The Canterbury Sisters (17 page)

“Well then it’s one for me too,” Becca says. She says it defiantly, staring down her mother, who isn’t even looking back.

“Do you have a boyfriend now?” asks Angelique. She has ventured in next, choosing a different route across the stream. Despite the fact that she watched Jean carefully, trying to learn from her mistakes, Angelique doesn’t seem to be making any better progress. In fact, she’s only halfway across and her right boot is already splattered, with an ugly ribbon of algae fluttering from the suede fringe. “You’ve never mentioned anyone.”

“There’s someone,” says Becca. “Mom doesn’t like him. Mom doesn’t think he’s good enough for me. Surprise, surprise.”

“I thought you said your story was about faithfulness,” Jean says to Claire, pointedly ignoring Becca. She has a muddy boot in one of her hands, those hands with their perfectly shaped fingernails, painted the exact color of her skin. Her socks are abandoned on the riverbank, crusted with mud.

“It’s about how I lost my faithfulness,” says Claire, her voice as pleasant as if she were discussing the weather. “It’s the story of how I slipped from being a respectable if somewhat road-worn wife and became the village tart. And all because I was trying to live up to the image of a woman on a videotape. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“Hilarious,” says Jean drily, shaking out one of her muddy socks.

“You’re not the village tart,” says Silvia. “Honestly, Claire, you say the most outlandish things. And besides, I think I’m going to bring up the average all by myself. My number of lovers, believe it or not, is seventeen.” She says this with pride, and her total is indeed higher than I would have guessed. I know that finding men willing to sleep with you has virtually nothing to do with your level of beauty. Men will sleep with anyone, even a woman who looks like one of Chaucer’s pilgrims. He described them all so cruelly—gap-toothed, pockmarked, humpbacked, and covered in boils. But a woman could have all of the above and more and still get laid. It’s the one advantage of our sex, I suppose—that and early admission into lifeboats. But it’s still strange to contemplate a universe in which a woman who looks like Silvia would have had more lovers than a woman who looks like Jean. Seventeen times more, to be exact.

“I was single for a very long time, you know,” Silvia is saying, smiling as if she were lost in memory. “Between husbands one and two, that is.” She’s one of those women who is less attractive when she smiles, her face folding up on itself like origami, her eyes nearly lost in the pillows of skin.

“Look at me,” Jean says. “I’m a mess.”

“We’re all going to be a mess before this is over,” says Claire, with the confidence of someone who’s never been a mess in her whole life.

“Maybe,” says Jean. “But I didn’t want to be the first mess.”

I’ve spent a lot of time comparing how the older women are holding up on the trail, so now that we’re stalled here on the bank, I take a moment to consider the others. I suppose it’s fair to say that Valerie, who wears no makeup and makes little effort with herself, looks pretty much like she did back in London. Steffi has gone from city polish to country athlete with practiced aplomb, her hair in a twisted braid and her face shiny with moisturizer. She’s by far the best equipped of us, and with her high-tech jacket and Patagonia boots she looks ready to scale a glacier, not merely stroll the English countryside. The youngest three women seem completely unchanged—Angelique because her face is tattooed on, Tess because she knows how to prepare for these walks, and Becca through the sheer resilience of youth.

I wonder where I am in the mix, if the others are thinking that the trail has made me better or worse. Probably worse. I glanced at the small round mirror in the bathroom briefly this morning and then looked away. There was no need to linger—I brought nothing with me but Crest and Secret and besides, my little vanities seem to be failing me these days. Makeup slides from my face and my hair seeks out preordained patterns and my clothes are all knits and neutrals and virtually interchangeable. I have the look of a serious woman, but it suddenly hits me, standing here at this little stream watching Angelique pick her way across, that perhaps I should buy something that is a color. Any color. Angelique is wearing an oversize beret, the kind that sags like a Rasta’s. It’s turquoise, with a woven gold band and some sort of little tassel dangling from the side. The hat strikes me, here in the sunlight, as an amazing thing to behold.

“Your turn, Tess,” says Angelique. She has made it through the creek less muddy than Jean, but still muddy, and she stands on the bank pointing out spots to Becca, who’s going next, but not paying the slightest attention to Angelique’s well-meaning advice. “How many guys have you done?”

