The Summer Wives_A Novel

by Beatriz Williams

  “Isobel!” Mama snapped.

  “Didn’t it ever cross your mind, Mother?” She turned her head to me and smiled. “Peaches? What about you?”

  “I don’t know what happened that night. I was asleep.”

  “Yes, you were asleep. Sleepy Miranda. It was the talk of the Island, how asleep you were that night. Must’ve been some evening.”

  “Stop, Isobel,” Mama said, more wearily, sinking into a chair and staring at her hands.

  “Oh, I’m just having a little fun. It’s all academic, isn’t it? Vargas confessed, he saved himself from hanging with his terribly convincing description of the crime—murder in the second degree, my father was only sort of murdered. So comforting.”

  I rose from the chair. “Poor Isobel. Poor tragic Isobel. How utterly awful for you. What must it be like, I wonder, to lose a father? So suddenly, so violently, right when you need him most—”

  Mama jumped from her chair. “Stop it, both of you! My God, I lost them both, I lost everything! For God’s sake, stop!”

  I hung there without speaking, staring toward the window, to Isobel’s cigarette against the smudged outdoors.

  “Just stop,” Mama said. She wandered across the room and through the door to the bedroom itself. For an instant, I thought I smelled her old perfume, but it must have been a trick of my senses, because I knew she never wore it anymore.

  Isobel stubbed out her cigarette on the window frame. “Say. I wonder if we’ve landed yet.”

  “Landed?” I said stupidly.

  “On the moon, Peaches. Landed on the moon, remember?”

  8.

  She actually came down with me. Isobel actually took my hand and walked down the stairs by my side—the main stairs, not the back stairs—and into the library, where everybody had assembled on the rug in front of that little television. Brigitte had got it working, had found the channel. They’d gone through the buffet line and sat Indian-style on the rug, like kindergartners, holding their plates in their laps, their pretty coupes of champagne punch next to their toes. Not one of them glanced up when we entered.

  Isobel called out, “Well, have they landed yet?”

  Livy spilled her punch. Clay set aside his plate and rose to his feet.

  “Landed yet? They landed hours ago!” said Miss Patty.

  “Just past four o’clock,” Miss Felicity said. “We missed it.”

  Hugh rose too. “My fault. I got my times mixed up. But they haven’t come out of the module yet. I think they’re sleeping or something.”

  “Sleeping?” said Miss Patty. “You mean land on the moon and then lie down for a nap?”

  “That’s what the schedule says.”

  She turned up her head to take in the ceiling, a dozen feet above. “Scientists.”

  Isobel and Clay were staring at each other. Clay looked away first. “Can I get you some dinner?” he asked the library shelves. “It’s all laid out in the dining room.”

  “I can get it myself. Come along, Peaches. Aren’t you famished? I’m famished.”

  We loaded our plates and returned to the library. By now it was nine o’clock. Livy announced she was bored and went off somewhere; the blurred, gray images on the television screen didn’t seem real. I ate and listened to the droning voice of the announcer for as long as I could, until at last I turned to Clay and asked how much longer.

  “About an hour or two,” he said cheerfully. “Aren’t you listening? Fascinating stuff. I always wanted to be a scientist.”

  I gathered up a few plates and returned them to the kitchen, and instead of going back to the television in the library I went outside, right through the kitchen door onto the lawn. My heeled shoes sank into the turf. I took them off, took off my stockings too. The air was so cool I was almost chilled, a strange sensation at this time of year, as if the world were upside down. I considered doubling back and digging up a cardigan from my bedroom, but the journey was too far, the object too small, and anyway I didn’t want to be inside Greyfriars. I wanted to be here. The breeze struck my face, thick and sharp with the sea. I started toward the dock, and then I thought better of it, I don’t know why, some premonition maybe. I went to the swimming pool instead.

  The feral grass scratched my feet. I stepped right on one of those prickling weeds and swore in a whisper. There was a trace of fragrance in the air, some hidden thing blooming. In the darkness, I ran straight into one of the boxwoods, but this time I swallowed the word that rose in my throat. Again, I don’t know why. Some premonition. Instead, I felt along the foliage until I reached the gap, slipped through the gap, listened to the quiet lap of the swimming pool water, moved by the breeze. And a voice, a murmur. From the cabana.

