. How it felt when my father walked out, how it felt when he died. Now he knows things about me that, before, only Rudy knew.
I know things about him, too. I can picture the earnest overachiever he used to be, winning track medals and getting straight A's for Mom and Dad, dedicating his young life to making his adoptive parents proud of him. Proud and not sorry. He told me it wasn't only Sally he let down when he gave up the law, it was his parents, too. In a way, it was even harder to disappoint them, because their expectations had been even higher. Now they laugh about him to their friends, he thinks - but gently, fondly; philosophically. What are you going to do? he imagines them sayinig. That hurts him so much.
So-we know things about each other. We're intimate in the strangest way, like jail mates who communicate through the plumbing, or bang out a code with our tin cups against the wall. We share secrets, but never touch.

   Jay got tired and came slogging through the sand to our umbrella encampment. He collapsed between my towel and his mother's, and asked for a soft drink from the cooler. He drank it noisily, his eyes still on Mick and Henry, whose game had ratcheted up several -notches on the macho scale now that it was just the two of them. "Hi," he said to me with a shy, sideways grin.
"Hi, yourself." "So you slept late," he observed.
"Yep. Guess I was tired." "How come?" "Mmm." I thought. "Bad dreams?" He nodded. "I have them. Nightmares, I have. I wake up, and my dad comes. Or my mother sometimes. Then I go back to-sleep." "Me, too." Except for the mother and father part. "What do you dream about?" "Monsters. What do you dream about?" "Well, usually I dream I'm late for something, and I can't find it." Lost and late; 1 have these dreams incessantly. "I don't know where the train station is, or sometimes it's the bus station, and everybody's giving me different directions. Then the bus comes, or the train, but I don't know where it goes, I can't read the number, and I'm late, I'm so late, and everything keeps repeating and repeating, until finally I wake up out of boredom." Jay stared at me for a long second, then belched.
"'Scuse me," he muttered, with a glance at Sally. She only smiled and raised her eyebrows at him.
I wish I could say she's a bad mother-No, I don't, no, I don't, that was a figure of speech, even I am not so far gone that I'd wish a lousy parent on a helpless child. In any case, she's not a bad mother, she seems like a very good one from what I've seen with my jaundiced eye, very attentive and low-key, very affectionate. And yet- you knew there was an and yet-Jay behaves differently with Sally than he does with Mick. He's giggly and loose with Dad, silly and relaxed and happy, a normal, welladjusted kid. But with Mom, he sobers up fast. His youthful brow furrows and he watches her closely, At five and a half, he's already a little caretaker.
Not that I'm an expert on children. Hell no, they scare the daylights out of me. They're so autonomous or something. So unforgivingly straightforward. Irony's not in their vocabulary, so they never get my jokes. As a rule I stay out of their way-but you'll understand that this one fascinated me, so I was paying special attention to him. What I saw was a polite, anxious boy, bashful and very sweet, but wary and much too observant for his age. As if he were compelled to check the temperature, over and over, of whatever emotional atmosphere he found himself in. - - Incredibly, Jay has decided he likes me. It happened last night at Brother's, and I could see the change so clearly, see the decision as he was making it -in his naked, guileless, child's face. Don't ask me why, I've forgotten the context, but I had launched into a mini-rant on the perversities of anthropomorphism and the amazing arrogance of us humans toward the so-called lesser creatures-all right, I'd had a couple of beers-and for examples, I was mentioning names like "panfish," "box turtle," "pocket mouse," "fur seal," humble creatures whose very existence we've limited and defined by naming them according to how they relate exclusively to us. For some reason the word "panfish" struck Jay as the funniest thing he'd ever heard, and he went off.
He couldn't stop laughing, and he's got this lovely, low, gurgling giggle, just the essence of- delight. It's irresistible, and pretty soon we were all snickering along with him. Then Henry and I started naming the silliest-sounding fish we could think of, to try to get him going again-scrod, kipper, fluke, smelt, croaker,- you get the idea. I said "crappie," and Jay lost it-he almost slid off his chair. What fun; I think I've found my best audience ever. And when he finally recovered, he kept beaming at me with the goofiest, the most charming, sweet-faced appreciation. Question: Am I that vain, or is this really the nicest, brightest kid I've ever met?

