by Holly LeCraw
Jed considered his brother-in-law. He appreciated his easy smile, his teasing, in much the way he imagined Callie once had: Billy was a balm to them, uncomplicated and cheerful. An Italian Southerner: who could be more gregarious? Only now it wasn’t working as well. He had betrayed them by taking Callie away, he was betraying them still with this weekend arrangement, but for once, all Jed wanted was for him to leave.
“And I notice that it’s Sunday,” Billy was saying. “Notice that you met this girl on a Friday night, and you did not see fit to return until Sunday. I can assume that you got to know each other well. That you are now, in a manner of speaking, close—”
Jed let him rattle on. Callie, nursing Grace again, sat with a half-smile on her face. He was grateful it was Sunday and the long, slow week stretched out in front of them. Tonight the midsummer sun would sink slowly, the shadows stretching longer and longer, there would be the feeling of infinite time he remembered from childhood. The summer never ending. Only now—now he suddenly cared what day it was. Sunday night, he had just gotten home, and when could he leave again?
THEN THERE WAS THE PROBLEM of Toni. She appeared Monday morning, long legs in short shorts, breasts swaying under her T-shirt, saying look at me, a challenge in her eyes as if she already knew what was going on.
Jed was sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal and Jamie was sitting with him, steering his toy backhoe and bulldozer around an imaginary construction site, periodically driving one of the trucks over his buttered English muffin. Jed had given up telling him not to. When Toni opened the screen door, Jamie eyed her warily. He was not always happy when she showed up.
Toni helped herself to coffee from the pot on the counter. “How was your weekend?” she asked—demanded, it seemed to Jed. “Didn’t you go to New York?”
“Yeah. It was good.” He was trying not to look at her legs, trying not to compare, and after a few moments some blessed screen came down and her body seemed only hers and Marcella was locked safely away in a golden tower in his mind.
“Jed? Hello? What did you do?”
“Uncle Jed came back,” Jamie said possessively.
“I know that, silly. Look, he’s sitting right there.”
Barely, Jed thought. Toni made a funny face and Jamie relented and laughed.
“He met a girl,” Callie said, appearing in the doorway with Grace. “That’s what he did this weekend.”
Surprise flickered across Toni’s face for the merest of moments before the hauteur returned. She looked languidly in Jed’s direction but then focused on Grace. “Little baby,” she crooned, and Callie, without hesitation, handed her over.
Toni didn’t ask any more questions but after a moment Callie said, “A Jersey girl. Marcie.”
Jed was surprised Callie was rubbing it in. It was just as well, it would explain if he was suddenly cool to Toni, which of course he now would be. But it was as though Callie were speaking without really paying attention. “She’s not from Jersey,” he said.
“What’s Jersey?” Jamie said.
“It’s a state, little buddy—”
“Like Massachusetts,” Toni broke in. “Where we are now. We can do the states puzzle after your breakfast. I’ll show you.”
“No.”
“Jamie,” Callie said wearily.
Listening to this, Jed decided he was safe. He reached for the box of cereal. “Hey, after I eat something, want to go to the beach, buddy? Cal, maybe you can take a nap.”
“It’s nine in the morning. How could I nap?”
Toni was still swaying with the baby. Her back was to Jed. It seemed to him she was moving her hips a little too much. “Maybe she’ll fall asleep,” Toni said. “Aren’t you supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps? You said the books say that.”
“The books! The books are full of—” In one step Callie was up and at Toni’s side. “Just give her to me. Give her to me!” Toni, her eyes wide, handed her the baby and Callie peered, unsmiling, into Grace’s face. “No, she’s not sleepy. Forget it. No such luck. I probably have to feed her again. Jesus,” she said, and turned heel and left the kitchen. They heard her bedroom door shut.
“Mommy’s mad,” Jamie said.
“She’s not mad, bud. She’s tired,” Jed answered.
“She’s mad at baby Grace,” Jamie said, both satisfaction and apprehension in his voice.
