Bodies and Souls

by Nancy Thayer

  Wilbur didn’t worry much about Judy Bennett, for he didn’t know her very well, but he did miss Ron. He mourned him. He realized that he had come to think of Ron as almost another son; he certainly had gotten on better with Ron than with his own sons. Both sons had flown in from their various homes off in other places of the United States in order to be at Wilbur’s side for a few days after the heart attack, and Wilbur had been glad to see them, but he wished he could have seen Ron, too.

  The knowledge came to him as he lay in his hospital bed waiting for his body to recover that he would have liked to give his poems to Ron when he died. Ron wasn’t particularly the sort to like poetry, but they had spent so much time talking together, more time than Wilbur ever spent with his sons, that he thought Ron might see the poems as just another way of continuing that conversation. Now Ron was dead, and Wilbur didn’t know what to do about his poems. Phrases and images occurred to him from time to time as he lay there staring at the ceiling, and when he could sit up in bed, he attempted to write these things down, but it was too exhausting. Humph, Wilbur had thought, it’s a fine state a man’s in when just thinking up a line of poetry is too exhausting!

  He had told Norma about the poems the first day after his heart attack; it had seemed an urgent matter then. “They’re up in the attic in my old fishing-tackle box,” he told her. “If I die, I want you to read them, then you can do whatever you like with them. They’re probably no good. I don’t know why I wrote them.”

  “So that’s what you were doing up there,” Norma said. “I was beginning to wonder. Poems, huh? My, my. Wilbur, you’d better get well and live a long life. I think there’s no end to the things you want to do.”

  There was no end to the things he wanted to do, but Wilbur was afraid that in spite of his desires, his energy was failing him. He tried walking short distances every day during the summer, tried to build up his energy level, but it didn’t seem to work. He was always so tired. It was as if his body had always operated off of two powerful motors and now one of them had shut down. He didn’t have the endurance or stamina. And his mind was playing tricks on him, though he’d never tell Norma; he didn’t want to worry her. One moment he’d be sitting on the back porch with her, drinking lemonade and watching her weed her flower garden, and suddenly he’d be back in his dry-cleaning shop when he had just opened the business. He could see skinny, lank-haired Gretchen Hardt in her blue flowered shirt pressing the cleaned clothes with a flatiron. He’d blink his eyes, and Gretchen would disappear; he’d find himself in the shop as it was when he sold it a few years ago. He’d be standing by a big drum of DuPont Val-Clean, the fluorocarbon chemicals they used to clean the clothes now, and Amy Vaden would be laying the clothes out on the hydraulically operated press and pushing two buttons to get the work done. “It’s amazing how technology has changed things,” Wilbur would say.

  “What?” Norma would ask, and he would find himself staring at his wife, back on his porch on a summer day.

  These flashes of vivid memory were not unpleasant. Still he hoped he’d die before he somehow got lost in them and ended up scaring Norma by mentally living in the vast reaches of his mind. She’d think he’d gone mad.

  No, it was necessary to hang on to his sanity, his sense of reality, for all it was worth. It was necessary not to eat salt, not to have sex, to drink only one cup of coffee a day, and to get moderate exercise. Living could be an effort and a bore, he was discovering, and he knew he was losing his sense of humor, or at least it seemed now that when he made a joke it always had a sardonic cast to it, and this shamed him. He was alive. He still had Norma and two sons living and five grandchildren. He still had friends and a whole world to watch.

