An Act of Love Page 12

  It was after her divorce that Celeste had realized she loved Owen, had loved him all her life. Unfortunately for her, Owen did not reciprocate those feelings. He was fond of her. He cared for her. But for him that sexual and romantic spark just did not ever flare or even flicker. They managed to remain friends; they dealt with any awkwardnesses with the diffusing device of humor.

  When Linda came on the scene, Celeste treated her with a swaggering candor that was supposed to make up for its substance: she envied Linda and wished she’d drop dead, or at least just leave. After Linda married Owen and moved to the farm, Celeste reduced the voltage of her death-ray smile and adopted a kind of brusque big sister–camp leader bossiness with Linda that really was the best she could do, given the fact that Linda had gotten the man and the farm as well.

  Tall, bony, angular, agile, Celeste was the one woman Linda had ever met in all her life who could have carried off couture fashion, and she was the one woman Linda knew who disdained clothing. Her farm was everything to her. She bred quarter horses and golden labs. She kept bees and sold their honey. She had inherited enough money from an aunt to keep the farm in tiptop shape forever and to travel as well if she wished, but she didn’t want to. She’d tried traveling, and discovered she preferred to be on her farm.

  Or on the McFarlands’. One of the enduring arguments between Owen and Linda concerned Celeste’s habit of walking into their home without knocking or calling first to see if it was a good time to come over. Over the seven years of their marriage, Linda had found Celeste’s habit intrusive and arrogant, not to mention occasionally awkward and embarrassing. Celeste had walked in to find Linda weeping over a bad review or yelling at the children or arguing with Owen, and Celeste hadn’t had the good sense or manners to leave but had instead said, “I’m out of salt,” and opened the cupboard—she knew what was in each one—and taken it out. “I’ll bring it back later.” Linda didn’t begrudge her the salt—or the dog food or rope or aspirin—she begrudged her the act of entering their home without first knocking and waiting for someone to open the door and invite her in.

  “But Linda, she grew up treating our house and farm as an extension of hers. And I did the same at her house,” Owen contended.

  “It’s not appropriate now,” Linda insisted. “God, Owen, you place so much significance on privacy, on boundaries, on propriety. I don’t see how you can’t see how invasive it is to have her just barge in whenever she wants. It’s as if she thinks she has a claim to this place.”

  “I think you’re overreacting. She’s merely a good neighbor. You have to admit, she comes in handy whenever we go away.”

  That much was true. Celeste knew where the fuse box was and how much medicine Maud needed at night and how to toss out the hay for the horses so that Fancy didn’t get it all. Because of her, the McFarlands had been able to make overnight trips to Hedden for Parents’ Weekend. Linda had tried to teach Rosie Ryan the routines of the house. She liked Rosie more; she trusted her. But Rosie was busy now with her baby. Owen was right, it was just easier for Celeste.

  The seven neighbors gathered around the Burtons’ long mahogany table, and Bud Burton stood to say a Thanksgiving prayer. As Linda listened, head bowed, she looked through her lashes at the table, covered with linen and set with china and silver and a centerpiece of fruit spilling from a silver bowl. Candles set in long holders all up and down the length of the table threw a soft glow over the faces of her friends, and she thought how fortunate they all truly were. And how they also were strong, persevering, in their individual ways. Irene was battling Parkinson’s disease, and sometimes was almost defeated by it, which in turn sank her husband into the depths of misery. No one knew how he would live without Irene. But today she was in a good period, smiling, gracious, and this, Linda knew, was something to be thankful for. Each good day was something to be thankful for. The Ryans were always near financial disaster; Riley worked hard, but the little convenience store brought them only a tiny income, which he augmented by selling firewood from the few acres of land he’d inherited. They had to work hard, scrimp and save; yet this was the life they’d chosen, and they loved it. No pity needed there, Linda thought, and looking at Rosie’s face, she decided that her friend looked especially pretty today, with Sean nestled on her lap. Motherhood suited Rosie. And Celeste … Celeste must be lonely. But Owen said that she liked her solitude, so Linda wouldn’t worry about her, either. She would just try to appreciate the day, the delicious food, the company of friends.

