He tried to see the house of his childhood through Kit’s eyes as they traveled up the long driveway in his old white Mustang. Was it obvious to her that his family had money, that he had never wanted for anything? He no longer felt guilty about that. The first time he’d visited Jay’s family—seven people in a steamy frame house that smelled of tomato sauce in every corner of every room—he had wanted to apologize for his past. But no longer. Background was unimportant. They had all been equalized by time.
“This is beautiful, Cole.” Kit was taking in the vast green lawn, the towering oak trees, and the little pond that he and Corinne used to skate across in two long strides when it froze over in the winter.
The house itself was set far back from the street, stark white against the lush green of the grass and shrubs. He thought, as he always did, that it looked like a museum with its two-storied, pillared portico. He hoped Kit wasn’t put off by it.
He’d had a hard time convincing her to come. “My parents know my friends as well as they know me,” he’d told her. “They want to meet you.”
On the patio, his parents settled them into lounge chairs with glasses of iced Perrier. Both his parents were dressed in white as if they’d just played a few sets of tennis, but that was a ridiculous thought.
His father had made the potato salad and wrapped chicken breasts in foil to put on the grill. He’d even made the salad dressing from the fresh herbs in his garden. Since his retirement from the airline, he did most of the cooking. It was a good arrangement; Virginia had never been comfortable in the kitchen.
Kit complimented Phillip on the dressing and juiciness of the chicken and the dill in the potato salad. Phillip beamed like a shy little boy trapped in a body that was growing very old. He was ten years older than Virginia, nearly seventy now, and Cole was struck again by how white and sparse his hair was. His father seemed more withdrawn than ever, a fading shadow in Virginia’s presence.
“Corinne was going to come, but at the last minute she called to say she wasn’t feeling well,” said Virginia, pushing the potato salad in Cole’s direction. They were sitting at the glass-topped patio table, eating off black stoneware plates.
He guessed that Corinne had backed out after learning that a stranger would be present.
“She’s planning on starting therapy again,” his mother said.
“I’ll believe that when I see it.” Cole passed the potato salad on to Kit. He thought his father had overdone it on the dill.
Virginia turned to Kit. “I don’t know how I raised two children so different from one another. Corinne’s just as intelligent as Cole, I really believe that, but she’s always been held back by her fears. As a psychologist, it’s been frustrating for me not to have been able to help my own daughter.”
Kit nodded in sympathy.
“I just hope she can pull out of it with this new therapist.”
“She doesn’t want to pull herself out of it,” said Cole.
“Of course she does. Look how she came to the airport to meet you. And she’s gone grocery shopping by herself several times lately.”
He was relieved when his mother changed the subject.
“How’s Maris?” she asked.
“She seems better,” he said. “I don’t think she has the nightmares anymore.”
“She’s had just one since I moved in,” said Kit. “She woke up screaming. I thought she was being murdered.”
“She never worked any of those losses through,” Virginia said, shaking her head.
Cole remembered the old Maris, the Maris they’d hired to remodel the house. He’d admired her, the way she’d seemed to have overcome the tragedies in her life. Her mother had died when she was fourteen; her brothers were killed in a fire a few years later. And she’d had miscarriage after miscarriage. Still, she’d been full of sparkling energy when she started on the house, busting out walls for bay windows, overseeing the work on the long back porch. He remembered her sitting day after day at the kitchen table, painting the tiles for the backsplash above the counters. She’d been pregnant again, optimistic because this time she’d made it to her sixth month. But then Chuck was killed, hit head-on on the Parkway, and Maris lost her baby the same night. She didn’t want to go back to the house she and Chuck had been working on. And there was so much room in the Chapel House.
“She always looks so tough,” said Kit.
“It’s a facade,” said Virginia. “Some day it’ll catch up with her.”
“How do you know her so well?” Kit asked.
Cole laughed. “You can’t spend an evening with my mother without her learning all your secrets.”
“Now, Cole, that’s not true.” Virginia looked at him sternly. “You’ll make Kit nervous about being here.”
