She’d think of something before their next time together. He was going on a three-day run, all the way down through Connecticut, he said. He’d call at ten, the morning he returned. Joyce didn’t know how she’d wait that long. She’d probably finish the bedroom and start on the kitchen.
As the supermarket came into view, Joyce decided she couldn’t wait another minute for a cold drink and pulled up to the soda machine out in front.
Rummaging through her wallet for change she heard her name.
“Joyce!”
It was Buddy Levine. “I am so glad to see you,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to call and thank you. Kathleen’s been so blue at home lately, if you two weren’t spending so much time together, I’d be a lot more worried about her.”
THE NEXT DAY, Joyce showed up at Kathleen’s front door at noon. “I am taking you to lunch. No excuses.”
Kathleen offered none. “You look good,” she said. “Is the writing going better?”
“No. But I did find a great little store in Rockport.” Joyce twirled around to show off a new sundress. “Put on some shoes, and we’re out of here.”
They went to Traveler’s, a newly renovated restaurant on Main Street where the fish sandwiches were served on sourdough rolls. Sitting under a ficus tree by the front window, Joyce studied Kathleen’s face as she read the menu. The hollows in her cheeks were too pronounced, and she seemed tense and vague. Joyce had seen Kathleen gripping the door handle in the car all the way into town.
“How about a glass of wine?” Joyce asked.
“I’m fine, you know,” said Kathleen quickly. “I’m just ready for this treatment to be over. It’s knocked me out.”
“Is it just fatigue, really?”
“I think so. Buddy is nagging me to go talk to someone. But I’ve got you, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do.” Joyce studied the menu. What could she say? “I’m sorry I’ve been too busy not-quite-screwing my boyfriend to pick up on the hints you probably dropped on the phone every day”? Or maybe, “Good thing I ran into Buddy, who spilled the beans about your lying to him.”
There was a rap at the window. Kathleen waved at a young state trooper in full regalia: black shiny boots, peaked cap, holstered gun. “Jimmy Parley,” she said to Joyce. “An old student.” She motioned for him to come inside.
“Look at you,” she said, shaking his big hand.
“Hey, Mrs. Levine. You know my little girl is going to kindergarten next year?”
“Impossible. Alyssa, isn’t it?”
“Yes!”
“Hard to believe. Forgive me, Jimmy, this is my friend Joyce Tabachnik. She bought the Loquasto house over on Forest. Near where your cousin Bob lives.”
The trooper shook Joyce’s hand, then asked Kathleen, “How are you, uh, feeling these days?”
“I’m going to be fine,” Kathleen said firmly.
“Good. Well, that’s what I heard. Good. Well, I’ve got to go, but say hi to Mr. Levine and tell Hal he better call the next time he’s up.”
“Tell Cynthia I said hello, too.
“I remember him in kindergarten,” Kathleen said. “Such a shy little guy. He fell sound asleep once during story time. He graduated a year after Hal. Now look at him. And a father.”
Their food came, and Kathleen relaxed a little. She told Joyce her neighbor had brought over three more marijuana cigarettes. “For my appetite,” Kathleen said. “I guess Louisa thinks I need fattening up.”
“I’d have to agree with her there,” said Joyce. “But who is this Louisa person? A drug dealer?”
Kathleen laughed. “You should see Louisa; the epitome of the genteel New England lady. She must be nearly eighty. But when her husband had stomach cancer a few years ago, the marijuana helped him get through the chemo.” Louisa Moore Bendix’s life was a great story, from her grandmother the prohibitionist to her great-grandchildren who lived in Kuwait. Joyce listened gratefully, realizing how little she had to talk about.
Nina loved camp, but her notes were unremarkable. And what can you say about painting? Frank was still missing in action, and this wasn’t the best time to begin a conversation about her marriage. Most of all, Joyce didn’t want to talk about the only thing on her mind. I’ve been so obsessed with Patrick, I didn’t even notice that Kathleen was in trouble.
Kathleen started to fold her napkin.
“Oh, no,” said Joyce, “we’re having dessert.”
