Of course, she never said that to him. There were lots of things she never said to Buddy. Kathleen believed it was the secret of their marital happiness.
She’d known a man, once, to whom she had said everything that popped into her head, but that was years ago. Stan might be dead, for all she knew.
It was good to have Joyce to talk to.
She smiled at her husband, whose eyes were still clear and tender. “I love you, too.”
He leaned in to kiss her. A real kiss, mouth to mouth. He drew her toward him. Kathleen was flattered on the occasions Buddy got aroused. He reached around, holding her backside in his big hands, a move that still made her feel like a girl. She pushed into his embrace, feeling his erection.
“One second,” she said, and turned to get the lubricant from the drawer.
Kathleen woke up an hour later and found a stem of Sweet William on the pillow beside her. She stared at the red-and-white stripe of the flower and ran a finger around its pinking-shear edge. Does anyone still own pinking shears? she wondered.
She was restless. She hadn’t climaxed with Buddy. She reached under the sheet and touched herself. She tried to remember what it was about Stan that had been so tempting, so compelling. She had risked everything for those afternoons, each one thrilling not just for the sex, but also for the talk. Stan was a great talker, and she had never made anyone laugh so much. Now she couldn’t even remember what he looked like.
She closed her eyes, and Dr. Singh’s face materialized. Kathleen giggled. She wondered whether all his patients fantasized about him.
She thought of his full, cupid-bow lips. She remembered his hands on her. The nut-colored skin. Hands with long, tapered fingers, long, oval nails. Oh, those hands.
JULY
JOYCE spent another whole week behind the wheel of her car, working her way through a long list of errands in advance of Nina’s departure for camp. And then there was her daughter’s urgent social calendar: she had to sleep at Sylvie’s house; Rachel’s sleepover was the last one until September; going to the movies with Jesse was the only thing she wanted to do.
“What if I sit on the other side of the theater?” Joyce asked as she drove the girls to the multiplex. “You won’t even know I’m there.”
“I would, too, know it,” Nina snapped.
Joyce opened her mouth to argue, thought better of it, and said nothing.
Nina finally agreed to spend a few hours with Joyce, shopping for camp clothes. They bought sneakers and shorts at the sporting goods store without incident. The underwear purchase went smoothly, but at Old Navy, Joyce said, “Honey, I’m not going to spend forty-nine dollars on a pair of pants that are going to get wrecked at camp.”
“I am not going to wreck them,” said Nina, her eyes instantly glazed with furious tears. “These are the only ones that fit me.” She slammed the dressing-room-cubicle door.
A woman outside another door caught Joyce’s eye and shrugged. “They’re all like that,” she whispered. “They get better.”
“Promise?” Joyce whispered back.
The well-dressed stranger nodded as her daughter — tall, chubby, and pouting — walked out of another cubicle carrying a stack of jeans. “Nothing,” she said, glumly handing the jeans to her mother in a messy heap.
“Do I look like the maid?” the woman asked in a strangled voice that Joyce recognized. The girl shot her mother the Teenage Death Ray look, grabbed the pants, and shoved them at another sullen teenager wearing a headset, whose miserable job was to fold rejected items.
“Nina,” Joyce said softly through the door, “let’s just buy those pants and go home.”
Nina opened the door and smiled. “Thank you, Mommy.”
Joyce and Frank drove two cars to see Nina off. Side by side, they watched as the buses pulled away. “Seven weeks,” Frank said. “I don’t know whether to cry or cheer.”
Joyce nodded.
Frank took her hand. He chewed the inside of his lip. “She’ll come back more mature.”
Joyce, fighting tears, didn’t respond.
“You’re a great mom.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said. “Want to grab a cup of coffee?”
“Sorry, Joyce, I’m already late for a meeting that I can’t miss.” He kissed her on the cheek. “See you later?”