East Hope (6 page)

“Jack's right. It's her word against yours. You'd never win.” She leaned into the cushions, looking more disappointed than sympathetic.

“I shouldn't be kicked off a faculty because of some student's lie. I want to hire a lawyer. Maybe someone in your company would know someone.”

“Darling, just do what Jack told you. Give that girl the C. Take some time off. People will forget about it. You can just slip away and it will all die down.”

He stared at his wife, hoping to hear a little more sympathy. “But I won't forget. I don't want to give up my job.”

She leaned forward. “Wait. Don't you see? You can come to New York. Start over.”

“We're talking about my career. You expect me to walk away?”

“You're resigning. You're not being fired. Jack will give you a good recommendation.”

“You have no idea what the job market is like. I'll never have a job like this one.”

“You might eventually. And we'd be together again. If that matters to you.” Mary Beth stood and turned to the window.

Will came behind her and put his arms around her; he bent down, resting his chin on her shoulder. Her hair was soft on his face. Her clothes smelled faintly smoky. “Of course it matters,” he said, “but giving up here is wrong. It's my integrity that's on the line.”

“Will, please accept it. Think of the time, the expense. I know it's hard. You can do other things—write, maybe find an editing job. You don't need to teach.”

“What?”

Mary Beth turned to face him. “Think about us. Do you really want to take on the financial toll of a lawsuit? The emotional toll, too?” Her lower lip trembled and she started to cry.

He stared down at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “I'm tired.” She wiped her face with the backs of her hands. “I've got a lot going on. I promised Drew I'd be back in LA on Monday.”

“You're going to the West Coast again?”

“Come on. We can make this work. It's not the end of the world. Please. I've missed you.” This time she put her arms around him and pressed her face into his shirt.

“I don't know,” he whispered. Will stepped free of her arms, thinking that at the very least she might have been more understanding. She seemed oblivious to all he was giving up. “I need some air,” he said.

He left the study and went out to the back porch and sat on the top step. The warm spring sun on his back offered no relief. His entire body ached as if bruised. The exquisite morning seemed an affront. He shielded his eyes from the sun.

He remembered sitting on the back steps of his childhood home, breathing in the salt air, anticipating the long, light-filled days of summer. Life had been so much simpler then. He thought again of Maine. He had wanted to take Mary Beth there as a surprise to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Now she would be making even more trips to the West Coast. Nothing was going the way he had hoped.

Why had their lives become so complicated? Will stared out at the yard. He stretched out his legs and kicked away a pebble on the bottom step, trying to think what to do.

T
he day after the dinner party Caroline escaped into her gar den. Pete's presence seemed to linger in the house. Outside, lifting her face toward the sun, she breathed in the sweet, cooler air. Fortunately May had returned to normal, with a gentle breeze and scattered clouds. She rolled up her sleeves and savored the softness of the air on her bare arms. Only hours ago she had slept in Pete's embrace, his breath warm against the back of her head. He had made her feel alive again. What would it be like the next time she saw him? Now that they had had sex, everything would be different.

This morning the real world loomed. There was lots to do in the garden. The wind started to pick up and the sun went behind a large cloud. Caroline had clipped her hair back to keep it from blowing in her face. She pulled on her gardening gloves, wet from last night's rain. They felt dank and cumbersome. Harry used to chide her for leaving her tools out. She yanked the gloves off and stared at her hands.

Beautiful hands, Harry had said once. It had been at her sister Darcy's wedding reception, and Harry had been an usher. Caroline had been amazed that Harry Waverly, older and working at his first job in New York, had seemed to take an interest in her when she was only a senior in college. At the time his compliment had struck her as odd, perhaps something that an older person might say. She drew the back of one hand to her mouth. It was cool against her lips. Since Harry had died her body had felt like a husk, dry and hollow, like the dead stalks of the plants.

This spring she'd worked in her garden only sporadically. Early morning was her favorite part of the day. She had missed spending more time out-of-doors. Today she began by raking the winter debris from the perennial border along the fence. The top layer of leaves came easily, but she had to kneel and use a small hand rake to gently lift the wet leaves that clung to the base of the plants. Using her favorite pair of red pruning shears, she clipped back the dead stalks and took them periodically to the compost heap behind the garage. The pruning shears had belonged to her father, and she could maneuver them easily through the stems of the Rudbeckia that she'd left intact for the birds to enjoy during the winter. Pale shoots peeked through the crown of the plant.

Later, after bagging the rest of the debris, she started working in the shade garden on the other side of the yard. The French lilac bush, now fifteen years old, anchored the far corner. Beneath it she had planted a sweep of hostas, hellebores, ferns, and white astilbes. She loved their frothy blooms that came in June, pristine and virginal against the rich green leaves and dark soil.

Gradually, feeling warmer, she sat for a few moments on the back steps. The phone rang. Caroline didn't go inside to answer it. It might be Pete. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. As the sun seeped into her back, she pictured what the future might hold with Pete. Hushed phone calls, plans for a weekend away, perhaps at an inn on the eastern shore, or in another city where they knew no one, where they could be alone together. Did she want that? Could she ever love Pete?

And later, months from now, perhaps an entire year, how would they feel? Would it be the end of the affair, remnants of shame, pathetic apologies, or the start of something more? She imagined talk of divorce, whispered glances at the garden club, Marjorie, hurt, indignant, inconsolable that her husband of so many years was throwing her over for someone else, for Caroline Waverly. Whoever would have thought?

