Husbands & Lovers

Chapter Fifteen Mallory

August 2008

Winthrop Island, New York

I insisted on driving back home. Monk sat in the passenger seat with the steak in his hand. I told him to put it back to his jaw and he obeyed me for about a minute.

The fight hadn’t lasted long. The one punch. Monk had stepped in front of me and Barbara and blocked the next one with his forearm, then Mike had jumped over the bar—no stranger to breaking up brawls, I guess—and dragged Dillon out the door.

Cue a few moments of hysteria as the groupies tumbled over to see what was going on, to fuss over Monk until Mike (returning from evicting Dillon) hustled the three of us out through the kitchen, where he found a steak in the freezer for Monk’s jaw.

“Well, that was exciting,” Barbara said, as I aimed Bessie carefully up West Cliff Road. “We hardly ever get fistfights at the Club.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked Monk.

“Fine,” he said. “I took worse at lacrosse practice.”

“I don’t know what got into Dillon. He takes spiders outside to set them free.”

Barbara leaned forward over Monk’s shoulder. “Make sure you save that steak in the icebox when you’re done with it.”

“This?” He held up the steak. “Come on, Bar. Look at this crap. Leather’d grill better.”

“Do you remember that time your grandfather brought those nice rib eyes back from the Costco in Providence—”

“You guys buy your meat from Costco?”

“My dear,” said Aunt Barbara, “everyone on the island buys his meat from Costco.”

“The older the money, the cheaper the skate,” said Monk.

“Anyway,” Aunt Barbara said, “he locked poor Sadie in the house—”

“Who’s Sadie?”

“Our dog,” said Monk. “Grandpa used to keep kind of a rotating lineup of black Lab bitches. When one started getting on in years, he’d get a new puppy. Older dog’d show her the ropes.”

Aunt Barbara rapped him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “Do you mind if I get on with the story, young man?”

“Sorry. Proceed.”

“Well, we were all out on the terrace sipping our drinks and somebody left a door open—I won’t say who—”

“Was it you?” I asked Monk.

“Maybe.”

“—somebody left a door open and Sadie slipped out, naturally. Gobbled down every one of those damned steaks and then—adding insult to injury—the poor bitch vomited them back up all over the lawn. Pa was furious. Do you remember that, darling?”

“Never knew Grandpa could swear like that,” Monk said. “Damn creative piece of work.”

I parked Bessie carefully under the shelter of the porte cochere. Monk helped Aunt Barbara into the house and walked me back to Seagrapes. We didn’t say a word. When we reached the glow of the porch light I tried to get Monk to let me look at his jaw, but he turned his face away and said he was fine. Kissed me goodbye and headed back next door, hands in his pockets, guitar case slung across his back, as if nothing had happened.

By now it was almost midnight. I tried not to make a sound, but Mr. Adams called out from the sunroom, where he was nursing a drink. Not his first, from the look of it. He stood by the french doors, staring out to the sea you couldn’t see. From the back, he might have been Monk. Same shape to his shoulders, same height, same stance. A little more stoop, maybe. But he was closing in on sixty.

He turned and waved me to a chair. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks.” I considered. “I’ll just get myself a glass of water from the kitchen, if you don’t mind.”

“Please.”

I swallowed down one glassful from the sink—the Seagrapes refrigerator was about forty years old, before they heard of water dispensers—and refilled it before I returned to the sunroom, which was now empty.

“On the terrace,” called a voice through the open door.

I carried my glass outside, where Mr. Adams sat on one of the wicker chairs, rolling a joint.

“My wife won’t let me smoke indoors,” he said. “Sit.”

I perched on the edge of the wicker sofa and sipped some water. “What’s up?” I asked.

He lit the end of the joint and offered it to me. “I insist this time. You look as if you need it.”

“Funny, that’s the second time someone’s said that to me this evening.”

“Then maybe you should take the advice.”

I stared at the glowing end of the joint and reached to take it from him. I tried to draw shallow but the effect was immediate.