“As leader of the group and judge, I fear I must withdraw from the contest,” says Tess. “Or at least I’m going to use my title as an excuse to withdraw. I’m very sorry about this little rill. I didn’t realize it would be so swollen.”

“What’s a rill?” asks Becca, nimbly overstepping the worst part of the puddle, moving from one slippery rock to another.

“Only one for me as well,” says Steffi. “I hit the bull’s-eye with my first shot.”

“Jesus,” says Angelique. “Such a bunch of goody-goody girls we are. Is everybody lying?”

“I’m not,” says Steffi, teetering a moment before finding her balance. “And it’s only been one despite the innumerable opportunities I was offered in med school and during my residency. You know all those doctor shows on TV where everyone’s always hooking up in the linen supply room? Having sex on the gurneys in the ER? All of that is kinda partly true, even if most of the interns don’t look like John Stamos and Patrick Dempsey.”

“There,” says Becca, ignoring Tess’s outstretched hand and springing to the bank in one fluid motion. She rubs her feet resolutely on the velvety carpet of moss, wiping off the small flecks of mud. “That’s the way to go.”

“I’m not sure I can hit all those rocks,” Valerie says cheerfully. “I don’t have your stride length. Aw hell, why try?” And then she plunges directly into the creek, sinking past her ankles with the first step and causing Tess to release an involuntary cry of dismay. There’s a loud sucking sound as Valerie struggles to pull her leg free, and in the next step she sinks worse.
She’s going to be ruined beyond redemption,
I think.
Her boots, the socks, the legs of her jeans. She can wash them out when we get to the next inn, but denim doesn’t dry fast, so what’s she planning to do tomorrow?
Valerie is a weird bird, no doubt about that. It’s like she doesn’t even try to do things the easy way.

When I look up, Becca and Steffi are both staring at me rather pointedly.

“Oh, okay,” I say. “My turn. I may win this whole thing for Team NotClaire. I’ve tried to run the tally before, but I always lose count at thirty.”

“Thirty?” says Becca. “You lose count at thirty? How old were you the first time you gave it up?”

“It’s always the ones you least suspect,” Silvia quietly observes, which I suppose could be taken as an insult, or maybe even a double insult, when you stop to break it down.

“I was well into college before I lost my virginity, so that’s no excuse,” I say, looking down at the water and trying to figure out how to make that critical first step. Where is Sir Walter Raleigh when you need him? I’d accept his cape now. I’d smirk and giggle and flirt and give him ten pounds without question, because even after all this time spent watching the others, I still have no idea how to get across this ridiculous creek. “I just had a couple of years in there where the numbers really rolled.”

“Well, there you have it,” says Silvia. “I’ve been keeping track. We stood at thirty-seven before Che, who completely manned up for the team, just as she says. So if we go with an estimate of thirty for her, that’s a grand total of sixty-seven and there’s no way you can top that, no matter how distraught you were about the Edith situation.” She has followed Valerie into the stream and is moving well, stepping steadily from one spot to another, forging her own route and confirming my suspicion that she’s an outdoor girl at heart. Strange that she would be the one to keep a running track of the total in her head, but she still seems peeved at Claire for telling a story she’d never heard, especially one like this. She wants numerical proof that her best friend isn’t really the village tart.

“The Edith situation . . .” Valerie says, scrambling to the bank at last. She is covered in mud and I can’t even think how she’s going to get herself cleaned up enough to enter a pub for lunch. “I like it. It’s a good name for all the women we compare ourselves to, all those tapes we run in our head that tell us someone else out there is better than us.” Then she looks at me when she turns, with that annoying slight smirk on her face, and I’m sure I’m looking back at her with the exact same expression I pulled when she ordered the white zinfandel. I’m critiquing her creek-crossing performance in my mind, but it’s easy to mock the muddiness of others when you’re still standing on the bank. When you haven’t even started the process yourself. Who knows how many times you might slip before your own journey is done? I’ve looked up and down along the rill and there is a tree with a low-hanging branch not far away.
I’ll just mosey downstream and
hold on to that
, I think.
Use it to stabilize myself, at least for the first few steps.
But there will still come a point where I have to let go, halfway through, and then . . . who knows? With my luck the branch would snap back and hit me in the face and knock me into the stream ass-first. I have the feeling a couple of the women would totally enjoy seeing that.

