Summer Beach Reads

by Thayer, Nancy

  25

  The July morning was dense with humidity, the air so thick and moist it was spongy. Natalie woke with a glaze of sweat on her skin. The heat pressed down on her eyelids, as if forcing her back into her swamp of sleep. She struggled to comprehend why she was so hot; the air-conditioning at Aunt Eleanor’s worked efficiently.…

  She wasn’t at Aunt Eleanor’s.

  She was in Ben’s bed.

  Her eyes flew open. All her senses flipped awake like flowers eager for rain. Next to her, Ben lay on his side, one arm over Natalie’s waist, as if to keep her from leaving, although he should know after last night she had no intention of leaving. The warm gust of air ruffling the top of her head was Ben’s breath. She glanced down at his strong, tanned arm, each individual hair golden in the morning light. Perspiration glistened along his arm. His room was not air-conditioned. Why bother buying a window air conditioner? He was hardly ever here, he told her last night.

  Her eyes wandered the room, noticing what last night she’d been too occupied to see. Ben’s room was in an ordinary condominium—four square rooms, white walls, venetian blinds over the windows, an oatmeal-colored wall-to-wall carpet, commonplace moldings, hollow-core doors, basic. His bedroom held a double bed taken from his grandparents’ house, covered simply with one white bottom sheet; why, he’d asked sensibly, would he need a top sheet in such heat? Natalie had replied—this conversation had taken place late at night, when they were sated from lovemaking—that she couldn’t sleep without something over her to make her feel safe. “I’ll be your safety,” Ben had promised, spooning next to her and wrapping his arm around her.

  His arm was still there.

  A battered wooden chest stood against one wall, one of the drawers open, a cotton rugby shirt spilling out. In the corner was a wicker chair, its strands unweaving from around its arms and legs and sticking out like antennae covered with discarded clothing. Through the open closet door, she saw proof that he could be organized: All his pants hung together, his shirts together, his jackets together. Around the room, towers of books, journals, and monographs rose, teetering dangerously the higher they grew. Six fat tomes rose on his bedside table. How he managed to turn on the light or shut off the alarm clock without knocking the books on the floor, Natalie could only wonder.

  The clock. It was after nine! They’d slept late. Well, they’d been awake half the night. At certain moments, they’d spoken words of love, although occasionally Natalie had coached Ben. “Now,” she said, “is when you tell me I’m beautiful.” That was during the second time they made love, or maybe the third, and she held herself a certain way, teasing him. He had groaned, “You know you’re beautiful.” And she’d moved just exactly the right way, to reward him.

  He had told her he loved her. Without prompting, Ben told Natalie he loved her. She loved him, too, she’d replied, over and over. She’d never been more nakedly honest with any person. No words had ever meant more. She smiled, remembering.

  “Are you awake?” Ben’s voice was a whisper stirring her hair.

  “Mmm,” she answered, wriggling tighter against him.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving.”

  He released her and rolled on his back. “I’ve crushed all feeling from this arm,” he confessed, rubbing the arm he’d been lying on in order to put his other arm over her.

  Natalie flipped over to face him. “Poor baby. Want me to kiss it?”

  “If you kiss anything of mine, we’ll never get out of bed, and we have things to do today,” Ben told her.

  “Oh, really?” She nudged him with her pelvis.

  “Stop. I’m serious.” He sat up, tossed his legs over the side of the bed, and rose. “I’ve got to take a shower. I smell like a sty.”

  “I have to take a shower, too. Shall I take one with you?” Natalie offered.

  “Natalie, behave yourself.” Ben’s expression was serious, but his eyes were full of light. “You know what would happen if we tried to shower together. If you want to take one first, go ahead. I’ll make coffee.” He strode, naked, from the room.

  The shower felt wonderful, cleansing and refreshing. She soaped her hair with his shampoo, scrubbed her body, and stood for long minutes rinsing beneath the flood of water. His towels were old but clean, no doubt borrowed from the Barnabys’ house. Her hair, almost chin-length now, lay in cooling spikes against her face and head.

