Crazy in Love (5 page)

“Give me some credit, okay? Don’t you think I question the way we live? It’s crazy, me flying in and out of Black Hall, bringing home work every weekend, spending so much time away from you. You coming to New York just so we can have a quick dinner together. It would be much easier if we lived in the city, but we both love the Point so much.”

“I know,” I said. It was typical of Nick to not take unfair advantage in an argument. He could have said “but you love the Point so much.” He knew how much I loved my family. Another man might have resented that, blamed our difficulties on my unwillingness to leave them, but he loved them too.

“It will be easier on us both if you stop checking into the Gregory every time—if we don’t always count on having dinner together,” Nick said. “I’m so tired right now I can’t taste what I’m eating. And I have to be at the office by seven tomorrow morning.”

“Have you been dying to bring this up?” I asked. “Just waiting?”

“It’s been on my mind,” he said.

Can you pinpoint the moment when a marriage begins to change? It can be an instant or longer, a period that marks the end of the relationship as you’ve known it and the start of something new, something that could turn out to be sweet or dangerous. To observers, even to people who knew us well, that night at Vinnie’s in the Village might have seemed ordinary. But it was not. Sitting across that cozy bistro table from Nick I felt anger but also a sort of grief. I was losing something I loved.

Dining together, no matter how difficult the logistics, had always been important to us. It disciplined us. Where other busy couples would lapse into one dinner a week apart, then two, then three, we had an unspoken commitment to share the evening meal.

Nick paid the check and we left Vinnie’s in silence. I felt unhinged with sadness and worry. I wanted to ask him what he had meant, suggesting we not plan dinner together every night: Exactly what had he meant? I knew the answer he would give me: he was just being sensible. The time had come for us, for Nicholas Symonds and Georgiana Swift, to give in to what other couples, probably no less loving than we, had accepted much earlier. Sometimes the demands of life kept people apart. It was that simple.

But not to me. In the taxi I imagined motives: dark, heavy as sex, and furtive. I thought of Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, who had imagined his wife Faith to be pure, then discovered she had joined the witches’ sabbat along with the rest of the neighborhood sinners. Had we been special, Nick and I? We didn’t speak, but we sat close to each other and rode uptown with our shoulders touching.

“I know I’ve hurt you,” Nick said when we were alone in our hotel room.

Then, because he was sounding like the Nick I wanted, I started to cry. “Explain it to me,” I said, which was really stupid because I knew just what he would say, and I knew that it would make good sense.

He said nothing. He turned off the bedside light and walked to me. He held me for a long while. When he began to stroke my arms in a slow, gentle way, I began to feel mad with desire or maybe violence. Energy pulsed along my veins; I could have chaneled it into wild sex or a fistfight.

“Nick,” I said, pulling back because I felt afraid. I kept my head down.

He was unbuttoning my dress. I felt his big fingers undoing the delicate buttons easily. His other hand cupped my shoulder, then pulled the dress away. I saw it fall to the floor, a puddle of blue and white cotton around my feet, and I stepped out of it. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I brought my arms across my breasts, but Nick held my hands and pulled them away.

“Have I made you want to hide?” he whispered.

“No. I don’t know,” I said, standing stiff and hearing my sullen tone. What would happen if I hit him? I wondered. After that thought I felt more like making love. I kissed him. I was standing naked against him, and he was fully dressed. I felt his erection through his trousers. He lowered his head and kissed my nipples. Sometimes with Nick I thought of nothing and felt joined, truly joined with him in spirit, but not that night. That night he undressed me and then himself, and every place he touched me seared, and I paid attention as if I were committing every sensation to memory.

“I have always loved you,” he said later, just before he fell asleep.

Watching him as he slept, I thought about dinners past and dinners yet to come. Smoked turkey and appenzeller sandwiches at the Library of Congress. During Nick’s third year of law school we lived on Capitol Hill. Studying late, or preparing a journal article, he would say he was too busy to take a dinner break. I would take him sandwiches. As I walked past the Senate office buildings, the Supreme Court, and the Capitol, all floodlit, white, and stark, my mission seemed greater than the mere delivery of dinner. The Library of Congress guard would admit me with barely a glance through my bookbag. I would cross the rotunda to the law library, where I would find Nick at his favorite carrel beside the mezzanine’s wrought-iron balustrade. Then we would go into the stacks to feast and talk.

