Belonging (16 page)

“I’ve got a lot of changes taking place everywhere,” Joanna murmured.

“Really?” He was rising to take his leave; instead he sat back down and looked at her intently. “Good changes?”

He seemed so concerned she felt almost guilty. “Well, yes, good changes, but major ones. I’m moving here from New York. And I’m leaving a job I like a lot.”

“Do you have a supportive partner?”

For a moment she didn’t understand what he meant. Then, smiling ruefully, she admitted, “No. No partner at all. But I do have good friends here.”

He leaned forward, as if to impress on her the weight of his words. His gaze was calm and steady. “It sounds to me as if you’re going through a lot all at one time. Simply being pregnant with twins is a major feat in itself. You have to take care of yourself. Your mind as well as your body. According to your chart, you have no relatives. Will you be able to afford help toward the end of your pregnancy, and then after the birth of your twins?”

“Yes.” She felt her face flush. “Money won’t be a problem.”

“That’s good, then. That will make things much easier. I’d advise you to buy some good books on pregnancy and childbirth, especially about twins, and also decide if you want natural childbirth, and if you do, think of who you might ask to be your partner. See if you can’t find a friend to share this experience with you.” His smile was very sweet. “You’ll need a friend.”

Joanna was warm with affection for Gardner Adams; she felt at once like his mother and his daughter. “All right.”

“And call anytime if you have any questions or worries. Don’t be embarrassed by the smallest thing. You shouldn’t let yourself be anxious.”

“All right. Thank you.”

He rose then, handing her a slip. “You can get dressed now. Please give this to the receptionist. And make an appointment for a month from now. Good luck.”

Joanna sat for a few moments after the physician left the room, almost palpably absorbing Gardner Adams’ warmth, as if a nimbus of light had been left shining in the air. Looking around the room again, this time she saw past the medical equipment to the
pictures on the walls. Framed with blue or pink, often hand-lettered and decorated with bows and ribbons and rattles, were photographs of babies Gardner Adams had delivered. Most of the pictures had a smiling mother and father leaning around the baby in a kind of completed circle with the baby as the hub.

As she dressed she thought of other photos: those of Chip that Carter carried in his wallet. The framed photos Jake kept on his desk of Emily and his grown sons—and even one of his golden retriever, Bucky. The walls covered with photo collages Tory had made of her family on various trips and holidays. The albums all her friends had of the years of their lives as their children grew from babies toward adulthood.

She had a few photographs of her parents as children, and even one of her as a baby in her mother’s arms with her father standing proudly nearby. But her mother hadn’t had the time or inclination for keeping albums, and they would only have been a bother during her many moves. The few photographs she did keep were tossed loosely in the bottom of a shoe box Erica had used to carry old costume jewelry she couldn’t bring herself to throw away.

Who would be in the picture with her and her twins when they were born in October? Anyone? Feeling rather dismal, Joanna dressed and left the examination room.

Doug Snow was completing another job and couldn’t start work at her place for about a month. Joanna had moved out of New York, but she had things to do before she could settle into her house—things to buy. She flew to Boston, rented a car, and treated herself to a monthlong shopping spree throughout New England. She drove up into Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont and paid extravagant prices for the plainest old pine pieces to be shipped to Nantucket. She stayed at charming guesthouses in small country towns, dining at quaint little inns, tasting the arrival of spring in the tender asparagus, juicy lamb, delicate berries served over ice cream. She took a room at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston for a week while searching out and buying a new queen-sized pale oak bed with four square posters, a gauzy canopy, and the best mattress money could buy. She bought Royal Worcester china for everyday use, Limoges for dinner parties. She bought a coffeemaker, a toaster, a microwave, damask tablecloths and napkins, sterling silverware, delicate champagne flutes. She sat for hours comparing swatches of fabric for drapes.

