CHAPTER 3 #12
I was just saying I’d give the whole thing another half hour when, in the distance, the Chris-Craft swung into view.
They were going fast, a tall arc of spray above their wake.
When the boat came closer in, we could see that both men were standing, and when they saw us, they waved and we waved back.
“You never know what the day will bring,” Jonathan said.
We watched the boat slow, then make its way to the dock.
Eddie and Skip tied the lines and then got off like two old men, Skip helping Eddie up and then Eddie, safely on the dock, turning around to give Skip his hand.
A few times they stopped to laugh about something we were too far away to hear.
They were both wearing sunglasses and baseball caps.
Polly came outside as they were climbing the stairs and sat down in the wicker chair beside us.
She wore a different blouse now, still in the family of dark pink.
She must have been watching for the boat from a window somewhere.
“Look at them,” she said to us. “Every time they get together, they’re kids again.
Can you imagine having a friend like that for your entire life? ”
“No,” Jonathan said.
“My sister,” I said.
Polly shook her head. “Doesn’t count.”
Eddie, coming up the stairs, waved his hand over his head. “Ahoy!”
“Was it glorious?” Polly called.
Skip, a few steps behind Eddie, stopped to catch his breath. “There’s still water in the bilge. The boat’s spent so much time in the yard getting fixed that I might as well not have a boat and the goddamn thing is still leaking.”
“I’ll call on Monday,” Polly said.
“A boat sits in the water all day long,” Eddie said. “Logic dictates that it’s going to get a little water in it.”
Skip shook his head, still on the same step. “That’s like saying logic dictates the house will have a few termites because it’s sitting on dirt.”
Eddie laughed and turned around. He held out his hand and Skip declined to take it, so Eddie went up without him. After a minute or two Skip caught his breath and came up.
“Where did you go?” Polly asked.
“Westport!” Eddie said. “A pretty town to see from the sea.”
“Made all the better for not needing to find a parking space,” Skip said.
Polly agreed. “There is no parking in Westport.”
It was clear, at least to us, that brunch at the Hotallings’ had at last reached its conclusion. “Well,” Jonathan said, looking at his watch, “it’s time my bride and I headed back to Bronxville.”
“Drop me at the train station, will you?” Eddie asked.
I said we’d be happy to.
“You can’t go now,” Polly said to Eddie, her franticness resurfacing for the moment. “Spend the night! Or at least stay for dinner. We can watch a movie. Did you see all the food we have?”
Eddie shook his head. “There’s work to be done, manuscripts waiting in line for the red pencil.”
“But it’s Saturday,” Polly said, a fact she’d no doubt called out to the men in her life for as long as she’d had men in her life. Later she would say it to her children, and then to their children: It’s Saturday. Stay with me.
I was still undecided as to whether I disliked her intensely or felt terribly sorry for her.
“No one’s going to die if you don’t get chapter fifteen straightened up this weekend,” Skip said.
“Did I ever once, in all the years you were working, tell you to put either the merger or the acquisition aside so that we could go out on the boat?”
But Eddie had missed what Skip was saying: Skip wanted him to stay. If belittling Eddie’s job was the only way he knew to ask, still, he was asking. One imagined time passed slowly in Darien.
Skip waved Eddie away with his hand. “Let them go,” he said to Polly. He still had his sunglasses on.
Polly declared that in order to leave we would have to take a portion of the leftovers with us: leftovers as exit tax.
Then she disappeared to the kitchen, returning ten minutes later with plastic containers full of food arranged in two giant bags from Palmer’s Market.
“Eat it,” she said sharply. “I don’t want everything going to waste. ”
We said our goodbyes. I put the bags in the backseat beside me and told Eddie to get in the front. We looked like we had robbed a specialty food store and were making our getaway.
Eddie clipped his sunglasses back onto his glasses.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said as we pulled down the driveway, his head falling back against the headrest. He continued to wave and Polly continued to wave even though Skip had gone inside.
“I never would have gotten out on my own. Her will is too strong. Take a left down here.”
“We’re not going to the station,” Jonathan said. “We’ll drive you home.”
Eddie shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I told him we were ridiculous people.
The Yankees were playing, and so we set out on 95 South towards 287 West to avoid the traffic. Jonathan, who had promised Polly he would say nothing, recounted our afternoon down to the stain on her sleeve.
