An Act of Love

by Nancy Thayer

  “You know the Huntingtons have been pressuring me to sell it to them for months now. When Bruce was arrested, I knew I’d need money for a lawyer, so I called them and did it. Now that we don’t need a lawyer, I want to give the money to you.”

  “Won’t you need it for Bruce’s therapy?”

  “I’ve kept enough from the sale of the land for that and other expenses: medication, an old pickup for Bruce when he gets his driver’s license. But this is for you. I want you to buy a house in Basingstoke. That should be a good hefty down payment on something, something small but nice.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about us, the future, the next few years. Emily has two and a half years of high school left. She’ll probably want to stay in Basingstoke, right?”

  “I’m sure of it. She’s moved enough; she won’t want to leave Basingstoke. Her old friends are there, her new ones. Her therapist.”

  “And God knows how long Bruce is going to be living with me. I hope next year he can live at home and attend U. Mass in Amherst. I really can’t predict what will happen with him. But whatever happens, I am still your husband. You are still my wife. You’ve got to have some kind of life, something better than that dinky apartment.”

  “I do hate paying rent instead of putting it into a mortgage.”

  “Right. If you come back to the farm to live … when you come back to the farm to live, you can sell whatever house you buy, and we can use that money to do the work you’ve always wanted to do on the farm. Until then, well, you’ll have a decent place to live.”

  “Owen, this is so generous of you. I don’t know what to say, except thank you. And honestly, I’ll be so glad to leave that apartment.” She looked down at the check, and then with a sigh she looked up at her husband. “But perhaps you should save this money. In case … in case Bruce needs a lawyer in the future.”

  “I’ve thought of that. I can’t live my life that way. I don’t want us to live our lives that way. It’s hard enough that we’re living apart. We’ll probably live apart for three or four years. At least. That’s enough. We are doing enough for our children, living apart this way, so that we can be good parents to them. We need to think of ourselves as well. We need to have some quality of life or we’ll become such miserable cranks everyone will suffer.”

  Linda nodded. “That’s true.” Leaning over, she held out her glass. “Well, then, let’s drink to my new home. Our new lives.”

  Owen touched his glass against hers, and they drank.

  “Now tell me,” he said, “have you read any good books lately?”

  She loved him utterly. She wanted to weep with joy and sympathy, but she rallied and said, “Actually, yes …”

  They talked about books and movies and music and videos, all the pleasures of the world they’d foregone over the past few weeks. Their conversation carried them down to the dining room for a delicious meal of grilled salmon and the celebratory richness of cherries jubilee. They talked about their own work, too, and Linda told Owen about a section in her book she was stuck on, and he discussed it with her, helping her turn it over and over, like a crystal ball into which they both could see, and gradually what she needed to do with the book became clear. They had always talked to each other like this, and it was bliss to talk this way again. As they looked at each other, they saw it was still there, after all they had gone through. It was still there, the love, the admiration, the understanding. The desire.

  We are still married, Linda thought. There were so many different ways to be married. Women in earlier times took separation from their husbands in their stride. When men went off to war. When men went off to try to make their fortunes, in the gold rush, at sea. Marriage was not defined by location; a marriage did not arise from the fact of two people living in the same house. It was more complex than that, and more elementary. Linda and Owen were not living together, and would not for years, but they were still together in every way that mattered, and that was what counted. That was the bedrock of their lives. Emily, watching, would come to understand this. Would come to appreciate it, to learn how to make a marriage herself. And perhaps in his own time, in his own way, Bruce would, too.

  They went into their bedroom. The fire had burned down and only a few embers glowed, fiercely orange amid the ashes, but that was enough, that provided sufficient light. They undressed each other. They held each other, standing together, naked flesh against naked flesh, all up and down, thighs touching, chests touching, lips touching, warm breath and warm breath mingling, their souls mingling, so that they seemed enclosed within a translucent cocoon of desire and possession.

  Their bedcovers had been turned back. The room was warm, luxuriously so as the cold winter wind rattled against the windows. They lay in the bed together. They did not speak, except to say endearments. The lives waiting for them, the difficult lives they would return to the next day, were as much a part of this night as the wind outside the window, but for now they could forget all that, let it wait for them, held apart from them, while they focused on each other, and on what had brought them together and would keep them together, growing richer and more profound with each burdened day of each new year; Owen’s body, Linda’s body, brought together in an act of love.

