Guests of August

by Gloria Goldreich

  ‘Andrea prefers the country while I love the city,’ he explained to those who expressed mild surprise at their living situation, and to a certain extent that was true.

  He was a venture capitalist, a denizen of Wall Street where he spent his days energized by the vagaries of the financial world, basking in his own shrewdness. He reveled in his evenings in the smoke-filled lounge of the University Club, dinners with powerful men who ordered thick steaks and sipped from tumblers of golden bourbon as they chewed the thick meat, and lathered layers of butter across their baked potatoes. There were occasional brief affairs, often with the wives of acquaintances who had opted for ‘accommodations’ similar to his own. And of course, he and Andrea still shared a bedroom and now and again came together as man and wife. Their families expected a child to be born and, ever obedient, they complied.

  Mark went to New Hampshire more often after Adam was born but their lives remained essentially unchanged. Andrea furnished and refurnished their large home and had a small coterie of friends. She drank her wine, supervised her staff, slept after lunch, took care of their son and sipped vodka when Adam was in bed, a book in her hand, music on her stereo. They were mutually satisfied. Divorce was messy. Also lower class. These were not words they said aloud. She and Mark congratulated themselves, periodically, on having arrived at an arrangement that suited them both.

  They had not thought about whether it suited Adam although he seemed happily unaffected by their odd life. His boyhood was uncomplicated. In an era when so many children were sent to psychologists, Adam was considered well adjusted. There were a few isolated incidents during his adolescence but then adolescence was always complicated. They ignored his moods, his occasional irrational angers. Always a good student, he excelled at Harvard and published his first novel, an account of his post-university odysseys, which won minor critical praise. They were pleased by his success and rewarded him with a generous allowance. It did not occur to them that the novel, which concentrated on the loneliness of an orphaned child, reflected his own incipient loneliness. It was fiction after all.

  They acknowledged that Adam was overly secretive about his life but then they asked very few questions. They had not known of Wendy’s existence until the week before Adam invited them to that sad little wedding. Her pregnancy had come as a surprise. Still, they were understanding, accepting. They increased Adam’s allowance. Andrea enlarged their wedding picture, taken by a friend on the steps of the courthouse, and framed two copies – one for the New York apartment, the other for the New Hampshire house. Similarly, she displayed Donny’s baby pictures in both homes.

  But Adam’s death, of course, changed everything. His marriage, the accident that claimed his life, and the child he had left behind, stripped them of all contentment. Rereading his novel with these new insights, they discerned the truth, revealed as it was on every page. They could no longer rationalize the life they had created for him. Their culpability was evident although they did not speak of it, not even to each other.

  The New Hampshire house, which had been Andrea’s refuge and the lonely fortress of Adam’s childhood, was a grim reminder of his wasted life, and their own careless contribution to that sad and terrible waste. They deeded that home to Wendy and Donny and fled to California, to a house large enough to allow them to continue living their separate lives. Wendy continues to receive the allowance once sent to Adam.

  They seldom mention Adam by name, but they devote all of August, the month of his birth, the month of his death, to his memory and to Wendy and Donny, the wife and son he left behind. Both Andrea and Mark find this ritual sufficient. It defines them as bereft parents and connects them, however briefly, to their grandson and to their son’s widow, for whom they feel a remote fondness.

  Their covenant remained unbroken, the latitude they allowed each other untroubled. Andrea, elegant as always, filled her small glasses with vodka and Mark, as always, controlled and removed, observed her in tolerant silence. But that silent truce seems to have worn thin for reasons neither of them can understand.

  They sit now with their books, enmeshed by accusations as yet unarticulated, and watch as Liane Curran selects a dart, stands next to Greg and takes aim. Not quite a bull’s-eye. She sighs in disappointment.

  ‘I used to be really good,’ she says to Greg.

  ‘You have to lift your arm just a little higher.’

  He lifts her arm, positions it, then angles the dart between her fingers.

  ‘Take a half step forward and then throw.’

