Between Husbands and Friends (6 page)

We did transplant one of Mrs. McIntyre’s rosebushes, which a neighbor’s fast-growing holly tree had put in the shade. I knew little about plants then (I know little now), but I must have done something right, for after it was transplanted, the leaves dried and the bush looked dead, and then, that same summer, new leaves sprouted, and an entire new stem, tender and juicy, grew off the tough, gnarled, woody base.

Other than that, we never paid attention to the backyard because about the time we bought this house, Aunt Grace died, leaving me her grand old Victorian on Nantucket. Over the years we rented out the Nantucket house in June and July and September, using the rent money to pay for taxes and necessary repairs, saving the month of August for ourselves and, later, the Cunninghams. So when I think of summer, of outdoors, of sunshine and fresh air and respite
from all the pressures of daily life, I think of Nantucket, not this backyard.

In many ways I am more myself in Nantucket than here. Or at least a different kind of self. Freer. More sensual. Less constrained. Certainly I have acted that way.

Here I sense a kind of watching, a kind of
awareness
in all the windows of all the houses around me. I have no privacy in this backyard. I have no privacy in this town, really. Always within me is a deep urge, a little gem of discontent, a desire to do something different, something wild … What? Dance naked in the moonlight? Well, perhaps. Is my yearning for a little recklessness related to that queer little attack I just had? Is one part of me, subconsciously aware that I’m terminally ill, telling another part of me to gather my rosebuds while I may?

Whatever I want to gather, I can’t do it here, where the neighbors might see. I love Sussex. I love it that our children know the police chief, the postman, and ancient Evangeline Champion, the town eccentric who wanders the streets in the formal gowns she wore to college dances sixty years ago. Margaret and Jeremy drink delicious water from the town reservoir and eat fruit and vegetables fresh from the nearby organic gardens. They can walk to a friend’s house safely; they can ride bikes through the town. I rarely begrudge the newspaper or any of the town committees we’re on the time that we spend there.

But I do feel a certain obligation to be a responsible citizen in every way, and sometimes I resent that. As I grow older, that sense of responsibility seems to fit me better, much like a large dress I’ve been wearing for years and am at last growing into.

And secretly I find that alarming. I wear L.L.Bean and outlet Gap, but in the closet of my private life lurks a tight black miniskirt, the secret uniform of at least one true part of my soul. And only Kate Cunningham knows.

It’s funny, but if I had to say whom I’m closer to, who knows me better, I’d have a hard time choosing between my husband and my best friend.

Oh, of course I’d say Max. We’ve been married fifteen years, since college. He’s seen me in sexual extremes and in labor and having a tantrum in an old bathrobe. We have two children.

But Kate’s seen a hidden side of me, a side Max doesn’t know. The wild side of me. It always has been Kate who has egged me on to enjoy whatever little bit of wickedness I’ve got left in this aging old responsible body. Of course, I’ve returned the favor.

But neither Kate nor Max knows everything about me. I have some pretty serious secrets from them both. I haven’t talked with Kate about the job offer. She’ll go gaga, she’ll insist that I take it. And whether I do or don’t take the job, she’ll understand. In many ways she understands me more than Max does. But how long can I continue to lie for her? Is a secret the same as a lie?

That first year in Sussex, Max nearly lived at the newspaper. I understood. And I was content, feathering my nest, raising my chick, writing obits or articles when Max needed me to, yet having plenty of time to dote on my darling daughter.

Still I was eager for warm weather. I wanted to feel the sun on my shoulders while Margaret and I planted flowers around the house. So it was a drag when the first week of June came grizzling in all cold and rainy. Margaret developed a gluey head cold that made her fussy and clingy. She whined all day, wanting me to hold her, carry her, read to her, and then pushing me away when I tried to wipe the green mucus that bubbled out of her chapped nose. Her silky dark curls became damp and matted. Patches of red bloomed on her cheeks. She fought me terribly when I tried to take her temperature, even though I tried to make it into a game. Outside the rain drizzled down the windows while the wind battered and whipped the tender new leaves of trees and flowers. I think I read
The Cat in the Hat
forty-seven times that week. I slopped around in jeans, moccasins, and sweatshirts, tissues tucked in every pocket, singing nonsense songs to cheer Margaret as I fixed dinner with her riding my hip like a baby monkey.

