Surprise
surprise
Now, Blythe sat with her ex-mother-in-law at the round table looking out at the yacht club’s dining room and foyer. Some people were still eating. Others were drinking coffee and chatting. The air carried the aromas of good food and the soft melodies of conversation.
Blythe leaned toward Celeste. “Talk to me. Pretend you’re telling me something serious. For example, someone we know died this year.”
Celeste understood immediately and turned her face to Blythe. “Who are you trying to avoid?”
“Sandy Green. She told me she’s bringing a man to dinner tonight and he’s widowed, and she wants me to meet him.”
“Ah.” Celeste quickly eyed the room. “I think that the man with the short hair is Hugh Green, Sandy’s husband, which means that the man with them, the man with wide shoulders is— Goodness, Blythe, you should meet him. He looks awfully nice.”
Blythe chuckled. “I’ll meet him after you tell me if Roland Wilson is your boyfriend.”
“We haven’t slept together, if that’s what you mean. We’re companions. Good companions. We’ll share a hotel room in Boston, but the room has two beds.”
“Okay,” Blythe interrupted Celeste. “Here they come.”
Sandy, her husband, Hugh, and their friend Nick arrived at the table. Sandy introduced everyone. Nick bent toward Celeste and shook her hand, giving Blythe a moment to study him. He was tall and broad-shouldered, handsome, tanned, athletic. Kind of Superman with a Clark Kent vibe. His eyes were a shade of honey ringed with cocoa, matching his shaggy, sun-streaked brown hair.
“And this is my best friend Blythe,” Sandy said.
Nick turned to Blythe. “Hello.” He had a beautiful voice.
“Hello,” Blythe said, and held out her hand. When she laid her palm in his, his fingers closed around her hand as if sending a secret code. Blythe blinked in surprise. Deep inside her, neglected chemicals woke up and raced around, rearranging and flinging themselves, ricocheting in her brain and body like sparkling jewels exploding from rocks. Well, hello, she thought.
“Won’t you join us?” Celeste asked.
Nick took the chair next to Blythe, and when he sat, his knee skimmed hers.
“What have you been doing on this beautiful day?” Celeste asked.
“We spent the day sailing,” Hugh said.
“That’s why they’ve got sunburns,” Sandy added.
That gave Blythe a reason to stare at Nick. He was sunburned, and he was beautiful, in an outdoor guy kind of way.
Nick’s eyes met Blythe’s and held. She felt warm all over, as if she’d just come in out of the cold.
“Nick’s a middle school teacher!” Sandy announced, as eager as a mother introducing her child to a new classroom. “Plus, he’s a musician!”
Celeste leaned toward Nick. “How wonderful! What do you play?”
Nick gave his attention to Celeste. “Guitar, mostly. Also, fiddle. I sing sea shanties. I’ll be performing for the children at the club sometime this summer.”
“Can adults attend?” Celeste asked.
“If they want,” Nick answered, and he looked back at Blythe.
“I’m not attending,” Hugh said. “My summer’s already booked.”
Sandy nudged Hugh. “Right. Golf. Tennis. Sailing.”
Hugh extended his arm over the back of Sandy’s chair in a playful hug. “You’ve reserved me for plenty of your evening activities. Cocktails. Dances. Parties.”
How lucky they are, Blythe thought, watching her friend and her husband talk.
“Is your summer booked?” Nick asked. He looked at her as if she were the only person in the room.
Inside her torso, just above her belly button, those chemicals were still fizzing around, ricocheting off her heart. They made Blythe coo, “Well, I know I’m going to attend a concert.” She sounded so flirtatious, she shocked herself. She reined herself in. “I mean, Sandy probably told you, I’ve got four children to feed and chauffeur, so that will keep me busy.”
“Maybe you can find some time to show me the island,” Nick said.
“I’d like that. But won’t Hugh be showing you around? You’re staying with the Greens, right?”
“I am. But Hugh’s island will be different from your island. I mean, we each have our own versions of the island.”
“I hadn’t thought of it quite that way,” Blythe said. If she leaned any closer to Nick, she’d fall right into his lap. She straightened. “I do have some favorite spots.” She blushed. Did that sound sexual? Because for the first time in months—years!—she felt sexually awake. “How long will you be here?”
“I hope to come back often. I live in a suburb of Boston, so I can come and go whenever I want.”
He had long eyelashes, the sort of eyelashes women always said should belong to a girl. He had a cowlick at the back of his head. Why were cowlicks so adorable?
“Let me give you my phone number,” Nick said. “And if you’ll give me yours, we can make some plans.”
“Good idea.” Now she knew she was blushing. When was the last time a man asked for her number? She reached into her small evening clutch and took out her phone.
“Give me yours and I’ll add my number.”
