The View from Here Read online

  “I saw this show, I think, Off Broadway,” Mason said. Patsy, pulling her T-shirt over her head, laughed with her face obscured.

  “Bring on the dancing girls,” Bee Bee yelled, hands cupped to her mouth. Tallulah, startled, began to yip madly.

  “It’s great, isn’t it, Dad?” Howie beamed as Ned, hoisting a cardboard megaphone, bellowed, calling for order.

  Hudson, from his pastel bouncer under an umbrella, squealed, and Richard, smiling, put a soft arm around one son and lent an index finger to the other. “It’s great,” he agreed.

  “A Feat Of Great Daring Performed By A Person Standing On One Leg,” Skipper declared, “to be performed by…” Mason mimicked a drumroll as she pulled a paper slip from one of Bee Bee’s floppy hats. “Richard,” she read.

  There were cheers as Richard, loosing himself from his offspring, stood and scratched his head. “Would a feat of great daring standing on two hands do?” he asked.

  Ned put it to a vote and pronounced that it would.

  Richard flipped his weight forward and walked easily on his hands some ten feet along the beach.

  “I married him for that,” Patsy said dryly.

  Richard righted himself with a little jump, curving neatly in reverse. There were more cheers.

  “That,” Patsy went on, “and the fact he could ski faster than me.” Mason smiled at her. “Whaddya know at twenty?” she said with a laugh.

  Soon I was called upon as “A Person Singing A Short Song In Dramatic Fashion.” I sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” It was a party trick from my teen years. I enlisted the twins to shimmy beside me and toot imaginary bugles.

  “Bravo,” Mason shouted when the three of us took our bows. “Moo-ore.” But by then it was lunchtime.

  Christina had packed a picnic to match the festivities. In a box, an enormous white frosted cake was already festooned with candles. As Lesley shut her eyes to blow them out, Patsy said softly, “Wish for happiness, honey. Wish for it whenever you can.”

  Patsy’s tone was too poignant for the occasion, but the tiny puncture was overwhelmed by a more marked intrusion—the sound of an unfamiliar engine on the stony roadway at the top of the beach.

  The car belonged to a pair of sandy-haired Americans named Beau and Myra. We struck up conversation with them after their swim. It was natural enough that we would; the beach was small, and we had claimed the center of it. They were taking a two-month driving tour around Mexico. It was the sort of thing they did quite often now that their kids were grown. Ned offered them a drink.

  “Oh no,” Myra protested. “We don’t want to intrude.” But everyone denied the possibility, and Mason, gentlemanly, offered her one of the director’s chairs that Sally had ordered brought down to the beach. She and Bee Bee had been sitting on them, cross-legged and behatted like two old-fashioned movie stars over lunch.

  Myra said she’d have a lemonade.

  “You sure about that, Myra?” Ned said, with a wink. He had the measure of her. “This is a party.”

  “I’m not much of a drinker,” Myra said, smiling, taking her seat.

  “Nor was Frankie,” Ned answered, “when we first got her, but she’s doing just fine now.”

  Myra laughed and agreed to a daiquiri, which was what, Ned assured her, all the other ladies were drinking. We were. Flasks had been packed. Three flavors. Myra asked for lime.

  “Would you look at that house!” Beau said, accepting a beer, scanning the cliff and whistling softly.

  “I’ll be,” Myra exclaimed, following his eyeline. She drew the air in audibly between her frosted lips when Mason said that it was ours, for the time being anyway.

  The children, impatient with the interruption and the adult talk, began clamoring for more entertainment. So Ned and Lesley did a Laurel and Hardy routine, clearly well rehearsed in the past, and Bee Bee and Mason danced a tango, with Howie’s snorkel standing for the rose and Ned humming the musical accompaniment. Beau and Myra lent enthusiastic hurrahs. Sitting again, amid the applause, Bee Bee, who was a little breathless, said, “He sure is a mover, that husband of yours.”

  “Yes,” Sally replied disinterestedly, “he sure is.” Then she announced, “Our guests will be at the house by six.” It was after four.

