‘Polly,’ he says softly and she turns to him, her face radiant with anticipation. His arm is outstretched. Within seconds he will draw her closer, within milliseconds his lips will be soft against hers. His throat is dry, his arm paralyzed. What is he doing? What the hell is he doing?
‘Dad!’ Matt’s voice rings out loud and clear across the meadow. ‘Hey, Dad.’
Jeff turns and his son sprints toward him, followed by Cary and Donny.
‘Hey, Dad, we want to take a rowboat out but we need an adult to be with us. Cary’s dad is working and Donny can’t find his mother. Can you do it? Please, Dad.’
He turns from his son to Polly.
‘Go ahead. The kids need you. I’ll see you at lunch,’ she says, and the relief in her voice matches the sudden lightening of his heart.
Swinging her sandals, she turns back to the inn and he trails after the boys who break into a run. He sprints along with them although by the time they reach the lake he is breathing hard and his pulse is racing dangerously.
Polly returns to the inn and goes at once into the kitchen. Louise, who is counting out cutlery, glances at her, taking note of Polly’s high color and seeing that her hair, pulled back earlier, now falls loosely about her face. Bending to mop up a damp spot on the floor, she sees the grass stains that streak Polly’s slender feet.
‘I’ll fold the napkins,’ Polly offers.
They work side by side in silence and then, with a startling abruptness, Louise turns to her, her face grim, her tone monitory.
‘Be careful, Polly,’ she says. ‘Be very careful.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Polly protests but her cheeks burn and a napkin slithers to the floor.
‘I think you do.’ Louise’s tone is flat. ‘Your life can be changed in a morning, in an hour, in minutes. Everything you dreamed about, everything you worked for, can disappear. Believe me. I know. Don’t be foolish. Don’t be stupid. You’ve worked too hard, Polly. Don’t lose everything …’
Her voice trails off.
‘You have no right …’ Polly begins, impelled to anger, but she looks at Louise and sees that the older woman is very pale, that the cutlery she holds clatters on to the counter, that tears glint in her faded blue eyes.
Wordlessly, she fills a glass with water. She hands the glass to Louise, goes into the dining room and begins to set the tables.
ELEVEN
The sing-along is a success. Greg and Paul each play solos and then ease into a duet. Annette strums along on her mandolin. Their audience is relaxed, attentive. Nessa sprawls across the couch, her head resting on Simon’s lap, smiling because Paul’s music always makes her smile.
Andrea Templeton notes disapprovingly that Nessa has painted her toenails silver with rainbow-colored stripes that match her loose wide-sleeved mumu. So inappropriate, she thinks as she pulls her needle angrily through her needlepoint. Her mood softens as Greg and Paul play a new arrangement of ‘Foggy Foggy Dew.’ The song had been a favorite of Adam’s, she remembers, happy to have retrieved that one lonely memory of her son. She sings along softly and sees that Wendy, who sits beside Daniel Goldner, is also singing. He taps his foot in rhythm to her voice. Andrea frowns.
Mark, however, is silent. He does not know that his son had a particular fondness for that song but he does know that the teacup from which Andrea now and again takes small sips surely contains vodka. He will not confront her with that deception. They have not spoken of the incident on the lawn, of the inexplicable (to him as well as to her) fury with which he had jerked the drink from her hand. Her anger and his regret have diminished over the passing days and they have retreated again into the complicity of silence which has for so long sustained their marriage. He watches as she lifts the cup yet again and wonders for how long he will have to sit through this damn sing-along. He wonders too how many sips of vodka it will take for Andrea to achieve the numbness of thought and feeling that she craves, that she has always craved. He is, however, grateful, as always, that she is now a quiet, unobtrusive drinker as opposed to her behavior during the early days of their marriage. The New Hampshire solution had, in retrospect, worked well after all. No divorce, a minimum of drama-infused scenes, their marriage in survival mode. He is satisfied, he supposes, or would be if they could forego the inevitable August pilgrimage. But Andrea is right. It is a social imperative, an obligation.