Cold lemon chicken during the New York Bar Examination Review course. By this time Nick was working until midnight at the firm, with four hours off for a nightly Bar Review course. Circles deepened under his eyes, he lay awake every night, utterly exhausted, worrying over the Rules of Evidence while at the same time worrying what it meant that the head of the Tender Offer Squad had invited Jean Snizort to lunch at the Broad Street Club but not Nick. We were living in New York then, downtown from the theater where the Bar Review was held. I loved that time. Nick would take the subway up from Wall Street. I would walk to Times Square. I would bring dinner with me, things that could be eaten tepid or cold, and sit through the class. With Nick taking fast notes while gobbling his dinner, I would turn off the lecture and think about our life. Even with Nick’s busy pace we were managing to have dinner together every night. All it took was a certain amount of creativity and flexibility. How smug I had been! I had sat there, wondering how many wives could plan such portable meals, so delicious that their husbands wouldn’t even notice the entire dinner had fit into two small plastic containers.

I conjure the business trips I’ve gone on with Nick by remembering sirloin steak at Morton’s in Chicago (a leverage buyout of Frankenthaler, Weiss); the tandoori chicken at London’s Bombay Brasserie (negotiations with a prospective White Knight for the ailing Rosco Corporation); turbot
grillé
at Hôtel des Indes in The Hague (meetings on the purchase-and-sale agreement of a four-billion-dollar transaction involving sixteen countries); Lobster Savannah at Locke-Ober’s (a hostile tender offer for shares of Boston Chemical); ravioli
de ris de veau
at Jamin in Paris (meeting to quell the general panic that hit the firm’s clients after the Socialists came into power).

I can remember vacations, periods when we had unlimited time together, without thinking of a single meal. When I think of our free time, I think of the clarity of that day’s light, the species of birds we counted, the Rembrandts we gazed at, the hills we scrambled. But for a running account of our marriage, I think of the dinners.

I lay in bed beside Nick, listening to a movie playing in the next room. I could hear the voices perfectly. The story was about a farming family in Nebraska in the thirties. The father had just been shot by bandits. I lay awake, crying for the mother and children. Then I realized: I feel as though Nick’s abandoned me. He’s left me to keep our little vigil on my own. Our good-marriage vigil.

3

IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, NO STORY
absorbed me the way Mona Tuchman’s had. I thought of her often. I related to her: as a woman in love who had sabotaged her own marriage. It was a matter of degree. Mona had alienated Dick and her children by an act of attempted murder. Surely they must feel they no longer knew her. But Nick: he knew me. When had I wanted anything but sheer closeness? If I was willing to make the trip into New York to have dinner with him, why should he mind? I felt as though I were pushing too hard, and that that delicious, almost unbearable closeness I had had with Nick, that I had lived by since our marriage, seemed in deep jeopardy.

One morning I stood in my yard, waving goodbye to him as he flew away. Although the weather was clear and fair, I walked next door to visit my mother. I felt sad; I wanted distraction. Honora stood in her driveway, cutting yellow daylilies with garden shears. She wore lightweight white trousers, a navy blue blouse, and, although the sun hadn’t risen enough to evaporate dew from the flowers’ leaves and petals, a straw sunhat.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she said, kissing me. “The boys have a nice day to fly. Winds will be light, out of the northwest, and the visibility should be about fifteen miles.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

“Your grandmother is still asleep.”

“You’re kidding!” I said, feeling alarmed. I had never known Pem to sleep past dawn. “Are you sure she’s still . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say “alive.”

“I checked, and she was fine half an hour ago. She’s been sleeping late recently.” She preceded me into the house and began arranging the lilies in a tall glass vase. “I have to admit it’s good to have some time without her.”

“It must be,” I said. The year before, Clare and I had tentatively suggested that maybe Pem should go to a rest home, and we had been relieved when Honora had said absolutely not. Knowing it was not a possibility, I felt fearless raising the subject. “Do you think it would be better if she were in a home?”

“No, of course not. But she’s a day’s work, Georgie. I’m not that old. If I weren’t taking care of Pem, maybe I could travel or teach or something.”

“Mom, you know Clare and I would help out.”

“No, she’s my mother. It’s my responsibility.”

“She’s my grandmother.”

Honora regarded me with blank eyes. “She wets her bed.”

This came as an enormous shock. “You’re kidding.”

“No. She’s done it twice this week. She can’t take baths by herself, so I have to bathe her. We’ve got mice because she makes herself a little sandwich, then hides it when she hears me coming—it seems that old people feel guilty about eating. Then she forgets where she hid it. I find these dried crusts all over the house.”

“I know about the sandwiches—I find them in my house every time she visits.”

We heard Pem’s bedsprings creaking. Then her feet shuffling into slippers, then the window being opened.

“How’s your report coming?” Honora asked. “It must be due soon.”

“I still have a week. I’m typing it over now.”

