The Hot Flash Club Chills Out (24 page)

36

S
aturday afternoon, as Polly waited for Hugh to arrive at her house, she
fretted
—a good, old-fashioned word,
fret,
capturing exactly how she felt. Irritated, peevish, nerves on edge. Much of the lace her mother-in-law had bequeathed to her, which Polly used on the Havenly Yours clothes, was fretwork. The pattern was ornamental, yet rigid—a series of small, straight bars intersecting one another at right angles. Guitar strings were pressed against frets, she recalled, and her nerves felt just like plucked strings.

Probably she should have waited until tomorrow to see Hugh. She still was tired from her trip. Friday morning had been fair and bright, but so windy the ferry bucked and shuddered, making Polly nauseous. She’d dragged her luggage with her up to the nearby bus station and taken the bus to South Station and a cab from there to her house. She hadn’t had enough energy even to go for fresh milk and groceries for herself. She took a nap, then phoned Hugh. He’d been his normal warm self. He’d agreed to stop by to see her today. Together they’d plan what to do that evening.

She’d taken a lasagna from the freezer this morning, in case they stayed in tonight. It was just after lunch, so she arranged a platter of cheese, crackers, and crisp veggies—she’d nibble on the veggies while they talked. Nerves always made her eat. Well, anything made her eat. As she moved around the kitchen, the memory of Roy Orbison moved with her. Now there was a constant and loyal companion! God, she missed him. Tears sprang to her eyes. She closed them tight and clenched her fists, willing the sorrow to retreat. She had to be upbeat, not gloomy, when she saw Hugh.

For she wanted to have it out with Hugh once and for all. She didn’t want to be like Shirley had been with her former boyfriend, Justin, pathetically eager to do
anything
to keep the relationship alive. She wanted marriage, a shared life. She wouldn’t press Hugh for that right away, but she did need to know whether or not that was a possibility in their future.

The doorbell chimed. She checked her reflection in the mirror—she looked good, tanned from the week on the island, feminine in her green flowered shift which set off the green of her eyes. Hugh had told her many times how beautiful her eyes were. She was glad she’d taken it easy last night; she looked rested.

“Polly.” He wore a light summer suit and carried a bottle of wine.

“Hello, Hugh.” God, those blue eyes! She kissed his lips lightly in greeting, then led him back to the sunporch. “Come in. How’s your day been so far?”

Hugh took off his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar as Polly opened and poured the wine. As they chatted, she smiled to herself, thinking how, in many ways, they were already such a
couple,
familiar with each other’s rhythms and habits, comfortable together. When they both had their glasses, they settled on chairs across from each other.

“You look great, Polly,” Hugh told her. “Island life becomes you.”

“Thanks.” Her heart did jumping jacks. Now she could broach the subject. Or she could just let it go…. “Hugh, can we talk seriously for a moment?”

He frowned. “Sure. What’s up?”

Polly took a deep breath. “I need to know where you think our relationship is going.”

He looked puzzled. “
Going?
I don’t understand. Why should it go anywhere?” Lightheartedly, he waggled his eyebrows. “I rather thought we had already arrived.”

Could he truly be so
clueless
?

“I guess I’m talking about marriage,” Polly admitted. She looked him straight in the face.

“Oh, Polly.” He heaved a huge sigh and shook his head. “
Marriage?
I don’t think I’ll ever want to marry again. And why should I? It’s not like I’m going to have any more children. I wouldn’t have thought you cared about legalities and formalities.”

Polly leaned forward. “I don’t. What I care about is
sharing
a life. What I care about is coming first in
your
life.”

Hugh looked away. “I’m sorry about leaving you when your dog died.”

“That really hurt me,” Polly told him frankly.

He shifted guiltily. “I did come back, Polly. I did spend the night with you.”

“Yes, but you left because your ex-wife thought she had a bat in the house. If there were ever a time when I needed you to stay with me, it was then. And you chose to go to Carol. You’ve done this over and over again, Hugh, but when Roy died, why, that just broke my heart! You’ve told me you love me. You know I love you. But you make me feel second place, or if we include your children, even further down on your list of priorities.”

