Pan Macmillan

Tigers In Red Weather

 

NICK

 

I

September, 1945

 

 

"I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse," Helena said.

"Whatever it is, at least it's something different," Nick said. "No more goddamned ration books. No more taking the bus everywhere. Hughes said he's bought a Buick. Hallelujah."

"Lord knows where he got it,” Helena said. “Probably from some cheat fixer."

"Who cares," said Nick.

Nick and Helena were sitting in the backyard of their house on Elm Street wearing their slips and drinking gin neat out of old jelly jars. It was the hottest Indian summer anyone in Cambridge could remember.

Nick eyed the record player sitting precariously in the window. The cheap needle was skipping.

"It's too hot to do anything but drink," she said, laying her head back against the rusting garden chair. Louis Armstrong was stuck repeating that he had a right to sing the blues. “The first thing I’m going to do when I get to Florida is get Hughes to buy me a whole bushel of good needles.”

“That man,” Helena said, sighing.

“I know,” Nick said. “He really is too beautiful. And a Buick and fine record needles. What more could a girl ask for?”

Helena giggled into her jelly glass. She sat up. “I think I’m drunk.”

Nick slammed her glass down on the arm of the chair, causing small reverberations. “We should dance.”

The oak tree in the backyard shaded them from the moonlight, so all that was visible between the dying leaves was the dark night sky, already a cold midnight color despite the warmth of the air. But somehow the fragrant smell of summer lingered, as if no one had told the grass that the middle of September had rung in. Nick could hear the nocturnal musings of the fat love-bug in the triple-decker next door. Tasting the flavor of the week.

Nick looked at Helena as she waltzed her way across the damp grass. Helena could have turned into that kind of woman, Nick thought, with her body like a polished cello and wartime beaux. But her cousin had managed to retain a freshness, all sandy curls and smooth skin. She hadn't gone all ashen like the women who had gone to bed with one too many strangers blown up by mines or riddled by Schmeissers. Nick had seen those women wilting on the ration lines, or creeping out of the post office, threatening to fade away into nothingness.

But Helena was getting married again.

"You're getting married again," Nick exclaimed, a bit drunkenly, as if the thought had just crossed her mind.

"I know. Can you believe it?" Helena sighed, her hand warm against Nick’s back. "Mrs. Avery Lewis. Do you think it sounds as good as Mrs. Charles Fenner?"

"It's lovely," Nick lied, spinning Helena out and away, her other arm stretched wide.

To her ear, the name Avery Lewis sounded exactly like what he was: some Hollywood wannabe selling insurance and pretending he had dated Lana Turner, or whoever it was he was always going on about. "Fen would probably have liked him, you know."

"Oh, no. Fen would have hated him. Fen was a boy. A sweet boy."

"Dear Fen."

"Dear Fen." Helena stopped dancing and walked back to the gin glass, waiting for her on the chair. "But now I have Avery.” She sipped from it. “ And I get to move to Hollywood, and maybe have a baby. At least this way I won’t turn into an old maid, like Gloria Valentine, down the street. Mad as a hatter and warts on my nose, like some witch."

"Well, no warts and one Avery Lewis, to boot."

“Yes,” Helena said thoughtfully. “I just wonder...” She trailed off.

“Wonder what?” Nick crushed the ice between her teeth and stared at the inky sky.

“Well, if...if it’ll be the same with Avery. You know, the way it was with Fen.”

“You mean in bed?” Nick turned quickly to face her cousin. “Well, I’ll be goddamned. Has the virginal Helena actually mentioned the act?”

“You’re mean,” Helena said.

“I know,” Nick said.

“I am drunk,” Helena said. “But I do wonder. Fen is the only person I’ve ever loved. Before Avery, I mean. But Avery is a man.”

“Well, if you love him I’m sure it will be just grand.”

“Of course, you’re right.” Helena finished off her gin. "Oh, Nick. I can't believe everything's changing. You're going to Florida and I'm going to the other side of the country and we have to give up our little apartment. We've been so happy here, despite everything."

"Don't get weepy. We'll see each other. Every summer, in fact. Unless your new husband is allergic to the East Coast."

"Yes, we'll go to the Island. Just like our mothers. Houses right next door."

"Houses, husbands and midnight gin parties."

 

Nick had just enough time to make her connection at Penn Station, after the train from Boston had been delayed and she had fought her way through the crowds all rushing off to be somewhere amid a muddle of luggage and hats and kisses and lost tickets. Helena must be halfway across the county by now, having left Nick to close up the apartment and give the final instructions to the landlady as to where everything was to be sent; boxes of novels and poetry to Florida, suitcases full of corsets to Hollywood.

The train, when she finally got on it, smelled like bleach and excitement. Nick kept pressing her nose to the inside of her wrist, inhaling the scent of her lily-of-the-valley perfume. She set her leather case on the rack in her roomette and clicked it open, checking the contents again to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. One nightgown for the train (white), and one for Hughes (green, with matching dressing gown). Two ivory silk slips, three matching pairs of ivory silk underpants and brassieres (she could wash them every other day until the rest of her things arrived in St. Augustine), her ditty kit (travel vial of perfume; one lipstick, red; the precious Floris hand cream Hughes had brought her from London; one toothbrush and paste; one washcloth; and one cake of Ivory soap), two cotton dresses, two cotton blouses, one pair of gaberdine trousers (her Katherine Hepburn trousers), two cotton skirts and one good summer-weight wool suit (cream). She also counted out three pairs of cotton gloves, (two white, one cream) and her mother's pink and green silk scarf.

Her mother had loved that scarf. She had always worn it when she was traveling to Europe. Now it belonged to Nick. And although she wasn't going as far as Paris, going to meet Hughes -- whom she hadn't seen in six months and whom she had barely lived with since they'd married --seemed about as far as going all the way to China.

"Beyond here be dragons," she said to the suitcase.

Nick heard the whistle blow and she snapped the case shut and sat down on the upholstered bench. Now that the war was over, the view out of the train window, women waving handkerchiefs and red-eyed children, was less affecting. No one was going off to die, they were just going to some old Aunt's house, or some mundane work appointment. Inside the train, it was also different, or at least she imagined it was, even though she had never been the one leaving before. Inside, it felt exciting, the world was new and people weren't dying. And she was going to see Hughes. Hughes. She whispered his name to herself like a talisman. Now that she was only a day away from him, she thought she might go crazy with the waiting. Funny, how that was. She had waited six months, but the last few hours were unbearable.

The last time they had seen each other had been here, in New York, when his escort ship had docked for repairs and Hughes had gotten liberty. They had stayed on board the U.S.S. Jacob Jones, in one of the rooms for married officers. There were fleas, and just when Hughes had gotten his hand down her skirt, her ankles began to burn. She had tried to concentrate on the tip of his fingers searching her out. His lips on the pulse in her neck. But she finally cried out.

"Hughes, there's something in the bed."

"I know, Jesus."

They had both rushed to the shower to find their legs covered in red, swollen bites and the water rushing down the drain in a sea of pepper. Hughes cursed the ship, cursed the war. Nick wondered if he'd notice her naked body in the shower. Instead, he turned his back and began soaping himself.

But he had taken her to the 21 Club. And it had been one of those moments when it seemed that the whole world was conspiring for their happiness. Hughes, who would never take money from his parents and wouldn't let Nick spend her own, didn't earn enough on his Lieutenant Junior's salary for a meal there. But he knew how much she loved the stories of the shark-skin-suited gangsters and their glamorous molls who had kicked up their heels there during prohibition.

"We can only have two martinis and a bowl of olives and celery," he said.

"We don't have to go there at all, if we can't afford it," Nick said, looking at her husband's face. It was sad; sad and something else she couldn't put her finger on.

"No," he said. "We can afford just this. But then we have to leave."

They arrived in the dark paneled Bar Room, with its crush of toys and sporting artifacts hanging from the ceiling, and Nick instantly felt the full impact of her own youth and beauty. She could feel the eyes of the men and women seated at small tables pass over her red shantung dress and glance off her short, thick black hair. One of the things she loved about Hughes was that he had never wanted her to resemble the celluloid blondes that were the popular model of their age. And she didn’t. She was a little too severe looking, her lines a little too crisp, to be considered pretty. Sometimes it felt like a never-ending battle to prove to the world that, in her difference, she was special, discrete. But there, at the fabulous 21 Club, with its urbane atmosphere, she felt her own rightness. It was a place full of streamlined women, with intelligent eyes, like bullet trains. And there was Hughes, so honey blond, with his elegant hands and long legs and Service Dress Blues.

The waiter, small and dark, seated them at table 29. There was a couple to their right. The woman was smoking and pointing out lines from a slender book.

"In that line, I really see the whole film," the woman said.

"Yes," the man said, with just a touch of uncertainty.

"And in some ways, it is so Bogart."

"It does seem like he could have been the only logical choice," the man said.

Nick looked at Hughes. She wanted to communicate to him how much she loved him for taking her here, for spending too much money just to have a cocktail, for letting her be herself. She tried to radiate all these things in her smile. She didn't want to talk just yet. She wondered about telepathy. She concentrated on making all those things seep into her expression.

"Do you know what?" the woman said, her pitch rising suddenly. "We're at their table. Do you realize we're at their table and we're talking about them?"

"Are we really?" the man said, taking another sip from his scotch.

"Oh, that is so 21," the woman said laughing.

Nick looked around.

"Whose table, do you think?" she whispered to Hughes behind her gloved hand.

"I'm sorry?" Hughes said distractedly. He had been looking for the waiter, who seemed to have vanished.

"They said they're at someone's table. Whose table?"

Nick looked over at the woman again and realized she was now eyeing them. She had heard Nick, seen her try to hide her curiosity behind her hand. Nick flushed and looked down at the red and white checked tablecloth.

"Why, it's Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's table, dear," the woman said. She said it kindly. "They went on their first date at this table. It's one of the things they brag about here."

"Oh, really?" Nick tried to hit a note somewhere between polite and nonchalant. She smoothed her styled hair with her palms, feeling the softness of the suede loosening the hairspray.

"Oh, Dick, let's give them the table," the woman was laughing again. "Are you two lovers?"

"Yes," said Nick, feeling bold, sophisticated. "But we're also married."

"That's a rarity," the man chuckled.

"Yes, indeed, it is," the woman said. "And that deserves Bogart and Bacall's table."

"Oh, please don't let us disturb you," Nick said.

"Nonsense," the man said picking up his scotch and the woman's champagne cocktail.

"Oh, really, you've been bedeviled by my wife," Hughes said. "Nick..."

"Oh, we'd love it," the woman said. "And she is especially bedeviling."

Nick looked at Hughes, who smiled at her.

"Yes, she is," he said. "Come on then, darling. We're all on the move for you."

The martini that arrived reminded Nick of the sea and their house on the island: clean, briny and utterly familiar.

"Hughes. This may be the best supper I've ever had. From now on, I only want martinis, olives and celery."

