Chapter Twenty-five
Under different circumstances, this place would be beautiful, although even under better circumstances Jordana isn’t quite sure why she would ever come here when the Hamptons is so much closer for her, not to mention so much trendier.
Jordana loves the Hamptons. Loves stocking up on her Calypso tops and Miss Trish sandals, her armfuls of diamond bangles— because you never know who you’ll bump into having dinner at Nick and Toni’s, and you always have to look your best, just in case.
She loves that she could be sitting next to Jerry Seinfeld on one side and Martha Stewart on the other. She loves that every night is filled with different parties. It’s all about seeing and being seen, dressing up, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good.
Nantucket is beautiful, no question about it, but, Jordana thinks as she looks slightly disdainfully around the pool area, where are all the gorgeous models? Where are the breast implants? Where are the diamonds, for God’s sake?
This is not a world Jordana understands, and now that there doesn’t seem to be any reason to stay, she can’t wait to get out of here.
But where to? Jackson is at home, waiting, terrified this will be permanent, wondering what he’s done wrong, vowing to do things differently, to do anything she wants just for them to be together again.
For the first time, Jordana has to consider her future. She had convinced herself that she and Michael were destined to be together, that when he saw her again, found out she was having their child, he would do the right thing, would come back to her and they would build a life together, just as they had talked about during those heady early days of the affair.
She has spent hours lying in bed at night, planning how she and Michael will live, where they will live. Somewhere not too remote, close enough to the city for them to be able to get in when they need to, somewhere where they could open a small jewelry store, a place with a wealthy enough clientele who would come to them and buy, but simple enough for Michael to be happy.
Pound Ridge, perhaps. Or Katonah. Maybe Nyack. She had even gone to the real estate sites and looked at the kind of houses she imagined them living in. Not like the vast Great Neck mansion she and Jackson lived in—marble floors and sweeping stair-cases—but something that Michael had always dreamed of, an old farmhouse with wide-planked floors and cozy, low ceilings, fireplaces in every room, rolling fields behind the house. It had never been her dream before Michael, but she was willing to edit her dreams for him, willing to become the person she thought he wanted her to be.
It never occurred to her that it wouldn’t happen. Now what is she to do? Go back to Jackson? Allow him to think the baby is his, even though technically it’s impossible? God knows how she would get around that. Should she confess the affair, promise to never stray again?
She doesn’t want to go back to Jackson. She wants to be with Michael, but if she can’t be with Michael, can she really do this on her own, is this really something she wants?
A baby. Not an accessory. Not a puppy like her adorable little Maltese terrier, but a baby who couldn’t be left at home alone when she went shopping, nor in the car, looking pleadingly out of the window as she sat in restaurants for lunch with her girlfriends. A baby.
Oh God. What is she going to do?
Jordana sits down on the bed and sighs deeply, rubbing her stomach unconsciously. She won’t have an abortion, though. She can’t. This is a child she made with Michael, a man she loves, and if she can’t have him, she can have his child. It’s the next best thing, and maybe once the child is here, maybe then he’ll change his mind, maybe then he’ll realize what they could have together.
She’s going to have this baby. It’s the only thing she’s sure of right now.
She gets up to go to the bathroom, blinking twice as she sits down and stares, uncomprehendingly, at the blood.
And she bursts into tears.
The initial euphoria of being with her mom has worn off very quickly. Yes it’s beautiful here, yes this house is kind of cool, but it smells old and Jess isn’t sure she likes old, isn’t sure she’d actually want to sit down on one of those threadbare velvet chairs in the living room, yes there’s the beach, but none of her friends are here . . .
Yesterday was good. Her mom was so thrilled to see her, which was a bit of a surprise, and she didn’t really say anything about the shoplifting, just told her that when she was ready to talk about it she would listen and wouldn’t judge, and then she took her shopping, which was really nice, especially when Jess was expecting a lecture.
Jess knows it was probably guilt, but look what she got out of it! A bunch of T-shirts, a baseball cap, a sweatshirt, a bathing suit and a ton of shells and notebooks and fun stuff at the Hub. All she had to do was pick something up and say, “Oh isn’t this so cute,” and her mom would buy it for her. With hindsight, Jess now realizes that was probably to stop her taking it for herself.
They went for ice cream and walked around the little shops by the marina, and in the evening they had dinner at home with the other tenants, although not with Nan, who had excused herself and gone to bed early.
