The Swimming Pool

by Holly LeCraw

  IV

  There was something Marcella had to figure out. She did not know what it was, but she could find it only in Mashantum. She had not been there in seven years, since the divorce. Since the last summer with Cecil.

  In Connecticut, the heat had broken in the night with a thunderstorm, and when she had woken that morning, before she talked to Jed and then Toni, it had been dank and cold. It felt like fall, or perhaps as if summer had never been. She knew these August changes were temporary and thought the weather would improve as she drove east. But instead it grew rainier and grayer, and when she drove into Mashantum Village, at six o’clock, the sky was twilight-dark.

  When she had first come to the Cape as a bride, the low gray-shingled houses and wild meadowy greenness seemed completely of the New World. She had assumed that she was going to a summery resort, and could not reconcile the scrubby vegetation and hunkered-down architecture with her memories of the expansive, sun-drenched Italian coast she had gone to as a child. Of course she had gotten used to it, and Connecticut after all was very similar; but driving down Route 6A again she felt she was twenty-two, and everything was strange once more. She felt ghosts all around her, of her former self, of Betsy, of Cecil. She felt his absence as though he had just died. She would not see him walking down the sidewalk. If she went to the beach, he would not be there swimming. He would not be in his whites at Nobscusset. She could not run into him, accidentally on purpose, no matter how hard she tried. It surrounded her, this reality of loss, which she had thought she’d already absorbed. She shouldn’t have come. She should have come back years ago.

  Once she was in Mashantum proper she drove to the deserted beach, and stayed in her car in the parking lot while the rain drummed on the roof. She left the car running, at first thinking she would leave any minute, but finally gave up and turned off the ignition. It was an effort to lift her hand. Memory was engulfing her, not like thought, but like pungent smell, or sound. It surrounded her, whispered against her skin, transformed her. If she looked in the mirror, surely years would have fallen away; she would have fainter crow’s feet, no gray hair; she would glow. She did not look. In front of her, the waves crashed against the seawall. The roar came through the closed windows.

  She tried to remember something particular about Cecil, something small, maybe his face in the sun, here on this beach. But instead she thought, Jed is here. Instead of Cecil’s gentle warmth she felt Jed’s heat. That sweet watery contentment had been nothing—she was wrapped in rough cloth now, she was being rubbed awake, she was alive. Jed. God help her, they were so close here, Jed and Cecil, she sat in her car dumbfounded, Jed and Cecil, they were both here—but only one was alive—God, she could not think that. He was close, she could feel him, it was possible to have him now, she would only have to go to him—break it all wide open—but then the impossibility of it snapped her straight. She had missed him before, but she had never felt this rebuke, as though he were telegraphing it from his house, a mile away, wanting her. She should not have come.

  Another car drove into the lot and she shrank down, looking at it furtively. She did not recognize it or the driver, but someone she knew could drive by any minute. She would see people she knew this weekend. It was inevitable. She would have to smile, be polite. Be only Toni’s mother. No one’s lover.

  Toni. Baby girl, not a baby—Toni was waiting too. By coming here, Marcella was making a gesture, and gestures were important, especially to Toni; as a mother, Marcella had not made enough of them. Hand on the key. Turn it, back up, drive away down the sandy road. She remembered the way to Anthony’s family’s house. And she knew she should forget everything else. Toni was the only reason she was here.

  ANTHONY HAD LAST SEEN MARCELLA the previous spring, at a parents’ weekend at Toni’s college. Marcella had seemed the same to Anthony, the same, that is, as she had been since the divorce: sad, a bit faded. He did not flatter himself that he was the source of her sadness. There were moments when he caught the old elegant beauty but they had not made him nostalgic, and he had reflected grimly that this must be recovery, all he could expect of it. He did not let himself consider that grief for his old longing was longing in itself.

  But the Marcella who was walking through his door now, on this rainy night, was different. She was vivid. She stood in the kitchen and shook the rain out of her hair—she had not put up an umbrella for the walk from her car to the house. “Let me take your coat,” Anthony said.

  “Oh, that’s all right.” Unspoken was that she would take Toni and leave as quickly as she could.

  “You’re looking well.” He did not say that there were still droplets in her hair, that they shone like silver in the bright kitchen light.

  “Thank you. And you, Anthony,” and her eyes met his and flicked away, around the room. “It is odd to be here,” she said.

  “You’re always welcome. You could have stayed here, you know.”

  “Oh, no. The motel is fine for me.”

  “Motel? You’re not at the Isaiah Howes?”

  “Full,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure he believed her, and thought, That is a change, if she can dissemble so easily. Probably she had not wanted to get into conversations at a bed-and-breakfast. She wanted to be anonymous. He stopped himself from asking which motel; he didn’t need to know. “So,” he said, “you have come to rescue Toni.”

  For the first time she met his gaze directly. “And from what does she need to be rescued?” she said, and laughed. A hectic flush rose in her cheeks, and her eyes grew a trifle wild, and then she looked away again, at anything but him. Still her old doelike skittishness—but what was different? Her eyes brighter, her gestures a little more sure? Marcella said, “I just missed her. She is”—her voice dropped conspiratorially—“so sad about this babysitting affair. There are times when you need to see a person in the flesh, the telephone will not do—ah! Bella!”