By Friday night, Margaret’s cold abated. Saturday the sun came out, the temperature shot up, and Margaret’s body was once again inhabited by her real self, a happy, busy, independent little girl.

That spring Max had agreed to be umpire for the Boys’ and Girls’ Club’s minor league, two teams of nine- to twelve-year-old boys who played every Tuesday and Saturday afternoon. I thought it would be fun for Margaret to watch her father; I thought it would be bliss simply to get out of the house. I put on a flowered summer dress and put Margaret in a yellow playsuit. She in turn dressed Betsy, this week’s favored doll, in yellow, too.

“Okay, Sunshine, let’s hit the road!” I said to Margaret.

“Okay, Sunshine, let’s hit the road!” Margaret said to Betsy.

I buckled her into the car seat and sang “Take Me out to the Ball Game” all the way to the school playground.

The roads leading to the playing fields were lined with cars. I parked, unbuckled and lifted my sweet-smelling child from her car seat. Now she squirmed and refused to be carried, insisting on walking, each of us holding one of Betsy’s tiny hard plastic hands. As we neared the
metal bleachers, my heart lifted at the sight of the broad green fields spreading beneath the cloudless blue sky.

“See Daddy?” I exclaimed, pointing. “He’s standing behind the catcher, there, by the fence.”

“See Daddy?” Margaret asked her doll. “Wave to Daddy, Betsy.”

I knew everyone there, at least by name. Some of the men were in T-shirts and jeans. Many had come directly from work and stood rolling up their shirtsleeves and undoing their ties while they watched. Some of the women wore short-shorts already; others, not able to believe that the cool weather had finally ended, were in jeans and sweatshirts. I felt light and feminine in my flowered dress; the chance to don it was probably the true reason I’d come out to the ball game. I was yearning for flowers, loose fabrics, the sun on bare skin. But I’d been a good mother; I’d rubbed my daughter’s chubby limbs with sunblock, and dabbed some on her little pink nose.

“Margaret!” Amy, one of my daughter’s playgroup friends, spotted her, raced toward us, and led her off toward a group of little girls.

I joined Amy’s mother. “I intended for this to be a chance for Margaret to see her daddy in action.”

Sandy Granger smiled. “And I thought Amy would want to cheer for Tom.” She nodded toward her nine-year-old son, playing shortstop for the Yankees. “She does have occasional spurts of enthusiasm. Whenever the crowd applauds, she yells ‘Go, Tom!’ whether he’s on the playing field or not.”

I laughed. “They’re probably too young. We won’t stay long, but it’s nice to get out in the sunshine.”

Amy had brought a blanket which she spread beneath the bleachers. She and Margaret and two other little girls settled there, whispering busily. I sat down on a bleacher and leaned my elbows on my knees. Max wore a chest guard and a face mask. He didn’t see me; his concentration on the game was total. I liked the authority of his decisions, the way he bellowed when he yelled “Ball!” or “Stee-rike!”

The pitcher was good, throwing more strikes than I thought a kid his age was capable of, and the batters who were struck out did commendable jobs of controlling their quivering chins and teary eyes. All the little boys were so cute in their uniforms, the Red Sox in red, the Yankees in blue. Some of the boys were all knees and elbows while the older boys were beginning to acquire paddings of prepubescent fat. The batboy was the cutest, perhaps only seven years old,
and not much bigger than the bat.

“Come on, Mikey! You can do it, Mikey!” The mother next to me screamed so much her voice was hoarse. “I can’t help it,” she told me. “He struck out in the last inning when the bases were loaded. If he doesn’t get one hit in this game he’ll be one miserable little son of a gun.”