Jess is fascinated by Nan. She’s never seen anyone like her before. She is old but she doesn’t seem old, and she is nothing like Jessica’s grandmothers, who wear twinsets or tracksuits, not flowing silk shawls in bright jewel colors and beaded satin slippers, just to hang out at home.
Her mom says Nan is wonderful, but she wasn’t wonderful yesterday. Mom says she’s had a big shock and she just needs some time to adjust, so hopefully she’ll be back to herself soon.
Meanwhile, what’s Jess supposed to do with herself for the next few weeks? There are only so many times you can listen to the playlists on your iPod without getting bored, and even though it’s really, really nice to be with Mom, Jess doesn’t want to hang out with her, and now her mom says she’s taking the rest of the summer off and they’re staying here. Jess wants to hang out with people her own age, and no one here is under the age of about forty.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Nan watches Jess from her bedroom window, sitting on the sand, hugging her knees, playing with the sand, gathering it up in her hand and letting it sift slowly through her fingers. Nan shivers, and puts on a robe from the bathroom, slips her feet into flip-flops and makes her way slowly down the stairs.
She isn’t ready to talk to anyone in the house yet, knows they are all being careful with her, concerned; they all want to know how she is, how both of them are. Both Nan and Michael.
Poor Michael. To have a father again after all these years, to have learned that his life too has been a lie. It is perhaps worse for Michael, she realizes, because he is so sensitive.
He had looked at Everett after he had attempted to explain, interrupting him with a voice that was cold, colder than she had ever heard it, as he said, “As far as I’m concerned you’re not my father. I can’t stop my mother from talking to you but I don’t want anything to do with you.”
Everett reached out a hand to stop Michael walking out of the room.
“Please, Michael,” he said, his voice choked up. “Please let me explain.”
Michael did stop then. He looked at Everett closely, barely able to contain his fury.
“Explain? You want to explain? Sure, I’d love to hear. I’d love to hear how you explain it to a six-year-old boy who is crying himself to sleep every night because he misses his dad so much. I’d love to hear you explain to him that it wasn’t, as he always thought, his fault. That six-year-old grew up believing that his dad wouldn’t have left them and killed himself if he’d behaved better, or hadn’t been naughty, had listened more. Can you explain what to do with the pain and guilt and fear that little boy grew up with? Can you?” Michael stares at Everett, now sobbing openly, before dropping his gaze. “No. I didn’t think so.”
“I’m so sorry,” Everett whispered. “I was sick. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I missed you so much. I’ve spent years missing you, thinking about you, wondering what you were doing, how you turned out.”
“Well, now you know,” Michael said, turning and walking out of the room, making his way unsteadily up the stairs to his room, where it was his turn to cry.
Nan tried to talk to Michael about it later, but what could she say? She was still reeling herself.
In the middle of the night, she sat up, bolt upright in bed, a terrible thought having just woken her.
Did he want the house? Is that why he came back? Was she finally going to lose the house because of this? Of course. Why else would he come back after all this time?
She hadn’t gone back to sleep after that. She sat up and worried about what she should do, how she could keep the house, or, at worst, sell it and keep the money herself. She didn’t owe Everett a penny, and if there was a way to make sure he got nothing, she would find it.
Now, as the sun comes up, she notices Jess on the beach and is drawn to her. There is something about this child’s unhappiness and confusion that seems to mirror her own right now, and she steps outside, trying not to think that she is very close to losing all that she loves.
“Hey!” Daff walks into the kitchen and is startled to find Michael there. It has felt as though he has been avoiding her this last twenty-four hours, and she is shocked at the sharp jolt of pain she felt upon realizing that this may be the case.
Pleasure and pain. There is the pleasure of having Jess back, of being able to spend time with her, with nowhere else to be, nothing else to do but be fully present for her daughter.
Not that Jess has opened up to her, not yet, but Daff is hopeful, and grateful that she wants to be here, grateful that it has happened so quickly and so relatively painlessly.
Focusing on Jess has stopped her focusing on Michael, on the pain he so obviously feels, on his withdrawing from everyone in the house, taking off into town and not coming home until late at night when he knew everyone would be asleep.
How quickly these people have become her family, she realizes. Living together perhaps it was inevitable, but she had no idea this would happen when she first phoned about the rental. She imagined Windermere as a boarding house in the truest sense of the word, a place where people had rooms but got on with their lives on their own during waking hours.