“I can’t wait to read it. Did you read that Dr. Tuchman was granted custody of the children?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of how Mona must feel. If he wanted custody, that meant he was leaving her. I remembered that day in her foyer, the small hope she had felt because her husband didn’t love his mistress. But that didn’t mean he loved Mona, either. I watched my mother getting Pem’s breakfast ready. “What do you think of her story? Can you understand how she could have stabbed Celeste Stone?”

“Mmmm, I suppose,” she said, pouring orange juice.

“I mean, how did you feel when you found out Dad was having an affair?” My heart went faster as I asked the question I’d been waiting to ask.

“Well, I didn’t want to kill her, if that’s what you mean,” Honora said, laughing a little. “She was very unimportant to me. She could have been anyone. It was your father. He shouldn’t have done that to us. It was humiliating.”

“You mean people knew?”

“I have no idea. But they might have. That idea made me furious. The main thing was that Timmy betrayed me. He cut himself away from us by seeing that woman.”

“Who was she?”

Honora was carefully scraping thin curls of butter from the cold block. “Alice Billings.”

I gasped. “You’re kidding! Mrs. Billings? I didn’t like her at all.” Suddenly I remembered the time Mrs. Billings had driven Rachel and me to the skating pond and my father was waiting for us. I hadn’t expected to see him. After helping me lace my skates, he had said he was going to sit in Mrs. Billings’s car and watch me. It had been cold, with snow on the hills and tree branches. I remember skating as daringly fast as I could, wishing I was in Mrs. Billings’s nice warm car with her and my father.

“She was a scrawny little mouse,” Honora said. “She worked as a research assistant at the Fisheries. I used to wonder how your father could go for such a boring person, not pretty, without even an interesting job. But then it occurred to me that he wanted someone who would adore him. Who would think he was a real catch.”

“He was one,” I said, feeling strangely defensive of my father.

“That may be true, but it’s irrelevant. He behaved like a bastard. I never trusted him again after I found out.”

“But you stayed with him.”

“That’s true. I stayed with him for three years afterwards. I’d probably be with him still if he were still alive.”

“Why? How could you stay with a man you didn’t trust?”

Honora smiled her beautiful square smile. “I was raised a Catholic, dearie. Those rules stick, even when they stop making sense. Plus I’m half Irish. And you know they say Ireland is a vale of tears.”

“That’s why? That’s the reason?” I asked.

Honora’s smile collapsed. “And I loved your father. I loved him very much.”

“G’morning,” Pem said sweetly, shuffling over to kiss us. “It’s bitter cold.”

“Pem, it’s nearly the Fourth of July,” I said. As she turned to Honora I saw the wet patch on the back of her nightgown and looked away.

“Come on, let’s have breakfast,” she said.

“I have to change her,” Honora said.

“I’ll run upstairs and get her a clean robe,” I said. By the time I returned to the kitchen, they were already in the bathroom. Honora opened the door a crack, and I handed in the robe.

“Goddamn it, I don’t want to change,” came Pem’s voice.

“You have to. You’ll be warmer if you do.”

“But I don’t want to!”
Pem shrieked.

“Oh, Lord,” I heard my mother say wearily.

I sat at the kitchen table, stirring my coffee, thinking about my father and Mrs. Billings. I hated to think of Honora feeling so betrayed. As a child I had always thought of her as being incredibly strong. People say that children feel responsible when their parents’ marriages go sour, break up. Sitting there at Honora’s kitchen table that summer morning, I was thinking, What did Clare and I do wrong? By the time Honora and Pem emerged, I had become a waif, the product of a broken home.

“Don’t look so gloomy, Georgie,” my mother said. “Try to cheer her up.”

Pem’s face was sullen. She refused to meet my gaze.

“She’s embarrassed,” Honora mouthed silently.

“Good morning, Pem,” I said. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

“Beautiful,” she mumbled. Honora placed a tray with toast, juice, and coffee before Pem. Pem prodded the toast with her index finger, as though she were inspecting something vile and inedible, then stuck out her tongue. “Stinks,” she said.

Honora pointed significantly toward her own eyebrows.

I glanced at Pem, her white hair splendidly wild that morning. Then I cocked my head and wrinkled my nose. She looked over, interested now. “What?” she asked.

“I was just wondering, what do you do to your brows?” I asked.

“So many people ask me that, it’s funny,” she said, her voice rising with mirth. “I do nothing to them.”

“But they’re so dark!”

“Well, my hair turned gray when I was only thirty years old, but my brows stayed dark,” she said, beginning to be absorbed in the story. “People always say, ‘What do you do to your brows?’ but I do nothing!”