  Reminded of Arturo and Maria’s visit, people looked at their watches. Beau and Myra said that they ought to be off, but the children groaned until one last event, a three-legged race, was agreed on.

  Ned bent to attach his ankle to Sally’s with a linen dishcloth. She smiled, compliant, and lifted her foot gracefully to ease the process. I felt a familiar hand at my waist.

  “You up for this, Frankie?” Mason’s breath was warm near my ear.

  “Why not?”

  Patsy, next to us, and alone after the pairings off, pouted, “Heey.” She had evidently been heading for Mason. He turned, rotating me with him, our legs tied together at the calf, and shrugged, raising his free hand, palm up, apologetically.

  “Be my partner, Mommy.” Howie began inexpertly attaching his leg to his mother’s.

  Beau and Myra joined the press at the starting line. Carl had paired off with Bee Bee. Paige and Lesley had a twin each, and Richard was hopping and laughing with his arm around Skipper.

  Ned shouted, “On your marks.”

  Everyone started without waiting for “go.” There was a blur of movement and noise until the mass of us reached the driftwood marker ten yards or so along the sand.

  “The winners,” Ned declared, raising his and Sally’s arms and spinning her around. “The champs.”

  There were yells of dissent. We were all dropping, breathing hard and laughing, onto the sand. Bee Bee and Carl landed with a thump next to Mason and me.

  “I think I’ll stick to bobbing for olives in the future,” Bee Bee said. “Give this amateur stuff a miss.”

  Carl laughed.

  “Oww.” Howie had fallen backward while Patsy remained standing, wrenching his foot into the air, though without enough force to do any damage.

  Patsy ignored him. She was staring, her features fractionally compressed, at Richard and Skipper, who, alone, had not made it to the finish line. They were lying where they had first fallen, near the start, stretched on the sand, legs intertwined. Richard’s chest was heaving. His laughter mingled with Skipper’s. One of her braids snaked softly across the base of his throat. She pulled herself up and a little over him, dislodging it. His arm was still folded comfortably around her, the hand at her bare waist obscured by the flap of the pink dress.

  Carl, detaching himself from Bee Bee, laughed too. “Want a hand, baby?” he called and, approaching Skipper and Richard with a languid gait, leaned to untie the dishcloth at Skipper’s ankle. Then he helped her to her feet, hands tucked gently under her armpits.

  “We couldn’t get up,” she said, turning to him, still smiling. He kissed her forehead and grinned, then extended a hand to Richard, who took it and pulled himself up.

  “Hell,” Richard said, wiping the faint trace of a laughter tear from his face, “I don’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.”

  Patsy, snapped from her reverie by Howie’s clumsy tugs at her ankle, spoke sharply, “Be careful, Howie.”

  Howie, worn out, began to whimper.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Patsy deftly unhitched herself from her son, and then, sending up little sprays of sand, turned and flounced back up the beach, pausing to pick up her colored straw basket, but ignoring Hudson, curled in sleep against a striped cushion. She tossed the basket into the jeep and clambered in after it. Then she waited, sullen-faced, in the passenger seat, with her feet on the dash and her arms folded.

  Sally turned to Beau and Myra to say goodbye with such an amazingly gracious tilt of her head that I thought for a moment that she was going to invite them to the house, as she had invited me, but she didn’t.

  “Very nice to have met you,” she said, smiling.

  Hudson, waking tetchy, began to cry, and the rest
of us, party over, began to gather up the gear until Sally said, “Leave that. I’ll have them come down for it later.”

  Pausing, as she spoke, from collecting a ball and bat set of Howie’s, something came to me with absolute clarity. Beau and Myra would remember Sally Severance and her remarkable beauty and her charming husband and her crazy friends and the children, and the incredible, enormous house for a long time and probably speak of it all often. Whereas Sally, and Mason, and the others would probably never mention, or even think of, Beau and Myra again. It was a realization that made me feel hollow.