“Love doesn’t come in lists,” Hugh said quietly.

“Oh, don’t be so sanctimonious!” Polly exploded. “Of course it does. When you have to choose where to be at any given moment, it does. And you always put me last. You always drop me, no matter what we’re doing, if Carol or one of your children calls. We—”

Hugh raised a weary hand. “Polly,” he said softly, “I wish you knew how many times Carol scolded me just as you are now. Not because I was with another woman, because I never was. But because I was with my patients. Perhaps I do ‘choose’ my children or Carol over you, but if I do, it’s because I’m trying to rectify a lifetime of letting them down. I’m committed to attending all my grandchildren’s events, because I missed all those recitals and baseball games when my own children were growing up. I’m an oncology doctor, I’m on call, I have to go to my patients when they need me, and that’s often during a holiday, or in the middle of dinner, or in the middle of the night.” Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his eyes. “All I’ve wanted to do in life is to help people, and yet with those I love the most, it seems that all I do is let them down.”

“Oh, Hugh.” Polly felt nearly ill. “I didn’t mean to
scold
you. I didn’t realize—I hadn’t understood how things were with you and Carol and the children. What you’ve just said—well, it helps me understand your actions a little better. But still—I mean, there are other things, Hugh. Like, will I ever be part of your whole life? I mean, will you ever invite me to one of your grandchildren’s games?”

His expression gave her the answer. “I think it might upset my children. I mean, Carol is usually there.”

Polly nodded. “So I’m always going to be sort of on the sidelines of your life.”

Hugh shook his head. “Well, Polly, I don’t know. I mean, the grandchildren will get older. Perhaps Carol will meet someone else. Things change. And really, is being ‘on the sidelines of my life’ such a dreadful place? You’re so active with your work and your friends…”

“True, but I’d like you, us,
us as a couple,
to be the center of my life, Hugh. I’d like us to live together. At least I’d like to know whether or not we have a future together.”

His voice was gentle. “Polly, at our age, we can’t say for sure if we’re going to wake up the next day. I don’t want to worry about the future. I want to enjoy the present. And I do enjoy it, with you. Can’t that be enough?”

Polly couldn’t prevent the tears streaming down her face. “I don’t think so, Hugh. I’m sorry. I want to come first with a man. I want to be married again. I want to share a bed and a home and a life, not exist off to the side waiting for you, always longing for more.”

“Oh, Polly.” Hugh rose and came to kneel next to her chair. He took her hands in his. “Polly, we have such fun together.”

“I know we do.” She pulled her hands away and grabbed a cocktail napkin to wipe her nose.

“Not everyone has that. And we do love each other. Just because it’s not legalized, is that any reason to throw it away?”

She smiled bitterly. “You do know how to charm a girl. But give me credit here. I haven’t been just talking about ‘legalizing’ our relationship. I’m talking about the real essence of it.” Reaching out, she stroked his warm, ruddy face. “I think what it comes down to, Hugh, is that I need to be with you more than you need to be with me.”

He caught her hand and kissed the palm. “I do need to be with you, Polly. I truly do. But I have to honor my prior commitments. That’s the kind of man I am.”

“And the kind of woman
I
am needs to come first. Or at least alongside.” Gently she pulled her hand away. Nothing could be said now to rectify the situation. “Hugh, I think I want you to go now.” Rising, she left the sunporch and went down the hall to the front door.

Hugh followed, carrying his jacket and tie in his hand. “I’m sorry, Polly.”

With her hand on the doorknob, Polly said, “You know, I’m going to see other men now. So you’re free to see other women, too.”

“I don’t want to see other women.”

Polly managed to smile. “Sure you do. You might meet someone willing to be on the side.” She opened the door. “And I might meet someone willing to be part of a couple.”

Hugh opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. He went out the door. “Good-bye, Polly.”

Polly shut the door. She leaned against it until she heard his car pull out of the driveway. Then she slid down onto the floor, laid her head on her arms, and wept.

