Hudson’s Brown Volvo took the last curve in the rutted Vermont dirt road, and within a few yards the public road narrowed to a private lane overgrown with sumac, grasses, laurel bushes, and maple saplings. The little trees, their trunks as slender and silver as flutes, shivered as the car passed among them. The dirt lane ended abruptly in front of a clapboard cottage that had once been painted white but that had become with age so streaked with dirt and weathered and peeled that it was now at an interesting tortoiseshell stage.
Hudson stopped the car, turned off the engine. For a moment the silence was complete. The cottage stood before them, its every flaw blazing at them through the clarity of the fine early-September day. It was shabby, asymmetrical, crooked, humble. Never grand, it had been worn down by age.
“This is it?” Hudson asked.
“This is it!” Daphne answered enthusiastically, and got out of the car. “A small thing, but mine own.”
Hudson still sat in the car.
“Hudson, you are such a stick!” Daphne said to him calmly. She walked around to the other side of the car and stuck her head in the window. “It’s better inside. It’s really cute.”
“Cute,” Hudson said.
“Yes, cute!” Daphne grinned. “Now, come on!”
She yanked the door open and Hudson reluctantly unfolded himself from the car. Daphne watched, and a helpless smile of pleasure spread across her face. Really, Hudson was such a thoroughbred, with his very long lean limbs, and he looked so fine in his clothes, that pink oxford-cloth button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, khakis, leather loafers on his long skinny feet. Daphne was wearing rubber thongs and a wraparound strapless sundress she had made from some flowered material she had found on sale for eighty-nine cents at Zayre’s. She didn’t dare think about the responsibility she’d given to the three little black snaps that were holding the dress on her body.
“Come on inside,” Daphne said, taking Hudson’s arm. Now, this was a different thing: Hudson looked great, so skinny, elegant in his clothes, but she hated the feeling of his thinness, it worried her. His arm felt skeletal to her hand, too frail to bear all its burdens. Instinctively she pulled him against her affectionately.
“Do you know, this is the first house I have ever owned? Forty-six years old, and a homeowner for the very first time.” She caught Hudson’s glance. “Well, of course you could say I owned a house when I was married to Joe. My name was on the deed, but I never really owned it. Joe owned it.” She felt the bitterness, like a sleeping snake inside her—always such a quick thing, always on the alert!—ready to uncoil and strike, releasing its poison throughout her body. She shook her head, she kept walking, she pulled Hudson to the first concrete step that led to the front door. “But this is mine,” she said triumphantly, and the snake lay back down. “It might have taken me a long time, it might not be a mansion, but it’s mine.”
After all the years of their friendship, Daphne could read Hudson’s mind. Just at this instant, as his courteous hand reached out to open the door for her, his fastidious mind was thinking with dismay: The screen door is made from aluminum instead of wood.
“The floors are all hardwood!” she cried, offsetting his silent criticism. “Look, aren’t they beautiful? Now, Hudson, you have at least to agree that the floors are beautiful.”
Hudson walked through the house. It didn’t take long. The front door opened into the living room, without even a pretense of an entrance hall. The living room was generously proportioned, with a large flagstone fireplace in the middle of one wall, and two windows on either side of the fireplace, giving views of the seedy grass and deep forest that ranged at the side of the house. Immediately to the right was a door leading into a bedroom, and Hudson circled the house through the bedroom, into the bathroom, which (he shuddered) had been tiled in pink plastic and papered with swans playing with bubbles, out the other side to the kitchen, which was spacious and bright (but had metal cabinets). From the kitchen he peeked in at what seemed to be an afterthought built on as a back bedroom, and at a small concrete-floored shed with a disconcerting step down to it, and at a stairway hidden behind another door.
“That leads to the attic,” Daphne told him. “It’s the best room in the house. Really. Go on up and see.”
The stairway was narrow, the only railing a thick twisted rope attached to the wall. But the attic room was charming, because of its slanted ceiling and the windows, one at either end of the room, which were oval and paned with diamond-shaped glass set in lead.
“Nice,” Hudson admitted.
“It will be hell getting furniture and boxes up there,” Daphne said. “I might use the little back bedroom as a storage room and make this attic the guest bedroom. I’d like to sleep up here some nights—to see how the moonlight falls through those panes.”
“Where will Cynthia sleep?” Hudson asked.
“I don’t know, really,” Daphne said. “Up here when she comes to visit, I suppose. I’m not counting on having her here permanently again.” The snake struck. Bitter pain shot through her stomach on its way to her heart. She counterattacked by digging her nails into the flesh of her hand. She hurried down the stairs, thinking: Action. Movement. That’s how you deal with the pain. You just keep moving right on over it. That way you still have the pain, but sometimes you get somewhere.
They were back in the living room. Now Hudson could take a long look at the oak floors, which had been sanded and polished until they gleamed like bronzed satin.
“Good floors,” he said. “Where will you put the piano?”
“I’ve sold the grand,” she said, moving away from him, keeping her back to him. “But that’s fine! I’ve found a darling old baby grand. Not a Steinway, but …”
Hudson was looking at her. She could feel his eyes on her back. “I’ve always told you, if you needed money—”
“I know. And I’m grateful. But this isn’t an emergency, Hudson. This is just life. Come on, come out back. There’s a place for a garden there, and a sweet little stream running just inside the woods.”
They went out through the door leading off the kitchen. The backyard was largely taken up by a garden fenced off by chicken wire. Orange marigolds and multicolored zinnias bobbed along the edges; discouraged potato plants and obstinate zucchini grew among the weedy rows.
“The chicken wire’s ugly, I know,” Daphne said. “But the former owners, the Wests, say it’s absolutely necessary out here. Otherwise raccoons, skunks, even deer get in and eat the entire garden. Well, they couldn’t do much this year. They’re old and ill. But next year I plan to plant the entire area. And look over there—raspberries! The Wests said they’re called ‘ever-bearing’ and they bloom from June into September. Here, Hudson, taste!”