  Days like today, of course, made it all seem worthwhile. If death was the price of life, he’d gladly pay it, to earn such a day. The sunlight flashed and glittered through the windows with such brightness that it seemed it must be made of angels’ wings, and the opulent beauty of all the flowers made his soul expand. The matter of the earth was miraculous. He and Norma had arrived early, so that he could take his time getting settled in the pew. They sat toward the back so that Norma could get a good long look at everyone as they entered and went down the aisle. Wilbur enjoyed looking at the people, too: how wonderful they all looked, dressed up in their fancy best, smug as flowers, pleased as youngsters on a holiday. Wilbur forgot to think of salt. He stopped turning inward and was satisfied to sit and gaze and reflect on this portion of mankind with whom he had spent his life. It surprised and strangely depressed him that after all they had been through, the Bennett family looked exactly as they had a year ago. Judy had not gained or lost weight or gotten one gray hair. She seemed untouched by the tragedy of her life, and Wilbur wondered if what was superficial was also real, or whether she was just very crafty at deception. He was glad to see that Reynolds Houston was back; he’d missed his presence. He didn’t know Reynolds well, and seldom talked with him, except briefly at coffee hour, and yet he felt the town needed Reynolds, who seemed to move through their lives like a headmaster passing quietly through a schoolroom, causing everyone automatically to correct his posture or his thoughts. They might not like him, but they were better people because of him.

  “Look,” Norma whispered to Wilbur now, “Pam and Gary Moyer aren’t sitting together. Do you suppose they’re having trouble? Actually, I’ve heard rumors that they’re getting separated.”

  “Well,” Wilbur said, “they’re certainly separated here and now.”

  “Oh, dear,” Norma said. “I wonder what’s happened. Poor people.”

  Poor people? Wilbur thought, looking at Pam and Gary. No, not really, he replied to himself: they are only in their forties, they are young, and they can eat salt and have sex. Their lives are full.

  “Hats are coming back,” Norma whispered.

  “Who?” Wilbur asked.

  “Hats,” Norma said. “Women are starting to wear hats again. I’m so glad I’ve saved mine, up in the attic. I think I’ll go dig them out this afternoon. I hope I saved the one with pheasant feathers.”

  Wilbur smiled and patted his wife’s hand. Hats, he thought, and he was pleased at the thought of Norma’s pleasure.

  The organ music swelled. Peter Taylor walked in, regal in his black robes and white stole, followed by Michael and his best man, his brother Will. The congregation whispered in anticipation, then were still, as they turned to watch Mandy Findly walk down the aisle. Wilbur felt lifted up on a wave of music. He was overcome with joy; he wanted to laugh out loud; for one moment he seemed to rise above the congregation, to hover there looking down; and he was exhilarated by this illusion. He grabbed up a program that had been left in the pew rack from last Sunday, and took a pen from his pocket, and quickly wrote a poem. He wrote:

  Mirrors reflect the sun’s light so that the warming glow

  Is magnified, expanded. Prisms refract that light

  Into a dazzle past our one sun’s art. This is right.

  Even God needs humans if He wants a brilliant show.

  Just so, yellow roses shimmer in a crystal bowl.

  My friends glitter in this church, a varied, lovely crowd

  That gladdens me. If I were brave, I would shout out loud

  To all who gather here: I love you, body and soul.

  Then he folded the program, put it in his pocket, and turned his attention to the wedding. He hardly knew where to look, everyone was so beautiful.

  I’ve got the best seat in the house, Peter Taylor thought, though he wasn’t sitting down. He had just entered the sanctuary and from where he stood he could see everyone clearly: the jubilant congregation, his wife, Patricia, in the first row in a beautiful dress that made her look too young to be the mother of a groom, and, coming up to stand in front of him, his sons.

  Will was fourteen now, and in the past year he had suddenly, thank God, started growing, so fast that they hadn’t been able to keep him in clothes or shoes that fit. He was wearing a rented
black tux and he looked handsome and almost manly, as long as he kept his mouth closed over his braces. Also his crutches kept him from moving toward the center of the church with the appropriate grace and solemnity. He’d practiced furiously, but he just hadn’t had enough time to get used to them. A month ago he had gone to the new skating rink for a roller disco party, and in a fit of abandon while showing off for his new girlfriend, Will had leaped, twirled, and crashed to the floor, breaking his right leg. Peter wasn’t there to see it happen; he had been called to the hospital during the evening. When he arrived to find his son in the emergency room, the ambulance attendants and the cluster of friends who had followed Will to the hospital had informed Peter that Will’s major worry was that now he wouldn’t get to be best man for his brother’s wedding. “I’ll kill myself if I can’t be his best man, I’ll really kill myself!” Will had sobbed, crying like a child. After his leg was set and he was settled in his hospital bed, they had called Michael in Northampton. Peter had listened casually as Will, trying to seem cool, told Michael what had happened.

