Nell (27 page)

“Look, Mindy,” Nell said. “I’m going to take my lunch hour at three instead of one today. My—uh, friend Clary is arriving on the three o’clock Hy-Line. I want to meet her and get her settled in my house. She’ll be living with me this summer. So I’ll be gone for an hour, from three till four.”

“Fine,” Mindy said, snapping her gum.

At three Nell walked back down Main Street and past the five-and-dime and the gift stores and restaurants to the Hy-Line dock. The small blue and white ferry approached, its decks so loaded with people in bright clothing that from the distance it looked like a boat full of balloons. Nell felt a shiver of excitement go through the crowd of people waiting at the dock. She would not have been surprised if everyone had cheered when the ferry slipped so perfectly into place and the ramps were let down to connect with shore. It was a real occasion, this ferry-arriving business, Nell thought. She watched lovers and friends and relatives greet and hug one another and it seemed to her she had never dreamed that the regular old world could be so full of daily joy.

Clary came down the ramp. The sight of her filled Nell now, as always, with a medley of emotions. She loved her, as one loves a child she has watched turn into an adult; she loved her as a friend. But she was also struck by her vivid beauty and, unavoidably, by her youth. Clary was so stunning, so firm and flawless. She was slim and
taut and both sophisticated and nubile at the same time. Just the sight of Clary made Nell feel old, and though she had been feeling almost beautiful, she now felt merely well preserved. Clary’s presence made Nell aware of all her wrinkles and sags, all the marks of time. She could not help the momentary twinge of alarm and the thought that perhaps Andy, on seeing Clary, would fall in love with her instead of Nell.

Clary came on down the ramp, unaware of her ex-stepmother’s jealousy. She was wearing loose white jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a backpack, and carrying an enormous bulging suitcase.

“Clary!” Nell called. She rushed up to her and gave her a hug. “You’re here!”

“Don’t look behind me,” Clary said, kissing Nell on the cheek. “Whatever you do, don’t look behind me. Where’s your car? Hurry up. Let’s go.”

Nell drew back. “What on earth?” she said.

“Ssssh!” Clary said. “I’ll explain as soon as we get in the car. Where’s your damn car?”

Clary was walking away even as Nell tried to take her bag from her.

“Clary,” Nell said, “what’s going on? Here, let me help you with your bag.”

“I can carry my bag,” Clary said through clenched teeth. “
I can carry my bag. Can we just go to your car?
”

“Clary, I didn’t drive here,” Nell said. “My car’s at the house. It’s only a short distance. A nice walk. What’s wrong?”

Clary stopped short, so quickly that Nell, who had been scurrying along next to her, trying to keep up with her, ran right into her arms. “Jesus, Clary,” she said. “Would you please tell me what’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, this is hopeless,” Clary said. “This is
ridiculous
.”

“Clary!” Nell said.

“You must be Mrs. St. John,” someone said.

Nell turned. Throngs of people were passing by, some just off the Hy-Line, some looking at the shops, and out of this crowd came a handsome young man with blond hair and the most beautiful blue eyes in the world. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said
I GOT SCROD LAST NIGHT
.

“May I call you Nell?” he said. “I’m Bob Walker.”

Nell was stunned. She looked at Bob; she looked at Clary. Clary’s face had gone into its mask of deep inscrutability that always indicated strong emotion on her part. “Clary?” Nell asked, touching her arm.

“You really are crazy, you know,” Clary said. She turned in a flash and was glaring at Bob. The two of them were the same height, and with their blond hair, T-shirts, and jeans, they could have been twins. “You really are crazy,” she repeated.

“I know,” Bob said. “I’m crazy about you.”

“If Nell were my father, you wouldn’t be here,” Clary said. “If Nell were my mother, you wouldn’t
dare
be here.”

“Clary,” Nell said. “What is going on?” People were beginning to glance at the three of them as they stood there, blocking the flow of walkers. “Do you suppose this could be discussed in private?” Nell asked. “Whatever it is?”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Clary said.

“I’m Clary’s boyfriend—” Bob said to Nell.

“
Was
,” Clary said.

“—and we’re having a little disagreement,” Bob continued.