And, of course, Rob. Silent, brooding, the loss of his father freshly etched across his face, he would never forget, nor would he understand his mother turning to someone else. Rob would never accept that. Caroline groaned audibly and got up. Sleeping with Pete had been a mistake. Being with him made her think more of Harry; it was as if their lives were inextricably woven together. Pete would keep her caught in the past. She needed to find a way to move forward.

She returned to the shade garden and worked carefully, not wanting to injure the new growth. The previous strangely hot days had lured some of the plants prematurely out of hiding. Spring was a tricky time of year. While it was a season of promise, there was still the likelihood of more cool nights, sudden storms, the unexpected weather that could wreak havoc on the young plants.

Caroline reached the end of the bed and stepped closer to the lilac, the heady scent still filling the air. The flowers were beginning to fade after the recent warm spell. The edges of the purple blossoms were tinged with brown. She fingered the rough bark. The shrub was large now, a mature bush. It seemed impossible. Fifteen springs ago her father had planted it when her baby, Grace, had died. Grace, who had lived only a day. The other great sadness in her life.

Her parents had come from Connecticut and stayed a week. Her mother, practical and efficient, had stocked the house with groceries, made casseroles for the freezer, and hired a woman to come clean once a week. She had taken Rob to his preschool, and in the afternoons the two of them had gone to the zoo, the children's museum, and the Air and Space Museum, his favorite.

The house had buzzed with activity, but her father had stayed outside most days, spending his visit in the garden. It had been early spring. Her father had started what became her garden for Grace. Less showy than the wide border of sun-loving perennials, these plants were quiet and restful, a peaceful part of the garden.

After Grace's death Caroline had had a difficult time resuming her life. Her mother had called it a breakdown. The doctor had said that along with her grief she suffered from postpartum depression. The pills prescribed for her made her feel as if she were wrapped in cotton batting.

On a morning like this one Harry had come and sat beside her on the steps. He held Rob in his arms.

“Our boy needs you, Caro.” Harry had caressed her cool cheek with one hand and gently touched her lips, as if to coax them to a smile. Then he took her arm, bone white and wrapped around her waist, and pulled it away from her body, creating a space on her lap. Caroline remained quiet and still as Harry lowered Rob, sleepy, just up from his nap, onto her legs, firmly placing her arm around their son.

Harry drew his own arm around them both, protective and insistent, as if telling her to let go of the pain, willing her to be happy again, because after all, in spite of everything, they were a family. Caroline had looked down, staring at her hands cradling her living child. They seemed to be the hands of a stranger, lifeless and fragile-looking, with the cuticles picked ragged, hands she had trouble recognizing as her own. This beautiful, healthy child had sat in her lap, and she had not been able to feel the softness of his hair or the delicate bones of his back as he leaned against her. Her Rob.

How long had they sat like that? Harry had been so in control then, and always, she thought. His shirt had probably been clean and pressed, his khakis neatly creased—his regular weekend attire, nice enough to go down to his office for a few hours late in the afternoon. Harry had been able to continue on with his life as if nothing had happened, whereas Caroline had fallen apart. In photographs of her that first year after Grace had died, Caroline had looked like a walking unmade bed, her clothes loose and baggy from her having lost so much weight. Her hair, once the golden red of a sunset, had become dull and listless. There were pictures of Rob too, toddling on sturdy legs with dimpled grass-stained knees, always smiling, ignorant of the pain his mother bore. Harry had remained steadfast in the belief that she would get better.

On the first anniversary of Grace's death Harry had given Caroline a teak bench for the shade garden. Now, all these years later, Caroline sat on that bench looking once more at the lilac. She brushed back the tears rolling down her face: tears for Grace; tears for her father, who had died a few years later; tears for Harry, who had kept his financial problems and his sorrows to himself. She thought of Grace and tried to imagine the girl she would have become. Grace, who would have been fifteen now.

Harry had been right: Caroline had gotten better. Now her grown-up Rob, her remote, silent son, would be coming home from college next week. A breeze ruffled the branches. The phone rang again inside the house. She gave a final glance at the garden and hurried inside.

Several days later, Caroline went to see her best friend, Vivien.

When Caroline and Harry moved to their big house in Chevy Chase, they had made other friends right in the neighborhood. Harry used to go jogging with Phil Larsen at the end of the block, and Phil's wife, Jill, and Caroline had formed a playgroup for their little boys, along with another mother on the block behind them. Phil and Harry swapped tools as they each tackled small home improvements.

Harry and Caroline's closest friends had been right next door, Marsha and Sam Greene. They often shared a babysitter and went off to the movies together or out for dinner. The Greenes' daughter was the same age as Rob. Marsha had been pregnant with her son, Thomas, when Caroline had been pregnant with Grace. The two mothers spent long hours together talking about their young children, their pregnancies, and coping together at “arsenic hour,” the chaotic time at the end of the afternoon when the children were especially fussy, while husbands worked long hours downtown.

After Grace's death, Caroline could hear Thomas's healthy cries through the open windows all that spring and into the following summer. Her own house felt horribly silent to her, despite Rob's cheerful babbling. Marsha, seemingly sensitive to Caroline's sadness, kept her distance for a while. Once Caroline got over her depression, she tried to resume her friendship with Marsha, but seeing the growing Thomas was a constant reminder of her loss. When Sam Greene took a new job in Charlotte and the family moved away, Caroline had been relieved.