All Dressed Up (20 page)

Dad and Billy
arrived home from their hike to Montcalm Point at around five.

“He managed
pretty well,” was Dad’s cheerful verdict on the exercise, to Emma
and Mom.

Billy
disagreed. “No, Dad,” he said. “This year it was you who managed
pretty well.”

“What do you
mean, Billy Bud?”

“Last year and
two years ago, I got tired and went slow and you were ahead of me
all the way back, and when we got home you said I managed pretty
well. This year, you got tired and went slow and I was ahead, so we
should say it the other way around.”

Emma laughed.
She was surprised, both at the perception and at herself for just
laughing like that, for the small ambush of pleasure with Billy…
Billy… as its source. “He’s right, Dad,” she said. “It’s logical.
Managing pretty well is not the winning position.”

Dad laughed
too, and a complicated look appeared on his face – happy and sort
of confused, as if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up where he
was in this life, but most of it was okay. “In that case, I’ll try
not to manage pretty well next time.”

In fact, both
Dad and Billy seemed wiped now that they were home. They slumped on
the porch and Mom went to grab them some juice from the
refrigerator. Billy’s water-bottle had leaked all through his
day-pack, including his sandwiches, and Dad’s water hadn’t been
enough for both of them. They’d started to dehydrate, until they
splashed into the lake fully clothed, up to their chests, and drank
the pure cold Adirondack lake water right where they stood. They
were both tickled by this.

“We stood in
it, and we drank it,” Billy said. “We went in till it was deep
enough to pour into our mouths.”

“I don’t think
I’ve ever done that before,” Dad said. “People probably used to do
that all the time. The Mohicans and the Mohawks and the Abenaki.”
He liked saying the tribal names. They rolled off his tongue. He
added the explorers. “Hudson and Champlain and all their men.”

“Do you wish
you were them, Dad?” Billy asked.

“Of course I
do!”

Emma followed
Mom into the kitchen and blurted out, “We never had another dog,
after Ralphie and Peaches, I want to get Billy a puppy, could I do
that?”

“A puppy? Like
for Christmas.”

“No, now. Look
for a good one. To give him something special to do over the
summer. So he could look after it when it’s little and needs all
the attention.”

“And what
about when we go back to Jersey?”

“Come on, Mom,
this is your kind of impulse! Don’t be the one to block.”

“I’m not
blocking. I’m just – ” She filled in the answer with her moving
hands.

Emma said it
out loud. “Scared of my mood swings.”

“Yes, a
little. Yes.”

“Can I at
least sleep on it, or something? Can you sleep on it? Discuss it
with Dad?”

“Yes, I
guess.”

Emma heard a
car pulling up and knew it must be Sarah and Lainie. She dropped
the puppy subject and went and hid upstairs until Lainie had driven
away.

“I have a
stomach-ache,” Billy announced just before they ate at seven. Mom
told him he was hungry after all the walking and that was why, but
he ate his spaghetti bolognaise and the stomach-ache didn’t go
away. He spent the evening lying on the couch.

At his
bedtime, Mom took the kind of deep breath and made the awkward
movement she always made in Emma’s direction before she – which was
rare in any case – talked to her in any meaningful way about Billy.
Emma wanted to yell at her, It’s safe to say his name, okay? But
she understood Mom’s hesitation.

“What do you
think, Emma? He hasn’t vomited, and he says he hasn’t had diarrhea.
He seems listless rather than in pain, but it’s been more than two
hours now.”

“Do you want
me to take a look at him?” She had to struggle to make the
offer.

She’d been
trying those little moments with Billy this week, and some of them
had worked out okay. One night, she reminded him to brush his
teeth. Sarah could do those things so casually – “Teeth, Billy,” –
two words – and Mom did them like a weary parent, but Emma felt as
if she herself had no right, that she was on stage in the wrong
costume.

“Have you
brushed your teeth, Billy?”

“I will.”

“Before you
forget, okay?”

“I will!”
Hands on the game control, not looking at her.

