Painting Naked (Macmillan New Writing) (13 page)

“She’s young.”

“That’s the problem,” Colin says. “The age difference between us is bigger now than it was when we first met.”

“
Yes
!” I punch the air with my fist.

Colin leans back, startled. “What?”

“You. You’re a man who finally gets it.”

“I am?”

Trying not to sound foolish, I explain my hangup over middle-aged men and younger women, and I’m barely finished when Colin grabs me. His mouth silences mine.

I guess he understands.

“Why didn’t you ask Sophie for my address at Keith’s party?” I say, coming up for air.

Colin kisses my nose. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”

“But when Sophie invited you for lunch—”

“—I took a chance. I had to see you. I wanted to see if that old magic’s still there. It is, isn’t it, Jilly?”

I nod, too choked up to speak.

“Then do you suppose,” Colin says, “we could pull off a miracle and turn back the clock?”

“Why not?” I bleat. “All it takes is a screwdriver.”

Colin puts a hand on my lips.

Oh shit, I’ve done it again.

“Jilly?”

“Yes?”

He unbuttons my shirt. “Shut the fuck up.”

Colin asks to see my work. “I still don’t understand what you do, exactly,” he says. So I lead him into my office, pull out my portfolio and fire up the computer.

“These are great,” he says, thumbing through my Archibald sketches.

“We have wild parrots living here,” I say.

“You’re having me on.”

“Am not.”

“Prove it.”

“It’ll mean going outside.”

He shivers. “If those birds can take it, so can I.”

I bundle Colin into one of Alistair’s old ski jackets and a pair of warm gloves and take him outside.

“Look, up there.” I point to the top branches of a tall silver maple in my neighbor’s side yard.

With no leaves to disguise them, the parrots stand out like green gauntlets. Obligingly, they squawk, as if to show they’re not aberrant bluejays or mutant crows.

“How do they survive?” Colin asks. “This isn’t exactly the tropics.”

“They’ve acclimated. They’re all over—San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta.” I grin at him. “Here, in balmy Connecticut.”

“What do they eat?”

“Birdseed, nuts, fruit. Last fall, I saw ten of them gorging on Lizzie’s pear tree.” I pause. “Which reminds me. We’d better get a move on. We’re going there for dinner.”

“Will she serve pears?”

“Only if we show up wearing feathers.”

The McKennas’ house is ablaze with lights, including those still in the evergreens and there’s a wreath, trailing pine cones and berries, clinging to the front door. By American standards, the house is old—built just after the Revolution—with narrow clapboards, a massive chimney, and haphazard additions whose proportions shouldn’t work, but do because, as Fergus often points out, builders back then knew how to build houses.

“Currier and Ives,” Colin says. “All it needs is a sleigh—”

“—and a couple of horses.” I climb out of the car and my feet crunch on corrugated snow.

“Hang on,” he says, taking my arm.

Lizzie’s front porch is guarded by twinkling rhododendrons the size of woolly mammoths whose leaves—starched by the cold or perhaps embarrassment over wearing Christmas lights in March—have curled into pencils. Frost rimes the edges of ivy and reminds me of salt on the rim of a margarita glass. I hope Fergus is in full bartending mode because I could use a stiff drink. I’m a bit worried about Colin meeting my friends. Suppose he doesn’t like them … or they don’t like him.

“Why didn’t you warn me he was this good looking?” Lizzie says the minute she and I are alone in the kitchen. Fergus has taken Colin off to meet the gang—Lizzie’s daughter, Paige, and her husband, Joel; Harriet and Beatrice. The kids are playing, noisily, upstairs.

“I take it you approve?”

She grins. “Can I have a turn?”

“This one’s all mine,” I say, relaxing. “Besides, you’ve got Fergus.”

Lizzie pulls a face and hands me a plate of mini quiches, hot from the oven. “Feed these to the masses and bring me a drink. Fergus is making margaritas.”

“Thank you, God.”

“No, thank Beatrice. She brought the tequila.”

A burst of laughter erupts from the living room and I hear Beatrice say, “—because changing lawyers in the middle of a case is worse than swapping deckchairs on the Titanic.”

