“And you know what else?” I said. “Cookie might have become a fussbudget, but at least you still have her. Let’s see what we can do to cheer the old girl up!”
“Good luck with that!” Eve looked over to the pool, which was unoccupied by any of the other guests. “Gosh, this is some summer without Daphne! Where are the boys this afternoon?”
“They’re down at Breach Inlet, kitesurfing or some sport designed to break their little necks,” I said. “How was Daphne’s year at college?”
“She did all right this year, but she didn’t exactly burn the town down.”
That was code for barely passed.
“So what’s she up to this summer?”
“Well, as usual, we’re rewarding her poor academic performance and assuaging our own guilt over Cookie’s drug debacle by allowing her to go with Kelly for a six-week cultural immersion in France. How about your boys?”
If Daphne was mine, I thought, Adam would have her chopping wood all summer or something else equally torturous. In our family, poor performance brought consequences.
“Well, they’re working for Adam, like they have since they could pick up a hammer. But he pays them the same as the other guys.”
“Dean’s List?”
“Yes,” I said with an involuntary grin.
“Figures.”
“They’re competitive with each other. It really isn’t about us pushing them. In fact, it might be the one advantage of having twins.”
“I don’t believe I could manage two Daphnes! Oh, did I mention she got suspended for plagiarism?”
“Well, girls are different,” I said, thinking, I don’t know if I could’ve managed the one she’s got. “She was probably just not thinking. They give you a run for your money.”
“She does. And she got three speeding tickets!”
“No!”
“Yes,” she said.
I was quiet for a moment and then I said, “Listen, I don’t think it matters if you have girls or boys. You worry.”
“It’s true. Hey, here come the guys. I wonder who won?”
Adam and Carl, red faced and sweaty, waved, peeled off their shirts, kicked off their sneakers and socks, and fell into the pool. In their tennis shorts.
“I’d swear I just saw steam rise from the water,” I said.
“I hope he left his cell phone in the condo,” Eve said. “But it’s probably in the pool.”
The boys came up for air, flipped over on their backs, and floated like dead men.
“Oh, thank you, God,” Adam groaned. “I finally whupped the son of a bitch.”
“Good, darlin’,” I said, laughing to myself.
“I nearly died out there,” Carl said. “It was so close.”
“It was never close,” Adam said. “You lost by a country mile.”
“He got me on a dink shot,” Carl said. “Very sneaky.”
“It’s called playing the net,” Adam said.
“I want a rematch,” Carl said.
“Stop! You’re whining like an old woman,” Adam said.
“Oh, really? Is that what you think?”
Their banter went on for a while, entertaining Eve and me to no end. Finally, when their body temperatures had returned to normal, Adam and Carl climbed out of the pool and sloshed over to us, dripping on us as much as possible, creating puddles all around their feet. We jumped away and complained, but we were laughing all the while. Carl pulled his cell phone from his sopping wet shorts and tried to make a call—sadly, to no avail.
“Fried another one,” he said.
“What about putting it in the dryer?” Adam said. “You know, like in a sock or something?”
“Yeah, right,” Carl said.
“What did I tell you?” Eve said, rolling her eyes to me.
“Oh, dear. There’s water in the cooler if you fellas want a drink,” I said.
Carl busied himself drying and blowing on his phone, thoroughly annoyed that he had ruined yet another one. He was embarrassed.
“Third one this summer,” Eve said, happy to announce that perfect Carl wasn’t so perfect after all. “Try covering it up in a bowl of rice. I read that somewhere.”
“Can’t hurt,” I said.
I was delighted that Adam had bested Carl on the tennis court. Carl had been beating Adam at golf and tennis and even poker for years, so it was time Adam had his pride restored. And it was also good because Adam could justify the amount of money he had spent on tennis lessons. After all the years we had been vacationing together, it had taken the challenge of Carl to make Adam competitive.
Eve seemed happy to see Carl and Adam getting along so well. We both were. It meant that this vacation was going well and that there would likely be another. Like me, she had come to cherish this time we all shared. She didn’t like Raleigh anymore. Daphne was gone, Carl worked all the time, and she was lonely. I knew what loneliness felt like. At least her mother’s illness brought her to Charleston and that helped her loneliness—to be needed. On occasion, we would meet downtown for lunch. Maybe the fact that no one really needed her was at the bottom of her malaise. At least I could offer her genuine friendship, and spending time with me gave her a chance to catch a glimpse of Adam again, even if their relationship was as chaste as Abelard and Heloise. I could see Eve aching for Adam’s company. And she worked mighty hard so that no one could detect the fact that she still had feelings for Adam. But it’s pretty hard to hide love.
Somewhere along the line, as Carl continued trying to salvage his phone, Eve caught Adam’s eye. I watched as Eve appeared to be eighteen again and so did he. Then I blinked and the moment evaporated as though it had never been. I needed to tell him that time had no patience for his longing. Guilt would eventually take a bite out of his soul and he should remember to be grateful for all he had—me, the boys, all that . . . still. I knew that something in him remained unfulfilled. But did anyone ever find all they dreamed of and all they needed in one person?
It’s his age, I thought. He thinks he’s going down the fucking tubes.
My husband had unquestionably arrived in middle age. We both had. There was nothing to be done about our advancing years except to embrace them and to pray that they continued to advance for decades to come. We were in perfect health and we looked pretty darn good for our age, and what else could we ask for?
If I could’ve crawled inside his head, I knew exactly what he would be asking for. Adam would ask for an epic blizzard to occur, and that he would be caught in a wonderful cabin in Vermont and Eve would arrive and they would lose power and sleep together for warmth. Nature would take its course more than once. But Eve would wake up with a total case of amnesia in the morning and it would appear to her that Adam had slept on the sofa under a pile of quilts. He would be making pancakes (that he didn’t know how to make) in a cast-iron skillet over an open fire and brewing the most wonderful-smelling coffee in the world. Why not? Then he wouldn’t have any guilt.