  The fear I felt then, I can’t describe it. Just cold, you know, and paralyzing. And yet I forced myself silently forward, my bare feet absolutely noiseless against the stones, my breath blocking my throat. On the cabana itself there fell some light from the house. I made out the shape of it, the stripes on the awning. I stopped at the corner and peered inside. Two bodies, not one. A woman sitting upright and unclothed on the cushions, facing the wall, somebody beneath her. She was moaning. Her breasts caught some flicker of light from inside the cabana, a candle or something, and as they swayed in a particular, universal rhythm, she said, to the same beat, Hugh, Hugh.

  I stumbled back and fell. The moaning stopped.

  “Who’s there?” said a woman’s voice. “Clay?”

  A man’s voice made a muffled curse.

  Run, I thought. Run.

  But I didn’t run. I could not run away from this. I stood up and stepped forward, so they could see me, they could see who I was, though I kept my own gaze fixed on the single, short candle sputtering on the shelf.

  “Get off my brother,” I said. “Get out of my house. Now.”

  9.

  When I returned alone to the library, the room had the limp, eerie air of a failed party. Leonard lay asleep on the sofa by the wall. Miss Felicity lay with her head on Miss Patty’s lap. Isobel reclined on her side, idling her fork around her untouched food. Only Brigitte still sat in her original pose, one hand on each knee, staring keenly at the images on the screen. Clay glanced up from a cross-armed stance before the television. “Where is everybody?” he asked.

  “Livy’s gone home, I’m afraid. She’s not feeling well.”

  “Hugh driving her?”

  “No. Hugh’s gone for a nice, cold swim in the pool, I think.”

  Clay looked into my eyes, and I looked into his. The elegant, vaguely British voice of the announcer droned nearby. Miss Patty said something about moving out of the way.

  Clay lifted his hand and rubbed his thumb against his brow. He was holding a cigarette, and a crumb of ash dropped away from the end and landed on the rug, unnoticed, as if he’d forgotten he was still smoking. “Then I guess I’d better head home,” he said softly.

  “Probably you’d better.”

  He swore. “But she’s got the car.”

  “I’ll drive you home,” I said.

  “Are you sure? I can ask Hugh.”

  “No, I’ll drive.”

  We exchanged another look, absent of expression. Isobel, sitting up, wore a slight smile, though she directed all her attention to the television screen. Clay picked up her glass and her plate, picked up his glass and his plate from the side table nearby, and carried them all into the dining room and stacked them on the sideboard. He patted his pockets, as if he’d forgotten something. “Ready?” he said.

  “Ready.”

  We said not one word as we drove to the Monks’ house, on the other end of the Island. I drove Hugh’s car with its noisy engine, for which I thanked God, because it covered the silence so admirably. A nice, cold swim in the pool, I’d said, which was the honest truth. I mean, what else could he do? Livy sprinting away, carrying her shoes. Hugh—sweating, bare-chested—torn between sprinting after her and making some kind of explanation to me first. I made it easy for him. I gra
bbed his arm and asked him what the hell was going on.

  It was my fault, he said manfully. I went for a swim, and she happened by, and she—

  He stopped and turned red.

  She what? I asked.

  He said he didn’t know how it happened, one minute she was standing there with her cigarette, asking him about football, and the next moment she dived in naked, and Jesus, Miranda, she just—I couldn’t just—she came right up under the water and started—I didn’t even—

  All right, all right, I said. I think I get it.

  He lowered himself to the edge of the pool and sat there, head in hands. The air was black, I couldn’t see him very well, but I thought he might be forcing back tears. What have I done, he said. What the hell have I done.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. I mean, he was my brother, my only sibling. Like me, he had no father, no strong fellow to put him straight in such matters. I thought about that first time with Carroll, and how I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache and saw his gray-speckled hair and thought, in panic, What the hell have I done?

  You made a mistake, that’s all, I said. Just promise me you won’t make it again.

