Montauk

by Nicola Harrison

  I didn’t put it in an envelope and address it to Mr. Rosen as I usually did when I finished a piece—it was too close to home, writing about Harry’s investments. Instead I looked around the room and thought about where to keep it hidden, to be sure no housekeepers or, God forbid, Harry saw it if they snooped around. I folded it and slipped it into the side of my pocketbook.

  31

  Thomas had left the subject of my marriage alone for a while. I supposed he trusted me to figure out a way to tell Harry at the right time. I thought about it constantly but didn’t know how anything was going to work. I threw myself into the charity ball. I felt more invested than ever and being busy agreed with me. My disappointment at being childless lessened and I didn’t know if I had begun to accept it or if it was that I was preoccupied and happy with other aspects of my life. I was so busy that I almost didn’t notice when my monthly bleeding didn’t come. It wasn’t until that Monday when Dolly accompanied me on a bike ride up to the elementary school to drop off some paperwork that I noticed anything different.

  We rode along, with me leading the way at first, our skirts tucked under our legs, our head scarfs flapping behind us. Dolly was chattering on about something, but I just couldn’t pay attention to her voice anymore. I was feeling utterly exhausted. I began huffing and puffing, wondering what on earth was going on—after all, the ride to the lighthouse was much farther than to the school and I had made that ride at least twenty times. I pulled to the side of the road when I saw a large boulder that would serve as a resting spot.

  “Sorry, Dolly, I’m going to have to take a little break. I’m a bit out of breath.”

  “Quite all right,” she said, pulling a pack of Luckies from inside her pocketbook. “I’m happy to take a breather.” She lit her cigarette and offered one to me.

  “No, thanks.” Suddenly the thought of smoking turned my stomach. “I’m actually a little dizzy,” I said, sitting on the rock and steadying myself with my hands on my knees.

  “Don’t worry,” Dolly said. “We’re in no rush. It’s quite warm, actually; maybe the sun is getting to you.”

  I lay back across the boulder, worried that if I didn’t allow myself to rest for a moment I might faint. I gazed out to the pond with half-closed eyes and lazily let a man in a rowboat fade in and out of view. He pulled the oars gently and little ripples of water rolled out toward me, a simple lulling movement in an otherwise calm and flat water. I felt a ripple under my skin, a tiny flutter of nausea, and suddenly I thought I might vomit. I sat up with a start and leaned my head over my bent knees, retching, but nothing came out.

  “Easy there, Bea,” Dolly said, taking the last drag of her cigarette, stubbing it out on the ground and walking over to me, rubbing her hand on my back. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “No,” I said, feeling perspiration form on my brow. “Of course not, it’s impossible.”

  “Impossible?”

  “The doctor said so. I’m done. Past it.” I could barely get the words out. Saliva gathered in my mouth and I tried to vomit again. I thought of my menstruation. I’d had no cramping, no tightness and none of the irritability that usually preceded my monthly flow.

  “Well, either you’ve eaten some lobster past its prime or your doctor was wrong about you being past yours.”

  Barely opening my eyes, I counted the weeks on my fingers. It was late. It hadn’t arrived. My God, I thought. Could it be? I looked up at her.

  “Darling, Harry’s going to be over the moon,” Dolly said.

  I reached up and grabbed Dolly’s arm. “Don’t.” It was all I could muster. I looked pleadingly into her eyes, sweat dripped down my cheek and I felt positively faint. “You can’t say anything to Harry.”

  Dolly’s face dropped. “Oh dear.”

  “Are you going to the city this week?” I asked.

  “I am now,” she said, fixing her head scarf. “We’ll go Wednesday. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  “Thank you.” Breathless, I vomited onto the dusty side of the road.

  * * *

  We sat on the train across from each other, bolt upright, dressed for the city, dressed for news. Dolly looked almost masculine in a short-brimmed straw hat, trimmed with a brown grosgrain ribbon, brown-and-white-striped silk dress with a collar and a matching brown silk necktie. I wore a wide brim, angled so that it covered half my face should someone see me entering the doctor’s office, with a high-necked, buttoned-up navy belted dress to appear respectable.

  If I could have gone the whole way into the city without speaking a word I would have. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell Dolly, I’d been dying to tell her everything about Thomas, about how he had changed my life in the course of a few short months, but this changed matters. Dolly had become a dear and close friend to me and I knew she would approve greatly of it all, she would absolutely devour all of this news and encourage me, but it was the “after” part I knew I wouldn’t want to hear. Dolly’s philosophy was to have your fun, pursue your dreams, indulge your desires, but go back home eventually, always maintaining your place in society.

  I looked out the window and watched as we rode along the water’s edge on Napeague Stretch, that narrow strip of land connecting Montauk to the rest of Long Island. It couldn’t have been more than half a mile wide with the Block Island Sound on one side, the Atlantic Ocean on the other, and a railroad track and a two-way road running down the middle. It was the thread that linked my surreal Montauk life to my reality in Manhattan. Traveling down that stretch of railroad made my body tighten and clench, leaving me panicked in case I somehow couldn’t return.

