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.”
O
n 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.
“It’s also got the worst wine list in the world, but that’s part of its charm,” says Harry.
Tonight, though, we are all tired. There will be no midnight swim. Madeleine says she will clean, and Claire offers to help her. Harry excuses himself and goes upstairs to work. I lead Ned and Cissy back through the bushes to my house. It is late when the two women go to bed. I can imagine them in the living room talking, their feet tucked up behind them on the couch, finishing the wine. They are very different, but there is a growing bond between them. It is hard to resist being idolized.
So much has been made about Harry, yet Madeleine has never protested or voiced any resentment. She has given of herself utterly. Since their marriage I had never thought of Madeleine needing or wanting anything other than Harry because she had so much already. He was the missing piece that made her complete. But she is human, too, something that many of us forget at times because she seems immune to pettiness, possessing a serenity that actually grows more pronounced the greater her troubles. She knew she had Harry and Johnny—and me, of course—but can she be blamed for wanting more? What is important is she thought she was the one making the choice.
As I often do, I sit in my room looking across to her house. In the distance I hear the whistle of the night train heading back to New York. Maddy’s light goes out well past midnight, and I crawl into my childhood bed.
T
he next morning Claire comes down later than the rest of us. It is nearly eleven. We are outside in the sunlight. Harry has been up for hours. He says it’s the time when he works best. We have all settled into our normal weekend routines. Newspapers. The smells of coffee and bacon. The hum of crickets, the call of birds. Harry and Johnny are practicing their fly casting on the lawn. They flick and roll the long line out gracefully, allowing the bare tip to hover for a second before floating down to the grass. They have been doing this for nearly forty-five minutes. It is mesmerizing, like watching water eddy and pool in a stream. It is a skill I have never been able to master. Johnny already casts like an old pro. Last year Harry took him to Wyoming for a week along the Bighorn. Harry once told me that if he hadn’t become a writer, he would have been a fishing guide.
Claire emerges from the house, carrying a mug. Her eyes are slightly puffy. She is wearing Harry’s Yale hockey T-shirt. It reaches down to just below the tops of her thighs. Her feet are bare.
“So that’s where it is,” he says. “Been looking for that.”
“Sorry. I took it by mistake. I brought it out last night to give back. Hope you don’t mind. It’s just so comfortable.”
“Not at all. Consider it a gift. I can always get another. After all, you did give me a new T-shirt last night.”
“Thank you.”
I can’t help but stare at her. I can see the curve of her breasts under the shirt, their youthful lift, the barely visible outlines of her nipples. Maybe she senses my eyes on her and excuses herself to go back inside. I have already seen her naked in the dark, but somehow in the morning it’s different. Of course, she has seen me naked too, but it’s not quite the same thing. I no longer possess the allure of youth, if I ever did.
O
n a summer day, for us there is only one way to go for a day at the beach—by canoe. My house and Madeleine’s former house sit side by side overlooking a brackish lagoon that drains into the ocean. As children we disdained the notion of being driven to the beach, or even biking. We would pack up a battered Old Town canoe with towels, coolers, beach chairs, and whatever else we needed and set off like Lewis and Clark. It is nearly half a mile to paddle, and the winds could be stiff, sometimes forcing us to hug the shore, but the extra effort was always worth it. Unlike those people who came by car and sat crowded in clumps by the parking lot, we had a whole stretch of beach almost entirely to ourselves.
There are two canoes now, and we keep them on racks at my house, the paddles and mildewed life jackets, which only Johnny ever wears, hanging from the thwarts. Harry and I hoist one canoe and walk it past the bulrushes onto the old dock and into the water, our feet sinking in the mire. Ned easily picks up the other one by himself. The wicker on the seats has long since given out and been replaced with crude and less comfortable wooden boards. Spiders dash out from the gunnels, and we scoop them out with our hands. Standing calf-deep in the water, we load up the canoes and take our seats. From long custom, I sit in the stern and Maddy in the bow of one, Harry and Ned in the other. Johnny sits in front of his father while Cissy reclines in the middle on a folding beach chair like Cleopatra touring the Nile. Claire hops into ours and sits on a cooler.
“I feel like a freeloader,” she says. “Would it be all right if I got out and pushed?”
“Nonsense,” I say. “Enjoy the ride.”
“Only if one of you lets me paddle back,” she says.