37

S
hirley pinched herself
hard
just above the elbow.

Ouch!
That hurt!

Okay then, she wasn’t dreaming. She was really here, sitting on Harry’s deck looking out at the shining water, while he fixed dinner.

But the day had been such a fantasy, how could she believe it was real?

This morning, rattled and thirsty and just a little scared, she’d yanked her spandex tights up as she thrashed through the bushes, flailing her way out to the dirt road to wave down the red truck, the first sight of humanity she’d seen for hours. She’d hoped it was Harry’s, but she would have been grateful to see anyone who could help her find her way back to the main road.

“Shirley?” Harry’s tanned face had lit up in a smile.

“Harry! Thank heavens! Harry, I’m lost!”

“Well, jump in. Reggie, scoot over.”

She knew she looked red-faced and disheveled as she climbed into the truck. The golden Lab helped complete her toilette by giving her face a thorough licking, which succeeded in plastering quite a bit of her hair to her cheeks and forehead.

Harry gave her an appraising glance. “You look hot and bothered. Why not let me take you out to my place for a sail to cool you off?”

“Oh, Harry,” she confessed, “I don’t know how to sail.”

“Well, Shirley,” he told her with a grin. “I do.”

She explained that she’d lost her bike, and Harry laughed, put the truck in gear, and bounced them along over the dirt roads. Very quickly he found her bike.

Once again he tossed it in the back of the pickup. Then he turned onto Polpis Road and sped away from town. At an unmarked dirt path, not even a road, more like a pair of ruts worn between scrub brush and heathlands, he turned again. They bumped along through a thicket, and suddenly the vista opened up, exposing a small lawn and a modest one-story cottage looking down a slope to the water.

“Polpis Harbor,” he told her.

The water lay before them like an enormous blue platter full of light. On the other side of the harbor, in the distance, the rooftops of other houses could be spotted, but the curve of the land around the house in an expansive open roll of natural heath gave the illusion of protected isolation. A nearby shed, where Harry kept his sailboat in the winter, was actually bigger than the house, which, he told her, had been built in the sixties as a summer house.

Harry led her into his house. “You won’t want to wear those shorts sailing. Go on into the little bedroom at the back. Some old bathing suits are hanging on a hook behind the door. One of them’s bound to fit you okay.”

The cottage was very male, natural and unfussy. The wooden floors and walls had been left unpainted to darken naturally. Only the plaster between the beams on the ceiling had been painted white. The old buoys hanging from the walls in the living room brightened the place. His sofa was deep and worn, but his television was new, and his tables were covered with an array of books and magazines. On a desk in the corner a laptop sat blinking.

The only bathing suit Shirley’s size was a two-piece, and even as slender and fit as she was, her pale white abdomen, dotted with the tiny moles that had sprouted all over her torso during the past few years, had the pasty, loose look of bread dough—sprinkled with rye seeds—set aside to rise. So she pulled on an ancient striped blue Speedo that hung on her. For a moment she stood paralyzed, afraid to let him see her exposed like this, her limbs pale and scrawny, her neck wrinkled, her makeup washed away by that morning’s tears.

“Find everything okay?” he yelled.

Well, she couldn’t hide in the room for the rest of her life! “I did!” She forced herself to leave the room.

Harry had also changed into a bathing suit and a faded polo shirt. He wore a scalloper’s cap with a long bill, and he grabbed another one from the back of the door and plunked it down on Shirley’s head.

“You’ll need this, too.” He handed her a tube of sunblock. “You can put it on while I’m rigging the boat.”

She followed him outside and down to the water. They waded through the reedy shallows to a small rowboat, which Harry rowed out to
Serenity,
his catboat. It seemed to Shirley a pretty little boat with its single mast and curving lines. The golden Lab swam out, too, got a lift into the sailboat by Harry, and established herself next to Shirley, resting her head on her knee. Shirley watched as Harry raised the sail and did mysterious things with the ropes.