“Sixty-seven men,” Silvia is saying, as she reaches the other side of the stream, stepping up near Steffi, who is wiping nonexistent mud from her boots. “It’s an admirable number of conquests for a group of gentle pilgrims. So you see, darling, your number isn’t so shocking after all.”

But Claire is following the same path across the stream that Becca took and, despite the fact that she’s more than forty years older than the girl, she’s doing an admirable job of jumping from stone to stone. We watch as she avoids every trap and takes Tess’s hand, pulling herself up without the slightest splash on her pale-gray boots.

“Still winning,” she says softly, as her feet hit the moss.

Eight

T
hat night, for the first time in forever, I am aroused.

It takes me a moment to realize it. I toss and turn in the bed. Count my breaths, picture waves breaking on a beach, prop a pillow under my knees. All my standard tricks to go back to sleep, but none of them work. And even when I finally sit up and admit that something is happening within me, I don’t call it arousal. I give it every other name I can think of—insomnia, indigestion, anxiety, ennui. Even homesickness for Freddy.

I went to sleep easily enough. I always miss my phone, of course, but for the first time since we started the trail, I didn’t need to read a chapter from my thriller to wind down. We’ve upgraded from the evening before. This time our inn is located in the village square of a sweet little town—everything your fantasy of the English countryside might be. Roses in the window boxes, sleeping setters by the fireplace, that sort of thing. The pub had been packed at dinner and it had taken some shuffling to move enough tables and chairs to seat a party of nine. Two other groups of Americans were staying there too: a family with teenagers, and three elderly sisters—named Mary, Margaret, and Martha or something like that—who were traveling by Bentley with a private guide. We had chatted back and forth among our tables as we ate, and they had been intrigued with the idea that our group was walking to Canterbury.

It had been Steffi who’d first announced our collective mission. When one of the old ladies asked what had brought us all together, Steffi had leaned back in her chair and rather proudly said, “We’re pilgrims, on the trail to Canterbury Cathedral.”

Interesting. She’d been reluctant to claim the title during our walk this afternoon, but suddenly she couldn’t wait to call herself a pilgrim. I suppose that’s why she’s doing this. Not to confess her failings or receive a blessing—she’s walking to Canterbury simply so that she can tell people that she did it. The faces of the other Americans had indeed lit up as she spoke.
Why yes,
their expressions seemed to say.
That’s what we should be doing too. Undertaking a grand quest, embarking upon something definitive and purposeful instead of just mucking around the countryside with a private driver. We need a trip we can eulogize to our friends when we return.
Canterbury may not be the ultimate destination, but it’s the ultimate brag.

Still, it had been a pleasant evening, the most relaxed and generous we’ve shared so far. The pub had a decent wine list and Tess ordered a couple bottles for the table, saying it was on the company. My foot had held up better through the day’s hike than I’d feared, but now some of the others were complaining about blisters and hot spots too, probably the result of the last hour’s walk in wet shoes following our slog through the stream. As we finished our coffee and pudding, we all seemed to grow tired at the same time, and we had gone upstairs early, about half past eight.

Steffi offered me her phone just before she went into her room. She’s offered it to me each time we’ve reached a place with wi-fi, and I know she means well. But I’m on a roll now and I don’t want to lose my momentum. Two and a half days without checking messages is a personal record for me, and besides, I still don’t have the foggiest idea of what I should say to Ned. You’re thinking that I’m playing a cruel game with him, making him worry just to even the score, but I swear I’m not. It’s just that I’ve been seized with a sort of uncertainty that began in the bar back in London and seems to have grown incrementally with every step of the trip. When I know what to do, then I’ll do it.

And it isn’t as if I’ve left Ned utterly dangling. He’s an attorney, after all. If he’s worried enough to investigate, he should be able to ascertain that I’ve put a hold on my mail, boarded Freddy, left notice of my absence with the condo manager, and bought a ticket from Philly to Heathrow. I can’t say exactly how he might discover any of these things, but I have no doubt that a lawyer knows a thousand ways to get the dirt on people.