  He whispered, Jesus. Mrs. Monk. Jesus.

  And that was when he dove into the pool. It wasn’t my idea, I assure you. It was his.

  Anyway, I wasn’t going to tell Clay these little details. I wasn’t going to tell Clay anything at all, and I wouldn’t have said another word on the topic, I would’ve just dropped Clay off at his own front door if he hadn’t taken hold of my hand as I reached for the gear shift and spoke, for the first time in a quarter of an hour.

  “Keep going to the guesthouse. It’s where I sleep.”

  I looked at his hand on mine, and for some reason I remembered that story about the B-17 over Germany. I thought, This hand once ditched a crippled Flying Fortress in the middle of a French field, saving the lives of several men. Funny how life works out.

  “All right,” I said, as if this were a perfectly ordinary request, and instead of shifting into neutral I popped the clutch and proceeded down the long, curving gravel drive, not quite certain what I was looking for, until Clay said, Stop.

  So I stopped. Put the car in neutral.

  We sat there. Clay rolled down the window, and the noise of the sea rushed in, much bolder here than in our corner of Winthrop because the Monks had some ocean exposure, facing Rhode Island instead of Long Island. He put his elbow on the doorframe and said, “Livy’s not really sick, is she?”

  “Not sick, no. She just wanted to go home.”

  “All right. All right.” He reached for a cigarette, checked his wristwatch, and swore. “The astronauts! You’re going to miss it.”

  “Oh, it’s all right.”

  “I’ve got a television inside.”

  “I really should get back, Clay.”

  “C’mon. It’s history, Miranda. You can’t miss history. What are you going to tell your grandkids? You had to get home and take an Alka-Seltzer so you missed the astronauts walking on the moon?”

  I laughed a little. “I can catch it on rerun.”

  “Aw, hold on a second. You can’t be serious. You’re not really going to leave me alone to watch history all by myself, are you?”

  He said it lightly, but I thought he meant it. Sometimes the words you say lightly are the ones you feel the most. I reached for the ignition. “Fine, then. Only for a minute, though. Just until they—you know—”

  “Walk on the fucking moon, Miranda? Just that?”

  I laughed again, harder now, because the weight of the evening was beginning to strain the tendons of my throat. “You win, you win. Let’s go.”

  A fine drizzle was filling the air, so we hurried across the drive and ducked inside. The house had no porch, seemed to be some kind of modern structure, lean and boxy and constructed mostly of windows overlooking the sea. Clay flipped on the lights and went for the television in the corner. It was a new, space-age model, blinding white like the furniture. I had the feeling that the main house looked much different, was decorated according to Livy’s taste. “Care for a drink?” asked Clay, and I opened my mouth to say No, but what came out was Yes! Almost a shout. Yes, my God, I needed a drink right now. Miss Patty’s champagne punch belonged to a distant and more innocent past. If such a thing still existed.

  “Coming right up,” Clay said, without asking what I wanted. There was a liquor cabinet, of course there was, well-stocked and convenient, paneled in walnut. I stared at the television screen, warming up slowly, and listened to the clink of glass behind me. My nerves spun, my head felt a little uncertain. Clay came up behind me and nudged my hand with a glass.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Oh, just a little something I improvised. Secret recipe. We’ll call it the Moon Landing.”

  “Not very original.”

  “The Moon over Winthrop? The Waxing Crescent? The Sweet Miranda?”

  “How about the Buzz Aldrin?” I said. “Emphasis on the buzz.”

  “Done. Cheers.”

  I clinked his glass with mine, and we drank in unison. “My God!” I sputtered. “It’s a little strong, isn’t it?”

  “The primary ingredient in the secret recipe is vodka.”

  “I’ll say.” I sipped more slowly. The screen was coming into focus now, such as it was, and the announcer’s voice came through clearly, if faintly. Clay leaned forward, turned up the volume, and invited me onto the sofa. The vodka had already begun to roar in my ears. I didn’t say yes, I just stepped back and sank onto the cushion. Clay sank next to me.

