Nell (30 page)

Clary walked along beside Nell in silence for a while. “No,” she said quietly. “No. I’d hate that movie, too.”

Nell worried about Clary. She was afraid she’d sink into a slump. But when they got back to the cottage, Clary said, “I’m going to call Sam,” and after she called him, she said, “I’m going to go down to meet him at the Atlantic Café. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

So Clary was pushing on with her life, Nell thought. Still she felt melancholy, for Clary and for men and women in general. She called Andy to say good night, then went to bed alone. She couldn’t fall asleep, although she was tired, although she very much wanted the oblivion that sleep offered. She missed Andy’s body next to hers in bed, missed his warmth and bulk. And she thought how it would be very soon, when the children came back and then in September, when she went back to Arlington. Then she would be sleeping alone again every night. She was beginning to sense just what sort of price she would be paying for the rich pleasures she was reaping this summer. She lay in bed, on her side, hugging herself with her arms, feeling hollow and melancholy, deep into the night.

Andy was a funny man. She had known him for more than two months now, and in some ways she knew him very well and in some ways she didn’t know him at all. She knew that he liked Dan Rather and why, and what jazz musicians he liked and why, and what he thought of Russian/American relations and American foreign policy—she knew that sort of thing in great detail. She didn’t know how much he had loved his wife or why they had divorced or whether he had loved other women or whether or not he preferred his solitary life. Whenever Nell talked about Marlow or her children or the divorce, Andy would listen for a while, but gradually he would show a kind of polite impatience—he would get up to fix himself a drink and remark on an interesting boat or sunset out the window, or he would remember a note he needed to jot down for his book. He never returned the favor of confiding the intimate details of his life. He did not seek out such details from Nell.

She tried, in what she hoped were subtle ways, to draw him out.

“Where did you go to school?” she asked one night after talking about Jeremy’s love for science.

“Snotty New England prep school,” Andy had replied.

“Oh,” Nell said, trying not to be daunted. “Well, where did you go to college?”

“Snotty New England college,” he had replied shortly.

“You’re pretty snotty yourself,” she had said, teasingly, smiling, “if you won’t even tell me the name of your college.”

“Harvard,” he had admitted. Then, with a combination of deft sidestepping and obvious complimentary interest, he had gotten Nell to talk about her college experiences.

Another time, Nell had been telling him about the way Hannah and Jeremy often squabbled. “Did you have brothers or sisters?” she asked.

“No,” he had replied, his tone flat, ungenerous.

“Did you want one? Were you lonely? I
always longed
for a brother or sister,” Nell said.

“I don’t know,” Andy replied. “I can’t remember. I don’t suppose I did. It wouldn’t have mattered. I was sent off to school in first grade. I was always at school or camp. I never would have seen a sibling if I’d had one. I seldom saw my parents.”

“Why?” Nell asked.

“Well, they were busy,” Andy said, calmly stating the fact. “Then they got divorced and my mother moved to New Zealand. We lost touch. When I was old enough, though, I spent a lot of time with my father, going through his factories. He wasn’t ready to deal with me until I was old enough to understand concepts like quantum mechanics. He died soon after I reached that stage.”

“How awful. I’m so sorry,” Nell had said. “You had such a lonely life.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Andy replied, genuinely surprised by her sympathy. “I was happy. I didn’t miss people. People aren’t everything, you know.” He paused, then said, looking right at Nell, “Maybe you should know that someone once told me that I have more meaningful relationships with machines than with people. She thought that as a newborn I must have been imprinted by a computer.”

Andy’s voice had been full of warning then, Nell thought, and when he tried changing the subject, she let him. At first a romantic fantasy, a throwback to the times when she believed in fairy tales, rose in her, so that she thought, well, it will be
different
for
us
. But as time went on, she could not seem to make it different. Andy obviously wanted things to stay on the surface, in the present. And it was lovely that way, Nell had to admit, but now and then she felt lonely, and more, she felt a sad twinge of foreboding. She was afraid that Andy’s unwillingness to entrust her with some knowledge of his past
indicated an equal unwillingness to entrust her with a share in his future.