As they exchanged phones, their hands brushed. Blythe knew she was glowing like a candle. I have to stop smiling, she thought.
But she couldn’t stop smiling.
At her side, Celeste straightened in her chair, placing her napkin on the table. “I’m sorry to cut the evening short, but I need an early bedtime tonight.” She rose. “Sandy and Hugh, it’s great to see you again. Nick, I’m pleased to meet you. I hope you’ll come by the house often.”
Nick rose. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“ A pleasure,” Blythe echoed, smiling.
The others at the table rose with Celeste.
Blythe pulled herself together. “Celeste, we’ll walk you out.”
Blythe strolled arm in arm with Celeste from the dining room into the large foyer with its walls hung with bulletin boards packed with sign-up sheets for doubles tennis and posters about the first summer dance.
They spotted Holly sitting by herself in one of the puffy navy-blue armchairs in the foyer.
“Everyone else went into town,” Holly said. “Carolyn had to go home with her family. I guess I want to go home, too.”
Celeste said, “Rose Waterstone’s over there. I’ll chat with her a little before I walk home.” She kissed Blythe’s cheek. “That was a nice turn of events, don’t you think?”
“It was a lovely evening,” Blythe said.
“And I haven’t seen you glow like that for a long time.” Celeste bent to hug Holly. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
“I glowed ?” Blythe was amazed.
“You’re still glowing,” Celeste said. “Good night, sweethearts.” She walked over to her friend and was quickly chatting and laughing.
Blythe wrapped her arm around her youngest child’s shoulders. “It’s just you and me, babe.”
For a moment, mother and daughter waited and watched as several families with young children passed by. A small girl squealed with pleasure as her father swung her up onto his shoulders. A boy of seven or eight gabbled excitedly to his mother about the sailboat they’d just come from. A little girl in a blue gingham dress and braids skipped along, each parent holding a hand.
Blythe sighed, remembering the days when her children considered her their hero, their best friend. The days when Miranda was small and adored them both. And as the two oldest children grew more independent and less adoring, along came Teddy and then Holly.
One day when Teddy was three, he told Blythe that he was her cuddlemum.
“Where did you learn that word?” Blythe had asked her little boy.
“I didn’t learn it! I made it! I made my own word!” Teddy had been wide-eyed with astonishment at his achievement.
Blythe remembered all the nights when she and Bob lay in bed sharing anecdotes about their children, their magical children. After a bath, when their hair was damp and fragrant with baby shampoo and they were wrapped in towels, when they giggled as Blythe played a game on their toes as she dried between them—such small things! Such small moments! Now she knew they had been some of the happiest moments in her life. And back then, when she was tucking her children into bed, she was probably thinking about whether or not she would still fit into her blue dress for the party she and Bob were going to that weekend. Her mind would be in two places at once, and often it still was, and sometimes she yearned to be back in that world, but then she’d remember how exhausted she’d been, trying to decide whether Daphne’s rash required a visit to the doctor, or whether she should talk to Bob about buying a new dishwasher.
Beside her, Holly was chattering about the land turtles her grandmother had spoken about at dinner. “Land turtles are a brilliant idea, because they could be kind of like taxis for the sea gerbils, when they come out onto the beach to explore.”
Blythe wanted to show her daughter that she was as interested in sea gerbils as Celeste.
“Maybe they could meet a seagull and he could fly the sea gerbils around the island,” she suggested.
Holly broke into a fit of giggles. “Mom! That’s crazy. Gulls would eat sea gerbils!”
“Right.” Blythe pretended to laugh, but really, in a way, her feelings were hurt. If Celeste had made that suggestion, she thought, Holly would have loved it! But Blythe realized how silly it was for her to have her feelings hurt over a discussion of sea gerbils.
Then Blythe looked up and saw, backlit by the outdoor lamps, the first man she had ever loved.
—
Aaden Sullivan. Her high school crush. Even after she’d married Bob twenty years ago and loved him as well as she could, she’d disciplined herself to ignore any thought of Aaden from her mind. She hadn’t looked him up on any social media or googled him. She hadn’t asked anyone about him. She hadn’t attended any of her high school reunions, but that was because she’d always been pregnant or rearing children. (And she’d always wondered why people said “ rearing children” because that word brought to her mind an image of a horse on its hind legs, its forelegs waving threateningly in the air, about to come down on you and slash you or wheel around and gallop around the field in a fit of wildness. Which, she realized, could be a description of what some days with children felt like.)
“Mommy?”
Blythe looked down at Holly, who was no longer babbling on about sea gerbils.
“Why aren’t we walking, Mommy?”
Blythe tried to laugh charmingly, in case Aaden heard her. “Oh, sweetie, I think there’s a man out there who I knew so long ago in high school.”
