The View from Here (15 page)

“Race you to the front gate,” she challenged, and started for it. Jessica and Howie took off after her, Howie soon lagging by a yard. Mason turned to watch them round the corner of the house.

“That kid has no idea what he's up against,” he said, turning back to me. “Even miniature women will tie you in knots.”

He laughed, more or less to himself, and we sat for a moment, sipping our coffee in the gentle warmth of the sunshine.

“I've been thinking about going to New York,” I said. I'd been thinking about it constantly.

Mason smiled. “Could get awful cold in your bikini come fall,” he said.

I laughed. “Well, I guess I'll just have to buy a coat.”

“That's a look I could learn to like,” he said, “a bikini and a coat.”

The children's shouts returning to the house were clearly audible as he leaned over and bit my earlobe.

• • •

I realize that the narrative of the more recent chapters of my life is not as orderly as that of those further past. But day-to-day life has that quality, muddy, while you are still in the process of swimming through it. It is the stored accounts that get polished, tossing about all those years inside the mind. Incidents from the last ten months come to me now with no particular chronology—conversations with Chloe; the clematis, especially the Montana, the pink one on the pergola, thriving despite, because of, my lack of attention; and the week, sometime before the end of the summer, when a mix-up with dates led to everybody, Chloe and Ed, Sonia and Ollie, Catherine and Dan and the children, and Tom and Alice, all coming down on the same weekend.

It was the loveliest weekend, though not in terms of the weather, which was muggy and threatened by heavy clouds that in the end delivered only spots of cool rain. At first people were embarrassed and said they'd leave, but I wanted them all, and these days no one refuses me anything.

Joan came over and helped with beds, and Catherine and Dan decamped to the B&B in the village. There was a great deal of food in the house because Helen leaves provisions after all of her visits and Catherine, as usual, had arrived laden. The atmosphere quickly turned festive, with everybody pitching in and Catherine's boys setting up some kind of ball game in the garden. It was all so perfect that for a while I came dangerously close to returning to an earlier state of mind, one in which I was convinced that reprieve was still possible, that everything could still be put back into a dark drawer and locked away for eternity.

That weekend I gave Catherine some of Chloe's old, stored-away things for her daughter Ness, Chloe picking over them first, nodding yes or no. It was after I had sorted the things—a ski jacket, some books, and a long cotton sun frock—and once again closed up the chest that held so many more of Chloe's treasures that I noticed the apricot dress. The apricot dress has hung in my wardrobe for almost five years and goes mostly unnoticed, but that day, Ness's new books in my arms, it caught my eye. I stopped and put the books on a chair and twisted the dress toward me on its hanger, slipping it from its protective plastic. It is a lovely dress.

Chloe, behind me, lumbered with the ski jacket, said, “That's gorgeous. Why don't you wear it more?”

“I've never worn it,” I said. I looked at her, confessional. “It cost an arm and a leg.”

We laughed. It's a female thing, isn't it? Buying clothes, in this case an expensive silk cocktail dress, and never wearing them.

“I've got shoes to match,” I said.

“So have I.” Sonia, prelunch drink in her hand, had come looking for us. “Still in the bloody tissue.”

We had bought the dress, and the shoes—a pair each—together, on a shopping trip to celebrate my fortieth birthday.

Downstairs in the kitchen Chloe's things met with Ness's steady eleven-year-old gaze and then her approval, largely, I suspect, because they had once belonged to Chloe. Chloe is grown-up enough for Ness to look up to and young enough for her to want to emulate. She took them away solemnly and piled them by the back door so that she would remember them when they went back to the B&B. Then she helped Chloe lay the table for lunch.

All the men and the boy children, in that way that sometimes happens at house parties, had drifted to the garden and were gathered there now, an amiable crew, talking, waving glasses and bottles, taking imaginary swipes at imaginary balls with imaginary sporting equipment. We could hear them, though not what they were saying, and see them through the big window above the sink. And Alice was telling a story about a handbag, prompted by Sonia's rendition of the apricot dress confession. Alice said that she had bought the handbag when she and Tom were first married and money was tight. She had felt so guilty about it that she'd hidden the bag in the back of a wardrobe for two years.

