The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again (2 page)

After college, David had worked in the same bank where his step-father had been vice president, but when he became engaged to Amy, he quit the bank to work at the Anderson Farm and General Store. Polly was surprised, but not upset. She had suspected that David had gone to work with Tucker partly to please him and partly because he had no clear idea what he really wanted to do. She knew from her own experience how children choose different lives from their parents’. She tried to be tolerant as she saw her son change.

She was just so unprepared for the changes.

At Christmas, she gave David and Amy beautiful cashmere sweaters, only to have them handed back to her, still in the box. “We make our own garments,” Amy had informed her with the gently reproving righteousness of an Amish elder. “Or, if necessary, we buy them at the secondhand shops.” Polly thought of all the pleasure David had taken, after being promoted at the bank, in buying several handsome suits from Louis of Boston. She stared at her son, who only smiled placidly, like a tranquilized bull. She reminded herself of Claudia and kept her mouth shut.

For David’s birthday, Polly wanted to take him and Amy out to dinner at Locke-Ober’s, a posh Boston restaurant. Amy had sweetly objected, “We don’t eat at restaurants. We don’t believe in supporting the gluttonous American consumer economy.”

Polly had cleared her throat and asked, meekly, in that case, could she invite Amy and her family to her house for a birthday celebration for David?

Yes, Amy had said, that would be nice. As long as Polly understood they would eat only organic foods and no sugar.

Polly had looked at her son, who had been born with a sweet tooth as fierce as her own. David had smiled back serenely.

“I know!” Polly had offered without a hint of desperation. “Could I treat you two to a weekend on the Maine coast?”

Amy had wrinkled her forehead in gentle alarm, as if Polly had proposed sending them to a nudist colony. “Why would we want to go to Maine when we have so much beauty around us?”

David had always loved the ocean, finding physical and spiritual energy in its blue tumbling and surge. But now David sat so quietly, Polly privately wondered whether Amy had cut out his tongue.

“Okay, David,” she asked in lighthearted tones, “what
would
you like for a birthday present?”

“We need a new tractor for the farm,” David told her, quickly adding, “I don’t mean you should pay for the entire thing, but perhaps you could give us whatever money you were thinking of spending on my birthday and we could add it to our savings toward the tractor?”

A tractor? Her son had a degree in economics and he wanted a tractor? He hadn’t even played with tractors as a child. Was he brainwashed? Polly wondered. Had he joined a cult?

Whatever had happened, he seemed happy, so she thought of Claudia and kept her mouth shut.

——————————

David and Amy were married on a sunny July day on the Anderson farm. David wore clean but grass-stained chinos and a peasant shirt embroidered by Amy. Amy wore a see-through natural-hemp garment, through which her breasts and belly showed in all their pregnant glory. Tucker’s mother, David’s step-grandmother Claudia, was invited, and Polly, squeezing between the Scylla of Claudia’s bitter formality and the Charybdis of Amy’s organic purity, offered to drive Claudia out to the farm. Claudia accepted and wore a suit and high heels, even though Polly had cautioned her that the wedding would be outside. David and Amy walked hand in hand to stand in front of the minister—a sight that brought tears to Polly’s eyes—they looked so beautiful, so innocent, like Adam and Eve at the beginning of the world! Beside her, Claudia stiffened. The moment the ceremony was over, Claudia turned toward Polly.

“You didn’t tell me the girl was pregnant. Nor that she’s an exhibitionist.”

Several people standing near them cast startled looks at Claudia.

“Oh, Claudia,” Polly began soothingly.

“I’ll wait for you in the car,” Claudia said, and stalked away.

Let her wait, Polly thought rebelliously. She followed the party to the reception table set out in the barnyard, toasted the newlyweds with a glass of mouth-puckering homemade Anderson raspberry wine, kissed the bride and groom, and hugged Katrina and Buck Anderson. Standing alone, she surveyed the crowd, realizing only now how few of David’s old chums were present. Had they not been invited? Her opinion about the wedding had not been requested, so she’d not offered, but now she felt even more strongly that her son had been indoctrinated into a strange sect.

She smiled at everyone, then, claiming that Claudia, who was in her eighties after all, didn’t feel well, took her leave, feeling, as she walked away from the crowd, like an outcast.

She drove Claudia back to her home in the charming, Waspy suburb of Dover, listening in resignation as Claudia criticized the wedding and each of its participants. Polly was too tired and depressed to argue.

Finally they reached Claudia’s enormous old house on Madison Street.

“Thank you for coming,” Polly said to Claudia. “I know David was glad you were there.”

“I doubt that very much.” Claudia undid her seat belt and opened the car door.