“I’ve been buying from the same fellow for years,” said Mr. Adams. “Never let me down.”

I gave him back the joint. “Did you want to discuss something with me?”

“My wife wants me to fire you,” he said.

“Fire me? For what?”

He brushed at his leg. He wore pajamas under a dressing gown, slippers on his feet. Like a page from the Lands’ End men’s catalog, except he was smoking a reefer instead of a pipe. “I don’t know how to put this. I understand from Becca that you and Monk—that you’ve undertaken a—well, let’s call it a romantic relationship,” he said.

“With all respect, Mr. Adams, my private life is my own business.”

“He’s my son, Mallory.”

“Then maybe you should speak with him instead?”

“I’ve left a message.”

“Good, then.” I started to rise.

“Don’t run off, Mallory. I’m not here to judge, believe me. Why shouldn’t the two of you enjoy yourselves, while you’re here? Perfectly natural. That’s what I told Becca, anyway.” He held out the joint.

I took another hit and handed it back. “And?”

“Mallory. I want to be candid with you. I want us to be friends, here. On the same team.”

“Of course.”

“Monk is…well, he’s remarkable. I knew that from the beginning, when he was just an infant. Rare, gifted. A natural leader. Born to do great things. You saw it at school, I’m sure. Everyone saw it.” He finished the joint and crushed it out into the water tray beneath the geranium pot. “This business about Harvard. Stubborn idiot. He should’ve gone, you know. What’s Harvard for, if not to prime a boy like that for greatness? For Christ’s sake. I wanted to shake some sense into him. Still do. But he won’t listen to me, will he?”

I started to speak, but Mr. Adams held up his hand.

“You, though. He likes you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Not that I blame him. I think he’s got a pretty good eye, if you don’t mind an old geezer telling you that.”

“Of course not. Um, thank you, Mr. Adams.” The weed was making everything seem better. Not so serious.

Mr. Adams sat down to roll another joint. “I mean it, Mallory. I like you very much. Best nanny we’ve had around here. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you teach them how to draw. Do you know what I told my wife? She wanted to fire you? Called you all kinds of names? I told Becca to mind her own business and let you continue doing what you do so well.”

He lit up the end of the joint and motioned in my direction. I shook my head. He shrugged and took a drag himself.

“Your mother raised you on her own, isn’t that right?” he asked.

“Pretty much. My dad left when I was eight.”

“I was on the board at Nobles for a time. I remember you well, in fact. Had my eye on you. You were unusual. Not the kind of girl we typically see there.”

“No,” I said. “I wasn’t.”

“And you’ve always had a talent for art.”

“I don’t know about talent. I’ve always had a passion for it.”

“Well, it’s remarkable, what you’ve been able to accomplish. Given the circumstances. Really remarkable. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve taken the liberty of showing some of your work to a few of my colleagues at the Gardiner museum. You know the Gardiner, of course. The Isabella Gardiner museum.”

“I know the Gardiner. Obviously.”

“At my suggestion, one of the board members has referred your portfolio to our scholarship committee. I don’t know if you’re aware, but we offer a number of fellowships annually to promising young artists.”

“Wow. That’s…I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s become a mission of mine. After watching so many talented female artists get passed over for grants and gallery shows by arrogant sons of bitches like me, who think we know so goddamn much about art. I woke up one day and decided it was time to act. Started pushing this at board level, really getting out there to support women artists. Encourage them to dream big. And you’re a perfect example. If you really want to be serious about your work, you shouldn’t be at RISD, Mallory. It’s a fine school, obviously, but a real artist needs to study at the conservatory level.”

“I’m—wow, I’m—that’s a lot to take in, actually.”

He leaned forward and gave my knee a friendly pat. “I want you to think of me like a godfather, Mallory. When I think of the advantages my own children have been able to enjoy, compared to how you’ve had to forge your own path. At every step. Without anyone to fight in your corner. A father, I mean.”

“My mom’s always been pretty supportive.”