Hughes put his hand to her face. "I'm sorry about all of this."

"How can you say that? Look where we are."

But Hughes wasn't there. He was somewhere else and Nick knew it. She wanted not to know it, not that night.

"We should get the bill," he said, motioning to the small, dark waiter.

"Is everything all right, sir?"

"It's fine. May we have the bill, please?" Hughes was looking at the door. Not at Nick, not at her red dress, or her shiny black hair that she'd had to keep in a net on the train all the way from Cambridge to Penn Station.

The waiter glided away.

Nick fiddled with her handbag because she didn't want to look at Hughes. The couple who had switched seats with them had left, although the woman had squeezed her shoulder and winked at Nick when she'd risen. Nick tried to stop herself wondering what Hughes might be thinking about. There was so much that she didn't know about him, not really, and although she always wanted to confront, to slice open the wound in one deft movement and peer inside, something animal in her told her it was the wrong way to proceed with him.

"Sir, Madam." A man who looked like a walrus -- handle-bar mustache and all -- had emerged at their table. "I'm the manager. Is anything wrong?"

Nick looked up.

"No," Hughes said, his eyes glancing around, presumably for the waiter. "I'd only asked for the bill..."

"I see," the Walrus said. "Well, it's entirely possible that you weren't aware, sir, but dinner," and here he paused, letting his mustache take full effect, "dinner is on the house for the Navy tonight."

"I'm sorry?" Hughes said.

"Son," the Walrus, smiled. "What can I bring you?"

Nick laughed. "A steak, oh please a steak," she said, and everything else vanished.

"A steak for the lady," the Walrus said, still looking at Hughes.

Hughes grinned, and suddenly Nick saw the boy she'd married hidden in the untouchable man who'd come back to her. A boy in a stiff cardboard collar and a very pressed blue uniform. And their predicament, which was just like everyone else's.

"A steak, if you can find one in this city, or this country for that matter," Hughes said. "I wasn't sure they still existed."

"They still exist at the 21 Club, sir, such as they are," the Walrus said, and snapped his fingers at the waiter. "Two more martinis for the Navy man."

Later, it was the fleas, again. And Hughes was tired, he said, from the steak. Nick folded her red dress and put on the black nightgown, which he wouldn't see in the dark. She lay on the bed listening to the noise of the fixers, working on the ship in the dock. The hammering of the steel, like the empty hammering of her heart.

 

The train was just pulling out of Newark when Nick decided to go to the lounge. She had packed three hard-boiled eggs and a ham sandwich for dinner so she wouldn't have to spend the three dollars in the dining car. But she couldn't resist the lure of the lounge on the Havana Special. It had been advertised as serving all the "new drinks", and Nick had put aside 50 cents for "extras". The Havana Special, which ran all the way from New York to Miami, was the first overnight train Nick had ever been on alone. No husband, no mother, no cousin. She could be anyone. She smoothed her grey skirt and applied her lipstick. She inspected herself in the mirror, one dark lock fell over her left eye. She was about to step into the corridor when she remembered her gloves. As she slipped them on, she smelled her wrist once more before closing the door sharply behind her.

Entering the lounge car, with its curved wooden bar and low-slung, burgundy upholstered seats set around small cocktail tables, Nick felt a trickle of sweat begin to pool between her breasts. She ran her gloved hand over her upper lip and instantly regretted the gesture. A waiter approached and showed her to an empty table. She ordered a martini with extra olives, wondering if they would charge her more for them. She pushed back the beige felt curtain and stared out the window into the night. Her own reflection stared back. Behind her head she could see a man in a navy blazer looking at her. She tried to make out if he was handsome, but a passing train obliterated his image.

She shifted her body away from the window and crossed her legs, feeling the shift of her nylons between her thighs. The waiter brought her drink and Nick offered up her cigarette to be lit, and the waiter had to fumble to locate his lighter. The man across the way stepped in, flicking a silver Zippo. All the young men back from the war carried Zippos, as if they came issued along with the uniform.

"Thank you," Nick said keeping her eyes on her cigarette.

"You're welcome."

The waiter disappeared behind a partition of frosted, etched glass. The man kept standing.

"May I join you?" he asked. There was nothing hesitant in his request.

Nick motioned to the seat, without looking up. "I'm not staying long," she said.

The man sat. "Where are you headed?"

"St. Augustine," Nick said and this time she faced him.

He had dark hair, slicked back with pommade. He was handsome, she supposed, in a Palm Springs sort of way. Perhaps a little too much cologne.

"I'm going to Miami," he said. "I'm going to see my parents in Miami."

"How nice for you," Nick said, in a way that sounded like she didn't think it was nice one way or the other.

"Yes, it is," the man said smiling at her. "What about you? Why St. Augustine?"

"I have a brother there," Nick said. "He's decommissioning his ship. I'm going to see him."

"How nice for him," the man said.

"Yes, it is." This time, Nick smiled back.

"I'm Dennis," the man said, extending his hand.

"Helena," said Nick.

"Like the mountain."

"Like the mountain. How original."

"I'm an original guy. You just don't know me very well, yet."

"And I suppose if I knew you better, I would feel differently?"

"Who can say?" The man finished his drink. "I'm having another drink. Would you like another drink, Helena?"

"I don't think so," Nick said.

"I see. I guess I'll just have to drink alone, then."

"It is looking that way. But who knows, if you hang around long enough, maybe you'll find a companion." The martini was making her feel brave.

"I don't want another companion," the man said. He sighed. "Trains make me lonely."

Nick looked out the window again at the night rushing by, the whine of steel hitting steel.

"Yes," said Nick. "They are lonely." She pulled out a cigarette. "I suppose I will have that drink."

The man signaled to the waiter. He brought the drinks, but this time Nick's martini had only one olive. For some reason, it made her ashamed.

"What's your brother like?"

"He's lovely," she said. "And very blond."

"So you don't look alike."

"No, we don't."

"Well, he's one lucky guy to have a sister like you."

"Do you think so? I don't know how lucky he should feel, really."

"I'd like a sister like you," the man grinned at her.

Nick didn't like the way he said it, or the way he grinned, as if there was a complicity between them. Now that he was so close to her, she could see that he wasn’t really handsome at all. He had funny ears and errant brown hairs protruding from his nostrils.

"I have to go now," Nick said, trying to keep her balance as she rose to her feet.

"Oh, come on."

"Don't bother getting up," Nick said.

"Don't get all huffy. I was only kidding."

Nick walked out of the lounge. He could pay for both her damn drinks.

"Any time you want some brotherly love," she heard the man call after her, laughing, before the compartment door cut him off.

Back in her roomette, Nick practically ripped her blouse trying to get it off. She was boiling. She pulled off her skirt, until she was standing in only her brassiere and underpants. She bent over the small sink and splashed water over her breasts and around her neck. Her head was pounding. She switched off the light and pushed the window down to let in some fresh air. The porter had turned down her bed while she had been in the lounge. She sat on it and lit a cigarette. When she was finished with that one, she lit another and pressed her head against the pane. The darkness went by. After a while, she lay down, the smell of the smoke still lingering around her.

It was five o'clock in the morning when the train pulled into Richmond. The sound of people shifting in and out of the train had woken her up. She hadn't closed the curtains and the window was still open.

"Goddamn it," Nick said, and tried to inch herself up the bed to the curtain, aware that she still wearing only her brassiere and underpants, for all the boarding passengers to see. The far curtain was just out of reach, so she tugged at the one nearest and got behind it. Standing there, covered in almost nothing but the green felt, she peered out. The sea seemed to embrace the air more gently here in the South. Not like at Tiger House where it took it by force. There was also the smell of pine, cleaning away the vestiges of her martini. She pulled the other curtain shut. After tying the sash of her robe around her waist, she opened the door and called to the porter for coffee.

She would be in St. Augustine by eleven tonight. And with Hughes. Had she dreamt of him? She tried to remember. The porter came with the steaming coffee. Nick opened the curtains and drank it, watching the sleepy passengers boarding for Florida. Helena would be arriving in Hollywood soon. She wondered what Avery Lewis's house looked like. Lord, she hoped Helena wasn't making a mistake. Poor Helena. Word had come early on in the fighting that Fen was dead -- it had taken him all but two months to get himself killed. And Helena had only married him two weeks before he shipped off. Who knows what their marriage would have been like if he had lived. They were both a couple of children and neither one had much money.

Helena's mother, her Aunt Francis, had not made a brilliant marriage either, while Nick's father had made oodles making bobbins and spools for the booming mill business. The sisters were separated by wealth, but remained devoted to each other. After Nick's mother, as the eldest of the two girls, had inherited Tiger House, Nick’s father had built a smaller house next door for her Aunt Francis as a gift. Nick couldn't remember a summer that Aunt Francis and her mother weren't in each other's pockets. Even after Helena's father died, when the Depression came. And even when her own father died and her mother was so unwell. Nick stopped herself. She didn't want to think about that right now.

She pulled out two of the hard boiled eggs from the brown paper bag she'd brought and cracked them on the window sill. No, everything was new now, like the shiny egg, just waiting to be cracked. And she would crack it. She and Hughes would do it together. She was hungry for it, she would stuff the world whole into her mouth and bite down.

 

 

 

 

 

NICK

 

II

January, 1946

 

 

 

Nick was lying on the floating dock when she heard Hughes pull up in the old Buick. She tried to concentrate on the music coming from the screened-in porch, so she wouldn't hear the coughing engine or the slap of the screen door as her husband entered the bungalow.

Count Basie's piano floated out from the record player, while she warmed herself in the late afternoon sun. The worn wood from the dock shed tiny splinters into the back of her yellow bathing suit. Her big toe skimmed the top of the canal. She waited.

When Hughes didn't come outside, Nick felt relieved. His homecomings had begun to bring on a sense of dread. Of all that wanting.

She heard the shower start inside the house as he washed away the dust and paint from the day's work mothballing the warship in Green Cove Springs. She imagined his body, the blond hairs on his arms covered in a fine layer of what was once the shell of the U.S.S. Jacob Jones. She could picture him slicking his hair back under the streaming water, turning his face up to the spray, his eyelashes like blonde cobwebs catching fine beads. Would he be thinking of her? She wondered this only briefly. She knew he would not.

The cottage was giving off its evening song: the faint sound of water rushing through the cheap pipes and scratchy jazz. Nick hated that cottage, hated its same-ness. A rented pre-fab, it was like all the others surrounding it: boxy, with a kitchen and bedroom at the front, and a large living room and dining area to the rear, with windows looking out on a back porch.

The bungalows sat in rows on either side of a dusty drive, each separated by their own plot of land. All the kitchens looked out onto the drive and at anytime, any number of the servicemen's busybody wives could be seen peering out. Their flickering eyes like guards in a penal colony. Nick had made it a habit to walk out to the drive in her bathing suit at least once a day, just to watch the kerchiefed heads quickly disappear, one by one, as she stared them down. It had become something of a game, to see if she could catch one polka-dotted head, frozen like an animal caught in the headlights of her racy bathing suit, cut higher at the thighs in the French style. This brightened her day.