“Skip took me out on the Chris-Craft so she could ask you about my health?” He stared out the window, taking in the passing mansions for a while before pushing ahead. “That’s why we had to go to Connecticut?”
“That was our impression,” I said. “I don’t think she meant to welcome me back into the family.”
“I don’t even remember how long I’ve had leukemia.
Eight years maybe? It’s not exactly breaking news.
My doctor stumbled onto it doing the annual blood work.
‘Your cholesterol looks good, Mr. Triplett, but we need to run some more tests to see if you have leukemia.’ Which I did.
It sounded so terrible at first. When I got back to the office, I called Skip—that was poor judgment on my part.
Skip told Polly, Skip and Polly looped in every expert they could think of, and all the experts said I was fine, given the circumstances.
I’m fine. I can’t imagine they’re still thinking about it. ”
“They’re very attached to you,” I offered from the backseat. We hold these truths to be self-evident.
“Anyone would think that Polly’s the one you’ve been seeing on the side all these years,” Jonathan said.
“That’s what my mother thought!” I said.
Eddie turned to look at me. “Your mother thought I was seeing Polly?”
“Back in the earliest days, when you and my mother were friends at Houghton Mifflin. She thought Skip was so angry at you because you were sleeping with his wife.”
“Skip was so angry at me because I was sleeping with Skip.” Eddie turned back in his seat. “I don’t know why people bother to guess at things. They’re always wrong.”
“Skip still seems angry.”
We could see the water from the car now, blue sky, blue water, the bobbing boats, the occasional storybook cloud.
“I wish you’d come out with us on the boat,” Eddie said.
“There’s no explaining how lovely he can be.
Which is not to say he isn’t perfectly capable of being a complete ass.
Both things are true. Both things are true for most of us, I suppose. ”
“So you’re telling me I don’t have to worry about your leukemia?”
“I am telling you,” Eddie said, “that given the state of the world, worrying about my leukemia, or my relationship with the Hotallings, should be far down on your list.”
Jonathan asked some more questions about Eddie’s numbers and the details of his medical care.
Jonathan, who had spent much of his adult life in a hospital, was full of knowledge he no longer knew what to do with.
Listening to him ask about leukemia was like listening to him recite the lines from a play he had once been the star of. He sounded good.
“I’ve had two flare-ups, if that’s the term,” Eddie said. “One last year and another one maybe three years before that. One dose of chemo and a little rest and I was back on track.”
“That’s reasonable,” Jonathan said.
Eddie turned to me and smiled. “See? Your husband says I’m reasonable.”
I smiled back. I wasn’t entirely sure we weren’t being snowed, but I would wait and ask Jonathan later. He would know.
“We’re on the Cross County?” Eddie asked, looking at the signs overhead. “Don’t you live in Bronxville?”
“We’re about six minutes away from our house. That way.” I motioned in the general direction.
“Take me to the train station in Bronxville then,” Eddie said. “You’ll lose the rest of the day if you drive into the city and back.”
“We have the rest of the day to lose,” Jonathan said.
“No, I can’t stand this. Or I have a better idea: Take me to your house. Show me your house and let me use the bathroom. I didn’t go before we left Skip and Polly’s because I didn’t want to impede the departure and that was a mistake.”
After a little more tugging back and forth, we finally agreed to take Eddie home with us, and then later we would drive him to the station.
Bronxville was not unlike Winchester, the town where I grew up.
Bronxville denizens lined the platform every morning to take the train to New York City, while Winchester denizens took the commuter rail to Boston.
In certain sections of both towns the houses ran towards mansions, and, in Bronxville’s case, foreign embassies, but there were also plenty of houses I thought of as regular.
We lived in one of those houses. Our life had never seemed as delightfully regular as it did on that day coming home from Darien.
“It’s wonderful to be home,” Eddie said, even though he’d never been to our home before. And I thought to myself, Yes, it is.
I showed Eddie straight to the bathroom while Jonathan brought in the bags of food.
We were set for the next three days’ worth of lunches and dinners.
Not having to cook made me think for a minute that going to brunch had been worth it.
It had been worth it because now I knew what was going on with Eddie.
“There’s a drawing of a rabbit in the hallway that looks like a Dürer,” Eddie said when he came back.