Mating for Life (8 page)

She pulled off her T-shirt, skirt, and underwear and looked at herself in the mirror on the bureau, trying to see what Lincoln might see. Breasts that were perhaps not as pert as they used to be, but weren't big enough to sag, with small nipples that Eric, her first husband—whom she had met at twenty-two, during a trip to Paris to see her father; he had followed her during a walk along the Seine, presented her with a bunch of flowers; she had been naïve enough to believe he didn't do this for all the girls—had once told her were the color of black cherries. Her stomach was flat, her skin smooth and lightly tanned already.

She raised her hands to her breasts and thought of the back of her dress, the night before. Back at home, clumsily unzipping it, she had realized that it was ruined. The delicate fabric had been pilled and mangled by the bricks on the wall of the half-finished house Lincoln had pressed her against when he had pulled her off the sidewalk during their walk home. She hadn't noticed at the time. She hadn't noticed anything, really, except the way it felt to be kissed.

Eventually they had come out from between the houses and had continued to walk, stopping every few feet. Ilsa had known the heels of her shoes were beyond repair, sticky with mud, stained with dirt. She hadn't realized about the dress yet.
How easy it is to ruin things.
A few houses before hers, he had kissed her one last time and asked her what the best way to contact her would be. She had given him her cell phone number. “It was delightful to meet you. I'll see you soon,” he had said.

Now she looked away from herself in the mirror and opened a drawer, where she rummaged for her black bandeau, remembered Liane was wearing it, and settled on a burgundy tank suit.

She pulled suits for Ani and Xavier out of their bags,
plus sunscreen, towels, and water wings for Xavier. And then she had that feeling she sometimes had, the one where she remembered for a moment what it had been like before children, when a bathing suit and towel for herself would have been enough, when she didn't have to worry about anyone else. And she felt a hollow sadness for even thinking about those days, and she focused on how much she loved her children.

She heard a floorboard creak. Helen stood in the doorway, her long, blond-streaked-with-gray hair messy. “Darling.”

“Mom! Did I wake you?”

“I wasn't sleeping, I was meditating.” Helen crossed the room and hugged and kissed Ilsa. “Good to see you,” she said, studying her daughter's face the way she always did when it had been a long time between visits. Ilsa felt abruptly self-­conscious, but Helen didn't say anything except, “You look beautiful,” which was what she always said. “I'll get my suit on, too.” Helen headed back toward her own room, removing her rumpled sundress as she went.

Ilsa turned away. Helen had never been the type of mother to hide her nudity, ever, and Ilsa couldn't remember when she had started looking away from her mother's body, and wondered when Ani would start looking away from hers.

• • •

Ilsa dove off the dock and swam down until she couldn't hold her breath any longer, and she still hadn't reached the bottom. When she came up, she felt cleaner, coldly vindicated. She paddled out farther, away from the dock, and she thought about her father, Claude, and the Catholic churches he had always taken her to during her trips to Paris to see him, starting when she was a girl. The summer before, Ilsa had traveled to Paris alone with Xavier, so Claude could meet his grandson for the first time. She remembered Claude had held the
little boy aloft to show off to his group of friends, all of them already wine-soaked at midafternoon. (He had done it when Ani was born, too, held her up as though she were the baby lion in that movie and said, “Here she is, my little Anaïs!” He was the only one who called her that.) That afternoon, with Xavier, the friends had all cheered: artists, musicians, poets, all of whom found themselves but not each other fascinating.

Later that weekend, he had dragged Ilsa off to a church. “Why do you always want to confess?” she had asked. “Absolution,” he had replied. “I think it really works.” “In what way?” “If you do what the priest says, all is forgiven. So simple! And then you can just come back the next week.” And he had laughed, removed his hat, and gone into the booth while Ilsa held Xavier and wondered if her son, almost two, who was staring up, up, up at the stained-glass windows, at the golden organ pipes, at Jesus on the cross, palms bleeding, face contorted but still pious, could understand any of this. He would not be this kind of man, this she knew already. But she—she was already who she was, and in that instant she had disliked Claude for it.