  “But listen, Michael,” Will said, “I still want to be your best man. They said I’ll be on crutches by then—would you still let me be best man if I’m on crutches?”

  Peter couldn’t hear what Michael answered, but he saw the look of relief and joy pass over his younger son’s face. When he hung up the phone, Will told him that Michael had promised he could still be best man, and that furthermore, if Will wasn’t able to walk by September 4, they’d just put off the wedding until he was able to walk. Will had been delighted, but Peter had been stunned. Since when had his sons developed such devotion to each other? All this intense love his children were involved in amazed him.

  Look what love had done for Michael. In the past year he had moved to Northampton with Mandy, gotten straight A’s in all his high school courses, graduated from high school, and at the same time made a good living. He had worked after school from three till eight at night five days a week and all day Saturday for a man names Lars Larsen, who ran his own wallpapering and painting business. Lars liked Michael’s work so much that he gave him three raises in the space of eleven months, and Michael learned a lot of useful information as well. This morning, when Michael came down for breakfast after spending the night in his own bedroom, he suggested that he come up some Sunday and redo the bedroom for them.

  “I could turn it into a beautiful guest room for you,” he had said. “You pick out the paper, Mom, and I’ll paint the ceiling and woodwork and paper the walls. Of course, I’ll have to do some sanding and wallboard compounding on the wall where I nailed so many posters and models and junk. I was checking it this morning, there are some bad holes in the plaster that could become a problem if they aren’t taken care of.”

  “Why, that would be lovely, Michael,” Patricia had said. “How nice of you.” But her eyes met Peter’s across the table and she telegraphed him a silent message: guest room. Our son wants to turn his bedroom into a guest room.

  As if sensing this, Michael had said, “Well, then Mandy and I could come up and stay with you a lot. ’Course, you’d have to get another bed. You could buy a bed with the money you’d be saving on having me do the work. I wouldn’t want you to pay me.”

  All these calculations, Peter thought. All this energy, all these plans. Short-range plans; Michael still did not intend to go to college, and he had even refused Lars’s offer to become a junior partner in the business, because he wanted to try his hand at other things. He still thought he might like to be a landscape contractor. He was not doing any of the things Peter had hoped his first son might do, yet Peter had to admit he was growing proud of the boy. Michael had become competent, and certainly more sensitive—a year ago he never would have noticed that his mother was hiding a sadness behind her smile. Much of this was probably Mandy’s doing, or at least the consequence of living with Mandy for a year. Peter liked Mandy; in fact, he thought Michael was a lucky man.

  Now Michael stood before him, his thick black hair brushed till it shone, his powerful body nearly bursting from the seams of his rented tux. The processional had started, the ushers were bringing the bridesmaids down the aisle, and the young people all looked lovely, but Peter could not keep his eyes off his first son, who seemed to be the handsomest person he’d ever seen. The church was packed with people, for not only did most of the Londonton friends come for the wedding, but so did an entire contingent of Northampton friends—men and women who called Michael “Mike.”

  Peter’s daughter Lucy came down the aisle now, scattering yellow rose petals for the bride to walk on. Small breasts budded under the yellow lace of her dress. Even his little girl was growing up. Lucy was smiling, embarrassed and pleased to have so many people watching her, and then she looked right at Peter and flashed a grin. My children, Peter thought, and a knowledge clenched inside him, taking his breath away. Patricia and I gave these children life, Peter thought, we did our best to keep them safe, to encourage them in their growing, and we have loved them. In turn, they survived this love and the knowledge of our fierce expectations. He did not suppose that this relationship was very much different from the one between God and man.