Daphne came to the bushes before Hudson and, squatting down, reached in through the thick green leaves and pulled off several fat ripe beaded red raspberries. She stood up, picked the best berry, and put it in Hudson’s mouth. Her fingers touched his soft lips, his white teeth. He bit down and she felt the gentle tug of his mouth as she pulled the green hull back. She stood, the sun hot on her back, the unruly grass tickling her bare legs, Hudson looking at her through his wire-rimmed glasses, his brown eyes huge through the distorting lens. She crushed the green hull between her two fingers and turned away. It was possible Hudson loved her. It was certain that he wanted her. But he was married, to a woman who had a chronically bad back, and he was of New England Puritan stock; he could not leave that wife, and he could not betray her by sleeping with Daphne. Though they had wanted to for many years now. Well, perhaps it was for the best: they certainly had stayed good friends. And Daphne had had David. In a way. For a while.
“Delicious,” he said, at the same time she said, turning away from him and the sensations he caused inside her, “Let’s go unload the car!”
They brought in laundry baskets filled with clean sheets, clean clothes, blankets, pillows and a sleeping bag for tonight, boxes of kitchen staples, paper cups and plates.
“This is a nice kitchen, isn’t it?” Daphne said.
The floor was brick-red tile-patterned linoleum, the walls colonial blue, the metal cabinets and appliances all old-fashioned white.
“It’s patriotic, at least,” Hudson said. He walked off into the living room, came back to stand just inside the kitchen door. “Daphne, I can’t see you living here. It’s so isolated. It’s so much of a change.”
“Well, my dearest friend,” Daphne said, “there’s not much I can do about change, is there? I mean, change seems to be the order of the day for me recently. We’ve been over this all, Hudson. I had no choice, what choice was there, some dreadful rented box of an apartment? Besides, with Cynthia leaving, I had to do something special. Something different. You know that.”
“I would have given you the down payment for a house in town. I still would. I could easily, just a gift. You would never have to pay it back.”
Daphne looked at Hudson and knew that as much as he loved her, and for as long as he had known her—seventeen years now—he would never understand that she could not take a gift of money from him. Life must be lived by certain rules.
“Hudson,” she said. “Don’t. Just don’t. We’ve been over this all before, too many times.” She looked at her watch. “Anyway, you have to go.”
It was five-thirty. Claire worried if Hudson didn’t get home in time for drinks at six. Claire relied on order in her life, and she relied on Hudson.
“You are sure you want to stay out here all alone tonight?” Hudson asked as he headed for the door.
“I’m sure,” Daphne said.
“No car, no phone. Dickens isn’t here. Won’t you be frightened?” Hudson turned to look back at her.
“Oh, Hudson, what should I be frightened of?” Daphne said, thinking: What else can be taken from me?, sighing. Then, seeing his face, she made herself brighten. “Don’t be silly!” she said. “This is just what I want! I’ve told you that. I’ve been looking forward to it all week. The movers come tomorrow with all my stuff, and then this house will be transformed, taken over by me and mine. But tonight it’s bare, just itself, and I want to get the feel of it. Well, think, Hudson, it’s like me being alone. Without Joe or Cyn or my friends or you. Or it’s like what you might be, if you suddenly were alone somewhere and you weren’t a college professor or a husband. Elemental.”
“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hudson said.
Daphne crossed the living room and leaned up to kiss his cheek. It was the most they permitted themselves. “Thanks for bringing me out.”
“Shall I fetch you in the morning and take you to your Jeep?”
“Yes. Please.” Daphne smiled. Their eyes met, held.
“All right, then,” Hudson said, turning to go.
Daphne watched as the brown Volvo turned around and moved down the lane. Her own car, a “new” car for her, for this place, was a 1979 red Jeep, scarred and bouncy, but with four-wheel drive for the winter. She had traded her Citation in on it, and the automobile salesmen were just finishing up what they called the “prep” job. The Jeep would be hers tomorrow; until then Hudson had offered to chauffeur her around. He always did what he could to help.
Her old home, the house she had rented for fourteen years, was down in Westhampton, just over the Massachusetts border, on a pleasant residential street lined with trees, near the college where she worked, within calling distance of other houses, other people, within walking distance of friends. The same week that her daughter had decided to go live with her father, the father Cynthia had not seen, had not received a birthday card from for fourteen years, Daphne had been told by the owners of the house that they were going to raise the rent by four hundred dollars a month, the exact amount of child support Daphne had been receiving all those years from Cynthia’s father. The exact amount that, now that Cynthia was going to live with him, he would not be sending any longer. Daphne could not afford to stay in the rented house that had become home to her and her daughter. And she didn’t know if Cynthia would ever live with her again.
Life often did things like that, hit you twice in the very same place—Daphne didn’t know why people believed that lightning wouldn’t strike twice in the same place. Of course it would.
Frantic, in shock, Daphne had wanted to run, to move, to change her luck, her life, and the most she could do was this wild thing: she had rushed out and discovered and made a down payment on this inexpensive and ugly little cottage set off a dead-end road partway up a rolling mountain in Plover, Vermont.
She was seriously thinking of naming the house Dead End. Her life had, after all, come to a dead end, had it not?
No. She would not dwell with bitterness.
Daphne went back through her house, which at least now without furniture seemed quite spacious, and into the kitchen. She opened a bottle of inexpensive champagne, which made a lovely celebratory pop, and poured it into a paper cup, then took it outside. She sat on the top step and surveyed her property. The sky was still a bright blue bowl overhead, but evening was on its way, in the blue air, and in the long sea-green shadows that floated on the heavy grass.
I have a house, Daphne thought. This house is mine. She liked those words, that thought. She rose, and slowly sipping her champagne, she circled her house.
God, what a place. It was crooked, angled, lopsided, it needed sanding and caulking and filling, and especially it needed painting. She would not be able to get that job done this year, not with fall and winter approaching.
Well, this would not be the biggest house she had ever lived in, nor the most expensive or elaborately decorated. But it would be the best. She would see to that.
She raised her glass and toasted her house. Her ramshackle house. As if in response, a cardinal called out and flew past, its passage reflected in the kitchen windows. Daphne turned in time to see the bird swerve off into the trees behind the garden.