“You can’t be mad at a baby,” Toni said, sitting down with them at the table. “Mommy loves baby Grace. You just have to take special care of a baby.”
“You have to take special care of me,” Jamie said gravely.
“We do,” Jed said.
“We will,” Toni said, almost at the same moment. Her eyes flickered to Jed’s and then away. She rose, went over to the coffeemaker, and refilled her mug. She did not offer any to Jed. “So, do you like her?”
“Yes.”
“Like who?”
“A girl, buddy.”
“It will happen when you’re older,” Toni said. “If you’re lucky.” She looked over her shoulder, her flirtation a defiance. “Right, Uncle Jed?”
And suddenly Toni’s mother was back again, the barriers he had set up dissolved, she was on the tip of his tongue—his tongue, God, her mouth, his mouth on her body, her body in her bed, miles away, where he was not, and all he could think was how long? how long?
WHEN HE LEFT, Marcella felt as if her life had fallen apart—the order of it, what little structure it had had. That was Sunday. On Monday morning she woke and the sun was shining and she felt a little calmer, like the engines of life had begun running again, but after she ate her breakfast and went outside and knelt down to dig, the aimlessness descended on her, making her almost dizzy. She had blue salvia to plant, eight packs of six, she had bought it last week and had to get it into the ground, she had meant to do it over the weekend—but instead she sat back on her heels and looked blindly at the border. She needed to decide where the little plants should go but her mind was like an untethered boat. Jed, she thought. Jed. She drifted.
Finally she rose and went back into the house, down the hall to her bedroom, and stood looking at her unmade bed. It did not make sense to her that it was empty. She could almost see, feel, the imprint of his naked body.
He had kissed her softly at first, in the kitchen, questioning. She had sensed the question was not entirely for her. She had been trembling, she had let him kiss her, but then she had thought, I mustn’t just let it happen. I must choose. And she had drawn back. Just a little.
His eyes had been burning at her. He had said, once more, “Please.”
She could see only his eyes. She saw no other part of his face, his body, nothing that looked like Cecil, nothing at all. His eyes had been brilliant.
She had prepared herself to be consumed but—no, I do not have to disappear. She had looked back at him, not shrinking away, and then his mouth was wild on her, he said please, and please again, and she had kissed him back, shhh, she had known for certain he was no longer speaking entirely to her, and then she had not thought anymore.
She looked at the bed again now and desire washed over her and left her shivering. He had held himself over her, his arms straight and hard. And then lowered himself and she was only skin. His mouth on her nipple and the heat blooming like some volcanic flower, and then the petals curving, curving and arching until she was being turned inside out. Please and please and finally yes.
She had a task. A task. She shook herself, and went back outside.
She knelt again at the edge of the flower bed. Old voices were trying to come back, old habits: I am dirty, disgusting, a woman with no morals, a pitiful weak creature, she thought—but did not feel. She had thought she was on a path back to a life of goals and normalcy, a life where she was not exiled, suspended. She had been creeping, creeping forward. And then Jed McClatchey had appeared on her porch. He had just appeared, and she had let him in. And now she was waiting for something different.
She wanted him
.
She had wanted Cecil too, she had wanted Anthony, long ago, but both of them had gone along with wanting something else, with a kind of life. But Jed—she wanted to bury herself in him, never move, for as long as—what? As long as he needed her? It was not that simple. No, she was not sure what this equation was, not sure what the solution would be. She knew there would be a solution, knew it was finite. She was amazed that this idea of finitude already gave her pain. She could think only about now. She hated now, because he wasn’t with her.
She turned back to her plants and lifted them, one by one, out of their crinkling plastic grid. She laid them on the ground and dug their new little holes and pushed the plants in and buried their roots safely in the darkness. She let all the words in her brain slip down her fingers into the black crumbling soil.
