The Summer Wives

by Beatriz Williams

  “My wedding day,” said a voice behind me, and I dropped the photograph on the rug.

  “I’m so sorry!” I gasped, bending to retrieve it.

  “Never mind.” Mrs. Vargas took the portrait from my hands and set it back in its place, just exactly so between a picture of a woman holding a baby—Joseph, perhaps?—and one indisputably of Joseph wearing one of those mortarboard graduation caps and a handsome grin. “His graduation day. He was the top of his class at the school here.”

  “You must have been so proud.”

  She snorted. “It’s a small school. There were only twelve of them that year. But I knew from a baby how clever he was. I knew he must go to college, he must make something of himself.”

  “He will,” I said.

  She went on staring at the photographs, as if she hadn’t heard me. “My goodness, I was so young. About the same age as you. How old are you, Miss Schuyler?”

  “Eighteen last February.”

  She nodded. “Just out of high school. Imagining you’re all grown up.”

  “Not all that grown up.”

  “Imagining you know everything. Imagining you’ve fallen in love.”

  “I don’t—I don’t.”

  She turned from the photographs, and in the dimness of the room her face looked softer than I remembered, smoother, so I could see the beauty she had possessed on her wedding day. I thought she spoke with a faint accent, much fainter than that of her husband. “I was speaking of my son,” she said. “My son seems to have imagined he’s fallen in love.”

  “Mama.” Joseph spoke sharply from the doorway.

  The funny thing was, Mrs. Vargas didn’t even flinch. It was like she already knew he stood there, wet hair and dry clothes, holding a towel and a few folded garments. She smiled and turned her face in his direction. “I was just keeping your little friend company. A sweet young thing like her, Mr. Fisher’s new daughter. What were the two of you thinking, getting so wet?”

  “The rain took us by surprise,” Joseph said. He came forward and handed me the towel and the clothes. “It’s just my old pajamas. Nothing else was going to fit you.”

  “She could wear something of mine,” said Mrs. Vargas.

  “That’s all right. I don’t mind. Is there someplace . . . ?”

  Joseph nodded to the doorway behind him. “There’s a bathroom to your left, just before the stairs.”

  I stole swiftly through the door and found the bathroom, which was old and tiny and smelled strongly of the sea, as if the salt water tended to wash through the window during storms. I shucked my wet clothes and toweled off. My skin was pink with cold and damp. I had to roll up the sleeves and the waist of Joseph’s pajamas, but I didn’t mind. They were Joseph’s, after all, and they smelled of him, and the soft touch of his flannel on my bare skin was like the touch of Joseph himself. I rolled up my wet clothes in the towel and went back into the living room, where Joseph stood alone at the window, staring through the glass toward the darkened channel.

  “Where’s your mother?” I asked.

  “She’s making tea in the kitchen.” He turned to me. “We’re going to have to wait a bit before I row you . . . back . . .”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Woke up this morning thinking to catch a few lobsters. Now Miranda’s standing in my living room, wearing my pajamas.”

  “I like your pajamas.”

  “I like you in them.” He held out his arms. “You must be exhausted. Longest day in the world.”

  “You too.”

  “Come on. We can rest on the sofa until the tide goes down.”

  I wasn’t sleepy, not a bit, but I followed him to the sofa and curled on my side, settling my head on his leg, not quite in his lap. “When does the tide go down?”

  “Should be all right in a couple of hours. The rain’s stopped, anyway.”

  “Why can’t we use the dinghy? It’s got a motor.”

  “Your parents might hear.”

  “I don’t care. Why should I care? There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We haven’t done anything wrong. Anyway, he’s one to talk.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Fisher. Your father.”

  “Shh,” he said.

  “Poor Mr. Vargas,” I whispered.

  “It’s all right,” Joseph whispered back. “I sometimes wonder if he knows, anyway. You can’t always tell with Pops, what he’s thinking.”

  “Why don’t you just ask him?”

