The Cost of Lunch, Etc. (15 page)

She shook herself alert, going out to weed the marigolds and zinnias she had bought in flats and put in along the flagstone walk that led from the cottage to the lake and the dock where their motorboat was tied up. Now at least she had time to garden. The first week, with Derek in the city and both boys at camp, she had felt lost here. Now a rich thick content filled her as she knelt, letting herself gradually drift into her past. Once she had lived passionately, lyrically. Her favorite scenes glowed like amber stones told one by one, like those worry beads she had seen men use
in Turkey. Derek had been in Istanbul on for a conference and brought her and the boys along. She had met Derek in college. His room, yes, every inch of it was radiant with memories.

Their parents had both been opposed to their relationship, judging them too young for commitment. Even the crises of the school year and their first narrow rooms in a tenement where mice scurried through the paper-thin walls belonged to romance. The door slammed behind Derek and he rushed to lay his heavy head in her lap and spill his day, his anger and jangling will across her thighs till he had calmed himself. Derek was a lion among fools and he loved her till the ceiling went away and her eyes fell back in her head. So long ago.

She had finished college, although she had understood obliquely that he had not wanted her to. He smoldered with jealousy of the men she borrowed notes from, studied with, sat by in lectures, chatted with between classes. He could not imagine that each one of them did not desire her. She kept silent, flattered. It proved his deep love. By the time she took her last exam, her swollen belly arched against the writing desk. Nat was already growing inside her.

In midafternoon Conway Gates came to the arbor between the cottages and she went to fetch her mending. Every nice day he brought a book to the arbor, but if she joined him, he would lay it aside. Poor lonely widower six years older than she, Conway taught chemistry and physics in high school. He came out here because he liked to fish in the early mornings and perhaps more simply because coming here was how he spent his summers, in a cottage he had inherited from his parents when they passed. Conway’s hair was grey and shaggy, rising to a cowlick. His face was gentle, sad-eyed, long-nosed and hopeful. His caramel-brown eyes with their long sandy lashes greeted her with open eagerness as she took her seat, sewing basket in her lap.

They exchanged books. Conway would describe all she had no time for, exhibits, plays, visiting poets, the fad for straw masks. They gossiped about neighbors here and people in their separate lives. At each summer’s beginning, they needed a week to sketch in their worlds. Their winter paths never crossed and Conway understood without her having to spell it out that when Derek was up from Boston she had little time for him.

Laura enjoyed how clever he made her feel, electric with perception. Sometimes in the middle of discussing some book, television documentary or film, sometimes in mid-dissection of a local scandal, she caught sight of her arm with a shock to see herself so womanly, unconsciously expecting the body she had years before when talk had been a lively duel and dead men’s winey ideas had fed her instead of her own cooking.

Conway lived in an area of galleries and coffee shops, and he liked having friends who lived with more risk than he did. He liked intellectual friendships with gay men, but then he liked to know men who were successful with women, too. He enjoyed teaching, especially bright young girls who needed encouragement in science. He gave much time to student activities and clubs, was a well-liked chaperon at dances. But in summer, it was good to escape the city before the close fabric of his life sagged. In a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, he would walk barefoot along the lake shore whistling, proud his legs were still trim and firm. He relished the contemplative silence of fishing and he enjoyed talking through the sunny afternoons with Laura.

Laura had short dark brown hair and wistful grey eyes, colors of autumn he thought matched her sadness. All the years of childbearing, hostessing for her domineering husband, cooking and raising boys had left her still graceful,
although a little thick in the hips. He felt guilty noticing, but he could not help being observant.

She was married to a balding opportunist, one of those types with one foot in the university, one in the business world and an eye on Washington—something boring to do with economics. Derek had been born with a machete in his mouth. Conway disliked being with the two of them together. Derek would pace around Laura examining her from the contemptuous corner of his eye. “Wear the blue silk with the belt and remember two doubles of dirty martinis for him before dinner and damn it, allow time for that and don’t start rushing people to the table when they’re chatting.”

Most likely she’d married the first man to show her attention. That coarse transformation that turned his shy minnow girls into man-hungry pikes. He saw her coming toward him cradling a basket against her, and the sensuous dignity of her walk made him swallow.

So they sat in the sun and shade of the arbor while she quilted. At Buttonwood, some of the mothers were in a quilting group. “I was thinking, Conway. You never speak of your wife. Is it that fresh, still?”

He looked slapped. Finally he said, “If I don’t speak of her, it’s because I feel more honest keeping quiet.”

She waited, bowed to her fine stitches.

“We were happy when we were first married. She was lovely but fearful, out of a broken home raised by her father only, deserted by a mother who drank. But somehow I failed her. I wasn’t ambitious enough, perhaps. Somehow I became that father and she had to betray me as her mother did. Or so I see it now. She left and came back, she left and came back. The third time she returned, she thought she was with child. I was sure it wasn’t mine. But it was cancer instead. They operated three times, chemo, radiation. It took two and a
half years for her to die.” He looked at her hands a long time. Then he said in a parched quiet voice, “It was all expensive.”