“Yes, but a kid needs a father too.” He smiled, stubbed out the rest of the joint, patted his own knees, and rose from the chair. “Anyway, I’m off to bed. Switch off the lights before you turn in, won’t you?”

I sat there for a few minutes after he left, staring across the water. The quarter moon had already set and the sea was black, almost invisible except as a void between the twinkling lights of Orient Point and the outline of the shore before me. I thought about this one time I shared a joint with Dillon. We were sitting on his sofa, I remembered, passing the joint back and forth, and he’d told me that he was named after Bob Dylan.

I’d turned this over in my head. Are you sure it wasn’t Matt Dillon? I ventured.

I still remembered the way his eyes had screwed up with concentration. Yeah, he’d said, after a while. Maybe it was Matt Dillon.

To the left, through the gaps in the shrub that separated Seagrapes from the Monk property, I glimpsed a light. Not the main house, but the guesthouse where Monk sometimes went to work on his music, after everyone was asleep.

I finished the water and took the glass into the kitchen. Turned out the lights and slipped out the mudroom door, taking care to leave the knob unlocked behind me.

Not that people ever really locked their doors on Winthrop Island.

Instead of going to bed, it seemed, Monk had gone to the guesthouse. Had taken out his guitar and plucked out some music. I could see him through the window, head bent to watch his own fingers.

I rapped on the glass. He looked up in surprise. I guess he couldn’t make me out very well in the darkness, because a few seconds passed before his face relaxed and he motioned me inside. I went around the corner to the door. As I reached for the knob, he opened it.

“Hey,” I said. “Couldn’t sleep?”

He sniffed. “Are you stoned, Pinks?”

“No, I am not stoned, Monkfish. Your dad was outside rolling joints. I took a couple of hits to be polite.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Ah.”

“Are you going to invite me in?”

Monk stepped back with a flourish. As the light fell on his jaw, I bit back a gasp. He touched it with his finger and grinned—at least, grinned with the half of his face that wasn’t swollen to the size of a baseball.

“That bad?” he said.

“I feel terrible.”

“Don’t. Seriously. It’s nothing. Can’t blame him, right?”

“What? Yes, you can!”

He shrugged and closed the door behind me. “Stole his girl.”

“You didn’t steal me, Monk. I’m not a possession.”

Monk walked back to the sofa and picked up his guitar. “I’m just saying that if you broke up with me and I had to sit around my cubicle at Dunkin’ Donuts imagining some asshole having sex with you all summer, then yeah, I’d want to walk into a bar and hit said asshole too. Sorry if that sounds a little primal. Men are Neanderthals, what can I say.”

I propped myself on the sofa arm and watched his hands as he picked a gentle melody. The guesthouse was authentic midcentury modern, by which I mean it hadn’t been touched since it was built around 1960. All angles and lines, a single studio room with a kitchenette and living area and bed, where Monk and I had slept together for the first time over a month ago. I folded my arms. “You say that like I didn’t have to witness a literal parade of girlfriends through your bed in high school.”

“A parade? Come on. Like who?”

“Like Soccer Sophie.”

“Soccer Sophie? You mean Sophie Sadler?” He laughed and changed key. “For the record, I didn’t have sex with Sophie Sadler. What were we, fourteen? Fifteen?”

“You had at least two other serious girlfriends. Junior and senior year. Like Julia Cooper? Playing opposite you in Guys and Dolls, senior year? She was Sarah?”

“Oh, shit. Julia Cooper, that’s right.”

“Monk, I painted all the sets. I literally saw you two hiding out backstage during rehearsal, eating each other’s faces.”

He grinned. “Sorry about that. Method acting.”

“Stop it. I cried for days.”

“Hey, Julia came on to me. I was just being a gentleman.” He strummed a few notes, which I recognized as a variation on the main theme in “Winter Tale.” Glanced at me sideways. “And I’m just offering it up that I might, somewhere in my immature, juvenile teenage brain, have been trying to get a certain crush of mine to maybe notice I was good for something more than cracking one-liners during AP Lit.”