She loved cardinals. They were perhaps her favorite bird. She thought of them as omens of good luck. Or once had. That was when she was a believer: in the luck of houses, in wishes coming true, in fortune-cookie fortunes, the I Ching, shooting stars, and God. And love. It was a relief to give up all that, and yet it left her strangely limitless; it was odd to have nothing left to pray to in a crisis, nothing superstitious to do when in agony.
But here would be comfort. In this house would be comfort. She was going to wrench this much from life.
How Cynthia would have scorned this place, Daphne thought. The chicken-wire fence was truly ugly. The encircling forest made the house seem more isolated from the world than it was—and Cynthia would have hated that, because she craved the world. Now sixteen, Cyn could never get enough of friends and boyfriends, of admiring teachers and children to baby-sit, tests and challenges, parties, dances, tennis, recitals, plays …
Of course, Daphne would not be here if Cyn had not first decided to leave. So the question would never have arisen.
The snake struck: bitterness and anger raced through her veins. Think of something else, Daphne ordered herself; something else, quick. She turned from the house and looked at the sweep of ground around her. She now owned an entire acre of land—so much grass to mow!
Setting the cup down on the back stoop, she crossed the yard to the wooden shed that stood near the garden, leaning toward the house as if it missed it. As she pulled the doors open, she noted from the squeaks and drag that they needed new hinges. The whole shed needed painting as much as the house. Inside, the concrete floor seemed in good condition, not cracked, but covered with general crud bequeathed to her by the former owners: leaves, dust, seeds, manure, bits of paper, small objects rusted past recognition, bits of rubber, dented empty oil cans, and what had once, not so long ago, been a mouse.
An old hand lawn mower was also inside, and, delighted to discover it, Daphne eagerly pulled it out from where it was entangled with rakes, spades, and shovels in various states of dilapidation. Taking hold of the splintering handle, she pushed it; it shrieked and caught and would not move. She turned it around and pushed it the other way. It shrieked again, caught, then something gave, and as she pushed it, it whirred noisily around as if it had remembered what it was meant for. Daphne made three swaths across the yard, the mower clattering along merrily, before she looked down to see that it was doing absolutely no good at all. The heavy grass was only bent. The blades were too dull, she supposed.
She sagged a moment, balancing her weight against the little old mower, waiting for the despair to pass. It was at times like this, when some slight thing thwarted her, that she most strongly felt the need to give up. It was at times like this that she could feel how her entire life, all her talent and potential and hard work, her devotion and perseverance and courage, had brought her only to this: loneliness so deep, tribulations so dense, like the sea of grass around her, that she could never fight her way out. And the things she counted on, hoped for as objects of assistance, like this mower, failed her every time. She sighed, rolled it across the yard, and put it back in the shed. She grabbed up her cup of champagne and headed for the front of the house.
The view was less demanding here. No unworked garden to chide her vision, no sagging shed. She sank down on the top step and tried to clear her mind, to observe. Light was fading from the sky, colors deepening. Birds were calling out and flicking through the trees. Daphne relaxed, leaned back against the screen door, stretched out her legs. Really, it was very nice here, like living in the middle of a Pissarro. Life imitated art, and the leaves on all the slender or thick-trunked trees were like so many millions of dots, silver-green, blue-green, jade and chartreuse.
Shadows shifted across the grass like ghosts, then vanished, absorbed into the gray late-evening light. Behind her, her house was dark, and this seemed somehow to make it loom bigger, to take on size and density. In a minute she would go in, turn on the radio, turn on the lights, live in the present. In a minute.
For now she sat staring. As darkness became complete, the individual trees of the forest were blotted out, one by one, until she saw the edge of her property as all of a piece, one dim and motionless mass. Now if she walked toward the woods, the trees as she came closer would take on life, silhouettes, individuality. Just as in her mind, when she walked deep into memory, the people she had loved and lost and let fade came clear, presented themselves to her in the flesh with their old alluring charm and smiles and voices, and the clarity of their margins, the expressions on their faces, and what they had meant to her, and meant to her still, could pierce her like a hook. For they were inside her, after all, a black mass of significance that she carried everywhere, unlike the forest around her, outside her, which she could always escape, if only by closing her eyes.
Cynthia. Joe. David. Laura. And Hudson too, though she saw him still, saw him every day. All gone from her now, yet never far away from her thoughts. What was her life about? Shadows?
Boy, it was amazing how fast a life could get fouled up, Jack Hamilton was thinking. It was amazing. He pulled his old silver Honda into the drive next to his wife’s white Mustang convertible (a present from her father), gathered up the sacks of easy deli foods—salty meats, oily salads, oniony buns—beer, and milk for Alexandra’s bottle, and made his way up the gravel drive into the A-frame house, the first house he had ever owned.
Here he was, coming home. Dr. Jack Hamilton (although they didn’t use that title here in the East), a college professor, the newest member of the Westhampton College English department, dapper and trim in his gray flannels and blue blazer. Arms laden, still he managed to open the front door. It swung inward, and his two-year-old daughter, dressed in pink, came flying across the room to him.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Alexandra tackled him at knee level, almost knocking him off his feet.
Jack set the groceries on the table and bent down to pick her up. He tossed her above his head, brought her down to nuzzle her stomach, his mustache tickling her soft skin so that she giggled and writhed with helpless glee. Her soft fat tummy smelled of baby powder and she wriggled like a puppy.
Across the long sweep of room, an actress in a dress coated with sequins glittered on the television screen, drinking champagne and looking scornfully at an actor in swimming trunks and a gold necklace. Carey Ann pulled her attention away from the drama and came to greet Jack. Barefoot, she made her way carefully across a floor littered with what seemed to be three million wooden and rubber toys: rock-a-stack rings, puzzle pieces, building blocks, bright pink naked baby dolls.
“Hi, darlin’,” she said.