Never did she dream she would feel, from almost the moment she set foot here, as if she had come home. Never did she dream she would care about the other people in this house quite as much as she does, feel as comfortable with them as she does.
Michael looks up and gives her a small smile. “Hey. I was hoping you’d be up soon.”
“Oh? Do you want some tea?”
“No. I have coffee. Thanks. I thought perhaps you’d like to go for a walk. I . . . I know I’ve been a bit distant and I wanted to explain.”
“Don’t worry.” Daff’s tone is light, careful not to convey how she really feels. “I know you’re going through a lot. You don’t owe me an explanation at all. It’s fine.” She busies herself filling the kettle with water, so Michael can’t see her eyes, how she really feels.
“Please, Daff.” He walks up behind her and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder, and when she turns he puts his arms around her and hugs her. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and when they pull apart he looks at her with a raised eyebrow.
“A walk?”
“Okay.” She smiles. “But let me find Jess.”
“She’s fine,” he says. “She’s with my mom. They’re working in the garden.”
“What?” Daff is stunned. “Jess? Working? That’s not my daughter. My daughter sleeps until noon and doesn’t work or help out unless there’s a bribe attached.”
“Well, perhaps aliens came down and swapped her during the night, but she’s out there. Look.” Michael brings Daff to the window and she looks out in amazement to see, in the distance, Nan chatting away to Jess and showing her how to stake the now-flopping cucumbers, Nan stepping back as Jess bangs the stake in and clips the wire, looking to Nan for approval.
“Oh my God,” Daff says. “I think your mother may be a witch.”
“There are those in town who’ve been saying that for years.”
“No, but seriously, my daughter’s a teenager. She hates everything and everyone, but she actually looks—I can’t believe I’m going to say this—but she actually looks like she’s enjoying herself.”
“She probably is.” Michael grins. “Remember when we were kids and we got to do chores or help out, or have jobs like waiting tables or working at gas stations? Remember the sense of achievement we got? Nowadays all the kids seem to work as interns for friends of their parents, and it’s not real work, not like the work we did. She feels useful. It’s probably a great feeling, and a new one for her.”
Daff tears her eyes away from Jess to look at Michael in amazement. “Thank you,” she says. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. She feels useful. We don’t give her anything to do; it would never occur to me to have her do gardening like I used to do. I always hated it and I thought I was doing her a favor, not having her do it and paying the landscapers to handle it, but you’re right.” Daff sighs. “That’s probably what all the stealing was about. She needs something else in her life. She needs to feel useful.”
“She certainly doesn’t look unhappy now.” They both look over to see Jess smiling shyly as Nan claps her hands in delight. “I’d say she looks pretty great.”
“Thank you.” Daff’s eyes fill with tears. “She is. And thank you for seeing that, and for saying it.” She blinks away the tears and sighs. “That’s enough about me. I wanted to find out how you are. I’ve been so worried about you.”
“It’s all a bit of a nightmare.” Michael frowns. “Jordana, the woman who turned up, is, well, you know who she is. And it seems she’s . . .” He swallows.
“Pregnant,” Daff says softly.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I didn’t. It seemed an obvious thing she would come all this way to tell you.”
“It never occurred to me. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“Will you go back to her, do you think? Try again?”
Michael sighs and shakes his head, and Daff can’t help but feel relief. “I can’t,” he says. “It would be entirely the wrong thing to do. I’m too old to live a lie.”
“Oh Michael,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know. So am I.”
“It’s definitely yours?” Daff thinks of the high heels, the brassy hair, the big diamonds. She wonders if Michael has truly been her only conquest of late.
“I think so. I’m pretty sure. I’ve known Jordana a long time and I don’t think she’s a liar. Although,” he snorts in mock laughter, “I would also have said she wasn’t the type to have an affair.”
“That’s what I would have said about you.” Daff smiles wryly.
“Me too. It was a case of bad judgment. I’m still not quite sure what came over me.”
“I have to say—” Daff is careful—“she’s not quite who I would see you with.”
Michael starts to laugh. “Who would you see me with?” Someone like me, she thinks. But doesn’t say it.
“I don’t know.” She shrugs, embarrassed. “Someone more down to earth, I think. Someone more natural.”
“A single mother, perhaps?” Michael grins, and Daff blushes and moves to the sink to wash up, stay busy.
