Amanda Bright @ Home (14 page)

Amanda stared down at her wavy, unvarnished toenails. (She had declined Christine’s invitation to join her for a pedicure.)

“I don’t know that I’d be very good at that.”

“Sure you would. It’s easy. Besides, you’re creative, and a lot of the work is planning the items to be auctioned. Trips and that sort of thing.”

“How does one get on a committee?” Amanda asked reluctantly.

“Depends. How much money did you give to the school last year?” Christine was staring at her intently now, the private eye about to expose the false alibi.

“Um, probably not enough.”

“I’ll look into it if you like. Recommend you to Phelps. Not that you
need
my recommendation—” Christine raised an eyebrow.

“Thanks. Let me think about it.”

On Monday Amanda arrived at the school deliberately late for noon dismissal. She had planned to fly into the front hall, grab Sophie, and fly out again, praying she would not bump into anyone she knew. But as Amanda raced up the steps, there, leaning against one of the columns of the veranda, was Alan. Amanda could not pass by him without at least nodding hello.

“Hey, Alan.”

“Hey, Amanda.” As she rushed on, he said, “You’re late today. I was looking for you.”

Amanda whirled around. She was running against the tide of dismissal, and her abrupt stop created a bottleneck of children and mothers.

“Why?” Had word about Ben trickled down to Alan?

He eased his way to her, using the stroller to create a path, and guided them both out of the way of the doors.

“I just wanted to let you know I can get you tickets to the opening of my play—it’s starting its run at the end of the month.”

“Oh. Great.”

“How many tickets will you need?”

“Gee—I’m not sure—”

“Do you think Bob will want to come?”

Distracted, Amanda scanned the stream of children, concerned that Sophie might pass by without seeing her.

“Bob? No.”

Alan seemed affronted by her bluntness.

“I mean, he’s pretty busy with the Megabyte case,” she explained quickly. “He’s not going out to anything these days. But I would love to come, sure.”

Alan looked pleased. “Good. I’ll arrange it and give you the exact date.”

“Okay.” She made a move to leave but Alan stopped her again.

“I heard about Ben,” he said. “Outrageous.”

Amanda wilted slightly; so it
was
everywhere. Alan perceived her dismay and grasped her shoulder.

“Amanda, I didn’t tell you to upset you. I just wanted to let you know I’m on your side. Anything I can do to help …” His eyes sought hers.

“Thanks, Alan. I really appreciate it.”

She hugged him lightly, and he hugged her back.

“Remember—it’s hard being outside the box,” he said, giving her an extra squeeze. His arms felt thin and ropy yet strong, like tough cords; not soft and enveloping like Bob’s.

“Better find Sophie,” Amanda murmured, pulling away.

All that afternoon, Amanda thought about Alan. At first he came to her in glimpses—his solicitous words, the touch of his hand, the kind expression of his eyes. She was grateful to him, she really was. He was the only other parent at the school with whom she felt she could be honest, herself. She even thought about phoning him at home, to seek out his advice further on what to do about the situation with Ben. Should she join a committee? What would Alan say to that?
(Don’t let them force you into the box.)

But as she flipped through the school directory, seeking his number, other thoughts began intruding themselves, thoughts that caused Amanda to pause. Did she seriously want Alan’s advice—or was she calling him for another reason? Her conscience resisted the idea that there could be anything wrong in making this call—hadn’t she phoned him many times to arrange play dates?—but the more it resisted, the more strongly the other thoughts rallied for her attention. She shut the directory and put on the kettle and walked into the hallway to listen for Sophie, who was napping upstairs; all was silent, except for the gradual whine of the kettle.

What would it be like—with Alan?

The question posed itself starkly, as Amanda stirred her cup of tea. She continued stirring, almost hypnotically. The question, realizing it finally had the floor, posed itself again.

What would it be like?

