“Are Mom and Meg coming?” Gavin asked. “This’ll be great.”
Fielding looked at Jennie, and she at him. He knew the correct thing was to be casual with his son, to act natural, but he couldn’t seem to do the correct thing anymore. He was afraid of the look in Jennie’s eye, and of what she might say. She might tell Gavin that his father had taken up with their childhood swimming teacher, and his mother would be on her own. He prepared himself for the girl to say it, and perversely hoped she would. He would have to say it soon if she didn’t.
“Is everything okay?” Gavin asked. He went to the pantry closet. “Hot water’s on,” he announced.
Jennie shook her head almost imperceptibly at Fielding, but he didn’t know what she meant. Don’t say anything? I won’t say anything? You’re in for it now?
Gavin was frowning at them, scowling the way he had as a child when the headaches came on, before they got him glasses. He always said the scowling helped diminish the headaches. It was like limping, he said, to scrunch up his face. It occurred to Fielding that Jennie might see the appeal in Gavin’s fresh, untapped devotion. She would tell his son her secrets, lying in bed, her smooth knee thrown over his strong legs. Kissing his father would be only one of them. She was so young and untroubled by guilt, she could tell everything and be forgiven.
Another engine stopped outside, and a car door closed decisively. His wife, arriving for dinner. She would find the children there, but that could be normal, unremarkable.
Raye came into the house in a long, waistless dress, her angular body suggested within it. Her shoulders were freckled, her hair thick and brown with defiant gray streaks, and she carried a bottle of wine. She smiled at Jennie with as much friendliness and warmth as a woman who has been beautiful can muster, when surprised by a girl half her age.
“Jennie, honey,” she said. “And Gavin. I didn’t know it was a party.”
No one said anything, and Raye’s face clouded with puzzlement.
“Why are you all looking at me like that?” She looked from Jennie to Gavin. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Are you two—”
Jennie shook her head. “No.”
Gavin seemed to blush.
“Oh, thank God,” Raye said, laughing with relief. “I thought you were going to tell me you were pregnant or something. I was going to need more than a glass of wine for that.” She smiled at them all, waiting to be told what was really going on.
Still no one said anything. Fielding thought he had lost the power of speech.
“I’ll open this,” Raye said, brandishing her wine bottle.
“You’re sleeping with Jennie,” Gavin said with horror.
“No,” Fielding said.
“What?” Raye asked.
“Then why are you acting this way?” his son asked.
“I’m not acting any way.”
“Why is Jennie here?” Gavin asked.
Fielding tried to think what to say. He wasn’t ready to tell them about Eleanor. He cast around for a way to explain.
“I came looking for you,” Jennie said to Gavin.
“For me?” He was flattered.
“But your dad was here, so we started talking about my dad.”
“Your poor dad,” Raye said. “How’s he doing?”
Fielding watched them draw closer to Jennie, all suspicion gone, and he marveled. She was a born adulterer.
“I think about him all the time,” Raye said, sinking into one of the kitchen chairs. “After the divorce, your mom seemed to need us more, and we kind of lost track.”
“He wasn’t easy to be with,” Jennie said.
Raye shook her head, wanting to be reassured, but not wanting to let go of her own interesting guilt. Fielding found a corkscrew and opened the bottle of wine. He poured some for Jennie, for Raye, and for his son. They ignored him as irrelevant, a waiter filling glasses. He wanted to dance with relief that the situation in the kitchen had stabilized, but instead he washed the lettuce, and salted and peppered the steaks.
“I’ll start the grill,” Gavin said.
“I should go,” Jennie said.
“No!” Gavin pleaded.
“Oh, please stay for dinner,” Raye said. “Tell her to stay, honey.”
Fielding held his hands up, helplessly.
“My dad’s expecting me,” Jennie said. “I have to go.”
She hugged Raye and Gavin goodbye. Then, in a perfectly natural way, she hugged Fielding, letting her breasts press against him. “I’ll tell my dad you said hi,” she said.
If he had been smooth, like she was, Fielding would have had an answer that meant one thing to Jennie and another to Raye and Gavin. Instead he said, “Thank you,” as if something were caught in his throat. He coughed.
With Jennie gone, they settled into the reflexive movements of a family dinner: Raye set the table, Gavin took the steaks out to the grill, Fielding tossed the salad. All the while he felt a buzzing anxiety in his chest and ears, a heightened awareness and a dread of what might come next. It was possible that nothing would. He could take Jennie’s advice, and find a way to let Eleanor go. Jennie could convince her mother that she had seen nothing important in that car, if anyone could. Fielding could stay with his wife, who now passed him the bread bowl and poured him more wine.
They had twice in their marriage seen counselors, a practice Fielding found ridiculous, but he had thought lately about what the professionals might say. They would tell him to stay, because they were marriage counselors, conservative by nature, interested in preserving whatever stability people had patched together. In his mind, there was no argument he could make that would convince them he was doing the right thing. He cut into his steak, which was nicely pink at the center, rich and brown on the outside; he had taught Gavin well. His children had faith in marriage as a safe destination, and if he didn’t leave, they could go forth into love with their confidence intact.
