A Summer Affair (13 page)

Adams took Claire by the elbow. “Let’s go grab a drink.”

“Oh,” Claire said. “I don’t know . . .”

“Claire?”

This was Lock’s voice. Claire turned too eagerly.

“Do you want to join Isabelle and me at Twenty-one Federal?” he said. “We’re going right now, for dinner.”

Did Claire want to go to Twenty-one Federal with Lock and Isabelle? God, no! It would turn into an uncomfortable extension of the meeting—or it would be Lock encouraging Claire and Isabelle to get to know each other. Claire would rather go out and belt back a couple of stiff drinks with Adams and the rest of the committee. But she didn’t want to turn Lock down. What if he took it as a rejection? Maybe she and Lock would outlast Isabelle; maybe they would return to the office alone or drive somewhere in Lock’s car. If she said no to him now, when would she see him again? Would he call her at home? Or would she have to create an excuse to swing by the office? If she swung by during the day, Gavin would be around. But what reason could she possibly fabricate to stop by at night?

“Come out for a drink!” This was Tessa calling across the room. “We’ll go to Water Street, okay, Adams? We’ll meet you there.”

“Okay,” Adams said. “Claire?”

“Have you eaten?” Lock asked.

Claire felt like she was being pecked at by chickens. But why? She could either go for drinks with Adams, Tessa, and the gang, or she could go to dinner with Lock and Isabelle. The fact was, she could have stood there all night deliberating and still not have come up with the answer, which proved to Claire only one thing: she was losing her mind.

“I ate earlier,” she said to Lock, though this was, of course, a lie. Or a partial lie: at dinner with the kids, she had eaten the two puckered ends of Shea’s hot dog. “I should really get home. The baby doesn’t do well without me.”

“Come out, just for one drink,” Adams said.

Claire put on her coat. She was finding it hard to breathe here in the Elijah Baker House. She felt like she was wearing a whalebone corset.

“Next time,” she said. She faced Isabelle and Lock and gave them a (believable?) smile, shook Isabelle’s hand, and said, “Thanks for running the meeting. You have my e-mail, right? Well, if not, Lock has it. He’ll give it to you. Or you can call me. I have to go. I’ll see everybody later, okay?” Claire wedged her way past Lock and Isabelle—who were looking at her as if she was nuts, which she was—and then around the table, jingling her keys. She meant it: she was leaving.

When she finally made it out onto the cool street, she could almost hear the skin on her face hissssssssss, the way a hot mold hissed when she dropped it into the water basin.

She took her cell phone out and called Jason’s cell phone. He answered on the first ring, in a whisper. “Hey, baby.”

She was so happy to hear his voice, she nearly wept. “Hey,” she said. “I’m on my way home.”

CHAPTER FIVE

She Surprises Herself

C
laire slept with Lock for the first time a week later.

After the meeting with Isabelle French and the committee, Claire walked away thinking,
I am done with Lock Dixon.
It was all adolescent nonsense, anyway, and what were they
doing,
two reasonable, married adults? Claire climbed in bed with Jason and thought,
I am happy here. I am happy!
That Lock Dixon had showed an interest in her was flattering and would be left at that.

How to explain what happened? Claire had always thought of adultery as a country she either wasn’t brave enough or didn’t want to visit—until someone handed her a passport and a ticket, and suddenly she was on her way. Lock called Claire on her cell phone, which he had never done before. She was driving home from dropping the kids off at school; she had only Zack in the car and he was drifting off to sleep. Claire was so certain it was Siobhan on the phone that she picked it up without checking the display and said, somewhat glumly (because she wasn’t exactly giddy about giving up Lock; in fact, it left her feeling deflated), “Hey.”

“Claire?”

It was him. She was flustered. She couldn’t later remember what he had said—something to the effect that he knew she’d found the meeting difficult, it would get easier, Isabelle would loosen up, she had been nervous and was going through the wringer with the divorce.

Okay,
Claire said.
Right, I could tell. Whatever, it was fine.

And then, after what seemed like a significant pause, Lock said,
Would you mind stopping by the office tonight?

Tonight?

Are you busy?

No,
she said.
Well, yes, always busy, but I can come in. Swing by.

Great,
he said.

Then there was silence. This was the time for Claire to renege, but she didn’t. She could “swing by” the office—it sounded both casual and proper. He had something to give her, there was something for her to sign, proofread, consider. But she did not ask what it was.

Okay,
she said finally
. I’ll see you tonight
.

See you tonight,
he said.

Claire waited until Jason got home from work to tell him.

“I have a meeting tonight.”

“Jesus, Claire!”

“I know, I’m sorry. It should be short.”

“I can’t believe this,” Jason said. “Why can’t you meet during the day when the kids are at school and Pan is working? Why does it always have to be at night?”