“I’ll phone you when the baby’s here,” Polly called out cheerfully.

“If you wish,” Claudia replied. “It’s of no particular interest to me.” Without a backward glance, Claudia strode up the sidewalk and into her house.

——————————

Now Polly leaned on her spade, watching the sky turn indigo. Her back ached pleasantly and the outdoor labor had filled her with a mild euphoria and a sense of accomplishment. A fat orange sun rolled low in the sky, casting a benevolent glow on the earth, and the air was sweet and chilly, with a bracing fall tang. I’ll phone Claudia, Polly decided, to tell her about Jehoshaphat.

Why bother? she asked herself.

Because, Polly told herself, I believe in love, all kinds of love.

She believed in romantic love, of course, and how could she not, when she had been married to a man she loved passionately for eighteen years? Even before she’d met Tucker, she’d believed in all kinds of love. Her faith had infused her life.

Maternal love, she believed in, beyond doubt, because her only child, David, had, over the thirty-four years of his life, brought her the most profound joys, even though he also had sent her into some of her most extreme fits of insanity.

And brotherly love, or general love, whatever it could be called, Polly believed in that, too. At some point in her life she had come to a kind of bedrock belief that all life was a struggle between good and evil, darkness and light, love and hate. She firmly believed that every individual’s actions tipped the balance toward good or evil, and that if there was anything she, as one individual, could do, it would be always to try to choose the good, even when she found it difficult.

So she would not let herself pout because she hadn’t been invited out to see her grandchild. She would put away her gardening tools and pour herself a glass of wine and rejoice that her son had gained a wife and a tractor and a boxed set of relatives, and now a son of his own. She would be pleasant to her mother-in-law and respectful of her daughter-in-law. She would patiently wait to hold her grandchild in her arms.

2

Twenty-six years old, five feet one, and weighing, with all her clothes on, scarcely one hundred pounds, Beth wasn’t the bravest person at the best of times, but tonight she was
determined
to ask her boyfriend, Sonny, about something that was driving her crazy.

She and Sonny had been dating for three months now. They’d been sleeping together for two. They read the same thrillers and discussed them over dinner at Beth’s. They went to movies and Sonny took her out to dinner afterward. He phoned her every morning to say hello; he’d taken her for a week’s vacation on the Cape in August and had reserved a room for them in Vermont in the fall for a romantic leaf-peaking weekend. She trusted him. She loved him. And from the way he made love to her, she could almost believe he was in love with her.

But he never asked her to do anything on Sundays, and often during the week, when she phoned him, he wasn’t home. Was he seeing another woman?
Sleeping
with another woman?

She
had
to know.

——————————

Beth had first set eyes on Sonny one Saturday afternoon in a bookstore. Outside, rain streamed down from a sky as gray and low as a bad dream. June’s welcome warmth had been washed away by the rain, leaving the air chilly, even sharp. The grass was sodden, muddy, the flowers bent nearly sideways by the downpour, the streets geysered with spray from passing cars. The forecast was for rain all day long.

Inside, the bookshop was warm, bright, and inviting, its aisles filled with other readers on the prowl for just the right book. Music softly lilted through the air, as gently tantalizing as the aroma of hot chocolate drifting from the coffee shop in the corner. Beth loved the spaciousness of the large store, the sense of an infinity of books, the unobtrusive companionship of other people, the bright, glossy lure of book jackets, the profoundly secret worlds they enclosed. This was her idea of heaven.

She was in the Thriller section, looking at the new John Le Carré, when she became aware of the man browsing nearby. How could she
not
notice him? He was
gorgeous.
Tall, muscular, lanky, in his jeans and plaid flannel shirt. Big hands. Curly black hair. He glanced her way, and she saw that his eyes were navy blue.

He smiled at her.

Blushing, she hurriedly feigned fascination with the books in front of her, even though she was so absolutely stunned with attraction she might have been in front of the bodybuilding section for all she knew.

She couldn’t resist: without turning her head, sliding her eyes sideways, she looked his way again.

The man took a book off the shelf and studied it,
exactly
as Beth did, giving a moment for the cover, turning it over to read the back copy, opening it to the inside back to consider the picture of the author, returning to the inside front to skim the summary, and finally, opening the book in the middle and reading a few lines to get the gist of the author’s style. His hands were large, his fingers beautifully shaped, and he wore no rings. Not married! His left thumb was bandaged, was that a clue? Perhaps he was—a chef?

As if he sensed her scrutiny, he looked at her again. And smiled that smile, again.

Beth smiled back.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” Beth wished she’d worn something more alluring than her old jeans and blue sweater.

“Good day for browsing,” he said.