  “Because I can’t, that’s all. You can’t talk about a thing like that. You just accept things the way they are. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, he’s my pops. Mr. Fisher’s just a—I don’t know—he’s Isobel’s dad. I care about her a hell of a lot more than I care about him.”

  “Doesn’t he ever—haven’t you ever—”

  “It’s the Island, Miranda. Nobody ever talks about what they really think.”

  I laughed a little. Curled my hand around his knee. “Well, he can’t object to us. You’re his son.”

  “Oh, he can object, all right. Just because I’m his own blood doesn’t mean I’m suitable for his stepdaughter. No, don’t worry.” He laid a thumb against my lips. “I’m not going to let him stand in our way. Like you said, it’s not the Middle Ages. It’s just bad luck they came home so early.”

  “It’s not bad luck, actually,” I said. “It’s good luck, the best kind of luck. Well, they’re happy about it, anyway. They’re thrilled to pieces.”

  His hand, stroking my arm, paused at my elbow. “What are you talking about?”

  I turned toward him and lifted my head. “Mama’s going to have a baby.”

  A crash came from the doorway, the catastrophe of a tea tray full of dishes falling to the floor.

  We jumped together, Joseph and I, and for an instant we stared at each other—Mrs. Vargas against the two of us—while a sea of broken porcelain cut up the stone floor between us, having just missed the cushion of the rug.

  Then Mrs. Vargas muttered something like How careless of me and bent to recover the pieces in quick, mechanical movement of her arms, and Joseph darted forward to help her. I followed him. Together we set the pieces back on the tray, not saying a word, not a whisper of dismay about the beautiful ruined dishes, the shards like razors, the massive spill of tea and milk, until Mrs. Vargas whispered something about getting a towel for the mess. As she rose, a few drops of blood splashed on the stone, and Joseph exclaimed, Mama! You’re hurt!

  She looked down at her hand. “It’s just a little cut, don’t worry. Stay here.”

  He made a move to follow her, but she repulsed him with a single look, and he went back on his heels and watched her leave. We finished cleaning up the porcelain, taking great care with the points and the edges, and Joseph took it all away to the garbage can. When he returned, he said he was going to check on his mother.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

  “No. Just lie down and rest, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He turned to go, and a strange fear overtook me at the sight of his back, like the chill I had felt on the beach, only stronger. I called out his name.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He stepped toward me and put his arms around me, and as I set my cheek against his shoulder it seemed I could breathe again. “Stay here with me,” I said.

  “I’ll just be a minute, I swear. Just go to sleep on the sofa.”

  “I can’t sleep without you.”

  He laughed. “You’ve never slept with me.”

  “Just hurry back.”

  “I will. Keep the sofa warm for me.”

  There was nothing to do but obey him. What was a premonition, after all? Only nerves, nothing of logic in it. I went back to the sofa and curled back in the same spot, laid my head in the dent where Joseph had sat, and closed my eyes. I kept seeing the broken porcelain, the blood falling to the floor in large, heavy drops, like the rain
. Maybe Joseph kept his promise and returned in a minute, but it seemed much longer before I heard his footsteps on the rug. I stretched out my arms and made a noise of relief.

  “I brought a blanket,” he said.

  We settled on our sides, facing the back of the sofa, Joseph behind me like a wall. This was my doing; I wanted to be enclosed, I didn’t want to see the place where the china had fallen, where the blood had mingled with the tea and the milk. The idea of it filled me with panic. I stared instead at the dark, immediate upholstery of the sofa cushion, and I fit my back into Joseph’s chest and his stomach, my legs into the spaces between his.

  “So I noticed something from the kitchen window,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Isobel’s home already. They must have left Providence right away. The yacht’s moored at the Greyfriars dock.”

  “That was quick,” I said softly. “You don’t think she’ll notice I’m gone, do you? Or row over to see you?”

  “Not at this hour, no. But I think maybe you should go home soon.”