   The day drew to a lazy close that seemed early to me-I'd gotten up so late. We had dinner at home, burgers and hot dogs on the grill. Afterward, Lee got me alone and demanded to know what was wrong.
"Wrong? Nothing. Wrong? What do you mean?" I tried to look astonished, but panic flickered in my chest. Did she know?
"It's Mick, isn't it?" "No," I denied, horrified.
"What I can't understand is why you don't like him." "But I do-" "I shouldn't have asked you to stay. I'm sorry, Em." She'd been cleaning the stove within an inch of its life. She sat down at the kitchen table, damp dish towel in one hand, a glass of ice water in the other. She looked hot and irritable. She pressed the glass to her forehead, and for the first time I noticed she also looked tired.
"No," I insisted, "I was happy to stay. Really, I'm having a great time." She dismissed that with a wave. "I don't blame you for hiding out. I would if I could, too. To tell you the truth, it's Sally's company I don't enjoy that much anymore," she all but whispered. A needless precaution, since no one was in the house but us: Henry, Mick, Sally, and Jay had gone for a moonlight walk on -the beach. Lee ranher fingers through her short brown hair, sighing. "I just wish she'd stop telling me things I don't want to know." "Personal things?"
She nodded. "When we were first getting to be friends, I told her a few things about me-us, Henry and me. Nothing really intimate," she said quickly, "not like I would tell the group-" "No, no."
"But somewhat personal, you know-" "Sure." "But I've quit, but she keeps telling me things." "Like. . ." I waited hopefully. Shamelessly.
"Like - they've been in couples counseling for five of the six years of their marriage."
"Wow." Mick had never even hinted at such a thing. How discreet. In the same situation, most men would have, don't you think? What a rationale: My marriage is a wreck, let's go to bed. - - - "And I hate the way she talks about her husband," Lee went on, leaning close. "Henry's crazy about Mick, and I like him, too. We feel more loyal to him now than her."
"What does she say about him?" "Oh, you know, how she resents his job change and what it's done to their lifestyle, how it's changed everything. She's from Delaware-apparently her family has money. She actually said to me, 'I didn't buy into this.' She laughed afterward, pretending it was a joke, but it wasn't." "No."
"It's so-it just makes me angry. I married a plumber, but I've never been ashamed of Henry, never. It's part of who he is, which makes it part of what I love about him." She sat back, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "Then again, what if he decided all of a sudden to give up plumbing and take up - I don't know. Wine-making. How would I like that?"
"Well, how would you?" She shook her head. "I wouldn't care."
"No, you wouldn't. Because he'd still be Henry." "And that's who I love." -
-l thought about Sally and who she loved. Presumably she used to love Mick the lawyer. Michael Draco, Esquire, was worth loving, especially in his three-piece suit and suspenders. But Mick the penniless painter wasn't. She hadn't bought into that.
Oh, she was a piece of work, all right. Her insecurities made you pity her, and her insincerity made you dislike her. But she was a good mother; somehow with Jay she transcended all her neuroses.
Poor Mick. Even I could see that he was trapped.

   Around ten o'clock that night, jay woke up screaming. I didn't even hear him at first; we five were upstairs with the TV on, although only Henry was watching it- some basketball game. Mick jumped up first, but Sally said, "I'll go," and hurried out of the room. - Lee had been reading. She laid her magazine aside and asked, "Does he have nightmares a lot, Mick?"
"Just lately, yes. They're coming almost every night." The crying stopped all at once. He relaxed slightly; some of the tension went out of his face. - - "It's not that unusual at his age," Lee assured him. "In fact it's probably more common than otherwise. You shouldn't worry too much. Really." He thanked her with a smile. "I know it's normal, but still--"
"It's upsetting." - He stood up again. "I just want to go see. Check. You know, make sure," he muttered apologetically, and disappeared.
