“Don’t be silly.”
He puts his hands around my shoulders. “You’ll be picture-perfect, honey. You always are.” He smells of Brylcreem and soap. Of mint toothpaste covering the hint of stale cigarette on his breath. They were probably smoking on the long road from New York, he and Pepper, while Caspian, who doesn’t smoke, sat in the passenger seat and watched the road ahead. He kisses me on the lips. “How are you feeling? Back to normal?”
“I’m fine. Not quite back to normal, exactly. But fine.”
“I’m sorry I had to leave so soon.”
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t expecting the world to stop.”
“We’ll try again, as soon as you’re ready. Just another bump on the road.”
“If you tell me you’re just sure it will take this time,” I tell him, “I’ll slap you.”
He laughs. “Granny again?”
“Your impossibly fertile family. Do you know, there are at least four babies here this week, the last time I counted?”
Frank gathers me close. “I’m sorry. You’re such a trouper, Tiny.”
“It’s all right. I can’t blame other people for having babies, can I?”
He sighs, deep enough to lift me up and down on his chest. “Honey, I know this doesn’t make it any better. But I promise you we’ll have one of our own. We’ll just keep trying. Call in the best doctors, if we have to.”
His kindness undoes me. I lift my thumb to my eyes, so as not to spoil his shirt with any sodden traces of makeup. “Yes, of course.”
“Don’t cry, honey. We’ll do whatever it takes.”
“It’s just … I just …” Want it so badly. Want a baby of my own, a person of my own, an exchange of whole and uncomplicated love that belongs solely to me. If we have a baby, everything will be fine, because nothing else will matter.
“I know, darling. I know.”
He pats my back. Something wet touches my ankle, through my stocking, and I realize that Percy has jumped from the bed, and now attempts to comfort my foot. Frank’s body is startlingly warm beneath his shirt, warm enough to singe, and I realize how cold my own skin must be. I gather myself upward, but I don’t pull away. I don’t want Frank to see my face.
“All better?” He loosens his arms and shifts his weight back to his heels.
“Yes. All better.” But still I hold on, not quite ready to release his warmth. “So tell me about your cousin.”
“Cap.”
“Yes, Cap. He has a sister, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. But she’s staying in San Diego. Her girls aren’t out of school for the summer until next week.”
“And everything else is all right with him? He’s recovered from … all that?”
“Seems so. Same old Cap. A little quieter, maybe.”
“Anything I should know? You know, physical limitations?” I glance at my dresser drawer. “Money problems?”
Frank flinches. “Money problems? What makes you ask that?”
“Well, I don’t want to say anything awkward. And I know some of the cousins are better off than the others.”
He gives me a last pat and disengages me from his arms. “He’s fine, as far as I know. Both parents gone, so he’s got their money. Whatever that was. Anyway, he’s not a big spender.”
“How do you know?”
“I went out with him last night, remember? You can tell a lot about a man on a night out.”
Frank winks and heads back to the wardrobe, whistling a few notes. I look down at Percy’s anxious face, his tail sliding back and forth along the rug, and I kneel down to wrap one arm around his doggy shoulders. Frank, still whistling, slips on his deck shoes and slides his belt through its loops.
Don’t settle for less than the best, darling, my mother used to tell me, swishing her afternoon drink around the glass, and I haven’t, have I? Settled for less, that is. Frank’s the best there is. Just look at him. Aren’t I fortunate that my husband stays trim like that, when so many husbands let themselves go? When so many husbands allow their marital contentment to expand like round, firm balloons into their bellies. But Frank stays active. He walks to his office every day; he sails and swims and golfs and plays all the right sports, the ones with racquets. He has a tennis player’s body, five foot eleven without shoes, lean and efficient, nearly convex from hip bone to hip bone. A thing to watch, when he’s out on the court. Or in the swimming pool, for that matter, the one tucked discreetly in the crook of the Big House’s elbow, out of sight from both driveway and beach.
He shuts the wardrobe door and turns to me. “Are you sure you won’t come out on the water?”
“No, thanks. You go on ahead.” I rise from the rug and roll Percy’s silky ear around my fingers.
On his way to the door, Frank pauses to drop another kiss on my cheek, and for some reason—related perhaps to the photograph sitting in my drawer, related perhaps to the key in Frank’s suitcase, related perhaps to my sister or his grandmother or our lost baby or God knows—I clutch at the hand Frank places on my shoulder.
He tilts his head. “Everything all right, darling?”
There is no possibility, no universe existing in which I could tell him the truth. At my side, Percy lowers himself to the floor and thumps his tail against the rug, staring at the two of us as if a miraculous biscuit might drop from someone’s fingers at any moment.
I finger my pearls and smile serenely. “Perfectly fine, Frank. Drinks at six. Don’t forget.”
The smile Frank returns me is white and sure and minty fresh. He picks up my other hand and kisses it.
“As if I could.”
He avoided Boylan’s the next day, and the next. On the third day, he arrived at nine thirty, ordered coffee, and left at nine forty-five, feeling sick. He spent the day photographing bums near Long Wharf, and in the evening he picked up a girl at a bar and went back to her place in Charlestown. She poured them both shots of Jägermeister and unbuttoned his shirt. Outside the window, a neon sign flashed pink and blue on his skin. “Wow. Is that a scar?” she said, touching his shoulder, and he looked down at her false eyelashes, her smudged lips, her breasts sagging casually out of her brassiere, and he set down the glass untouched and walked out of the apartment.
He was no saint, God knew. But he wasn’t going to screw a girl in cold blood, not right there in the middle of peacetime Boston.
On the fourth day, he visited his grandmother in Brookline, in her handsome brick house that smelled of lilies and polish.
“It’s about time.” She offered him a thin-skinned cheek. “Have you eaten breakfast?”
“A while ago.” He kissed her and walked to the window. The street outside was lined with quiet trees and sunshine. It was the last day of the heat wave, so the weatherman said, and the last day was always the worst. The warmth shimmered upward from the pavement to wilt the new green leaves. A sleek black Cadillac cruised past, but his grandmother’s sash windows were so well made he didn’t even hear it. Or maybe his hearing was going. Too much noise.
“You and your early hours. I suppose you learned