Fortunate Lives (30 page)

“I haven’t talked to Dad about this yet, Mom, because I really just decided it,” David said across the oak table, “but I think
I’m going to request a deferment from Harvard for next year.” He glanced up at her. Dinah’s face was immobile while she tried
to absorb what he had said, and so his voice became explanatory, persuasive. “I mean, what’s the point of going so soon? I
don’t have any idea what I want to do. And at Harvard you have to choose your major by the end of your freshman year, and
I don’t think I can know by then what I want to do.”

“Oh, David. Requesting a deferment’s a major decision to make. Have you really thought about it? All your friends
will be gone. Well, Christie will be here, but you don’t have any job….”

“They already said I could stay on at the café. And I could get some reading done. Reading on my own. I think it’s the right
thing for me. I mean, I’m not going to Harvard for any
reason
except because they admitted me.”

“Well, David, your decision is what counts, but I don’t think you’ve thought it out entirely. You don’t have any other real
plans, like a year in Europe or anything. I think working at the café during the winter could get real stale real fast.” Her
voice was gentle, though, not at all reproachful, and David looked up and smiled at her.

“I know. I’ve thought of all that. I’ll see what Dad thinks. I could make some money toward tuition, too.” He pushed back
from the table and took his glass to the sink. “I’d better get Anna Tyson home. I won’t be back for dinner. I’ll probably
be home late.”

When they had gone, Dinah stood at the sink washing the dirt off the tomatoes and zucchini and yellow squash, and putting
some in a basket for Martin to give to Helen LaPlante. Dinah looked out the window and studied the garden as, row by row,
it was lost in the dusk, and she forgot that David had fairly well abandoned it. She imagined the seasons ahead through which
it would pass under his tutelage. He would plow it under as it died back, mulch it against the winter, gaze out at it from
his bedroom window upstairs in January and February when it would be protected under a blanket of snow. She imagined the life
he would be leading, books they would discuss, dinners she would fix when Christie came over and when Sam and Ethan were home
for holidays. And then in the spring, he would till the plot, start the seedlings, and ready the garden once again for the
growing season.

In her contentment she let herself drift cautiously into thoughts of Martin and Netta. She wondered if the odd flash-ins she
had experienced—the image of Martin and
Netta together in the car, for instance—had been some sort of subliminal early-warning system. But she thought not. Her every
instinct was baffled by Ellen’s information, because now that she considered the possibility from every possible angle, she
was certain that Martin was not involved in any sort of real intimacy with Netta. Dinah loved Martin, and she knew she could
never, ever be attracted to a man who was sexually—or even emotionally—interested in a woman as wretchedly and earnestly literal
as Netta Breckenridge.

I
N THE COURSE OF
their marriage, Dinah and Martin Howells had slowly evolved an unspoken code of behavior that was peculiar only to themselves.
Over the years the landscape of their domestic life had been delineated in greater and more intricate detail; it had become
its own country with its requisite legends and myths, heroes and villains, victors and victims, customs and religion. Toby,
of course, during his lifetime, and Sarah and David had absorbed and become part of the family lore, its mystique, and all
its etiquette, even in its quirkiness. They adhered to it without a thought, although not one of the four of them realized
they shared fairly rigid ideas of the right and the wrong way to live one’s life.

When David, for instance, was called into the principal’s office several weeks before his graduation from West Bradford High
School and told that he would possibly be the recipient of three prizes during the ceremony, but that he and Ted McWayne,
who had not distinguished
himself otherwise, had come within one vote of each other by an outside panel in a competition for the Harold J. DeLong Book
Prize, David had, without a moment’s hesitation, suggested it go to the other boy. That night at dinner he told Dinah and
Martin and Sarah about the fact that he had won, but the notion of spreading this news beyond the family never once crossed
any of their minds. They all operated more or less on a principle of
oblige
without the
noblesse
.

Martin’s father, who had been a captain in the army in World War II, had steadfastly refused to accept the Veterans’ Housing
Benefit, even when the family was hard-pressed, because he had never left Staten Island, had never been engaged in real warfare.
It made no difference to him that, had he ever mentioned this subtlety of patriotism to friends or colleagues of his in Sheridan,
Mississippi, they would not have admired him for it, would probably have thought him a fool.

Dinah’s parents had honed through the years an equally individualized integrity. When she arrived home from her first year
at Ohio State with her sorority letters on the rear windshield of her Volkswagen, both parents expressed disapproval, even
disdain. And her father had been beside himself when the festivities of her brother’s wedding to the daughter of good friends
had been covered lavishly by the local press. “By God, the two of them have their pictures all over the newspapers! It’s all
a bunch of who-shot-John!”

Dinah’s brother Buddy had said to her in the aftermath of one of these outburts, “What do you think? One of the Briggses was
once on a ‘Wanted’ poster, or something?” She had laughed, but they had both understood that their father abhorred any sort
of public display of one’s private life.

Over time, Dinah and Martin unconsciously combined their separate legacies and established the mores of their
own marriage, and now each of them was amused or dismayed at those customs and prejudices of his or her own parents that Dinah
and Martin had discarded.

So, although the Howellses were indifferent about having their pictures in the paper, it would never have occurred to Martin,
for example, to wear or carry his Phi Beta Kappa key, and he would have been hard-pressed to admire anyone who did. Neither
he nor Dinah would have considered displaying any degrees or honors or personal photographs from their own academic careers,
graduations, or wedding on the walls of any of the public rooms of their house, although snapshots of the children in small
frames placed on end tables or on a bookcase were perfectly all right.