What now, what
do I say next, she’d wondered, shaping her mouth to speak more
firmly to him and then saying nothing further, in the end, just not
knowing how. All dressed up and no place to go…

“Only if you
want to,” Mom said now, in answer to Emma’s offer to take a look at
him, letting her free of her obligations too easily, as usual.

“Well, what
happens if I don’t?” Emma bit back at her. “You stay in the dark
and worry till it goes away.”

“Goes away? So
you think – ?”

“Let me check
him out.” She went to him. “Billy, wanna lie back on the couch for
me?”

She felt his
stomach and his forehead. “He doesn’t feel warm.” Then she returned
to his stomach. “If you’re thinking appendicitis, Mom, the pain
isn’t typical, but then it often isn’t. You don’t feel like you’re
going to throw up, do you, Billy?”

He shook his
head.

“So…” Mom
prompted.

“Just rest
overnight, okay? We’ll see how it goes.” To Mom, Sarah and Dad, she
added, “I could blang="e. I hope I’m right that it’s nothing
because, guess what, it’s the beginning of July and all the new
rotations have just started.”

They knew this
already. You did, when you had a doctor in the family. Early July,
when the new interns started, was the worst day in the whole year
for America to need hospital treatment. But there was a difference
between knowing it as a statistic, and knowing because you’d lived
through it this time last year – getting thrown into the water by
case-hardened senior doctors like a newborn in a swimming pool, to
see if you would thrash around l="e enough to work out how to
swim.

An old man
died waiting for a bed in the renal unit on Emma’s very first day.
A child threw up all over her. A drug addict abused her. A woman in
the eighth month of pregnancy – who probably wasn’t in a fit state
to be having a child in the first place, from the look of her –
hadn’t felt any movement for a while, and it turned out the baby
had died in utero.

“Maybe the
walk was too much,” Sarah suggested. “What is it, round trip? Ten
miles?”

“A little
over,” Dad said. “But no real climbing. The only problem this time
was the water, before we decided to drink the lake.” He did the
walk to Montcalm Point most summers, and over the years had
persuaded everyone in the family to accompany him at least once. It
was a peaceful hike, over flat and undulating terrain. The point
jutted right out into the lake and there was a boat dock which
would always make Dad talk about getting a proper boat and camping
equipment and really getting into the wild for a week under canvas,
to places you couldn’t reach by road, like Henry Hudson or Samuel
de Champlain.

He usually
came back from the hike singing “Away, Rio,” and “Brandy, You’re a
Fine Girl,” under his breath, because Montcalm Point made him
discover every year that his life, his love and his lady was the
sea. He was doing it right now – “And the sailors say Brandy,” –
while he kept a quiet watch over the situation with Billy’s
stomach.

I should have
gone with them today, Emma thought, I should have just helped pack
the picnic and gone al="e.

“Did you want
to see me, Lainie?” Mac said on the phone, after she’d dropped the
Farrs at their motel and Sarah back at the Deans.

Lainie didn’t
know how he had her cell number, but then thought about how often
it was listed in real estate advertisements in the newspaper, or on
For Sale signs out front of people’s houses. Her cell number was
the easiest in the world to get hold of, and his possession of it
didn’t indicate any particular heroic questing on his part.

Rats.

Oh, Lainie,
you fool!

“Did your
couple get married?” she blurted. “Did those fighting relatives
survive?” Did you know that God and I have more in common than I
thought?

“Shall I come
over, or meet you somewhere?”

“That would bl
great. Come over. I have a deck.” Just so you don’t think I’m
envisaging a couch or a bed.

“They got
married. I don’t know what it was all about. Long-standing. See you
soon.” He sounded cheerful, on top of an underlying weariness. “I’m
supposed to put in an appearance at their reception, so I’ll be…
you know… wearing clothes and driving a car.”

In this final
statement, the weariness predominated. Lainie got that little
tickly, squirmy, wonderful feeling which she’d forgotten existed
until last week, totally knowing that he would rather linger on the
deck with her.

Part of the
squirminess came from the knowledge that they weren’t supposed to
be doing this, that they’d agreed not to only last week, but now
they were sneaking around behind God’s back in defiance, because
the impetus was too stg="e, and their sensible agreement had
evaporated completely. Maybe it hadn’t been a sensible agreement.
Maybe she really owed a debt of gratitude to those horrible Farrs
for making her see it.