Whatever else Jack would ever think of his wife, he would always think she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She had long blond shimmery hair, huge blue eyes, a perfect figure. Now she was wearing jean shorts and a white T-shirt, and Jack loved the way her nipples showed like buttons through the soft cotton. And Carey Ann loved him too; that showed in her eyes.
“Glad you’re home,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss Jack, who tried to tuck Alexandra into one arm, but didn’t succeed; their daughter put out her fat hands to push her mother away, crying, “No! Mine!”
Sighing, unkissed, Carey Ann stepped away, discouraged. “I just don’t know when she’s going to stop that,” she said. She followed Jack into the kitchen to help him unpack the groceries. “I’m sorry the place is still such a mess. I did get all the towels and linens unpacked today. While Lexi napped. And believe it or not, I had all her toys in the playroom, but she insisted on bringing them in here. I don’t know. How was your day?”
“Cracker!” Alexandra yelled, seeing Jack bring out a box.
“Fine,” Jack said, handing his daughter a fist of crackers. “Look what I brought for dinner.”
“Oh, Jack,” Carey Ann said happily, seeing the beers he pulled from the sack. “You sweetie. I’ve been wanting one so much.”
“Me drink too!” Lexi cried.
“Here’s your drink,” Carey Ann said lovingly, getting the bottle from the refrigerator and handing it to Alexandra.
“No! That!” Lexi pointed to the beer bottles in her mother’s and father’s hands.
“Babies don’t drink beer,” Carey Ann said sweetly. She tried to distract her daughter. “Here, want a bite of salami? Lexi like salami.”
“That!” Lexi cried. Her peaches-and-cream face scrunched up and turned rosy with anger.
“I don’t suppose it could hurt her to give her a little sip, do you?” Carey Ann asked, looking at Jack.
He could see blue circles under his wife’s eyes. “Probably not,” he said. Then he grinned conspiratorially. “Actually, it might make her a little sleepy.”
“Oh, Jack,” Carey Ann said, but grinned back. She squatted down and held the bottle to her daughter’s lips. Alexandra took a big suck, her eyes widened, and she spat.
“Yucky!”
“Thank God,” Carey Ann said under her breath, wiping the spit off the mouth of her bottle. “Now I can have it for myself. Here, Alexandra, here’s your bottle.”
They spread their feast out on the paper wrappers on the dining-room table. Thirty feet away, at the other end of the room, the great wall of window glowed with early-autumn light, green leaves just turning gold, blue sky. It was after six, but still bright.
“So?” Carey Ann said eagerly. “How did it go?”
“Great,” Jack said, smiling. It both amused and pleased him that Carey Ann was so awed by his work, as if teaching freshman English and neoclassic literature required the bravery and courage of an astronaut. She couldn’t imagine how she’d keep a class of twenty-five young people quiet and interested for an hour. As he spoke of students and schedules, she listened intently, shaking her head in admiration. Jack was thirty-one, Carey Ann twenty-four, but she seemed so much younger. Sometimes she seemed so terribly young. (And sometimes that was good, and sometimes not.) “The composition classes will be fun, and easy—I can do that with my eyes closed, it’s what I did at UMKC. But the neoclassic class—God, it’s such dull stuff I’m still worried about how to get the students interested. But hey, I forgot to tell you—we’re invited to a party next Friday night.”
“Oh,” Carey Ann said, looking down. She began to busy herself with Alexandra, who for once was silent, lying in her mother’s lap, content with her bottle. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, we’d need a baby-sitter for Lexi, and I don’t know anyone yet …” Were those tears in her eyelashes? She kept looking down.
Jack stared at his wife. She didn’t raise her head. Here we go again, he thought, then with a burst of self-controlled energy jumped up from his chair. “I’m going to run up to the bedroom and change out of these clothes.” He took the stairs two at a time, needing to burn up the anger that had burst inside him. What would make that woman happy? She’d been afraid to leave Kansas because she didn’t know anyone back east and didn’t have any friends in the Westhampton area, and she was a woman who loved being with friends, but here was a chance for her to meet people and she acted as if he’d just suggested a visit to the dentist.
In a frenzy he stripped off his clothes and hung them up neatly, trekking into the bathroom to put his socks in the hamper; Carey Ann sure wouldn’t be able to say he had left the room a mess, had left his socks for her to pick up. Turning, he caught sight of his face in the bathroom mirror. Boy, did he look grim. He sighed and put the toilet lid down and sat there a moment in his Jockey shorts, trying to calm down.
He didn’t want an instant replay of last night. Last night had been terrible. He had driven home from the college through a sun-dappled September day, as brilliant as any day he had ever known, and, arms laden with briefcase and groceries, had burst into his beautiful and overwarm house to find his wife and child seated in front of the TV.
“TV?” he had yelled. “Hey, you guys, what are you doing in front of the TV on a beautiful day like this?”
It had been a spontaneous outburst, purely curious. He had meant no criticism and had thought there was nothing but enthusiasm in his voice.
But, “What’s wrong with watching TV?” Carey Ann had said, bursting into tears immediately. “Where am I supposed to go? I don’t know anyone to go visit. There isn’t a neighborhood around here. We’re stuck out in the old country! What am I supposed to do with a toddler? Do you have any idea how hard it is to follow a little kid around all day? It’s backbreaking. Besides, I like watching TV! It makes me feel better to see all those people whose lives are worse than mine!”
“Worse than yours? But, Carey Ann! What is so bad about your life?” Jack had asked, amazed. Again, he had meant only a question, not criticism.
But Carey Ann had shaken her head and turned away. “Oh, you can’t understand!”
She had sunk onto the sofa, head in hands, and cried. Alexandra had watched a few moments, enthralled, then, looking up at her father, had burst into confused tears herself, and there Jack had stood, in his splendid new home, with two of the most beautiful blondes the world had ever seen, bawling their eyes out.
He had calmed them down, and eventually, after dinner, they had all gone for a walk down their bumpy dirt road. Jack had tried to cheer Carey Ann up with descriptions of his day, his office, the other faculty members and the students, and thought he had been successful. But later, when they were climbing into bed, with Alexandra for once miraculously asleep in her crib, he had reached out for his wife, wanting to make love to her. But Carey Ann had pulled away and begun crying again.