But Eleanor. The sweetness of lying against her bare shoulder, the softness of everything about her. She was so pliable and willing, vulnerable where his wife was girded and bulletproof. That day in the hardware store, Eleanor was buying a nightlight with a motion detector and he had asked her why. She said she woke up at night.
“Are you worried?” he asked.
“Oh, sometimes,” she said.
“What do you do when you wake up?” He thought she would look as she did now: no makeup, her fine silky hair more mussed. He had wondered if she wore a nightgown.
“I lie awake thinking,” she said.
“About what?”
“Oh—everything.”
He had liked that Oh, the hesitation before the answer. It might be just a tic she had picked up, but it sounded thoughtful.
“Did you always worry?” he asked. “You seemed very cheery in the pool.”
“Oh, that pool,” she said, exasperated. “That’s how everyone thinks of me. I was seventeen, I knew nothing.”
“You seem very calm now.”
“It makes me less afraid, to act like I’m not.”
“What are you afraid of ?”
“So many things. Aren’t you afraid?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
“Yellowstone Park is a giant volcano,” she said. “It could explode any day.”
“The whole thing?”
“All of it. It would destroy all of the western states and the whole Midwest.”
He laughed, at the absurdity of the danger and the earnest look on her face. She had fine blond down near her ears, and freckles across her nose. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms and protect her. “Why tell me that?” he asked. “What good does it do me? When I wake up at night, I’m going to call you and complain. What else do you worry about?”
She smiled. “The usual things. The war, the climate. Flesh-eating bacteria. My parents’ health. I think about dumb things, too, stupid things I said. I’ll probably regret telling you all this. I barely remember your kids. Gavin and Meg, you said?”
> The second time they met, in a truck-stop coffee shop beyond the east end of town, where neither of them would know anyone, she ducked her head in embarrassment as she sat down to the table. He told her how bold and brave she was to come.
“I’m not,” she said, shaking her head.
“But you’re here,” he said. “Do you wish you weren’t?”
She shook her head again: no.
When her embarrassment seemed to have reached a peak, with the waitress coming by and the big glass door opening every few minutes, when she was practically vibrating with nervousness, he said that he had a house at the lake that was empty and quiet, and they could go have a drink there. They went, and once they were alone, all her anxiety was gone. He had been so happy, with her lying naked and safe in his arms. All he wanted was to preserve that feeling, of the two of them alone together, and make all obstacles to it go away.
Raye was clearing the table now, and Gavin was washing the dishes. Meg had called, late, to check in. When his daughter said, “I love you,” before hanging up, Fielding felt a squeeze in his chest. Eleanor was going to want children, in spite of her fears. She was thirty-two, the age for the wanting. Fielding hadn’t really absorbed the idea until now. Jennie was right that he hadn’t thought it all through. The diapers, the sleeplessness, the willful tyrant two-year-olds, the teacher conferences and dance classes and soccer games. Gavin could teach them soccer moves, but would he want to? Even when Fielding had imagined his grown children being furious with him, he had not imagined it lasting very long, or including new children who would know that their older half-siblings resented their existence. He thought Gavin and Meg were more forgiving than that, but he couldn’t be sure. They had never been tested.
Gavin squeezed his father’s shoulder and announced he was going back to town. To look for Jennie? He was out the door. Raye took a blanket off the couch and said, “Are you coming outside? It’s so nice out.”
Fielding went, wondering what he might say to his wife, feeling that he was walking onto a stage without his lines. So there they were on the deck, on the old cushioned chaises longues they had bought together when they were young and too broke to be buying deck furniture. The stars were very clear. A bat flitted by overhead, chasing insects. Raye gave him half the blanket and he pulled it up to his chest, thinking about the nights they had lain like this in college, when he had pretended to look at the stars for a minute or two before diving to get into her pants. Defiant Raye in college, saving the world, going braless with her A-cups; if he went back in time, he couldn’t have resisted it.
“Do you think Jennie has a crush on Gavin?” she asked him now. “She said she came looking for him.”
“I was thinking that Gavin might have one on her.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Jennie’s an attractive girl,” he said. “And she’s smart.”
“They’re like siblings,” Raye said. “It would be very strange. He needs someone with a real spark.”
He had nothing to gain by extolling Jennie’s charms, so he didn’t. Raye turned on her side on the deck chair, her body curving toward him under the blanket.
“Do you know who I saw this afternoon?” she asked. “Do you remember Eleanor Lansing, who taught swimming lessons at the city pool?”
His heart froze. “Eleanor Lansing,” he repeated.
“Sturdy blond girl?” she said. “All the dads were in love with her, outside the fence. I bet you were, too, you’ve just forgotten. She’s moved back here to live, to be near her parents.”
“Hunh,” he said, his mind stumbling over the facts. Why hadn’t Eleanor called him the second she escaped the conversation? He wondered if seeing Raye in person had been too much reality, if it had made her rethink stealing Raye’s husband. Or if she had only been waiting for him to hear about it. He wanted to jump up from the deck chair and call her now; it was agony to be still.
“She had a spark,” Raye said, musingly. “I mean, she’s too old for Gavin, of course. She had great tits, my God.”