The other canoe is far in front of us. The trip to the beach is always a race. Johnny’s and Cissy’s extra weight, along with most of the gear, usually evens things out, but now with Claire we are losing ground. Madeleine is intensely focused, reaching her paddle far out to draw as much water as possible, sending miniature whirlpools by me. She is very strong. I paddle hard too, focusing more on speed than on steering. “Oh, it’s all my fault,” says Claire, seeing how badly we are trailing. She has grasped the urgency of the moment yet can do nothing. “That’s it,” she says, and takes off her shirt. Gracefully, she dives into the water and we shoot forward. “I wasn’t kidding about pushing,” she says, and we feel her kicking behind the canoe.
Madeleine yells, “We’re gaining.”
It’s true. We are. My arms are tiring, but I keep up the same pace as before. I won’t let her down. Madeleine is the most competitive person I know.
“Get a horse,” I yell to the other canoe as we pull within several lengths.
“Hey, that’s cheating,” cries Harry. “No motors allowed.”
“Faster, Daddy, faster!”
I feel Claire stop pushing and see the other canoe now veering off to the right. Claire has reappeared by the other canoe. She has grabbed the stern and is forcing it off course.
“No fair,” Harry shouts, as he begins to stand up.
Cissy shrieks, “Don’t even think about it, Harry!”
Laughing, he tries to grab for Claire, but she ducks under the water. Seconds later her head pops up on the other side, like a seal’s. The canoe rocks dangerously but doesn’t tip over. Ned is sitting in the bow with his paddle poised in the air, looking bemused.
“I want a do-over,” he says.
Madeleine keeps paddling hard as we pass them. My arms feel like they are going to fall off, and my back is on fire, but we keep going until we hit the shallows. There is no way we can lose now. I lean back, exhausted, as we glide to a stop, the nose of the canoe crunching into the sand. Maddy gets out and dances triumphantly in the water. Claire splashes up, and the two hug like tournament champions.
“In your face, Winslow!” crows Maddy.
I am too tired to move.
“Flagrant violation. We are lodging an official protest to the stewards of the yacht club,” jokes Harry, as they glide lazily to the beach. “We’ll see you barred from these waters for good, Mrs. Winslow.”
“You’re just a sore loser.”
“Me? We had you beat fair and square until you torpedoed us.”
“All’s fair in love and canoeing, darling.” She kisses him.
“You’re coming with us on the way back,” he says loudly to Claire, and everyone laughs.
I know most people find the beach restful and restorative, but some beaches have special healing powers. For me, this is that beach. It is a place I have explored since childhood, and I feel as comfortable here as I would in my own house. I tolerate the occasional intruder the way any host would but am always secretly glad to have the place to myself again. Put me down on a stretch of sand in the Caribbean or Maine, and I will certainly appreciate it, but it’s not quite the same thing. In some places the water’s too cold, or too warm, or too green. The shells are alien to me, the smells unfamiliar. But here it is perfect, and I will come here as happily in January as in August. There are few days I look forward to more than that first warm day when I feel brave and resolved enough to withstand the still-frigid temperatures and the only other creatures in the water are neoprene-clad surfers and the fish, and I dive into numbing, cleansing cold.
My father did this every year too. He and I would drive to the beach in the old station wagon and plunge in. No one else was on the beach at that time of year, and he would say, “It’s polar bear time, Walt.” Now, I partly do it for him, and if I had a son, I would do it with him too.
By midsummer the water warms up, and the bathing becomes easier, although it rarely gets above seventy degrees. I am by no means a sun worshiper, though, one of those people who lie immobile for hours courting melanoma. For me the beach is about movement, about swimming or walking or playing, some food, and then a chance to doze in the sun and recharge before beginning the paddle back.
Maddy spreads out the blankets on the sand while Harry and I plant the umbrellas. We are fanatical about making sure the pole is deep enough. A sudden gust could pick up a poorly entrenched umbrella and send it skittering across the beach like a headless chicken. The sure sign of a beach rookie. We dig deep, packing the base with wet sand, tamping it down. Then there is football. Johnny, Claire, and Harry on one team. Ned, Cissy, and me the other. Claire is surprisingly good. She catches several of Harry’s passes and runs by me twice, making me feel old and fat. When her team wins, Claire jumps up and down, grinning with delight. This is her day; she is making an impact on all our lives.