“Tell me again how blue tastes of chocolate,” Kathleen teased, as Joyce coaxed her into finishing the brownie sundae, taking every bite as a personal victory. Kathleen’s watch was loose on her wrist.
As they got into the car, Joyce said, “Let’s go for a walk. Doctor’s orders.”
Kathleen tucked her hands under her thighs to avoid gripping the handle again and said with a heavy sigh, “I don’t know.”
Joyce pretended not to hear and turned toward her house. “We can stop and pick up a couple of hats. And I want to show you inside.”
“Maybe I’ll just wait in the car.”
“Please come in for a minute? No one’s seen it yet.”
“What do you mean? Surely Frank’s seen it.”
Joyce shook her head.
“He hasn’t been up at all?”
“No.”
“But it’s been weeks, hasn’t it?”
“A few, I guess. He’s busy at work.”
Kathleen wondered whether she should ask about Frank again. “Mind your business” had been the motto of her childhood. But now that seemed like a failing in a friend.
Joyce’s face betrayed nothing as she swung the car into her driveway and got out. “Ta-da,” she sang out as they walked into the house.
The living room, empty except for a beanbag chair and an off-white rug, was honey-colored — almost golden — in the full light.
“Wonderful,” Kathleen said.
“Come see.” Joyce gestured for her to follow down the hall. Her office, a translucent pink, was bare except for a calendar over an uncluttered desk.
“How pretty,” Kathleen said in the bathroom.
“Don’t look at this,” said Joyce, closing the door on the paint cans and ladder in the master bedroom.
Nina’s room looked the most lived-in, with posters on the walls and a low platform bed made up with purple sheets, which looked cool against the pale blue walls. She misses her daughter, Kathleen thought.
The kitchen floor was lined with newspaper. Joyce had finished the cabinets and walls in a rich tan. Random swatches of dark purple bloomed in several spots below the chair rail. “I still haven’t quite decided whether I can live with this color,” she said, handing Kathleen a long-sleeved shirt and one of Nina’s baseball caps.
“It’s lovely. The colors are so perfect. Where did you get the idea to paint that one wall darker in the living room?”
“I hired a decorator to tell me what to do,” Joyce said a little sheepishly.
“But why hasn’t Frank seen it?” Kathleen asked softly. “He hasn’t even been up on weekends?”
“He’s too busy.” Joyce waved her hand as if she were shooing a bug. “I don’t even care anymore.”
“You don’t care?”
“Let’s go to the beach.”
Kathleen was quiet as they drove over the hill, concerned and confused about the way Joyce had answered — or hadn’t answered — her questions about Frank.
“I’m going to drop you off and park,” Joyce said.
Kathleen crossed the bridge and sat down to wait. It was a sun-worshiper’s day, hot and almost cloudless, with a cooling offshore breeze. Kathleen shuddered with pleasure as the warmth soaked through her clothes. She buried her hands in the sand, wiggling her fingers down through the soft, sun-baked layer, pushing into the cool, packed surface beneath.
“I feel like a vampire released from the curse of doom,” Kathleen said, wiping her hands as Joyce sat down. “I’ve been avoiding the sun. I wonder if that’s making things
even worse.”
“Things?”
“The treatments, I guess. And August. It’s almost August. August is . . .” Kathleen stopped. Why tell her? she thought.
Joyce tried to find Kathleen’s eyes under the brim of the hat.
“August is hard for me.”
Kathleen glanced up to see Joyce looking at her, waiting, nodding. Oh, why not. “August is hard for me. Because my son died in August.”
Joyce’s mouth opened and closed. After a moment she asked, “You had three?”
“Danny. The middle one,” Kathleen said quietly. “He died on August fourteenth.”
“Danny.”
“He was three years old. Hal was four. Nearly five.” Kathleen straightened her shoulders and looked right at Joyce, who reached over and put her hand on top of Kathleen’s.
“They were playing in the front yard on their bicycles. Danny was on Hal’s old tricycle. Hal had a new two-wheeler with training wheels. The phone rang.” Kathleen stopped.
