Chance Harbor (5 page)

Russell saw her expression and pushed the plates toward her. “Go for it,” he said. “I had a late lunch.”

They ate and talked more about the day’s events, then moved on to discuss her mother’s recent decision to sell the house at Chance Harbor. “I hate the idea,” Catherine admitted. “I’ve always loved fantasizing about summers on the island with Willow and her children. But I don’t see how we can take it on.”

“No. We can barely keep up with our own house.”

“I know. Besides, realistically, even if you have the whole summer off, I can’t get away more than three weeks a year. If Mom doesn’t want to go to Chance Harbor without Dad, what’s the point? The poor house would be one of those sad summer places that’s closed up most of the year.”

“Well, don’t give up yet. Your mom might change her mind.” Russell dipped a hunk of bread into the warmed goat cheese. “I think she’s being too hasty. Grief is clouding her perspective.”

“I know,” Catherine said. “But she says it will be too hard for her to be there without Dad. Funny. I never really thought of my parents as being close, especially after the whole thing with Zoe. But Mom really seems to miss him. I guess that’s natural after so many years, but he sure wasn’t an easy man to love.”

“Eccentric and stubborn,” Russell agreed. “But those qualities got him off the island and into high tech. I always admired the guy.”

“I know. He liked you, too.” Catherine was quiet for a minute, her throat tight with grief. Occasionally she saw a small, wiry man who resembled her father and her sorrow fell like a veil, clouding her vision. If the pain of missing him was like that for her, what must it be like for her mother?

She reached for a helping of grilled asparagus. “The thing is, I know Dad would want us all to keep going to PEI,” she said. “Chance Harbor was the one place I saw him act completely relaxed.” She smiled. “Remember how Dad started behaving like a ten-year-old the minute we arrived, so excited and happy? I don’t think I ever heard him laugh as much anywhere else.”

When Russell didn’t respond, Catherine lifted her head from the asparagus. He was focused on his cell phone again, holding it under the table, his eyes cast down at its screen. Catherine could hear the phone vibrating, an angry sound like a dentist’s drill. “You might as well answer it,” she said. “You’re not listening to me anyway.”

Russell looked up sharply. “No, I’m listening.” He picked up a shrimp and bit into it so quickly that Catherine heard the crunch from her side of the table; he must have forgotten to pull the shell off the tail. Nonetheless, he kept mindlessly chewing, his gaze still distant.

Catherine felt a slow panic rising and set down her fork. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Russell said, then dropped the shrimp and buried his face in his hands, shoulders quaking.

“Oh my God. What is it, honey?” Catherine reached over to touch his wrist, but Russell flinched away.

After a moment, he put his hands down. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry. “Sorry.”

“So,” she said slowly, “I’m guessing you surprised me by arranging this date tonight for a reason. What is it? Are you ill?” She swallowed hard around a sudden knot of fear, thinking: cancer. They were at that age when everyone was being diagnosed.

“No. I’m fine.”

“Is someone we know ill?”

“Nothing like that.”

When Russell fell silent again, Catherine felt a flash of irritation. She’d had a tough day and was too tired to play twenty questions. “Did you lose your job?”

Russell laughed, a sudden unexpected bark. “Not yet. But soon, probably. I’m sorry.”

“Shit,” she said, doing some quick mental calculations: the mortgage, car payments, utilities. They could make it on her salary, barely. But if Russell were laid off, Willow would lose her tuition waiver. What then? “That’s bad news.”

“No kidding.”

“But why would they let you go?” Her mind was stumbling through a thicket of possibilities. “You’ve been there longer than almost anyone. Did the school lose its accreditation? Is there a funding issue? I don’t get it. Surely they could have warned you before the school year started. . . .”

“It’s nothing like that.” Russell’s voice was brusque now. “It’s nothing to do with the school or their money. It’s me.”

Now Catherine’s hands went clammy. Last year a teacher was fired for looking at child pornography on a school computer. Another teacher was suspended for making racist remarks about a Native American student.

She couldn’t imagine Russell—her ethical, kind, compassionate, loving, smart husband—doing anything that would harm his students or cost him his teaching job. No, this had to be a mistake. They’d fight it. She had two friends who were lawyers. It would be all right.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t make me guess anymore. Just tell me.”