“Is he a nice man?” Holly asked. “Because you look weird.”
“Well, thank you so much for pointing that out,” Blythe said, making a face at Holly.
Holly giggled and made a face back. Usually, because she was eleven, she considered herself too old to act silly, but clearly Holly was as elated as the rest of them to be on the island at the beginning of summer, plus, she was alone with her mother, which didn’t happen very often.
Blythe’s mind was rushing with those thoughts when she heard a man say, “Blythe? Is that you?”
She knew that voice so well. The huskiness, the bass tone, the slight accent, woke up parts of her anatomy she’d forgotten she had.
“Aaden! My goodness! What a surprise!” My goodness? she thought. She sounded like someone’s Great-Aunt Myrtle.
Aaden wore tennis whites. Blythe couldn’t not notice his spectacular muscles and his perfect tan. She felt shivery all over, like a debutante being approached by a prince.
He walked up to her and kissed her quickly on her cheek. He smelled of warm cotton and sunshine.
“And who is this lovely person?” Aaden asked, smiling at Holly.
Before Blythe could speak, her daughter announced proudly, “My name is Holly Benedict and I am a graphic novelist, the fourth of four children and the third girl. My mother is divorced, but she owns our Nantucket house.”
Aaden answered, “I’m very pleased to meet you, Holly Benedict. I’m Aaden Sullivan. I was a good friend of your mother in high school. I have two daughters, but my wife and I are divorced and my daughters are traveling all around the world.”
Holly said, “Ooooooooooh.”
Quickly, before Holly hijacked the complete conversation, Blythe asked, “Do you have a house on the island, Aaden?”
“Unfortunately, I do not. Fortunately, I’m staying with a good friend.”
Immediately Blythe envisioned his friend, a sexy, dark-haired socialite with a wicked backhand, a short tennis skirt, a flat stomach, and an aristocratic overbite.
Blythe cocked her head perkily. “You’re staying for a month?”
“Yes. Arnie tells me I can stay as long as I want.”
The toothy aristocrat vanished into thin air. Blythe beamed. “We should meet for coffee sometime.”
“How about tomorrow?” Aaden still had black magic eyes.
“Um, I’m not sure…the kids have such complicated schedules—”
Holly interrupted, obviously trying to be helpful. “I’ll probably be with Grandmother tomorrow.”
“Why not come have lunch with us at our house?” Blythe knew she was being cowardly. If the children weren’t around, if she was alone with Aaden, she would probably kiss him. They were both divorced! She would definitely kiss him.
What was going on with her tonight? Only a few moments ago, she was practically drooling over Nick.
Aaden raked his hand carelessly through his thick dark hair.
Blythe remembered clutching that hair when they were together, kissing passionately.
Aaden grinned, as if he’d read her thoughts. “I’d like that. What time is good?”
“Oh, any time around noon,” Blythe told him.
“We live on India Street,” Holly told him. “Number thirty-four.”
“I’ll see you then.”
Aaden leaned forward and kissed Blythe’s cheek again. She felt his breath, his nearness, and she wanted to take his face between her two hands and move his mouth to her lips.
Instead, she forced herself to smile. “Okay, then, see you.” She took Holly’s hand and walked away, out of the club, into the sensible air, and through the lot to their minivan.
Holly swung Blythe’s hand. “He’s cute.”
“Oh, you think so?” Blythe winked at her daughter. A moment later, she wished she hadn’t winked. Quickly she changed the subject. “How’s Carolyn?”
“Oh, Mom, she has a puppy! One of those poodle doodles, she has photos on her phone, he’s all fat and curly and I’m going over to her house tomorrow to see him, his name’s Buddy, because he’s her very own buddy, and I told Grandmother I’d go to her house for lunch tomorrow and then we’ll work on the novel, and oh no ! If I have lunch at Grandmother’s, I won’t get to see Aaden Sullivan! Is it all right for me to call him Aaden instead of Mr. Sullivan? He told me his first name…”
Blythe smiled as Holly babbled on and on. She always tried to let Holly talk all she wanted because when she was smaller, and probably now as well, her older sisters and brother spoke so loudly Holly could never get a word in. They referred to Holly as “the child.” If she’d told them the house was on fire, they wouldn’t have paid attention.
Only now was the light slipping away from the sky. Streetlights and house lights blinked on, and in the gentle dusk, the world magically became smaller, like a stage light shrinking the world down to a circle around the two of them, going home in the minivan, past lawns bordered by flowers whose perfume grew stronger with the arrival of darkness. Blythe remembered how it had been with Aaden, in his car, wrapped around each other, and nothing else in the world had mattered, all of the meaning of life had been right there, enclosing the two of them as they touched.