“Oh, I’m too ugly for anyone to make love to.”
“Carey Ann!”
“Well, look. I guess I’m going to have this blubber on my stomach for the rest of my life.”
“Carey Ann, you’re beautiful. You don’t have any blubber. You’re perfect!”
“Oh, don’t you lie to me,” she had said, offended, pulling away from him to sit on the side of the bed. “I know. I know how you get to look at all those pretty young carefree flat-stomached coeds all day long, those girls who have nothing to think about but getting dressed!”
“I think Westhampton College students have slightly higher intellectual concerns than that,” Jack had said, and all right, that had been stuffy, but it had just come out.
“Oh, right, and I don’t!” Carey Ann had snapped irrationally.
He had tried to charm her out of her sulks, but nothing he could do worked. “Just leave me alone, please,” Carey Ann had said. “I don’t want to make love. I’m tired.” She had curled up on her side of the bed and fallen asleep instantly, while Jack lay awake for long minutes, staring into the night.
How had he and his wife become so antagonistic? Were all marriages this way? He wished he had someone to talk to. He was getting the strangest feelings about his life, that it was fouled up, going the wrong way, that he was out of control, that he couldn’t do it right.
Wouldn’t Carey Ann’s old father back in Kansas be thrilled to hear of this? When Jack had formally asked for her hand in marriage, Mr. Skrags had said, “Jack, I have to tell you that I think I have a pretty good idea of what Carey Ann needs in life to make her happy, and when I look at you, I don’t see it.” Pompous old fart. He and his wife had spoiled Carey Ann terribly; they proudly admitted it. And even if she had married someone who made more money than he did—which would be just about anyone—she’d still have to learn how to boil water and keep house and take care of a baby: she was the one who wanted the baby. She was the one who wanted lots of babies. Not that he didn’t love Alexandra. He loved her more than his own life. But since her birth, just ten months after their marriage, everything had gotten so difficult. Carey Ann, who in her parents’ home had never made her own bed or done her own laundry, hadn’t been prepared to cope with a baby’s never-ending needs, the crying, the wetting, the fevers, the dirty clothes, the endless tending. Not that Carey Ann ever was anything but infinitely patient with their daughter. Still, Jack was beginning to think that she—they—were doing something wrong. These days Carey Ann found it impossible to do any kind of shopping for groceries with Alexandra along because the baby started screaming if she didn’t get what she wanted—cookies, candy, and so on—and yet Jack had seen mothers with babies Alexandra’s age riding along in the baskets of grocery carts, so other mothers must be able to do it. Why couldn’t Carey Ann? But if he tried to talk to her about it or offered to help, she grew furious or teary-eyed and ending up crying because her mother had always had help around the house. So maybe Mr. Skrags had been right after all: maybe it was all Jack’s fault that his wife wasn’t happy.
He wanted to make her happy. He wanted that more than anything else in the world. Although he could see how she would think that wasn’t true. After all, he wouldn’t work for her father, and he had made her move here so that he could teach where he wanted. Raised and educated in the East, Jack had finished his Ph.D. at Yale and started his grown-up life with two dreams: to teach English at Westhampton College, where he’d been an undergraduate, and to write novels. He knew he had to save up some money before he could seriously try to write, but in his fantasy/plan for his life he didn’t think that would take him too long. Then, after he’d written a few novels and become famous, he’d be asked to teach creative writing and modern fiction at Westhampton. When he had been asked, right after finishing graduate school, to teach freshman composition at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, he knew his plan was starting to take shape. He’d never lived in the Midwest before, and he thought of it in terms of “vitality” and “brashness.” He thought he would find material there for his future books.
What he found there was Carey Ann. He hadn’t been prepared for this. Probably there wasn’t any way to be prepared for such a thing—for falling in love so fast. He had met Carey Ann at a party, and that was it. He fell in love with her at once, and fell more in love with her every moment he was with her. She was so beautiful, and so much fun. She was such a happy person, so spontaneous and loving and quick and eager. He had fallen in love with her fast and deep. He’d never stop loving her.
Carey Ann had fallen in love with him too; loved him still. He believed that, had to believe it to go on. She admitted early on that she, too, had been attracted to Jack for superficial reasons: he was handsome, and had such an elegant New England accent and all those prep-school manners. Then, too, his last name, Hamilton, had appealed to her. It seemed aristocratic and British, unlike the embarrassment of a last name she was stuck with. Even though her father owned a chain of posh department stores all over the Midwest, so that now that name had, if nothing else, a kind of power attached to it, still … Skrags—why, it sounded like a kind of disease a person got from sleeping around too much, Carey Ann had laughingly said.
And Jack taught English literature. He was always quoting British writers. This just made Carey Ann swoon, for they had met the year that Prince Charles married Lady Di and a wave of Anglophilia swept the world. In her deepest heart, Carey Ann thought of herself and Jack as sort of like Prince Charles and Princess Diana. After all, Jack was dark and handsome and she was fair and beautiful. Not that Carey Ann was a fool. She was just romantic. She was smart in many ways, and intuitive. She listened to Jack when he talked about his work, and she could be clever: once, when she was reading a little hands-on book to Alexandra, which involved rubbing a section of the book, then inhaling and getting a good strong whiff of peanut butter or bubble gum or peppermint, Carey Ann had grinned up at Jack and said, “Just think what kind of a scratch-and-sniff book Chaucer would have made!” When she was happy, she could make love like the Fourth of July. But what she was … well, what she really was was spoiled. She was her parents’ only child, and so pretty to look at that anyone would spoil her, but it helped that her father was so wealthy. She had gone to college in Kansas City but hadn’t been able to figure out what she wanted to do with her life except that she wanted to get married and have lots of children (another thing, Carey Ann said, that she shared with Princess Diana). After college she had moved back home into her parents’ vast house in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, and she had worked at one of her father’s department stores on the Plaza, selling stuffed animals. It wasn’t what she wanted to do forever, but she enjoyed it, she was good at it, and no one could tell her she didn’t work, couldn’t hold a job.