“Well, look,” Nell said. “Why don’t we all walk to the cottage. I’ve only got about thirty minutes left in my lunch hour. Then I’ve got to get back to the boutique. Let me show you where the cottage is, and then you two can finish this—disagreement—in private.”

“Thanks a
lot
, Nell,” Clary said, glaring. But she picked up her bag. “Okay, let’s go.”

Nell led the way. Clary followed. Bob followed Clary. Clary walked stiffly, not talking, taking elaborate and extravagant pains not to be touched or bumped by Bob as she walked. After a few minutes of silence, Nell found herself doing what she often did in stressful situations: she babbled. “And this is Robinson’s, the five-and-dime,” she said. “It’s got everything. If you keep going straight up this street, this is Main Street, and go left at the corner, you’ll come to the boutique. But we’ll go this way to the cottage …”

Clary didn’t respond.

“What a beautiful place,” Bob said at one point, and Nell agreed. She talked about the beaches, the houses, the stores. She talked about Jeremy and Hannah and Charlotte
and Marlow. Clary just stomped along, her face set. The walk took forever. Finally, they reached the cottage.

“This is your room for the summer,” Nell said, showing Clary to the back upstairs bedroom.

“It’s really nice,” Clary muttered. She stood at the window, her back toward Nell and Bob, unapproachable.

“I’ve got to go back to the boutique,” Nell said. “Clary, I’ll draw you a map. When you’re ready, come down and I’ll talk with you about summer jobs. Everyone wants salespeople, waitresses, and so on. You’ll be able to find something good, I’m sure. Or you can wait till tonight. I’ll be back home a little after six. Uh, Bob, it’s been nice meeting you … I guess …” She laughed, trying to ease the situation. “Will you be staying … for a while?”

“Yes,” Bob said.

“No,” Clary said.

“Oh,” Nell said. She waited. Neither Clary nor Bob elaborated.

“Well,” Nell said, “I’ll see you at least, Clary, later.” She left them and walked back to work. It was the only thing she could do.

The store was busy enough to keep Nell from having much time to wonder about just what was going on with Clary and Bob. She was worried, though, for in the past few years Clary had seemed to develop a sense of humor and reasonableness that had been eclipsed this afternoon. Nell was afraid that in spite of Bob’s winning smiles there was some serious trouble between the two of them.

When Andy came into the store, Nell said reluctantly, “I’m sorry, Andy, I don’t think I can see you tonight. Clary’s arrived, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about anything at all. Her boyfriend followed her over on the ferry and when I left, they were in the middle of a fight over something. I don’t know if he’s going to stay or not. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I think I’d better see how Clary is before I plan anything tonight. I’d better have dinner with her, since it’s her first night here. Can I call you?”

“Sure,” Andy said, and smiled, but he slouched a bit in disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” Nell said. “I’m really sorry.” And she was, she was especially sorry
for herself.

Mindy took her dinner hour, then came back to run the store until it closed at nine. Nell worked till six, then left and walked back to the cottage. She found Clary there alone, crying.

“Clary,” she said. “Oh,
Clary
.”

For Clary was clearly miserable. Her face was puffy and her nose was red. It was obvious that she had been crying for some time. “Come on in the living room and sit down and tell me what’s happened,” Nell said. “What’s been going on? No—wait a minute.” She went into the kitchen and got a beer for herself and one for Clary. “Now.”

“It’s all over,” Clary said. “It really is all over now. And I love him so much.” She sobbed. She sat on the sofa with her knees drawn up and her arms crossed on her knees and her head buried in her arms. “Goddamnit,” she said.

“Well, Clary, surely it’s not all over,” Nell said. “He must love you, too. I mean, he followed you here. So he must at least
care
.…”

“Oh, he
cares
,” Clary said. “He cares. But not enough. Not enough to make a commitment.”

“Well, Clary, isn’t this the guy you wrote me about last year? Isn’t he the one you’ve been going with for about a year now?”

“Sixteen months,” Clary said. “And yes. I’ve been ‘going with’ him. What a goddamn stupid adolescent phrase. Going with. I’ve been
going
with him, but we haven’t been
getting
anywhere.”

Clary tossed her head and shook out her hair. She blew her nose. She took a sip of beer. Then she inhaled deeply, pulling herself together, and her breath came out in a little shudder, like Jeremy’s and Hannah’s did when they were heartbroken. Clary and Hannah had the same blond hair and dark eyes; Nell could still easily see the little girl in Clary’s lovely face.