“I went inside to get it.” It had been so long since she had told this story, the words seemed small and far away in her mouth.
“The driver was an old man. Too old to be driving. He lost control of the car. He wasn’t even speeding, really. I think he was going thirty miles an hour, if that.
“But he drove up onto the lawn and into the driveway and . . . He didn’t even know what he’d done. When he got out of the car, he . . . Well, he shouldn’t have been driving. I couldn’t blame him. I blamed his daughter. He probably had Alzheimer’s, though I don’t know if we called it that then.
“That was on August eighth,” Kathleen said with a catch in her throat. “At first, we thought he had a chance. Pat came that night. Did I tell you that she was a nurse? She slept with us in the hospital. She talked to every doctor, every specialist. The nurses were wonderful. He had the best care because of Pat.
“But there was too much damage. To his brain.
“We let him go on the fourteenth.” Kathleen paused and her shoulders drooped. She pulled her hand gently from under Joyce’s and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Oh, God,” Joyce whispered.
“I was pregnant with Jack then. I didn’t know it yet. I knew in September, but not in August.”
Kathleen looked out toward the horizon. “Every year, from the middle of July there’s some part of me that’s waiting. I’m never fully aware of it, and after all these years, it still sneaks up on me. First, I wait for it to be August, then for it to be the eighth, then for the fourteenth. At some point I look at the calendar and I remember. Oh. I’m waiting for Danny to die.”
Joyce hadn’t taken her eyes off Kathleen’s face, which had relaxed a little after the tension of telling. She stood up, held her hand out to Joyce, and said, “Let’s walk.”
It was a noisy day at Good Harbor. The surf chuffed into shore, where crowds of children squealed and teased and laughed. Three little girls, up to their thighs in the water, held hands and leapt up shrieking whenever a wave slapped up onto their convex bellies. A young mother dunked her giggling baby’s feet into the waves. A group of three women chatted, their arms crossed over their stomachs while their boys roughhoused in the surf.
Joyce winced at all the mother-and-child tableaux, which now seemed like a series of coldhearted insults to Kathleen’s loss. “There are so few men here during the week,” Joyce said.
“There are more women even on weekends,” said Kathleen, pleased that Joyce, too, had noticed. “Why do you think that is?”
“More moms are home with kids? More moms take care of kids than dads?”
“Yes,” said Kathleen. “But you see lots of women without kids, too, walking and talking. You and I aren’t the only ones here without children to entertain. Why, do you suppose?”
“Women are smarter than men?”
“I’m not sure about that.” Kathleen shook her head. “Though we do seem to take advantage of the opportunity to talk. And this is such a perfect setting.”
The tide put an end to the beach just past the red motel. They turned and started back.
“Kathleen, I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk about it anymore, but I have to ask you something. The story about Danny, and August, and all. Don’t you think that your symptoms, your fatigue, has something to do with him? How many years is it?”
Kathleen felt her throat tighten. It was twenty-five years, but she wouldn’t say that. Not even to Joyce. That would make it all a simple equation: Poor Kathleen; of course she’s suffering. After all, it’s twenty-five years. She wasn’t having any “Poor Kathleen.”
“It’s a lot of years.”
Joyce heard the hesitation in Kathleen’s answer and they walked most of the way back in silence. Below the mansion, children with nets squatted near the edge of the tidal river. One small girl wearing a yellow swimsuit sat on the wet sand with a red bucket between her legs.
Kathleen walked toward her. “What have you got there?”
“Fishies,” she said seriously.
Kathleen looked inside and nodded.
She must be about three, Joyce thought.
Kathleen leaned in and said, “You can catch little crabs around here, too.”
“Do they bite you?” asked the girl.
“Oh, no.”
It would have killed me to lose Nina at the age of three, Joyce thought. I would have walked into the ocean.
Kathleen said good-bye to the little girl, returned to Joyce, and answered her unspoken question. “Hal kept me alive. Cooking his meals, taking him to the playground. When I realized I was pregnant, I didn’t want a new baby. I only wanted Danny back. But then Jack was born, and he was the happiest, most joyful little guy. And I fell in love with him.”