He came back a few minutes later, looking relieved. "He's asleep and everything's fine," he reported, and we all said, "Good, good." "Sally's going to bed, by the way. She said to say good night."
So then it was just the four of us, spending a quiet last night reading and watching television. Henry had the whole couch to himself; he had a warm beer on his chest, and- occasionally he would mutter things like, "What loose ball foul?" and "Shoot, -shoot, what the hell are you waiting for?" Lee sat at the dining room table, absorbed in the July Vogue. Mick divided his attention between the game and his book, a library hardcover called Murder at the Hard Rock. Me? I was doing an impression of someone reading the latest Louise Erdrich, which I'd brought along on purpose to impress people, but in fact I was watching Mick. And sometimes, he was watching me.
Lee yawned, stretched. "Well, I'm going to bed. Henry?" "Yep. In a minute."
"Night, you guys," Lee said to Mick and me. We said it back. - Henry's minute stretched to fifteen as his team kept calling time-outs. I should leave before he does, I kept advising myself. It was going to be just Mick and me, and it was going to be awkward. But I reread the same paragraph over and over and didn't move.
Henry vaulted off the couch, energized by his side's win at the buzzer. "Great game. Lee go to bed?" We chuckled and said she had.
"So, early or late start back tomorrow?" - "Early for us, I'm afraid," Mick said. "Sally's folks are driving down for dinner." From Delaware, I -assumed. The folks with the money.
"What about you, Em? Any rush?" "No, not really. Whenever you and Lee want to go." "Great. Morning on the- beach, then." I've never known anybody who likes the ocean as much as Henry, not even Isabel. He's like a kid. "Course," he had to add, "you might've maxed out by now. How many minutes have you spent in the full, undiluted sun this weekend?
Ten? Fifteen? Ha ha!" "Ha ha." Still laughing, he tossed his beer can in the trash -"Three points!"-and went downstairs.
He'd left the TV on. Mick and I glanced at each other, then turned as one to stare at two sports announcers, a black guy and a white guy, recapping the- game. We did that for a while. A new announcer's voice came on to tell us that if we stayed tuned, we -could hear all the-sports news and scores from around the country. I stood up.
I don't know why - the tension was so tight. We'd been alone together before. We were friends. But when I looked at Mick, my muscles gave out. I stood there with rubber knees, taking shallow breaths and feeling as if my skin didn't fit me anymore, it had gotten too thin and sensitive, too tight. - - He stood up, too. One look at his face, and it was all over. I honestly don't know who moved, who put out a hand first. Even up to the -last second, it could've been innocent- just a touch, a good-night brush of fingers. But we gripped hands hard, and in the next second we were holding each other.
- We broke away quickly. Fatalistic, I clutched at the phantom memory of his hard shoulders, the cottony smell of his T-shirt, thinking that was all I could -have. He said something. I couldn't understand him, my senses were dazed. "What?" He snatched at my hand and pulled me outside, out onto the deck.
Too bright-too open. We went down the outer stairs as quietly as we could, me barefooted, Mick in his unlaced sneakers. Under the house, in the shadowy space between his car and a padlocked storage shed, we stopped. One last second of sanity while we faced-each other, hands off. We could go back up, -we could just talk- We kissed. It was painful, not joyful, but I couldn't stop-like drinking seawater if I were dying of thirst, it would kill me in the end but I had to have it. I clutched at his arms, covered his whole mouth with mine, grinding my body against him. He turned us, pressed me back against the side of the shed. My head struck something-the metal fuse box. "Ow." Mick started to take his hands off me, but I grabbed him back, urgent.
"Kiss me," I said, even though he already was. I kept saying it, like some exciting obscenity, because it felt good to say the truth for a change, tell him for once what I really wanted. He wasn't as articulate-he murmured curse words in between kisses, but to me they sounded like love poetry. He put his hands in my hair. "So pretty," he said, and my heart just sang. He'd never given me a compliment before. It meant so much. I kissed him tenderly, not like a madwoman, and we both started shaking. He slid his hands up-from behind, inside my blouse. Skin on skin.
