by Luanne Rice
“Maybe it’s more than a little crush. He just told me he’s in love with me.” I watched Nick straighten his spine just slightly.
“In love with you? How long has he known you?”
I waved my hand, wanting to dismiss the whole topic. “It’s not that I mind telling you about it, but it does seem like a waste of time right now. I’m so glad to have you home, Nick. I just met him Monday. I told you, he’s the guy who took my pictures in New York.”
“Have you seen him since then?” Nick asked, his voice definitely full of jealousy.
I realized the only way to get away from the topic of Mark Constable was to tell Nick about the kiss. I’d put it lightly, make it sound funny. I had already begun to consider that day unreal, my one moment in the spotlight. I had succumbed to narcissism; I hadn’t kissed Mark, I had kissed my reflection, a voice that kept telling me “You’re pretty.” Of course I had kissed Mark’s lips, but they were just standing in for his words.
“Until tonight I’d only seen him twice,” I said. “But the photo shoot was a fairly intense day for us. I told you about standing in the street, feeling like a model while he took my picture. It was fun. We were having a pretty wild time, racing around the city.” I didn’t mention the conversations we had had about our work and families, the more serious moments that could have spelled a real relationship. As I got closer to the climax of my story, I felt a line of sweat form along my brow. “So the next day he asked me out for lunch, and I figured, why not? After all, people have lunch together all the time. What’s the harm in a little lunch?”
“None at all.”
I swallowed. “I ordered the sole meunière,” I said. “It was very fresh. Maybe a little too much butter.”
“Too bad. You hate buttery sole.” Nick sounded amused, as though he knew this story was a difficult one for me to tell, and he was enjoying my discomfort. Of course he didn’t know the zinger, the kiss, and I knew I was about to dash that amusement right out of his voice.
“Nick. After lunch we went outside. We were standing on the sidewalk. And then, Nick, we kissed.” I closed my eyes, to avoid seeing his hurt expression.
“Really? You kissed him?”
“No, he kissed me. But I wasn’t totally unwilling.” My voice started to quiver. “I swear I would never, never do it again. If only you knew how terrible I felt, still do. Will you forgive me?” I reached for him. His color was deeper than it had been.
“I can’t believe you kissed that guy. I can’t believe it.”
“Oh, Nick. Say you’ll forgive me.”
Nick stood; he pulled me to my feet and hugged me close. “You don’t care for him? Are you sure? Because I couldn’t stand it if you did.”
“I don’t care for him, Nick. Will you forgive me?”
“God, I feel bad that you kissed someone else, but there’s nothing to forgive.” He laughed, but it may have been a sob. “I’m glad he beat it to New York, because otherwise I’d kill him.”
I couldn’t help it; I made mental notes for the Swift Observatory. Nick was my first example of a male’s desire for vengeance. And I had inspired it. I lay my head against his chest. “I love you,” I said.
“I love you,” he said.
“Will you look what the cat dragged in?” Pem asked, standing beside us, beaming up at Nick.
Nick swung one arm around her and pulled her close. “How are you, Pem?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said. Then, to me, “Do you think the boy will make us a drink?”
“I bet he will,” I said, relieved.
“Three martinis?” he asked.
“Make mine a cranberry juice,” I said. He gave me a funny look, and I smiled, but of course that was not the moment to tell him. I felt like taking a long walk alone with him, but Pem seemed so happy to see him.
Pem and I sat on the sofa, I in Honora’s spot. It was the first time since I had moved in with her that I had dared sit there. Although it was easy to feel jealous of their love, I respected it.
Nick mixed drinks in the kitchen; I heard ice tinkling in the shaker, and I thought how amazing he was. The news I had given him could have ruined our short time together, but he wasn’t letting it.
“Are you hungry?” I asked when he entered bearing a tray of drinks.
“No, I ate on the plane.” He sat between me and Pem, his arm around my shoulders.
“Many happy returns of the day,” Pem said, moving closer to clink glasses.
