by Nancy Thayer
Bella approached. “Hamburgers and hot dogs, hot and juicy, get them on the grill now! Fix your plates, you guys, then join me and Aaron down at the table on the grass. We’re saving places for you.”
Morgan scanned the backyard. “I’ll get Petey.…” She went off toward the small beach.
Their group separated, some toward the drinks table, some toward the grill.
Bella took Natalie’s arm. “Having fun meeting your neighbors?”
Was it the wine, or the fresh air, or simply how easy it was to talk with Bella? In a whisper Natalie confessed, “I am having fun. Your brother’s intriguing.”
“Oh, please, don’t you start,” Bella moaned. “Ben’s got the personality of a turtle.”
“Bella.” Her father passed her, a glass of wine in each hand. “Be nice.”
Bella sighed theatrically. “This is what I get for living at home.”
“It’s a remarkable place to live,” Natalie told her, and she meant it. It was idyllic, not just the scenery but the sense of neighborhood. By the side of the house, several teenagers played volleyball, jumping, yelling, snorting with laughter. At the other tables, families gathered with other families, and Grace and John Horton strolled among the guests, saying hello and asking if they had everything they needed. Grace would never be anyone Natalie would choose as a close friend. She was at least ten years older, and in her ironed white shorts and shirt and gold earrings shaped like anchors, there was something a bit prissy about her. Natalie was certain Grace would find Natalie’s artistic dreams too bohemian. But this seemed to be Grace’s talent—to hold large, casual gatherings where neighbors got together to enjoy life.
At Natalie’s table, the group broke off into separate islands of conversation. It amused Natalie to see how animated Ben was as he argued with Morgan about the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to bring all universities and colleges into compliance with the current hazardous waste management laws. Odd how Morgan, who’d seemed rather stiff, even aloof, when she first arrived, was vivacious now. Who knew what a few sweet words about waste management could do for a girl?
At her left sat Josh O’Keefe, leaning forward rather aggressively in his chair, pounding the side of one hand into the palm of the other like some revolutionary Russian, clearly trying to convince Aaron of something about Bio-Green. Natalie tuned in; was Josh actually trying to get Aaron to invest in Bio-Green? It sounded like it. Not the most charming way to converse at a cookout.
“Josh?” Bella asked sweetly, rising. “Would you help me clear the table?”
Josh said, “Of course,” and stood up to help. Instantly he reverted to the man Natalie had met on the deck: low-key, good-humored, easygoing.
Natalie leaned back in her chair for a moment, letting the talk all around her fade into the background while she lost herself in pleasure at the sight of the water shining as if glazed with gold by the setting sun. She wouldn’t allow herself to gawk constantly at Ben, but she was aware of him all during the evening, as if he were a song drifting through the air, or light from the rising moon.
When the party ended, Josh carried Petey home, the child’s head lolling on his shoulder, rather than risk waking the boy by placing him in the stroller. Back at their house, he carefully laid his son in his crib.
“I’ll take off his clothes and tuck him in,” Morgan whispered.
Josh nodded and left the room. As Morgan undid the snaps of his OshKosh overalls and slid them off his chubby body, Petey shifted in his sleep but didn’t wake. She checked his diaper—still dry; she’d just changed it at the Hortons’ house. He’d be comfortable enough in his tiny white tee shirt, even if a few grains of sand were sifting off his clothes. Her child lay flat on his back, arms and legs spread, as if he were effortlessly falling through his sleep. His lips opened slightly as he puffed his sweet breath into the air. The sight of his innocent face made Morgan feel peaceful in every vein and bone. She etched his face on her brain for the inevitable days to come when he would turn into Hyperactive Tantrum-Throwing Monster Boy.
In their bedroom, she pushed the button (how swank was that!) and the blinds buzzed shut across the wall of windows facing the lake. She undressed, hung up her clothes, pulled on one of Josh’s long-sleeved tee shirts she’d appropriated for her own use as a nightshirt.