Jack had “courted” her—that was how Carey Ann liked to think of it—for the first year he taught in Kansas City. When his contract was renewed, he had asked Carey Ann to marry him, and had been warned by her father that he could never make her happy. Not a college professor. Not someone who made so little money and lived such a prissy (Carey Ann’s father’s estimation) life.
But he had made her happy, that first year, when he taught at UMKC and she was pregnant. It was after Alexandra’s birth that things got difficult. Not that Lexi was a difficult baby, but any baby took a lot of care and work. And then Jack heard there was a position opening at Westhampton College and he’d applied for it and gotten it. Carey Ann didn’t want to leave Kansas City and her family and friends; the Skragses didn’t want her to leave, even though, in their own old-fashioned way, as they told Carey Ann, they believed a woman was obligated by marriage to follow her husband wherever his work took him. In the meantime, Jack had developed a depression of his own, over the realization that now that he had a child and wife to support he’d never be able to take a year off to write, at least not until he was in his eighties. His plan for his life was all turned around. But when he tried to tell Carey Ann that, she had burst into tears and said, “Well, all right, if that’s how you feel, let’s just get a divorce.” Which wasn’t what he wanted at all. “No, no,” he’d said. “I’ve always wanted to teach at Westhampton.” And that was true. He just hadn’t expected it so soon. And not with a wife and child, on a tiny salary.
But together they had decided to make the move, and once the decision was made, they went toward their future optimistically. They almost had been happy again. But when they had come east that summer to look for a house, leaving Lexi with her grandparents, more problems had arisen. Westhampton had become such a resort area, with people flocking there in the summer for the cool mountain air and in the winter for skiing and winter sports, that the cost of real estate had skyrocketed. There was no way that young faculty, paid pittances to teach at Westhampton (but teaching there anyway, because of the prestige), could afford to buy a house. Carey Ann’s vision of herself as an American Princess Diana rapidly slipped away as she was confronted with the realistic view of a two-bedroom rental apartment with walls so thin they could hear the couple arguing next door, or a large rental house with windows that wouldn’t open, doors that wouldn’t close, mouse droppings in every room, and a kitchen with appliances that were rusty or moldy or broken or all three.
The realtor had suggested they try Vermont, just a few minutes away. The school system wasn’t as good as the Westhampton one, the realtor told them, but Carey Ann proclaimed they’d be long gone from this area before her daughter was old enough for school. And the A-frame was a spectacular buy. Nestled in the side of the hill, it overlooked a green and winding valley. The living and dining rooms had a splendid two-story-high cathedral ceiling. Two doors led off the area, one to the small kitchen, one to the room that would become Alexandra’s playroom. A staircase led up along one wall to a sort of gallery where the two bedrooms and bathroom were. The banister and railing were all knotty pine, sturdy, unshakable, and the space between the balusters was too small for Alexandra to stick her head through. Whoever had built the house had taken care that a child not be able to fall from the high second floor. The bedrooms had wall-to-wall carpeting, as did the playroom; the living-room and kitchen floors were beautiful flagstones; and the entire house was full of light. There was even a fireplace built into the living-room wall, and Jack had been afraid that it would be a long time before he could buy a house with the luxury of a fireplace.
Best of all, they could afford it. Barely. With Carey Ann’s father’s help. Jack agreed to borrow the down payment from his father-in-law; what else could he do? And to give the old goat his due, Mr. Skrags went out of his way not to make Jack feel second-rate or obligated or indebted.
So now here they were, in their beautiful house in the mountains. Jack had his job and Carey Ann had her baby, and she was down there crying and he was up here sitting on the toilet in his underwear. He rose, made a face at himself in the mirror, and went into the bedroom to put on his sweats. Then he took a deep breath and went downstairs.
Carey Ann and Lexi were sitting on the floor with a wooden puzzle. Carey Ann rose and went up to Jack, nuzzling against him. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I mean about getting all maudlin about the party. I’m just having a real insecurity attack, I guess. I don’t know anyone here, and the faculty wives I met when you interviewed here … well, people are just so different. They’re so cool and boxed up. They make me feel like I’m funny-looking or something.”
“You could never be anything but gorgeous,” Jack said, hugging her to him. (It flashed in his mind at just that moment, however, that he had noticed—and he wasn’t usually aware of women’s clothes—how different Carey Ann had looked next to the faculty wives when they were all out to dinner when he was being interviewed in the spring. All the other women wore little gold shells in their ears if they wore any jewelry at all, and there Carey Ann had been with her earrings swinging back and forth like pieces of a chandelier amid her shimmery hair. But he couldn’t tell her that, could he?) He tried to be helpful. “Listen, when I interviewed, we met only the old faculty. There are lots of young faculty wives around. I know you’ll make friends.”
“I want to show you something!” Carey Ann said, pulling away from him, a smile on her face.
Honestly, Jack thought, when his wife smiled she could light up the night. She led him to the little room under the stairs, which was to be Alexandra’s playroom.
“Ta-da!” Carey Ann said, opening the door.
The shelves along one wall, which had been meant to hold Lexi’s toys, were stacked now with Jack’s collection of books, mostly textbooks and novels. Their old card table was set up against the window looking out over the valley, and on top of that was his old faithful portable manual typewriter, and next to that an unopened box of bond paper. There was a coffee mug on the card table, holding pens, pencils, scissors, his letter opener. Behind the card table, within easy reach, were his dictionary and thesaurus.
“I wanted to put your leather desk set out,” Carey Ann said shyly, “but there was really no place for it, since you don’t have a desk at home. Besides, I know you like to write on the typewriter instead of longhand.”
“Come here,” Jack said, and hugged his wife against him, hard. He was overwhelmed with emotion.
“It’s nice, isn’t it? Now you’ve got your own study. Now you can write your novel.”