“She doesn’t anymore?” he asked. Almost anything he said might be held against him later on: anything that suggested that he hadn’t seen Eleanor could be construed as an outright lie. He had not expected to be talking about her tits.
“No, I guess she still does,” she said. “I just think of her as a teenager in a swimsuit. Like I still think of myself as fifteen years younger. I see myself in the mirror and I think, Who is that, how did I get so old? Don’t you do that?”
“Of course.” They had had this conversation before, and he had a pang of remorse about jumping ship on her in middle age, trying to swim to a younger boat.
“Eleanor’s parents were Republicans or something,” she said. “We didn’t know them.”
He could have told her they were only Lutherans, but didn’t. They might as well be Republicans.
“It’s funny she’s moved back,” Raye said. “If Gavin and Meg go away and wait fifteen years to move back, we’ll be really old.”
“They should do what they want.”
“But wouldn’t it be nice to have them stay?”
“Only if they’re happy here.”
“Ugh,” Raye said. “You should be more selfish, like I am.”
Fielding said nothing. Raye reached toward him, under the blanket. He was wearing thick corduroys, and she slipped her hand into his pocket, the thin cotton like a sock on her hand. He felt the usual stirrings, undiminished by the events of the day. He had imagined, very clearly, that he might leave his wife for Eleanor. But could he fuck his wife within minutes of pretending not to know Eleanor, and then leave her? He didn’t think he could. So could he tell Raye now? He had an opportunity; in a way, she had brought the subject up. But he would have to start talking, right now, and he couldn’t begin. So could he not fuck his wife, in order not to add insult to injury? She knew just what pressure to use, and now she loosened his belt and slipped her cool hand against his skin.
He opened his eyes and she smiled conspiratorially, and in the dark she looked briefly like the Raye of thirty years ago: the lanky, tender college girl, the wanton defender of the poor. Could he stay and be happy here? Three minutes ago he had been desperate to call Eleanor, to dissect her conversation with his wife, but now he had settled back into the habit of his marriage, of talking in the dark about the children, of his wife’s expert hands. He tried to determine if he was paralyzed with indecision or only mired in comfort. He tried to reconstruct his reasons for wanting to leave, but it was like trying, while heavy with sleep in a warm bed, to construct reasons for getting up into the cold.
“You there?” Raye said.
“Yes.”
She moved her hand up to his chest, her palm flat beneath his shirt. “What is it you’re thinking about doing?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure, that’s why I’m asking,” she said. “I keep feeling that you’re half somewhere else, like you’re about to bolt.”
“Really?”
“Your heart’s going crazy, since I asked,” she said. “I can feel it.”
He tried consciously to slow it down.
“I don’t know what’s happened,” she said. “And I don’t want to be a fool here. But for what it’s worth, I don’t want you to go.”
Another bat shot by, a swift black shadow overhead. Fielding’s throat felt constricted. He was, even after so much planning, unprepared to speak.
“Babe?” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere.” It was the only thing he could say that wouldn’t change everything, and he didn’t know if he was buying time or if it was true.
“You aren’t?” she asked.
He hesitated. “I’m not.”
She watched him, his eminently intelligent wife. He pulled her closer to make the scrutiny stop, and feeling her head on his shoulder was reassuring. He was doomed to ambivalence and desire. A braver man, or a more cowardly one, would simply flee. A ha
ppier or more complacent man would stay and revel in the familiar, wrap it around him like an old bathrobe. He seemed to be none of those things, and could only deceive the people he loved, and then disappoint and worry them when they saw through him. There was a poem Meg had brought home from college, with the line “Both ways is the only way I want it.” The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?
It had started to grow cold, on the deck. The stars were impossibly clear. The bats were out in force. He held his wife and felt himself anchored to everything that was safe and sure, and kept for himself the knowledge of how quickly he could let go and drift free.
IT WAS A FINE TREE, Everett’s daughter agreed. His wife said it was lopsided and looked like a bush. But that was part of its fineness—it was a tall, lopsided Douglas fir, bare on one side where it had crowded out its neighbor. The branchless side could go against the living room wall, the bushy side was for decorations, and now the crowded tree in the woods had room to grow. Everett dragged their find through the snow by the trunk, and Anne Marie, who was four, clung to the upper branches and rode on her stomach, shouting, “Faster, Daddy!”
Pam, his wife, followed with an armload of pine boughs and juniper branches. She seemed to have decided not to say anything more about the tree, which was fine with Everett.
The Jimmy was parked where the trail split off from the logging road, and Everett opened the back to throw the tools and boughs in, then roped the tree to the roof with nylon cords. Pam brushed off Anne Marie’s snowsuit and buckled her in the front so she wouldn’t get carsick. The smell of pine and juniper filled the car as they drove down the mountain.
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” Everett sang, in his best lounge-singer croon. “Jack Frost nipping at your nose.” Here he reached over and nipped at Anne Marie’s, and she squealed. He stopped, forgetting the words.
Pam prompted: “Yuletide carols,” half-singing, shy about her voice.
“Being sung by a choir . . .” He reached for the high note.