Each bungalow also had a good-sized backyard stretching all the way down to the salty canal, which served as a byway for St. Augustine's fishermen and, from time to time, kids fooling around in rowboats.

But theirs had one thing all the others didn't have: a dock, tethered into the silty bank of the canal, which swayed with the movement of the water. Unlike the rest of the development, it didn't have the look of better times, of new lives being started over in cheap boxes. The wood was grey and weathered, perhaps rescued from an old piece of siding or a fisherman's ramp. Nick loved the dock, like nothing else in that Florida town. Sometimes when she was lying there with her eyes closed, she was almost sure the hammered planks had come free from their soft purchase and that she was floating away, down the canal and out to sea, back home to her island up North. Then she would open her eyes and see the ungainly house at the other end of the lawn, and realize it had only been a passing fishing boat, causing the dock to pitch from side to side.

Nick passed her days lying on the dock in the Florida sun, listening to the records that had arrived from Cambridge in a trunk lined with old newspaper, and trying to shock her neighbors. Sometimes, she tried out new recipes from a cookbook she had bought in town, The Prudence Penny Regional Cook Book. It was divided into chapters like Pennsylvania Dutch, Creole, Mississippi Valley, Minnesota Scandinavian and Cosmopolitan, and called for ingredients whose presence on the page continued to startle her; she had to keep reminding herself that rationing was over.

Before they left Elm Street, Nick and Helena had made a small bonfire and burnt their expired rationing books. It wasn't that they hated them so much, although Helena had always had a hard time figuring out which stamp went with what food, and would sometimes return with a can of frozen spinach instead of chicken because she had mixed up the days. Nick had even liked the challenge of rationing for a while. Still, it had eventually grown tedious, like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that was missing a piece.

Now, she could cook whatever she liked, without having to figure out a substitute. But she found it difficult to concentrate on the recipes in the cookbook, and sometimes would give up halfway through the honeyed ham or Oysters Rockefeller, and go lie on the dock in the sun. Later, she would throw the remaining ingredients together into some kind of casserole.

Hughes never said anything, but she knew he was dismayed by her uneven cooking. Now, lying on her dock, she tried not to think of dinner, once again left undone. She also tried not to think about her husband, who had himself become something rationed.

The orchestra's horns section broke in and Nick slapped her foot in time against the coming tide, making little splashes of canal water fly up onto her calf. Her eyes were shut and her yellow bathing suit was losing the heat it had absorbed from the afternoon's sunbathing. A breeze was whispering up from the water and she could hear a small rowboat passing.

In the house, the water stopped running. Silence, except for the sound of the music and the children a few houses down, complaining about being called to dinner. Nick turned her face to the West to catch the last heat of the day on her cheek.

"Hello."

Startled, Nick lifted her head. Shading her eyes, she saw Hughes standing on the lawn, freshly showered and wearing the white shirt she had ironed earlier in the day.

"Do you want me to make you a drink?" she asked, not moving.

"No, I'll make it myself." Hughes walked over to the weathered Tiki bar set up near the dock and, pulling a bottle of no-name gin out of the cupboard, poured two fingers-full into a tumbler.

"There's no ice out here," Nick said. "Too hot." She lay her head back on the warm planks and shut her eyes again.

"You haven't forgotten that Charlie and Elise are coming for dinner?" There was a note of resignation in his voice, as if he knew she had forgotten, as if she couldn't but have forgotten. As if all she did was forget and not remember.

Nick stiffened, but kept her eyes closed.

"Who? Oh yes, your friends," she said. "No, I haven't forgotten." She had forgotten. "I bought shrimp from the shrimp boat."

She heard Hughes sigh into his drink.

"Well, I know you're bored of it, but for a dollar a bucket, it's really all we can afford until the next paycheck." Nick got up and dusted herself off. "Especially if we're entertaining."

"I thought you said you missed having dinner parties," Hughes said quietly.

He stood facing her, holding his drink. His blond hair had turned dark from the shower, and the setting sun lit him from behind. To Nick, it seemed as if his shoulders were almost squared against her, like a fighter.

"I do," Nick said. "I mean, I did say that. Darling, It's just that I don't know them and you..." she broke off when she saw Hughes staring at her like she was some kind of slow child.

She felt the strange juxtaposition of emotions, becoming so familiar now, sweep over her. She wanted to take his drink out if his hand and smash it into his face, grind the glass against his skin. She also wanted to beg for forgiveness, and then be forgiven, like when she was a child and her mother's cold punishment would pass into clemency.

"Never mind," Nick said. "I'll go in and fix the supper. What time did you tell them?"

"Eight, sharp," Hughes said.

Nick didn't go in and fix the supper. Instead, she stood smoking in the kitchen, letting cold air leak out of the ice box as she studied the vegetables. Cucumber salad, she decided. It would go well with seafood. She shut the door, leaning against it. She looked down at her legs, which were getting brown from her daily doses of sun. She'd had to buy the bathing suit at a local shop, for a small fortune. She hadn't realized the sun would still be strong at the onset of winter. On her island up North, the sun would already be a muddy, washed out color, her bathing suit already packed in a cedar trunk to hibernate until the following summer.

She heard Hughes turn off the record player and head toward the kitchen. Nick began busying herself with the shrimp, peeling and de-veining the pink waning moons. She used to love them. Now, they ate them almost every other day.

"Why don't you turn on the radio?" Hughes asked.

"Oh, yes do," she said and held up her slippery hands. "I don't want to hurt it."

Hughes had bought her the radio last week and Nick had a vague feeling of animosity towards it.

He had taken a Saturday afternoon drive alone and returned with a box in tow. She didn't ask why he drove without her on the weekends, or where he went. He would just stare at the sky through the screen door and then pick up his keys. The first time, she hadn't even realized he was going until she heard the engine start. She walked to the door and looked up at the cloudless expanse, the dusty drive, the road beyond, to see what in it had made her husband want to drive away. But as far as she could see, there was nothing. Only the old green Buick flatlining down the straight Florida road.

Then one day, the radio had appeared, like a spy, from wherever it was her husband went to get away.

"I thought you'd want to hear something other than your records," he had said by way of explanation. "You may even be able to hear programs from London."

"London?" she had asked, wondering why he thought that was important to her. But he was already on his way to the shower, her voice echoing in the empty kitchen.

Nick looked up from the shrimp. Hughes hadn't switched the radio on, but he was fingering the silver knobs. He had elegant fingers with neat, square nails. Everything about him was like his hands, tailored and clean, the color of pine. Nick watched him gaze at the dials, run the tips of his fingers over the brown covering of the speaker. She wanted to eat him, he was so beautiful. She wanted to cry or melt or gnash her teeth. Instead, she peeled the skin off another shrimp.

"They look good," Hughes said, coming up behind her and putting his hand on the small of her back.

Nick had to grip the counter with one hand to keep herself still. She smelled him, Ivory soap and Bay Rum, so close to her skin, but not touching it. Touching it through the fabric of her dress. She wanted his hand on her neck, or her arm or in between her legs.

"I'm sure it will be delicious," he said.

She knew he was sorry he'd been nasty about the shrimp. "Oh, well," she said, suddenly feeling gay again. "I know it's awfully repetitive. I suppose its partly because I sleep so late and can't seem to get up in time for that early market. Are you sorry you have such a lazy wife?"

"I have a lovely wife," he said.

She was about to turn to him when he took his hand off her back. She would have caught his hand, pulled him to her, maybe even begged him, but he was already moving away.

Nick watched him head for the screened in porch, his long legs moving slowly like a sleep-walker. The invisible imprint of his hand burning into the small of her back.

When she had finished with the shrimp and put them in the ice box to cool, Nick went into the bedroom and carefully removed her bathing suit. She showered in the small bathroom off the bedroom. When she opened the closet, a cockroach as big as a sparrow came flying out, ten times bigger than any she'd ever seen up North, and with wings. A water bug, one of the servicemen's wives had called them. Nick didn't scream, she wasn't even surprised by them anymore.

Running her hand across her dresses, she stopped at a cotton sundress with cherries and a sweetheart neckline. Slipping it on and surveying herself in the mirror, Nick took out her sewing scissors and cut off the straps. Without them, her breasts sprang to attention, the heart-shaped top just clearing her nipples. She brushed her dark hair back, still glossy despite the sun. She looked strong and healthy, and a little less severe with her new nut-colored skin setting off the yellow flecks in her hazel eyes. She felt proud of the effect. She dabbed her wrists and cleavage with perfume and went barefoot back into the kitchen.

She pulled a bottle of white wine out of the ice box and brought it out to Hughes, who was sitting on the porch looking out over the canal.

"Would you open this for me, darling?"

Hughes looked up at her and took the bottle and the corkscrew out of her hand. He began peeling away the foil.

"That's quite revealing," he said to the bottle.

"You took me to the Yacht Club dance in this dress, don't you remember?"

He looked up, a half smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "No, I'm sorry, Nicky, I don't."

"Oh, come on," she said. "There was that funny, ugly little man leading the band who thought he was Lester Lanin. And he made some comment about the cherries and you almost hit him."

"Did I?"

Nick sucked in her breath. "Well," she said "It is a bit different. I did cut off the straps. But I think it's more sophisticated this way."

Hughes pulled out the cork and began freeing it from the screw. "Won't you be cold?"

Nick stared at him, as her head pounded out a hot little rhythm, like the angry horns in Count Basie's orchestra.

"Goddamn it, Hughes," she said slowly. "It's goddamn Florida. I will not be cold."

Hughes didn't look up, didn't even flinch. He handed her the bottle. She took a swig, not bothering with the glass, and walked out to the lawn.

 

Nick wasn't sure how long she'd been there when she heard the knock at the door. Only that the bottle was almost half empty and her dress was damp from the grass. With some difficulty, she roused herself and walked unsteadily towards the porch. Walking through the house, she saw Hughes was already shaking hands with the couple at the front door. Nick didn't realize she was still barefoot until she reached them.

"Hello," she said laughing and looking down at her feet. "Well, you have a shoeless hostess. I do hope you won't take it as a sign of indifference. I was out in the yard. It's too damp for shoes."

"I've always thought a barefoot hostess is a mark of the highest regard," the man said, extending his hand. "Charlie Wells. And this is my wife Elise."

His eyes were round and black, like the jet beads her mother used to wear to the theatre, but his brown hand was warm, if a bit rough to the touch. Nick knew it was from mothballing the ship, and that Hughes's hands had also hardened from the chipping and painting, preparing the Jacob Jones to be docked. But Charlie's callouses also reminded her that he was an enlisted man, not a commissioned officer like her husband. It was because they hadn't gone to college, because their families hadn't educated them. A bluejacket, Hughes said they were called in the Navy. "One of the brightest men I served with, though, poor fellow," Hughes had told her.