“This is the boom,” he said, touching the long heavy horizontal pole. “It swings back and forth when I tack, so when I tell you to duck, duck.”

She wanted to say, jokingly, “Aye, aye, Cap’n,” but at that moment the boat, with a little shiver, took off, racing away into the wide waters. Shirley swallowed as the safety of shore receded. Harry flashed her a smile. She laid her hand on the dog’s strong golden head and was reassured. Soon, lulled by the heat of the sun and the hypnotic beauty of the shoreline, she relaxed.

It was so quiet, sailing! No engine, no background grumble. Only the splash of the waves and the cry of the gulls. She and Harry were quiet together—at first, that felt awkward to Shirley, who called out, “Beautiful!” and “Wonderful!” to show her appreciation of the land, the water, and the boat Harry so obviously loved. But Harry merely responded with a nod and a smile, and soon she forgot about manners and obligations and did what she was always telling people to do—
Be here now.

It was like being in a bottle of champagne when the cork pops and that first delicious foam spills over. The light, the air, the atmosphere were effervescent and crystal clear. They sailed through a narrow cut between two shoals and were out in the larger harbor, sailing to the long spit of golden beach called Coatue. The warmth of the sun was better than a sauna, the slight breeze cool and refreshing. Light dazzled across the water, tossing diamonds here and there, and in the distance the town rose like a dream.

She couldn’t help looking at Harry. His limbs were tanned and strongly muscled, scarred here and there, like those of one who’s done lots of physical labor. Vaguely she wondered how he could afford a house on the water; but that kind of thought didn’t belong in this kind of day, so she let it drift away.

She liked the way he moved. Economical, efficient, steady, he seemed to anticipate the demands of the water and wind. They anchored near Coatue. When Shirley followed his lead and jumped out into the cold water, her feet just touched bottom, so she felt safe as they waded up to the shore. He spread out an old blanket and opened a small cooler, handing her a bottle of seltzer and an apple. They lay around for a while, talking idly, then went for a long walk. Harry regaled her with information about the island, but Shirley was so dazzled by her increasing sense of desire for the man that he might as well have been speaking in Martian.

On the way home, Harry gave Shirley a sailing lesson. She loved the tug of the sheet and the immediate response of the catboat as it lifted or listed or turned, but Harry’s proximity tangled her thoughts. She felt so attracted to him—she felt that intense surge of lust and excitement she’d felt with her old boyfriends Justin and Jimmy, but she also felt oddly soothed by his presence. It had been a long time since she’d felt so alive.

When they returned to the house, it was evening. In spite of the sunblock Harry had given her, Shirley felt slightly stupefied by the sun and the motion, and she was delighted when he suggested she take a cool shower while he threw together some dinner. She couldn’t help it—she snooped in his bathroom. No signs of a woman—good! A few bottles of pills. The same blood pressure medication Faye took, and Lipitor, which made her wonder. How could a man as fit as Harry have high cholesterol? It was a genetic thing, no doubt. She pulled on a terry cloth robe hanging on a hook on the back of the door and padded out barefoot to find the table on the deck already set with cheese and crackers and a plate of raw veggies.

Harry handed her a glass of iced water. “Nantucket has the best water in the world,” he told her.

“Thanks!” She leaned back in her deck chair and looked down the slope of lawn and brush to Polpis Harbor shimmering in the evening sun.

“What do you think?” Harry asked.

“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Shirley answered.

Even now, at seven in the evening, sailboats glided past, their sails as proud and white as swans, long ripples flowing behind them like trains on a wedding gown.

“It
is
a little paradise here,” Harry agreed, crossing his bare feet and resting them on the railing of the deck. “I think that every single day, even in January gale force winds.” Beside him, Reggie thumped her tail in lazy agreement.

“Don’t you ever get lonely?” Shirley swept her arm in an arc. “No houses nearby, and you can’t even see town from here.”