“Oh, seriously? You made out with Julia Cooper to make me jealous.”

“Just offering it up.”

“Come on. You two were into each other for months. You went to prom together, remember?”

“All right, fine. I admit I didn’t leave high school a virgin. Who does?”

“I don’t know. Me?”

He looked up. “You? What about Max Whatshisname? Math Max.”

“Lathrop. Max Lathrop. I dated him for about five minutes and no, we didn’t have sex. For the record, Your Honor, I was officially a virgin until spring semester of freshman year. College, to be clear.”

“No way.”

“Yeah way.”

He looked back down at his fingers, plucking the guitar strings. “So who was the lucky guy? Dillon?”

“Dillon came later. Just this guy I met. We pretended to be madly in love. The problem was that we were both virgins. So it wasn’t the greatest situation.”

“Like, how?”

“Like, I don’t know. We went to this hotel in Boston to make it special.” I put quote marks around the word. “He wanted me to go on top. And I was like, fine, whatever turns you on, but it turns out being on top is kind of a challenging position for a girl’s first time. Because, you know, you’re doing all the work, right? So I’m trying to get him in and it hurts like hell and he just comes, right? Comes like a truck before he’s even all the way inside. I’m like, crying in pain. He’s howling with pleasure. Oh my God, Mallory, that was uh-maze-ing. And I’m just, what the actual fuck. Where is my romance-novel version of this? Your first time is supposed to be this—I don’t know—this transcendent experience, when your lover expertly initiates you into womanhood, and I’m lying there wondering if I’d actually had sex or not. I mean, I honestly wasn’t sure until I saw the blood the next day. I was just…I was just…crushed…and—and mad, right? I mean, you only get one first time and…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to…to just unload with all that…”

Somewhere in the middle of this, Monk laid down the guitar and pulled me into his lap. “And then what?” he said, stroking my hair.

I waited until I had my breathing back under control. “And then I was so pissed I ghosted the poor guy.”

“Goddess.”

“And pretty much avoided dating anyone for, like, a year.”

“Honey,” he said. “Pinks, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“It’s not a story I go around and regale at parties, believe it or not.”

“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t. But I’m glad you told me.”

I sat up. “I’m okay. Really. It was a while ago. I’m over it.”

“You shouldn’t be over it. It’s literally one of the shittiest things I ever heard. I want to punch this guy. I want to…I don’t know.” He urged my head into the hollow of his shoulder. “I guess I just want to go back in time and make it right for you. Make it better.”

“He wasn’t that bad a person, really. Kind of a romantic. He was just clueless.”

“He wasn’t clueless, Pinks. He was selfish. He made it all about him. His little personal fantasy of having sex with a hot girl.”

“To top it all off,” I said, “his credit card was declined. So I ended up paying for the damn room. And breakfast.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“He was like, That’s so weird, I thought I paid the minimum last month.”

Monk’s chest heaved.

“Are you laughing? Tell me you are not laughing, Monk Adams.”

“I’m—what?—no, of course not. I’m not laughing. I’m just—oh Jesus, what a fucking tool. I mean, I was all wrong. That is one hundred percent the shittiest thing I ever heard. It’s not even close.”

“And then we got mugged on the way back to campus.”

“What?”

“Kidding.” I turned to straddle him. With my fingertips I brushed the baseball under the skin of his jaw. He winced one eye, a flicker.

“Pinks,” he said. “Mallory. I really am so sorry. I’m gutted for you. You deserved so much better.”

I bent to softly kiss him.

“Make it right for me, then,” I said. “Make it better.”

The windows of the guesthouse did not have curtains, for some reason, so I woke up as soon as dawn struck the eastern horizon. Monk sprawled on his stomach next to me. I turned on my side, curled my knees to my stomach, and watched the steady rise and fall of his back, the slopes and shadows of skin, the tangle of hair, the lump on his jaw, until his head stirred. His eyes started to open, he winced, they opened the rest of the way, and he fell on me.

“Hey,” he said. “What time is it?”

“Time for me to get on my horse and ride back to the homestead.”