  Mandy came down the aisle now on her father’s arm; yellow roses were twined in her hair. She looked beautiful. As she passed each pew, little joyous exclamations rose into the air like bright balloons: “Ah!” people said, seeing her pass. Then she stood before Peter, and smiled up into Michael’s eyes. For one brief moment, Peter felt bouyant with optimism, drunk with sunshine, Mendelssohn, and hope. Then the organ music stopped and the church was quiet. Mandy and Michael looked at him, trusting him to know, for these few moments at least, just what to do. He smiled back at them, as a father, as a minister, as a fellow human being who loved them in their young beauty. He said:

  “Dearly Beloved, We are gathered here today in the sight of God and man.”

  For Joshua and Jessica

  With special thanks to Kate Medina, Bob Buckwalter, and Bill Peck

  By Nancy Thayer

  Nantucket Sisters

  A Nantucket Christmas

  Island Girls

  Summer Breeze

  Heat Wave

  Beachcombers

  Summer House

  Moon Shell Beach

  The Hot Flash Club Chills Out

  Hot Flash Holidays

  The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

  The Hot Flash Club

  Custody

  Between Husbands and Friends

  An Act of Love

  Family Secrets

  Everlasting

  My Dearest Friend

  Spirit Lost

  Morning

  Nell

  Bodies and Souls

  Three Women at the Water’s Edge

  Stepping

  Nancy Thayer is the New York Times bestselling author of Island Girls, Summer Breeze, Heat Wave, Beachcombers, Summer House, Moon Shell Beach, and The Hot Flash Club. She lives in Nantucket.

  nancythayer.com

  Facebook.​com/​Nancy​Thayer​Author

  Read on for an excerpt from Nancy Thayer’s

  Nantucket Sisters

  Published by Ballantine Books

  It’s like a morning in Heaven. From a blue sky, the sun, fat and buttery as one a child would draw in school, shines down on a sapphire ocean. Eleven-year-old Emily Porter stands at the edge of a cliff high above the beach, her blond hair rippled by a light breeze.

  The edge of the cliff is an abrupt, jagged border, into which a small landing is built, with railings you can lean against, looking out at the sea. Before her, weathered wooden steps cut back and forth down the steep bluff to the beach.

  Behind her lies the grassy lawn and their large gray summer house, so different from their apartment on East 86th in New York City.

  Last night, as the Porters flew away from Manhattan, Emily looked down on the familiar fantastic panorama of sparkling lights, urging the plane onward with her exciteme
nt, with her longing to see the darkness and then, in the distance, the flash and flare of the lighthouse beacons.

  Nantucket begins today.

  Today, while her father plays golf and her beautiful mother, Cara, organizes the house, Emily is free to do as she pleases. And what she’s waited for all winter is to run down the street into the small village of ’Sconset and along the narrow path to the cottages in Codfish Park, where she’ll knock on Maggie’s door.

  First, she waves back at the ocean. Next, she turns and runs, half skipping, waving her arms, singing. She exults in the soft grass under her feet instead of hard sidewalk, salt air in her lungs instead of soot, the laughter of gulls instead of the blare of car horns, and the sweet perfume of new dawn roses.

  She flies along past the old town water pump, past the Sconset Market, past the post office, past Claudette’s Box Lunches. Down the steep cobblestoned hill to Codfish Park. Here, the houses used to be shacks where fishermen spread their nets to dry, so the roofs are low and the walls are ramshackle. Maggie’s house is a crooked, funny little place, but roses curl over the roof, morning glories climb up a trellis, and pansy faces smile from window boxes.

  Before she can knock, the door flies open.

  “Emily!” Maggie’s hair’s been cut into an elf’s cap and she’s taller than Emily now, and she has more freckles over her nose and cheeks.

  Behind Maggie stands Maggie’s mother, Frances, wearing a red sundress with an apron over it. Emily’s never seen anyone but caterers and cooks wear an apron. It has lots of pockets. It makes Maggie’s mother look like someone from a book.