“I thought … Lexi’s playroom …”
“Well, I could see I wasn’t going to have any luck getting Lexi to keep her toys in just one room. She likes to be wherever I am, so she’d always be dragging her stuff out into the kitchen to watch me cook, or to the living room. Besides, she’s got enough room in her bedroom for all her stuff. And she doesn’t like being stuck away from everyone. But you do. You need a room all to yourself to get your writing done. Do you like it?”
“I love it, Carey Ann. This is really sweet of you. This is really thoughtful.” He kissed her.
“Go on,” she said. “Sit down. Look at the view.”
Jack sat on the old wooden chair in front of the card table and looked out at the sweep of valley. She just doesn’t have a clue, he thought. How could she imagine he’d ever have the time to write a novel when he was teaching such a heavy load at Westhampton? He didn’t want to hurt Carey Ann’s feelings, but God, didn’t she understand the first thing about his life? Now that he was married and had a child, now that his life was all turned around, he had to get tenure. He dreamed of tenure like Percival dreaming of the Holy Grail. Tenure meant security, a wonderful financial and emotional security that would set him free later to write his novel. If he could get tenure, he could get a sabbatical, and in seven years he’d have his year off to write. But getting tenure these days, especially at Westhampton College, was about as easy as getting hold of the Holy Grail. It required hard work and dedication and publications, not fiction, but critical essays in the best and most erudite journals. Publish or perish. If he did any writing, it had to be critical. And he wouldn’t have a chance to get to that sort of thing until Christmas vacation.
No, he wouldn’t find time to write fiction for years.
But now was not the moment to break this news to Carey Ann.
Jack pushed back his chair, rose, took her in his arms again. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”
They kissed, and moved closer to each other, and Jack would gladly have shut the door and made love to Carey Ann on the floor right then and there, but Alexandra came toddling into the room, waving a plastic elephant. Wanting to please his darling daughter, wanting to please his wife, he swooped Alexandra up in his arms and carried her upside down out into the living room. He roughhoused with her for an hour, giving her pony rides on his knees, tickling her till she howled, playing with her until he was exhausted. Then he gave her a long bath and put her to bed with her bottle.
Later, though, when Jack and Carey Ann went up to bed, Alexandra awoke, as if from an instinctive alarm, called out, climbed out of her crib, came into their bedroom, and merrily climbed into bed with them. She sat between her parents, grinning happily.
“I don’t know what to do.” Carey Ann sighed. “I can’t get her to realize she’s got to sleep in her own crib.”
“Let’s just put her in there and shut the door,” Jack suggested.
Carey Ann looked at him as if he’d just become one of the criminally insane. “We can’t do that! She’d cry. You know how she’s cried whenever we’ve tried it before.” She cuddled the baby against her. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “She’s wet again.”
It was after eleven when they fell asleep, all three of them, in their chaste bed.
The next morning was Friday, and Jack awoke at six-thirty. He had such a routine, had awakened so regularly for so many years now, that he almost couldn’t not wake up at six-thirty, except for a week or two in the fall and spring when daylight saving time threw him off.
He looked over at Carey Ann, who looked dead. When she slept, her skin did the same weird thing Alexandra’s did: it paled out so completely that it seemed her heart had stopped pumping and had withdrawn all the blood in her body into a tight hot chamber in the center of her heart. If he touched Carey Ann now (which he wouldn’t—she’d cry with exhaustion if awakened so early), he knew she’d be hot at her stomach, burning at her crotch, but her face was so drained of color that it looked frosty. Her long blond hair was every which way all over the pillow, and her long eyelashes curled down onto her cheeks. She looked innocent, a child herself, too young and helpless to be taking care of another child.
Alexandra lay in the middle of the bed, as zonked-out as Carey Ann, sleeping on her stomach with her bottom sticking up in the air and her thumb at her mouth. The back of her neck was damp with moisture, her blond, almost silver hair curled from the moist heat of her little body. She had her thumb poised right at the edge of her mouth, as if even in sleep she kept it near for emergencies, and her bottle, a plastic thing that used to look like a bear but had lost some of the markings, lay next to her, drained.
His little girl. His baby. When Alexandra saw Jack, her face lit up with ecstasy, every single time. No one else adored Jack as Lexi did. It really was something to have the power to make another human being so happy. It was also a responsibility.
Carey Ann used to say, before they married and in that first year, that she could never ever be happy without him, but now he wondered if she could be happy with him. He would do anything in the world to make his two females happy. If only he knew what to do!
He slipped from the bed, grabbed up his jogging things where he’d tossed them on a chair, and went into the bathroom. Then he crept out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house. The sun hit him like a spotlight. God, it was a warm and brilliant day. He stood in his driveway, doing warm-up stretches. He’d been jogging five times a week for six years now. He’d started jogging at Yale when he was working on his Ph.D., feeling the need to stretch out the body that spent so many hours bent over a book, crooked and cramped at a desk or typewriter. He used to go every weekday morning to the gym, where gradually he worked up to jogging four miles around the track. He kept it up for a while when teaching in Kansas City, because he found the morning run exhilarating and refreshing. He taught better, his mind worked more quickly, his responses were sharper. After his marriage, and especially after Alexandra’s birth, he just couldn’t find the time—or the energy—to keep up those four miles. So he had settled for two, which took him only about fifteen minutes, even when he was taking it easy.
He’d gotten in the car and measured a route up here the first day they moved into the house. It was almost exactly one mile from his doorstep to the end of a funny little lane giving onto an old cottage, and back again; then a mile in the other direction, down to the remains of an old barn, and back. It was a pretty run along a country dirt road, perfect for jogging, not as hard as street pavements, but well-packed, with no other houses in sight, mostly forest bordering the road, and dusty wildflowers and grasses, and an occasional view through the trees, as the road turned, of the valley so far down below.
The realtor had shown him and Carey Ann the cottage. “Only forty thousand dollars,” she had said. “You just can’t find anything at that price anymore. But it’s been sold. Just like that, this spring. After being on the market for over a year.”
“Ugh,” Carey Ann had said. “It looks like something imported from the Ozarks.”