Russell tried to smile but didn’t succeed. His mouth twisted up on one side and down at the other corner, making him look like a stroke victim. “I’m going to be a father,” he said.

“
What
?” She stared at him, certain she’d misheard.

“It’s true.” The smile was working its way into a more familiar shape, the grooves deepening on either side of Russell’s handsome mouth into a nearly recognizable expression of happiness. But his eyes were still red and his knee was jumping under the table as he repeated tonelessly, “I’m going to be a father.”

“And yet, how funny. I’m not going to be a mother,” Catherine said, clutching her drink as if they were in the middle of an earthquake, magnitude 8.8. But it wasn’t the glass or the table or the floor trembling. It was her. She had started shaking all over.

Russell winced. She realized that he’d been doing a lot of wincing lately. It was okay when they were talking about newspaper headlines, house chores, or car repairs. But she absolutely did
not
want him wincing at her. Like she was the cause of his distress. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’s all you have to say?
I’m sorry
?” Her voice rose on the last two words, causing a few diners to glance in their direction. Good. Let them be witnesses to this sudden collapse of their marriage.

“I’m . . .” He stopped himself in time. “Words can’t express how terrible I feel, Catherine. I never meant to hurt you. Listen, I’m not really very hungry. Have you eaten enough? Maybe we should get out of here.” He glanced around.

The restaurant was full—the height of the Friday-night post-work crowd—and now Catherine understood that’s what Russell had counted on. When he’d asked her out on this “date,” he must have been planning to announce his big news in public to keep her reaction in check. He was going to have a baby!

A baby, something they’d both wanted and hoped for and paid big money for and failed at for years. A decade of wasted energy, foolishly hoping for something that came to nothing. Together they’d mourned and then come to terms with being childless. Then they’d become Willow’s guardians. A miracle family. They were happy.

Or so she’d thought.

Catherine was shaking even harder now—from doubt, fear, shock, and, most of all, fury. Russell was still watching her, but he was also fondling the phone in his pocket, perhaps silencing a call. A call from the mother of his child, no doubt, wondering if he’d done the dirty deed, delivered the news and, P.S., done it while having dinner in the same restaurant where Russell had taken her—Catherine, his wife!—to celebrate their last wedding anniversary.

Diamonds: he’d given her a pair of diamond earrings. She’d given him a watch. They’d kissed while walking down Newbury Street that night, and on impulse they’d ridden the swan boats in Boston Public Garden with a group of giggling Japanese tourists who had captured Russell and Catherine in their pink cloud of happiness on videos they would take home to Japan as part of their Boston memories. She and Russell would be kissing in the cloud for eternity, no matter what happened here on earth.

“Why leave?” Catherine said. “Where would we go to finish our conversation? Home to Willow and my
mother
?” She glanced out the window. Still raining. “Who is she?” She suddenly flashed on the hours Russell had spent working on his book in his office, on how he’d stayed home in August instead of coming with them to Chance Harbor.

“Nobody you know,” he said.

Her body felt numb with shock, but some part of her mind was still engaged, sorting through data like a computer, examining possibilities. How could getting another woman pregnant cost Russell his job? Then it dawned on her. “She’s someone you work with, right?”

Russell had the grace to look surprised. That must be the expression he reserved for clever students who spoke up in class. “Yes. Look, this wasn’t anything I ever imagined doing, Catherine. It just kind of happened. It was like being swept down a mountain in an avalanche. All I could do was swim to the surface and hope I ended up in one piece.”

“Do. Not. Tell. Me. You. Love. Her.” She spit the words out like ice cubes.

The waiter appeared. He was dark and handsome, just what a Spanish restaurant required, though his Indian features suggested he was Mexican or Guatemalan. He was savvy enough to sense disaster and looked anxious. “More tapas, señores?”

“I think we’ve had enough to eat, thank you.” Catherine fixed her eyes on Russell, daring him to make a run for it. “But we’d love another pitcher of sangria.”

“Another pitcher?” Russell raised an eyebrow. “Really, do you think that’s . . . ?”

