Indiscretion Page 4

  Madeleine Wakefield was the most beautiful woman at school. She was the most beautiful woman anywhere she went. Men hovered around her but she had become inured to such attentions. Magazine editors and photographers had asked her to model, but she always said no. To her, beauty was nothing earned. It was a fact, like being left-handed, and it was nothing she ever thought about. While the other girls would dress up for parties, borrowing clothes from roommates, pulling earrings that their mothers had given them for a special night from the backs of their drawers, Maddy never tried. Her normal costume was an old shirt of her father’s, a baggy sweater, blue jeans. Still, wherever she went, the men would forget their dates and stare at her, although few of them were bold enough to approach her, sensing there was something different about her, incapable of knowing the true self beneath that beauty.

  I knew, of course. We had always talked about going to Yale together, but after her girls’ school in Maryland and my prep school in Massachusetts, the reality was almost better than the dream. She had a car back then. A vintage red MG convertible that had been a present from her grandmother, with the plates MWSMG. Freshman year had been a blur of weekends in Manhattan, nightclubs, and bleary last-minute dashes up I-95 to make it, hungover and hilarious, to classes on Monday morning.

  And then, in our sophomore year, she fell in love with Harry. We were in different residential colleges. He in Davenport, Maddy and I in Jonathan Edwards. We had seen him, of course. In Mory’s, where he was usually surrounded by his friends, drinking beer or celebrating his latest victory. He was popular and, honestly, it is impossible to imagine him otherwise. Maddy instantly disliked him, which I should have known as a sign. “He’s very full of himself,” she had said, on those nights when it was just us, which it was most nights. She wanted to make fun of him and to despise him for what she saw in herself. But, in hindsight, it was like watching two lions circling each other. It would have been either death or a lifetime together.

  Maddy and I remained friends—how could we not? She had been my late-night companion since she first climbed out of her second-story window so we could go catch fireflies together. As children, we would walk our bikes silently down the gravel drive and meet for midnight escapes on the beach, where we made fires out of driftwood and listened to the waves lap the sand while we shared our most intimate thoughts and dreams.

  We had to be careful, though. My parents were often away, and I would be left alone in the care of Genevieve and Robert, the childless Swiss couple who took care of the place. Genevieve was short and stocky and cooked. Robert drove and looked after the garden. Both of them were in bed by ten and assumed I was too. I was an only child, pudgy and bookish, so they hardly would have imagined I had this secret, nocturnal existence. Madeleine’s father was more of a problem. He would have beaten her if they had caught her sneaking out. Not that it would have stopped her.

  One time we were playing tennis and I saw the welts at the tops of her thighs when she bent over to pick up a ball. He had used a belt. I wanted to do something but she swore it was nothing and let’s play another set. God, she was brave. She still is.

  The dinner is marvelous. Fresh swordfish, tomatoes and corn, hot bread, and ice cream, washed down with cold, steely white wine. Maddy has a special way of grilling the fish using pine branches that gives it a wonderfully rich taste. We sit under round paper lanterns, outside on a small, screened-in porch off the kitchen. There are more men than women so I sit between Clive and Cissy. Cissy is very funny. Small, blond, she can talk for hours. She is from outside Philadelphia, the Main Line. She and Ned have been trying unsuccessfully for years to have a baby. I admire her toughness, her lack of self-pity.

  Clive keeps trying to quiz me about my clients, but I put him off. When I grow tired of his insistence, I ignore him completely and listen to Harry tell one of his stories, which, if I recall, was about the time when he was seventeen and drove his car into a tree on purpose to collect the insurance money. He had even borrowed a pair of hockey goalie pads for protection. The car was an old heap, and he had hoped to make about five hundred dollars. He thought thirty miles an hour would be a good speed, not too fast or too slow, but the impact was so great, it knocked him out.

  “The next thing I know,” Harry says, “there’s a cop knocking on my window with his nightstick wondering just what the hell is going on and why am I wearing hockey pads in the middle of July?”