In a way, Jack liked the property the cottage sat on better than his own—they had no land, just a small yard—and although the view out the front was spectacular, Jack was already worrying about the heating bills and the winter wind. Their A-frame felt exposed. The little cottage, on the other hand, was sort of nestled down in among an orb of trees. It seemed so cozy, protected, a fairy-tale place cut off from the world.
Now he headed down the dirt road, taking it easy, concentrating on his breathing. The road narrowed to a lane, the grass and saplings flickered closer to him, and the taller trees arched over, cutting off the sun. He ran through the shadowy tunnel, and, coming out into the light again, saw, with a shock, a woman seated on the steps of the cottage.
In the instant before she opened her eyes in surprise, he saw that she had been leaning against the cottage door, wearing a short white terry-cloth robe, her long bare legs stretched out in front of her. She had been soaking in the sun, and, perhaps, the silence, before he broke it. His breathing sounded like roaring in his ears. He supposed he was trespassing. In any case, he couldn’t just turn around and jog away; it would be rude. It would look strange.
“Oh, hi, sorry!” he said, coming just a little closer to her, jogging in place. “I didn’t know anyone was here yet. I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“That’s all right,” she said, smiling. “You gave me just the shot of adrenaline I need to start the day. I didn’t know anyone lived around here.” She had short dark hair, large blue eyes, and freckles. Freckles all over, from what he could see.
“I’m Jack Hamilton,” he said, and stopped jogging. Breathing deeply, he walked toward her, holding out his hand. “My wife and daughter and I just moved into the A-frame down the road. You have to pass it to get here.”
“Oh, wonderful!” she said, shaking his hand. As she reached forward, her loosely tied robe fell open slightly so that he couldn’t help but see a great deal of her heavy, swinging, plump, and freckled breasts. “I’m Daphne Miller. I’m moving in today. My furniture’s coming up this morning. I was just having coffee, enjoying a few more moments of peace before the madness hits. Would you like some coffee?”
She gestured toward the Styrofoam cup next to her on the step, and he realized the wonderful rich dark smell he had been unconsciously enjoying was coffee. Brewed coffee. Carey Ann didn’t like coffee; didn’t drink it. She would get up in the morning and pour herself a tall glass of warm diet cola, without ice, or, if it was winter, she’d put a spoonful of instant-iced-tea mix in a mug and stir hot tap water into it, making a lukewarm murky brew. He used to think the sight of her doing that, drinking that stuff, was surely one of the things people got divorced over. But now he knew that was nothing; there were much more serious matters.
He shouldn’t drink coffee now, in the middle of a run. On the other hand, he’d interrupted his run already and it wouldn’t be polite for him to take off again right now. He’d walk back to his house.
“That would be really nice,” he said.
Daphne Miller smiled and stood up. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Cream, sugar?”
“Black,” he replied. Her robe came only to the top of her thighs. She was as tall as he was. Her limbs were not fat, but they were full, and so white, with a sprinkling of freckles. Cream. Sugar. His mother used to cook a heavy white candy that she called divinity; he could sink his teeth into a piece and it was as substantial against his teeth, for a moment, as dough; then it would dissolve, filling his mouth with an explosion of sugary sweetness. My God, why was he thinking of that?
The woman went in the house, came back out with a cup of steaming coffee. She handed it to him and they sat down together on the step.
“It’s beautiful here,” he said, looking around.
“Yes,” she replied. “So peaceful. It will be a great change from the college.”
“You’re at the college?” he asked.
“I’m a secretary,” she said. “For the history department.”
“Well, maybe I’ll run into you there,” Jack said. “I’m going to teach there. In the English department. This is my first year.”
Daphne smiled. “We’re bound to run into each other. The English and history offices are in the same building, on the same floor. We even share”—she lowered her voice dramatically—“the same Xerox machine. Quite intimate, you see. And your wife? Does she teach too?”
“Oh, no. Alexandra—our daughter—is only two years old. Carey Ann wants to stay home and take care of her. Carey Ann’s from Kansas. We just moved here. I … hope she won’t be lonely. She doesn’t know anyone here,” he heard himself confessing.
“Oh, there are lots of young faculty with children,” Daphne said. “She’ll have friends in no time. Read the faculty newsletter. There should be some parties for new faculty anytime now, and also there will be parties at the faculty club, which many of the townspeople belong to. She’ll meet all kinds of people.”
“I don’t know about the parties,” Jack said. “With the baby, it’s kind of hard to get away.”
“Oh, you just bring her to the parties,” Daphne said. “To most of them, anyway. I mean, these are family parties, cookouts and so on. And the town’s crawling with nice teenage girls who want baby-sitting jobs.”
She went on talking, and Jack drank the coffee, which was strong and aromatic and filled him with an instant complacency. Or was it this woman? She was making everything sound so easy. Now he knew why he had thought of the divinity: this woman had made him think of his mother. Not that she was that old—although she was older than he. There were the crow’s-feet around her eyes, and the skin on her neck and chin was not smooth and taut. But she was a comfort to be around. Here she sat, friendly, talking, smiling, flicking a flying insect off her bare knee, as if she had complete confidence in the workings of the world.
Suddenly his whole future looked as promising and bright as the day that was now opening up around him. Birds were singing, dipping, flitting across the grassy yard, calling … the sun was high enough now so that the grass seemed to glow and the trees to flicker and blaze like candles … he was warm from the sun and the coffee … Why, he was young! He was only thirty-one! And he had a beautiful wife and a healthy, happy baby daughter, and he had been hired to teach at a prestigious college, and he’d do a brilliant job—there had been wise people who had called him brilliant—and he’d write a novel someday, and the entire world, the rest of time, lay before him, as the valley lay spread out below, just on the other side of those trees.
“I’d better go,” he said. “I’ve got work to do. Thanks for the coffee. And stop down and meet Carey Ann sometime. I know she’d be glad to meet you.” In her white robe, with her heavy white limbs as subtly rounded as if carved in marble, Daphne seemed Greek, prophetic, wise.
They said good-bye. Jack intended to walk back to his house, because he’d drunk the coffee and didn’t want it sloshing in his stomach. But before he knew it, he was running again, and whistling as he went.