“She’s in good form,” Lizzie says.

I lean against the doorway and study Harriet’s new partner. Wearing a shapeless tweed jacket, baggy linen pants, and topsiders with no socks, Beatrice French looks more like an upscale bag lady than the highly-paid chemist she really is. Sturdily built, with cropped salt-and-pepper hair, Bea has unremarkable hazel eyes, a nose that’s too long to be called elegant, and a radiant smile that transforms her face from plain to stunning. Her humor and kindness are legendary. I can see why Harriet loves her. Colin’s at the buffet table, talking to Joel. I unload Lizzie’s hors d’oeuvres and ask how he’s doing.

“Fine,” Colin says. “Joel’s telling me about Claudia’s squirrels.”

“Really?” I turn to Lizzie’s son-in-law.

“Don’t read too much into this,” he says, “but the guys in marketing would like to see more. Do you have any?”

“A couple. I’ll send them to you next week.”

Kids swarm through the room. Beth, her younger brother Tyler, and Anna are squealing and laughing and being pursued by the pink-faced nanny from Holland. A brass candlestick goes flying off the credenza. Lizzie walks by, picks it up, rubs it against her thigh, and puts it back.

Under his breath, Colin says, “Are the children always this noisy?”

“No, they’re usually much worse.”

He makes a noise in his throat.

“I’m kidding,” I say.

“They’re not eating with us, are they?”

Fergus claps Colin on the back. “Heaven forbid,” he says. “They’ve had pizza and ice cream upstairs. Probably wrecked the joint by now.”

Lizzie calls out from the kitchen. We’re to take our seats at the table. Paige asks Harriet how things are going at the courthouse and this launches another round of Bea’s legal jokes.

Everyone laughs, but Colin barely smiles.

Beatrice leans across the table. “Are you an attorney?”

“I run a hotel.”

“In that case,” she says, rubbing her hands with obvious glee, “have you heard the one about the innkeeper’s daughter?”

I try to catch Bea’s eye but she’s off and running and once started, there’s no stopping her. Harriet, glowing in pearls and green silk, intervenes by asking Colin about the lodge.

“It must be fabulous to live in a house as old as that,” she says.

After a couple of false starts, he loosens up. So, finally, do I, especially when he has everyone chuckling with a story about two elderly couples from California who muddled up their room numbers and climbed into bed with the wrong spouse.

“Don’t the locks work?” Fergus asks.

“Not always. It’s a really old house.”

Three scrubbed, shiny-faced, pajama-clad children are ushered in by the nanny to say goodnight. Anna hugs her mother and blows me a kiss. “What did the snail say when he rode on the turtle’s back?” she says.

Harriet groans and nudges Bea. “See, I told you it would rub off.” She turns to her daughter. “Okay, what did the snail say?”

“Wheeeee!”

I laugh so hard, soup threatens to come out my nose.

When we’re through stuffing ourselves with boeuf bourguignon and debating the merits of restoring old houses, Paige and Harriet decamp to the kitchen.

They return with a cake.

Fergus sings Happy Birthday. The others chime in and I blush.

Colin says, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I forgot.”

“Jill’s lying,” Lizzie says. “She’s in denial.”

Sands Point

March 2011

We light the candles and watch one another undress, and for once, I’m not ashamed of my middle-aged body. Tonight my hips aren’t wide, they’re generous. My soft stomach is smooth and sensuous, and I’m proud of my full breasts that never passed the pencil test. Colin runs his fingers over them, around my nipples, teasing them to attention. He traces circles on my belly and probes between my legs, pushing them apart and licking me until I feel like a glove being turned inside-out, one finger at a time.

I lose track of my orgasms.

Giddy and helpless and covered with sweat, we collapse in a tangle of arms, legs, and sheets. Colin looks at my alarm clock. “Is this the right time?”

“I guess so. Why?” The numbers flash, then blink to one minute past midnight.

He leaps out of bed, wraps himself in Anna’s Scooby Doo towel, and races through the door like Cinderella after the ball. Doors open and slam shut. Did I do something wrong? Is he venting his frustration on my kitchen cupboards?