  She hesitates, unwilling to move her arm, to relinquish the touch of his very soft hand against her flesh. Leaning closer toward him, she inhales the oddly pleasant odor of his sweat and knows that he, in turn, must surely be aware of the mingled aromas of her floral blended perfume and her almond-scented shampoo.

  ‘Now!’

  She obeys and the feathered dart sails through the air and punctures the heart of the board. The small boys, who have gathered to watch, applaud.

  ‘We want to play. We want to play. Please, Uncle Greg.’ Matt is imploring, insistent. The other boys echo his plea.

  ‘Please. Teach us,’ Cary and Donny ask in unison.

  Wendy looks up from the Scrabble board. ‘Is it safe?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, it’s fine,’ Nessa assures her with the casual authority that commands the trust of the parents who enroll their children in her nursery school.

  Wendy waves her consent, triumphantly moves her tiles on to a triple word and wonders where Daniel Goldner is. She is still surprised that she revealed so much of her life to him but she forgives herself. She is, after all, on vacation, a time when the norm is, by very definition, vacated, the vigilance imposed by the regulated routine of daily life abandoned. In the ambience of leisure, thought and word relax. That is why she had spoken as she did to Daniel, whom she hardly knows. She arranges and rearranges her letters, bitterly amused that she has blindly selected an A, a D and an M. With one more A she would have had Adam’s name.

  ‘Can I try, Mom?’ Cary asks Liane.

  ‘I’m OK with it,’ she replies, relieved that Michael does not look up from his spreadsheets. He is, in all things related to Cary, much more cautious than she is.

  ‘Jeff? Is it OK for Matt to play?’ Greg calls.

  ‘Sure.’ Jeff captures Simon’s knight with his bishop and smiles apologetically. He had assumed that Simon would be a more formidable opponent, but then so many of his assumptions have been proven wrong. He had, after all, assumed that on an evening as clear as this he and Susan might take a long walk, that he might give voice to the shadowy doubts and fears that have haunted him over the past several months. But Susan had hurried upstairs right after dinner, and he knows that she is engrossed in her translation. That damn translation. He sits back and watches Polly cross the room, hugging her heavy text and glancing at him nervously. Too quickly, he averts his eyes and studies the chess board, although he is aware that Polly is seated nearby, that the top buttons of her shirt have come undone and the rose-gold rise of her breasts is brushed by lamp light. His throat tightens and he shifts his chair so that she is out of his line of vision.

  It is Simon’s move and he fingers his remaining knight, looks up to smile at Daniel who has wandered into the room and moves on to observe the action at the dart board.

  The small boys encircle Greg who sinks to his knees and shows them the darts.

  ‘They’re not toys,’ he says. ‘They’re sharp. Very sharp. Look.’

  He selects one and pricks his finger. A droplet of blood bubbles up and the boys look at it in fascinated fear. The slightest cut terrifies them, exposing as it does the mysterious fragility of their bodies, the streams of crimson liquid that course beneath their skin. They marvel at Greg’s courage as he dismissively dabs at the tiny puncture with his handkerchief.

  ‘So never fool around with them. You understand?’ He speaks sternly, his voice trained by hours standing before restless students in crowded c
lassrooms.

  They nod solemnly, their heads bobbing, bright hair falling across suntanned brows.

  Watching them from across the room, Nessa is almost moved to tears. They are so beautiful, so innocent. She feels impelled to rush toward them, to hold them close as she had held Paul as a toddler, as she still comforts the children in her care. She shakes her head and turns back to her Scrabble tiles, although a story is fermenting, a children’s book to add to her popular series, The Games We Play. She has already written about the urban games once played on the sidewalks of her city, a group of competitive little girls jumping rope, two sets of siblings vying for a hopscotch championship, chalk drawings on harsh cement pavements. Why not a game of darts in a basement rec room? Swiftly, she turns a page on the scoring pad and draws the three small boys gazing so fixedly at the feathered darts.

  The boys line up, Matt first. His uncle places a dart in his hand, positions his arm, tells him to look straight at the board, straight at the bull’s eye. Matt thrusts himself forward and throws but the board is too high and he misses.