But it was true. By the time dessert was finished, Virginia knew about Kit’s marriage and divorce, her career change, her longing for independence, as well as her increasing desire for a relationship with a man with no strings attached. Virginia had a knack for getting information from people, and Kit poured it out.
“Why don’t you come up here on Saturday mornings so you have some hills to run on?” There was a light in his mother’s eyes that Cole hadn’t seen for a while. “We can have lunch afterward.”
“I’d love to.” Kit smiled, a look of delight on her face.
Cole and his father were quiet, not wanting to tread on the electricity between the two women. Yet Cole couldn’t help but be annoyed with his mother. Why hadn’t she ever taken to Estelle that way? He wished he could introduce Estelle to her again and have them start over. As if that would make any difference.
“When does Estelle get back?” Virginia asked as they walked across the thick lawn to his car. It was the first time his parents had mentioned Estelle all evening.
“The end of next week.”
Phillip put his arm around Virginia. “Give her our love,” he said, as though he were speaking for them both.
Kit sat in one of the wicker chairs on the balcony of his room the following evening. She had on a pair of blue shorts and a white T-shirt, with one of her soft shirts—this one dark blue—unbuttoned over it. The circular driveway of the Chapel House was beneath them, along with the tiny circle of lawn they took turns cutting in the warm months. It was the only grass on the Chapel House property, and it was easy to forget it was there.
Barnegat Bay stretched across the horizon, above the rooftops of Mantoloking. An enormous red sun was falling toward the water, staining everything on Cole’s balcony a metallic pink.
Kit’s bare feet were propped up on the white railing, and on her knees she held a picture of Estelle, framed in silver. Cole felt jittery, as if she were holding something priceless too casually on her knees. Something she might at any minute abuse.
The black-and-white picture was his favorite. It was actually an advertisement cut out of a magazine from the days when Estelle had had to “sell her body,” as she called it, to make ends meet. She stood against a background of black and gray foliage in lacy panties and a bra that seemed too diaphanous to hold her breasts. Her huge eyes looked past the camera, focusing on something that caused her to part her lips expectantly.
Kit ran her fingers lightly over the glass, over Estelle’s body. He wished he could read her thoughts.
She finally spoke.
“If you’re a man, and Estelle’s a woman, I must be a third sex,” she said, a wry smile on her lips.
She tended to do this—put herself down. He thought of telling her how attractive he found her, how hard it was to sit next to her without touching her, but thought better of it. “No one would mistake you for anything other than a woman, Kit.”
“You must miss her.”
He hesitated, squinting out at the bay. He could just make out the pier they rented and the tail end of the Sweetwater. He loved that boat. It was nothing special and had barely enough power to pull a skier, but he and Jay were taking it to work these days. He could think of no better way to begin the day than with that cool glide across the bay, up through the canal to the river, where the hospital clung to the water’s edge.
He hadn’t told Kit about the problems with Estelle. He hadn’t wanted to damage the chance of a friendship between them. But right now he wanted to tell her more.
“She’s angry about my moving back in here,” he said, frowning at the dusky sky. “And things were rocky between us when I left France. She’s changed during the past few years. It’s been gradual, but it came to a head in Paris. She was so possessive of me. She criticized anyone I wanted to spend time with.”
Kit turned in her chair to face him. “But she was in a strange country and probably felt very dependent on you.”
He smiled. She was defending Estelle, the way one woman would shield another from the callous reasoning of a male. But she was wrong; it was more complex than she could imagine. How odd it felt, though, to have someone take Estelle’s side. That was usually his task.
“She speaks French better than I do, and she loves it there, so I really doubt that’s the problem.”
He decided to say no more. He wanted Kit to like Estelle. Estelle had never had a friend, never a confidante. Women pulled away from her. He’d seen them stare at her, absorb her from head to toe. He’d seen the spiteful look come into their eyes before she’d even said a word.
With Kit it would be different. He’d watched her with Janni and Maris. In the hospital he’d seen her laughing with other women, touching their arms lightly with affection. He’d seen her with his own mother, not an easy woman to elicit warmth from. Kit had some kind of magnetic attraction that drew women to her. He hoped Estelle would allow herself to be touched by it.