Beth nodded. He was so handsome. So masculine. What on earth could she say to him?

He held out a paperback. “Have you read this one?”

Ah—
this
she could talk about. “I have. It’s brilliant, his best book.”

He cocked his head, studying her as if she were a curiosity. “You read a lot of thrillers?”

“I do. I prefer the older ones set in foreign places I know I’ll never travel to. Hammond Innes, Gavin Lyall.”

He was nodding his head in agreement. “Andrew Garve?”

“I have a collection of Andrew Garve paperbacks!”

“I thought I was the only one who knew about Garve.” He held out his hand. “I’m Sonny Young.”

His hand was warm, his skin slightly rough, which made her own skin tingle. “Beth Grey.”

“Want to grab a cup of coffee?” He was still holding her hand.

“Sure,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant, even though if he’d asked her to stand out in the rain with her clothes off, she’d have said “Sure” to that, too.

——————————

The only child of an accountant for H&R Block and a librarian, Beth was well aware that she had lived a sheltered and, some would say, eccentric life. Every weekend of her childhood, her parents took her to the library, the Museum of Fine Arts, the various museums of science, followed by dinner at the Ritz, where she sat up straight and learned to use a fish fork. Some evenings they attended a concert, ballet, or opera. Beth loved every minute of it. Only gradually did she realize that other fathers explained the games of baseball, football, and hockey to their children, rather than the plot of
Tosca.
Other mothers baked, sewed, or planted gardens rather than read.

In high school, Beth continued accompanying her parents to the theater. By then, she was used to being considered an oddball, a brain. She did have friends, a small group of quiet, intellectual geeks, who eavesdropped in the cafeteria with tremulous awe to the tales of the cool kids doing wild and dangerous things, and who sighed enviously over the popular girls with their bouncy personalities and their dramatic teenage romances. Of course, Beth’s teachers doted on her, little bookworm that she was, and helped her win a scholarship to Smith College, where she earned straight A’s, worked in the library, made some good friends, and finally, in her own timid way, lost her virginity to a U. Mass. physics major who went off to grad school at Stanford.

After college, Beth returned to Boston to work toward a master’s and then a Ph.D. in English literature at BU. Her parents invited her to move back in with them then, and Beth was tempted. It would have been so convenient—her bedroom unchanged, their routines compatible with hers. But she reminded herself she was a grown-up and must act like one, so she took a small apartment in Brookline, and a job in the BU library to pay her rent. She was happy with this arrangement, until the dark winter night when her parents were both killed in a car accident on their way home from a lecture. Then Beth regretted terribly every moment she’d missed spending with her parents. She had loved them so much. Even better, she’d liked them. Now she was all alone.

For the first time, books did not provide sufficient retreat or company. Most of her college and high school friends were in grad school, scattered all over the continent, slaving away on dissertations that left them little time for idle conversation. The best she could hope for was a quick e-mail.

Occasionally she went out with some of the other Ph.D. students for coffee or tea, so she was developing a little group of almost-friends, but graduate school was, after all, such a hotbed of neuroses, rumors, conspiracies, and cliques that friendship with her colleagues was as risky as having tea with the Borgias.

Besides, some of them resented the plush, cushiony nest bequeathed by her parents, who, as cautious, well-organized people, had protected Beth in their death as they had in their lives, leaving behind, in their detailed wills, a substantial amount of money. When they died, she sold their house—it would have been too heartbreaking, plus kind of odd, to live in it. She put the money in the bank and considered buying a place of her own, after she had earned her Ph.D. and found a teaching position. Her parents’ prudence meant she could concentrate on her academic work, unlike most of the other students, who took jobs at Starbucks and Stop & Shop to support themselves.

Sometimes, Beth thought, it might be good for her to work at such places. She knew she had a bad habit of retreating from the real world into books, especially romances, which wasn’t such a horrible thing, since her field was medieval romantic literature. The fictional world was so much more satisfying, with its terrors, challenges, dragons, and magic. Often the tales had happy endings, and if they didn’t—well, they were only stories.

——————————

They sat in the coffee shop for four hours. Sonny told her he was a carpenter working with his father and brother, that he lived in an apartment in an old Victorian house in Methuen, that he’d been a jock in high school until he’d broken his ankle in several places. While he’d been laid up for the summer, a neighbor had introduced him to the pleasures of thrillers, and he’d been hooked ever since. Beth told him about her own life, her parents’ deaths, and that she was working on her Ph.D. in medieval literature. It was nearly nine o’clock when they realized how the coffee shop and the bookstore had emptied out.

Sonny smiled wryly. “As much as I hate to admit this, I guess we’re going to have to leave here, sooner or later.”