While the man was dark and slender, his wife looked blonde to the point of albino. And she was wearing a pale pink dress that, in Nick's opinion, wasn't doing her any favors. Still, she had a sort of soft femininity that gave Nick a small prick of envy.

"What can I get everyone to drink?" Hughes asked.

"Come out to the porch," Nick said. "Our silly bar is outside, so Hughes won't have to walk as far to bring you your Scotch." She led their guests through the house back to the porch. "Really, we live out here. That's the lovely thing about Florida. Do you have a porch Elise?"

"We do," she said. "But, I'm hardly ever out there. I'm not really... well, I'm not crazy about the outdoors."

"That's a shame," Nick said, rolling her eyes, but only inwardly. "Do you like Count Basie? I'm on a sort of kick at the moment."

"I don't really know. Charlie's the one who knows about music in our house."

"Do you have Honeysuckle Rose?" Charlie asked.

"I do indeed," Nick said, skipping off to the record player. "Are you a fan of the blues? Hughes always says its too melancholy."

"Life is melancholy. Why dwell on it?" Hughes said, returning with the drinks. "Anyway, this stuff isn't the blues, it's swing,"

In the fading light, Nick saw he had removed her wine bottle from the lawn. "Oh, you think you're so clever," she said, laughing.

"You must think I'm clever, too. You married me, after all," Hughes said, returning her smile, and offering her a martini.

"Have you ever heard Robert Johnson?" Charlie asked. "That's real blues. Southern blues. Not for the club set."

"What do you have against the club set?" Nick asked, turning to face him, happy to rise to the bait. Happy for something to happen around here.

"I have nothing against the club set, except maybe their musical taste," he said, giving her a quiet smile.

Nick was about to reply, but thought better of it. Instead, she stared at him a moment, wondering just how drunk she really was. She could hear the beetles singing in the night. The rustle of the palm at the corner of the lawn. The soft, southern night air mingled with her lily-of-the-valley perfume. She heard Hughes talking about Elise's hometown, in Wisconsin, somewhere. And the sound of the horns.

And next to her, sitting in the rented chintz-covered chair, was this man with jet beads for eyes, giving her a smile full of of cat house jazz and motel rooms.

"Excuse me for a minute," Nick said rising, her hand on the arm of the rattan chair to steady herself. "The kitchen calls."

"I'll help you," Charlie said.

"It's really not necessary," Nick said, picking up her martini and holding it against her like armor.

"I'm a whiz in the kitchen. Ask Elise."

Elise stared at her husband, impassive. But she didn’t, Nick noticed, offer to come in his stead.

Nick didn't dare turn around as they walked back to the kitchen. She opened the ice box and pulled out the peeled cucumber.

"Could you slice this for me?" Nick asked, handing the cucumber back.

"Knife?"

"In the drawer under the sink," she said, retrieving the shrimp.

"From the shrimp boat?" Charlie asked, eyeing the bowl.

"Yes," Nick said laughing.

"Which one?"

"What do you mean, which one?"

"The five o'clock?"

"Yes, what other one is there?"

"The morning shrimp boat," Charlie said, slicing the cucumber, a little too thick for Nick's taste. "Seven a.m., sharp. It's the best one and you get more shrimp."

"And how in the world would you know this?" Nick asked, giving him a mocking smile.

"I always buy the shrimp. Elise doesn't like the canal."

Nick busied herself making a lemon sauce, whisking a yolk into the pool of ljuice at the bottom of the bowl.

"I'll show you one morning, if you like," Charlie said. "Cucumber's done." He approached her with the cutting board and stood motionless behind her.

Nick stopped whisking.

"Do you have any Robert Johnson records?" Nick asked.

"I do," Charlie said. "Would you like to hear them?"

"Yes," Nick said. "And the shrimp boat, too. I'd like to know about that."

"Fine," he said.

Nick began whisking, the sauce turning a thick pale yellow.

"Your cucumber," he said.

 

"I liked them," Nick said, clearing the plates.

"He's a good worker," Hughes, said staring into his scotch. "Some of those boys don't seem to care one bit whether the work on the boat gets finished. Mostly, those are the ones without families."

"Nothing to go back to, I suppose." Nick began running the tap. She eyed Hughes. "But Charlie, I liked him. He said he'd show me the good shrimp boat."

"Did he? Well, Elise doesn't seem much for the outdoors, does she?"

"A bit milquetoast," Nick said.

"She's quite lovely, though."

"Did you think so? I thought she might fade into the wall and we'd be searching for her all night," Nick said, scrubbing the plate. "He's pretty dashing, though."

"Yes, well you're not alone. He has many admirers at the lunch canteen."

"I imagine she must have a hard time with that."

"Oh, I don't know, he seems quite devoted to her."

"Really?"

"You did seem to have a good time. I'm glad," Hughes said, still staring into the remnants of his drink. "I don't want this to be too dull for you."

"This is our life. Why would it be dull?"

"Our life," Hughes said slowly, an almost imperceptible sigh escaping his lips. "Yes, I suppose it is."

"What do you mean you 'suppose it is'?"

"I don't know what I mean, maybe I've had too much to drink."

"Well, I've had too much to drink," Nick said turning from the sink to face him, "and I want to know what the goddamn hell you mean, you 'suppose it is'?"

"Yes, you're right," Hughes said, staring straight back. "You have had too much to drink."

"So I've had too much to drink. So what? I've had too much of everything, goddamn it." Nick slammed the plate into the sink.

"I wish you wouldn't swear so much."

"I wish you were the man I married," Nick said, shaking. She knew she had said too much, but it was like cliff jumping.

When she was a girl, she and Helena and a couple of boys would go up to the old quarry to test their nerve. The granite had run dry years before and the quarry had been abandoned to the groundwater, its depths unfathomable. They would each take turns, starting from an old oak stump that served as their marker, and running without stopping until they were in the air, plummeting off the cliff. The boys who were really scared would skid like marbles at the edge. But Nick always jumped.

Then again, there, she had known the lay of the land.

Hughes finished his scotch in one quick swig and poured himself another. "I'm sorry if you feel disappointed."

"I don't want you be sorry, goddamn it. I want...Goddamn it, I want you to make me feel not disappointed."

"Go to bed, Nicky. We can talk when you've sobered up."

"You're the person who's supposed to...," she stopped, unsure. "You're my husband. I'm your wife."

"I'm well aware of that, Nick."

His voice seemed angry, spiteful even.

"Are you really? You don't seem aware of much these days."

"Maybe you'd be better off alone, maybe I'm not up to the job of being anyone's husband," Hughes said, slamming his glass into the table

"At least I'm trying," Nick said, suddenly afraid. "You..."

Hughes stood, and in an instant seemed to be towering. His palm lay flat against the table, his knuckles white around the empty glass. "You don't think I'm trying, Nick? What do you think I do every day, every second? That boat, this place, this house, this life: You think this is what I want?"

Nick looked at him. And then with one swift move, she yanked the radio cord out of the wall. One minute the radio was in her hand, and the next, it was hurtling through the air at her husband's head.

Hughes didn't move a muscle, he just stood, his words hanging about him and an emptiness in his eyes.

The radio missed him and smashed against a corner of the wall.

"And what? You think that," she pointed at the springs and plastic lying in a heap, "you think that's what I want?"

"I'm going to bed," Hughes said.

"What's the point?" Nick ran her fingers through her hair. "You're already asleep."

 

Hughes left early the next morning. Nick pretended to be asleep. The curtains were drawn and the room was stuffy. They both liked to sleep with the window open, but Nick had left it shut when she had finally come to bed, refusing to afford herself even the pleasure of the cooler air. It would be horrible and it was horrible, not least because it was stifling.

When she heard the engine finally turn over, she rose, not even bothering with her dressing gown. She sat at the kitchen table staring into her black coffee. She toyed with the idea of throwing her things into a case, calling a taxi and fleeing back home. But when she mentally arrived in Cambridge, she was lost, the future yawning out in front of her. And he would still exist somewhere, somewhere else, and she wouldn't have him. So she just stared at the coffee.

She tried to think of her parents' marriage, but it was no use; she wasn't aware of what went on behind closed doors, in dark stairwells, at parties when she was left at home, on midnight walks when the world slept. They had seemed happy. But her father had died when she was still so young, and what she could remember of the two of them together were fragments: a diamond brooch presented in a green leather box at Christmas; her mother running her hand over her father's whiskers; the intermingling smell of Royal Yacht tobacco and L'Heure Bleue.

Her mother hadn't wanted her to marry; she thought they were too young. She had forced Nick to go on dates with other boys, boring dances with a sweaty-palmed neighbor trying to hold her hand under the table. But when it became clear that she and Hughes were meeting in secret, her mother gave in. Better she be married if anything happened, her mother had said.

They were married on the Island, at the church where she had been Christened. Small, with beautiful stained-glass windows. The reception was at Tiger House. They had some overly-strong punch and tea-sandwiches and a sweet white cake with candied violets on it.

Nick, feeling strange and sick, had escaped to the upstairs drawing room. Sitting on the grey silk Sheraton sofa, she began pulling the orange blossoms out of her hair. She had wondered if she'd ever be able to go back downstairs. Maybe she'd waste away on this sofa, like a sort of Miss Havesham. The orange blossoms would wilt and petrify, the chocolates set out on the side-table would become brown, old stones.

And then Hughes had appeared in the doorway in his morning coat. Without a word, he came over and sat beside her. Nick continued to toy with the small scented sprigs, not daring to look at him, ashamed. He had taken her chin in his hand and turned her face to him. And in that gesture, was everything, everything that wasn't dead and stale and confining.

He took her hand and led her to the maid's bedroom in the back. The window was open in the small bedroom and the yellow-checked curtains were blowing in the harbor air. Lifting her voluminous skirt and petticoat, he knelt and put his face against her, inhaling her, but remaining still. Minutes seemed to pass before they heard footsteps in the corridor. Hughes turned his head toward the open door, but remained pressed against her. The downstairs maid passed by the door and stopped, paralyzed and flushing before their tableau. Hughes had stared at the woman a moment, as if he wanted her to see them, see what was happening and changing between them, keeping still, before kicking the door shut.

 

It was ten o'clock, the sun was on its way to its apex and Nick was still wearing her nightgown. The coffee lay cold beside her motionless hand on the breakfast table. She thought she could detect the lingering odor of last night's shrimp, although it could have been the shrimp from Wednesday, or Sunday for that matter.

She had found the remnants of the radio carefully wrapped in tissue outside the front door, like a baby left on a doorstep. She had half expected to find a note pinned to it reading: Unloved and Unwanted.

Damn him, Nick thought, damn him to hell.

They were supposed to be different, different from all the people who didn't want things and didn't do things and who weren't special. They were supposed to be the kind of people who said to hell with it, who threw their wine glasses into the fireplace, who jumped off cliffs. They were not supposed to be careful people.

But, if only he weren't so beautiful. If only she didn't want him so much.