Still, he could charm her. He could please her as no other man ever had. It was easy, it was the easiest thing in the world, to stop worrying about the future when she was with him, with his hand on her arm as he guided her across the street, or when his long, lanky body was stretched out next to hers in bed. He was always courteous and undemanding and understanding. He was a marvelous cook—what a treat it was for her to be presented with gourmet meals, which included artichokes, shrimp, capers, and other items her children made gagging noises over! He loved modern technology and would grow as excited as a little boy when describing the possibilities of computers, robots, satellites. He had a vision of the future that was extravagantly optimistic.

Many evenings Nell would sit with him, sipping a creamy liqueur, gazing out at the water, trying to turn the conversation toward some intimate, personal subject. Andy would be bored, monosyllabic, and even petulant until they had come to a more neutral topic: politics, the weather, Nantucket gossip. Before she knew it, and without her knowing just how it happened, Nell would find herself listening to Andy going on about something scientific—the theory behind space flight, the history of aeronautics—until Nell felt her eyes nearly crossing with boredom. She tried to console herself at such times by believing that he was at least sharing something he considered of great importance with her.

He had not told Nell that he loved her, but he had said, “You are beautiful.” And “You are special.” And “You mean so much to me.” And “God, how wonderful it is when you are around.”

On Mondays, Nell’s day off from the boutique, Andy would rise early, as was his habit, to walk to the beach. Sometimes Nell would rise with him, but more often than not she would stay in bed, sleeping late. Andy would awaken her after he had had his walk and his coffee. He would take off his clothes and slip into bed with her, his skin cool from the ocean air, his breath smelling like coffee. He would hold Nell in his arms. He would press her up against him, all up and down, until her legs touched his legs and her stomach touched his torso and her face was nuzzled into his chest and his lips were pressing against her forehead. He would hold her like that against him for a long time, and it seemed to Nell at those times that she could feel the need in him. That she could
feel how he needed to come back and find her in his bed, to be able to lie down and hold her in his arms, and that when he lay naked against her, holding her against him, he was trying to tell her that he loved her. Sometimes it even seemed to Nell that she knew Andy better than he knew himself, that she was able to admit what he felt—love and need—while he was still incapable of articulating these feelings.

“You are so beautiful,” he would say over and over again, stroking her hair, running his hand down her back. “You are so beautiful.” And Nell would think how she must really look, in the morning with the sun exposing all her wrinkles and stretchmarks and sags, with her hair matted and her eyelids so swollen with sleep that she knew she looked beady-eyed, pig-eyed, and she would think: I am not so beautiful, Andy, or I am beautiful only to you, because you are in love with me. Those mornings in his arms she felt an almost indescribable peacefulness and security.

But those mornings did not last long, and the effect of them evaporated like a sweet perfume in the air by the next day. Nell would go into work at the boutique and a married couple would come in, fussing slightly in their married way about what sort of present to buy their mother or their daughter. The woman would say, “This is like the blouse you bought me last year.” The man would say, “Why don’t we get this for Annie for Christmas? We’ll never find one we like as much.” And Nell would look on with yearning, with envy, at this couple who shared a past and a future with such carefree reliability.

As the first of August drew closer, Nell began to dream of her children. Andy had not yet met them; he would be surprised, she thought, at how beautiful they were. She thought about Jeremy, with his boyish bony body that was just now beginning to show signs of manhood—his shoulders were so wide, his chest broadening, although his skin was still as smooth as a baby’s. She thought of Hannah’s eager laughter, her willingness to share good news or bad, her self-reliance. Hannah was never bored. She could always turn the dullest day into gold. She was a powerhouse of energy, and when she was around, the world seemed brighter. If a friend couldn’t come over for the day, Hannah would put on a record, dress up her dolls or Fred the cat, and create her own friends. She would argue, discuss, share, laugh, all with her dolls or an imaginary friend, and she would be just as satisfied, it seemed, by that illusory presence as by the presence of a real
person.