She had not returned to visit him since. She had thought about asking Helen again, as she had dozens of times throughout her life, exactly what had attracted her to Claude. But it wouldn't be straightforward, nothing like the way it probably was for people whose parents had divorced and, beforehand, had explained to their children where it had gone wrong.
We'll always love each other,
these people might say.
But we aren't
in
love anymore
. Whereas Helen had once said to Ilsa, “I was in love with him, but it was never sustainable. Isn't he a beautiful man, though? And you're beautiful, too, just like him. So I made a good choice, in the end.” This had always struck Ilsa as surprisingly shallow.
You chose him so I would be good-looking? What about all the other shit that goes along with being the daughter of a man like that?

Ilsa still shuddered when she recalled the one time Claude had taken her to meet Madame La Boussière, the woman who paid his rent, and more. It had been like a scene in a play, one that you wished, when the curtain fell, you had never watched. The old woman languished on a couch, her blue eye shadow and foundation caked, her cigarette ash falling on the floor. She had squinted at Ilsa and said, “
Est-elle ta maitresse
?
” (Is she your lover?) “
Non,
” Claude had said, patting the shoulder of the woman's loose kimono, taking the envelope from her ring-encrusted hand, telling her he'd be back the following week and would have more time to spend. “I don't ever want to have to see her again,” Ilsa had said to him afterward, and he had said nothing in response.

“Watch out,” Liane said from the dock. “The snapping turtle is around, and he's meaner than ever this year.”

“Come on, get in. Maybe you can actually beat me to the floating dock for once.”

Ani, Xavier, and Helen were in the shallow water close to shore, splashing and laughing. Liane stood, peeling off her Vampire Weekend concert T-shirt to reveal the bandeau. Ilsa noticed there was now a man on the dock next door, which appeared to be a lot closer than it used to be—she'd have to ask Helen if the Castersens had sold. He had a book in front of him, but he was watching Liane, who, instead of diving in, plugged her nose with one hand, held the bandeau in place with the other, and jumped awkwardly into the water. The man smiled and looked back down at his book.

Ilsa swam more slowly than usual and let Liane win.

• • •

Later, Ilsa put the children to bed and then she, Liane, and Helen sat at the bistro set in the screened-in porch for a late dinner. Helen had a pile of greens grown by someone named Iain and there was kamut mixed with canned mushrooms,
and tempeh steaks that tasted freezer-burned. Ilsa tried not to think about what they would have had if Fiona had been there. Besides, there was also wine. It was making her feel pleasantly light-headed, and if she took a sip right after a bite of tempeh, it didn't taste so bad.

Later, Helen stood to clear the plates away and get dessert.

“So, tell me, now, why did Fiona get so mad at you that she refused to come here?” Liane asked when Helen was gone.

Ilsa swallowed. “She suspects me of being an extreme hussy.”

“Sus
pects
?” Liane laughed, but then looked at Ilsa's face and stopped laughing. “What did you do?”

Ilsa hesitated. But she could tell Liane anything, couldn't she? And the fact that judgmental Fiona wasn't there made it easier to speak freely. “She had a party last night and it turns out her neighbor is Lincoln Porter, who is . . . well, a really great artist.”

“
You're
a really great artist,” Liane said.

“Ha. Thanks. But I haven't painted anything worth saving in ages, you know.” Saying it aloud made Ilsa feel like she was falling into a pit.

“Come on, really? When's your next show?”

“No shows upcoming. I'm experiencing a dry spell. Which is maybe why . . .” Ilsa uncrossed her legs and put her elbows on the table. “I kissed Lincoln on the way home,” she whispered, feeling pleasantly warm, like a teenager again, with a secret to share with her sister. “A lot.”

“You
what
?”

Ilsa looked up, surprised at Liane's reaction.
Oh. Right. She just got engaged. She's probably feeling quite chaste.
“Sorry. Never mind.”

“No. Come on. Ilsa!”

“What? Just forget it, okay?”

“Do you want Michael to find out?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why would you leave Tim and Fiona's house with another man? Tim is Michael's best friend. And his business partner. What if he saw you? He would tell Michael, you know. He wouldn't keep it a secret just for your sake. And Fiona—well, she's mad. She didn't even come. This is not good, Ilsa.”

“What's not good?” Helen was back, carrying a tray with a plate of grapes and three dishes of her soy ice cream.

Ilsa and Liane were silent. Then Liane said, “Ilsa made out with some guy,” and Helen sat and reached across the table for Ilsa's arm and said, “Ilsa?” and Ilsa wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
Why can't we just be normal people, a normal family?
Why can't we have a mother who we can't talk about stuff like this with?

Except Helen seemed oddly uncomfortable, too. Her eyes, rather than attempting to probe into Ilsa's and get her to tell all, were now downcast.