Beth checked her watch. “Eeek. I should have been back at my desk hours ago.” Reluctantly, she rose.

He said, “I’d love to see your Andrew Garve collection.”

“Oh!” Was he asking her for a date? He could certainly find Andrew Garve books elsewhere. “Oh, well, that would be fun.”
Fun,
she thought,
don’t be so lame. You want to have sex with this man.
“Want to come by tomorrow?”

He shook his head. “Tomorrow’s not good for me.”

A wave of embarrassment passed through her. Had she seemed too eager?

“How about Monday night?” he suggested.

“Um, that works.”

He took a pen from his jacket, scribbled something on a napkin, and handed it to her. “My phone number, in case something comes up.”

She gave him her address and phone number. His smile was like the gentlest of kisses. They walked through the store, stopping just at the door. Rain was still pouring down.

“My car’s that way.” He pointed.

“I’m parked over there.” It was in the opposite direction.

“Okay, then, I guess we’d better run for it.” He put up the hood on his yellow slicker. “Bye, Beth.”

“Bye, Sonny.”

He raced off in the rain. Beth hurried to her own car through the puddles, splashing water up on her jeans, soaking her shoes, and she thought the raindrops floating around her were like diamonds, sparkling from a good witch’s wand.

——————————

Now, three months later, Beth waited in terror for Sonny to arrive. Poor Sonny, who had no idea he was about to be interrogated like one of the heroes in his beloved thrillers. Well, not
interrogated,
but questioned. Nicely. Perhaps even charmingly. But
definitely.

The novels she read in a white-hot blur of guilty pleasure hadn’t fully introduced her to the painful way love could warp time. If she wondered whether the fictional lovers would end up together, she just kept reading into the night, until she’d finished the book. Or she could cheat and read the last page first. Real time, she was discovering, could not be hurried, and passionate love could be torture—not the gorgeous “exquisite torture” of books, but the nail-gnawing, lip-nibbling, stomach-dropping variety that made her want to crawl into bed and suck her thumb.

A truck rumbled up the street. Sonny! Racing to the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of wine, drinking so quickly she choked. She heard his knock. She opened the door. There Sonny stood, handsome and strong.

“Hi, Sonny.”

Stepping inside, he shut the door, leaned against it, and pulled her to him in a long kiss.

“I made spaghetti,” she told him when she could catch her breath.

“I got a video,” he said. “We can watch it after dinner.” He held her hips against his. “Want to eat dinner? Or do something else?”

“Actually,” Beth said, forcing herself to pull away just a little, “I’d like to talk a bit, first.”

She thought he’d be surprised, maybe even a little wary, but she was the one who was surprised when he said, “Good. Because I’d like to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“Let me get a beer,” he said, going into the kitchen and coming out with a bottle of Heineken.

Until Beth had met Sonny, she’d never had any kind of beer in her refrigerator. She liked seeing the bottle in his hand, so upright, rigid—masculine.

They settled on the futon she used as a sofa. Drawing her legs up, she tucked them beneath her so she could face him. “I have a question to ask you,” she said.

“I have a question to ask you,” he echoed. “You first.”

“Okay.” She took a fortifying sip of wine. “I need to know if you’re seeing someone else.”

Sonny looked bewildered. “Why would you think I’m seeing someone else?”

She looked down at her hands. Her face was burning. “Because you never ask me to do anything with you on Sundays. And a lot of the time, if I call you in the evening, you’re not at your apartment.”

“Oh,” Sonny said. “Well.” He let out a long, gusty sigh.

That sigh seemed so laden with import, Beth’s heart nearly stopped. Sonny was married, Beth suddenly realized. Or dying.

“Look,” Sonny said. “I’m not seeing another woman. I don’t want to see another woman, Beth.” He put his beer on the table, took her wineglass from her and set it next to the beer, then held her cold hands in his. “I love you, Beth.”

Her mouth fell open. “You do?”

He nodded.

Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Sonny. I love you, too!”

“I want to marry you, Beth. That’s my question: do you think we could have a life together?”

Amazed, Beth could only nod.

Sonny pulled her to him and kissed her on the mouth. His mouth was soft, warm, and beer-flavored. She wrapped her arms around him. He picked her up and carried her into her bedroom—she felt like a heroine in the romances she loved! Sonny laid her on the bed, gently brought his body down on hers, and kissed the hollow of her neck. All the voices in her head were stilled as her body melded with his.

——————————

Afterward, she lay against him, her face buried against his chest, breathing in the pungent smell of sweat and sex. Her legs were wrapped over his torso. She could feel his moist penis against her thigh.