He closed his eye and threw an arm over me. “Stay.”

“Can’t stay. Sun’s coming up. Gotta do the walk of shame before anyone sees me.”

“Don’t go. Take the day off.”

“My day off is Monday.”

“So? Call in sick. Let Becca take care of her own damn kids for once.”

“I’m a working girl, honey. We don’t call in sick for work. Even when we are sick.”

Monk hunted all over my face for something. He pulled his arm free from the sheet and cradled my cheek with his hand.

“What’s wrong?”

“It hurts, Pink. Like a pain in my chest, like it’s too much to hold. Like I’m going to lose you.”

“You’re not going to lose me.”

“Stay, Mallory. Another hour. Come on.”

“You know I can’t stay. So try to stop looking so adorable and help me find my shameful clothes.”

We walked across the lawn in the pink light. The air was cooler than yesterday and the dew clung to the grass. From the left came the sleepy beat of the ocean. When we reached the porch, Monk drew me up for a kiss. It was a brief kiss and when he lifted his head he stared at my face, one hand cupping the back of my head.

“Tell me something, Pinks,” he said. “What’s your last day here? Working for Dad and Becca, I mean.”

“The fifteenth? I think that’s what we arranged.”

“That’s what I thought. A week from today, right? So, then what?”

“Well, school starts at the end of the month. So, you know. Get my life back in order. Hang out with my mom for a bit. Paige is in Singapore right now, so…” I shrugged a shoulder.

“Yeah, you told me. Working for some bank.” His hand fell away from my hair. “I’d like to meet Paige.”

“She’ll be home at Christmas, I think. So maybe…you know, winter break…”

My voice faded out. Monk put his hands in his pockets and looked away, toward the sea. He started to speak, cleared his throat, tried again.

“Mallory, the thing is…”

I lifted my hand and laid it on his chest, over his heart. “I know. It sucks. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“Me too.” He reached up to gather my hand under his palm. “But when I do think about it, when I think about driving you down to that fucking ferry and watching you sail away, when I think about heading back to college, like nothing happened, everything back to the way it was, I just…it’s going to kill me, Pinks. Like the sun’s gone out. Winter all the way through.” He gathered me close and spoke into my hair while my heart thundered. “This summer with you, Mallory. The way you love me, the way you see me, the way you show me how to see myself? It’s like finally I know for sure, for dead certain, what I was put on this earth for. And I’m just supposed to walk away from that?”

“I know. It’s been killing me too,” I said.

“There’s no way to go back, Mallory. No way I could live without this. Without you.”

His chin rested on top of my head. Over the crest of his shoulder I saw the rising sun, the streaks of dawn. I thought, Don’t forget this. Don’t ever forget a single detail of this.

“Sorry if that’s a lot to take in,” he said. “I don’t want to freak you out. But it’s true. It’s just true. I can’t play it cool any longer. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to play it cool with me, ever. Just say what you feel. I won’t freak out.”

“You should. If you knew how much…God, if I could even find the words. Just touching you. Your heartbeat, Pinks, your breath. Your hair. Your skin. Your shoulders and ears, they’re so fucking beautiful to me. It freaks me out.”

I lifted my head to look at him. The bruise on his jaw jarred me. I drew the pad of my thumb over the swelling. “Are you sure it’s not broken?”

“Nah. If it were broken I couldn’t move it. Don’t worry, I’m good. We’ll just turn the lights off. Problem solved.”

“Does it hurt? When I touch it like this?”

“Trust me, Pinko, nothing hurts when you touch it like that.”

I sank my cheek back into the cozy hollow where his shoulder met his breastbone. “Are we crazy, though?”

“Crazy how?”

“I mean, how can this be real? We’ve only been together a few weeks.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” he said. “We’ve been sleeping together for a few weeks, sure. Which has been amazing, don’t get me wrong. Best month of my entire life. But we’ve been together for years. All the way back to high school. Do you remember the first time we talked? In the dorm, after your mom dropped you off?”