  We were only two people extra that evening, but the slight formality of the occasion made it feel like more. The maids, under Christina’s icy-eyed supervision, were dipping in and out of the little knots we had formed, offering hors d’oeuvres.

  Maria twitched with pleasure. “Beautiful,” she said to me, rotating her hand to take in the room and slipping the last of a shrimp-filled pastry case into her mouth.

  I followed her gaze. I hadn’t been in this room much. None of us had. It was the kind of room a different crowd, in a different climate, might have retired to after dinner for coffee. As it was we usually ended up out by the pool.

  Maria was admiring a vast oriental bowl on a mahogany sideboard. She ran a tentative finger gently over its gold rim. A small, neat handbag dangled from her elbow.

  “I don’t think you’ve met my children, Señora,” said Sally, joining us. Jenny and Jessica were standing with her, in matching, pastel party dresses, each of them holding a hand. The image was, to me, incongruous: mother and daughters. Sally let go of the girls and nudged them forward, palms between their shoulder blades. “These are my two youngest.”

  “Jessica and Jenny Severance,” I said. “Nueve años. They’re nine.”

  Maria beamed.

  “Say buenas tardes to Señora Rodriguez,” I coaxed.

  “Buenas tardes, Señora Rodriguez,” they chirruped, pleased with themselves.

  “Ayee. Que bonitas.” Maria, rapt, reached out and gave Jessica’s blonde hair an admiring stroke. “Que bonitas niñas las dos. Veery beautiful,” she said to Sally. “Beautiful children.” Beautiful was her best word.

  “Delphina,” Howie announced, interrupting determinedly. He was wearing miniature grown-up clothes, a crisp white shirt and formal navy trousers. “Delphina,” he said again loudly at Maria’s side. She looked down at him, confused. I told her about the dolphins we’d seen from the boat. Howie had been repeating the word ever since.

  “Ahh, sí, delphina,” Maria said, beaming.

  Howie beamed back.

  I guided Maria around the room, while Mason did the same, taking an opposite figure-eight path, with Arturo. Even Paige and Lesley, I noticed, could manage a reasonably sophisticated level of light cocktail party chat.

  “You remember Mrs. Luke,” I said. “Patsy. And her husband Richard.”

  Patsy, despite her earlier mood and wordless disappearance to her room when we’d returned from the beach, fell into neat social step beside her husband. “Very nice to see you again, Señora Rodriguez,” she said, and Richard, leaning forward slightly, took Maria’s hand and echoed Patsy’s greeting.

  “Very nice,” Maria repeated, sending Arturo a swift, nervous glance over her shoulder. She was uncomfortable on such foreign ground, even with me by her side. Arturo was deep in amiable conversation with Sally. I watched as he said something to her and she laughed, tipping her head back but holding the drink in her hand perfectly still. I felt a prick of shock to see how soft her beauty turned under his attention.

  One of the maids, just then, brought Hudson in, freshly bathed and doughy in fluffy baby pajamas, to be kissed goodnight. Maria, delighted by the child, put her glass down so as better to clutch at his chubby face.

  “A fine boy,” said Arturo. Hudson had the whole room’s attention.

  “Thank you,” Richard said. “We think so.”

  Patsy smiled, gracious in her acceptance of the compliment.

  “Delphina,” Howie repeated, almost shouting now, to Arturo.

  Arturo, understanding, grinned, rubbed Howie’s head, and said, “Two fine boys.”

  Shortly afterward, they made an elegant exit, Maria holding my hands in hers for a moment before they left by the front door, standing open for once, and got into the large dark car that was waiting for them there.

  “Nice guy,” said Ned, coming back inside, refilling his glass, and freshening Bee Bee’s.

  “He is nice,” said Richard, dropping into a wicker chair and extending his legs. “In fact, I like them both.”

  “But then,” said Patsy with a small sigh, “Richard is not exactly fussy about who he takes a shine to.” She lifted the olive from her martini, put it into her mouth, and sucked at it theatrically for a moment before removing the pit and dropping it into an ashtray. “He’s like a little puppy dog,” she said. “He’ll just wag his tail and rub up against anybody.”