  But at every moment Linda was thinking: Emily. Emily. Her first Thanksgiving apart from her family. Linda had known, of course, that this would happen some day, but never had she imagined it would happen like this.

  After the enormous meal the group dispersed. Rosie carried Sean up the stairs to the Burtons’ guest room for a nap; Riley and Bud turned on the television to check out the football games.

  Linda and Owen settled in front of the fireplace with cups of coffee and Celeste sank into a chair across from them.

  “What’s up?” she inquired. “You’ve been away.”

  Linda looked at Owen.

  “Had to get to Hedden. Take Bruce dress clothes. He’s going to the big city.”

  “Come on. There’s more. You’re in a black mood, I can tell.” Celeste leaned toward Owen, speaking as if Linda were not in the room.

  “Just minor kid stuff,” Owen hedged.

  “Oh, come on, tell me. It couldn’t be any worse than some of the stunts we pulled as teenagers.” She ran her hand through her short blond hair. She cut it herself, and it fell in a shaggy golden mop over her shapely skull, framing her enormous blue eyes.

  Owen looked at Linda. He cleared his throat. “Bruce got in a fight with another boy. Wouldn’t say why. We had to meet with the dean of students. He was given a warning this time. He’ll be suspended if it happens again.”

  “Good for Bruce!” Celeste exclaimed. “High time he got into a little red-blooded trouble.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you,” Owen said.

  “Come on. Remember what we did at his age.”

  “I think I’ll see how the game’s going,” Owen said, and rose, heading for the den and the group around the television.

  “Huh!” Celeste sat back, surprised. She arched a brow at Linda. “Where’s his sense of humor?”

  “I suppose we all lose it when our kids are concerned,” Linda told her.

  “I guess,” Celeste replied halfheartedly, and rose and followed Owen into the den.

  “It’s sort of pitiful, isn’t it?” Rosie asked in a low voice as she entered the room.

  “You mean Celeste?” Linda asked, looking over her shoulder to be sure the other woman was far enough away. A roar exploded from the den and Bud yelled, “Touchdown!”

  “They can’t hear us,” Rosie assured Linda, and settled in next to her on the sofa. “I just feel so sorry for her. Trailing around after Owen like a lovesick puppy.”

  “She’s a beautiful woman. You would think she’d have hordes of men after her.”

  “She doesn’t want hordes of men. She wants your husband. Besides, how would any man find her? She never leaves her farm.” She snuggled close to Linda. “Anyway, guess what?”

  The glow in the other woman’s eyes confirmed Linda’s suspicion. “You’re pregnant.”

  Rosie nodded. “Only just. Riley knows, but I’m not telling anyone else for a while.”

  “I’m so glad for you, Rosie.”

  “Thanks. It’s just what we wanted. It will be good for Sean to have a sibling around.”

  The fire was warm and crackling, the room filled with its golden glow. Rosie was telling Linda about baby clothes, baby furniture. Linda listened, smiling, nodding, and thought of Emily.

  They returned home late in the evening. No messages on the answering machine; thank God for that much.

  Linda was slightly melancholy as she moved around her bedroom. For a few moments she stood at her window, looking out
at the night, thinking how everything had changed. Usually this time of year filled her with satisfaction and anticipation for the season to come, as if darkness and cold were luxuries. But it could be any season now. It could be spring or summer, still she would be numb with cold. What could she do to sort through the puzzle that her daughter had become? Her head ached from thinking.

  She heard Owen enter. He was naked, and he crossed the room and took her in his arms. For a moment she held back, feeling irrationally that if she did not at this moment enjoy pleasure, somehow that denial would balance out a mysterious scale and keep her daughter safe from future harm.

  But Owen mattered, too, and she could feel his need, here, now, physically real, more indisputable than superstition.

  Everything else fell away. She let it fall.

