walked around the perimeter of the pool to the snack bar to place our order for lunch: tuna sandwiches and Diet Cokes for Jadey and me, grilled cheeses and lemonade for Ella and Winnie. The snack bar was essentially a glorified shed with a kitchen in the back and a counter where you ordered; whenever an unexpected storm broke out, most people got in their cars and went home, but the most optimistic would cram into the front of the snack bar, hoping the rain would pass.
When I carried our tray of food back to the lounge chairs, Ella and Winnie were huddled together on mine, both soaking wet. Seeing me approach, Winnie called, “Step lively, Aunt Alice—we’re starving!”
I distributed the food, and Winnie said, “Mom, when I’m finished, can I have an ice-cream bar?”
“Only if you bring me one, too,” Jadey said.
We made the girls wait an hour before going back in the water, and they wandered off toward the grassy stretch at the north end of the pool; as soon as they were out of earshot, Jadey whispered, “When I was their age, I
waited.” Jadey, like Charlie and Arthur, had grown up belonging to the country club, swimming in this pool. She’d told me that at her debutante ball, which had occurred at the club in June 1968, the theme had been “A Hawaiian Luau,” and she’d worn a strapless Hawaiian print dress and an orchid lei around her neck; guests had drunk fruit cocktails, eaten pineapple-and-shrimp kebabs and pig from a spit (it had roasted for hours ahead of time), and while there was a traditional twelve-piece dance band in the dining room, outside, a man with a ukulele had sat strumming on the high diving board.
“You know who walked by when you were getting the food is Joe Thayer,” Jadey said. “I was thinking I should have an affair with
”
“Jadey, he’s going through a divorce.”
“Oh, I love wounded men. I’ve often wished Arthur were more bruised by life. But what makes me wonder about Joe is that their daughter turned out so creepy, and she had to get it from somewhere, right?”
“Megan’s not creepy,” I said. “She’s nine years old.”
“I can’t
that girl.”
“Jadey!”
“Honest to God, last year at Halcyon, I was walking down to the dock and dropped this huge tray of snacks and drinks—everything went everywhere—and I’m cursing and picking it all back up, and then I look over and she’s been watching me the whole time, not saying a word. She wasn’t even laughing, she was just staring at me.”
“She’s a kid,” I protested.
“She’s a sociopath. Plus, Winnie said Megan once offered her a poop sandwich.”
I suppressed the urge to repeat Ella’s similar story. Poor Megan seemed to have enough problems without my gossiping about her, so I said, “I think you should talk to Arthur. I’m sure he knows you’re mad at him, but he probably doesn’t want to bring it up.”
Jadey was adjusting the back of the lounge chair again, flattening it, and she made a harrumphing sound and rolled onto her stomach. Her face was turned to me, half of it pressed against the chair’s vinyl straps. She said, “Did you have any idea marriage would be so damn much work? God almighty.” She’d removed her sunglasses before lying down, and her eyes dropped shut. In a drowsy voice, she said, “You still worried about Chas and his whiskey?”
“I may have been overreacting.”
“I forgot to watch him at Maj and Pee-Paw’s, maybe ’cause I was so busy knocking back the vino myself. You have any of that merlot?”
“I had a glass of the chardonnay.”
She opened her eyes, propping herself up on her elbows. “A glass?” she repeated. “As in one glass?” When I nodded, she said, “Honey, maybe it’s not that Chas needs to drink less. Maybe it’s that you need to drink more.”
WHEN I REMINDED Charlie on Monday morning that the Suttons were coming for lunch—Miss Ruby had called the evening before to confirm, and when I offered to pick them up, she’d said Yvonne would drive—he was shaving in front of the sink in our bathroom, and I was standing in the doorway. “No can do,” he said. “I’ve got an eleven o’clock tee time with Zeke and Cliff.”
“Charlie, I told you about this over a week ago.”
“Lindy, we’re making the offer to the Reismans tomorrow. With eighty-four mill at stake, don’t you think it’d be wise for us to dot some I’s and cross some T’s?”
“That’s what you’ll be doing on the golf course?” I folded my arms in front of me. “Don’t make me be a nag.”
He chortled. “Whether you’re a nag is up to you, but I’ve got an eleven o’clock appointment, and it would be unprofessional to miss it.”
I watched as he brought the razor down his right cheek, his mouth twisted to the left, and I felt such an intimate kind of anger. Was this what marriage was, the slow process of getting to know another individual far better than was advisable? Sometimes Charlie’s gestures and inflections were so mercilessly familiar that it was as if he were an extension of me, an element of my own personality over which I had little control.