  Toni was in the doorway and Marcella was looking at her with undisguised delight. “Hello, love!” she said. Anthony could only watch Marcella’s face. Damnit, there it was, that look, she’d had that look since he had met her, it was so rare—that exquisite joy she bestowed on a face she loved. The essence of what he wanted, what he had thought for so long he had: someone who would never stop wanting him.

  V

  After the summer of Cecil and Marcella’s affair, when Marcella returned to Wellesley, she had trouble eating, and even getting out of bed. Yet she felt not gloomy but euphoric. In the mornings after Anthony and Toni had left, she would sit immobile for minutes, even hours, at a time, her coffee cold at her elbow, her mind racing. She was waiting to break the rules.

  She was obsessed with images of Cecil. She had never been to Atlanta, and it bothered her tremendously that she had to make things up, that she was not seeing him as he really lived. She imagined a master bedroom, a vast, quiet, carpeted space, and pictured Cecil and Betsy in it—not in bed but in quotidian weekday scenes: Cecil with a fresh shirt half-buttoned in the mornings; Cecil sitting on the edge of a yellow chintz-covered bed with a shoehorn in his hand; Betsy padding across the floor in stocking feet, her hands up, fastening an earring. It took Marcella a while to see that these were the tableaux she had always envisioned for herself. She hadn’t realized her dreams were so mundane—merely security, continuity. She supposed—she knew—that there had been intimacy like this in her life with Anthony, but it had not had the depth or the sheen she had always imagined, it had not quieted some fluttering frightened thing in her, and she saw that she had sucked all the meager poetry out of her life as it had existed and given it, in her mind, to another man—her lover—and his wife.

  It became impossible for her to distinguish what was hope and illusion and what was actually Cecil. He was very busy with projects that did not involve travel to Boston, and they had not seen each other for weeks. If she heard his voice on the phone, she yearned, but sometimes she was not even sure it was for him. When they talked, she tried to ke
ep her confusion and excitement and nameless fears out of her conversation, and even her tone.

  So now she was lying to two men.

  Finally, one day in mid-October, sitting in her own kitchen, still in her bathrobe, something in her that had been whirring in endless circles finally stopped. She felt she had been traveling and traveling and had finally come to the edge of a great sea and could not see the other side. She walked outside to her patio and stood in a pool of sunshine, looking around as if she were in a stranger’s garden. The asters had seeded themselves everywhere, and now they had taken over, attended by a few late, lazy bees. The day was bright, but she felt that her life was unreal, and what was real instead was Cecil, far away. Cecil who had said he wanted her. She would not wait any longer. She would say she had to see him, would say they had to make plans. She would explain that she was at the edge of this vast, turbulent ocean and she was frightened and he would comfort her. She had not expected to feel so grim. She wanted her elation back.

  As if the gods had heard her, she received an invitation to a ladies’ weekend in the mountains of North Carolina—the ideal cover. She called Cecil, determined not to sound plaintive, but he in his turn was eager, ardent. “Asheville is just a few hours from here,” he said. “I’ve got business there. Or—I can make business. I’m sorry it’s been so long. I can’t wait this long again,” Cecil said.

  “No. It is horrible.”

  “Chella?” He sounded breathless. “Chella, I’m going to make it so we don’t have to wait anymore.”

  She did not breathe herself, did not even move, at the other end of the line.

  “I’m going to fix it,” he continued. “Somehow. I don’t know how—I don’t—but I’ll figure out something—I don’t know, Chella. But I have to do something. I do.”

  She whispered only, “Yes. Please.”

  The next morning at breakfast, Anthony said, “You seem to have snapped out of that mood.”

  She was standing next to the stove, briskly stirring sugar into her coffee. “What mood?” she said. She tapped the spoon on the edge of her mug, a sharp metallic clink.

  “Whatever was bothering you. Something was.”

  She put down the spoon. “It’s hard to adjust to the end of summer,” she said. She made her voice light.

  “Ah, yes. My sun goddess.” His voice sounded both sardonic and tender. As he left, he kissed her on the temple. She looked up at him and thought several things at once: he’s handsome, still is. And, he saw me. He noticed me. And, if he saw I was sad, why didn’t he say anything till now?

  And then: He knows.

  As the door closed behind him, she knew with absolute conviction that he knew. Not who, probably. But the fact of her infidelity—he knew. She stood rock-still, rock-cold. She never would have thought he could take such a thing so lightly.

  Surely she was wrong. How would he know? That night, when she told him she was invited away for a weekend, he barely looked up from the papers he was reading. “North Carolina? Why so far?”

  “It’s her birthday. Her family has a house there. She’s flying everyone down.” She gave a little laugh. “It is nice to have such money, I’m sure.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and her composure began to wither. “I didn’t realize you were such good friends. Well, have a good time.”