  The floorboards creaked as they moved to the bed. Linda lit a candle, and the flickering light threw all the aged, familiar sections of her room, the fading draperies, the scuffed floorboards, the cluttered bureau, the half-shut closet door, into shadow. This was their home. This was still their home, and here there existed many kinds of love. As she moved beneath Owen’s body, she was filled with certainty. She was exactly where she belonged, doing the one thing she should be doing in all this world. So ordinary, so profound: she was making love with her husband, in a bedroom of their home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Friday Emily had to see Dr. Bug-Man again. Well, why not? It was already a gross day. The windows were streaked with rain. The sky was gray, bleak. The leaf-stripped tree limbs shivered in the wind like living things, living things in pain. It was creepy.

  “How are you doing today, Emily?” Dr. Brinton asked.

  “Okay.”

  On days like this on the farm, her mother would pull on old boots and a rain slicker and stalk off into the wind, exhilarated. She’d climb the hills, yelling at Emily: “Take a deep breath! Doesn’t it smell rich? Leaves and pine needles and wet earth and fresh air. The planet. Yum.” Later, she’d shower and build a fire and bake cookies and cajole everyone into a game of Scrabble or Pictionary. Those thoughts glowed inside her like little fires. She missed her mom.

  Dr. Brinton looked at a folder. “So tell me. What’s the deal with your father?”

  Emily shrugged. “No deal. He’s an asshole. I never see him.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  “No anger? No regret?” When Emily didn’t reply, he prodded, “How did your parents get together? Do you know?”

  “Yeah, a little.” She stirred deep into her memories. “Mom was getting her masters in English lit. My father’s a cellist. He’s on the music faculty at Leeds University.” This was like talking about a book her mother had read her as a child. She could conjure up the images in the same way, the way she’d envisioned things when she was a little kid, curled up in her mother’s lap at bedtime, both of them smelling of baby shampoo, her mother’s voice dreamy, spinning out a tale that Emily made pictures to in her mind. She had shown her photographs, too. Her mom had been pretty, in a kind of humorous way, in her dorky clothes, like shirts with long pointy collars and swirly vests, and her hair had been cut in a shag that surrounded her head like a fuzzy box.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Huh? Southern Pennsylvania somewhere. They fell in love, got married, had me, got divorced.” Her mom had one album, padded blue leather, heavy pages, with photos carefully placed and annotated: Linda in an ivory wool suit, Simon in corduroys and a tweed jacket, and an ancient couple, friends from the music department who witnessed the marriage. A few photos of Linda and Simon on vacations, on the beach, in New York. On holidays, decorations for Christmas or a birthday cake in the background. Lots of photos of Simon in his tux with his chamber group before a performance. Linda huge with pregnancy, Simon with his arm around her and his mouth primped up with disdain. Linda with her newborn baby. Simon with his infant daughter, holding it out from him as if afraid it would pee on his clothes.

  “Got divorced because of you?”

  “No. Well, maybe, kind of. My father doesn’t like children. But Mom would have left him sooner or later anyway. He’s nuts.”

  “Nuts? Certifiably?”

  “No, just narcissistic.” She flashed a glance at Bug-Man, checking to see if he believed she knew what that meant. “Arrogant. Selfish. Ask Mom. She doesn’t talk about him much.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “How could I? I never was with him. I mean, Mom left when I was, like, one year old.”

  “You must wish now and then that you had a father …”

  “Sometimes.” Emily squirmed in her chair. “When I see friends at school with their dads. Or those TV commercials of, like, a wedding with a father all happy to see his little girl getting married. But I don’t think about it much.”

  “Have you ever tried to communicate with him?”

  Emily snorted. “You don’t get it, do you? The man plays by his own set of rules. He doesn’t give a shit about having a daughter. He doesn’t want to know. I don’t exist for him. And all right, sure, sometimes I get all pathetic about it, but I mostly don’t even think about it. He doesn’t exist for me, either. It’s like having a father who’s dead.”

  “What about grandfathers?”

  “Don’t have any.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re both dead. So’s Simon’s mother. I’ve got a grandmother, though. Mom’s mother. She’s kind of cool in her own bizarre way.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Florida. We visit her sometimes.” Just the thought of her grandmother flushed Emily with warmth. Inches of sweet thick icing on cake, mashed potatoes, Jell-O salads, creamed corn, creamed everything. The constant beat of heat against the walls and windows. The drowsy exhalation of the air-conditioning. Shades and curtains pulled to dim the brassy sunlight, and pillows everywhere, the wall-to-wall carpet feeling three feet thick, everything so soft, as if you could fall asleep anywhere, any time.