The noises stop. Footsteps. Coming back upstairs. He slips into my room, smiling and carrying the hunk of cake Lizzie insisted we bring home. A pink candle is stuck on top. He hands me a card.

“Lizzie told me your birthday’s really today.”

My fingers tremble as I slit the envelope. It’s the one I bought for Anna, and beneath a leprechaun perched on a pot of gold, he’s written:

“Oh, yes,” I say with a gulp. “Oh, yes, please.”

“Then,” Colin says, taking my hands in his, “I love you, Jilly Hunter, and I always have.”

I pull him back into bed and we find all sorts of ways to eat cake I never dreamed of before.

We spend most of Sunday in bed. Zachary, banished from the room, skulks in the hall but I’m too delirious with desire to feel sorry for him. Making love with Colin has blown me away. Literally. Lizzie’s right. It
is
like riding a bike, except this time, I seem to know what I’m doing.

I’m feasting on Colin the way my parrots feasted on those pears. I’m insatiable. The utter joy of being alive astonishes me. I’m vibrant—aware of myself in ways I never knew existed until now. I remember reading somewhere you’re a different person every seven years. That’s how long it takes the human body to slough off all its cells and replace them with new ones. Well, I’ve got news for the boffins who came up with that theory. It only took me three days. I’m not the same woman who met Colin off the plane last Thursday. She was flat. One-dimensional. The new me has more facets than a three-carat diamond.

Richard complained I was cold. Frigid. He’s right. I was, but only with him. With Colin, I’m the sweet spot on a tennis racquet. A violin tuned to perfect pitch. Crystal that shatters at just the right note.

Colin’s stomach grumbles and I plummet back to earth.

He admits to hunger. So do I.

We make mushroom omelets, light the fire, and watch
The Bridges of Madison County
. I’ve seen it before, but Colin hasn’t and by the time we reach the scene where Meryl Streep is caring for her sick husband, Colin is crying.

“Shelby would never do that for me,” he says, taking off his glasses and rubbing them vigorously.

No, she probably wouldn’t.

Colin sighs. “Too self-centered. Too young, I suppose.”

But I’m not. I’d take care of this lovely man. I’d wash his socks and iron his shirts, providing I could find the iron, and I’d love him until we were too feeble to do more than blow kisses at one another from matching wheelchairs in the corridors of some grotty nursing home. I want to grow old with him. I want to fall asleep in his arms and wake up with him beside me. I want to remember things with him because I can. He’s part of my past. We share memories nobody else has.

My cat is nowhere to be seen when I leave the next morning to take Colin to the airport. I’ll worry about Zachary when I get back.

Colin wants to go shopping.

“What for?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

The only place in Boston I know how to find, besides the airport, is Quincy Market. We have lunch there. I pick at a salad while Colin ploughs through a heap of pad Thai, then excuses himself to visit the men’s room. He’s gone a long time and I’m about to go looking for him when he comes up behind me and puts a small box on the table.

“What’s this?”

“Happy birthday,” he says.

I open the box. In a nest of white tissue lies a heavy gold chain. The kind of jewelry I’ve always admired on others, such as Elaine who can afford luxury like this.

“Do you like it?” Colin asks, sounding anxious.

“It’s gorgeous—but …” I fight against tears. “It’s too much.”

Colin puts his fingers on my lips. “I can afford this. It’s the first of many things I want to give you,” he says, clasping the bracelet around my wrist, where it settles into a deeply satisfying curve.

At the airport we cling to one another and make plans for me to visit in May. Two months? Two whole months. How will I be able to wait that long?

How will he?

He walks backward through the security checks, clutching his bag and looking at me as if his heart is about to break.

Tense and aroused, I drive back to Sands Point. My thighs tremble. I squeeze them together, hard, to quell the ache down there.

That’s what my mother called it.
Down there
, a bit of forbidden territory like the chocolate truffles she bought for Christmas one year and hid so Dad and I wouldn’t find them. That wasn’t her only euphemism. Having one’s period was
being unwell
, submitting to sex with your husband was
doing one’s duty for England
, and bearing children was
God’s punishment for Eve’s sin
. Poor Eve. She gets blamed for an awful lot of stuff.