  In January, when he returned from Argentina, Jorge had called Emily, and then he called her every night, and then they began to meet on Saturdays for lunch at the Basingstoke Café. She had liked that, sitting across the booth from him, drinking coffee; she’d felt grown-up. And day was a good time for her, full of light, even if it was only the thin January light. She felt less threatened.

  One day when the snow was falling in wet smacks against the café window, Emily had confided in Jorge. Looking at the plastic red geraniums, she had told him about Bruce raping her. Asked him to keep it a secret. He promised he would and as the days and weeks passed, she knew he’d kept his promise, for Zodiac or Cordelia would have called her in a fit if they’d heard any kind of rumor.

  “That’s terrible,” Jorge had said when she told him. “I’m very sorry.”

  “I wanted you to know,” Emily had said. “So you’ll understand if I act weird.”

  “You don’t act weird.”

  “Well, I did. When I freaked out at you in the woods.”

  “That wasn’t so bad.”

  “Sometimes I still get scared. Mostly of guys. It comes up inside me without my control, just all at once, for no reason, like a cough or something.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “I’m taking aikido. To learn to be brave.”

  “I think you’re already brave.”

  “You probably think …” She hadn’t known how to say it. All the things she felt, still felt, although the doctors said she shouldn’t, her mother said she shouldn’t, still she felt them: soiled, sullied, damaged, not just by the rape but also by the fact that she had been in a mental institution. She wanted him to know he didn’t have to hang around with her now that he knew. She was strong. She wouldn’t fall apart. “You probably think …”

  “I think I like you,” Jorge had said. “A lot.” He was leaning on the table between them, his arms crossed behind his plate.

  “Doesn’t it make a difference that …?”

  “It only makes me sorry that it happened. It only makes me wish that I could help.”

  He’d asked her to go to the movies with him the next Saturday night. He’d call a cab, he said, since Hedden students weren’t allowed to keep cars at school. That appealed to her. It seemed adult, plus she wouldn’t be alone with him in the dark, not with a cab driver present.

  That first evening when he arrived at their apartment, he presented himself with an old-fashioned, almost geeky courtliness that, Emily could tell, amused her mother as much as it pleased Emily. He brought a box of Godiva chocolates for “Mrs. McFarland,” and a sheaf of pink roses for Emily, who felt her cheeks flush with pleasure in spite of herself.

 
; The movie had been Phenomenon, starring John Travolta, who was a guy with sudden special mental gifts and aberrations, and halfway through the movie, Jorge leaned over to whisper to her, “I didn’t know this was what the movie was about. Do you want to leave?”

  “No,” she’d whispered back. “It’s fine. I like it.” And to her own surprise, she’d patted his hand, reassuringly, and somehow he took her hand in his and held it for the rest of the movie.

  And she had liked that. A lot. She had not been at all afraid.

  Now, at the end of February, they had gone to the movies three times, and for the past two Sundays she and Jorge had gone ice skating at the local pond, and then he had come over to the apartment for a pizza dinner with her and her mom. They had watched television together. Her mom had gone into her bedroom to read, coming out now and then for a cup of coffee, not really coming out to check on them, like Emily knew other moms would constantly, checking on two people sitting side by side on the sofa.

  Jorge did not try to kiss her. Did not try to get his arm around her. He only held her hand. That was enough, that was like honey in her blood, when he held her hand.

  “Mom,” she’d said one night, “I need to talk to you.” It was night and Linda had come in to kiss Emily good night. She sat on the side of Emily’s bed and waited. “Mom. Jorge says he likes me.”

  Linda had smiled. “Well, of course he does. How can he not? Look at you. You’re perfectly adorable!”

  “Mom. Get serious.”

  “I am serious. You are adorable. You’re smart, and witty, and you listen to people when they talk, and you are turning into a beautiful young woman, especially now that your hair is growing out.”

  “But I feel so … confused.”

  “Is Jorge rushing you?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “So you don’t feel that he’s pressuring you.”