  “So, Emily, not a whole lot of males in your life, huh?”

  She returned to the present. Shifted in her seat. Thought about the question. “Well, there’s Owen.”

  “What kind of stepfather is he?”

  “Okay.” She braced herself to be pried for more detail, but Dr. Brinton said, “Tell me about life in … what is it, Ebradour.”

  Emily shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head, relaxed. Not hovering over a pad of paper, poised to write stuff down. “Do you like living on a farm?”

  “I guess. Mom loves it.”

  “So you tried to love it, too, right?”

  “I’d rather live in a neighborhood on a normal street. Where I could walk to friends’ houses or to a coffee shop or to school. And Ebradour is a stupid town. You can’t do anything there without everyone knowing. Can’t buy cigarettes, can’t even buy a candy bar without Rosie knowing and making some kind of deal out of it.”

  “Not much privacy?”

  “Well … when Mom and I lived in Arlington we had to live on the second floor of an apartment house above a wicked mean nurse. She worked at night and slept during the day and totally freaked if we, like, walked on our floors.” Day and night traffic hurtled past their house at such dangerous speeds that Linda wouldn’t allow Emily to roller-skate or ride a bike even on the sidewalks. There was not much of a front yard, and the backyard was small and perpetually darkened by neighboring garage walls.

  “So it must have been nice to live in a house.”

  “Mom thought it was paradise, all that space, all those rooms.”

  “And you thought …?”

  “Boring.”

  “How’d you get along with Bruce?”

  She considered, then answered honestly. “When I first moved there, we both really hated each other for a while.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was eight, he
was ten. I don’t mean real hate. It was just, suddenly we had no choice, there I was in his house, we couldn’t avoid each other, and we had all these dumb rules.”

  “Rules?”

  “Yeah, Mom and Owen made a list and sat us down and talked it over with us, like it was the United Nations peacekeeping laws or something. They kept it on the refrigerator. We had to help clean the table and do the dishes every night. Take turns feeding the old dog. Mom even kept track of who rode to the grocery store with her and helped carry in the groceries. She’d go, ‘Bruce, Emily helped me last time, it’s your turn now.’ ”

  “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.”

  “Maybe not. It was kind of anal. I mean, each week we all had to make plans for when we’d watch TV.”

  “Probably kept the friction level down.”

  “I guess.”

  “So you and Bruce were adversaries then?”

  “Not adversaries. Just … strangers.”

  How could she explain it? That first year, the new place, the males so large, so loud … even when they were just talking normally, their voices boomed. They were like extraterrestrials. They didn’t shut doors, they slammed them. They didn’t put the bread in the bread drawer, they tossed it in from across the room, as if they were making goals in a basket, and her mother didn’t stop them. Their movements were fast, jerky. That first year she’d still played with dolls and stuffed animals, and Bruce teased her relentlessly about that, crying wa-wa-wa-wa like a baby, making farty noises when he passed by her room. Once when he said he’d play with her, he put pants on her baby’s head and a hat on the bottom and went into a frenzy of laughter that accelerated as Emily grew more and more angry, until he was rolling on the floor laughing, accidentally kicking over her carefully arranged dollhouse.

  But it wasn’t that they were bad or anything, it was just that they were there. They were always there. She’d had her mother to herself all her life, now suddenly Linda was either gazing cowlike up into Owen’s eyes or going into raptures over Bruce’s homework. The very air around her smelled different: their apartment had smelled so pretty, a mixture of perfumes and scented soap and almond body lotion and Cling Free sheets from the dryer. Owen and Bruce and their house smelled like sawdust and hay and male sweat and old dog with an underlying acrid tang like wild grape jelly that Emily eventually figured out was from the constant scratches, scabs, and cuts on Bruce’s skin. At first Linda had fussed over him, but Owen had said, “For God’s sake, Linda, leave the boy alone or you’ll make him a sissy.”