MARCIE. HE WANTED TO LAUGH. He wanted to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. He hadn’t wanted to leave, that Sunday, but he had made himself, thinking that he couldn’t take much more, that he might go crazy with the feel of her skin and the look of her body. He left her still in bed. He had buried his face in her neck, he had twined himself around her, and he had said, “I’m coming back.”
“Good.” Her eyes had been sleepy, soft, but then her brow had creased.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
“You keep saying that.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m going to hurt you.” Her look now was downcast. He misinterpreted. “And we are not hurting anyone else,” he said. “There’s no one to hurt.” She knew he was talking about Cecil.
So, back in Mashantum, Jed went to the beach. He held his niece, his nephew, took Jamie to the playground, made him peanut butter crackers. He watched movies into the night with Callie when the baby fussed and they were too tired to talk and he worried about her being alone. She sent him off by himself because they had Toni and what was she paying her for, anyway? And so he would go running, would run until his side cramped and he could barely see for the sweat and exhaustion but he wouldn’t stop because it was a long way back home, and if he was in agony he knew it would end and it seemed right, anyway. The agony.
On Friday he made himself wait until Billy had been there more than an hour. His sister and her husband laughed at him and told him to go, go, and their laughter, together, made him happy and he did not remember until he was in the car alone how desperate he was.
When she came, it was with a long keening wail that took him out of himself, clinging only to her, and as she fell through endless space he had no choice but to fall with her.
III
Jed was out in the front yard with Jamie one morning soon after the Fourth of July when a strange car pulled into the driveway, crunching along the pea stone. Jed was facing east and the sun was directly in his eyes for a moment and then he could see that it was Anthony Atkinson, dropping off Toni, which Anthony had not done before.
Toni slammed the passenger door, waved through the window at her father, and sauntered over. She was wearing very short cutoffs and a purple halter top that hid only what was absolutely necessary. The day was already hot, and a fine sheen of perspiration completed her outfit. “My car died last night,” she said.
“It’s dead?” Jamie said.
“Well, not really, cutie. That means it’s not working.”
“Oh.” Jamie seemed to consider this, accept it, and move on. “I’m hot. I wanna go inside,” he announced, and he turned and took off for the door. Toni was after him before Jed had a chance to move, but not before he saw that Anthony wasn’t pulling away, but instead was getting out of the car. He’d left it running—hopefully this meant he would not stay long.
Anthony walked toward him with his hand outstretched. “Haven’t seen you much this summer, Jed.”
Anthony had always made Jed think of gray, the gray of steel, smooth and opaque, gray neither light nor dark but instead cagey, indeterminate, the color of a brewing storm that might or might not blow over. His hair was dark silver, receding only a little, and precisely cut. He was of medium height and build and had always struck Jed as a person about whom there was nothing extra—no excess pounds, no wasted movements or superfluous words. His regular-featured, patrician face might have been bland if the look in his eyes had not been so sharp, missing nothing, or if his brow had not been a bit hawklike. It was the face of a man who rarely hesitated.
Jed shook his hand and was surprised to find that it was warm, normal flesh, not ice or metal or a live grenade. He tried to look Marcella’s former husband and cuckold in the face without flinching. “I’m keeping busy playing uncle,” he said.
“Well, take a break. That’s what you’ve got Toni for. How about some tennis this afternoon?”
“Well—”
“During the kids’ naps. I remember the days,” he said, giving Jed a smile that was less chilly and more awkward than Jed would have expected. He knows, Jed thought, he knows—one of three people now, including himself. Knew that his father had been unfaithful. Did not know that Jed knew. Did not know a lot of things. Jed felt that his face was frozen. There was simply no safe expression for it to assume. “Let the women watch the fort for a while,” Anthony said, and Jed saw he was trapped.
When Jed was back inside, Callie raised a droll eyebrow. “He’ll cream you, Jeddy. You haven’t played in ages.” She looked at Toni. “Was this your idea?”
“Of course not,” Toni said. She was blushing. “He thought of it. I swear. He probably just wants you to get out more.”
“Thanks,” Jed said. “I’d like to believe that.”
“What does that mean?”