“Sorry,” Claire said. “It will be quick. I’ll be back by nine.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

After dinner, Claire gave the younger three kids a bath, got the girls into their bedroom with books, and dressed Zack in his pajamas. She handed him to Jason, who was zoned out in front of
Entertainment Tonight
.

“Can you make his bottle?” Claire asked.

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I can do it, but I have to get ready.”

“Get ready for what?”

“My meeting.”

“Why do you have to get ready for a meeting? You look fine.”

“I’d like to change.”

“Why?”

Claire was shaking from anger, frustration, guilt, nerves. “Forget it,” she said. “I won’t go. Give me the baby.”

Jason scowled. “You’re acting like one of the kids.”

“
I
am?”

“Go get ready for your meeting,” Jason said. “I’ll take care of things here. Again.”

Claire went into the kitchen and fixed Zack’s bottle. She couldn’t do this. She could not leave her home, her kids, she could not even leave her infuriating husband to go to Lock. She wasn’t cut out for it; it required guts that she didn’t have. She felt something pop inside her—the bubble of expectation that had been expanding every second since Lock said,
See you tonight
. He would be there, in the dark office, waiting for her. When she came up the stairs, he would smile.

Claire brushed her teeth and changed into jeans and a cashmere sweater. She did nothing with her hair and she did not put on perfume. Earrings? No. Earrings would be a red flag.

“Okay,” she said to Jason. “I’m going to my meeting. I’ll be back by nine.”

He said nothing. She hesitated. He hadn’t even heard her. Or he had heard her and was ignoring her.
Stop me!
she thought. But she only wanted him to stop her so she would have a reason to go in anger. As it was, she was going to have to take this step of her own free will. The decision was hers.

“Jason?” she said.

He was wrapped up in
Jeopardy!
He waved.

When Claire reached the office, she was shaking. She couldn’t keep herself from shaking, even though she’d told herself that nothing had to happen, that it would all just be very innocent. Gala business.
We insist things be done in an aboveboard way.

Lock was at his desk with two glasses of wine already poured, but they didn’t even get to the wine until afterward, after he had taken her, with insane hunger, incredible electric urgency, up against the wall. It was fast, animal-like, there was clawing and biting. They were like a pile of gasoline-soaked rags that someone took a match to, they went up in flames, whoosh, just like that; they were two crossed wires that caused an explosion. Boom. Hot. Claire had no thoughts other than thoughts about her body and what it wanted. He touched her here, he kissed her there, she could not get enough, she did not want it to end. His body was so different from Jason’s. Jason was lean and muscular; he had six-pack abs that he was very proud of. Lock was softer, pudgier in the midsection, his chest was hairy—it was so foreign to Claire—but his arms were strong and he touched her with skill and desperation. He caressed her body, then grabbed it; he sucked, then bit. He was a man who had not made love in a long time, and his unchecked desire was touching, heartbreaking almost. Claire wanted to hand herself over:
Yes, take me, gobble me up, it’s okay.

She had landed. Welcome to Adultery
.

When it was over, Claire slid to the ground, stunned, and Lock, too, despite the lack of decorum, sat on the floor next to her and pulled her head into his lap and gently stroked her hair.

“How are you?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Me, either,” he said.

“I’m all messed up,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

She was grateful that it had happened quickly, so quickly that there had been no time for deciding—yes, no, right, wrong. When she thought back on it later, it seemed like an act of nature visited upon them—a tornado, a bolt of lightning. Lock.

She cried on the way home. Her whole body shook, despite the glass of wine, whose purpose all along, she realized, had been to calm her nerves. She was sad because she had done something very wrong: She had betrayed not only her husband but her own set of values. She was an adulteress. Then, too, she was sad because the sex had been amazing, it had been transporting, she was a hostage to it, to him, Lock. She was sad because she had to leave him. He would stay at the office, get cleaned up, and go home to Daphne, while Claire would go home to her kids. And Jason. She said,
When will I see you again?
He said,
I’ll be in touch.

It continued. They met once a week, twice a week; they arranged it by text message or by e-mail. Claire couldn’t explain it, she didn’t understand it, she was a captive of the country:
Adultery
. Lock had infected her, he was something she’d caught, he was a sickness—maybe, like the common cold, it would wear off in a week or two, but maybe it would linger and grow like cancer. It would kill her. Claire couldn’t decide if the worst thing about adultery was the guilt or the fear. The guilt was debilitating. It was worse than the guilt she harbored about Daphne and worse than the guilt that attended Zack’s birth. Those had been accidents, mistakes. They had been unintentional. This affair was deliberate, the most deliberate sin she had ever committed. As a child, she had memorized the act of contrition:
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you
. . . A priest once told her that sinners only thought about God after they had sinned, not before. This was Claire. She slept with Lock, she begged for forgiveness, as contrite as all the world, and then she slept with him again.