“Then there’s the small matter of my father turning up when he is supposed to be a bundle of bones at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Ah yes.” Daff turns to look at him. “I was wondering when you were going to mention that.”
“It didn’t seem important.” He shrugs, and they both laugh.
“I’m waiting for the next bomb to fall,” he continues. “It feels as if everything in my life is not what I thought it was, everything has changed, and nothing will ever be the same. If everything I thought I believed, everything I trusted, was wrong, how can I ever trust again?”
Michael pauses, but Daff senses he has more to say and doesn’t interrupt.
“Remember 9/11?” he says. “After the planes hit the towers we heard the news about the Pentagon, then the plane in Pennsylvania? ” Daff nods. “We were all waiting for the next thing, waiting for the world to come to an end. That’s how this feels. It feels as if my world has come to an end. Everything that was safe and secure and real for me is not. How do I trust?” He looks pleadingly at Daff. “How can I trust in anyone again?”
You can trust me. The words are on the tip of Daff’s tongue, but she doesn’t say them, just stands there gazing at him as he sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. You are a beautiful man.
She wants to say: you will find your way through this, you will find a way forward because you are all good. You are goodness and kindness and perhaps the best man I have ever met. You can trust me because I trust you. Because even though I barely know you I would place my life in your hands. I know you would look after it.
“Can we go?”
“What?” Daff shakes her head, breaking her reverie. “Go where?”
“For that walk.”
She laughs. “Yes, I’ll just get my shoes.”
They walk for hours. Along the pretty roads of Sconset, alongside the beach, neither of them with any time constraints, they are happy to just walk and talk, lapsing into occasional companionable silence.
“How do you feel about being a father?” Daff asks as they reach a pretty cove.
“I don’t know.” Michael winces at the thought. “I love kids, but they’ve always been other people’s kids. I’ve never felt ready for my own.”
“I’m not sure any of us are ever ready for kids.” She laughs. “They always seem to take you by surprise. You’ll be a great father, ” she adds. “If you choose to be involved.”
“Of course I’ll be involved. Oh God. That’s the next thing. Talking to Jordana and telling her just how involved I plan to be. I’m not going to just walk away from my child. I’d never do that.”
“I know,” Daff says.
“Shall we stop for a bit?” Michael points to another little cove ahead, smaller, hidden in the dunes.
“Sure.”
Suddenly it’s awkward. The two of them are sitting on the sand, knowing what’s coming, not knowing how to get there, unsure whether this is the right thing, or whether this is just another huge complication in an altogether-too-complicated life.
There doesn’t seem to be a choice anymore for either of them, and as Michael leans over to kiss Daff, he realizes that she is the only safe place for him right now. How could he possibly walk away from the only thing in his life that is good?
“Now I know why they always say sex on the beach is overrated.” Daff furiously shakes the sand out of her hair.
“Oh thanks!” Michael says.
“I didn’t mean that.” She laughs, pulling on her shorts and allowing herself to be wrapped in his arms and kissed. “Not that,” she murmurs, looking at him and smiling, unable to believe this has happened with someone so wonderful. “That was lovely.”
“Was that your first time since your husband?”
“Ex-husband.” Daff smiles shyly. “Yes.”
“Was it okay?” he asks nervously.
“Okay? It was better than okay. It was marvelous! Like riding a bike,” she says, laughing. “Only better.”
Truly it was marvelous. Better than marvelous. Blissful.
Who would ever love me, Daff remembers thinking during those early days when she and Richard first separated. My breasts are saggy from childbirth, I have stretch marks on my stomach, legs I forget to shave for months at a time. The last person to fall in love with me did so when I was young, firm, gorgeous. When I was bathing-suit-ready every morning of my life, just by the sheer act of falling out of bed. Who would love me now?
She had thought that when she did come to have sex with anyone again, it would be awkward as hell, would have to be done with the lights out.
Yet there they were, on the beach, and it didn’t feel awkward, it felt like the most natural thing she had ever done. And she didn’t feel ashamed of her lines, or her veins, or her sag. She felt beautiful.
Lying in his arms afterward, as they continued to chat softly, the thought occurred to her that this is intimacy. This isn’t what she and Richard had. Ever. They never lay in one another’s arms after the fact, but rolled over after a perfunctory kiss goodnight and went to sleep. Or, in the beginning, rolled over to get out of bed and get dressed. This feels like something she has been waiting for her entire life.
This feels utterly new and utterly familiar at the same time. It feels right . . . like coming home.