  We hoot with laughter. Claire, on Harry’s right, is in paroxysms of delight. She had been helping Maddy in the kitchen and is the first to jump to her feet to help clear. She is showing off a little, letting us know she is more than just Clive’s latest mistress. We are all of us in our forties, and we can’t help but be a little enchanted by her potent combination of youth, beauty, passion, and brains. It turns out she does the New York Times crossword puzzle, which is one of Harry’s favorite distractions too. They groan complicitly about the creeping influence of pop culture in the clues. They argue over a book review they both recently read, and share a passion for Mark Twain. Is this the best night of her life? I think so.

  Clive is not part of this. He dislikes not being the star. This crowd is not impressed by his Aston Martin or his fancy watch or the last time he was in St. Bart’s. He doesn’t really belong here. Claire doesn’t belong with him either. I am willing him to leave.

  After dinner we play charades, something else at which Harry excels. By midnight everyone is drunk and Harry stands up and says, “It’s time.” I know what he means, of course. As do Ned and Cissy. Maddy just rolls her eyes.

  “Time for what?” asks Claire, but already the others are in motion.

  “Time to go to the beach,” Cissy says over her shoulder. “We do it after every dinner party.”

  “You all go on without me,” declares Maddy, remaining in her chair. “Someone has to stay here with Johnny.” I could have offered to stay. I normally do. But not tonight.

  “Come on,” says Claire, pulling a bewildered Clive to his feet and dashing out the door to the Winslows’ old red Jeep. In the front seat, next to Harry, Ned is carrying a bottle of wine. He is slurring his words a little. Cissy is sitting on his lap. Claire and Clive pile in beside me in the backseat. The house is a short drive to the beach, under five minutes. This time of night the beach is deserted. The moon lights a path across the water for us. The sand is cool beneath our feet.

  Harry runs down to the water’s edge, pulling off his shirt and then dropping his trousers until, naked, he rushes whooping into the dark water. Ned and Cissy follow close behind, Cissy shrieking as she dives in. I am slower, but suddenly beside me, Claire is undressed as well. I can’t help but notice her body in the moon glow, her young breasts, the roundness of her hips. I catch a glimpse of a triangle of dark pubic hair. It happens in an instant, of course. One second she is standing beside me, the next she is in the water. A surge of desire seizes me as I watch her run. It is just Clive and I now. I pull off my trousers. “Bloody hell,” he mutters and strips too. We dive in together.

  At night the ocean always seems so much calmer. It is like a big lake, the waves barely more than ripples. The water is waist-high. Most women would be crouching in the water, concealing themselves. But not Claire. It is becoming apparent to me that she is not most women. Harry and Ned are having a splash fight, like a couple of boys. She joins in, laughing, splashing hard. It is impossible not to watch her. Clive stands off to the side, as though he were an interloper and not Claire’s lover. Then Cissy climbs on Ned’s shoulders and gracefully dives off. “I want to try that,” says Claire. But instead of climbing on Ned, or even Clive, she glides behind Harry and grabs his hands. He squats obediently under the water while she places her feet on each shoulder. He lifts her easily, and she balances for a moment, drops his hands, and throws her arms out and her head back before smoothly diving off. When she comes up, she wipes the wet hair from her face and yells, “I want to do that again!”

  Once again Harry squats, his back to
her, and she confidently mounts. And again, she drops his hands and balances, but this time she wavers and falls with a splash into the water. Harry helps her up. “Careful,” he says with a laugh.

  “My favorite lifeguard,” she pronounces with a laugh and gives him a wet kiss on the cheek and a quick hug, her nipples grazing his chest. “Once again you’ve saved me from drowning.” She stands back in front of him, as if to say, Look at me. This could be yours. I can’t remember if anyone else noticed the moment. I tried to catch Ned’s or Cissy’s eye, but they were in the middle of doing another dive.

  Harry says nothing and looks away as Clive comes up.

  “Let me show you how it’s done, mate,” he says.

  Claire pulls away from him, but he squats down, saying, “Come on.”

  She climbs up without looking at him and just dives off, straight and clean. When she comes up, she says, “Can we go? I’m getting cold.”