  “No. No, it’s not him, it’s me.” She felt like she was made of a pack of cards, a pile of leaves, a lump of snowflakes, and sometimes any old wind would come up and blow her thoughts and feelings into a blizzard.

  “That’s understandable. After all you’ve been through. Good Lord, a new school, new friends, not to mention your old friends at Hedden, and at the hospital, and in Ebradour. Cut yourself some slack, Em. Give yourself time.”

  “But do you think he means it?” Emily had asked.

  “That he likes you?”

  “Really likes me.”

  Linda had reached over and softly smoothed Emily’s hair. “Jorge seems … reliable. Steady. He certainly acts as if he likes you. He looks at you so fondly. He treats you well. I think you can trust him. I think you should trust him.”

  She was trying. She was trying to trust him, and their new and growing intimacy was both delicious and frightening, like skating on a pond when she wasn’t quite sure the ice would hold.

  This Sunday afternoon they skated together at the pond across from the Basingstoke high school. It was exhilarating, the movement, the brisk air, the bright scarves and mufflers, the comedy of novice skaters, the chatter and giggles of children. Jorge held her hand sometimes when they skated. He was not particularly confident on his skates and Emily liked it that he didn’t mind trying, learning, in front of her.

  As the lavender sky turned dark, they sat together on the bench, undoing their laces and tugging on their boots, their breath billowing into the air around them like steam.

  “Ready to go?” Jorge asked.

  “Yup.”

  But they stayed there, looking at each other.

  “Could I kiss you?” Jorge asked.

  The night air was soft and sparkling with cold. Nearby in the distance children shrieked and giggled as they made their way from the pond up the hill to the street.

  Emily nodded. Slowly Jorge stretched his hand toward her, softly he put the palms of his hands against her cheeks. His skin was warm. Instinctively Emily turned her head just slightly so that her lips touched his hand and she could inhale the scent of his skin. What caused this sudden elixir of happiness to flow through her veins? As he bent to her, his dark eyes were so serious it nearly stopped her heart.

  He tilted her head just slightly, and bent to put his mouth on hers. It was the softest of kisses. It was an exhalation. He pulled away.

  “So.”

  She had never been so happy in her life. “So.”

  “That was okay? That didn’t scare you?”

  “No. I liked it.” She put her hands to his face. “Do it again.”

  This time she kissed him back.

  For Mimsi Harbach

  My Calliope

  With love

  Acknowledgments

  Many people helped me with this book, and I would like to thank them:

  Katie de Hertogh at Nantucket Cottage Hospital; Tim Thompson, who directed me to A Safe Place; Sheila Coffin, for help with police procedure; attorney Kevin Dale; the members of the Wednesday Night Study Group, especially Marilyn Whitney; psychologist, family counselor, and brother-in-law par excellence Chuck Foshee. I would also like to express my gratitude to my agent, Emma Sweeney, and my editor, Jennifer Weis, who kept me turning the kaleidoscope until the pattern came clear.

  And Charley,

  Thanks for making me happy,

  All day, all night.

  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/​NancyThayer​Author

  Read on for an excerpt from Nancy Thayer’s

  Nantucket Sisters

  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 excitement, 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.

  “You’re here!” Maggie squeals.

  “Welcome back, Emily.” Frances smiles. “Come in. I’ve made gingerbread.”

  The fragrant scent of ginger and sugar wafts out enticingly from the house, which is, Emily admits privately to her own secret self, the strangest place Emily’s ever seen. The living room’s in the kitchen; the sofa, armchairs, television set, and coffee table, all covered with books and games, are just on the other side of the round table from the sink and appliances. In the dining room, a sewing machine stands on a long table, and piles of fabric bloom from every surface in a crazy hodgepodge. Frances is divorced and makes her living as a seamstress, which is why Emily’s parents aren’t crazy about her friendship with Maggie, who is only a poor island girl.

  But Maggie and Emily have been best friends since they met on the beach when they were five years old. With Maggie, Emily is her true self. Maggie understands Emily in a way her parents never could. Now that the girls are growing up, Emily senses change in the air—but not yet. Not yet. There is still this summer ahead.

  And summer lasts forever.