“Sure, I get lonely,” he replied honestly. “But I’ve come to treasure my isolation. In my earlier days, I spent enough time with people to last me forever.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, what everyone else did. Had a corporate job, married, had two kids, traveled, then got divorced, drank too much, ate too much, screwed around too much.” His eyes rested on the water as if he were seeing his past floating there. “The only place I’ve ever felt at peace has been on this island. So a few years ago I retired here. And even at my loneliest, I don’t regret it.”

Shirley nodded.

“What about you?” Harry asked. “You told me you run a spa, right?”

“Well, I kind of own it. With the investors and the bank. Nora Salter’s one of the investors. I know her because I used to be her massage therapist. I’ve given massages all my life, but in the past few years, with the help of some friends, I started The Haven. I’m up to my ears in mortgage, but I’m living out a dream I’ve had all my life—to run a wellness spa.”

“Wellness spa means what, exactly?”

Shirley hesitated. Growing up, she’d been taught that if she wanted to keep a man’s interest, she had to get him to talk about himself, not dominate the conversation with her own interests. So her reply was brief, but Harry asked a question, and then another, and the sun slipped lower as they talked. She followed him into the kitchen and talked while he fixed their dinner. He respected her vegetarian beliefs, and made a simple pasta tossed with olive oil, fresh broccoli, garlic, cauliflower and tomatoes. He put a long baguette on a cutting board with several blocks of cheese, and carried it all out to the deck.

They ate in companionable silence, watching the water reflect the changing colors of the summer sky. He spoke about his childhood summers on the island, and how he’d tried to recapture that for his own children when he and his family summered here. He spoke about his children and grandchildren and stepchildren and step-grandchildren—he’d been married and divorced twice. Shirley told him she’d been married and divorced three times and had no children, and felt the loss. He nodded, understanding.

They carried their dishes into the kitchen where Harry washed and Shirley dried them as they waited for the decaf to drip into the pot, and then they fixed their mugs and took them back out to the deck. Shirley had never felt so at home with a man before. It was rather like being with a woman, except that as the sky drifted into a soft violet-gray, iridescent and indigo-streaked, like the inside of a mussel shell, she felt more and more sexually awakened. She felt like a night bird—an owl? A nightingale? The deep resonance of Harry’s voice warmed her, and when his eyes met hers, something sparked inside her; not just sexual desire, but also a kind of odd hope. She felt like a lost ship, and the blue flash of his eyes on hers flared like a beacon on a lighthouse, beckoning her toward a safe harbor.

When the sky had deepened to black velvet, Shirley said, “I’d better go.” Reluctantly, she rose. “Oh.” She looked down. “I’ve still got your robe on.”

Harry rose, too, and stood in front of her, just inches away. “Why don’t you take it off?”

Heat flooded through Shirley. Desire made her tongue-tied. “I—I’ll change back into my shorts.”

“That’s really not what I meant.” He put his hands on Shirley’s shoulders. He moved closer, so his chest almost touched hers and she felt his breath when he spoke. “Why not stay the night?”

“Um—Faye might worry?” Her voice came in a squeak.

“Phone her. Tell her you’re staying here tonight.”

She swallowed. She hadn’t experienced sensations this intense for months, if ever. Would she seem easy? Would she—

“I’ll respect you in the morning,” he said jokingly. “If you’ll respect me. Besides, you haven’t lived until you’ve watched the sun rise from my deck.”

She was trembling all over. His warm hands steadied her.
I’m old,
she wanted to warn him.
When I lie down, my breasts look like a couple of dead jellyfish.

“I’m kind of scared,” she whispered.

“Don’t be,” he told her. He drew her against him, wrapping his arms around her, and kissed the top of her head. “You can trust me,” he said. Then he kissed her temples, very gently, and each of her eyelids, and the tip of her nose and each of her cheeks. He kissed the top of one ear, and the lobe of the other ear, and breathed warmly against her neck. He kissed her jawline, her sagging jawline, he kissed her chin. He took her head in both his hands, and softly, and for a very long time, he kissed her mouth. It was all Shirley could do not to knock him onto the deck and crawl all over him. She longed to let go of her fears and her vanity and her doubts, and trust him. And so, she did.