  In October, somewhere past the midpoint of this extraordinary journey that I am now near to completing, it was our anniversary. Phillip took me to the seaside, not half a day’s travel from home, though we stretched it to more than that, stopping for coffee on the way.

  It was one of those hot days that October in England’s south can sometimes deliver—rather cruelly, I think, since November inevitably introduces winter with a snap—and the sun through the windscreen was very warm. Phillip had worn a tweedy jacket and we pulled over so that he could get out and take it off. Standing in the sunshine at the roadside, the middle part of him, blue striped shirt and tan gabardine trousers, was framed in the doorway.

  I was struck by the fact that I loved him very much at that moment, loved the way that he gave the jacket a little shake before laying it in the backseat, loved the way that he ran his hand absently over his forehead, tidying his hair against the slight breeze. Strange how it ambushes you like that, love. That’s why it is so difficult to defend yourself from it, I suppose. I wanted to reach out just then and touch that blue shirt and feel the soft familiarity of the skin beneath.

  He leaned into the car to talk to me, squinting a little. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Comfortable?”

  I was.

  I knew that Josee and Phillip spoke on the telephone, not so often, but sometimes, at night, the door to Phillip’s study pulled closed. I had become sensitive to the click ever since one morning not long after the hanging-up incident, when waking early, I had walked into that room in our house that is most permeated with him, his maleness, his past, his secrets, and, in the gray light, lifted the telephone receiver and pressed redial. Josee’s voice had answered, not with the throaty tones of someone roused from sleep, but the brighter, slightly false notes of an answering machine.

  I had replaced the receiver instantly and stood fearful for a moment lest she returned the call, but she had not. After that I had wondered, did they write too? Were there love letters tucked in the packages of correspondence bundled up by his office and couriered to him? Did Carla, who had worked for him for six years now, recognize the hand? But I had begun to care not so much less as differently about these things. I was no longer obsessed with the business of my husband’s affair in that way that detaches one from reason, but interested in it instead, almost as one might be in a new and absorbing hobby. I felt as though I were discovering something, something important.

  It was the beginning of a new phase, the last phase, of our marriage.

  We were to spend our anniversary at a hotel that we had visited many times before, often, when Chloe was younger, making the trip just for a day, she and a friend in the backseat, swimsuits under their clothes. The hotel has a pool as well as beach access, and Phillip and I used to have lunch on the terrace so that the children could play in the water, clambering needlessly in and out the way that children do, while we ate. Today, I noticed as we pulled up, the pool was closed, sealed beneath a thick greenish rubber cover. I was pleased. Poolside images are vivid eno
ugh for me now.

  I wanted, before we went in, to walk a little on the shore. It took me many years to love the English ocean, and then, when I realized that I did, I could not pinpoint when the affection had begun. But anyway, somewhere along the way, I stopped yearning for the gemstone sparkle, or the breathless calm, or the warm embrace of other seas and fell for this one, with its pebble fringes and grubby little wavelets, only ever whipped to any sort of passion by bad weather. I came to like the salty damp and the slap of wind that so often accompanies beach visits in this country even in summertime and may have even absorbed some of that superiority with which the English turn misery into a challenge, with which they make everything that has an element of difficulty in it somehow better. What use to us are those easy beaches? Ours take work.

  At the water’s edge, on a beach that was empty but for a lone woman tossing sticks for a happy Labrador, I said, “Bring me here.”

  I meant my ashes. Phillip put his arms around me and told me that he would.

  We ate inside that day, by the window, looking out with that sort of middle-distance gaze that the sea elicits, and after we had ordered, Phillip gave me my present. It was an eternity ring, fashioned to match my engagement and wedding rings, emeralds and diamonds set flush to white gold. I gazed at it, snug in its leather box, for a long moment before he took it back from me and slid it onto the appropriate finger, above the ring his mother had supplied for our brief engagement. He held on to my hand then, and we looked at each other, love and sadness tangible, compressing my chest.