Elin Hilderbrand - The Surfing Lesson

“Nobody knows where it comes from,” he said. “And nobody knows where it goes.”

Where does it go? Margot wondered.

That night, after the kids were in bed and Margot and Drum were sharing the bathroom, washing the stickiness from their hands, Margot said, “Who’s Elvis?”

Drum said, “This guy.”

Margot waited him out. He knew that answer wasn’t close to sufficient.

Drum said, “He was always cool with me. He developed a little bit of an obsession with Hadley, I guess. Called her all the time, sometimes didn’t say anything, just breathed into the phone. Drove his pickup back and forth in front of her rental house, showed up at the gallery where she worked, that kind of thing.”

“And this was…? Before you? After you? During Colin?”

“Oh, God,” Drum said. “Who can remember?”

The winter of the drunken late-night phone calls-which was the winter after the summer that Margot and Drum had first dated, which was also the summer that Hadley had taken a break from Colin, reunited with Drum, then left Drum and returned to Colin-Hadley traveled out to Aspen on the sly. She showed up at the Aspen Club Lodge, where Drum was working the night desk in exchange for a season’s ski pass, and they shacked up together for a week, until Colin appeared, banging on the door, claiming to have a gun. Drum said he knew Colin didn’t have a gun, he knew Colin was just sad, and desperate at the thought of losing Hadley, and so Drum opened the door and let Colin in. Margot imagined some kind of hairy scene where Drum and Colin battled over Hadley, but Drum said it was low drama. Drum explained to Colin that he and Hadley had had some unfinished emotional business, but that it had been brought to a close. Hadley was free to go with Colin if that was what she wanted. Drum was going to pursue this other girl he’d met, a girl who lived in New York.

Drum and Hadley, Hadley and Colin, Drum and Margot, Drum and Hadley, Hadley and Colin, Hadley and Jan Jaap, Colin in Hawaii hiking the ridges of active volcanoes and drinking mai tais with the descendants of Princess Kaiulani, Hadley and the Private Equity Guy who shopped for her at Hermès, Margot who had spent the past eighteen months wondering where love went when it left, where could she find it, how could she get it back?

In bed, she said, “I’m glad you’re giving Curtis a surfing lesson tomorrow.”

Drum said, “I’m not.”

Their life in New York had been enviable from the outside, she supposed. Drum’s parents had bought them an apartment on East Seventy-Third Street, a spacious three-bedroom in a prewar building with good water pressure and crown molding and a responsive superintendent. Margot worked at Miller, Sawtooth, and Drum cared for the kids practically the same day she popped them out. Margot expressed milk in her office between meetings, and Drum would wait in the lobby of her building for Margot’s assistant to run the bottles down to him. Drum changed the diapers, he hand-puréed baby food, he took the boys to the playground and to their baby classes in Spanish and classical music. He did the shopping and all of the cooking and the laundry. On his downtime, he smoked weed and watched Warren Miller films. Once the kids were in school, he took up running; he dropped fifteen pounds. He spent time on the Internet planning their vacations to Costa Rica and Park City to surf and ski. On these vacations, Margot cared for the kids while Drum did his thing-eight to ten hours a day on the water or the slopes. Margot wanted to complain, but she knew that, for Drum, this was working. It was professional fulfillment.

Meanwhile, Margot toiled and strove and accomplished at Miller, Sawtooth. She appreciated the foot rubs and the glass of chardonnay when she got home, and the hot mushroom strudel with arugula salad at her place at the dinner table, but sometimes she looked at Drum and thought, Why are you slaving over me this way? Why don’t you get something for yourself?

They became friends with a couple named Teresa and Avery Benedict, the parents of Maurice, who was Drum Jr.’s best buddy at preschool. Teresa and Drum Sr. had forged the friendship; they started going for coffee after dropping off the kids. Sometimes they hung out together all morning-shopping, going for lunch. Teresa bought Drum Sr. a gift subscription to Bon Appétit; the two of them shared recipes. The two of them-Margot was sure-complained about their spouses and the obscene hours they worked and how grouchy they were when they came home. Margot wondered if Teresa and Drum Sr. were having an affair. And then one day she realized she wanted them to have an affair-she wanted them to drop the kids off at school and go back to one apartment or the other and fuck until they were sweaty and seeing stars.

Margot once said, “So, what do you think of Teresa?”

Drum said, “What do you mean, what do I think? ”

“You like her, right?”

“Yes, I like her. Of course I like her. She’s cool.”

“Do you ever…”

“Do I ever what, Margot?”

“Do you ever…”

“No,” Drum said. “I don’t.”

There were other tense conversations, whispered late at night, after the boys were asleep.

Margot said: It’s exhausting, you know, being the only one who brings home a paycheck.

Drum said: You don’t have to work as hard as you do, Margot. The apartment is paid for. You could make half of what you do and we’d be fine.

This infuriated Margot, mostly because he was correct.

Margot said: I like working hard. I love my job. I want to make partner.

Drum said: Okay, so then why are you complaining?

Why was she complaining? Drum was taking care of the home front so she didn’t have to. He was a classic 1950s housewife, but better because he was handsome and sexy and everyone loved him. He wore flip-flops and Ron Jon T-shirts, even in December. Margot wasn’t sure what the problem was. If pressed, she might say it was Drum’s lack of ambition. He seemed to expect nothing from his days but smiles on his kids’ faces and a good dinner. Wasn’t a grown man, a man thirty-five and then forty, supposed to want more?

She said to him one night, “It’s like you don’t have dreams.”

“Dreams?” he said.

Then Margot’s mother, Beth Carmichael, was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, and Margot’s world was thrown into a tailspin.

In one of the last conversations with her mother, Beth had grasped Margot’s hand and said, “All a mother wants, Margot, is for her children to be happy. And that may take different forms at different times.”

“I am happy, Mom,” Margot said.

Beth had seemed unconvinced. But that could have been the morphine at work. Margot said, “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Beth said, “Ever since you were a little girl, you’ve been too hard on yourself. It’s the curse of the firstborn. You need to cut yourself some slack, allow for your imperfect moments. You need to be your own best friend.”

Margot had squeezed her mother’s hand. “I have a best friend,” she said. “It’s you.”

“Oh honey, I know,” Beth said, and her eyes fluttered closed. “Just listen to me.”

When her mother died, Margot cleaved to Drum. She couldn’t get him close enough; she wanted to inhabit his body. She wanted him to absorb her pain, to sop it up like a spill on the counter.

During this period of grief and renewed closeness, Margot got pregnant again-with Ellie. To have a daughter and not have her mother to share it with? God, the pain! When the doctor placed Ellie in Margot’s arms, Margot gazed up at Drum and burst into tears. And he had wept right along with her and said, “I know, babe. I know. She should be here.”