“How’s Honora?” he asked.
“Much better. She’s doing very well now. But you should have seen her that first night. Clare said she looked like death, and she did. Her skin was gray; she was attached to so many machines. Now they say she can come home next week.”
“Poor Honora,” Nick said to Pem, turning to face her. Pem shrugged and looked away.
“Very sore subject,” I said quietly.
The rhythm of breaking waves and the joy of being together lulled us into silence. Nick’s fingers drummed my shoulder. I pressed closer to him, wild about the secret I was about to tell him. The fact that Pem already knew made it no less intimate. I thought of the expression “in one ear and out the other,” of how aptly it applied to Pem’s reception of my news. His legs outstretched, Nick eased off one shoe, then the other. Occasionally he sipped his drink. Once I leaned forward to look at Pem. She was sitting upright, her eyes closed, a gentle smile on her lips.
“She’s so happy to have the family together,” I whispered. “Honora’s being gone has been terrible for her.”
“That’s no surprise,” Nick whispered back.
“Maybe we can go out for a little while,” I said. “I have something to tell you.”
We crept away from the sofa, to avoid waking Pem. Grabbing big sweaters, we walked onto the front porch. Nick sat in a wicker rocking chair; he pulled me down on his lap. Ever since we had married, I had fantasized telling him that I was pregnant. Even during the years when I doubted that I would ever want children, I recognized what a pleasure it would be for a woman to tell the man she loved that she was going to have his baby. We rocked back and forth, Nick’s arms securely around my waist.
“Lots of revelations tonight,” he said.
“This one may make you quite happy.”
“Well?”
“We’re having a baby.”
“Georgie!” he said, lifting me in his arms. My arms circled his neck, and I pressed my cheek against his. He carried me out the door, down the slatted wood steps, across Honora’s yard. We stood at the edge of the sea.
“We’re having a baby,” he said, surveying the waves. “This reminds me of the night I asked you to marry me. I feel so happy.”
Actually I had asked him to marry me, but he always wanted the credit for it. It had happened on this very spot, after a long dinner with Honora, Pem, Clare, and Donald. Honora had had a date that night, but I couldn’t remember the man’s name. That entire dinner was a blur. I had sat between Nick and Clare, phrasing the question in my mind, much the way I had rehearsed the words I would use to tell him about the baby. In the end I had held his hand and asked if he would be mine forever. He had said yes, then bent to kiss me. Nick was so tall.
“How long have you known?” he asked, still holding me aloft.
“Since this morning. It seems such a miracle, you arriving here tonight. I was calling all over London, trying to find you. I would have hated telling you over the phone, but I wanted you to know right away.”
“I swear it’s destiny. I felt so driven to get here—it seemed absolutely necessary, as if I didn’t hug you by midnight tonight I would die. Really die. I felt this terrible constriction in my throat, like I was choking. That’s never happened to me before.”
“Oh, Nick.”
“It’s fine now.” He lowered me so that I was standing in front of him. “We have to commemorate this,” he said. “What should we do?”
“Let’s swim,” I said.
We undressed each o
ther standing in the middle of Honora’s yard. I undid his silk rep tie, then hung it around my own neck while I unbuttoned his white shirt. He was struggling with the shell buttons on my blouse, and I let him finish before I reached down to unbuckle his belt and lower his zipper. Shivering in the chilly night, we made a pile of clothes, topped it with our underwear, and walked into the bay.
The water was warmer than the air and silky against our skin. Side by side, we swam from Honora’s dock to Clare’s and back. On the return trip we breaststroked, to make conversation possible.
“Do you like the names Bennison for a boy and Letitia for a girl?” I asked.
“Nice names,” Nick said. “Would you like to know the sex before it’s born?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Me too. We’ll want to know as much about the baby as soon as possible. When will you have the baby?”
I smiled, siphoning seawater through my teeth. “Well, the doctor thinks I’m about six weeks pregnant. So the baby should be born in March.”