They both took a dim view of vanity license plates. Whenever Dinah was parking at the grocery or on Carriage Street, and caught
sight of an acquaintance’s sporty Mercedes convertible with the license plate “ALL MYN,” she was offended. And the only decals
that would ever grace any windshield of the Howellses’ cars were the ones that allowed them to get rid of recyclable waste
in the West Bradford landfill and certified that they were entitled to use the town park.

It was fine—when it was necessary—to buy a comfortable, safe car, but, even had they been able to afford one, they would have
thought it tasteless to own an expensive car designed purely for pleasure. These facets of deportment and taste were symptomatic
of a wider-ranging attitude: comfort was desirable, but excess or ostentation was very nearly immoral and just plain tacky.
If other people were immoderate, however, no criticism was ever to be made of them; and above all, one honored one’s word,
one’s promises, and adhered, in spite of any difficulty, to a tradition of honesty tempered by compassion.

Therefore, when David began to think that he would be staying on in West Bradford through the following
school year, he could no longer avoid considering his longstanding relationship with Christie Douglas and how inexcusably
unkind he had been to her over the last part of the summer. He had managed to rationalize his behavior thus far by persuading
himself that he would be leaving her anyway, that he would be meeting people from all over the country—all over the world.
Now he had to come to terms with the fact that he had been avoiding explaining this to her; he had been cowardly in putting
off a possible confrontation.

David arrived at Christie’s house ashamed of himself and quite miserable, but determined to apologize, to try not to hurt
her feelings any more than he probably already had. He hadn’t phoned ahead, but when he pulled into the drive, he could see
Christie and Meg Cramer lying on towels beside the pool in Christie’s backyard.

Since neither of her parents’ cars was in the driveway, he made his way through the gate and around the side of the house,
approaching the girls from across the pool. Christie glanced up at him and then lay her face back down on her arms, but Meg
drew herself up into a sitting position and began gathering things into her backpack: suntan lotion, a hairbrush, an extra
towel. She greeted David with a quick, polite smile, but was on her feet before David had come all the way around the pool.
“I’ve got to get home,” she said. “I have to be at work at five.”

Christie didn’t move or respond, and David was nervous. He sat down on the end of a chaise longue next to Christie’s towel,
but he still hadn’t said anything by the time Meg’s car pulled out of the driveway, and neither had Christie.

When he finally did speak, his voice was too loud in the echoing acoustics of the terrace and pool. “I hope it’s okay that
I came by,” he said. The immediacy of his own voice almost made him jump. Christie didn’t reply; her face was turned away
from him, her eyes closed. “I mean,
I know I haven’t called. I know I’ve been a real shit. I feel awful about what’s happened.” He still hadn’t got his voice
modulated, and his words rose hollowly or fell to a mumble.

“I care about you a lot, Christie. We were together for a long time. But I guess it just isn’t going to work out….” She had
opened her eyes and turned her head on her folded arms, and was regarding him with what seemed to him like curiosity. “I know
it’s my fault. I didn’t realize,” he went on, “that maybe I’m too much older than you.” She had slowly raised her head and
was lying on her side with her elbow bent and her head propped on her hand.

“Do you think that’s it?” she asked, not at all angrily, but with interest, and David began to feel relieved. He bent toward
her, his forearms resting across his knees.

“Oh, yeah, Christie,” he said, with a kind of muted enthusiasm. “I can see that I might have put too much pressure on you,
especially this year.” He was soft-voiced. This was the first year they had had sex together; he thought it was more tactful
not to be blatant about it. “We probably shouldn’t have stayed together for so long…. It wasn’t fair….”

“Really?” Christie asked, with soft curiosity. “I don’t know,” she said, considering it. “I really liked fucking. I thought
that was great.” Her voice was uninflected as if she were only stating a fact, and her tone made David unexpectedly defensive
and angry.

“Fucking. God! Give me a break, Christie.
I
never would have said that. And what do you mean, anyway? You were always totally freaked out for clays! You were always
afraid you’d be pregnant even though…” He had raised his voice, and Christie cast a disdainful look over him, interrupting
him.

“I liked having sex with you, I said. I didn’t want to have a
baby
with you.” She didn’t raise her voice, but she sat up slowly and looking at him appraisingly. “And, you know,
I don’t feel great about what’s happened either.” Her tone was almost dismissive. “I don’t think
two years
is really all that much difference in age. But mostly I just feel so embarrassed for you.”

David stood up, and Christie got up, too, shaking out her towel and folding it with calm deliberation. David had meant to
be repentant; he hadn’t intended to be furious. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh, it’s just that it’s really terrible to see you… I mean, I’ve cared about you for a long time….” and for a moment Christie
seemed about to lose her poise. She paused and bent to pick up her sunglasses, and then straightened and gazed kindly at David
and continued what she was saying. “I can’t help it. I feel
humiliated
for you that everyone knows about you and Netta Breckenridge. Now
that’s
a pretty big difference in age. I mean, what is she? Thirty? God, David, she has a little girl!”

David was enraged, and at the same time he knew he had no right to be. He hadn’t even known that Christie knew anything about
him and Netta. He had no idea that Christie had driven through Netta’s parking lot night after night, and gone home and wept
after seeing his car there. David didn’t even understand that he was suddenly humiliated for himself, but all at once Christie
understood it as she watched his expression become beleaguered. She crossed the carefully matched blue slate of the terrace,
and put her arms around David’s waist and pressed her face against his chest, and he automatically put his hands on her shoulders.