Shuddering, hissing in my breath, I gasped out the fatal question. "Mick, Mick, where can we go?" Glare from the outside spotlight glittered in his eyes when he turned his head, looking around. I saw the same outlaw indifference to consequence that I was feeling. He took my hand. We picked our way past the pilings and stepped off the concrete pad onto the grass, along a narrow, half-beaten path to a row of scrub pines separating Neap Tide from the beach house behind it. From there the path turned toward the sea. Where was he taking me? Would we drop between the pines and kiss some more in the dark? Would we keep going till we reached the water and make love in the cold sand in the moonlight? I followed him blind, thoughtless, loving the feeling of being tugged along, and so glad the choice was his and not mine.
1 stepped on a burr. - Mick caught my elbow when I started hopping on one foot and swearing. I stuck my foot out behind me and tore at the stinging thistle, but I only got part of it; as soon as I took one step, I was hobbling again. "Sit," he said, and we sank down together in the sand.
Wasn't this just like my life? A living analogy? Accidental performance art? He made me straighten my leg out and put my foot in his lap. He tried to be gentle, but by the time he plucked out the last of the spiky, prickly nettles in the soft part of my arch, we were different people. We had turned back into our old selves. Our thinking selves. I mourned the loss so sharply, I wanted to weep.
The wind blew the feathery fronds of sea oats and stirred the beach grass, carrying the heavy smell of the sea. So many stars, more stars than black sky, and a moon one night past full. We stayed where we were, enclosed in the steady roar of the surf, watching each other. Mick studied the look of his hand around my ankle, pale on paler, and I measured the weight of my calf on his thigh. He had on gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. Moonlight picked out the silver in his too-short hair, and I leaned closer to touch him, overcome by a stabbing, irresistible tenderness. We started to speak at the same time. I gestured-you first.
"When we got here and 1 heard you were staying," he said, and stopped. I scooted closer. "I thought I'd just see - remnants of you. I was looking forward to finding an old book you'd read and discarded, a-" He laughed with no sound. "A wet towel." "I looked in your shaving kit," I blurted, "Just to see. I touched your things." He put his hand on the side of my face, and I closed my eyes. "I shouldn't have stayed. Oh, Mick. I knew it as soon as I saw you." "But I'm glad you stayed." "I'm glad, too, but it's crazy." "I know." "What are we going to do?" "I don't know." So much for having my will taken away from me. That had been my secret hope, that Mick would take charge, make all the decisions, tell me what to do, make me do it if I put up any resistance. Kind of like a father and his little girl.
I embarrassed myself.
"Emma-I don't think I can leave my family. I can't leave Jay." "I know, I know that, I'm not asking you to," I said quickly, stumbling over the words in my haste. That he should think for a second that I wanted to wreck his marriage-and yet he broke my heart with his finality, his lack of equivocation. 1 didn't want games, but I needed something, some slender thread of -made-up hope to hold on to.
I covered his hand on my cheek with my hand. "I have so many things to tell you." He bent his head, leaning closer. "But also, I have nothing to tell you. If you can't leave her." He swallowed, his face bleak with pain.
I was in pain, too. "Do you still make love to her? Have you had other women besides me? I don't know anything about you. How can I be in love with you, we've never even gone to the movies. I hate this. I want- I just want-I want to hold hands with you, Mick, call you up on the telephone-" - This was torture. He didn't say anything, didn't answer. Even now, he couldn't talk to me about his marriage, couldn't bring himself to betray Sally to me. And now would have been the perfect time to say, "Emma, I'm miserable, she doesn't understand me, let's be lovers." But Mick had no rap, no married-guy patter, he couldn't excuse himself by enumerating his wife's failings. Most especially, he couldn't walk out on his little boy, who already worried about Mommy, and woke up screaming in the night from bad dreams.