She heard an engine outside and slowly rose, moving toward the kitchen window.

Charlie Wells was slamming the car door shut, an assembly of records tucked under his arm. Nick ran into the bedroom and shut the door. An image from the night before --his hand on the soft interior of her thigh under the dinner table, a silent interloper -- came back to her. How could she have forgotten that?

Her heart pounding, she found her dressing gown and checked her appearance in the mirror. She looked thin and unhappy. Goddamn it, she thought, I am thin and unhappy, so what?

Charlie was knocking on the side of the screen door. Nick straightened her back and went to greet him.

"Hello," she said, looking at him through the screen.

"Hello," he said, smiling back at her. "I'm sorry for dropping in on you like this, but I was wondering what to do with my morning and I thought to myself that I'd like to spend it listening to Robert Johnson. And then I thought, maybe you would, too. I'm playing hooky."

"Ahh, and Hughes told me what a good worker you were."

His hand, seeking her out while she fiddled with her napkin.

"Yes, your lieutenant is a very serious man."

"Yes, he is," Nick said, picking at the grime lacing the screen.

Charlie stood there, jostling the records under his arm. He was wearing a pair of khakis and a chambray shirt, dock shoes and that cat house smile.

Nick continued to work at the dirt caught in the fine wires.

"Look," he said, finally. "Maybe I've been too impetuous. You're probably busy and I'm being a nuisance."

Nick looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "No, I'm not doing anything that a little music wouldn't improve." She pushed the screen door open and stood aside, "Please."

Charlie stepped in and put the records on the table.

"Stay here and make yourself at home. I'm going to put on something a little more practical. One has to be serious about music after all," she said, finally throwing him smile.

In the bedroom, Nick put on her green striped sundress and some red lipstick.

She thought about his hand rustling under her cherry dress the night before.

She went back to the kitchen and began fixing a fresh pot of coffee. She stood with her back to the counter watching Charlie thumb through his records at the breakfast table. Some of the cardboard packaging was worn, disintegrating at the corners. Hughes would never let anything he cared about be so ill-used, she thought. All his tools were kept clean and carefully returned to their cases when he was done with them. He even kept his toothbrush in a special case in the bathroom cabinet. And yet, it moved her, all that care and intensity for a screwdriver or a toothbrush.

"I think we'll start your education with this one," Charlie said, holding a record out to her.

Out on the porch, Nick gripped her coffee, as Charlie put the needle to the vinyl. The music was rougher than the blues she was used to, but it had certain a back-porch quality. It was like a piece of driftwood, all worn down and muddy-colored. But with the strong sun shining on the green lawn and the palm trees bowing and straightening in the breeze, it couldn't make Nick sad. In fact, it made her feel light-headed, like she might blow away with it.

The drying damp coming off the grass beckoned and the porch seemed to float up and away from the house, moving over the canal. The skirt of her dress ballooned and Nick lay her head against the back of the chair. The lonely appeal of a Mourning Dove sounded somewhere through the haze of the day.

 

Nick didn't know how long she had been sitting like that, but when the music stopped, she forced herself to open her eyes and saw the day gathering strength. Charlie Wells was sitting in his chair looking at her, sizing her up, as if he were trying to catalogue her.

"Did you like it?"

"Yes, it has a sort of tonic effect, doesn't it?" It was all she could find to say, without saying what was really in her heart. Something about fleeing, something about this horrible cottage, about a broken record player and Hughes's hand on the small of her back.

Charlie didn't answer, looking down at his hands. In a moment he looked up, as if whatever it was he had been thinking had passed. "Are you hungry?" he asked. "Because I'm starving."

"I suppose I could make up some sandwiches. Our cupboard's rather shameful at the moment. I'm a bit of a sporadic shopper," Nick said.

"Never mind the sandwiches. I'll take you to lunch in town."

"What an awfully grand offer," Nick said. "A little too grand, really."

"That's all right. I know a Spanish place in the old town, tapas. Not so expensive. Have you ever eaten tapas?"

"I don't even know what that is," Nick said, laughing.

"It's good. You get to taste all sorts of different small dishes," he said. "I ate octopus once in Spain, before the war. I had never even seen a real Octopus, but there I was, eating it. Sometimes a thing like that, a thing you've never even imagined in your head, can go down surprisingly easy."

 

The rusting Clipper, which Charlie said he had borrowed from "one of the boys," rolled towards town along the flat road. Next to them, the canal opened up into a large waterway, dotted with fishing boats and clapboard shacks.

The car felt close, almost intimate. Nick found herself pressing her ankles together, knees touching, like her mother had taught her to do when sitting with a boy. She smoothed her hair back and willed herself not look at him. But as she listened to the whirr of the tires moving over the road, her mind returned to the dinner table.

It hadn't been a noisy, clumsy, mean advance, like the man on the train. It had been silent, the hand sliding under the tip of her skirt, pushing her knees apart slightly. His thumb brushing the interior of her thigh, making little concentric circles on her flesh.

She knew if she closed her eyes, she could imagine that it was Hughes's hand, quiet but insistent, the way she remembered it.

She had poured more wine, rising in her seat a little to reach the others. Some of it spilled on her grandmother's white linen tablecloth. All the while, Charlie had kept his eyes on Hughes, continuing their conversation about the lousy food at the canteen, chuckling at Hughes's jokes. It had made her feel sad, to see Hughes nodding his head, his blue eyes crinkled at the edges in a smile. But it also took her breath away, made her feel drunker, powerful.

Nick had been unable to resist a glance at Elise, who had kept her own eyes on Charlie. She wondered if Elise suspected, if maybe she was used to it, the way they said you got used to the air-raid sirens. You wait, knowing it's coming, then try to keep your ears covered until it's finished, when you can curse it in safety.

In the car, Nick pressed her knees tighter together. She should have stayed home. She should be lying on her dock, listening to Count Basie, thinking about getting ready for the officer's picnic that night.

But then she remembered the radio, wrapped carefully in tissue, and the heavy cookbook full of ingredients she hadn't bought, and she leaned her head against the car window and closed her eyes.

She tried to remember the last time Hughes had taken her to lunch. Sometime before the war. Always the same thing about money, as if they really were poor. It wasn't that she minded so much about the money, exactly, but she hated the way things always had to be discussed and weighed, and in the end he always decided anyway, leaving her with the impression that she might as well have a been wall. It was exhausting and it made her reckless. When she had wanted the yellow bathing suit, the one from the local store, she had telegramed her trustee and asked for the money in secret. Then she had lied to Hughes about how much it cost, ripping up the tag on her way home and scattering it on the roadside. All for a goddamn bathing suit. But somehow she loved that suit even more for it.

It wasn't as if Hughes's family didn't have money. In fact they had oodles. It was just that Hughes hadn’t made his own yet. Not like Helena, who really had nothing.

Goddamn Helena. She had telephoned Nick last week, long-distance from Hollywood. When the operator told her where the call was from, Nick knew something was up. Helena, or more precisely Avery Lewis, wanted to sell the house on the Island for cash. The news confirmed Nick's suspicion that the man was a charlatan and she told Helena as much, making her cousin cry down the scratchy telephone line. She told Nick that Avery wanted to invest in a film venture, some b-movie nonsense that Nick suspected had to do with that starlet he was always going on about. Nick had coldly reminded Helena that she wouldn't even have the house if it weren't for Nick's father, hoping to shame her into dropping it. Shamed or not, Helena had relented saying they would just have to find the money another way; of course Nick was right. Nick had been furious when she hung up and she told Hughes she thought they'd better get to Hollywood and see what was going on out there. Hughes had reminded her that cross-country tickets were costly and Nick had stayed in a black mood, refusing to do the shopping for days.

 

"Where are you?" Charlie Wells's voice brought Nick back to the car, the warm air drifting through the open windows.

"Oh, just away somewhere," Nick said. "I'm a bit tired from all the wine last night."

"Let's park, we can walk from here," Charlie said, pulling up alongside the old Spanish fort that had once served as a look-out.

The restaurant was in one of the Hacienda-style houses that marked the narrow cobbled streets of the old town of St. Augustine. It was dark inside, with a low ceiling, and Nick wondered how many other women Charlie had taken here.

"I'll choose for us, if you don't mind," he said.

Nick waved her hand. "Please. I wouldn’t even know where to begin." When the waiter brought the wine, Nick put her hand over her glass. "I don't think I'll have any."

"You must," Charlie said. "You can't have tapas without wine."

"Well, just a little then," she said removing her hand.

The table was small, their knees were almost touching under it, but Charlie hadn't made a move toward her, leaving Nick vaguely disquieted.

The little fish and meat dishes were at once salty and spicy, oily and saline. Their chins were slick from the sauces and Nick had been compelled to lick her fingers at one point.

"I feel so native," she said cheerfully. He had been right about the wine and she tipped her glass toward him for more.

"You look a bit native with that tan," Charlie said, laughing and pouring the wine.

"This is the first time I've been brown in the winter," Nick said. "I've been working very hard at it."

"Well, I'd say its been worth the effort. All the boys on the ship have quite a crush on you."

"Do they? I've hardly seen them."

"Once is enough," Charlie said. "I'd been told, but I had to see it to believe it."

Nick knew he was lying; she wasn’t the type that had seaman swooning, but she felt herself flush anyway.

"Don't be embarrassed," Charlie said, laughing at her.

"I'm not embarrassed, I just don't know..." Nick hesitated. "Well, I guess I am a little embarrassed."

"Doesn't your lucky bastard of a husband give you compliments?"

Nick didn’t say anything, just looked down at her dirty napkin.

"All right, all right. I'll stop teasing you. Let's order some coffee."

The waiter brought thick coffee in small chipped cups and it tasted like nothing Nick had ever had at home.

"It's Moroccan," Charlie said. "They filter it twice, and they put cardamom in it, that's what gives it that flavor."

"Oh," Nick said.

They sipped their coffee in silence, listening to the sound of dishes banging in the kitchen.

"I feel so tired," Nick said, as she swirled the silt at the bottom of her cup. "Like I could sleep forever."

"Do you want to go back?"

"I think I'd better. Otherwise, I might end up like Rip Van Winkle and sleep at this table for a hundred years."

"I doubt they'd mind," Charlie said, laughing.

"I suppose it wouldn't be the worst place. At least I'd have something nice to eat when I woke up."

"I wanted to show you where the good shrimp boat comes in," Charlie said. "But I guess we can wait on that."

"First, I'd have to be able to get up early enough," Nick said. "Besides, maybe one lesson is enough for today."

 

Nick leaned her head out the car window, letting the wind take some of the heat from the wine out of her cheeks. If she'd been alone she would have gulped at the air, let its saltiness blow her whole insides clean, but she didn't want to do that in front of Charlie.

She could feel his glance slide over her from time to time and she knew he wanted to touch her.

The car turned into their dusty driveway and Charlie turned off the ignition. The cooling engine dinged in the sun and Nick lay with her head against the window frame, listening to the crickets whirring in the stiff swamp grass around the bungalows.