  The moment has passed. Claire wades back out of the water, shoulders hunched forward, an arm covering her breasts, a hand in front of her loins. She looks at nobody. No one looks at anyone as we hurriedly pull our clothes over our wet bodies. Our mood is postlapsarian.

  We drive back to the house in silence. Even Cissy is quiet. When we get out, Claire and Clive hang back. It is obvious they are going to have a fight. The rest of us go inside.

  That’s not entirely true. I linger just out of sight and overhear snatches of what they say. “Don’t touch me” and “Stupid cunt” and “Why don’t you just fuck him then?”

  She comes in, crying, running past me to the kitchen. To Maddy.

  “Is everything all right?” asks Harry. I say nothing, and Clive is standing in the hallway, looking angry. He wants to follow her but knows he can’t, an unbeliever in the temple.

  Madeleine comes out. “Clive, Claire seems very upset. I know it’s late, and we’ve all had a lot to drink. But she asked if she could stay here tonight, and I told her she could.”

  Clive stares at her, unsure of what to say, of how to react. The words he wants to say fail in his throat. His will is not as strong as Maddy’s.

  She senses his frustration and puts a hand on his arm. “She’ll call you in the morning.”

  When he gets outside the house, he will find his words again, he will rage, he will think black thoughts, call them all names. But not now. Standing before him is Madeleine, looking like a Madonna. Behind her, Harry, Ned, me. He has no chance. Now all he says is “Tell that cunt I don’t want to see her again,” and he leaves, his car spitting gravel as it drives off.

  Inside, Maddy has her arm around Claire, who is apologizing over and over. Her face is wet with tears. Maddy consoles her. We all do. Or at least try to.

  “See, I told you I didn’t like him,” I say, but all the thanks I get is a dirty look from Madeleine.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” Harry tells Claire. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. If you need us to get your things from Clive’s, I’ll run over tomorrow. For tonight, we can loan you anything you need.”

  “Thank you,” she sniffs.

  “We are going to have to put you on the couch in the living room, if that’s all right. Ned and Cissy already have the guest room. We’ll get you pillows and sheets. You’ll be snug as a bug.”

  I am about to suggest that she would be welcome to stay at my house, as there are plenty of empty bedrooms, but then think better of it.

  “Please don’t go to any bother. I don’t mind at all. You’re being so kind. I just feel like such a fool.”

  “Not at all,” says Harry. “I’ll be right back.” He goes upstairs and returns several minutes later with pillow, sheets, blankets, a towel, and a large gray T-shirt with the words yale hockey on it. “I figured you could use something to sleep in.”

  Cissy and Madeleine begin to make up the couch. Harry wanders into the kitchen and starts rinsing glasses. I debate having a last drink but then decide against it. It’s already past one in the morning. Instead I say my good-byes, kiss Maddy good night, tell Claire to sleep well and that everything will look better in the morning, and head out to the familiar path that leads through the narrow strip of trees that separates our two houses.

  I can imagine Claire, having calmed down, thanks to a few gulps of brandy, getting under the covers on the couch. Madeleine would be there, making sure her newest charge is comfortable and well looked after. Ned, Cissy, and Harry would have already gone up. Then Maddy would have left too, turning off lights, leaving Claire alone in her temporary bed, staring up at the ceiling, happy as a child.

  3

  Several weeks pass. Summer rages on. The streets of Manhattan bake in the fierce sunlight. To Claire, the breezes and salt water of Long Island are just a memory. She has been banished to the ordinary world, one inhabited by coworkers, college friends, deliverymen, strangers on the subway. Like Eurydice, she will never again walk in fields of flowers.

  Claire has not seen the Winslows. There is no reason why she should. She returned to the city the day after her fight with Clive. Harry and Ned had gone to Clive’s to get her bag and retrieve her rental car, but when they pulled up, no one was home and her possessions had been thrown into the front seat.

  Even though Harry and Madeleine had asked her to stay and been so kind, she felt like an intruder, a stranger taken in under false pretenses. She would forget about them. Their lives, which had temporarily intersected with hers, would now continue along a different path.

