“We could figure it out, right? We could retire poor old Remy, once he fixes the roof. That would save us tons. And we could do some repairs ourselves.”
“Don’t look at me. I make art. I don’t do anything that involves power tools, or safety goggles.” Gwen laid an arm over her face and peered out at Libby from the crook of her elbow. Libby imagined Gwen wearing a tool belt full of compact umbrellas, washi tape, X-ACTO blades, palette knives, tubes of matte medium, and vintage postcards.
“No, we’d make Dan do all the hard stuff. He’s young. He can take it. I just don’t want Tom to think he can make any executive decisions.” Libby started absentmindedly cracking her knuckles.
“Don’t get all worked up. Tom is just Tom. He’s in his own world with Melissa and the kids. He’s so bogged down by life, it’s amazing he can even breathe. He needs this place just as much as we do, maybe more. He needs a place where he doesn’t have to be perfect. I mean, besides his Chinese Gambling Parlor,” said Gwen.
Libby laughed. She loved it when Gwen talked about Tom’s fictional life of debauchery and deviancy.
“Or his Bunny Ranch.”
“You really think it’s all talk?” said Libby. “You don’t think he’s serious?” She started to line up pinecones next to her.
“How serious is a voice mail, really? He is exercising his man-of-the-house role. It’s machismo in action. He doesn’t realize it’s the ladies who have always been in charge.” Still lying down, Gwen passed her pinecones from the far side of the towel.
“For better or worse. At least as the new guard, we’ll be more enlightened.” Libby’s pinecone lineup became a small pyramid.
Gwen reached out and squeezed Libby’s foot. “Love is love, baby. Scoot.”
Libby leaned to one side, and Gwen pulled out the towel and wrapped it around herself and stood up. “I’m ready for a swim.”
Libby felt hot and nauseated. She blamed Tom, as if his wishes had somehow invited this threat into their lives. The simple existence of the offer was dangerous. It was an unlit match in a hayloft. The idea was sickening. She needed to purge it from herself.
“Maybe just a quick dip,” said Libby. She would extinguish the match before it could even strike. She would drown the idea in the frigid sea.
NINE
TOM
July 5
In the gravel parking lot of Schooners they stood in front of the house car, a dusty jeep that lived at the house all year long, rusting quietly under the oak. Gwen sat in the car, facing out of the open passenger-side door, her feet hooked on the edge of the frame.
“This is why you can’t rush me,” she said.
“You are responsible for your own person,” said Tom. He couldn’t believe that she still pulled this kind of absurd behavior. After her practical comments about the costs involved in keeping the house, he hoped she was growing up, but turned out she was still a child who needed him to bail her out. Just like when she bounced a rent check, or three. Tom had two children, and they were more than enough (wonderful, actually, if only Gwen were more like them). He turned his back to the car and took a deep breath.
“I’m not a toddler.” Gwen.
He turned back to her and gestured at her bare feet with both of his hands. “You forgot your shoes.”
Gwen wiggled her toes.
“I’ll go in,” said Libby, “sit down, take off my shoes, and pass them off to Danny, who’ll bring them out here to Gwen. Easy.” She said this slow and saccharine. Gwen tried not to laugh. Libby shoved Danny toward the restaurant as he took a photo of Gwen’s bare feet.
“I love this.” He grinned.
Tom rolled his eyes and followed them into the restaurant while Melissa waited with Gwen. A harried waiter waved them at an empty table, and they sat down. Tom watched Libby slide her shoes out from under the table toward Danny.
“The swallow is in the nest,” she whispered.
Danny winked, bent down, and hooked her Keds onto his fingers.
“I will take my leave of you, madam.” Danny put the hand with the shoes behind his back and made a small flourish with his free hand.
“I’m going to the head.” Tom got up, not wanting to hear another word. Why do they make everything a game? Libby thinks of herself as the host here, but she’s barely better than the other two. Well, at least she has a career.
In the bathroom Tom splashed water on his face, trying to wash the heat out of his skin, out of his cells. In the mirror he looked puffy and mottled. Maybe I should stop eating salt. Maybe I should move to Costa Rica and open a turtle farm. I can be the surly owner who sits under a palm tree and bottle-feeds baby turtles or gives them lettuce. Tom didn’t know much about turtles. He could remind tourists that there is no escaping reality, that sea turtles are going extinct even when you’re on vacation. Someone has to be practical. Someone has to save the turtles while everyone else is getting a tan. This is, he was sure, what his siblings didn’t understand. Life meant being practical, moving forward no matter what. It meant keeping your grades up, introducing your “friend” as your girlfriend, it meant wearing shoes to restaurants, it meant working until midnight if that was what it took to polish the social media platform presentation. Why didn’t his boss, Linda, understand that? Apparently, staff can’t “be pushed so hard.” Why was he the only one who had to push himself?
“No one should be calling their assistant at three in the morning to go over account stats,” Linda had said. “Take some time off and spend it with your family. It’s important to be with them at times like this.” This had been his boss’s carefully worded kiss off. Tom understood. Linda didn’t want him there. All his devotion to that company, and she decided how he should be mourning his mother. No thought to what the clients might need. What he might need.
He needed to get back to work. It had been a month, and he was spending his days in a Starbucks in Lexington where he could answer e-mails with no fear of running into anyone. Really, he just sat at his computer and thought about how he had failed his wife. Even if her failures were more obvious; it was his; it was him. He was trying his best to hate her, because his love felt far more toxic. And then he’d think of his mother. And then he’d be crying in the Starbucks bathroom crouched beside a stainless-steel toilet bowl. Work. That was his thing. But Linda refused to tell him how long this “break” would last. What kind of alimony could he pay with no job? What about health insurance? Melissa’s part-time editorial work wasn’t exactly going to pay the bills.