  She saw her face in the mirror. She looked good. Happy. Glowing.

  What possible plans could Ben have for today that would propel him from bed so quickly? What “things” did they have to do? Her heart jumped like a startled doe. She forced herself to calm down. She had gotten so bossy in her life on her own, she hardly knew how to act around a man, let alone one as reserved as Ben.

  She dressed in the clothing she’d worn the evening before, just shorts and sandals and a pretty, sleeveless cotton top. They were wrinkled, but fresh enough, and anyway, everything got wrinkled in this damp heat.

  She followed her nose toward the aroma of coffee coming from the galley kitchen.

  “The coffee’s ready. Help yourself to juice and cereal,” Ben told her, and went to take his own shower.

  He’d set out a box of granola for her, and a bowl, and a spoon. She found the milk and juice in the refrigerator and, on the spur of the moment, opened the cupboard door. On the shelf were cans of baked beans and corned beef, and a box of Apple Jacks. For some reason, she loved it that he had Apple Jacks. It helped her spy the boy in this serious man.

  She ate her breakfast. Ben came out of the bedroom, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt in a turquoise that made his eyes silvery blue.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Just let me wash the bowls,” she told him.

  He nodded. “You’re right. In this heat, they’d start smelling sour quickly. I’ll dry.”

  She treasured standing next to him, not talking, performing such a humble, ordinary task.

  “Now,” he said, grabbing his keys up from the counter. “Off we go.”

  “Okay.” She hesitated. “Ben, I don’t know where we’re going. I’m only wearing shorts. Am I dressed appropriately?”

  “Sure,” he assured her. “I’m taking you to see my office and lab.”

  If he’d said he was taking her on a rocket to the moon, she couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “Oh!” she said, and smiled. “Well!”

  “Come on.” He took her arm and ushered her out of his condo, down the stairs, and into his car.

  His condo was on the outskirts of the small town of Amherst. As he drove along the shaded streets, past grand old Victorian houses and into the maze of the university, he informed her like a tour guide, “This is my regular route. I bike to my office whenever I can.”

  The university was enormous, sprawling over more than fourteen hundred acres of land, its buildings a mixture of modern and historic, the campus so extensive the streets required traffic lights, metered parking spots, and a university bus system.

  Ben parked in a lot in the middle of the campus.

  “I’m totally lost,” Natalie told him. “I’d wander around here forever and never get home.”

  “I’ll take care of you.” Ben took her arm.

  His manner had changed; his words were not flirtatious but sounded practical, and Natalie realized that before her eyes he was morphing into Science Man.

  “This is Draper Hall.” He opened the door into a stately Victorian building. “My office is this way.”

  She went quietly alongside him as they walked down a shadowy corridor. He unlocked his door and they stepped into his office.

  It was a small room with a window looking out on a well-groomed lawn crisscrossed by sidewalks. Along three walls were bookcases reaching to the ceiling. A beaten-up wooden desk, obviously university-issue, sat in front of the window. Behind it was Ben’s ergonomic chair, and in front of it was a plain, uncushioned wooden office one. Ben’s computer took up
a great part of the desk surface, and all around it piles of papers of various sizes and thicknesses sprawled like several giant decks of cards. Yet Natalie could see some order to it all. One pile of manila envelopes. One pile with ring binders, probably student essays. One pile of pads of graph paper with penciled equations slanting upward on the page.

  Ben held out his hand. “Sit down.” He indicated his desk chair.

  “That’s your chair.”

  “Yes, and it’s comfortable. I’ll sit here.”

  Natalie hid her delighted smile at this unexpected gallantry. She went around his desk and lowered herself into his chair.

  “Now,” Ben said. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, hands on his elbows. “You know we’ve got an oil crisis.”

  Natalie said, “Duh.”