  I thought about her on a few occasions during the days that followed. Hers was an unfinished story, and I wanted to know more of it. What would she do? What turns would her life take? And then it seemed she had disappeared for good.

  Until one night Harry announces to Maddy and me over dinner in the kitchen, “I meant to tell you. Guess who I saw today?” He had been in New York, lunch with his agent, a few errands. “Claire.”

  “How is she?” asks Maddy.

  “She looked well. I was walking out of the restaurant and talking with Reuben, and all of a sudden, I almost knocked her down. What are the odds of that?”

  “I liked her,” I say. “Poor thing was wasted on Clive. What a horse’s ass.”

  “Maddy liked her too, didn’t you, sweetheart? At least I thought you did. We were standing there chatting about this and that, and she asked warmly after you both, and Johnny, and Ned and Cissy, and she looked a little blue, so I thought, what the hell, and invited her out for the weekend. At first, she said she couldn’t, but I insisted. Hope you don’t mind. She needs being taken in hand. Maddy, you’re just the person to do it, too.”

  Maddy does love a project. Even as a child she was always taking in strays. I remember sitting up nights with her, helping her watch over a dying rabbit or chipmunk which the local cat (my cat, incidentally, but she never blamed me for it) had eviscerated. She would keep them warm, use an eyedropper to give them water, and inevitably bury them in the woods in one of my mother’s shoe boxes.

  “I’m glad you invited her, darling,” she says. “But we can’t have her sleep on the couch again. Where will she sleep? Aren’t Ned and Cissy coming?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I offer. “They can stay with me. I have lots of room.”

  “Great,” says Harry. “Thanks, Walter. And Ned and Cissy can give her a ride out.”

  On Friday they arrive, late. The traffic is particularly hellish on Fridays, especially during the summer. What had been a ninety-or-so-minute drive in my childhood can now stretch out to three hours or more, even for people like me who know the back roads. The farms that used to line the roads are almost all gone. The old potato barns are nightclubs. The quaint little stores where I had once bought comic books and penny candy and donuts are high-end boutiques selling cashmere sweaters and virgin olive oil. Last year an Hermès opened in the old liquor store. The beach and the sunsets are just about the only things that haven’t changed.

  Claire is greeted with hugs and kisses. Her face is
bright with welcome. She looks lovely. “I brought this for you,” she says as she presents Madeleine with a large, brightly wrapped box.

  “It’s heavy,” Madeleine says. “What is it?”

  She opens the box and pulls out a gleaming copper saucepan. “Oh, you shouldn’t have. These are very expensive.” It must have been a small fortune to someone like Claire. She works for a magazine, an assistant editor or something, the lowest on the pole. The generosity of the gift, as well as its appropriateness, overwhelms Madeleine, who is a sucker for cookware. She gives Claire another, longer hug. “I love it. Thank you!”

  “And this is for you,” Claire says to Harry. She hands him a paper bag. From inside he withdraws a red T-shirt and opens it up to display lettering on the front: LIFEGUARD and a white cross. He puts it on over his shirt. Everyone laughs and claps.

  “Another childhood dream fulfilled,” he laughs. “All I need now is a whistle and a clipboard.”

  Wine is brought, glasses filled. Harry carves the chicken. It is from a local farm. There is also fresh sweet corn and long green beans crunchy with sea salt. Everyone is happy to be here. Plans are discussed for Saturday. A beach excursion and a picnic seem to be in order. Then Harry announces that tomorrow night they are getting a sitter and giving Madeleine a night off from cooking—“About time!” she cries and we all laugh—and that we will all be going out to eat.

  It’s one of our favorite restaurants, a place with red-checked tablecloths and inch-thick steaks dripping with butter. The owners are a diminutive Greek woman and her brother, who spends most evenings drinking by himself in the corner. Some nights I sit with him and listen to his schemes for investing in real estate. Once when I was there, a family of local Indians from the Shinnecock tribe came in. There were six of them, two parents and four children. They ordered a single steak and split it amongst them. It made me feel absurd and fat to be eating the same thing only for myself.