  She had the strangest impulse to tell him right then. Maybe it was what he wanted. He was trying to confuse her with his nonchalance, to get her unbalanced. She felt herself at the edge of the sea again, the water even stormier, deeper. She was almost afraid to speak but she said carefully, “I am going to bed now. I’m tired.” She smiled woodenly at him and left the room.

  A journey, she thought, as she climbed the stairs. Movement: that was the important thing. She had never been to North Carolina. She had heard the mountains were beautiful. Mountains, not sea—she was going to the safety of old, old earth. The trees would be flaming yellow and red and orange in their annual, temporary death, but for her and Cecil it would be the beginning of a new life. Yes, she believed that. She had left herself no choice.

  CECIL HADN’T MEANT for any of it to happen. That would be clear to anyone who watched him, anyone, that is, who could see into his brain and his heart. At every stage of his affair with Marcella Atkinson he’d thought, I’m going to end this. And then he would look at her and think, Just a little longer! Just a little more!

  But then Marcella had made him that dinner, at the end of the summer, and that brief false domesticity made him realize how he had been holding himself apart from her. He had always felt a little superior, felt that really his marriage was happy while hers was miserable—that she needed him more than he needed her. But sitting at that meal, he had been blindsided by the words that came out of his own mouth: that he wanted a life with her. That he’d meant it. Since then he had been avoiding her—yes, he’d admit that—but only because he was so shaken by this new truth. In an ascetic moment he’d even left the damn bathing suit, his favorite talisman, at the Cape. He’d regretted that more than once.

  So he’d meant what he said on the phone, that he couldn’t wait so long to see her (even though this waiting had been of his own doing). But he hadn’t said the rest. He hadn’t said that he couldn’t keep waiting while he was with her either. Being with her always felt like a fantasy that was too tantalizing, too rich; he realized he was waiting for a life with her that was dependable and real and ordinary. He’d been waiting for his heart to slow down, but instead it felt like it was speeding up and he was growing desperate for some kind of peace. Yes, he had to figure something out.

  He did not know for sure what he was going to do until after he had driven into Asheville. If he had been farther south, it might have all been different—if he had not been surrounded by the autumn leaves already past the peak of their color (in Atlanta they were just beginning to turn), if he had just been somewhere familiar, even Mashantum, where he had felt no harm could ever come to him. But here, driving down strange dark mountain roads to the house where they were to meet, it became clear to him that newness and strangeness would not give him peace. Before long he came to a solution, and it was not the one he had anticipated. His extraordinary Marcella was waiting for him, like a rare masterpiece that jolted with its beauty—and he did not want, anymore, to be jolted. He pulled off the highway then, and just sat, in the cold dusk.

  Years ago, before he had even met Marcella, it had occurred to him once that marriage was like an elaborate journey—the kind nineteenth-century nobles, say, might take, with multiple, massive trunks, and servants, and first-class trains with dining cars and china and starched tablecloths, and private staterooms with soft beds, where only the gentle clacking underfoot and the moving scenery out the window reminded you that you were on a journey at all. But an affair, he now knew, was a hasty, lean escape. You took only the clothes on your back; you were practically weightless, sleek and swift, a new man. It was exhilarating, at first. But now he wanted to go back to that comfortable way of traveling. The comfort was home. The home he already had.

  When he saw her, when he told her, it would feel like he had snuffed out everything wondrous in his life. God, his heart. It hurt, it was breaking, but he had a brain too, one that understood duty. Was he weak to pick duty over desire, or strong? It didn’t matter, he didn’t have to decide. Duty was comforting that way, he thought, even though he did not feel comforted. But in a few minutes he started the car and got back on the road.

  Duty. It meant the decision was already made. The more he thought about this idea, how neat and symmetrical it was, the truer it seemed. Someday, he thought, a long time from now (and it was then that he knew, even in his misery, that he would be all right), he would say this to Betsy. He knew she would agree.

  IN A MOMENT OF UNACCUSTOMED BOLDNESS Marcella had—well, not told her friend about Cecil. But implied. The friend had immediately understood and had not even been shocked (which in turn shocked Marcella), and as a result Marcella fo
und herself that Friday night not in a hotel but in an empty house that her friend had borrowed on her behalf, an ersatz mountain lodge with massive, rough-hewn beams on the ceiling and cashmere throws on the deep sofas, and enormous chandeliers made of antlers. She knew the place was rather ridiculous but still it pleased her: it looked like a house in a fairy tale. She let herself be giddy and as she waited for Cecil she thought about how she would say this to him and how he would agree and how they would know such a setting was, for the two of them, entirely appropriate.

  But when he walked into the house she knew something was wrong. He kissed her, but she felt something inside him closed and separate. Then he stepped back and looked up at the double-height ceiling and towering fieldstone chimney with a half-smile, but under it his face was pale. Abruptly he sat down on one of the sofas and, not looking at her, began to talk. He told her he was not brave enough. He could not make it, them, work. He had lied.

  She said, “You didn’t lie.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know until—I just figured it out, Marcella. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to believe I could do it.”

  She almost said, I am not a challenge! I am not some sort of event! But she had never said a sarcastic word to him before, and did not want to now. “Cecil,” she murmured. “Darling. Don’t cry.”