She felt battered. It seemed to her he was bleeding from the mouth. She put her hands on his shoulders firmly, instinctively. “How terrible—”

He bit his lip. “It’s old. It’s worn out. That’s the fault of talking about it, don’t you see? It doesn’t matter any longer. Only …” He pulled her onto his lap, quilt and all, and kissed her.

She lay in his arms quite shocked, surprised by the softness of his mouth, the smoothness of his cheek, the taste and smell not of cigarettes but of the peach he had eaten earlier. She lay in his arms and unthinkingly, as if she were biting into a slice of cake she had been offered, she kissed him back, felt his lips on her neck, timid nibbling like a horse nuzzling. She rubbed her mouth against the smoothness of his cheek.

A car passed on the gravel road. She came to and pulled from him. “I must start supper,” she stuttered and ran for the house. She was stung with shock as if she had been slapped all over her body.

That evening she couldn’t give herself time to think about it with Derek home for most of the weekend. Then in bed she couldn’t sleep for remembering, pondering what had happened. Does he love me? Has he wanted to do that for a long time? Did I accidentally encourage him? Was it pure impulse? Could he conceivably have thought that’s what I meant when I touched his shoulder to comfort him? It was so strange for Derek to lie there sleeping bedside her not knowing anything at all, not knowing another man had embraced her. He would be furious. She longed to wake him, to confide the afternoon. But an explosion would result if she did.

No, she must be very careful not to hurt Conway’s feelings and not to alert Derek. She must set Conway at ease so that they could go on chatting. She went over the strange afternoon trying to find signs and premonitions.
Lying beside Derek, stark awake in the first dull light, she rounded out a nice speech about impulse and maturity and friendship and the truth of moments.

In spite of lack of sleep, Laura felt exalted in the morning. She made a breakfast of an omelet with herbs from her little garden, grating Parmesan into it and frying bacon crisp. She wished she had oranges to squeeze for fresh juice. Derek brought a sheaf of papers to the table, but he complimented her on the eggs. “You seem in a good mood this morning.”

“I was thinking of baking a blueberry pie. They’re fresh this time of year. I bet the farmer’s market has some in town.”

“I’m cutting back on sweets, remember?” He looked up from his papers, frowning, his broad forehead crinkled. Once again she thought how handsome he was, still, a large broad-shouldered man with a strong chin and direct commanding gaze from his eyes the dark blue of lapis lazuli.

“Of course. Sorry! I wasn’t thinking. Maybe I’ll bake cookies to send to the boys.”

“Don’t. Ethan needs to lose some weight, not pack it on. You might think about a diet yourself … Keep us company.”

She could not stay away from the window facing Conway’s cottage. She felt astonished when she saw him looking as he always did, padding along the shore barefoot, turning over his compost pile, bringing in a couple of logs for his fireplace. She went over her speech, adding and subtracting and standing aside to admire. She changed into a sundress and washed, then brushed her hair thoroughly, as she always meant to but always forgot.

In midafternoon, he came out to the arbor. She paused, suddenly unwilling. Derek was on his cell, arguing with someone. She felt a little guilty. Would Derek think her unfaithful, to have kissed another man? It had been so … accidental. She recalled her period of jealousy four years previously when she had suspected him of an affair with a graduate assistant. Finally she had accused him and he had
laughed at her. “Do you imagine I’d throw away my university career for some fling with a student? Don’t be absurd.” She would have preferred he answer that he loved her too much, but Derek was pragmatic to the core—a trait that she generally appreciated. It had enabled him to give her security and comfort and their sons attendance at excellent schools, tutoring, sports equipment, the latest gadgets they desired.

She was being ridiculous. She walked down to the arbor, feeling her face heat. He laid aside his book as if reluctantly and began telling her about it, a tome on some new theory of learning. In detail, he set out its argument. She sat staring at him, wondering if yesterday had been some kind of delusion on her part. She could not stay there. She excused herself and hurried to the safety of the cottage.

It had meant nothing to him. She flung herself from room to room. A bachelor for the last six years, did she imagine he had known no women? He had meant the kiss as an invitation that, when she fled, he had taken as a refusal and considered the matter closed. How dare he offer her that kind of invitation. Or even worse, perhaps he had kissed her to turn the conversation from his dead unfaithful wife. Or been merely curious. The kiss had satisfied that curiosity. He had not liked her response. He had instantly regretted.

When she saw him in the arbor the next afternoon reading calmly and drinking something from a tall glass, she turned from the window and flung herself on the bed. That weekend she kept away, replied to his distant greetings with brief nods, glanced his way only when she was sure he could not see her. She broke a wine glass and, while slicing tomatoes, cut a gash in her thumb. She kept making speeches at him that left her unsatisfied, humiliated.

Monday after Derek had returned to Boston University for a meeting and still she did not return to the arbor, she saw him walking toward the cottage. She felt a pulse of
triumph and then panic. What had she done? Now he was rapping on the screen door. Slowly she walked through thick air to let him in.

She pretended to be busy about the kitchen while they spoke in short sentences of broken rhythm. He cleared his throat twice. Suddenly fed up, she learned against the refrigerator and glared at him. “Why did you come up here? To talk about that damned book?”

“Laura? I had to talk about something. You looked at me so coldly. You seemed angry.”

“Why would I be angry?” She said, already calmer.