“Can we please forget I ever said anything? Please?” Ilsa pulled her arm away from Helen's and picked up Liane's left hand, flopping it back and forth while Liane kept it limp. “Don't we have other things to talk about? Like, why hasn't anyone mentioned this engagement ring? What a bunch of weirdos we all are. Let's talk about
that
instead.” Ilsa actually felt grateful to Adam at that moment, for giving her something to distract everyone with.

Helen started rearranging the grapes on the plate. The awkward silence remained. “Yes, tell us about the ring,” she said, and Liane gave them both a look that seemed oddly defiant.

“Adam and I got engaged,” she said.

“Great news!” Ilsa practically shouted.

“I know you don't think so. You already told me you don't like him.”

“I never did. I just said . . .”

“You said he was staid, and if I stayed with him, one day there would be no way to leave. And that one day I would regret it.”

Ilsa closed her eyes.
Staid.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean it.”
I was talking about me.
She opened her eyes.

More silence. Then: “Let's rewind,” Helen announced. It was something she had always said when they were little. Then she'd make funny noises with her lips, or walk backward around the room, and let the girls or herself have a “do-over.” She didn't make any funny sounds or walk backward this time, though. She just lifted her empty glass and said, “A toast. To Liane, and to marriage, and to the possibility that maybe love
can
be, if you really work at it, everlasting.
Necessary.
”

The three of them clinked glasses, and then Helen looked down at hers, realized it was empty, and pretended to drink anyway.

4

White-Tailed Doe
(
Odocoileus virginianus
)

A mother doe often leaves her fawn unattended for hours at a time, returning so the fawn can suckle and then leaving again. If a fawn needs her mother, she bleats to call out to her. Those does that do not have young, either because they are barren, failed to produce a fawn, lost a fawn to a predator, or are too old, are sometimes referred to as “dry does.”

S
ometimes Myra believed she had stayed because of the call of the loon, the howl of the coyote, and the doe with her fawn, standing in the dew-strung garden in front of the cottage. It was such a beautiful place—in the summer, at least.

The truth wasn't quite as simple. It was this: She stayed because she loved Johnny. She stayed because she never gave up hope. She tried to convince herself it didn't matter to her that he was never going to be able to love her back because he was the kind of man who was a little frozen on the inside, even if on the outside he seemed gregarious. She had once read a Leonard Cohen poem and thought of him: “I'm just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet, who loved you with his frozen love, his secondhand physique.” Except, of course, he didn't love her, not even in a frozen way.
Really?
an insistent inner voice would sometimes ask her.
Are you sure
he's actually incapable of love, or are you simply justifying the fact that he doesn't love you? And regardless, is this the right person to be trying to have a baby with?
She tried to ignore the voice.

Perhaps if the four boys—the endless supply of sons had turned out to be a bit of a rural legend; Johnny also had ­nephews who worked at the marina, and they all looked alike—had ever shown any signs of needing her, she could have used that as a justification, too. But the reality was the boys, at seventeen, nineteen, twenty, and twenty-two, were past the point of needing a mother by the time she came along. The only moments she ever felt like a mother to them was when she picked up their dirty socks. She followed trails of socks through the house, muttering to herself, frustrated. She would put the socks in the washing machine and try not to feel resentful and imagine that at that moment she was probably feeling something that real mothers felt all the time: The Resentment of the Dirty Socks. She thought about what one of the inspirational books she had started buying when she went into town would tell her, that she was probably supposed to find a way to be grateful for all this, to stay in the moment and see the good.
But how can you be grateful for dirty socks and a man who doesn't really love you?

There were days when she thought she would probably leave, too, just like all the other women had left before her. And still other days when she felt hopeful that things would change and she would get what she wanted out of this. (The love, the baby.) But, especially in the winter, there were also days she felt so barren she knew it was a permanent state. She didn't need a doctor's opinion. She was a dry doe, a term she heard one of the hunters in for an early breakfast use that morning.

The hunters had been arguing over the practice of shooting does that had fawns with them. From what Myra could understand, not knowing much about hunting aside from the fact that it made her feel nauseous, it was frowned upon to
shoot a doe that had a fawn with her because that would also, ultimately, lead to the loss of the fawn. (Myra felt confused about this: So the life of a fawn mattered more to a hunter than the life of a doe or buck? Was this because fawns were babies and awakened some sort of empathic response in the hunters or because, if the fawn died an untimely death, this would be an animal the hunters would
not
one day get the chance to shoot at?)