From time to time, in spite of all her attempts to the contrary, Nell found herself wondering what it would be like if she and Andy were to marry, if the four of them were to live together as a family. It was a hard thing to imagine. She had gotten used to Andy’s idiosyncracies. She knew now how much he liked his privacy and solitude, how impatient he was with small talk, how tactless he often seemed with his blunt questions. He was not a gregarious man, and at first Nell had been delighted by this. She knew she was prone to irrational and extravagant jealousy, knew that if she saw him talking with another single woman—or married woman, for that matter—she would be eaten up inside by her own nasty suspicions. She knew she was most content when she was with him or, if she couldn’t be with him, knew he was by himself. But soon she began to wish that he enjoyed people just a little more. She liked parties. When she was invited to cocktail parties or dinner parties, she always asked Andy to join her, and more often than not, he had at least a nodding acquaintance with the hosts and other guests. He would be polite at a party, although from time to time Nell had seen him peering at a person with his forehead wrinkled in a frown and she knew that Andy was thinking: Can this person be for real? Why would he choose to spend his life this way? Andy was arrogant; he found almost all of the professions of modern man almost hilariously unnecessary. Sell insurance? Make jewelry? Run a hotel? Write ads? Surely that was no way to live a life.

At one party Nell had been smoldering with jealousy because a lovely woman had approached Andy, swiveling as she walked, and had engaged him immediately in a serious conversation. God, Nell thought, I wonder what
she
does. When she could stand it no longer, Nell had excused herself from her conversation and made her way across the room to Andy’s side. She was glad she did, for Andy was, in his own quiet way, lambasting the poor lovely woman for selling real estate on Nantucket. Nell arrived just in time to hear him tell the woman that she was a parasite on society who destroyed the land for her own gain.

Still, Andy could be wonderful if he liked someone. He enjoyed talking to Clary about her work with rats. He listened to her stories about them carefully and asked innumerable questions. He was more lenient in his judgments about Clary and her friends, perhaps because he thought of them still as children, even though they were in
their twenties and early thirties. He was able to excuse their silliness because they were young.

What would he think of Jeremy and Hannah? Nell wondered as the first of August approached. At least they were young—he couldn’t judge their choice of profession yet. But she wanted him to do more than tolerate them; she hoped he would
like
her children. She hoped he would be charmed by them. She tried to prepare him—and herself—for their presence by talking about them more often as the day of their arrival drew near. She wanted to impress on him just how young they were, how innocent, how much at the mercy of adults they were. She tried to describe the children to him. Many of the things she remembered them saying or doing seemed strange as she repeated them, seemed too cutesy or almost unbelievable.

“One year,” she told Andy one evening, “Hannah came home from her first day in first grade. She told me about the different projects and classes she would have at school, and she gave me some forms to fill out. One was permission to go on field trips. One was permission to take a section in sex education. Hannah said, ‘Oh, that slip is about sex. We’re going to have a bunch of lechers at the school.’

“ ‘You what?’ ” I asked.

“ ‘The teacher said we’re going to have some lechers.’ ”

Nell continued her story, telling Andy how puzzled and slightly worried she had been, how she had finally called another mother before managing to figure out that the word Hannah was trying to say was
lectures
. But she could tell long before she got to the end of the story that Andy had immediately understood what the misunderstood word was and was listening to Nell only out of kindness. Oh dear, Nell had thought, if he thinks they’re boring when they’re cute, what will he think of them when they’re awful?

And she didn’t know what to do about the sleeping arrangements. It had been so wonderfully easy and natural with the children gone. Almost every night for two months they had slept together—whether they made love or not, they had slept all night together, either at the cottage or his house. She supposed that now and then when Clary was sleeping in the cottage she could slip off to Andy’s for the night, but she didn’t especially want to do that. And she didn’t know how to tell Andy that she had never slept with a man all night around the children. She was afraid that by broaching this subject she
would be pushing their relationship into a seriousness that Andy was not yet ready to discuss.