“They’re just naturally dark?” I asked, trying to sound skeptical.

“Yes! Go on!” she said, indicating that I should test for myself by rubbing them to see if any charcoal or bootblack came off on my fingers. I touched them, then held up clean hands for Honora to see.

Pem chuckled. “So many people ask me that, and they call you a liar if you say you do nothing.” She took a bite of toast. The query had done its work. Honora and I breathed deeply. Casey, a poor eater, had had to be cajoled into each mouthful by images of planes flying into the hangar, pirates delving into the cave, here comes the pony express. Persuading Pem to eat her toast was getting to be the same sort of adventure.

“Look out there,” Honora said. I joined her at the window. Across the lawn, at the edge of the bay, Clare was sitting at her easel. Eugene sat at her feet, drawing on the rocks with chalk.

“A future graffiti artist,” I said.

“He is a rascal,” Honora said. “How did Casey turn out so sweet and calm? Eugene keeps Clare on her toes. He takes after his great-grandmother.” Pem had finished her toast; we heard her rearranging the living room.

“Did you see the portrait Clare did of the boys?” I asked. “She’s planning to give it to Donald for their anniversary.”

“It’s a beautiful painting,” Honora said. “She caught their personalities, didn’t she? Also Eugene’s likeness to Donald. Does Eugene have a cowlick?” Honora asked, reaching for the telescope she kept on the shelf beside the toaster.

“That’s a funny question,” I asked. “Of course he doesn’t.”

“Because I could swear Clare painted him with one. Of course it was probably artistic license, giving him that Tom Sawyer look. Freckles, cowlick, and all. What a kid,” Honora said, turning from the window. Sunlight burnished her chestnut hair. “Is it wrong of me to wish Clare would do more with her painting? I love her sea paintings. And I’m sure Dina Clarke at the gallery would give her a show.”

“Clare’s never seemed to want that,” I said. Clare, who always seemed in perfect control as a sister, daughter, wife, and mother, had shied away from succeeding as an artist. As her sister I was probably unqualified to rate her painting, but I had never seen a seascape I liked more than hers. One night after she married Donald she confessed to me that during graduate school she had been offered a one-woman show at Boston’s Drake Gallery. I had known enough never to tell Honora: Honora would have lost her mind with the idea her daughter could decline such an opportunity. Clare knew how to wisecrack, and she loved to tease me about “affair paranoia,” but my own theory was that she bore her own scars of my parents’ troubles, and they kept her very close to home.

“Well, she’s a wonderful artist,” Honora said. “It’s ungenerous, in a way, to keep her work hidden. When so many people could enjoy it. But you’re right out there, honey. My little chicken, the Swift Observer.”

“Mom, do you really think it makes sense? I mean, I’ve set myself up to observe families. I love doing it, of course, but I don’t want to give myself the voice of authority.”

Honora gazed at me for ten long seconds, her mouth set to speak. “Of course it makes sense,” she said, “but you do seem to be devoting an inordinate amount of time to Mona Tuchman. I mean, I’m wondering how Nicky feels about that.”

“How Nick feels about what?” I asked, my back stiffening.

“Well, about the fact you’re so fascinated by a story about adultery. Isn’t that begging for trouble?”

I sputtered. I guffawed. I was laughing so hard that Honora, now frowning, had to give me a glass of water.

That was Honora—she said what was on her mind. She made it her business to tell Clare she should show her work in a gallery, to tell me my choice of subjects might be coming between me and Nick. God, how she annoyed me! But did I want the perfect mother, one who would say just the right thing without taking risks, without the cliff-edge passion that for me came along with love? Even family love, the kind that was supposed to be safest?

“Do you find it so funny?” Honora asked glumly.

“No. I find it disgusting, but I have to laugh,” I said. “Daddy hurt you. That doesn’t mean Nick’s going to do the same thing to me.”

“I hope he doesn’t. I’m sure he won’t, but it doesn’t hurt to be on guard, sweetie.”

“Okay. Thanks. Come on—let’s go take a look at Clare’s painting.”

“You go. I’ve got to get your grandmother dressed.”

I paused. I almost offered to help her, but instead I kissed her cheek and walked outside into the fresh air.

“Hey there,” Clare said, not looking up from her watercolor. I stood beside her, saw it was of the rocky archipelago that led from the bay into the Sound.

“Doesn’t Mommy’s painting look like turtle shells?” Casey asked.

“Well, yes,” I said. “If you look at it a certain way, the rocks do look a little like turtle backs. Gleaming in the sun.”

“I told you, I told you, Mommy,” Casey said.

“Mmm,” Clare said. “Box turtles? Sea turtles? Any particular kind?”