“I used to take it out and look at it sometimes,” she said.

Everybody laughed at this, and I was glad because Alice was the outsider in the bunch and I wanted her to feel welcome. I was full of affection for everyone. I think now that that was the beginning of the feeling of floating almost, of wanting everything around me to be happy and gentle and pleasant—all those mild adjectives. I wanted nothing abrasive in my world, nobody hurting. I remember now that Dan had once complained of Catherine being that way during her pregnancies, weeping for the plight of the poor and animals without homes; he had claimed that she was prey for any passing con man, any brush salesman with a sob story.

I still have a very clear picture of the lunch we had that day, although I could not tell you the date of it without the prompt of a calendar and other events for reference. I remember there being bowls of steamed corn and baskets of hot bread, and I remember that the goodwill feeling that I had then seemed to radiate from everyone, even the children, even Ollie, who could be sullen sometimes, especially around his mother.

It was during that lunch that I decided, not just that I wanted more lunches like that, more weekends like that, but that I wanted to have a party. A really thumping proper party with all these people and more. People I hadn't seen and wanted to see. People will come to a party, I thought.

I thought too that if I had a party I could wear my apricot dress. A frivolous notion, wasn't it, for someone in my position, my circumstances? But not entirely without purpose after all, because I had decided that I would be wearing my apricot dress when I spoke to Josee. I would invite her to the party. And she would come.

• • •

I did wonder sometimes in the gray dawn, after my door had slipped closed behind him and the gentle slope that he had made in the mattress had eased flat again, how it was that Mason managed those nocturnal visits, which, once begun, soon developed a rhythm and had on two separate occasions led to his sleeping briefly beside me while I, afraid to move, did not, lest I wake him and advance his departure. But I chose not to dwell on that mean detail. I had shut my mind early on to all difficulties where he was concerned and allowed myself to become dopey with blind optimism.

Nevertheless, it struck me through this lavender fog one morning that Bee Bee's voice was caustic when she said, “My, we are bright, aren't we? Shiny like a little Christmas bauble.” She was speaking to me. I looked at her. I had agreed to play a silly, riotous swimming game with the children. Jenny had invented it. Now, the game finished, I was sitting on the pool edge in my wet bikini, still laughing, my hair dripping over my shoulders.

“Nothin' wrong with a spark of good humor,” Ned said, deflecting.

Bee Bee, her eyes still on me, half closed them and put her cigarette to her lips. “This particular good humor just happens to be getting rather noisy,” she said. “Some people could do without it.” She ran a pampering finger over one eyebrow and adjusted her dark glasses.

Ned smiled. “Are we a little shaky this morning, dear?” he asked.

Bee Bee spun her head to him and tightened her lips. “It's not a hangover that's bothering me if that's your implication, my sweet. Hangovers never bother me,” she said, with a matter-of-fact expression, looking in my direction again. “I know how to handle them. They run in the family.”

Ned laughed, but I felt my nervousness escalate.

“Sorry…we did get a bit loud.” I shushed the children, or tried to.

“Oh,” she purred, “I'm not against people having fun. It's just that I think they ought to be aware when they're having fun at someone else's expense.”

I snapped my eyes to her.

She smiled under her glasses, laid her cigarette in the beaten indent of a copper ashtray, and said neutrally, “I don't know what's gone wrong with the barman today. A person could die of thirst.”

Ned hopped up.

“Apologies, ma'am,” he said, scooping up her empty glass and heading off to refill it.

Left then, the only other adult, alone with her, I looked back down at the children splashing in the water and waited for the next blow. But she just said, “It's going to be hot this afternoon.”

The prediction was accurate. The sky turned hard blue and the sun burned. It was too hot to walk down to the beach, though the children were keen on the idea after lunch. We took the cars instead, loaded with gear as usual. Even with the umbrellas up, though, and the light breeze off the water, it was too hot to just lie on the sand. We all headed for the sea. Bee Bee and Sally kept their sunglasses and hats on. I watched as they waded through the soft frill of waves to the calm beyond, where they sat in the water, floating with their toes poking out, talking.