Joyce nodded. “There is nothing I can say, is there?”
“No. There is nothing to say. But it’s good that you know.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
Kathleen dozed off almost as soon as they got into the car. Joyce pulled into Kathleen’s driveway slowly and kept the engine going.
Joyce watched her friend sleep and remembered Kathleen’s questions about Frank. She hadn’t known how to answer her. She didn’t have anything to say about Frank. She didn’t think about her husband from his morning phone call to his evening phone call. She went for hours without even wondering what Nina was up to. She thought only of Patrick. Patrick’s fingers, Patrick’s lips. She had dreams about him, dreams set in a boat on the ocean. The owl and the pussycat.
What could she say about Frank? She could have shared a couple of half-truths. It’s always nonstop when you work on a startup. He was probably even enjoying it, staying up all night, drinking beer, eating pizza. But the other times, he’d had Nina to come home to, and Joyce, too. She wasn’t home anymore.
Kathleen moaned softly in her sleep.
Frank and I have had long dry spells before, Joyce reminded herself again, picking at her cuticles. Of course, I wasn’t having an affair before. And I am having an affair, even if we haven’t technically consummated. For a while, Joyce had talked herself into believing that stopping short of penetration made a difference. But that was bullshit. It would be easier if Frank were having an affair. That would let her off the hook.
Kathleen startled and sat up. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You were only out for a few minutes. And you needed the sleep. So here’s the deal, Miss Kathleen. From now on, we will walk on Good Harbor beach every afternoon, but I think later would be better, when the sun isn’t so strong. I’ll call tomorrow morning to set it up. This is not an invitation, by the way. It’s a prescription from Dr. Joyce.”
Kathleen leaned over and gave her a long hug. The smell of lavender lingered on Joyce’s cheek as she drove away.
Thank God for Kathleen. I don’t have to be just an adulterous fraud anymore, Joyce thought. I can be a friend — a good enough friend to be trusted with what happened to Danny. God, poor Kathleen.
I wonder if she’d still be my friend if she knew about Patrick.
Oh, well. Nina will be home in a few more weeks, and Frank will show up eventually, and everything will change, but not yet.
Not just yet.
AUGUST
KATHLEEN lifted her head from the pillow: 5:50 P.M. Buddy would be home from work soon. She closed her eyes again and stretched. She and Joyce had done the length of the beach twice that day, resulting in a wonderful, long nap. Maybe their walks would help ease the panic that had spilled over from the car into the rest of her life.
She wasn’t driving at all anymore. Buddy took her to and from the clinic in the morning, and Joyce picked her up for a walk at three-thirty, plenty of contact to diffuse suspicions about her mental health. But Kathleen had developed several other odd, secret habits that were less obvious.
She was avoiding the mirror altogether, but at least her hair had grown so long she could pull it up into a ponytail without looking. She used a washcloth in the shower so she wouldn’t have to touch her own skin. She stayed out of the kitchen as much as possible and ate only when Buddy was around. She avoided the front door. Kathleen knew that she was acting peculiar, but she told herself she’d be back to normal as soon as the radiation was over. She was counting on it.
A car door slammed. Kathleen rolled to her side and tasted sea salt on her lips. She wondered what Buddy had brought home for supper.
“Mom?”
Kathleen was up in an instant. “Hal?”
He was hugging her before she could get to her feet.
“Surprised?”
“Completely.”
“You are way too thin, Mom.”
“Aren’t you the charmer?”
“Isn’t the doctor concerned?”
“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Hal frowned.
“Let me get a look at you,” she said.
I’m going bald.”
“Impossible!”
“See for yourself.” He tipped his head forward.
“Oh, dear. That makes me feel ancient. I have a balding son.”
Kathleen was perpetually surprised at how her genes and Buddy’s had yielded two such distinct replicas: Jack was a McCormack — a compactly built Irishman — while Hal was a Levine, cut out of the same large, sandy cloth as Irv and Buddy. “Too bad you didn’t inherit the Levine hair, though even bald, you are one handsome man.”