During that month as she drove from town to town, she was content with her own company. Her mother had trained her early on to amuse herself, and waiting for Carter to
find time to be with her had also sharpened her self-sufficiency. When she was lonely, she called Tory and talked to her for hours about her treasures. But she wasn’t often lonely. At night in hotel rooms she made lists and drawings and diagrams, envisioning where the furniture should go in each room of her house. When she couldn’t bear to think of home furnishings for one more moment, she went to a movie—a real luxury in her life, for during the five years of FH, she’d been really too frantically busy to have time for movies. Sometimes she simply stayed in her hotel room and watched a movie on television.

She tried not to mind being cut off from the network and all its accompanying news. She assured herself she didn’t need to worry about competition now; the end of spring and all of the summer were fallow months for television. Everyone knew better than to challenge sunshine and warm weather, so it was almost certain that any show that would rival hers would premiere in September. Still, she bought
Interview
and
Variety
and
Premiere
and
TV Guide
, searching for any signs of possible competition. It was funny how even the old, familiar titles of
Designing Women
and
This Old House
always caused her heart to lurch with dread. Her audience was devoted, but not large; she couldn’t bear to lose anyone to an imitation show on another network. But she still held the field to herself. She thought.

Just to be certain, to put herself at ease, she spent a morning with her charge card and the telephone, subscribing to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences newsletter and magazine, to the
International Journal of Satellite Communications
, and to
TV Executive Daily
, as well as a few other trade newspapers and periodicals. That simple task demonstrated to her with startling clarity how much of the tedious paperwork Gloria had done for her. She would miss her even more, Joanna realized, when all those publications started arriving at her house. Gloria had always scanned and excerpted them for her, clipping out and highlighting anything significant. Now she’d have to plow through it all herself.

What she missed even more was the inside network gossip. She made a note to ask Jake to have the network newsletter mailed to her on Nantucket; but what she really needed was a spy to pass along the early-warning rumors. Many times during the month of May Joanna reached for a phone, intending to call Dhon; but always she withdrew her hand. Dr. Adams’ careful voice admonished her: if she wanted to carry these babies to term, she had to watch her blood pressure. Dhon existed in a state of permanent frenzy.
She had to rest, to relax. That meant forgetting about the network and her show for the next few months.

Once she made up her mind, she discovered it was easier to do than she’d anticipated. She was finishing the fourth month of her pregnancy and the nausea had dissipated. In its place her wise hormones generated a kind of soothing honey in her blood, a delicious languor. She didn’t feel her usual drive to accomplish things, to get on with it all. She wasn’t anxious or hurried or pressured or worried—she was lazy. Her stomach was quite swollen now. Because she carried twins, she looked much further along than she was. One day she bought an entire new wardrobe of maternity clothes. And comfortable shoes—ah, the exquisite pleasure of comfortable shoes! She’d always worn very high heels at the network, wanting to appear sexy and powerful at any and every moment, but now she dropped her standards and her arches and wore Rockports and Reeboks and moccasins.

The last purchases she made before she flew back to Nantucket were twelve enormous photograph albums, a red leather diary, and a compact, very clever video camera. She’d come up with a brilliant idea: she’d keep a record, a diary, of the renovation of her house, complete with videos of each stage of the work. Perhaps when she returned to the network, she would do a segment, or several segments, on Joanna Jones’ own fabulous home.

On the first day of June, Joanna moved into her house. It was a brilliant spring day, sunny and not yet humid or hot. As ungainly delivery trucks rumbled into her driveway, the local cable company installed a satellite dish. The cost was high—around thirty-five hundred dollars—but she couldn’t imagine life without television; she would have paid anything. The dish, small, black, and fairly unobtrusive amid the tangle of brush, was brought in and a trench dug in the ground to the house to hide the cables. When the work was completed, she had around one hundred and fifty channels available on her new forty-five-inch RCA stereo projection television. Just in case she couldn’t find anything she liked, she added a VCR. All that was tax deductible.

After the movers and their trucks had rumbled away, leaving her alone at last, Joanna went through her house, putting snowy sheets on her bed, hanging thick soft towels in her bathroom, plugging in her telephones and television and toaster.