“That’s a nice month for a birthday. I’ve never wanted a baby to be born too near Christmas.” Nick’s birthday was January 2.
“Maybe it will happen around March 21, the vernal equinox. Spring is a perfect time to come alive.”
Nick stopped swimming and let his feet touch bottom. He held me close. “The baby’s already alive,” he said, touching my stomach. We gave each other a long, salty kiss.
“I could kiss you for an hour,” I said.
“But let’s do it on dry land,” Nick said.
We climbed onto shore. Nick grabbed our clothes; I ran ahead of him toward Honora’s house. We were shivering as we crept around the porch, checking each window for Pem. She hated it when anyone skinny-dipped; she didn’t approve of night swimming at all. She was touring the living room, pulling leaves off the jade plants. We entered through the back door. We stood in the downstairs bathroom, rubbing each other with thick white towels. “I’ll run a bath for you,” Nick offered.
“Not right now,” I said, for I felt a desire so strong that it must have been the accumulation of all the nights I had spent without him. Wrapped in towels, we went through the house, dashing past the living room door, to the room that had been mine as a child.
We held each other tight, and for a while that was all I wanted. I remembered other times we had made love in this room, times when Nick would visit for the weekend and sneak down the corridor from his room to mine. The stealth had made everything more exciting, and I suppose that sneaking past Pem that night reminded us both of earlier times. We began to make love. We knew each other so well. My hands knew the contours of his body by heart: his narrow hips, the scar of his appendectomy, the gentle curve and ridges of his erect penis. This was the man I’d been longing to touch.
“Your hands,” he said, kissing them, and the feeling of his lips against my fingertips drove me crazy. We were pressed against each other the length of our bodies. Nick’s legs wrapped around mine; I felt his bony knees and ankles, his soft calves. I wasn’t sure that making love with Nick could be as good as my memory of it, but, that night, it was.
“I remember this,” I said.
“It’s been a long, long time,” Nick said; there was an expression of pure contentment on his face. He was touching me in ways that were new and familiar. My arms ached and tingled.
“Hold me all night,” I whispered.
Nick held me tight, and he didn’t let go.
FIRST THING NEXT MORNING we took a swim, then drove to the hospital. Honora dozed, her bed cranked to a sitting position, the morning paper spread across her legs. Nick stopped in the doorway to her room. I saw him register astonishment, and although I had grown used to seeing Honora in the hospital, I realized that for Nick it would be a shock. He, like all of us, had thought her the picture of health and strength. Having seen her attached to tubes, the heart monitor, and an oxygen machine, I thought she looked fine today.
Nick stood beside her bed, lowered his head to kiss her. “Sleeping Beauty . . .” he said.
Her eyes opened, and she beamed. With a pang I remembered how she had smiled at me and Clare the night of her heart attack; that smile had been just as full of welcome and delight.
“Nicky! What are you doing here? Georgie, why didn’t you tell me he was coming?”
“I’ve been away too long,” Nick said. “It’s only for the weekend, but I had to come home.”
“Poor lambie, you’ve been homesick,” Honora said. “Well, certain of us here have been going crazy without you.” My mother and my husband exchanged knowing, significant glances, as if they knew something about me that I could never hope to understand.
“Are you okay now?” Nick asked.
“I think so. I have to say, I feel appallingly weak, sleeping all the time, no desire to move. I’ve gotten addicted to television. I watch the morning talk shows, the noontime news, a couple of soap operas, then a rerun of Weather Woman. I made a pretty dashing heroine, I must say.”
“Do the nurses know you were Weather Woman?” I asked.
“I’ve let it slip out to a couple of them. One of the young residents wanted me to autograph the newspaper’s weather report.”
“Still famous, and you filmed those shows how long ago?” Nick asked.
“Must be twenty years. Gad, thirty years, some of them. I’ve been remembering that time. What else is there to do in here except watch TV and relive your life? Anyway, I was thinking about Woods Hole, how those scientists made me out to be the Painted Lady of meteorology.”