  His hand crept under my pajamas to rest against my stomach, and I laid my own hand over it.

  “It’s real, isn’t it? You won’t go away?” I said. “When I wake up, you’ll be right here?”

  “Of course I will. Your hand’s like ice. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Miranda, tell me. What are you afraid of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it Isobel? You’re worried about her? Because it doesn’t matter, I don’t care if she approves or not. If Fisher approves or not. I’ll come back for you, Miranda. I promise I’ll come back for you.”

  “Don’t promise you’ll come back,” I said. “It’s bad luck.”

  He spread his fingers wide, spanning the soft plane of my belly between his thumb and his pinkie. “Are you thinking of your father?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and I tried to tell myself that this was true, that this black panic in my chest had something to do with my father’s departure across the sea, my father’s death on some French field seven years ago.

  “I’m coming back for you, Miranda. I’m not going to leave you.”

  “It’s real,” I said. “It’s happened. They can’t take it away from us, can they?”

  “I won’t let them. I love you too much.”

  Those were the last words I recall hearing before I fell asleep, and I must have slept at a tremendous, subterranean depth, because I heard no voices, no commotion, nothing at all until Mrs. Vargas shook me awake some unknown time later. By then, I was alone on the sofa. I remember how I stared in confusion at her white face, and how she had to repeat herself twice before I comprehended what she said.

  “There’s been a terrible accident. You must go and fetch Dr. Huxley.”

  1969 (Miranda Thomas)

  1.

  My husband tracked me down at the end of August, the day of Tom Donnelly’s party on Horseshoe Beach. The weather had turned hot, and we had moved our rehearsal to the incomplete shade of the young elms near the swimming pool. So ferociously was I absorbed in the play, I didn’t notice the man in the pale suit who stood by the edge of the boxwoods, observing us. It was Brigitte who pointed him out.

  Brigitte was playing Caliban, an inspiration of mine. I often used to advise Carroll in his casting, even before we became lovers, and it seemed I had a knack for it, because while he freely criticized just about everything else I did, he never doubted my instinct for actors. Miss Felicity was Ariel, and Hugh was Ferdinand, and Miss Patty was Prospero, and Leonard made a perfect villainous Antonio, and Isobel—Isobel!—had agreed to take on Miranda, an act of cooperation that stunned me. But it worked, you know. The existing connection between Hugh and Isobel struck a mesmerizing note, when I could actually compel them to stop giggling and do the damned scene.

  We were supposed to perform the first act of The Tempest on the beach at Tom Donnelly’s party this evening, however, and at the moment of Carroll’s appearance I was burrowed deep inside that black, echoing cave known as opening night panic. Isobel had never troubled to learn her lines perfectly, so Miss Patty kept feeding them to her. Miss Felicity tended to drift into daydream and miss her cues. Hugh—well, Hugh was never the kind of fellow to take direction, was he?

  And then Brigitte. Brigitte had woken me early that morning and told me, urgently, that she thought she’d been playing Caliban all wrong. “He’s their slave,” she said, “he’s their prisoner. Of course he resents them. He says these things because they expect him to say them, because he has decided to be their worst fear. They have invaded his world, his island, and now they rule him. They tell him he is an inferior race, that his mother is a terrible witch. Of course he hates them.”

  I sat up against my pillow, still groggy, and tried to understand her. “But what about Miranda? She taught him language and how to read, and he tried to rape her.”

  “Did he? Or is this just some Christian hysterics? This is their greatest fear, you know, that the savage will try to impregnate the gentile.”

  I glanced down at her withered, bony hand, which still held my forearm, and back up at her face, which focused not on my eyes but my lips, so she could understand me perfectly. “All right,” I told her. “Caliban’s yours. You play him as you find him. Just remember it’s our last rehearsal this morning, so you don’t have much time.”