The spring evening filled the house with a pastel light; she didn’t realize how late
it was until an ache in her back caused her to check her watch. Almost nine o’clock. No wonder she was exhausted!

She made herself a drink of cranberry juice mixed with sparkling water and went out the French doors at the back of the house. The moment she sat down, the dew on the steps soaked through her jeans. It was a misty spring evening, the far horizon and the near edges of her property blurred with drifting fog. She thought of moving to a drier spot, but now that she’d relaxed, she was too tired to move, and it was so warm that even damp she wasn’t cold.

The absolute silence was bliss. There was no wind, and the house was far enough away from the ocean so that when the water was calm like this, she couldn’t hear its rhythmic lapping. Even the birds had settled down for the night. A rabbit ventured forth from the wild moor side, froze at the sight of Joanna, then hurried off down under the
Rosa rugosa
that ran to the sea.

She had never known such silence, such peace.

It was not a thrilling sunset. The silver light slowly drained from all the air, like water sinking through sand, taking the shine with it, leaving the surface gritty and dull. It was wonderfully tranquil, and enveloping. She felt not apart from nature, a human speck goggling at a spectacle, but part of nature, part of everything, as if she were a figure in a pointillist painting, the dots of her body blurring into those of the landscape.

Oh, she was getting very kharmic in her old age, she thought, and smiled at herself. She raised her long blue cotton sweater and placed her hands gently against her belly. She could relax at last.

Did Carter wonder where she was? Did he miss her? Was he sad?

She forced Carter from her thoughts.

Joanna sat on the wide steps of her home, leaning back on her elbows on the step behind her, looking into the darkness. This was the first time in all her life she’d ever been alone, outdoors, in such an isolated spot at night. She was not afraid. All color had drained from the landscape. Sky and sea, all the outside, was dark. Joanna felt her lighted house rise behind her, sound and safe, like a ship carrying her into the deep unknown.

Nine

Joanna was just sipping her first cup of boring herbal tea when she heard the crunch of tires on gravel and then a knock. The carpenters were here.

“Good morning,” she said, opening the door.

“Morning,” Doug Snow replied. Today he wore jeans and a worn khaki work shirt washed to an appealing softness; the sleeves were rolled up over his strong, muscular forearms. “Ms. Jones, this is my son, Todd. He’ll work with me.”

“Hello, Todd.” Joanna smiled, remembering at once where she’d seen this gorgeous blond male before—on the ferry ride over, surrounded by girls. Of course. Like father, like son. She shook his hand.

“I thought we’d start to work on those rooms upstairs you want made into a study,” Doug told her.

“Perfect,” Joanna said. “If you’d like coffee first—”

“No, thanks. We’ve had breakfast. We’ll just bring our stuff in.”

“I’m planning to go through the house with a video camera,” Joanna told them. “Take a series of before and after shots. I hope you won’t mind if I come in with the camera while you’re working. I’ll keep out of your way.”

“No problem,” Doug replied, and turned and went out the door. Todd followed.

For a while Joanna just leaned against the living room door, watching as the Snows carried their sledgehammers and power tools and sawhorses through the wide central hall and up the stairs. They were careful not to scrape the walls as they went, and they moved calmly, but the sight of the muscles and sinews bunched and swollen under their shirts as they labored and the sound of their breathing as it quickened and deepened had a brute carnality that stirred Joanna. Even their footsteps as they moved in the room above her head fell hard and explosively on her ears, like hammer blows. She was surprised and slightly dismayed at the strength of her reactions but also excited and apprehensive. She was causing real and concrete changes to take place in this old, dignified home. The sense of responsibility was rather daunting.

Deciding to use her nervous tension to fuel her own work, she dug the new camcorder out of its box, stuck in a fresh cassette, and hurried back upstairs. Quickly she
panned around the walls of the two boxy bedrooms the Snows would change into one. Then she went through the house, shooting everywhere except the boring basement.