“They were envious of you,” I said.
“Some of them were, but others enjoyed feeling superior to me. It was a very difficult place to live, Georgie. I don’t know if you’re aware of that. Everyone rallied around your father, treating him like a member of the club, no doubt feeling sorry for him having to put up with my frivolity. I think that’s what came between us. I’ve been thinking about him a lot in here.”
“It didn’t seem that bad,” I said, dazzled by the intimacy; this was not at all like Honora. Nick and I sat at the end of her bed, like children gathered around the feet of a great storyteller.
“I’m glad we sheltered you from it. I used to be afraid for you, being my daughter. Clare was fine; Clare was an excellent student, always tops in the class. Everyone said she took after her father. But you never wanted to go to school. Your grades were good, not great. You always wanted to stay home, or spend a school day pawing through tidal pools on Nobska Point.”
“But you were always strict about making me go to school.”
“Yes. Now, looking back, I so admire your imagination and the fact that you didn’t fit the mold. Then it terrified me. I thought you had to do all the conventional things, and do them well. You read more books than the entire third grade, but I was so upset when you got that C in arithmetic.”
“I remember that.” Honora had set me up with a little desk and an abacus, and she had made me spend one hour after school every day adding and subtracting. I was always better at subtraction.
“Why do you think she wanted to stay home?” Nick asked.
“I’ll tell you why,” my mother said, looking straight at me. “She was afraid something would happen if she wasn’t there to look after our house. She thought her father and I would have a fight that would end our marriage, or that one of us would simply disappear. I knew that, Georgie. Even back then.”
“I always wanted us to be together. Poor Dad,” I said.
“Yes, poor Timmy,” Honora agreed. “I can’t get him out of my mind. He died so early. To me, he will always be a young man, even though he died in his forties. He would be so proud of the Swift Observatory. And my God! Of his latest grandchild! Give the old grandmother a kiss and let me congratulate you, Nick.”
Nick obliged, getting his arms all the way around her in a good hug. I watched him from behind, the way his suede pilot’s jacket hiked up over his pants, revealing his blue pullover sweater. His w
aist looked so narrow. “In London I was thinking of you here in the hospital, and Georgie mad as hell at me for going without her. I never thought I’d come back to a homecoming like this.”
I smiled, happy he considered the news about the baby his homecoming. He seemed to have forgotten Mark Constable.
“Well, I told Georgie I don’t think she should be driving until the fainting stops. It’s much too dangerous.”
“I agree,” Nick said. “You know, she drove herself home after she fainted here yesterday?”
“I had to get home fast, to wait for your call,” I said, knowing the excuse was feeble, that all of us were imagining the crash and wreck.
“We won’t even honor that comment,” Honora said.
“Just don’t do it again,” Nick said.
I imagined the pleasure my pregnancy would bring to Honora, all the things it would give her to worry about: whether I was eating properly, whether I was gaining too much weight or not enough, the adverse effects of swimming on the mother and unborn child. “Thank heavens I established the Swift Observatory before I got pregnant,” I said. “I don’t see why I can’t continue as before.”
“What about your grant increase?” Nick asked. “I thought John told me those funds are earmarked for travel.”
“That’s true, but he said it was a no-strings-attached proposition. I get the money whether I travel or not. I think I’ll go back to my telephone system, conducting my interviews over the phone.” What about the fact that my best interviews, with Mona Tuchman and Caroline Orne, had happened in person? I dismissed that thought.
“Well, if you want to continue traveling, I think we can arrange it,” Nick said. “We could hire a nanny to help with the baby.”
“I was so lucky, having Pem to help with you and Clare,” Honora said. “In Woods Hole we had a series of housekeepers, some of them perfectly fine but others dreadful. The problem was that none of them stayed long enough for you girls to get attached to them. Pem, of course, was terrific. Once we moved to Black Hall, our families seemed to merge.”
“It feels that way now,” Nick said, his voice a little thick.