  ‘Stupid of me. I have to lower the board for you guys,’ Greg says and goes off in search of a hammer and a nail.

  Matt picks up the fallen dart. ‘Let me see it.’

  ‘No, me.’

  Donny and Cary clamor for a turn but Matt sprints away from them, holds the dart up high, then mischievously whips around and tosses it. Donny moves forward, Wendy screams and for the briefest of moments all movement and sound freezes until with startling suddenness, Daniel Goldner hurls himself at Donny. They crash to the floor as the dart sails past them and embeds itself into the floor.

  Wendy hurries to her son who shakes off her embrace, turns away from the fear on her breath.

  ‘I’m OK, Mom. Leave me alone.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Templeton. Really, I was just kidding around.’ Matt Edwards fights his own tears, both ashamed and angry.

  ‘Come on, Donny. I’ll give you one of my quarters for the pinball machine,’ he says in atonement.

  ‘Me too. I’ll give you one,’ Cary adds and the boys scuttle away, relieved to escape the accusing stares and fears of the grown-ups.

  ‘Thank you,’ Wendy says to Daniel, and turns to Andrea who stands beside her now, her lips pursed, her pale eyes cold as marbles.

  ‘I was surprised you allowed him to play such a dangerous game. I would never have allowed Adam to go anywhere near a game like that,’ the older woman says.

  ‘Really? As though you ever knew where he was going and what he was doing,’ Wendy replies.

  Her face is flushed, but her voice is steady. It is the first time she has ever spoken in such a manner to Adam’s mother and her words, cruel as she knows them to be, are strangely cleansing. She stares unflinchingly at Andrea who blanches and turns away. Mark takes his wife’s arm and, without looking at Wendy, walks very slowly to the door, almost colliding with Susan Edwards who is on her way in.

  ‘Matt,’ Susan calls. ‘It’s bedtime.’

  The other mothers glance at their own watches.

  ‘Cary.’

  ‘Donny.’

  The maternal tones are stern and the small boys surrender to their own exhaustion and trail their mothers to their rooms where the beds are already turned down, and pajamas are laid out on the linens that smell of an unfamiliar detergent.

  A restlessness overtakes those who remain. Games are abandoned, the jigsaw puzzle left undone. The teenagers huddle and then announce that they are going for a walk but within minutes they hear Richie rev his motor. Nessa goes to the window and sees that Annette sits beside Richie in the open-top roadster, her fair hair whipping her narrow face as he accelerates. Tracy, Jeremy and Paul race after them, laughing and calling their names. She glances quizzically at Simon who shrugs.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘They’re just having fun. You don’t have to worry about Richie. He’s a terrific driver.’

  She does not tell him that it is not Richie who concerns her. Her worry is focused on Paul, who has, for this brief hour, lost his Annette, but she knows there is nothing she can do to protect him and it may be that he does not require protection. She goes to the table and glances at the jigsaw puzzle on which he and Annette are working. She writes a note – Work in progress. Leave as is – so that the cleaning staff will not disturb it. That much she can do.

  Slowly, the room empties. Good nights are exchanged and they ascend the staircase. Michael Curran carefully folds his spreadsheets and places them in his attaché case. Helene and Greg Ames walk upstairs hand in hand. Polly concentrates on her text and sighs deeply as Jeff Edwards salutes her with a dismissive wave.

  In their room, Jeff undresses swiftly and slides into bed next to Susan.

  ‘You’re finished early,’ he says although it is, in fact, not all that early.

  ‘I’m making good progress,’ she assures him softly.

  ‘Good. Very good.’

  ‘Matt told me about the dart. He was really frightened.’

  ‘Nothing happened. Almost doesn’t count,’ Jeff says, but his words are heavy with warning. Something could have happened. An ‘almost’ can become a reality. A near-miss on a highway could become a fatal accident. Brakes can fail. Their lives are shadowed by ‘almosts’, every hour pregnant with danger. Their son, their sweet, playful, fearful Matt, could have blinded another boy and spent the rest of his life haunted by guilt.