Jed made himself smile, banish Marcella from his mind. “Nothing.”
THE NOBSCUSSET TENNIS CLUB had been founded fifty years before by Bayard Hall, a Bostonian with an unshakable loyalty to hard work, community spirit, cocktails, and sport. As the story went, he and his three sons had spent an entire July clearing out a patch of woods behind their house and installing six clay courts, which, by the time Jed started taking lessons, had been augmented by a small, sandy parking lot, a spigot that served as a water fountain, and a shack, known as Hall Hall, full of tennis balls, clay rakes, tarps, lime, a line-marking contraption, and the clipboards on which members registered for tournaments. Now, as he biked up the long, unpaved driveway, Jed noted some new, manicured flower beds as well as a Porta Potti, obviously a recent concession to comfort. He wondered if the male holdouts were still wandering off into the trees when nature called, highly visible in their whites.
He was bracing himself for greetings from people who didn’t yet know he was here for the summer, but lessons were over for the day and only a couple of courts were in use. He parked his bike in the rack and went over to a bench to stretch. The place was bright and quiet, the only sounds the pock of the balls and the occasional brief conversations between players switching sides. He saw Larry Stowell, no doubt sweating extravagantly, playing a man Jed didn’t know, and Nancy Hale and three other sinewy, gray-haired women playing doubles. They would notice him at some point, but hopefully by then he would be deep into his game with Anthony Atkinson.
He bent his head down as close to his knee as he could get, and as he felt the tension in his hamstring he realized the bench he was leaning on was new, the kind made from recycled plastic bags. It had a memorial plaque on the back: BITSY HALL / A LONGTIME AND BELOVED MEMBER OF THIS CLUB. Old Mr. Hall’s wife. So she’d died too. He glanced around and realized that all the benches were new; come to think of it, had there been benches at all before? Had anyone sat down, ever? He gave a quick stretch to his other leg and then, walking as unobtrusively as he could—it was all he could do not to slink between the trees like some movie Indian—he made a quick tour. There were six benches altogether, and it was as he suspected. There was not a plaque for either of his parents. He had no doubt that, seven years ago, his parents’ friends had discussed the idea among themselves and then decided never to bring it up, and instead made quiet donations to the Vi
llage Improvement Society, which would do some good without upsetting anyone.
The last bench, for Gardner White, was in front of the shack. He stood there in the shade near the water fountain, a small patch of real estate that had once seemed very large. He’d waited here in line, racquet in hand, summer after summer, for his lessons to start; even before that, he had played in the mud at the base of the spigot, waiting for Callie’s lesson to end or even, he supposed, for his parents to finish a match. The woods around him had been hot and green and alive, the thrill of their mystery, he saw now, entirely benign.
“You kept up with your game?”
Jed started. Anthony was right behind him, in a white polo shirt and shorts that looked pressed.
“Sorry,” Anthony said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” He held out his hand again as though they hadn’t seen each other just hours before, and Jed had no choice but to take it. His handshake was the same, one decisive motion.
“I—no. I haven’t played much recently.” As soon as Anthony let go, Jed turned and took a drink from the spigot, as if that had been his original purpose all along. As usual—he remembered too late—the pressure was abruptly strong and water spattered his chin. He wiped it with the bottom of his shirt.
Anthony’s eyes flicked down, then back up. “In Atlanta I suppose you can play outdoors year-round,” he said.
This sounded to Jed like a veiled rebuke. “The weather is pretty nice,” he said. “But I’ve been busy with work.” He did a few knee bends. He wished he’d finished stretching. “Which court, do you know?”
Anthony said, “Toni tells me you quit.”
“No, sir. Leave of absence.” He would just let that hang.
Anthony gave a curt nod that could have meant anything. “Court three.” He turned around and walked back to the court’s entrance, and Jed followed. “After you.” But when Jed was halfway through the tall gate, Anthony took his arm. “Jed. I just want to say. I always think of your mother when I’m here. She was a hell of a player.”