Mating for Life

by Marissa Stapley

  “Shut up, asshole.”

  “Beck,” said Helen quietly. “Please. And, Cole, don’t goad him. Now, Beck, upstairs in the medicine chest is a bottle of calamine lotion. You should put some on, and try your best not to scratch it. You also probably shouldn’t go swimming any more today.”

  Isabel was fairly surprised when Beck came down a few moments later covered in pink lotion. He looked embarrassed, but he also must have been incredibly itchy. His leg really did look pretty disgusting. She was sitting at the table, shelling peas from the summer garden for Helen, and looked away, but she knew he had seen her looking. He scowled and left the room and she soon heard the sound of a video game in the living room. Helen sighed. “I suppose telling him not to swim any more is as good an excuse as any for him to plug himself back in. But I wish he wouldn’t. I can’t help but think those things simply soften the brain. Do you play video games, Isabel?”

  Isabel shook her head. “No, not interested.”

  “That’s right. I’ve noticed you like to read. Actual books. I think that’s wonderful. You know, there’s a whole floor-to-ceiling shelf full of books in the living room.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You’re welcome to borrow or take home any book you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  Helen went into the pantry and Cole came into the room.

  “I was thinking of going for a kayak ride,” he said to her quietly. Helen had bought two new kayaks, just for that weekend, apparently. “Do you . . . do you feel like coming?”

  Isabel looked at him for a moment and thought that to her he was the cutest of the two brothers. “Sure. That would be fun.”

  • • •

  “I always think of this place as my private beach,” Cole said. “Even though I know someone owns it, obviously. It’s just that hardly any of the people on this lake come up here. It’s crazy. Look at these places. Huge! And they don’t get used.”

  Together, they had taken the kayaks to another island, that one much smaller than the one they were on, and privately owned. There was only one massive cottage on it, and a boathouse that was the size of Helen’s cottage, at least.

  Cole steered his kayak directly toward the sand and she followed. With soft shushing sounds, they both landed their boats.

  “Do you want to get out?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said. He got out first and held her boat steady while she stepped onto the beach. They sat down beside each other in the sand. She took off her flip-flops and put her feet in the water. They were silent.

  “Helen said your dad rented the cottage next door last summer, while your parents were still together. That must be kind of weird,” he said.

  “It really is,” she said. “But you know what? I thought I was going to have an awful time when I came up here, and I’m not.”

  “I thought that, too,” he said. “But . . . I’m not, either.”

  She wanted to ask, Are you not having an awful time because of me? but couldn’t bring herself to. That would have sounded insecure and needy. That would have been the exact opposite of what Mykayla would have advised her to do.

  Her feet were still in the water and a group of minnows had converged. When she moved her foot slightly they scattered, but returned right away.

  “What do you think they think I am?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The minnows.”

  He looked down at her foot. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe some kind of giant? Some kind of . . . really pretty giant?”

  She glanced sideways at him and then looked back down into the water. The moment seemed to pass too quickly.

  “I think my parents are getting a divorce, too,” said Cole.

  “Really? That sucks. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. They haven’t talked to us about it. But . . . well, it’s like they think we’re dumb, like they think we don’t notice they basically never talk to each other anymore, or hear them arguing in their room at night.”

  “Yeah, but aren’t they supposed to be spending the weekend together talking or something?” She hesitated. “Sorry. I’ve heard your aunt talk to my dad about it.”

  “Yeah. I guess. I really don’t know. You probably know more than I do. They seem to think me and my brothers shouldn’t be in the loop. So annoying.”

  “My parents were like that. We spent most of last summer up here, and they weren’t together, they were just pretending. Obviously, Bea didn’t notice much, but I could tell something was not right. It was pretty offensive, really.”

  “Yeah. That’s the right word. Offensive.”

  “Are you mad at your parents?”

  Cole sighed. “Sort of. Sometimes. You know, they’re not bad, as far as parents go. My mom is pretty uptight, but she’s also a good mom. She does a good job of putting up with Beck’s shit, and he can be such a prick—but that’s the problem, he’s just turning into more of a prick, and it seems like for the past few months things are just getting worse. And she’s checked out. And my dad . . . well, something is up with him. It seems like things used to be so good but I didn’t really notice, because they were good. And now they’re not, and that sucks, because I never appreciated it before.”

  She nodded. “Uh-huh. That’s exactly it. When things start to go bad, you look back and think, Wow, things were amazing and I didn’t care.”

  “Because you didn’t have to. Because you didn’t know it was going to end.”

  “I really liked being an only child. I’m pretty sure my parents only had Bea to try to save their marriage, and things started to go way worse after she was born. Plus—well, I love her, but she’s sort of a pain in the ass.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, she sort of is. Sorry.”

  “No offense taken at all.”

  “So, what’s it like, you know . . . with Liane?”

  She glanced at him.

  “It’s okay, I know she’s my aunt, but you can say what you want to me.”