Sweat was pooling between her breasts and she could feel the back of her knees sticking to the vinyl seat. Charlie put his hand on her thigh. She looked at him. He pushed himself along the seat, reaching around the gear shift, to get to her. She didn't move closer. He seemed to be searching her face for something and she wondered what he saw there. He slid toward her, his arm outstretched to catch her to him, but his pant leg caught on the gear and he had to stop to fiddle with it.

Nick almost felt like laughing. It was like watching a desperate contortionist. He pulled at her, trying to get her to move closer to the middle, but she remained still. She could hear him breathing heavily. He finally got one leg around the gear shift and was on her, pushing her back into the corner. Nick thought about how strange they must look to the busybodies who were no doubt watching from their kitchen windows. Now they really would have something to talk about.

He was covering her neck with his mouth, leaving a wet trail around her collar bone. Nick felt too hot, from the wine and the sun and the sound of the crickets, whose song suddenly sickened her. She pushed back at him. But he was tearing at her now and pushing his full weight against her, one hand up the skirt of her sundress, the other clawing at the straps at her shoulders. She pushed back harder.

"Stop," she said. "It's too hot."

Charlie wasn't listening, or hadn't heard, and Nick wondered if she'd actually said it out loud. She shoved back at him, harder this time, but it didn't seem to make any difference. He ripped the top of her sundress, sending a dozen tiny cloth-covered buttons flying around them.

Nick found the door handle behind her and released it, sending them both tumbling out on to the driveway.

Nick lay flat on her back in the dust, with her dress fanning out around her, feeling an uncontrollable urge to laugh. She covered her ripped top with her hand and tried to push the humming laughter back down, but it refused to go. She clamped her free hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Tears began streaming down her face as she gasped for breath, laughing and choking into the dusty ground, the force of it threatening to snap her apart. Charlie sat next to her, looking very angry and overwrought, which made her laugh even harder. He pushed himself off the ground.

He stood glaring at her, his face red and sweaty.

Nick couldn't even look at him anymore, for fear of exploding into a cloud of hysteria.

"I'm sorry, It's just...oh dear," was all Nick managed, before dissolving again.

"Bitch," Charlie hissed, "You're just a damn tease." He kicked dust at her before getting back into the car and slamming the door.

Nick just lay there laughing and holding her stomach as the car peeled out.

 

She spent the rest of the afternoon making the tomato aspic that she had promised to bring to the officer's picnic in Green Cove Springs that evening. It had completely slipped her mind until she saw the recipe on the counter next to the ice box, calling for her mother's stock and a little Knox gelatine.

After lying out in the dust awhile, watching the particles make twisters up into the shafts of sun, she had picked herself up and gone into the house and that's when the recipe, written on white-lined paper, had caught her eye. It had seemed suddenly so important, possibly the most important thing in the world, that aspic, and Nick had thrown herself into the task with intense concentration.

She had roasted the leftover bones and peeled the vegetables. She had watched the stock carefully as she reduced it into a thickened consomme. She boiled the tomatoes and strained them and poured her mixture into the pewter fish mold that had been sent from up North with the rest of her belongings. She then placed it in the ice box to set and went to get ready.

Nick had thrown her ripped dress in the laundry hamper and was fastening her pearl earrings when she heard the Buick cough and spit its way up to the house. She applied a bit of powder and checked her appearance. A Good Lieutenant's Wife looked back at her. Hair neat and in place, a yellow cotton sweater covered her shoulders and buttoned over her bosom. A little lipstick and no rouge. She walked out into the kitchen and almost bumped right into Hughes. They both hopped back a bit, startled.

"Hello," Nick said, glancing only briefly at him, before fixing her gaze to the floor.

"Hello," Hughes said quietly. "I'm going to shower and change. We don't want to be late."

"I made the aspic," Nick said. "And I'm wearing shoes this time." She looked at him and saw his expression soften. "I think it may be the most glorious aspic I've ever made."

"Thank you," he said.

They regarded each other for a moment, then Hughes turned toward the bedroom and Nick's heart sank. She heard the shower start and she tip-toed into the bedroom. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, to let the steam out. Through the opening she watched her husband stretch and soap himself, rub shampoo into his blond hair. He really was golden all over, she thought, realizing how long it had been since she'd seen him naked in daylight. She was so close to him and yet he didn't even sense her presence. Nick wanted to cry. Instead, she went back into the kitchen to see if the aspic had gelled.

She pulled it gently out of the ice box, so as not to break it's continuity, and marveled at its perfect color, like a tomato-colored swimming pool. She carefully pressed her finger to the top to check the firmness. It pushed back and Nick let out a sigh of satisfaction. She chose a platter and slowly turned the mold over, lifting it away to see the perfect fish-shaped gelatin gleaming and winking back at her. Searching for a cloth to cover it, she selected her favorite one, with the little Dutch men printed on it, and lay it over the platter. She then picked it up gingerly, and began heading out to the car.

Nick wasn't sure if she'd caught her heel or the platter had just slipped from her grasp, but, before she could react, it was tumbling to the ground, bouncing and breaking into tiny ragged cubes across the green and white linoleum floor. A piece of it landed on her foot and squished between her toes. Nick stared at her foot, her smudged yellow patent-leather sandals, the red splotches of aspic melting in the warm air around her. Her legs gave out underneath her and she plopped to the ground, her limbs tumbling beneath her. She then lay her head in her lap and hot tears rushed from her eyes. Her sobs broke out of her violently, like painful hiccups, threatening to rend her into small pieces.

Hughes came rushing out of the bedroom, his white shirt unbuttoned and his hair damp from the shower. Nick looked up. Rasping and shaking, she spread her hand out, gesturing at mess around her.

"It's ruined," she cried. "It's ruined and I don't know how it happened. I wasn't careful enough."

"Hush," Hughes said, dropping down beside her and wrapping his arms around her. He pressed his face into her hair. "Darling, it doesn't matter. We'll fix it. Don't cry, we'll fix it."

Hughes put his hands around her waist and pulled her up, leading her to the kitchen table.

"Sit down, sweetheart. I'll take care of it." He picked up a bowl and carefully gathered up every piece that hadn't yet melted. "It's perfect. Look, Nicky."

"Oh God," Nick said peering into the bowl at the broken and glittering remains of gelatin. "It's disgusting."

"No, it's the most beautiful aspic in the world. Every man is going to be green with envy that I have such a creative wife," Hughes said, smiling at her. "Darling, please. It's going to be all right."

"It's not all right, Hughes. It's really, really not all right," Nick said pressing her face into her hand.

"It will be all right," he said prying her hand away and turning her chin to face him. "I'm sorry. Our life is lovely. You're lovely and I'm going to be a better husband to you. I'm going to take care of you, darling, I promise."

"Hughes," Nick said. "Hughes, please, I want to go home."

"I'm going to take you home, Nick," he said. "And everything will be all right."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NICK

 

III

February, 1947

 

 

Nick sat in the kitchen smoking, listening to a program about birds and rubbing her drum of a belly. She wasn’t really listening to the program and next to her lay a copy of “Anna Karenina” resting on the green formica counter Hughes had designed himself.

Instead, she was looking out over the yard, which, like her stomach, was hard and asleep. Here and there, a sparrow picked hopefully at the unyielding ground. She wondered about the baby, and desperately hoped it would be a boy. After a commercial for Bromo Seltzer, the announcer’s voice broke back in.

We’re back with Miss Kay Thompson reading from Winfrid Alden Stearns’s seminal manual “New England Bird Life,” which has been delighting bird lovers for over 60 years.

A woman’s voice, husky with a New England twang, drifted up through the kitchen.

The Whippoorwill is a bird belonging to a family peculiar in many important respects, and of such singular habits that superstitions no less dismal than ridiculous have attached to its mysterious manners. But the Whippoorwill has a number of amiable and admirable traits, among which are its parental affection and its conjugal fidelity.

Nick checked the meringues baking in the oven. Hughes had become positively obsessed with meringue, following a recent work luncheon at a French restaurant. So strange, the desires he picked up when he was away from her. It never ceased to amaze her to find out that he suddenly loved this or that, when only that same morning he had left the house a known quantity. But despite these small, surprise passions, she knew him better. Or maybe she knew their marriage better; she was beginning to learn that they weren’t the same thing. In any case, since they had come back North, away from that that ugly house and the flat highways, things had gotten better.

She hated the word compromise. Such an ugly, mediocre word, Nick thought. But things had become smoother, like a creaky door whose hinges had finally gotten greased. And Nick had paid for that with compromise.

When they came home to Cambridge, he had bought her this house. Nick had thought that perhaps they could go live at Tiger House, if only for a little while, to wash away the hot, stale Florida air. But Hughes had immediately put his foot down.

“I can’t work there, Nicky,” he told her over dinner in their rented second-floor apartment on Huron Avenue. “And we’re not asking my parents for money.”

Hughes had gotten a job as an associate lawyer at Warner & Stackpole, where his father worked. And then he found the house. “Built by the first woman architect to graduate from MIT,” he told her. She knew this was supposed to be an incentive for her to love it. She could see herself through his eyes: difficult, combative, someone who would have something in common with this disruptive female pioneer, who was probably a lesbian anyway.

The way he had taken her through the rooms -- touched the door frames and spread his arms wide to show her where the counter would be -- she had known he was buying a place to put her in. A place for her to be perfect in, where all her strangeness would be sucked out of her, or at least hidden. She had been sick with the thought of it.

As she unpacked their boxes, dusted off wedding silver, hung his shirts, she imagined herself running away to Paris, renting an apartment on the Champs Elysees, with a balcony, drinking small dark coffees and dancing in the cafes until dawn. But aside from buying a very expensive set of French lingerie, she made no move to get away, except in her head. If she knew he was trapping her, she also knew that she loved him, or rather she had him under her skin, like a fever. Wherever she went, she would be sick with him. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she had stopped fighting it. And just like that, as if her capitulation had broken the dam, he began to see her, to really see her.

“You’re amazing,” he said one day, when he came home to find the table set with the good linen and silver, and Nick patting down a round, rosy side of beef she had gotten cheap from the butcher.

Another night, he touched her knee under the table, after Nick had prepared an impeccable dinner of cold cucumber soup, lamb chops, roast potatoes and spinach for a partner at the law firm Hughes wanted to impress.

“You’re a lucky man to have a wife that can really cook,” the partner had said. “A man like that can go far.”

Hughes had taken her dancing at Spring Ball in Boston, and pressed himself against her, his arm wrapped tight around her waist.

“I could get drunk just smelling you,” he whispered in her ear. “You always smell like home.”

When he made love to her, he held her face in his hands and watched her.

“Tell me you’re happy,” he said once. “I want to know I’ve made you happy.”

So the little things were done, done perfectly. And in between, she read her books and listened to her music and thought up plans for them. And she thought that maybe when he felt that everything was good and safe, maybe he would wake up and want to be free again, with her.