  And now Miss Patty was thundering forth—Thou most lying slave, whom stripes may move, not kindness!—when I felt the tug of Brigitte’s hand on my arm, when I followed the tilt of her head and froze my gaze upon that figure in its pale, pressed suit, standing against the boxwoods.

  I turned back to the company. “All right, let’s take a short break,” I said, in a voice of remarkable calm. “Who wants lemonade? Mama, could you pour out some lemonade?”

  My mother, who sat quietly in the nearby grass on a picnic blanket, gave me a curious stare and reached for the thermos. Hugh threw himself happily on the grass and put his hands behind his head. I stuck my paperback copy of The Tempest into the pocket of my sundress and walked steadily up the slope toward the swimming pool. “Miranda,” Carroll said, as I approached, but I continued right past him to the gap in the hedge and stepped through. When I turned around, I saw he had followed me.

  I crossed my arms and stared at the boxwoods behind him. “How did you find me?”

  “Do I not even warrant a greeting, Miranda? Not even a glance?” Carroll’s voice was plaintive, almost petulant. He often took that tone after one of our fights, which were my fault, self-evidently, because Carroll Goring could do no wrong. Surely I realized that. Surely I recognized that the demons made Carroll behave badly, whereas my own transgressions came from within.

  I said, “I don’t think we need to stand on ceremony at this point, do you?”

  He made a noise of astonishment. I took in his linen trousers, his spotless leather shoes. He held a straw hat in his hand, which he spun around in slow, idle circles. His cologne was terribly strong. I had forgotten about that. The scent threw me back into his bed, into his arms, over the back of Victor’s sofa. My stomach reacted in panic. I could almost see the sky’s reflection in Carroll’s shoes, so exquisitely were they polished, and not a blade of grass had stuck to them on the way down.

  “Well?” I said. “Did somebody tell you? Was it in the papers?”

  “No. I found your bank statements, when they arrived in the post. The canceled checks to some builder fellow in Winthrop Island, New York. I looked it up on the map.” His hands reversed the direction of the hat, sending it around counterclockwise. “I didn’t realize you kept a bank account in America.”

  “The Countess used to advise me to keep a bank account of my own, if I was ever so foolish as to get married.”

  “I see. Charming woman, the Countess.”

  There was a hot little pause. I stood in full sunlight, and the perspiration gathered on my temples and my upper lip. I said, “Well, now yo
u’ve seen me. You know where I am. It’s time for you to leave.”

  “Leave? We haven’t said a word!”

  “We have nothing to say to each other.”

  “Nothing to say to each other? We are husband and wife.”

  “But I’m going to divorce you, Carroll. Surely you understand that by now.”

  He swore and walked to the opposite side of the swimming pool, the shaded side, and stood there for some time, staring at the tiny green leaves of the boxwoods. I’d had them trimmed and fed, so they now sat in civilized order, although I sometimes wished I’d left them alone. You so rarely see boxwoods in a natural state. Always, always, people trim them into shape, rounded or square or something more outlandish. Poor boxwoods, they aren’t ever allowed to be themselves, are they? They’re forced inside the boundaries of human imagination.

  Carroll turned at last. “How are you, Miranda?”

  “I’m extremely well. As you can see.”

  “I mean the baby. I was so awfully sorry about the baby. I thought we might grieve together . . .”

  He looked directly into my eyes and allowed the sentence to die. The temperature had soared since daybreak, and his Englishman’s face wasn’t taking it well. He was sixty-one, and had drunk and smoked and taken pills for at least forty of those years, had slept recklessly with every creature under the sun, and his nose was bulbous, his cheeks and eyelids and even earlobes sagging, his capillaries mapped across his skin. The trim, dapper, electric man I’d married had disappeared into some cavity within.

  I said, “Grieve together? You killed my baby on purpose, Carroll. You didn’t want her to begin with.”

  “Her?” He turned his head aside. “I did not—that was an accident, Miranda, I was angry and drunk, you’d made me so damned angry that I—”