“Of course I remember.”

“This new girl with the crazy hair and the green eyes that saw through everything. Kept trying to find an excuse to talk to you and losing my nerve. I mean, I’m just some shallow preppy asshole, right? Why would she waste her time? And then it was October, I remember it like a movie, Dad dropping me off Sunday night, I hear this voice calling out. Your mom.”

“Literally the most embarrassing moment of my life.”

He laughed softly. “I was like, finally. This is it, Adams. Don’t fuck this up. And it was the greatest. Talking to you. For hours, like we already knew each other. Remember that? How it felt? Because that’s love. To me. That’s what love is. And this physical thing we have, this insane combustion that happens with us, the bonfire last night? It’s because of that. Because the connection goes right down to the bones of us. Am I making any sense? Do you get what I mean?”

I looked back up. “Monk. Wait a second. What’s all this about? Are you worried about me leaving? You think I’m just going to walk away next week and that’s it?”

“No, of course not. I just—”

“Because I need you to know—I’m sorry, I’m not good at this, I don’t have all the words like you do. I draw, that’s my language. But what I feel…Monk, even thinking about leaving you, being apart from you, it’s so bleak, it’s like…it’s like…So I tell myself…I remember it’s just for a couple of months, right? We’ll have breaks. Weekends. And it’ll be May again before we know it. Graduation. So you don’t need to worry. No matter how far apart we are. You understand that, right?”

He stroked my hair a few times, like he was gathering his thoughts. “Listen, Pinks,” he said. “I was thinking about all this last night, after you fell asleep. And I was thinking, next week? We don’t have to go our separate ways, do we? Not right away. We could maybe go somewhere together.”

“You mean like a vacation?”

“Sure, a vacation. Take a break from all this noise. Just the two of us, for once. You and me, hit the road, see the sights. Bessie’ll take us wherever we want to go.”

“Until school starts?”

“Right, until school starts. What do you think?”

“I think that sounds…” I choked back an unexpected flood of relief, of joy, of sunshine. I thought I might float to the sky if Monk weren’t holding me so close. “I think that sounds amazing.”

“No more sneaking around. Fall asleep together, wake up together. Make out on top of a mountain somewhere and figure everything out. Where we go from here.”

“I’m in,” I said. “Oh my God. Totally in.”

“Seriously? That’s a yes?”

“Of course it’s a yes! What did you think I’d say?”

He pulled back and held me by the shoulders. Looked into my eyes, grinning. “Jesus, you’re the best. You know that? You’re so game, Pinks. You’re fearless.”

I laughed. “Two weeks road-tripping with you? What’s not to love about that? I mean, you had me at making out on a mountaintop.”

“You don’t need to worry about anything. I have a little money my grandfather left me last year. Plus what I’ve earned this summer. Not a ton, but we’ll be able to get around okay. No sketchy motels, I promise.”

“What are you talking about? The sketchier the better.”

Monk lifted me up and swung me in a circle. “You’re my dream girl, you know that? You’re not even real.”

“And you haven’t even seen me wash underwear in a sink.”

“Tell you what,” he said, “the laundromat is on me.”

“Shallow preppy asshole. I bet you’ve never even gone camping.”

He cupped my face with his hands. His expression turned serious. “Mallory, listen. I want to speak to your mom before we go. I think that’s the right thing to do. And my dad, I guess. He’ll hit the roof, but fuck him.”

“Really? You think he’ll be mad? It’s just a road trip.”

“Nothing’s just anything to Dad. But don’t worry, I’ll handle him. I’ll make it happen.” Monk leaned his forehead against mine. Already the sky was lighter, the morning had come. The new sun glowed around the edges of his ears. “One week. How does that sound?”

“One week. Got it.”

“One week from this moment, right here. August fifteenth, we pack up Bessie and blow this joint.” He pulled apart from me and held out his little finger. “Pinkie promise, right?”

I curled my little finger around his. I remember thinking how strong he felt, his musician’s finger. How this finger would do great things.

“Pinkie promise,” I said.