“Look, Nell,” she said. “I’ve been going with Bob for sixteen months now. We haven’t dated anyone else. We’ve both been working at the same place, the lab at Rutgers. We’re both biologists. He’s ahead of me; he’s just finished his PhD. I’m just a lab assistant. But the point is, we have all these interests in common. So it’s not just sex or anything, it’s everything.
Everything
is there. We have been so happy together. It has
been so wonderful. Now he’s just gotten his PhD, and last month he got an offer of a full-time job at a lab out in Michigan. He wants me to come with him.”

“Why, Clary, that’s wonderful. What’s wrong with that?” Nell asked.

“He wants me to come with him as his live-in,” Clary said. “He doesn’t want to get married. Oh,
goddamnit
! It’s so embarrassing. I hate it, I hate this situation, I hate myself. I hate it that I had to bring up the idea of marriage.
I
had to be the one to say: do you mean you want to get married? And goddamn him, he said no. He says he’s not ready for a commitment like that yet. He says he just got through with the pressure of getting his PhD and he’s going to be under a lot of stress trying to get situated in a new job. He doesn’t think he could take the additional stress of being married yet. He says he loves me, he wants to be with me, he doesn’t want to be with anyone else, and yet he doesn’t want to marry me. Jesus Christ, Nell. Don’t you think I feel like some kind of dumbbell? Some kind of
nincompoop
? Can you imagine how humiliating it is to be the person to suggest marriage—and get refused?”

“Oh, Clary,” Nell said. “Oh God.” She was thinking: I thought it had changed for your generation. I thought it would be easier. “How old is Bob?” she asked.

“He’s thirty,” Clary said. “He was thirty this November. Boy,
that
was something. Talk about a crisis. We nearly broke up for good then. In fact we’re still having trouble over that. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.”

“What happened?”

“Well, what do you think?” Clary said, tossing her head again. “What would you expect to happen? Here’s this good-looking man, working like a maniac to finish his PhD. and hold down a full-time lab job, and he turns thirty and decides he’s suddenly
old
, like
really old
, that he’s been wasting his whole life working, he’s in a rut, all his life is just a rat race, he never has any fun … he went out and balled every teenager he could find.”

“Oh God, Clary,” Nell said. “How awful.”

“Yeah, it was awful,” Clary went on, not crying now, but very sober. “I had planned this big surprise dinner for him. Six of his best friends. I made a wonderful birthday cake. I made a
fucking birthday cake
. I might as well be my mother, making a cake. Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven. Jesus Christ, what a sap I am
sometimes. So I made this cake, bought these steaks, had presents, champagne, and his friends came over and we were all ready for a big marvelous party.… He never showed up at my apartment. It was … it was just shit. Finally Rod, he’s Bob’s best friend, went down to this bar where they hang out a lot. He came back after a while and said some other people had seen Bob in there. He’d left with a girl, a teenager. God, can you imagine how embarrassed I was in front of his friends? One was his fucking boss at the lab! Everyone went home except Roni, she’s a good friend of mine, we just sat and drank the champagne all night. When she left, I drove over to Bob’s apartment. It was about four in the morning. I took that gorgeous birthday cake—it really was a gorgeous cake, Nell, you should have seen the mother, three layers, I’ll never be able to make anything like it again!—I took it and smashed it all over the inside of his car. On the steering wheel, the seats, the windows. I left a note saying, ‘Happy Birthday, you rotten creep.’ ”

Clary stopped talking then. She drank some beer. She sat for a while. Nell didn’t rush her.

“Well, he called the next afternoon and said he was sorry and could we talk. But I said no, I didn’t want to see him again. So he said all right. That killed me, Nell. That was even worse than knowing he’d gone out and screwed a teenager, his just saying all right like that. Giving up, as if I weren’t worth some kind of struggle. I didn’t hear from him for about two weeks. Ten days exactly. His friends told me he was going to the bars and taking home some teenybopper every night.

“I wanted to die. I went out with a guy, and then I met another guy at a bar and went home to bed with him, but you know, I never did like doing that too much. I keep thinking of
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
. It always scares me a little. So mostly I just stayed home and cried and was miserable.