She carried the cup to the table and sat down, the sight of the newspaper that she’d intended to read dissolving in the dam burst of images suddenly flooding her brain …

Minutes passed, until Amanda drew herself up, trying to snap out of the fantasy, but one image lingered, and she clung to it—the thought of the two of them atop a duvet twisted from passion, their hot bodies cooled by the manufactured breezes of an air conditioner. Where were they? In his bedroom. Yes—his bedroom, on a weekday morning. The thrill of it lay in the hour of the day, when the children were at school and the sun forced its way through the blinds no matter which way you angled them. The rest of the world was working while they traced the soft hair on each other’s bodies …

Stop it!
Amanda told herself.
This is ridiculous. I don’t want an affair!

What
did
she want then?

She got up and rinsed her cup in the sink.
Christ,
she thought,
even my fantasies now accommodate my children’s schedules.
And that was it, wasn’t it? Here’s what she wanted: she wanted an entire afternoon to pass without being asked to fetch a glass of juice. She wanted to lie in one morning, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. She wanted to make love without having to lock a door or wait until children were asleep, to make love without feeling there was something else she ought to be doing. The last time Amanda had felt so free was six years ago. She could chart it to the day. She and Bob had traveled to Rome for what turned out to be their last holiday without children. One morning they decided simply not to get out of bed. They made love, they napped, they read, they talked. Food arrived on silver trays, the sheets remained unmade; through the tall windows, they followed the arc of a Roman day. When they finally stepped out at nightfall, Amanda leaned on Bob’s arm, her limbs exhausted by pleasure. The young men had begun to crowd outside tables; passersby hurried home, packages clutched under their arms; here and there a shop remained open, selling highball glasses and key rings to the evening surge of tourists. Bob led her down cobbled alleyways and through squares with the confidence of a man who had mastered his new surroundings in less than a week. They ended up in a little restaurant where a waiter persuaded them to try raw fresh fava beans with olive oil and a scraping of pecorino. They drank cold red wine. It was impossible to feel any happier.

Amanda and Bob tried once to recapture this trip a few months after Sophie was born. Amanda’s mother volunteered to baby-sit the children over a winter weekend. Amanda and Bob didn’t go far—just a ninety-minute drive to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. They stayed at a bed-and-breakfast Amanda had read about in a travel magazine. Its charming description as an eighteenth-century whaler’s cottage turned out to be miserably apt: eighteenth-century whalers did not expect much in the way of comfort or privacy. Amanda and Bob were assigned a drafty attic room furnished with a spindly bed with noisy springs. The bathroom was across the hall. The owners of the house urged Amanda and Bob to join them by the fire in the gloomy parlor for “afternoon tea.” It was too bitterly cold to go outside, most of the nearby town was shut down, and she and Bob had not gone away to listen for hours to the innkeeping aspirations of their genial but relentless hosts. They left early Sunday morning—luckily so, as it turned out, since Amanda’s mother had decided after a hellish weekend of her own that she was “not the sort of grandmother to play mommy” and wouldn’t be offering her services again. When Amanda looked back on this disastrous little trip, she liked to think it might have gone otherwise—if only they had chosen a different inn, a different season—but she knew, really, that it couldn’t have gone otherwise. Had she and Bob been dropped into that hotel room in Rome again, there would not have been a moment in which she wasn’t waiting for the phone to ring, not a moment in which her children weren’t hovering near her conscience, banging to get in.

Thoughts of Alan continued to intrude upon her, despite her efforts to banish them; by the time Amanda readied herself for bed, she felt uneasy with desire—and the uneasiness of being desired. What was it that he had said to her?—“There’s fire in you, too.” His words played through her head as she fell asleep; she wasn’t dead, no, not yet, the embers glowed still …

Amanda was awakened by the noise of a drawer being closed. She had left a bedside lamp on for Bob, and its glare blinded her when she opened her eyes. It took her a moment or two to adjust to the light; Bob was sitting on a chair unrolling his socks from his feet.

“What time is it?”

“Close to midnight,” he answered. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” Amanda propped herself up on her pillow. “What time did you get in?”

“About half an hour ago. Thanks for leaving me some of that spaghetti.”

“I figured you might be hungry.”

“I was. Ravenous. Worked right through dinner again.”