  “Right. What I’m trying to do is to find a way to convert woodmass into biofuel.”

  Natalie nodded encouragingly. “Okay.”

  “Woodmass contains a large amount of oxygen and water. We are using pyrolysis—the thermochemical decomposition of organic material—”

  “Of course.” Natalie tried not to roll her eyes.

  “I need you to hear this,” Ben told her.

  She straightened in the chair. “I’m listening.”

  “We’re attempting flash pyrolysis in an ablative process. We’re moving biomass particles at high speed against a large metal mass.” A change came over him as he spoke. His words were deliberate, clipped, clearly enunciated, evenly paced, as if he was trying not to rush himself in his attempt to articulate his complicated subject. He folded his arms on his desk, leaning toward her, eyes steady, posture upright—and yet clearly his excitement for his experiment pushed him to an emotional high she’d never seen before, not even when they had made love. He transformed into a flame, burning for this subject, yet held firmly in check by sheer force of will. He would not rush. He would not reduce or diminish. He would do it fully and right.

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on his as he continued to explain mechanical reliability, carrier gases, reaction volumes, and commercial applications. She couldn’t begin to comprehend what in the world he was talking about, but she struggled as she hadn’t since high school to memorize some of the terms, because she got it, what Ben was doing.

  He was talking to her. He was telling her what mattered to him, what he did daily, what he was thinking about constantly, what made him absentminded and moody and noncommunicative. Just as she found herself in the midst of a group with her thoughts wandering away toward the penumbra on the bottom left side of her current portrait, so did Ben’s mind return like a homing pigeon to this biomass stuff.

  “I have five graduate students working under me,” he said. “I supervise their work. I write detailed applications to various companies, mostly energy corporations, for grants to continue my work. During the fall and spring semesters, I teach three classes and have papers to grade, theses to oversee, and faculty meetings to attend. I’m required to do volunteer work with the students three hours a week; I oversee the chemical engineers club. I attend every conference the university will send me to. I work on papers about our project, which I submit to the most prestigious journals in our field in hopes of getting published, and that’s daunting work. I love my work and I’m obsessed with it.”

  “It’s important work you’re doing,” Natalie said slowly.

  She had said the right thing. Ben sat back in his chair, his hands curled into loose fists on his thighs. “I think it is.”

  “I can’t pretend to understand it, you know.”

  “Probably you’ll be able to, kind of,” Ben told her, and he was being honest. “You’re an artist. You know about charcoal and the chemistry of color.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Natalie agreed.

  “Probably you could teach me a few things about chemistry and pigments,” Ben told her. “You could never teach me to do what you do—I use real materials and processes, but you seem to pull inspiration out of the air.” He paused, searching for words. “The thing is, Natalie—the thing is, I’m boring. At least to most people I am. I can’t change that.”

  Soberly, she told him, “You’re not in the least boring to me.”

  Ben shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “I wish I could explain this.… Natalie, I’ve always dated scientists before. So that we could speak each other’s language. And I don’t understand why, but no matter how nice they were or how brilliant, or even if they were chemical engineers like me, I always found them boring. But you—I never find you boring.”

  “Ah.” Natalie sighed. She felt as if she were blossoming like a rose in front of him, the feeling caused by the inexplicable chemistry between them. Probably Ben knew the formula for it.

  They talked some more, but he had work to do and so did she. They agreed she’d take his car, drive to her house, and paint. Around five, she’d pick him up to drive to her house for dinner.

  In Aunt Eleanor’s house, the air-conditioning hummed softly, keeping the air cool and dry, which was just what Natalie needed for her paintings. She drifted into her studio and studied her work—the charcoal of Ben swimming. Yet some unusual atmosphere surrounded her as completely as the conditioned air. It was as if an incense were pumping through the coils of the machine into the air she breathed, wafting her into a sense of bliss, as if she were on some invisible drug.

  She realized she was on an invisible drug, and it was love.