  I had drifted so far out in thought that I had almost forgotten I had company.

  “Good Lord, Beatrice, I am trying to give you some space, a little time for you to be ready to catch me up here, but what am I supposed to do, sit here all day and wait?”

  “I’m sorry; I’m a million miles away.”

  “You’ve obviously got a lot on your mind. But my mother always told me, a problem shared is a problem halved.”

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Start with the lovemaking, of course. Tell me everything, from the beginning.”

  Despite the fact that I knew she’d try to talk sense into me, I now felt a swell of relief, knowing I would finally confide in her.

  “Oh, Dolly, I’ve had the most wonderful couple of months; it’s just been divine. I feel alive again.”

  She clapped her hands and leaned onto the table between us.

  “You know Elizabeth?” I asked.

  “The laundry girl with the boys, of course I know her. Oh God, you’re not in love with a woman, are you?”

  “What? No, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m not opposed to that kind of thing, it can be quite freeing and wonderful if you are going through a creative spell, it can open up your artistic side, but that just doesn’t seem to fit your current predicament.” She nodded to my stomach.

  “Dolly, no.”

  “That’s good; you should save that for when you’re a little older, when you know your body really, really well. It can be quite profound, and boy, do you have some tricks to take home and teach your husband. Anyway, go on.”

  I laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you. Elizabeth has been very kind to me. I got to know her family, her boys; she lets me tag along on drives around Montauk.”

  “How lovely. I can tell you that some of the most stimulating parties Clark and I have hosted have been those we’ve had for the gents at the factory and their families: anniversaries, daughters’ wedding receptions. Quite often more substance than what we get in our circles. Do go on.”

  “Well, through Elizabeth I’ve met the most wonderful man—loving, caring, thoughtful, handsome, a manly man.” I told Dolly about seeing him in the fishing village, our run-in at the greasy pig contest and again at his house, his fall. I told her everything.

  “I adore this story,” Dolly said. “An a
ffair with a lighthouse keeper! How thrillingly romantic.”

  “I was helping him at the lighthouse; we were around each other for hours at a time, sometimes with nothing to do but talk. He understands me more than anyone ever has. I’ve told him things I didn’t even know about myself. He told me things about his estranged wife, his son—”

  “An estranged wife? Ooh, the plot thickens. You know they’re often more passionate when they’ve been denied something, don’t you find? The men that have a beautiful wife, a beautiful home and beautiful children, they get bored of all the beauty and the availability of everything. The best affairs are with those who have been robbed of something, or who have to work hard to get it. They really know how to appreciate a woman, if you know what I mean. Oh my, I’m getting flustered just thinking about it.”

  I nodded absently; she spoke as if I’d experienced many affairs that I could compare this to. She was turning our love into a cliché, as if Thomas were of little significance, just someone to reignite the spark of my marriage. I urgently wanted her to understand how deeply I felt about him.

  “He told me things he’s never told anyone before, unfathomable stories about the war and how those times haunt him. He trusts me. He’s taught me about wildlife out here and the ocean and the stars, Montauk before it was developed and how to run a lighthouse.”

  “How to run a lighthouse?” she said sarcastically. “How very salacious!”

  “It was exciting, though; it is,” I said, flustered. “He cares what I think and what I know, and I care about him, too—it’s so different to actually have an intellectual connection with a man as well as physical.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “But Dolly, the one thing that’s so astonishing is that he knew my brother.” I waited for a response.

  Dolly raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Yes, he worked for a little while in my hometown. It makes me think it was my fate to meet him. I was meant to come here this summer and this was supposed to happen.”

  “I understand how that would mean something to you, Beatrice, but come now, it’s a small world; it’s not that uncommon.”

  “Dolly, you don’t understand; I never thought I’d meet anyone else that I could connect to my brother.” I could have gone on, but I wasn’t able to convey how important it all was to me, and Dolly seemed to be getting a little tired of my story.

  “I thought you were going to tell me about the whoopee!” she said loudly. “That’s the whole point of all this, right?”

  I put my face in my hands. “Dolly, will you stop!” I said through my fingers. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever known.”

  “Go on.”

  “To have this intense combination of lust and passion, yearning and caring and wanting at the same time as a meeting of minds, to feel loved, appreciated, to have all of that in one person is something I’ve never experienced. And he’s, how can I say this, very masculine.” I laughed, a little embarrassed to be talking so openly, and yet picturing him and missing him at the same time. “I’m absolutely wild about him. I’m alive just talking about him.” It felt surreal to talk to another person about all of this, after keeping it secret for so long.

  Dolly nodded, but I could see the excitement draining from her face. “Okay, very nice.” She sat a little taller and placed her fingertips together. “So you’ve had your fun; it’s wonderful; I’m really quite proud of you. You deserve it. All the men do it until it bores them and they come back home again, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t enjoy yourself, too.” She smiled but only with her lips; her eyes were serious. “So, now the fun is over you need to start thinking about what you’ll do, if you are”—she raised her eyebrows—“you know, in the family way.”

