Summer’s End

couldn’t bear losing her, couldn’t bear it. Suddenly, the full force of it struck home. He reached for her unencumbered hand and pressed it hard. “Don’t ever, ever do that again!” His voice rose desperately. “Do you hear me?” She nodded again. And then there were tears pouring down his face as well. He sat down at her side. “I would die without you. Don’t you know that?”

There was no answer in her eyes. No, she didn’t know it. But it was true. He himself knew it for the first time. Now there were two of them. Deanna and Chantal. Two of them he owed a lifetime to, and he was only one man. He couldn’t live with himself if he put Deanna out of his life. And he couldn’t live without Chantal. The weight of it struck him like an axe. He saw her watching him. He was almost gray. “I love you, Chantal. Please, please don’t ever do anything like this again. Promise me!” He squeezed harder on the delicate hand.

“I promise.” It was a whisper in the sudden electricity of the room. Fighting the sobs that were rising in his chest, Marc-Edouard folded her gently into his arms.

By the end of the day, Deanna had chosen eleven paintings. It was going to be hard work selecting the rest. She set the eleven to one side and then walked back to the main part of the house. She was still thinking of her talk with Marc. She wondered if she would have defied him about the show if he hadn’t let Pilar buy the motorcycle. It was strange how those things worked. Their marriage was filled with petty revenges. She walked up the stairs to her bedroom and peered into the closet. What would she need? Another bathrobe, some jeans, the champagne- colored suede skirt that she was sure Ben would like. What was she doing here, in Marc’s bedroom planning her life with another man? Was she being menopausal or childish, as he’d suggested, or merely crazy? The phone rang as she stared into her closet, wondering. She didn’t even feel guilty anymore, except when she talked to Marc. The rest of the time she felt as though she belonged with Ben. The phone rang again and again. There was no one she wanted to talk to. She felt as though she had already moved out. But reluctantly, she picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Can I come get you? Are you ready to come home?” It was Ben. And it was only four-thirty.

“So early?” She smiled into the phone.

“You want some more time to work?” As though her work mattered, as though it were important, as though he understood.

But she shook her head. “Nope. I’m all through. I picked out eleven today. For the show.”

Her voice was strong, and he smiled. “I’m so proud of you I can hardly stand it. I told Sally today, about the show. We’re going to run a beautiful ad.”

Oh, Jesus, not an ad. What about Kim? She felt as though she were gasping for air when she spoke again. “Do you have to do an ad?”

“You let me handle my business, and you handle yours. Speaking of which, I’d like to handle…” His voice was very soft in the phone, and Deanna blushed.

“Stop that!”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in your office, and I’m-I’m here.”

“Well, if that’s all that’s stopping you, let’s both get the hell out of those repressive places. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Are you ready?”

“Desperately.” She couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Every moment she spent in it was oppressive.

“Desperate enough to go all the way to Carmel?”

“I’d love it.” Then: “What about your housekeeper?”

“Mrs. Meacham? She’ll be off.” It was disagreeable to be hiding like that, but he knew Deanna felt that she had no choice. She still wasn’t free. “Anyway, never mind Mrs. Meacham. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. And by the way, Deanna,” he paused while she waited, wondering what he would say; he sounded very solemn. Then his voice dropped again, and she almost could see him smile. “I love you.”

She smiled happily and closed her eyes. “So do I.”

The weekend in Carmel was heavenly. The Fourth of July. They spent all three days wandering on the beach, lying in the sun, looking for shells, and collecting driftwood, and once or twice braving the still-icy ocean for a quick swim.

She was already smiling to herself as he lay down next to her on the blanket, shivering from the sea. She had been soaking up the sun and improving her deep-honey tan.

“What are you smiling about, sleeping beauty?” His body was cool and damp next to hers, and his skin felt delicious as she turned and ran her fingers down his arm.

“I was just thinking that this is all rather like a honeymoon. Or a very good marriage.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had either one.”

“Didn’t you have a honeymoon?”

“Not really. We spent it in New York. She was an actress and she was in something off Broadway, so we spent a night at the Plaza in New York. When the play folded, we went up to New England.”

“Did the play have a long run?” She looked admiring, with her big, innocent, green eyes. Ben smiled.

“Three days.” They both laughed, and Ben moved onto his side, so he could look at Deanna. “Were you happy with Marc before I came along?”

“I thought I was. Sometimes. Sometimes I was terribly lonely. We don’t have a relationship like this. In a way we’re not really friends. We love each other, but… it’s very different.” She remembered their last conversation when he had told her not to show her work. He was still the voice of authority. “He doesn’t respect me the way you do- my work, my time, my ideas. But he needs me. He cares. In his own way he loves me.”

“And you love him?” His eyes searched her face. She didn’t answer immediately.

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about things like that. This is our summer.” There was reproach in her voice.

“But it’s also our life. There are some things I need to know.” He was strangely serious.

“You already know them, Ben.”

“What are you saying?”

“That he’s my husband.”

“That you won’t leave him?”

“I don’t know. Do you have to ask me that now?” Her eyes held an autumnal sorrow. “Can’t we just have what we know we can have, and then-”

“And then, what?”

“I don’t know yet, Ben.”

“And I promised I wouldn’t ask. But I find that increasingly difficult.”

“Believe it or not, so do I. My mind drifts to the end of the summer, and I ask myself questions I can’t answer. I keep hoping for an act of God, a miracle, something that will take the answers out of our hands.”

“So do I.” He smiled at her then and leaned over to kiss her lips again and again. “So do I.”

12

“Ben?” He smiled to himself as Deanna’s voice reached him from his spare room. It was late on a Sunday night, and they were just back from another weekend in Carmel.

“What? Need some help?” All he heard was a shout and a gurgle of laughter. She had been in there for over an hour. He climbed out of bed and went to see what was going on. As he opened the door to the spare room, in which he often worked, she was staggering to hold up a tenuously piled stack of canvases which had started to slide off a mountain of boxes propped against the wall.

“Help! It’s an avalanche.” She peeked out at him, a small paintbrush clenched in her teeth, and both arms held aloft, trying to keep the pile of paintings from crashing to the floor. “I came in here to sign a few that I noticed I had forgotten to sign, and…” She shoved the paintings aside as he lifted them from her arms. Then, his hands still filled with the mountain of her work, he bent his head to kiss the tip of her nose.

“Take the paintbrush out of your mouth.”

“What?” She looked at him with an expression of absentminded pleasure. She was still thinking about two of