She was tired. These days it seemed she was always tired, which was weird, because Petey at twelve months slept through most nights. She got comfortable in bed, plumped up her pillows, and waited for Josh to come back upstairs. Now was the sweet time, chatting lazily with him about the evening and the people they’d met. As tired as she was, she wouldn’t mind making love tonight. It had been a while.
Josh didn’t come up. She went out into the hall and leaned over the railing. “Josh?”
“I’m going to stay down here. I’ve got some work to catch up on.”
Morgan bit back a bitter retort. He was always working, always in his study, even tonight. Since their move here, Josh had spent almost every night on the computer. Sometimes just an hour, often three or four. She didn’t nag him about it. She’d known when he accepted the position that he’d have enormous, time-consuming responsibilities. Still.
Sometimes, when she’d had a bad day, missed her job and her friends, and allowed herself to morph into her Mad Morgan self, she wondered if work was all he was doing on his computer. Perhaps he was emailing some gorgeous, sexy secretary from the office—but that was just ridiculous! She’d never had anxieties about Josh’s fidelity before; she knew he loved her and adored Petey.
She stomped back to bed, shoved her glasses on, grabbed up the Transfederal Task Force on Optimizing Biosafety and Biocontainment Oversight report, and settled in. She would read until Josh came up to bed, and then she’d surprise him with an attack of sweet sex like she used to before they were married.
After an hour, she fell asleep, with the bedside lamp still on and her glasses sliding down her nose.
2
Sunday morning, Natalie woke late. Through the open window, a fresh breeze drifted in. She stretched and curled on her side, watching the sunlight flicker against the wall as the wind played with the curtain. An unfamiliar sensation possessed her. After a few moments she identified it, cautiously, as happiness.
When had she had such fun with so many fascinating people? At first, Natalie admitted to herself, her inner snob had been unimpressed by petite Bella with her Alice in Wonderland blond hair and innocent blue eyes, but when they began to talk, Bella turned out to be clever and funny and not unworldly at all. Bella’s boyfriend, Aaron, was smart, charming, and incredibly interesting. He was an architect who knew a lot about art and the relationship between the two. Aaron had traveled to Milwaukee to see the Santiago Calatrava pavilion for its famous art museum, and his description made Natalie want to jump on the first plane to Wisconsin. The O’Keefes were cool, too, fascinating and humming with an enigmatic inner tension so palpable Natalie thought she could have painted an abstract inspired by the couple’s dynamics.
Bella and Ben’s mother, Louise, was a gift, the perfect neighbor, kind and informative, generous and capable, with an interesting face. Natalie would love to paint her portrait someday.
And there was Ben.
Her heart did a drumroll.
She tossed herself out of bed. It was summer, she’d met some brilliant people, and she was living in a spectacular house.
She enjoyed sleeping naked on Aunt Eleanor’s million-count sheets, but now, as she roved through a house with so many windows, she needed to wear something, so she pulled on her ancient red dragon kimono and padded downstairs to make coffee. She stepped out onto the deck. Already the lake was alive: Nearby a couple stroked through the water in a canoe, and in the distance a Sunfish sail flashed.
Only a month ago, she’d been sharing a one-room apartment with another waitress in TriBeCa, working at a Starbucks during the day and babysitting at night. For almost ten years, this had been her routine in New
York or Boston: a year, or two of working as hard as she could to make enough money to take art classes and paint for as long as her savings held out.
She’d known since junior high that she wanted to paint. She’d worked after high school at a drugstore lunch counter, taking her earnings immediately to the bank down the street to tuck away in her savings account. She’d denied herself cool clothes, bought no makeup or nail polish, and when friends took bus trips down to Boston, she went to the library and spent the weekend poring over art books. When she graduated from high school in Maine, she’d saved enough money for two years of community college near Portland. She’d gone to every art exhibition she could find; she’d taken a drawing class and an art history class before deciding she wanted to find a teacher or an art school and concentrate on oils.
Natalie’s mother had scoffed at this. “You’ll never make a living as an artist!” she’d predicted with exasperation.
