Such a Good Husband
The Lake Catherine Country Club sat at the end of a long private road landscaped with alternating colors of begonias (red, white, red, white) and a statue of the club founder at the entrance—a great-grandfather of Regina’s, it turned out.
Along one edge was the golf course—rows of carts lined up, men in pastel shirts and plaid pants out on the links, some of them accompanied by younger men carrying their bags.
“Welcome to the club,” Forrest said, as we pulled into his parking space. Reserved for Staff. Forrest was never one to pay attention to rules.
“They’ve got a Jacuzzi and a sauna and a great pool,” he said to me as we toured the building. “There’s sure to be plenty of kids your age.”
For a moment then, I let myself imagine I could be one of them. I pictured myself in my faded one-piece swimsuit, sitting around with a group of girls in bikinis. I had no idea what they’d talk about. Boys maybe. Makeup. Parties. Shopping.
“I might not fit in,” I suggested.
“Who wouldn’t want to be your friend?” Forrest said. “And if they don’t, screw them all.”
A girl about my age was just coming in as we entered the clubhouse.
She had a tennis outfit on—white, with pink piping along the hem, and a matching shirt and visor.
A few steps behind, a woman who must have been her mother carried a bag that contained the girl’s racquet—several racquets, from the looks of it.
The mother knew Forrest. She smiled when she spotted him.
“You devil,” she called out. “You didn’t even let me know you were back! I wasn’t expecting you until the Fourth.”
“We wanted to get a jump on the summer,” Forrest told her. “It’s always too short.”
“You’re looking good,” the woman said. Phyllis was her name, evidently. She had on a necklace that spelled it out.
“You could stop by for a drink later,” she went on. “Terry’s out of town, and Olivia’s having a sleepover. I’ll be all by my lonesome.”
Was my imagination taking over—when did it not?—or did she turn her body very slightly at this moment, in a way that made her breasts appear more prominent?
“Regina needs me at the house,” he said.
“God, why do you have to be such a good husband all the time?” she said. “Maybe you’ll give Terry a few lessons.”
“I want to introduce Olivia to Frances,” Forrest said, gesturing in the direction of the girl my age wearing the tennis outfit. “She’ll be spending the summer with us.”
I was grateful that he had not presented me as their family’s mother’s helper. For all either one of them knew, I could have been a relative, with a cute tennis outfit of my own back at the house and a bagful of racquets.
Olivia looked me over. Not likely.
There was something about the look of a girl who grew up going to a country club, and something about that of the one who didn’t. You could pore over the pages of Seventeen magazine all day. It wouldn’t help. When a girl came from the place I did, she brought it with her wherever she went.
“Maybe Olivia could show Frances the ropes around here,” Forrest said.
“You never know,” Phyllis told him. “But she’s pretty busy with her tennis these days.”
Forrest put an arm on my shoulder. I felt its warmth. This was what it must be like having a father who looked out for you. A father, or a boyfriend.
“Stop by if you can,” Phyllis called out after him. “There’ll be a Manhattan waiting with your name on it.”
I studied Forrest’s face as he watched her head toward the tennis courts.
They were red clay, not asphalt, like tennis courts in public parks, if you even lived in a place where there were parks.
I watched as a couple of men in white uniforms moved up and down along the length of the courts, rolling out the clay for the players.
For a moment, the sight of those men rolling the red clay left me transfixed. Or maybe what fascinated me was the life of a girl like Olivia, for whom they were preparing the playing surface now—a girl for whom this place was as familiar as, for me, it was exotic and magical.
“I don’t think that girl wants to be my friend,” I said to Forrest. He’d seen it all, of course. The way that mother took in the sight of him. Her daughter’s disdain when she’d looked me over.
“Pay no attention to her,” he told me. “The main thing is, we’re going to have a more interesting summer than the lot of them.”
We were a team then. We understood each other and the world. It was as if we had a club all our own with only two members.
Afterward, Forrest brought me to a place called the Caboose. He wanted to buy me a milkshake, but I said no thanks.
I ordered a Diet Coke. Forrest introduced me to the manager.
Anytime I wanted, he said, I could come by with or without the children for ice cream or snacks.
He did the same at the little grocery store down the street from the Caboose, where the vegetables were set out like jewels, and gourmet cheese from France filled one entire wall.
“Whatever this girl orders, just put it on our account,” Forrest said.
I could have whatever I wanted. Nobody had ever suggested this before.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not in New Jersey anymore,” Forrest told me, back at the house.
He took me to where a row of bicycles was lined up in a rack. He reached for one.
“You’re going to need to get around town,” he said. “Do errands. Take the kids places. Normally, the girls we hire for the summer have their license, but since you don’t, it seemed like a good solution to pick this up for you.”
He had bought me a bike—yellow, twenty-one speeds, with a basket on the front. “For when you go pick up the croissants,” he said. “Or just . . . have an adventure.”
I never had a bike like this before. I owned a very old one for a while, back home, but someone stole it.
“It will be good exercise for the kids, riding their bikes to the club along with you instead of getting driven around all the time,” he said. “Those two spend way too much time in front of the TV set.”
I couldn’t speak, the bike was so beautiful.
“I think this baby deserves a name,” he said. “What do you want to call her?”
It just came to me. “Buttercup,” I told him.