  • • •

  “Mom?”

  “Natalie. Are you okay?” Marlene’s voice went up an octave.

  For an instant, Natalie was breathless, stabbed with guilt. It had been over a year since she’d seen her mother, and weeks since she’d phoned her.

  “I’m fine, Mom, just fine. In fact, great. How are you?”

  “How’s Slade?”

  “He’s fine, too. And, Mom, I’ve sold some paintings! I got a great review in the Hartford Courant.”

  “Oh.” Marlene hesitated. “That’s wonderful, Natalie. You really are becoming a success.”

  “I want you to come see them. I want you to meet my new friends. Especially, I want you to meet a man.”

  “You do?” Marlene’s voice lifted in surprise.

  “Of course I do. You know there’s plenty of room in Aunt Eleanor’s house—”

  “I think I’d like that.”

  Natalie babbled on, “Mom, I like it so much here. I might stay here. Not in Aunt Eleanor’s house, but in this area. The people next door have become such good friends. Bella is about my age, and her brother Ben is the man I want you to meet. Her parents, the Barnabys, own the house next door.… What? What did you say?”

  “I said I’d like that.” Marlene sounded shy. “I’d like to come visit. I’d like to meet your friends.”

  Shocked, Natalie said, “Well, good, Mom. How soon can you come?”

  “I’ll have to find someone to deal with the dogs. But I’d like to come as soon as possible, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Yes, please do that,” Natalie agreed.

  “I’ll call you right back,” Marlene promised, her voice stronger now.

  Natalie didn’t return the phone to its cradle but sat holding it in her hands, as if the instrument still retained her mother’s words—and more than that, her mother’s tone of voice, which had been rich with affection. Was it possible that Marlene had changed? It would be strange, Natalie supposed, if her mother hadn’t changed over all these years. When Natalie was a young girl, her mother’s voice had been warm, enticing, adoring. During Natalie’s teenage years, Marlene’s voice had been strained and curt. Of course, Marlene’s life had been difficult then, and it was a pretty safe bet that teenage Slade and Natalie had not filled Marlene’s life with joy.

  So Marlene had changed—but, Natalie realized, she had changed, too. Watching Morgan with her small son made Natalie understand how a woman can love a child with all her heart at the same time she’s being driven mad by that same child. Mor
gan had to stretch emotionally, from sweet to strict, from practical to consoling, from counselor to cuddler, in the space of minutes. Natalie didn’t know if she could ever do that. And now she understood, a bit, all that her mother had done for her and Slade. Not perfectly—and who could do it perfectly?—but well enough.

  For the first time since she’d left home, Natalie was eager to see her mother.

  26

  Bella had set her laptop computer on the display counter so she could be available in case a customer walked in. She sat on a high stool, a sheaf of notes in a pile beside her, and she had several windows open on her screen.

  Her mother had not used a computer to run Barnaby’s Barn, but Louise had been organized. She kept a ledger and several accordion files marked with the names of the artisans, each of their works, their asking prices, the dates the pieces were set out for exhibit, the dates they sold, the prices that were paid, the commissions Louise took, the amount and number of the checks sent to the artisans. She also kept, for tax purposes, a record of every paid utility bill—electric, water, heat. Snowplowing in the winter for the parking lot. Lawn mowing in the summer.

  Basically, Bella was realizing, her mother’s shop had been an endeavor of love. Louise had always made enough money to clear expenses—as long as she didn’t pay herself a salary.

  That was the past. The question was, could Bella’s support itself and Bella’s own real life? Her fingers flew from the columns on the screen to the Dashboard calculator. She chewed her lip as she worked.

  “Hey.”

  She looked up to see Slade standing in the doorway.

  For once, he wasn’t in all black. He wore blue jeans and a snow-white tee shirt that made his black hair shine like ebony. He lounged against the door, cocky, relaxed, slightly amused by whatever private joke was running through his head.