The sun fell like a blessing on my face, the sky was blue and infinitely high, the air fresh and fragrant with the smell of new-mown grass. In the further field, a mixed-sex soccer game was in process. The players were college age, all of them tall, lean, and already tanned. As I watched one young woman in a red shirt and very short shorts swivel and dart between two young men, I found myself wondering how she could do it. How she could concentrate on the game. I would have been paralyzed by sensual sensations. I was nearly paralyzed by sensual sensations now, a married mother watching children play ball. It was the warmth of the day, the fragrance of the grass … it was the proximity of the other men, all heights and sizes, watching with their arms folded or lounging back on the bleachers, suddenly yelling, “All right!” I loved men, I thought, and it suddenly hit me that I’d like to sleep with them all.

Just then Matthew Cunningham streaked past the bleachers, his mother in hot pursuit. Kate grabbed her son up, seized the Popsicle someone else had discarded from his hand, dumped it in the trash, then came toward me. She wore another simple linen sheath, this time in lime green, and her blond hair was tied back with a green ribbon. She wore sandals. Her toenails were painted the same color as her perfectly shaped fingernails. The polish matched her lipstick.

“The boy down the road plays on the Yankees,” she said, bouncing Matthew on her hip and wiping his face with a tissue from her pocket. “Matthew adores Gary. I
thought
he’d be fascinated to watch Gary play.”

I laughed. “My husband’s an umpire. I thought Margaret would like to see him, and look where she is.” I pointed to the shady area beneath the bleachers where Margaret and Amy were exchanging their dolls’ clothes.

“Which one is your husband?”

I pointed. “At home plate.”

At that moment someone called time out and Max lifted off his face mask and wiped the sweat off his face. His hat had mashed his black curls down around his head.

“He’s cute,” Kate said.

“Yes, I guess he is. He looks even better when he’s not covered with sweat.”

“Oh, I kind of like them that way,” Kate said, and before I could respond, Matthew squirmed. She set him down, he raced off, she followed.

I watched the game. The pitcher caught a line drive by simply lifting his hand in the air. Then he had two strikes on the next batter, a boy so thin he looked like he was made from coat hangers, when the thin boy whacked the ball so hard it flew over the heads of the outfield, and into the soccer game. There were two runners on base; the thin boy hit a home run; everyone screamed and jumped up and down until the bleachers shook. The pitcher struck the next batter out and ended the inning, but damage had been done. The Yankees were behind. This was good training for real life, I thought; this would teach kids all sorts of things: team spirit, self-control.

The pitcher raced off the field, his mouth clenched, looking ready to cry.

“Wally.”

I turned to watch as a young man about twenty approached the wire fence near the wooden dugout.

“Come here. I want to talk to you.” The young man’s voice was low but husky and strong. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt. His shoulders were wide, his stomach flat, his thighs long and thick.

He must have been the pitcher’s older brother. The pitcher took off his cap and I could see that they both had thick sandy hair and handsome, wide, all-American faces. The brothers faced each other through the fence.

The older brother hooked his hands into the wire. His arms were muscular and the blond hair on them glittered in the sunlight. “Don’t let it get you down. It happens to everyone.”

“I sucked, Dan,” Wally said.

“Yeah, you did, but just for a few seconds. The rest of the game you’ve been brilliant.” Dan squatted to get on a more even level with his younger brother. “Remember what the coach said about concentration. Forget what happened. Focus on right now.”

When had Max last worn jeans? I couldn’t remember. It was cords or flannel in the cold weather and khakis in hot. What was it about jeans that was so sexy? Dan, brother of Pitching Wally, was oblivious of the way his jeans outlined the sleek thick curve of his thighs and the tidy bulging packet at his crotch.

What would it be like to spend an afternoon alone with him? To run my cool palms against the hot length of his back? To lift his T-shirt and see the sun catch fire in the twists of hair on his chest and belly and groin? Embarrassed, I forced myself to look away from the young man.

As if pulled there by her own magnetism, my gaze landed on Kate’s face. She was smiling at me, a smile full of mischief and insolence. She wiggled her eyebrows and glanced
over at Pitching Wally’s sexy brother, then glanced back at me and nodded. She knew exactly what I was thinking. She was thinking it, too. I laughed out loud, and for a few more seconds I felt free of my responsible, reliable, good-citizen persona. It was like lifting off the earth, like being weightless, like breathing an atmosphere made of the driest champagne. It was a little bit like falling in love.