Apparently some hunters were indiscriminate, not caring if they shot a doe that was accompanied by a fawn. But most hunters, Myra overheard these men say, took down stags and bucks exclusively whenever possible during hunting season. However, if they were absolutely positive of the absence of a fawn, they would also shoot “dry does” at will.

When she served the hunters their breakfasts she said to them, quietly, “I'm sorry, I overheard you talking and I'm curious. What's a dry doe?” They looked surprised, likely because Myra didn't talk to the customers much more than she had to—she wasn't unfriendly, just professional, or so she hoped people thought. (
I have an MBA,
she sometimes had the urge to say, when a breakfast was sent back or someone talked to her like she was somehow less than. But, she realized, half the people she served probably had no idea what an MBA was—and the other half would probably say,
Then what the heck are you doing in a place like this?
) The hunter with the red-and-black-checked jacket and the trucker hat said, “A dry doe is a doe with no baby.” “Why doesn't she have a baby?” Myra asked. “She's either too old, or her baby died earlier in the year, or she failed at mating that season. So we shoot her if we see her and we're sure of it, since there's no danger of putting fawns at risk.”

Myra had put the breakfasts down on the table, taking care to place the correct breakfast in front of the correct man and ask if he needed anything else
at the moment,
before going to
the bathroom and closing and locking the door. There, she had allowed herself to cry for three minutes, staring at the wood paneling that was really wallpaper before returning to the dining room to continue serving breakfasts and brewing pots of coffee.

Now she was standing by the window of the cottage beside the marina, where she lived with Johnny and the boys, trying not to think dark thoughts. It was late June. The first official day of summer had just passed. But still, she had to force herself not to think about winter, and about how it would arrive, wanted or not, as always. “I don't know why you rage against it so much,” Johnny had said to her once. “Winter will always come and there's not a thing you can do about it, especially up here.” During the winter that had just passed, he had agreed with her that it wouldn't be a bad idea for the two of them, at some point, to go somewhere warm for even just a week. But it hadn't happened. When she'd brought it up in March, he'd suggested she go on her own. “You deserve it, My,” he'd said. “You work hard. I know you hate the cold. Go somewhere. I'll buy your ticket. I'll pay for you to stay somewhere ritzy.” But she didn't, even though she should have. She took too much solace in the way he called her “My,” thinking maybe he finally meant it, that maybe he'd finally taken possession.

Also, she had been about to ovulate.

She didn't even bother tracking her cycle anymore, though, hadn't since around then, probably. She wasn't sure if she'd given up or not and didn't want to have to decide. Admitting she had given up would involve a period of mourning. Better to save that for winter, really.

She saw the boat approaching. It was Jesse, and he had the young woman with the red hair whom Myra had ferried over to the island alone the week before in the boat with him. Myra hadn't thought this woman was coming back until Tuesday and knew her car was blocked in by one of Johnny's trucks.
She went outside and walked down to the dock.

“Hi,” she said. “On your way back to the city already?” She noticed that the woman's pale face was blotchy and red in places.

“Yes. I'd like to get my car and leave,” the woman said, in a tone that seemed to be trying to prove a point to someone who wasn't there.

Myra said, “I just need to move Johnny's truck. And I'll get the keys for you.” Johnny wasn't there. He'd driven into town to run some errands. Myra thought about refunding part of the woman's parking pass, which would have been paid in advance as per Johnny's policy. This woman would have paid for more days than she had actually stayed. (Johnny charged five dollars per day for parking and insisted on no refunds. If she
did
refund money to this woman, he would probably be annoyed. “Summer is the only time we have to make any real money,” he often told her. “And most of these cottagers have it to spend.” As though she, Myra, didn't know about money or businesses or life. As though she, Myra, hadn't had a life and a job and a heck of a lot more knowledge of a great many things than he did before she arrived there and dashed her dreams against his dock.)

Now the woman was holding out money.

“What's that for?”

“For driving me back here early. I wanted to give it to him.” But Jesse was already off the dock and walking toward the restaurant. “Just take it. Give it to him. He could probably use it.”

Myra bit her lip, for some reason offended by this. What made this woman think Jesse
needed
that money? What if he didn't?

“Oh, no, it's okay, the ride back, it's on the house. Please, no thank you.”