Mac came up
her front steps a half hour later, wearing gray trousers and a
nice, crisp shirt in a plaid kind of pattern of subtle blue and
white. It showed off his barrel-like chest far more blatantly than
the darker ministerial garb he’d worn for his church service last
Sunday, and Lainie realized for the first time, as he shook her
hand, just how physical this was for her.

It wasn’t
polite and restgained.

It wasn’t
staid or safe or middle-aged.

It wasn’t just
about companionship.

She actually
seriously desired this man to a shocking extent. She wanted to run
her hands over him, and touch his skin with her mouth. She wanted
to bury her face in his neck and inhale his smell. She wanted to
suck in the maleness of him, the stgength and hardness and all that
stuff, all the exact physical things you were supposed to love
about men and the way they were different from you. Their deep
voices. Their squared muscles. Their body hair.

Except that
those generalized qualities wouldn’t have been right in any other
man, they had to bel="e expressly to this one. To Mac.

“Saturday
afternoons in summer are not a great time to get hold of me unless
you like spectating at weddings,” he said. “I saw you there… but I
couldn’t really speak… and then you were gone, and I had a late
afternoon service after the wedding.”

“We were
driving by, Sarah and I. The horse and carriage were in the way,
blocking the lane, and we couldn’t get through. But I’m so glad –
Come in. That is, come through,” she corrected herself, still
determined to show him that she was keeping this out in the open
air, on her back deck, even though she actually wanted to lead him
stgaight to the bedroom.

Or up against
the wall at the top of the landing, that could blagood.

And just strip
him and touch him and tell him I want you.

But no, it was
going to be the deck. It had to be the deck.

She already
had store-bought pink lemonade sitting on her outdoor table in a
jug full of ice. She had matching glasses, and some nuts and
stuffed olives, and a pile of paper napkins so high you’d think she
was offering him lobster claws in garlic butter.

“Oh. Okay. So
you didn’t want to see me? Okay,” he repeated.

“No! No! After
I saw what a hard time you were having with that wedding, yes, I
absolutely did want to see you! I hated that we’d eyeballed each
other but we couldn’t talk, Mac.” Oh, she could feel the color in
her face again! “I was concerned about you, in case you came in the
way of any more punches and didn’t deal with them so well the next
time. I really wanted to see you and talk to you. I think it was a
mistake, the way our coffee ended last Sunday.”

There youago,
Lainie, just let it all drop out right in front of him, don’t
exercise any restgaint at all.

But he didn’t
seem to mind. “I think so, too.”

An hour and
three glasses of lemonade later, he rose, after they’d talked crime
fiction and their kids and gardeni"e, and she tried not to let him
see her disappointment. “I should go to that reception,” he said.
“I really have to.”

Apparently he
wasn’t expected to bring a date to the reception, because he didn’t
ask if she wanted to go with him. She would have, in a heartbeat.
Meanwhile, they still hadn’t kissed.

Lainie had a
well-built,agood-looking, nicely-dressed middle-aged man coming
down her front steps. Angie felt a flush start up, as if she was
bending over a hot stove. The skin of her neck tingled and she knew
her face would bl turning red and shiny because she’d seen it in
the mirror.

Lainie had
flushed, too. Or blushed.

There was an
awkward moment when Angie and the stranger met on the front path
and Lainie had to decide whether to come down the steps and
introduce them or what. She’d been standing on the porch watching
the stranger out to his car.

This was a
form of politeness that differed from family to family, Angie had
observed. Some people closed their front door behind you, in a
hurry to pour themselves a drink or turn on the TV. Others walked
you all the way to the car and leaned down to talk to you through
the driver’s side window until you actually pulled away. With
Lainie, it was always the porch. She stood, and as you drove off,
she waved. As if she was never going to see you again and had to
take the final possible glimpse. Or as if making sure you weren’t
only pretending to leave before you parked your car fifty yards
down and sneaked back in.