  “I don’t have anything bad to say about her,” said Isabel. “Really, she’s super-nice. It’s just . . . hard to share my dad, that’s all. It’s funny, because I guess most girls are closer to their moms, but it’s really my dad and I . . . we’re really close. I have no problem sharing my mom, for some reason. She’s—kind of distant. She’s a scientist,” she concluded, hoping that explained things.

  “I couldn’t imagine having to do that, having to share either of my parents.”

  Isabel bit her lip. “Maybe it’s okay, though,” she said. “I mean, maybe it will be okay, one day. My dad at least seems happier with Liane. My mom—well, she’s not the happiest person in general. I don’t know if she’ll ever be happy, and my dad at least seems to want to be happy. I think that’s important.”

  “If only our parents understood how well we know them,” Cole said.

  “If only.”

  And then he reached for her hand and they sat on the beach and she looked at him and he looked at her. She wanted him to kiss her, but, because she’d never kissed a boy before, she had no idea how to convey this. Finally, she looked away from him. That was when she heard the sound of a boat motor, coming closer.

  “Hey . . . is that . . . what are they doing?” Cole let go of her hand and stood. “That’s Beck. And he’s got Eliot driving the fucking boat.” Cole started waving his arms. “He was trying to get Eliot to do it yesterday, and Eliot pretty much does everything Beck tells him to. But he has no clue what he’s doing.”

  “Plus, don’t you need a spotter if you’re going to wakeboard? Wasn’t that what Helen insisted on if she was going to let you guys go out in the boat?”

  “Yes,” Cole said. “Come on, let’s go try to get their attention.”

  Another boat was coming around the island now. “Cole, Eliot’s not watching where he�
��s going,” Isabel said.

  “I know, I know, I—” Cole waved his arms again, and so did Isabel.

  “Eliot, watch out!” she screamed.

  Isabel was certain she would never forget what happened next.

  16

  Seagull (Laridae)

  Gulls are monogamous and colonial breeders that display mate fidelity that usually lasts for the life of the pair. Divorce of mated pairs does occur, but it apparently has a social cost that persists for a number of years after the breakup. Gulls also display high levels of site fidelity, returning to the same colony after breeding there once and usually even breeding in the same location within that colony.

  When Tim and Fiona married, they didn’t write their own vows, but they did each choose a small reading to recite to one another during the ceremony. Fiona thought it would make the ceremony seem more personal (as if there were something impersonal about standing in front of all your friends and family and declaring your intent to spend your lives together). Fiona still had Tim’s reading, deep within her bedside table drawer. It was on a cue card, and it had been dog-eared and bent when he gave it to her, from carrying around all day in his tuxedo pocket. Now the paper had turned yellow and the ink had bled a little. Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you; not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten, and rustle for you. Walt Whitman. “I hope you know what I meant by that,” he had said to her later. “That I’ll love you until the end of the world.” Tim was not the type to make such sweeping romantic pronouncements, and Fiona was not the type to crave them. Which was why she had believed him. Until the end of the world.

  And yet now, here they were, spending a weekend doing “intensive” couples therapy. It had been Fiona’s idea—well, Helen’s, actually; she had suggested it during one of the phone calls that had become so regular they were almost daily. Fiona still felt surprised by the way she felt when she hung up, like there was this person (person, not mother; it was one of the things Helen had asked of her during their talk in the labyrinth, to try to see that just as she, Fiona, was not only a mother, neither was Helen) she had neglected to get to know properly all these years. And while, yes, Helen and Fiona were still nothing alike, there wasn’t as much threat in it anymore. When she stopped doing battle against Helen, stopped fearing being like her, she was able to really see her. And she realized that maybe, in some ways, being more like her wouldn’t be so awful. So she had decided to try something different, to take her mother’s advice and seek out the therapy.

  She didn’t hold out much hope, though. According to the research she had done, the main reason couples counseling so often failed was because couples mostly only sought therapy when things were already broken. Apparently, you were supposed to engage in couples therapy regularly, get monthly tune-ups to keep your marriage healthy. It amazed Fiona that she now wished she had done this. The old her would never have risked going to couples therapy even if presented with empirical data that it would help protect her marriage for the future. The old her would not have wanted to risk anyone finding out and thinking that her marriage was anything less than perfect.

  The therapist’s office was new. So new, in fact, that the wall-to-wall bookshelves in the office were empty. Fiona and Tim had already been a few times, in the preceding weeks, and every time they arrived, Fiona wondered if there would be any books. The shelves always remained empty, though. It made Fiona feel as though perhaps it wasn’t a real office, as though perhaps none of this was happening at all. They were always early for appointments that were always late to start, and they would sit and stare at those empty shelves and dread the moment when the doors opened and the couple came out. What if it was someone they knew?

  The therapist, who was named Audrey Stevens and preferred to be called “Dr. Audrey” instead of “Dr. Stevens,” employed a method called Imago Relationship Therapy. She had just moved to Rye from New York City and was supposed to be one of the best Imago therapists in the state. (Who had told Fiona about her? Jane, of course. “I credit her with saving my marriage, and I didn’t think anything could,” she had said to Fiona. But you don’t seem happy, Fiona had wanted to say. She hadn’t, though. Jane was still a new friend. She didn’t want to risk offending her.)