  ‘Thank God.’ Susan’s voice is frightened and he knows that she now shares his awareness of lurking dangers, large and small, careless actions, careless words. How vulnerable they are, how cautious they must be.

  He pulls Susan close in protective embrace, his mouth upon hers as though to quiet the words he does not want to hear. Their hearts beat in familiar unison as love and fear meld. Afterwards they lie awake in the darkness, until the sound of wheels on the driveway, and the slamming of the front door of the inn give proof that Annette has returned, that their family is intact and safe.

  EIGHT

  The passing days of that first week of vacation assume a slow and easy rhythm. The guests of August adjust to the finite luxury of unstructured hours, unstructured days. Small alliances are formed. Wendy and Daniel stake out an isolated corner of the lawn where he works on the proofs of his novel and she sketches, her rainbow-colored pencils spread across a weathered picnic table.

  Michael Curran and Mark Templeton study the Wall Street Journal which Michael buys each day. There is urgent conversation as Michael opens his laptop and Mark studies the screen, now scrolling forward, now backward. Mark makes calls on his cell phone. Michael sweats profusely until Simon joins them, opens his notebook, speaks very softly. The pantomime is repeated each morning. It is understood that something is happening of considerable importance but nothing has yet been arranged. Mark is holding back. Liane observes her husband nervously. She wants him to stop sweating. She wants their future to be assured.

  The women go for morning walks in odd couplings – Liane and Helene, Nessa and Susan. Andrea takes solitary strolls, elegant as always in pastel-colored linen pant suits with broad-brimmed sun hats to match. They return with armloads of flowers which they arrange in Louise’s unmatched vases, their faces bright with pleasure. Only Andrea plucks a single blossom, a sprig of primrose, a regal iris, which she places in her own crystal bud vase on the center of her table.

  Later in the morning, couples amble hand in hand down to the lake or cut across to the road that leads to the cemetery.

  The teenagers sun themselves lazily, swim with effortless grace and, with startling suddenness, pile into rowboats and paddle vigorously across the quiet waters.

  The small boys build adjuncts to their fort, create pathways of twigs and stones, furnishings of logs and rocks and suddenly quarrel with bitter intensity. Donny and Matt allied against Cary. Cary and Donny angry with Matt. The late-morning spats morph into peace by the afternoon, one parent or another driving the boys to the village for an ice cream or a
n impromptu visit to the hobby shop. Now and again Paul Epstein engages them in a board game of his own creation, using Harry Potter characters. The boys cluster around him, willing acolytes fascinated by their mentor’s profound understanding of how Harry and Hermione negotiate their way through Hogwarts. Paul improvises a script, playing the part of Harry, and presses Annette into service as Hermione. Jeremy, Tracy and Richie, sprawled out on the lawn, watch them, smiling cynically. They have graduated from childhood and are bemused by Paul’s tolerance of little kids, by Annette’s complicity, although Annette seldom lingers after a perfunctory reading of her lines. Richie is teaching her to drive and she sits beside him in his small roadster and practices shifting gears, starting and cutting the engine, his hand guiding hers.

  Nessa notes that often in the late afternoon, the young people clamber into that car, which has room only for four, and head into town, more often than not leaving Paul behind. It is then that her son seeks out Greg Ames and the two of them play their guitars together, Greg teaching Paul new chords, as Helene watches her husband, her eyes newly soft, a smile playing at her lips. Nessa finds Helene’s expression oddly familiar, reminiscent of women she has known who have reached a decisive turning point in their lives. This new serenity of Helene’s reminds her of friends long since vanished from her life, of the young mothers of her nursery school children who share small happy confidences with her or, occasionally, sad revelations.

  ‘We’ve decided to move to the country.’

  ‘We’ve decided to have another child.’

  ‘We’re going to separate, just a trial time apart.’

  ‘We’ve decided to divorce.’

  She mentions this to Susan Edwards, who sinks into a lawn chair beside her one day just before lunch.