The entire group sings ‘On Top of Old Smokey’ and Matt, Donny and Cary, giggling and red-faced, rehearsed by Greg and encouraged by Paul and Annette, sing ‘If I Had a Hammer’ and invite everyone to join in the chorus. With easy spontaneity, they all link arms and sway as they sing.
‘I’d hammer out freedom, I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land.’
They smile at each other. This is a moment that will be frozen in memory, a vacation evening to recall through the lonely wintry months to come, this hour of easy comfortable fellowship, their voices raised in song in a lamplit pine-paneled room. Matt seeks out his mother who is in one corner of the room and then his father who crouches on the floor, directly in front of the makeshift stage. He wills them to move closer to each other, to exchange glances and smiles, so that he might be reassured that everything is all right between them, but they remain in self-imposed isolation. He turns away and joins the small energetic chorus in singing the final refrain. They then segue into solos.
Liane surprises them by singing a haunting love ballad, her voice trembling with a sweetness Michael does not recognize. Paul accompanies her on the piano as Greg and Helene glide across the floor in a slow dance.
Watchful Nessa sees that Richie’s arm rests on Annette Edwards’ bare shoulder, sees that he draws her closer. Annette moves imperceptibly away, but her color is high and she sweeps her long silken hair back so that her fingers lightly touch Richie’s hand.
There is applause, a call for an encore, and Liane obliges with ‘Dancing in the Dark’. Wendy and Daniel now dance with easy grace, as though they have been partnered forever. Nessa, in Simon’s arms, moves with the light-footedness peculiar to many heavyset women. Jeremy and Tracy waltz across the floor but Susan Edwards does not move from her chair and her husband stares out the window where the branches of the elms tremble against the gust of a sudden wind.
Richie and Annette leave, having offered to help Louise Abbot set out the apple cider and cookies she traditionally provides for the sing-alongs, a custom that fits into her concept of what should be done at a country inn. But before going into the kitchen they wander outside and look out across the lawn, listening to the wind, welcoming its cool caress across their faces. Richie turns to Annette and again he draws her close. This time she does not pull away. His lips find hers, his tongue rakes its way about her mouth, a mingling of moistures. He kisses her once and then again but when his hands touch her breasts, she thrusts him away.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. No.’
‘Why not?’ he asks harshly. ‘Why the hell not?’
It is not a question she can answer. Instead, she dashes into the kitchen and reluctantly he follows her. Tease, he thinks, Goddamn tease. He should have known better than to start up with a high-school kid.
The music trails them into the kitchen where Louise has already filled the pitchers with cider. Paul at the piano and Greg on the guitar play old-time show times. Helene and Susan sing as they did when they were teenagers, vulnerable sisters then, singing their way free of the strangling net of their mother’s misery, of her silent and inexplicable rage. The soothing duets of their sad adolescence are a legacy they reclaim.
Susan sings ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ by herself as Helene hums.
‘My mom has a really good voice,’ Annette tells Richie, hoping that he is not angry with her.
‘Oh yeah. Good for her,’ he answers, his voice heavy with indifference.
She turns away as he lifts the tray that holds two pitchers of cider and carries it out without looking ba
ck at her. He’s done with her.
She arranges the cookies on a paper doily and hopes that she will not cry.
It rains that night, a fierce, relentless late-summer storm, the heavy downfall an ominous reminder of the season’s treacherous ending.
Louise Abbot moves through the deserted dimly lit kitchen, clearing the counters, filling the huge urn with coffee ready to be brewed at first light. She worries that Evan does not have his rain gear and chides herself for the foolishness of that worry. She places a battered pot on the kitchen floor to catch the rain drops that drip through a leak in the roof. The building needs a new roof, she knows, but she wonders if they can afford it, wonders if it is even worth doing. The life of the inn is uncertain. Reservations are down and even regular guests have not booked for the coming season. It is not even certain that the guests of August will return. It is a frightening thought and so, swiftly, she reassures herself.