Ned had found a rubber raft in the basement and excited the children by showing it to them. Now he was attempting to inflate it. His cheeks strained at the small plastic valve. He signaled to Richard, trying to palm off the job.

“Nuh-uh,” Richard responded, laughing. “You found it, you blow it up.”

Ned rolled his eyes. Richard grinned and walked farther into the water. Eventually he let himself fall forward and swam off.

“You need a bicycle pump,” Mason suggested when Ned, heaving, quit blowing for a second.

“Nobody likes a know-it-all,” Ned said.

The three of us, me and Mason and Patsy, began to wade deeper. Ned, curls of froth rising up his calves and the twins and Howie tugging at his elbows, looked up for a second and yelled, “Well, thanks, fellas.”

“You're welcome,” Mason called and lifted his arm without looking back.

The water was warm. Too warm to be much use for cooling purposes, but we lay in it anyway, enervated. The raft, blown up at last, had a pinprick puncture in one of the seams and needed reinflating at regular intervals. Richard, swimming back in and regaining his breath, took a turn with the puffing. Then he helped Howie to wriggle on top.

“How far'd you go?” Patsy's asked.

Richard lifted one dripping arm and pointed to the curve of land beyond where the house sat, at the wineglass rock end of the beach. “Past that funny rock and out. You can see right along the coast.”

Patsy looked at Mason. “Up for it?” she asked.

Richard looked at Mason too. Then, as if shaking away some thought, he gave his head a flick, dislodging water, and sniffed.

“The sea's cooler out there,” he said. “Feels good.” He turned toward us, lifted his feet from the bottom, and began treading water.

Mason and Patsy struck out rhythmically. Richard looked at me for a second, questioning.

“I'm not much of a swimmer,” I said. We were both watching the flutter of Patsy's and Mason's feet on the sea surface. It felt, just for a second, as though we were the spare pair on a double date.

“You caught the sun, Richard,” Sally said at the pool over drinks.

Richard, freshly showered, his complexion as shiny as his children's, touched his nose, which was pink. “I guess I did,” he said. “I can feel it. You kept your hat on, didn't you?”

“Yes,” she answered, putting her glass down.

“My mother always wears a hat,” Patsy said. “Never goes out of doors without one.”

“Your mother is a Southern belle,” Richard offered.

“Well, yes,” Patsy went on, “but I think it has to do with age too. You know, women of a certain era wear hats. Especially as they get older.”

Sally was looking at Patsy and running her index finger idly up and down her glass. The movement cleared a line in the condensation.

“Touché, dear,” she said and lifted her drink with a small superior smile.

Patsy, not letting go, giggled rather childishly. “Well, if the hat fits.”

Bee Bee, sitting near Patsy on a slatted chair at one of the round tables, uncrossed her legs and turned to her. “Don't fool yourself for one second, baby face, that youth is a match for wisdom in any sort of fight that matters.” She had fixed Patsy with an extraordinarily hard look.

“Who was it,” Richard asked, “who said that youth was wasted on the young?” It wasn't clear whether he was attempting to dispel the tension or was simply unaware of it.

“It's a song,” I answered, relieved. It seemed Bee Bee's barbs were not reserved for me.

“It is too,” Ned confirmed. “Sammy Cahn wrote it. ‘Love, like youth, is wasted on the young,'” he said, quoting.

“Ain't that the truth.” Bee Bee settled back in her chair.

“You're a real mine of information, aren't you, Frankie?” Sally said.

I shrugged.

Mason, who had been quietly sipping his drink in the corner, detached from developments, said, “Now there's a worrying possibility, people who are smart
and
young.”

I smiled at him, and Patsy toasted in his direction.

“To smart and young.” She grinned. It was a grin tinged with triumph.

That night, when I heard his tap, I got up straightaway. I'd been waiting for it. Hopeful. I went to the door without putting on my robe.

“My,” he said, low-voiced, “what a little sex kitten I have for a mistress.”