Then there was the talk of a baby.

“I don’t want one, Hughes,” she told him one night at dinner, over a peppered pork chop. “Not now, at least.”

“Everybody wants a baby,” he said.

“That’s a ridiculous thing to say.” She brushed some scattered pepper off the white tablecloth. “And anyway, we’re not like everyone else,” she added quietly.

“Nick,” he said. “I know this isn’t how you imagined things. It’s not how I thought things would be, either. But then there was the war.”

“The war, the war. I’m sick of it.” She stood to start clearing the plates. “That can’t be the excuse for everything.”

Hughes caught her wrist.

“I’m serious, Nick. I really want a family.”

“Well, I’ve got some news for you, Hughes Derringer,” Nick said, stamping her foot with rage. “I’m serious, too.”

“I just want us to live our lives. Just live them.” He was searching her face. “Can’t you understand that?”

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child.”

“Then don’t act like one.”

His tone had changed from passionate to chilly in a wink, and a silence -- a dangerous one, Nick knew from experience -- lay between them.

“I’m not trying to make you angry,” he said finally. “I want a life...Maybe not exactly like everyone else’s, but not complicated, either.”

“A baby,” she said, “is going to be complicated.”

“I want to make something, something good and real.”

“We already have something good and real. Why can’t you see that?” She looked at his face and it already looked weary. She tried to get a grip on the heat rushing through her, the feeling of frenzy causing her legs to shake.

“It’s just...” She sat down and put her hand over his. “Oh, Hughes we’ll have to be so careful with a child. Our life, it’ll be...careful.”

“Not careful,” he said. “Deliberate.”

Nick thought about Hughes, the way he always returned his cuff links to their right box, instead of putting them in the vide-poche on his bureau, or the way he never lost the covers for his Swiss army knives, the way most people did the minute they got them home. Hughes wanted to be careful, he took pleasure in it. He wanted life just the right temperature, not too hot, not too cold. Nick wasn’t sure she could survive all this smoothing down.

“I don’t know Hughes,” she said finally. “We’re still young. We could do things before we have a baby.” But even as she said it, she felt the weight of the house he had bought her and knew it might already be too late.

“What things? Travel? I’ve been abroad, the world’s no better out there than it is here. And anyway, we can always travel as a family.”

Nick thought about Paris, about the apartment on the Champs Elysees.

“I don’t know if I can be that careful, deliberate, whatever you want to call it,” Nick said. “I’m sorry.”

 

Nick pulled the meringues out of the oven and set them to cool on the rack under the large window looking out onto the yard. She had to extend her arms at full length to place them there, taking care not to knock her large belly against the counter. She stood back and admired her handiwork; they were large snowy looking things, peaking and dropping along the ridges. Meringues were lovely, she admitted, but personally she preferred macaroons. They were also achingly sweet, but grittier with their bits of coconut.

After their conversation about the baby, Hughes didn’t bring it up again. But when Nick found out that Helena was newly pregnant in April, he paid for her train ticket from Los Angeles.

“It will be nice for you two to see each other again,” he told Nick. “Anyway, I’m not so sure about that Avery fellow.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Nick said.

Nick knew Hughes was thinking that seeing Helena happy in her pregnancy might change her mind about having a baby, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t seen Helena since they had lived together, and truth be told, she missed her. Nick also thought, from her cousin’s telephone calls and letters, that Helena’s husband might be worse than just the impostor she first took him for. Helena seemed so bowed and tired every time she talked about Avery and his plans for the two of them.

 

Helena arrived in Cambridge in May, just when the lily-of-the-valley was spreading across the yard in a blanket of glossy dark green and delicate white. Nick had picked a small bouquet of the flowers to take to her cousin when she met her train at South Station.

“Helena, my word. You don’t look the littlest bit pregnant,” Nick said, laughing and hugging her cousin when she finally descended onto the platform.

“Really? I feel huge.” Helena was wearing a sky-blue suit, made from some light-weight wool, or man-made blend that was all the rage.

“You look positively glamorous,” Nick said. “Don’t tell me you’re in the pictures now, too.”

“Dear Nick,” Helena said, her head thrown slightly back in laughter. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still lying through your teeth every chance you get.”

Nick handed the porter a quarter drawn from her red leather purse and took her cousin by the hand. “Hughes has even given us taxi money, so we’ll be traveling in style.”

Helena took in the bustling station and, when they got outside, the square, sturdy buildings of Boston.

“Oh, it is good to be home,” she said. “You don’t know how happy I am.”

“Well, I know how happy I am,” Nick said gaily. She waved her hand at an idling cab. “I’ve almost been completely transformed into the perfect housewife. I’ll need you to examine my head later. Come on, let’s get home. Lunch and wine await.”

When they arrived back at the house, Helena went to freshen up in the guest room, while Nick set the little round table in the garden room and began fixing the tuna salad. When Helena came back down, her cousin had removed her little blue hat and her blonde curls brushed her shoulders. Her face looked rosy and plump, like an advertisement for Christmas.

“Well, pregnancy does agree with you, I’ll say that for it,” Nick said. “What is it, three months, now?”

“Four,” Helena said, seating herself at the counter. “Or at least that’s what the doctor told me. I’m not sure I trust him, though. I think he may be a bit of a quack.” She sighed. “But Avery says that all the good actresses go to him, so...”

“The only thing good actresses do is have abortions,” Nick said. “You really should come back here and have it. You could see Dr. Monty.”

“I thought Dr. Monty was dead,” Helena said, laughing.

“No, sir. Alive and kicking and still pinching the nurse’s bottom.” Nick looked at her cousin, then turned back to arranging the lettuce on the plates. “Hughes wants one.”

“A nurse to pinch?”

“I wish it was just that. No, a baby.”

Helena laughed. “It’s not a death sentence, you know. It’s actually quite nice.”

“So they tell me. Oh, Helena, can you see me elbow-deep in dirty diapers? For Christ sake, he’s already got me chained to the stove. What more does he want?”

“Oh, stop pretending you don’t love him, or this life.” Helena said. “You’re his wife, for heaven’s sakes.”

“Of course I love him,” Nick said. “I just thought it would be a little more exciting.”

“Marriage is exciting, in its own way. It’s a haven; you’ll never be alone again. That’s exciting.”

“Not marriage,” Nick said. “Life.” She looked out the window and then turned quickly back to her cousin. “Don’t you remember our little house on Elm Street? We could do exactly as we pleased and no one expected anything of us. I even miss those horrible ration books. I wish it could be like that now, for me and Hughes. Not all stuffy and respectable. Sometimes I want to rip my clothes off and go running down the street stark naked and screaming my head off. Just for a goddamn change of pace.”

“That was the war, not real life,” Helena said. “And it wasn’t all good.”

Nick sighed, remembering Fen. “You’re right. I’m being a twit.” She forced a smile on her face. “Enough of this. Darling, why don’t you pour the wine. It’s right next to you on that funny counter Hughes designed.”

“He really has bought you a lovely house,” Helena said, filling the two small jelly glasses Nick had rescued from their time together during the war.

“Yes, a lovely house for a good wife,” Nick said, bringing the knife down on a stalk of celery. “I shouldn’t say that, it’s nasty. But damn men, anyway.”

“Oh, Nick you really are impossible. You want too much. It’s like flying in the face of God, as Mother used to say.”

“And Avery?” Nick asked, suddenly piqued with Helena’s stoicism. “Is he everything you want? Is God so damn pleased with you both?”

“We’re living in a rented house,” Helena said, thoughtfully. “I would like to have one of my own. Then again, it is a lovely little bungalow, with a spare room for when the baby comes.”

“You can be so dense sometimes, darling,” Nick said, putting the knife down on the cutting board and turning to face her cousin. “I want to know about your husband. Stop beating around the bush and tell me just what in the sam hell is going on out there.”

“Oh.” Her cousin looked taken aback. “Well, I don’t know. The same as usual, I guess.”

“Lord, Helena you’re slower than molasses in January.” Nick felt like hitting her cousin on the head with the celery stalk. “What is the same as usual, then?”

“Nick, he’s not like other men, you know. I mean, I know he tries, but he’s very passionate about the movies, and you know how artists are.”

“What on earth are you talking about? Avery isn’t an artist, he sells insurance, for God’s sakes.” Nick knew she was being hateful, but she couldn’t help herself. How dare Helena lecture her about marriage?

“Yes, to earn his living. But his real passion is films,” Helena said, peering into her jelly glass like she was looking for something. “Actually, he’s very meticulous about it. You see he has this collection.”

Nick walked over and sat down next to her cousin. “A collection.”

“Yes, well actually, you see he had this friend, this actress and she was very good and very talented and very beautiful. And they were going to make films together, she was going to be the star and he was going to raise the money, but then, well, then someone killed her and he was just absolutely heartbroken.”

“That all sounds very dramatic.”

“Well, yes,” Helena said, without any guile. “And he didn’t feel like he could go on. And then he met me and he realized that he didn’t have to be sad, but that he could make his life’s work collecting everything about her and showing the world the talent that she was.”

“So, how is he doing with all that? Showing the world what a talent his ex-mistress was, I mean?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Helena said, jerking her chin. “Most people don’t. It’s a work of art, someone’s whole life. Like if I collected everything about you in order to capture your essence. That’s what Avery is doing.”

“Essence, my foot. This sounds positively cuckoo, Helena. I knew something hinky was going on out there, but I didn’t realized he had you convinced that it was art.”

“You’re being unfair,” Helena said. “He may be unusual, but he’s a good person and he loves me. And I owe him my support.”

“Your financial support, you mean. Honestly, don’t be such a patsy.” Nick saw her cousin’s face color, and suddenly all her passion receded. She put her hand on Helena’s shoulder, saying gently, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be critical. But really, darling, you can’t go on like this. It’s cracked, you can see that, can’t you?”

“Nick, he’s my husband. And my second at that. I don’t plan to get a divorce and move on to number three.”

“Fen doesn’t count, bless him. You were married for about two minutes before he was killed. And maybe you could get the marriage annulled. Insanity may be grounds for annulment. We could ask someone at Hughes’s law firm.”

“Nick, I’m having a baby.”

Nick looked at her for a moment, and then slowly began nodding her head. “Right. Of course, you are,” she said, but thinking to herself: That’s settled. I am never, ever having a baby until I’ve gotten everything I want.

 

The Whippoorwill may be in the brush where it was hidden during the hours of light, or it may have stolen close to the house. It may even drop unperceived on the house-top, and cry out with sudden vehemence in the middle of the night, sending a shiver down the spine of those susceptible to ominous impressions or superstition.

Nick felt the baby kick, like a very small flash of lightening running down her belly. She began sorting through the mail. In one pile, she put the bills for Hughes to look at when he returned from work. In another, she put their social correspondence, which she would have to reply to tomorrow, after the ironing.