“I insist.” The young woman pressed the fifty-dollar bill,
one of the new ones, the plastic ones that made Myra feel like the rest of the world was passing her by and Johnny grumbled had the potential to melt, into her hand. “Just take it.” Myra was going to protest again but instead she took the bill and put it in the pocket of her jeans to give to Jesse later.

“Thank you,” she said. Then: “Let me help you with your bags.” It was this, this
servitude,
that bothered Myra sometimes. She tried to channel gratitude, the feeling she had on good days, when she felt superior to the people still held in slavery to whatever electronic device they had in their pocket sending radioactive waves through their bodies as they asked her frantically if there was a cellular tower nearby.
Nope,
Myra would say.
But there's a pay phone.
And then she'd have the urge to add:
I used to work on Bay Street. But now I get to fall asleep to the sound of the loon's call and wake up to the sun shining on a lake as still as glass.
Something always stopped her from being so smug, though. Because she knew there were also nights when she fell asleep to the sound of ice cracking, loud as gunshots across the lake, and woke in a darkness so deep she might stay inside for days.

She hoisted the woman's bag out of the boat, then leaned down and adjusted the knot on the rope tethering the front of the boat to the dock.

Later, after the woman got in her car and waited for Myra to pull the truck out of her way so she could pull out, Myra sat and watched her taillights disappear and, unexpectedly, she felt envious.

But you could just go, too. If you really wanted to.

• • •

Myra had come to Flipper's for the first time during a girls' weekend at a nearby cottage with women she didn't see anymore. These women likely now thought she was crazy. She was probably now a cautionary tale. It all felt like a lifetime
ago—and in some ways, she supposed, it had been. In other ways, it hadn't been at all. Half a life, really.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

In reality, it had been three years.

Johnny had been tending the bar that night, mixing them margaritas, or cosmopolitans, or something predictable for a group of women of a certain age, which they were. He'd had a bartender's guide behind the bar and he'd been magnanimous, happy to serve them whatever they wanted even though they probably all seemed like a bunch of cackling hens to him. Now she knew it was because of the money he was making off of them, but she had thought at the time that perhaps he actually enjoyed his job, enjoyed serving people, and also, just maybe, that he enjoyed being around her, was interested even, in her. When she looked at him, the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up over arms that bore a tan that obviously reached the deepest layer of his dermis, the hair golden on top of his skin, she had very badly not wanted him to think
she
was a cackling hen. She had very badly, when she looked at him, wanted to go somewhere and kiss him. And this was not something that measured and shy Myra was prone to feel or be tempted to do.

“Who is he?” she'd asked her friend Wendy, the one whose family owned the cottage the group of women were staying at for the weekend.

“Johnny Hicks. Nice name, huh? Kind of appropriate, although he is rather delicious in a guy-from-the-sticks way. Very blue-collar. Rumor has it there's a different woman with him here every few summers. He gets most of them pregnant, they all have boys, and then they all leave.”

Myra had leaned in, fascinated. “Are you serious? Come on. That can't really be true.”

“For real. I don't even know how many sons he has, but there are lots of them and they all look the same. So do the
women: pretty and blond.”

“How many women? How many sons?”

“I told you, no idea. But I think the first woman had two kids before she left.”

“But
why
would they all leave?”

“Maybe because they're bored to tears.”

Myra looked at Johnny and couldn't imagine being bored. She was staring at him so hard she barely heard Wendy say, “The winters here are pretty deadly. Depressing. Nothing to do but cross-country ski and listen to the ice crack. And let's face it, there's only so much sex you can have, even with a guy like that.”

Myra proceeded to drink several more cocktails, and later, out on the deck, she kissed Johnny Hicks with her hands clasped up and around the back of his neck. She went back inside after and was convinced none of her friends had ­noticed—but of course they all had, and were talking behind her back with a cruelness borne of jealousy. (
Isn't she still technically married? What is she thinking?
) Later, she and Johnny snuck outside and kissed again and she ran her hands down his chest, over the softness of his shirt, and Wendy walked outside with two of the other women and they cleared their throats.

Eventually the women all left and Myra and Johnny went to his place. The boys were sleeping, so he said she needed to be quiet. She whispered things in his ear like, “What did you want to be when you grew up?” and he said things like, “What I am right now,” and she thought that meant something great about him, like that he was, unlike anyone else she knew, exactly
who
he was. Really what it had meant was that Johnny took everything literally.