Natalie had shot back, “You should know.” Her mother had always struggled financially. When Slade was nine, Natalie and Slade’s father had left them and never reentered their lives, never sent child support, not so much as a birthday present. Their mother, Marlene, had worked in the high school cafeteria for years before gradually sliding into the business of breeding and selling purebred bulldogs. She loved those dogs, Natalie had often thought, more than she loved her children. But, then, no doubt the dogs were easier to love.
Aunt Eleanor, Marlene’s sister, had been the saving grace in the gloom of Natalie’s childhood, not simply because she often arrived like a fairy godmother, giving everyone presents, but because her own life was a model for Natalie. As a young girl, Natalie had seen Eleanor exhausted from cleaning the posh homes of Portland’s fat cats. She’d heard Eleanor raving to Natalie’s mother about the books on interior design she got from the library and devoured. Marlene had scoffed at that, too. When Natalie was ten, Eleanor had taken her down to Boston to go through the Museum of Fine Arts and later to a concert.
“These are things you have to know,” Eleanor had impressed on Natalie. “You don’t have to go to college to know them, but you do have to know them.”
Natalie had seen Eleanor in sweatpants and tee shirt, on her knees, scrubbing ground-in dirt from the floor of her newly leased shop space on Boston’s fashionable Newbury Street. Natalie had been there in her own sweatpants, helping Eleanor. In Eleanor’s cramped Charlestown apartment, Natalie had seen Eleanor in a somber suit, hair pulled back in a bun as she prepared to meet a banker to apply for a start-up loan for her interior design shop. Eleanor had gotten it, and quickly repaid it. The last time Natalie had seen Eleanor, she’d been dressed to go out in the evening in a sexy low-cut dress, high heels, and dangling earrings. Recently, Eleanor was interested in finding love—and it looked like she’d found it, since she was spending a year traveling with her boyfriend. Eleanor had asked Natalie to caretake the lake house; she’d even offered her a small salary. Really, Natalie knew, Eleanor was making it possible for Natalie to have one full year to paint.
She was grateful to Aunt Eleanor; how could she not be? She admired her like crazy. And she loved her, truly, but in an unsettling, confusing kind of way. Aunt Eleanor was like lightning. You never knew when she was going to strike or how extreme she would be. She wasn’t the kind to remember birthdays or Christmas—but one day when Natalie and her brother were in their teens, they got a phone call from the local car dealer. Eleanor had bought them each a car—inexpensive used rattletraps, but they passed state inspection.
Whatever had happened in the past, Natalie knew she was fortunate to be given this amazing gift of an entire year with a free house and enough money to live on. She shouldn’t waste it.
She walked through the house, sipping her coffee. Really, this place was sensational. The living room stretched the width of the house, its cathedral ceiling arching high. A kitchen and half bath were tucked at the front by the entrance hall and downstairs closet. Glossy oak floors lay under hand-woven modern rugs in geometric patterns and vivid colors. Deep sofas faced each other by the high stone fireplace, a hand-carved coffee table between. Upstairs were five bedrooms. Aunt Eleanor had insisted Natalie use hers, and Natalie was delighted—it was the biggest, with the best view.
When she first arrived, she’d been buzzed with determination. She bought groceries and wine, got a card at the local library, and checked out a number of books she’d always intended to read. She’d set up her easel and dragged a table in from a guest bedroom to hold her paints and rags. She’d taken out her portfolio and thought about what she wanted to work on. She studied her own sketches. She arranged her favorite art books on the coffee table.
The first few nights in the enormous house had kept Natalie on edge. After the noise of the city, the sirens and shrieks of tires, the shouts and laughter of passing neighbors, the overall enveloping whir, the quiet of the country spooked her. The brushing of the fir tree against an upstairs window made her jump.
Last night she’d fallen asleep easily, knowing she had nice neighbors.
She hadn’t had a chance to get to know Morgan and Bella well, she realized. It was one thing to be in a group, quite another to be with “just the girls.” Grinning, she checked her watch to be sure it wasn’t too early, then picked up the phone and invited Bella and Morgan over for drinks this Friday night.