"This is it, isn't it? This is all we're going to get." I touched Mick's mouth, his raspy cheek. I put my fingers in his hair. "Darling, who gave you this godawful -haircut?" I said, choked on tenderness, feeling tears sting behind my eyes.
He said, "I didn't want this to happen. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you." "I know that. Anyway, it's too late." "Emma..." Then we were kissing again, eyes shut tight as if we could stay blind to the truth that this was hopeless, this was just putting off the inevitable.- But, God, it felt right to hold him, it felt like the most honest thing I'd done since we met.
It had to stop. We backed off shakily, breathing hard, like teenagers in the backseat at the drive-in. "Cod," I said, and he said, "Emma, Christ," and we sat back on our haunches and stared at each other.
"Okay. Okay," I said, "it's over. No more. Because this is killing me." He helped me to stand. That sounds silly,- but I needed help. He glanced over my--head, back at the cottage, and I looked back, too-a reflex. There was nothing to see, no lights on upstairs, no suspicious wife on the side porch, hands on her hips, surveying the dunes. But his anxiety infected me. It made me feel sick.
"Do you want me to go back first?" I-Ie looked at me sharply. "No." "You see how we would be at this?" I said -a little wildly. "We wouldn't even have any fun. We can't see each other anymore, Mick, not at all. Don't call me, don't do anything." He nodded once. He put the palms of his hands on his forehead and pressed. "Lee and Henry are bound to have something." "I know. If I hear you've been invited, I won't go." "No, you go, I'll stay away." "No, you're friends with Henry, and I can see Lee anytime. You go." I turned and started back toward the cottage, keeping my eyes on the path, wary of rogue nettles. Another metaphor for my life. Mick and I had never even made it to the beach, never made glorious, swept-away love beside the crashing waves. Because of a burr, we'd hunkered down in the chilly sand and made do with a few furtive kisses.
I never cry in front of people. It's a matter of pride, or maybe it's a phobia. Anyway, I don't do it. Imagine my chagrin when we got to the bottom of the wooden steps at the side of the house and I realized I couldn't stop. I could have waved good-bye and run up alone -he'd never have known then. But I didn't want to leave him yet.
"Shit," I whispered when he put his arms around me. Were we safe here? What if someone came out- Henry, to smoke a cigar? Jay, sleepwalking? Lee overcome by a sudden compulsion to sweep the porch? "I hate this, I hate it." "I hate it, too, and it's my fault. I swear I never wanted this."
"Stop saying that, it's nobody's fault. Anyway, we haven't done anything." "I've made you miserable." "That's true. I forgive you."
We kissed, smiling. But then I spoiled it by starting up again. "I'm not like this," I assured him, using his Tshirt to dry my face. "I'm really not, this is a first."
He pretended to believe me. He stroked the tears from my cheeks with his fingers, and then he leaned in and pressed his face to mine. "Sorry to hurt you. Not sorry this happened. I've been lying since the beginning."
"I've been lying, too." "At least . . .
"Yeah." At least we weren't lying anymore. There was some chilly comfort in that.
"I'll miss you," he whispered.
"Oh, don't." But I didn't break away, I wanted every futile, agonizing second.
A last kiss, very soft. No passion, just-good-bye. I don't like the feel of my heart breaking. It's very romantic, but it stings like acid.
"Bye. I'm sleeping in tomorrow, Mick-I don't want to see you." Those were the last words. Car lights swung off the highway onto our cul-de-sac, a stranger's - car, but it scared us. We backed away from each other. I turned and ran up the steps, tiptoed inside, slunk down the hall past the closed door to- Sally's room, and ducked into mine. - - Closed the door. Sat on the bed in the dark and waited until I heard Mick in the hall. His door opened and closed softly. I listened like an animal, like a wolf, but there was no sound, no murmur of voices. Nothing.
I had a long time, all night, to suffer for my disappointment. I'd wanted her to catch him. I'd wanted the jig to be up.
He's wrong-he should leave her for me. I could make him happy, and I could fall in love with Jay. In fact, I already have.
But.
But what I love about Damn him. He's killed me.
20.