  “What I’ll do? I don’t even know if I am,” I said in a whisper, even though the first-class train car was empty. “This could all be a lot of talk about nothing, a few bad oysters.”

  “Be realistic, Beatrice.” Dolly was taking a tone with me now and I wasn’t sure I liked where it was going. “You need to think what you’ll do if it’s not Harry’s.”

  I let out a loud, sarcastic laugh and shook my head. “It’s not Harry’s. There’s no way in hell it could be Harry’s. We’ve been trying for years and he hasn’t impregnated me.”

  I thought about the night he had forced himself on me, the only time he could possibly have been responsible for my current situation. I cringed at the thought of a child, so pure and innocent and wanted, coming from something so vulgar and painful and full of hatred. There were a few times prior, much earlier, but I had had my monthly flow since then. I took some small solace in recalling what the doctor had told me, that the woman must climax in order to open up “the interior passages,” and I clung to that detail, knowing with every part of my being that it could not be Harry’s child.

  “So you took up with a handsome lighthouse keeper and now you’re very possibly with child,” Dolly said.

  “You make it sound like a terrible thing.”

  “It’s not ideal, is it? It sounds like you’ve enjoyed yourself. I just wish you’d been more careful, used a diaphragm and considered the consequences more carefully. Now you have a ‘situation’ to deal with, you need a plan.” She looked out of the window. I felt like a scolded child. “The way I see it you have two choices. Number one, you could get it ‘taken care of.’ I know someone who got herself into a difficult situation last year and she saw someone who handled things with delicacy and he was very discreet. He told her exactly what to say and do during recovery to make it appear as if she had been ill, a menstruation problem no man wants to know about.”

  “If I’m expecting then I’m having the baby,” I said adamantly. “I am keeping the baby.”

  “Darling, darling, relax.” She reached into her bag and brought out a silver flask. “I had a feeling we’d need this,” she said, unscrewing the cap, taking a swig, then handing it to me. “Take a drink; you’re getting your nerves up.” The bourbon burned as it went down my throat but had an almost immediate effect.

  I pushed it back toward her and took out a cigarette, lit it and inhaled deeply.

  “Sweetheart.” She took my hand in hers. “I’m not saying that’s what you should do; I’m simply laying all the options on the table. A far better choice, and this is what I would do if it were me, you announce your pregnancy with sheer excitement and you and Harry live happily ever after.”

  “What? You think I should just play as if it’s Harry’s baby? Just go back to my marriage and let him believe, for his whole life, that this is his child and let the child believe that Harry’s his father?”

  “Well, yes, of course,” Dolly said. “My only concern is those tests they can do now to determine the father. They can test the baby’s blood once it’s born and see if it’s a match with the husband. What if Harry insisted? You’d be ruined, and so would the poor baby. But I suppose that’s just a risk you’d have to take.”

  “Dolly, there are things that have gone on in my marriage that you don’t know about.”

  She sighed. “I do know, darling. Unfortunately, that’s the downside to the circles we run in; everyone knows everyone’s business. It’s more common than you think.”

  I felt disgraced all over again. Why hadn’t she said something to me if she knew about the affairs all along? I sat a little taller. “I’m not just talking about his indiscretions. Dolly, there are things that you could not possibly know about.” She didn’t push me to talk more. “And besides, those tests are not even accurate,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this anymore until I get the results.”

  “Okay, love,” she said, patting my hands. “You know I’ll help you in whatever you decide. But Beatrice, darling, you need to think things through logically, before you find out, before you get emotionally invested.”

  I pulled my hand away and looked out the window, the brim of my hat turned to her. I couldn’t go back to my old life. Not now. And
I couldn’t deprive Thomas of what was rightfully his and mine. The thought of expecting a child gave me the courage to build a new life for myself and for this child, no matter what the cost. This baby deserved a father like Thomas, a good man.

  “I’m going to be with him, Dolly,” I said quietly. “It’s no use trying to persuade me otherwise. I’ve made up my mind.”

  She patted my hands. “Let’s just wait and see what the doctor says before you go making any rash decisions.”

  * * *

  I hadn’t mentioned anything to Thomas before I left for the city. I wanted to see the doctor first. I had assumed, naïvely, they would be able to tell me right then and there at the doctor’s office if I was in fact with child. I already knew the answer—my body felt different, my breasts were sensitive, I was dog tired and my monthly flow still hadn’t come—but I wanted to confirm what I already knew.

  Dolly had taken me to a different doctor, a friend of a friend of a friend, but still I had to provide my husband’s name and information. I only gave my address at the Manor and told them we were both out there for the rest of the summer, just to be sure that there’d be no correspondence back to the apartment in the city.

  While the doctor had been all business, the nurse looked at me with sympathetic eyes. “Mrs. Bordeaux, I know you are anxious and excited to find out, but the doctor is very strict about informing his patients of the news,” she said as she helped me dress.