• • •
At six, Morgan and Bella arrived. Bella wore a headband to hold back her bouncing blond hair, but she’d changed into skinny capris and a black tee, so she didn’t look quite so young and cute. Morgan wore khakis and a loose blue shirt of her husband’s. They had all agreed to be comfortable, so Natalie was in jeans and a black cotton hoodie.
“What do you think?” Natalie asked them. “Shall we start out on the deck?”
“Oh, let’s,” Morgan pleaded. “The weather’s so gorgeous.”
“In honor of the day, I’ve made strawberry daiquiris,” Natalie announced. “With just a touch of rum, so we can drink all we want without getting hammered.” She took the pitcher out of the refrigerator, and the other two women brightened at the sight of the frothy pink liquid, which Natalie carried out to the deck and poured into wide-rimmed glasses.
They settled in Eleanor’s comfortable wicker chairs around a table set with a plate of cheese, crackers, and fruit. A strong sun had warmed the deck, and as it slowly moved overhead, it cast slender shadows through the trees.
“It’s finally June.” Bella sighed, stretching her arms. “I am so ready for it.”
“I’m so ready for this.” Morgan put her glass on the table. “I don’t mean the drink, although I’m certainly ready for it, too. I mean a girls’ night out. I had no idea how desperate I was to talk to women my own age.”
“I totally understand,” Natalie agreed. “Although Louise has been by a few times, to see if I need anything.”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “She helped me when we first moved in, too. She’s a very cool lady.”
“She’s beautiful,” Natalie said. “I’d like to paint her.”
“Speaking of work,” Bella said, “Natalie, would you show us what you’re painting?”
Natalie jumped up. “I thought you’d never ask. Bring your drinks, ladies. The more you drink, the better my work looks.”
Natalie led them back into the house and up the stairs to the front bedroom she’d turned into a studio. This week she’d continued to transform the room into her place. Now whenever she entered, she stepped into a stimulating, resplendent cocoon. She’d dragged in long tables from the rest of the house and dug out Aunt Eleanor’s most vibrant shawls, tablecloths, and pots. She’d stacked the shelves along one wall with her big, heavy, glorious art books: Rembrandt, Monet, Pissarro, Wyeth. She’d hung a few of her own favorite paintings, all still lifes, and against one wall she’d set up a still life of a silver bowl with apples.
Bella studied the beginnings of Natalie’s painting on the easel.
“Your work is astonishi
ng,” Bella said.
“Thanks. But I don’t know, I’m not feeling it.” Natalie cast a critical eye at what she’d done. “I think it’s the season. I shouldn’t be using apples. It makes me think of fall. It’s got too heavy a tone. I think I’ll start over with, oh, strawberries, cherries.…”
“These are all yours?” Morgan knelt on the floor, looking through a pile of painted, unframed canvases.
“They are. In New York I worked on abstracts.” She chewed her lips. “But I like other styles, too.”
Morgan had pulled a large canvas from the stack on the floor. “This one is amazing, Natalie.”
“Thanks.” Natalie knew she had to get over the wash of embarrassment that flooded her whenever anyone complimented her. Her art felt so intimate, so personal, and most of all, her inner critic knew that the painting really wasn’t amazing. It was, at best, okay. “Hey, my glass is empty. Back to the deck.”
It was cooling as the sun drifted across the sky, casting shadows, so they carried their drinks and munchies into the house and settled in the living room.
“All right,” Natalie said, “it’s your turn for show-and-tell, Bella. What’s the deal with you and Aaron?”
Bella groaned. “It’s complicated. I met him in December and we’ve been together every moment since. He’s smart, he’s good, and I’m in love with him.”
“Does he love you?” Morgan asked.
Bella nodded.
“Then what’s the difficulty?”
“He wants to move to California. He’s been asked to interview at a San Francisco architectural firm he’s wild to work for.”
“Has he asked you to go with him?” Morgan asked.
“Not yet. But he will. He told me he loves me. I’m sure he’s going to ask me to marry him.”
Natalie was bending over the cheese board, slicing Brie and dabbing it on crackers. She stopped and gawked at Bella. “You love him, he loves you, he’s going to ask you to marry him. And your problem is?”