Oh, but they are loyal that August contingent; they have long been loyal. All will be well. It had been such a good evening. The singing, the dancing. They will surely remember that.
She draws the kitchen curtains against the weeping rain and goes upstairs to the loneliness of the large double bed that had belonged to Evan’s parents. She lays awake, as she often does, indulgent in her imaginings, the fantasy of her girlhood still held close, the life plan upended by carelessness and harsh reality. She hopes that Polly understood her warning.
At the edge of sleep, she visualizes the ghostly apartment in Boston she had once thought to make her own. She would have furnished it with a beige couch, many colorful cushions, a low teak coffee table. Sometimes she adds a desk with a shaded lamp for the papers she carries home from the office where she is an executive secretary. She has always loved the sound of those words. Executive secretary.
She would have given small parties in that pleasant room. There are nights when she imagines Daniel Goldner arriving as a guest at such a party, carrying flowers, yellow roses which she will place in a blue ceramic vase. She will welcome him, welcome her other guests, and pile their coats on her bed, covered with a madras spread. Smiling sleepily, she reminds herself that it is a bed bought new. In her entire life, Louise has only slept on beds handed down from others.
On this rainy night, infused with nostalgia after the sing-along, she places an imaginary crystal bowl on her imaginary bedside table. Soothed and satisfied by her illusory conjectures, she adds Evan’s pillow to her own and falls asleep.
Annette Edwards also lies awake and listens to the tympanic patter of the rain drops against the brittle leaves of the giant oak tree just outside the window.
‘Jeremy.’ She calls softly to her brother, across the flimsy curtained partition that separates their beds.
‘I’m sleeping, Nette. Let me sleep,’ he replies drowsily.
He has not been sleeping. He has been remembering how he held Tracy Epstein close, reliving the magic moment when he felt the softness of her breasts against his body as they danced with such ease. He wonders if she would rebuff him if he really put a move on her. He wants a kiss, just a lousy kiss. She could give him that. She’s probably done a lot more with other guys. She’s in college, after all. So what if he’s a couple of years younger than she is? They’ve been getting along great, really having fun, and he wants to have a memory of this vacation, a small triumph to be revisited over the coming months. He imagines himself lying in bed on winter nights thinking of Tracy’s lips soft upon his own, her hands gliding slowly across his body. He will remember always that her hair smells of citrus and her chin dimples when she smiles.
Tracy. He mouths her name soundlessly into the darkness.
But Annette is persistent. ‘I just want to ask you something,’ she says, and the hesitancy in her voice surprises him. They are twins who once spoke to each other in their own secret language, anticipated each other’s thoughts, but those days have vanished. They have bickered their way into independence, learned how to tease and provoke. But their sensitivity to each other’s moods lingers. He hears her pain.
‘What do you want to ask me?’ His voice is gentler now.
‘Do you think Richie is a nice guy?’
He does not hesitate. ‘No. I think he’s a jerk. A conceited jerk. Even Tracy thinks that and she’s his own sister. You know who’s a nice guy? Paul’s a nice guy. It’s hard to think that those two guys have the same father. Richie and Paul.’
‘Yeah. Paul is a really nice guy,’ she says thoughtfully, calmly, and within minutes they are both asleep.
Nessa and Simon sip their tea in the soft glow of their bed lamps and speak in the relaxed marital shorthand peculiar to their late-night exchanges.
‘Cheese,’ she says sleepily. ‘And olives. Kalamatas.’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll zip into the village. The deli. Probably in the afternoon,’ he assures her.
He is irritated that his pro-bono advice to Michael Curran is taking up so many mornings because Mark Templeton, that arrogant bastard, is being so difficult. Curran’s software is a terrific opportunity for venture capital investment, yet Templeton keeps upping the ante. Simon has sat on boards with men like Mark, petty corporate tyrants who confuse their wealth with actual power. Simon is not surprised that elegant Andrea Templeton is a secret drinker and Templeton’s daughter-in-law and grandson keep their emotional distance from him.