  We watched the screen without a word, waiting and waiting for the hatch to open, for somebody’s boot to appear, for history to occur before us. Armstrong was going first, the announcer said, and he read off the message inscribed on the plaque they were going to leave behind. Something about coming in peace for all mankind, a nice pleasant sentiment. Nobody could argue with peace for all mankind. By now I was sort of floating above the sofa on a vodka cloud, a secret recipe cloud, a Buzz Aldrin cloud, emphasis on the buzz. I’d emptied the glass somehow. Clay pried it from my hand and rose to pour me another, pour himself another. I remember thinking, when he sat back down again, he was closer than before, and that he lit a cigarette. Or maybe I’m just remembering it that way because it fits, you know, fits the narrative of what happened that evening, that night, the night of the moon landing, when the whole world was holding its breath and watching its television set.

  Of course, you already know that story. The hatch opened just after eleven post meridiem on the East Coast of the United States. We all leaned forward, clutching our vodka and our cigarettes, and watched a blurry Neil Armstrong make his way down the ladder and utter his famous words, One small step and all that. I recall the instant of that step, his boot touching the dust, because for that instant it all fell away, Joseph and Isobel and Hugh and Livy, Carroll and my sweet, dead baby who never lived to see a human being step on the moon. For that instant I was made of wonder. I set the glass on the floor and wept.

  “That was something,” Clay said, rubbing my back.

  I nodded and wiped my eyes with my thumbs.

  “You know, it actually happened a few minutes ago. Isn’t that a gas? I mean, we’re all hanging by our fingernails but it’s over and done with, this isn’t actually happening right now.”

  “Because the radio signal takes so long to reach us.”

  “Not that long. It’s because—well, if something happened”—Clay’s hand began to slide downward to my waist—“if he missed a step and fell on his ass, for example.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just a—a hell of a day.”

  I leaned back, causing his arm to fall along my shoulder, and I was too loaded and too listless to shake it off. Anyway, it was just Clay. Clayton Monk, my old friend, almost like family. Why, just an hour ago, his wife had been screwing my kid brother inside the Greyfriars
cabana. We were practically related.

  “Livy . . .” he said.

  “What about Livy?”

  “She was with Hugh, wasn’t she?”

  I didn’t answer. Clay swore.

  “She does this,” he said. “She’s been doing it since—I don’t know—after Barbara was born, I guess.”

  “She’s your third?”

  “Our second,” he said. “I took an early train home one evening and found her in bed with the neighbor’s son, college kid, mowed our lawn in the spring. Mowed more than that.”

  “My God.”

  “She made up some story, I forget what it was. Lucy was at a friend’s house, the baby was asleep in the other room. I forgave her—all right, you know, I’m not perfect myself—and things got better. We had Jackie. Then they got worse again. I won’t bore you.” He heaved himself up from the sofa and went to refill his drink. “Once Jackie’s in college, we’re going to divorce. Until then, we live cheerfully in hell together. The show must go on.” He toasted himself in the mirror above the liquor cabinet.

  “I’m so sorry, Clay.”

  “The thing is, the kind of comic relief in all this, irony, whatever,” he said, staring at himself, his pink eyes in the mirror, “I thought this was what I wanted. Wife and kids and a nice, quiet life. Flying out there at night, you know, when I was overseas, Germany, freezing to death, flack shooting up my ass, it was all I dreamed about. Isobel and a house in Brookline, summers on the Island, every day like the one before, all the traditions, all the—the stuff we did as kids, forever and ever.”

  “I remember.”

  “Then, you know, the reality.” He finished the drink and turned. “I’ll have a word with Livy about Hugh. That’s just—that’s sick, she’s sick, she needs to see a shrink or something. Is he all right?”

  “He wasn’t exactly himself, if that’s what you mean. He feels terrible. He’s a good kid, he feels guilty. I don’t know if he’s—if he’s ever done that kind of thing before, or if she—”

  “Aw, Jesus. Jesus Christ. I never should have taken her to Greyfriars tonight. I knew she was taking notice of him, but I thought—I mean, my God, Hugh. He’s like a son to us. Are you sure he’s all right?”