Claire was plagued by memories of her own parents. Her father, Bud Danner, had owned an electronics store in Wildwood. He was a heavy drinker and a wild philanderer. He had not, in the words of Claire’s mother, “been faithful for five minutes.” After work, he would go to the bar, where he caroused with a string of trashy women. Claire remembered her mother crying, her mother blaming herself, her mother so angry at her father that Claire thought she would kill him. She screamed, she threw things, he walked out—he seemed to have no shortage of places to go—and then Claire’s mother would smack herself in the face again and again. It was awful. It was the worst thing Claire had ever witnessed, her mother’s self-loathing. Claire had promised herself she would never be this way. She would not blame herself for things beyond her control. But of course she did, all the time. She had inherited her parents’ worst traits, their most despicable behavior. She certainly never believed she would follow in her father’s flawed footsteps and
cheat.
And yet here she was. As Claire spoon-fed Zack pureed squash, as she bathed the girls and folded their pretty clothes, as she chose peaches and rib-eye steaks at the grocery store, she recognized herself as a liar. She wasn’t the person her children thought she was; she was someone with a secret life. Even worse than feeling guilty was forgetting to feel guilty. The guilt should have been part and parcel with the adultery; it should have been constant. To not feel guilt was monstrous. Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things.

We’re going to hell,
Claire whispered in Lock’s ear one night.

There is no hell,
he whispered back.

The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught.

One night, after Claire came home from being with Lock, Jason said, “You smell funny.”

Panic seized Claire by the knees. “I do not.”

“You do. You smell funny. Why do you smell funny?”

She didn’t look at him, though he was sitting up in bed, staring at her. “You smell funny all the time,” she said. “You smell like cigarettes.” She got right into the shower.

One day, she couldn’t find her cell phone. Where was it? Claire looked everywhere—throughout the house, under the kids’ beds, in the drawers, in each of her purses, in the car, outside in the frosty grass, in the hot shop. Where was it? Had Zack taken it? She looked in the toy box. Had she left it at the supermarket? She called the supermarket; no one had turned in a phone. She called Siobhan. Siobhan said, “Call the phone, silly. See if anyone answers.”

Claire called the phone. Jason answered. Claire said, “What are you doing with my phone?”

Jason said, “I have no idea. I didn’t even know I had it until just now, when you called me.”

Claire’s stomach contracted until it was a tight ball of fear. This sounded like a lie. Had he taken her phone to check on her? Had he seen all the phone calls to the Nantucket’s Children office, or to the strange number that was Lock’s cell phone? Had he seen the texts? Meet me here, meet me there? Claire should have deleted them, one and all. She was such a
bloody fool,
such an innocent—she had not followed the most basic rule in covering her tracks. She got in the car and drove to Jason’s work site, thinking of how to reasonably explain herself. The worst thing would be if Lock called while the phone was in Jason’s possession. But there was an easy explanation: gala business. There were always questions about the gala that needed to be asked or answered.

Still, when Claire got the phone back, she erased every call with a sick and pounding heart. The fear was the worst thing.

Claire wanted to go to confession, but confession was only held on Saturdays at four o’clock, and every Saturday at four o’clock J.D. had a Pop Warner football game at the Boys & Girls Club, and Claire could not miss a game. It would be worse to miss her child’s football game than not to confess to her adultery, she decided, though her desire to confess was pressing. She wasn’t sure she could actually hand the truth over to Father Dominic, the priest who had baptized all four of her children and had administered J.D.’s and Ottilie’s First Communions. Claire adored Father Dominic, she’d had him to the house for dinner numerous times, and twice the two of them had gone to the movies together—once to see
Chicago
and once to see
Dreamgirls
(Father Dominic was a big fan of musicals; Jason could not abide them). The longer Claire went without confessing, the more convinced she became that she would not be able to say the words
I’m committing adultery
to Father Dominic. She would have to wait for a visiting priest, whom she didn’t know and who didn’t know her, or she would confess to Father Dominic to a gamut of general sins and hope that adultery was covered among them. But somehow Claire understood that confessing would not be confessing unless she confessed to Father Dominic about Lock Dixon. Anything short of this would be a cop-out and would not count. And so she went. She left the Pop Warner game at halftime, telling Jason she had a migraine and had to go home.

He said, “Will you take Zack with you, please?”

She said, “I can’t.”

He said, “I can’t watch Zack and Shea—
and
Ottilie and J.D.” Ottilie was cheerleading, adorable in her
N
sweater and her blue and white pleated skirt. Shea was kicking a football on the sidelines, chasing it, kicking it again. Zack was whining, clawing at Claire’s neck. Claire could not in good conscience leave Jason with all of the kids, but she had to get to church.