‘Brie. And Gouda,’ Nessa adds and segues on to another topic.
‘I’m worried about Paul. You know, the Edwards girl. He really has a thing for her.’
‘I know. Richie’s in the equation. Not much we can do about it. They’ll be all right. They’ll sort it out. All kids go through that sort of thing.’
‘I suppose.’
She will go no further. She does not discuss the children of his first marriage with Simon. She will not say that she fears that Richie is very much his mother’s son, that he has inherited Charlotte’s false values, her careless indifference to the needs of others. Simon knows that she fears for Paul who is so gentle, so sensitive, so new to desire, so very different from his older half-brother. But this is a subject on which they must remain silent. He is father to both boys.
He sets his empty teacup down and turns off his bedside light.
‘What about Wendy and Daniel?’ Nessa asks, gravitating toward safer territory.
‘She would be so good for him.’
‘Too early for Daniel to get involved,’ Simon says carefully. ‘He’s so newly burned. No time yet for him to heal. It wasn’t easy with Laura. And they’re not even divorced yet. He’s still in no-man’s land.’
‘I like Wendy.’
‘I do too. But I don’t think either of them are ready for anything permanent.’
Nessa nods. Still, she decides that she will invite Wendy and Donny to spend a weekend with them in New York. She will organize a dinner party. Or perhaps a brunch. A brunch would be more casual, less obvious. And afterwards she and Simon and Wendy and Daniel will walk through Central Park. She imagines the four of them kicking their way through swaths of autumn leaves. The plan contents her. She is a generous woman. Her own happiness is not sufficient; she would share it with others. She wants Daniel, their dear friend, Simon’s surrogate younger brother, to be happy. She wants to hear Wendy laugh.
She too sets her cup down and turns off her own light. Simon draws her close and rests his head on her shoulder. They lie quietly and listen to the storm which has intensified.
Helene and Greg, awakened by the clap of thunder, hold each other close.
‘I loved tonight,’ she murmurs.
‘Good vibes,’ he agrees. ‘Nice music. Nice dancing.’
‘I love the way you look when you play.’
‘And I love the way you look at me when I play.’
That exchange of looks has been there from their very first meeting. They were vagabond Americans then, self-designated bohemians, drawn to each other amid the merriment of an Irish pub. He had looked at her, she
had looked at him and they were together then and thereafter.
She snuggles closer to him. It is wonderful to be warm and dry, safe from the storm, safe from fear and loneliness. His finger traces the curve of her lips and her body arches against him with feline grace.
‘Wait,’ he says warningly.
He knows her to be uncertain. Do they really want children? Will she be a good mother? She knows him to be patient.
But tonight is different. He senses that at once.
‘No. No need to wait,’ she says. ‘I’m done waiting.’
The exposed fragility of Susan’s marriage has caused her to fear for her own.
They come together as twin bolts of lightning flash across the sky. Their passion is purposeful, their pulses race, their limbs entangle, their breath commingles. Exhausted, satiated, they lie hand in hand, cocooned in joy, thrilled by their new and wondrous togetherness.
In the room across the hall Susan and Jeff lie in wakeful uneasiness. Their eyes are closed, their bodies rigid. They make no move to draw closer to each other in this, the largest double bed in Mount Haven Inn. Raindrops drizzle down the windowpanes and Jeff rises and pulls the gossamer white curtains closed. Susan says nothing. She is thinking about the chapter she recently translated in which LeBec’s characters, Pierre and Jacqueline, recognize the vulnerability of their marriage and Pierre reflects bitterly that, in fact, all marriages are dangerously fragile. Susan had struggled with the very concept, struggled with the translation of LeBec’s phrasing of Pierre’s meandering thoughts, rendered in an archaic French. Even as she tapped her hesitant translation on to her keyboard, she had argued against the thought. Pierre was wrong, she had told herself.
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