The waiter glanced from one to the other and made his decision. “
Sí, señora,
I will bring that for you
pronto
,” he said, and dashed off with a flash of shiny black shoes.

“I plan to be here for a while,” Catherine said, settling back in her chair, “hearing all about how you’re finally going to have that baby you always wanted.”

“Believe me, it was an accident.” Russell closed his eyes as his phone vibrated again.

“Just answer the damn thing,” she said. “We both know who it is.”

He shook his head. “She can wait.”

“Only for about nine more months.” Catherine noted the sudden flush rising from Russell’s neck—he always got blotchy when he was upset—and said, “What? Is it less than that? How long before the happy event?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on, Russell. I bet you can figure it out. When did she tell you about the baby? This week? A month ago?”

“Mid-August.”

Why was he being so cagey? Guilt, she hoped. “All right. That wasn’t so hard, answering a simple question, was it? Here’s another one: When’s the baby due?”

“January fifteenth.”

“January?” Catherine did a quick calculation. “
January
? You were busy fucking some woman without protection while we were burying my
father
?”

“It wasn’t like that!” Russell’s face was on fire now, a patchwork of pink and white.

The waiter arrived with the new pitcher of sangria and, after glancing at them both, set it squarely in front of Catherine and beat another hasty retreat.

“No?” She poured herself a glass. A full glass. “Tell me, then, what it was like.”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Catherine.”

“I’m not doing anything to me. You are. So tell me. Who is she? What does this have to do with you losing your job? Is she another teacher? A parent? A trustee?” Her eyes widened as she pictured the only colleague of Russell’s she knew well, the curvy Spanish teacher, a lively brunette in her twenties who was married to the head of school. Second marriage, of course. “Not the head’s wife, Yolanda?” That would certainly explain Russell being let go from work.

Russell remained silent as Catherine felt panic rising from the pit of her stomach to clog her throat, a sour physical lump too enormous to swallow. She was having trouble breathing around it.

As Russell’s face mirrored her stricken expression, she finally let herself understand what he’d hoped to hide from everyone. “It’s a student.”

“Yes,” Russell said, a soft exhalation of sound. “I’m so sorry.”

“I swear to God, Russell, if you apologize to me one more time, I will cut your balls off with this knife.” Catherine waved the serrated bread knife around for emphasis, causing the waiter to rush over again.

“More bread?” he suggested.

Catherine smiled at him around teeth that felt like fangs. “No, thank you.”

The waiter reached for the knife with a knowing look. He must have been familiar with knife-wielding jilted wives. Catherine obediently handed it to him. Then she passed him the bread basket and her dishes, too, after whisking crumbs into her palm and dumping those on her plate out of habit. She’d been a waitress for too many years to leave a mess. “You can take all this away. We’re nearly done here. Thank you.”

“As you wish.” The waiter bowed and removed the aftermath of their dinner.

“I cannot believe I married a pervert.” Catherine clung to her anger, which was all that kept her from dissolving.

“Please, Catherine. Lower your voice.”

“You abused a child!”

“She’s eighteen,” Russell said. “Hardly a child.”

“She’s hardly older than your own daughter! What will Willow think of you doing this to her?” Catherine folded her arms to stop herself from slapping him.

“I didn’t do this to Willow!” Russell said. “And I didn’t do it to
you,
either. It just happened, Catherine.”

“Stop saying that!” Catherine shouted, causing heads to swivel. Good! Let them look. Let Russell’s face stay scarlet and shamed. “Obviously this girl didn’t make a baby all by herself. How did this even happen, Russell? I swear to God, I will not leave this table until you tell me who it is. I’m bound to find out anyway. Tell me!” She threw back another gulp of sangria.

He sighed, wincing again. “Her name is Nola Simone. I met her last year. She was in my AP history class and started coming in for extra help. And, well. Those extra help sessions turned into actual conversations about things we’re both interested in. Things you don’t really care about,” he added. “Nola loves hearing me talk about my dad’s career in politics and my memoir. She’s a Civil War buff, too, just like I am.” He spread his hands. “We connected on commonalities.”