“Oh god, life is boring,” she said to the empty kitchen. She wondered what Tolstoy would have to say about ironing or social correspondence. He’d probably be all for it.

Nick knew that Hughes wanted a girl, but a boy wouldn’t have to deal with all the mundane details of life. He could call the shots, do whatever he pleased. He would be strong and determined and independent, without having to apologize or bake cookies he didn’t even want to eat.

Nick stopped. “For crying out loud, cheer up,” she told herself. She found these black moods coming over her more and more frequently these days. Dr. Monty had said it was normal to feel off during pregnancy.

“Many women feel a bit down during this time,” he said, his hand lingering a little too long on her knee as they sat in his little office off Brattle Street. “It’s very normal, Mrs. Derringer. It’s a big change for any woman, but a welcome one.”

Last week he had recommended she start reading more cheerful books, eyeing “Anna Karenina” suspiciously. “Many of my patients have found pattern-making very uplifting. Industry, that’s what I recommend,” he said, assurance and promise leaking out of his voice.

And Nick had gone and bought a book of patterns, for day dresses. It was sitting upstairs in her dressing room, still wrapped in its brown paper.

She put a finger to the meringues. They had cooled. She brought over the black tin lined with wax paper and gently started placing them in it, taking care not to break their peaks. She wondered what Helena was doing right now.

It had been a while since they had spoken. Helena’s son was five months old now, and Nick kept telling herself that her cousin must be busy with her new baby. But she couldn’t help feeling that during their brief chats, Helena sounded increasingly far-away, almost undefined, like she was underwater.

It made Nick a little sorry, although not entirely, for the way they had parted. After their first conversation, they had stuck to happier subjects during her visit. But the night before Helena went back to Los Angeles, Nick couldn’t help bringing up Avery one last time.

“You don’t have to go back to him, you know,” Nick said. Hughes had gone to bed and they were finishing off what had already been a little too much wine.

“I want to go back to him,” Helena said, not looking at her.

“You don’t owe him anything. I know you think you do, but you have a right be happy, too.”

“I don’t think you’re really one to be dispensing marital advice.”

It was the first time in their lives that Nick felt something akin to contempt in Helena’s voice, and it took her aback.

“I just want you to be happy.” She felt her own temper rise.

“You don’t know anything about it.” Helena looked directly at her. “Nothing makes you happy except what you don’t have. You’ve never known how to do anything but to take and take and then ask for more. You have everything and you act like it’s nothing. So how would you know what makes me or anyone else happy.”

Nick was stunned into silence for a moment, before finding her tongue. “I guess I should be glad that we’re finally telling the truth,” she said, tasting metal in her mouth. “Since we’re not mincing words, your neediness is what makes you so goddamn self-centered that you can’t see past your sorry little world. I’m supposed to be happy just because I have more than you? For heaven’s sakes, listen to yourself.”

“No, you listen to yourself,” Helena said, rising. “I’m going to bed.”

They had made their apologies in the morning, and kissed warmly at South Station, but the episode had left Nick wondering how well she did know her cousin’s heart.

 

The birds are in full cry during the breeding season, after which the cry is seldom, if ever, heard. This being the principal indication of the Whippoorwill’s presence, it is therefor difficult to say at what precise time they do depart, so silently and furtively do they slip from our midst.

Nick slid her mother’s silver letter opener under the fold of the first letter in her pile. There was no return address and her hand shook as she tried to pull the card out. She knew it would just be an invitation to a cocktail party thrown by the wife of one of Hughes’s colleagues, or a letter from a neighbor on the Island reporting on her hydrangea, but she felt her mouth go dry, nonetheless. Ever since The Letter, as she thought of it, she found this dread creeping up on her from time to time, when confronted by an unknown sender.

“Don’t be a silly goose,” she told herself firmly, but felt unconvinced.

She had to put the letter down and stare out the window for a minute before she could read it.

Nicky Dear,

Tea on Wednesday?

4 p.m.

Love, Birdie.

Nick laughed with relief. Just tea, just Birdie. It was fine. She felt elated, high. Hughes would be home soon, she had baked his favorite cookies and they were having a baby. It was fine. Everything was just fine.

Everything had not been fine when The Letter had arrived. And if she could erase that day from her memory, Nick would. But it could not be erased, and now her big, hard belly and the perpetual arrival of the U.S. post were a constant reminder.

It had been a Tuesday during that unseasonably cold September. She had been on the fence about whether to take the pot-roast out of the freezer or make a run to the butcher for lamb chops before Hughes got home. She had been erring on the side of the pot-roast, because it meant she would have time to go buy some new gloves in Harvard Square instead.

She had thought, I’ll just open the mail first, and then decide. It had been the third letter in her pile. It was a somewhat bulky, brown envelope, almost a parcel. It was addressed to Hughes, but it was hand-written instead of typed, so she knew it wasn’t a bill. Also, it had been forwarded on from the base in Green Cove Springs, and she had been afraid that it might be a letter from Charlie Wells, perhaps an act of revenge for her behavior after their lunch together.

The minute her hand felt the expensive correspondence paper inside, however, she knew it couldn’t be from Charlie. The first thing she noticed were the initials at the top, ELB. Frowning, Nick scanned down the card to the slanted, elegant script.

 

I know I said I wouldn’t write.

The world’s not on fire anymore. But I still love you.

I wanted you to know that, wherever you are.

Besides, we all deserve to be happy.

 

Nick reached her hand back into the envelope and pulled out a silver skeleton key attached to a brass plate that read: Claridge’s Room 201.

The key was heavy and the plate so smooth. Nick rubbed the her thumb over the shiny brass, leaving a greasy smudge. She looked at her thumb and it suddenly seemed fat and dull and dirty. Common hands, as her mother had told her as she massaged butter into her fingers at night, that’s what every lady must avoid.

Nick picked up the card again and read it, deciphering every line, measuring it, trying to decide which word meant something, and which had just been pressed in service to connect those that carried weight.

There were few that weren’t significant, she finally decided. “That” and “to be” were the only spares, and even they couldn’t be done without. Besides, everyone deserves to be happy.

“Oh, god,” she said, as the full weight of the words, the stationary, the heavy brass key, hit her. “Oh, god.”

She put her head down on the counter and tried to cry, but nothing came out. She watched her breath as it steamed up the formica before vanishing again.

After a while, she sat up and straightened her back. She passed her hand over The Letter again. Leaving the key on the counter, she picked up the thick, creamy card up and walked into the bar in the garden room, where she mixed herself a martini and upended it into her mouth.

Then she mixed another. After she had drunk the second one, she looked at the card again. The world’s not on fire anymore. But I still love you. She mixed herself a third, this time letting three olives drop into the glass. Then, with The Letter in one hand, and the martini in the other, Nick walked into the living room, where the fire she had lit earlier that afternoon was now smoldering and spitting.

She sat down on the green and tan embroidered low-bench in front of the fireplace and took one last look.

I know I said I wouldn’t write.

She threw The Letter on top of the sagging logs, where she watched it curl and slowly, slowly turn to ash.

She sat there a while, twirling the stem of her glass between her fingers, feeling hypnotized by the fire. Then she rose and walked slowly into the library. Taking out her address book, Nick placed a long-distance telephone call to Helena in Hollywood.

As she waited for the operator to connect her, she pulled a cigarette out of the box sitting on top of the telephone table. Lighting it, she stared out the small bay window that made the library her favorite room in the house. The low branches of the ash tree outside the warm room scratched at the windowpane.

The operator told her to hold for her connection.

Nick sipped what was left of her martini.

“Pot-roast,” she said to herself drunkenly.

By the time Helena’s voice came down the line, Nick felt numb.

“Nick?” Helena’s voice sounded scratchy.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly surprised to be talking to her cousin.

“Is that you?”

“Yes, yes, it’s me.” Nick found words difficult. But I still love you.

“How are you? Is everything all right?”

“No, it’s not all right,” Nick said. “I...I was just suddenly missing everything. Do you remember our little house on Elm Street. And how hot it was the first summer?”

“Yes,” Helena sounded hesitant. “Nick, what’s wrong? Is Hughes all right?”

“Hughes is Hughes,” Nick said. “No, I just was sad for our life before. That’s all. I would give anything to be back in that house right now, washing out our stockings in that horrible little bathroom. Do you remember when my last pair just disintegrated, on the hanger over the tub. And we came back and found only a tiny pile of brown dust? And we had a little funeral in the yard?”

“Yes, darling, I remember. And we played the Moonlight Sonata for them.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Nick said, running her hand through her hair. “I’d forgotten what we’d played.”

“That was it,” Helena said. “And then I drew a line on your leg with your eyebrow pencil, but it came out pretty wobbly.”

“Yes, and I had a terrible time getting it off.” Nick lit another cigarette. Wind blew against the window pane.

“Darling, have you been drinking?”

“Yes, a martini, or three.” Nick laughed, but it sounded more like a fork on a tin camping cup. “I’m sorry darling, I just wanted to talk to you, talk about something from before.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, yes. I have to go now. Goodbye, Helena.”

“Goodbye, Nick. Write to me soon.”

Nick put the receiver down. “Goodbye,” she said to the quiet room and the wind whistling past the ash tree.

Nick had gone to bed early that night, complaining of a headache and crying herself to sleep while Hughes ate soup in the kitchen by himself. But the next night, when he arrived home, she was prepared.

She had put on her red shantung dress, the one she had worn to the 21 Club during the war, and had her hair set in Harvard Square. She prepared steaks and mash potatoes and peppered green beans. She fixed martinis and the pitcher was sweating on the marble top of the bar when her husband came through the door.

She met him in the front hall and took his briefcase out of his hand.

“Feeling better?” he asked, kissing her forehead.

“Much,” Nick said. “Go into the sitting room. I’ve prepared cocktails.”

Hughes looked at her, saw her hair, her dress. “What’s the occasion?”

“A great occasion,” Nick said, disappearing through the dining room toward the bar, his briefcase heavy as lead.

Her hand shook as she poured the martinis and she had to swab up the tears of vodka that had dribbled down the glasses. She placed them on a silver tray with olives. Nick stood back and looked at them, marveling at how something could look so clean and be so poisonous at the same time.

Patting down her hair, she picked up the tray and walked carefully through the long garden room, her high heels clacking out a rhythm on the tile floor. When she reached the living room, she saw Hughes sitting in his blue wing-chair, looking expectantly at her.

Nick set the tray down gently on the side table next to him. She handed him one glass and took the other for herself.

“Hughes, I’ve decided....” she stopped. “I think we should have a baby. I want a baby.”

Hughes put his glass down and stood, taking her in his arms.

“Darling,” he whispered into her hair, sending off the acrid odor of hairspray. “It is a great occasion.”

“Yes,” Nick said.

“I knew you’d want one. I knew you’d change your mind and that you’d want one, too.”

And with that something hard and pure that had been living inside her heart, a dream that perhaps had begun in the maid’s room of her mother’s house the day she married, shattered, and dissolved into her hot blood.