Relations between Amanda and Bob had thawed to the point that they were speaking, but without intimacy, like two military officers exchanging situation reports at the end of a shift: “Anything happen?” “No, not much. You?” This was fine. Amanda was certainly not eager to tell him what had been on her mind for most of the day. She watched quietly as Bob put his clothes away, except for his blue suit, which he left out to wear again tomorrow.

The jacket looked as tired as she felt. It was hunched over the rack. There were creases in its arms, and the buttons had worn circles in the fabric. She remembered Bob’s complaint that he had not bought a new pair of shoes in two years. It struck her now that he had not bought a new suit, either. Her mind reeled back to another memory from their trip to Rome, when Bob had tried on a beautiful cashmere blazer. It was handmade by a tailor who fussed and pulled at the shoulders as Bob admired his reflection in the mirror. The tailor had gotten as far as making chalk marks on the seams before Bob decided against buying it. Amanda urged him to change his mind but, as he explained as they walked away from the store, while he could afford it, he could only
just
afford it, and they had much better uses for their money than blowing it on a blazer for him. A day later, in another shop, Amanda paraded before him in a pair of purple suede jeans. He insisted upon getting them for her even though they cost nearly as much as the blazer. She gave in, pleased, and wore them throughout the rest of the trip. When they got home, she unpacked the pants lovingly, folded them over a hanger, and never wore them again.

Bob’s suit came back into focus; Amanda felt sickened by guilt. She rolled over and clutched his pillow, her fantasies chased away by the footsteps of Bob returning from the bathroom, the man who was not Alan. Why had she permitted herself to think about him so much?

Bob pulled back the covers and settled in next to her. He did not shut the light but opened a magazine. He turned the pages delicately, in a way that suggested he thought she had fallen back to sleep.

Amanda burrowed in closer to him, wide awake with remorse.

“Did you have a rough day?” Her tone was more solicitous than it had been in weeks.

He folded up the magazine and gathered her tightly in his arms. “I thought you were out cold.”

“I was. Now I’m not.”

He strained to reach for the light without disturbing her position. When he spoke again it was dark, and she couldn’t see his face although it was only a few inches away. His freshly rinsed breath still smelled faintly of Scotch.

“It wasn’t bad,” he said. “Just a lot of trench work, trying to line up companies to testify against Frith.”

“Are they coming along?”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a long pause, in which Amanda realized Bob was drifting off to sleep. She didn’t want him to, not yet—not until she was certain things were normal between them again.

“Are you speaking to Jim Hochmayer?” Amanda remembered that she had not told Bob about the Texan’s dinner invitation to Susie.

“Yeah,” he said sluggishly.

“He’s dating Susie.”

“Huh?” This roused him slightly.

“She met him at Chasen’s. I did too. He asked her out. He seems like a nice guy. For once.”

“Wow. That’s impressive.” Bob’s voice started to fade again. “Good for her.” He yawned. “I didn’t think she still had it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What?”

“What did you mean by that?”

“Oh, Amanda.” Bob disentangled his arm from her and rolled over, as if to end the conversation. “I’m whacked. Do we have to discuss Susie now?”

Amanda sat up. “Explain what you meant—about her not ‘having it’?”

The dark lump next to her groaned. “I meant exactly what I said—that I didn’t think she still had it. Now can I go to sleep?”

“No!” she exclaimed, and then, accusingly, “How can you say such a cruel thing? Susie’s young, she’s beautiful—and in any case, Hochmayer’s so old—!”

Bob switched on the light, squinting at its brightness. “I wasn’t trying to be cruel, okay?” He rubbed his eyes. “I was merely
observing
that Susie is not what she was five, even three years ago. She’s what the folks at Treasury would label a good consumer, but not a good producer.”

“Excuse me?”

“What I mean is that she demands a lot and doesn’t expect to give anything in return. That may work when you’re twenty-five. But a man—especially the kind of man she wants—eventually tires of the privilege of escorting her to parties, paying for her dinners, taking her on expensive vacations. And there will come a moment when all the Botox treatments and mud peels and whatever the hell else she does to herself will cease to work their magic and she’ll be left with the fact that she’s a rather dull, self-absorbed middle-aged woman with no husband.