  Dr. Audrey had dark brown hair she always wore in a French twist, and reading glasses with tiny semicolons on the upper edge of each frame. Fiona thought she should be older, less pretty, less stylish. She wasn’t threatened by her attractiveness. She just wasn’t particularly comforted by her. Audrey used an iPad instead of a notepad, and this threw Fiona off, too. She suspected sometimes that maybe Dr. Audrey was just checking her email when she was tapping away at the screen as Fiona and Tim talked.

  Tonight, for their second last-ditch session of the day, they sat on the brown leather couch and Fiona realized they were as far away from each other as they could possibly be. Fiona’s legs and arms were crossed. Judging from our body language alone, she probably doesn’t have any hope for us at all, Fiona thought.

  Tim was talking. She had thought he’d be more reticent, but in her opinion he had been dominating the sessions. He had said so many things about her to a person they hardly knew. Things that made her feel excluded, diminished, and exposed. How did it come to this? It wasn’t even about Samira anymore, either. They had barely even discussed her. Dr. Audrey had cautioned them to wait, to process and distill everything that had led up to the crisis first. We were so, so broken and I didn’t even know it.

  “It wasn’t so bad when the kids were really little, when we were living in Toronto, but after we moved here, when it seemed like our lives really settled into a routine, she started to make me feel like I was irrelevant to the process,” he was saying. “Like I was irrelevant in general. And also, to be completely honest, like she didn’t really mind that I started having to go away so much. That she kind of liked it. That when I was around I was nothing but a nuisance. Just some guy who didn’t know where anything was in the cupboards.”

  Fiona wanted to scream at him to stop. It was all true, of course. This was exactly how she had felt about him. She just couldn’t believe Tim found it so easy to talk about her as though she weren’t in the room. Meanwhile, she would either say nothing, or she would open her mouth and start to speak in an angry, irrational-sounding voice she didn’t recognize. She had lost it once, completely lost it, and started shouting at him and crying, and then, when she had finished with her outburst, Dr. Audrey had shared a complicit glance with Tim and said, “Well, that was unpleasant.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Fiona had snapped.

  “Fiona, I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m just trying to help you.”

  Now, Fiona reached for a tissue and blew her nose loudly, hoping it would alert the other two people in the room to how wounded she was.

  Dr. Audrey glanced at her and Fiona read only pity in her expression. “Time’s up,” she said. “Let’s try again tomorrow.”

  • • •

  The next morning, Fiona stood alone in her white, perfect kitchen. She made a caffè americano, then out of habit started making one for Tim. She stopped, stared at the two coffees, then dumped them both in the sink. She thought about something else Helen had said to her the day before, about Ilsa. “I realize you and Ilsa have never quite clicked—but she has always looked up to you. You never seemed to see that, but look at her. She tried too hard to emulate you, because she thought you were perfect, the ideal woman who could do everything. She’s just a little sister who looks up to you.”

  Fiona left the two cups on the counter. She went into the basement to get her basket of cleaning supplies because, if she was going to do this, she wanted to arm herself with something. In the front foyer she picked up her purse and car keys and left the house.

  At Ilsa’s studio, she knocked. No answer. She knocked again. She thought for a moment tha
t her sister probably had a man in there with her, and the familiar old resentments surfaced. But even if she does, so what? She left Michael, didn’t she? Why judge her, even now?

  “Ilsa? Hello?”

  The door opened. Sun was streaming in through the window behind her and the flyaways rising up from her messy hair were illuminated. For a moment Ilsa looked angelic, as though she had a halo. Then she stepped into shadow and the halo disappeared.

  “I thought I’d clean up in here,” Fiona said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Oh.” Ilsa didn’t sound especially surprised to be greeted by her sister and a bucket of cleaning supplies so early in the morning.

  “Do you have a mop?”

  “In that closet, yeah. But, Fiona, you don’t really have to . . .”

  “Ilsa, this place is disgusting.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well, it is. I’m guessing you think disorganization breeds creativity, and what do I know about creativity . . . but I want to help you.” The words hung in the air. I want to help you. “You live here now,” she continued. “This is your home. You need to make it feel like one.” She was trying to say something else, but she couldn’t put it into words. Dr. Audrey would probably say she was withholding. She was trying to say: I forgive you. I’m not angry with you anymore. I understand. And also she was trying to say: I need you, too. I’m just as lost as you are. But how did you just come right out and say something like that?

  “What’s that, Vim?” Ilsa asked. “I’m not sure it will work on the floors in here.”

  “It’s not Vim,” Fiona said. “It’s biodegradable, plant-­enzyme-based cream cleanser, and I’m not planning to use it on the floors.” She lifted another bottle filled with ­yellow-tinged liquid. “I’m going to use this on the floors.” Now she turned and started looking around the studio. “Wow. This place is gross,” she said. “It’s really disgusting in here. How do you live like this?”

  “It’s not gross. It’s . . . bohemian.” Ilsa attempted a smile.