Charles Dubow - Indiscretion

“Let me show you how it’s done, mate,” he says.

Claire pulls away from him, but he squats down, saying, “Come on.”

She climbs up without looking at him and just dives off, straight and clean. When she comes up, she says, “Can we go? I’m getting cold.”

The moment has passed. Claire wades back out of the water, shoulders hunched forward, an arm covering her breasts, a hand in front of her loins. She looks at nobody. No one looks at anyone as we hurriedly pull our clothes over our wet bodies. Our mood is postlapsarian.

We drive back to the house in silence. Even Cissy is quiet. When we get out, Claire and Clive hang back. It is obvious they are going to have a fight. The rest of us go inside.

That’s not entirely true. I linger just out of sight and overhear snatches of what they say. “Don’t touch me” and “Stupid cunt” and “Why don’t you just fuck him then?”

She comes in, crying, running past me to the kitchen. To Maddy.

“Is everything all right?” asks Harry. I say nothing, and Clive is standing in the hallway, looking angry. He wants to follow her but knows he can’t, an unbeliever in the temple.

Madeleine comes out. “Clive, Claire seems very upset. I know it’s late, and we’ve all had a lot to drink. But she asked if she could stay here tonight, and I told her she could.”

Clive stares at her, unsure of what to say, of how to react. The words he wants to say fail in his throat. His will is not as strong as Maddy’s.

She senses his frustration and puts a hand on his arm. “She’ll call you in the morning.”

When he gets outside the house, he will find his words again, he will rage, he will think black thoughts, call them all names. But not now. Standing before him is Madeleine, looking like a Madonna. Behind her, Harry, Ned, me. He has no chance. Now all he says is “Tell that cunt I don’t want to see her again,” and he leaves, his car spitting gravel as it drives off.

Inside, Maddy has her arm around Claire, who is apologizing over and over. Her face is wet with tears. Maddy consoles her. We all do. Or at least try to.

“See, I told you I didn’t like him,” I say, but all the thanks I get is a dirty look from Madeleine.

“Don’t you worry about it,” Harry tells Claire. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. If you need us to get your things from Clive’s, I’ll run over tomorrow. For tonight, we can loan you anything you need.”

“Thank you,” she sniffs.

“We are going to have to put you on the couch in the living room, if that’s all right. Ned and Cissy already have the guest room. We’ll get you pillows and sheets. You’ll be snug as a bug.”

I am about to suggest that she would be welcome to stay at my house, as there are plenty of empty bedrooms, but then think better of it.

“Please don’t go to any bother. I don’t mind at all. You’re being so kind. I just feel like such a fool.”

“Not at all,” says Harry. “I’ll be right back.” He goes upstairs and returns several minutes later with pillow, sheets, blankets, a towel, and a large gray T-shirt with the words YALE HOCKEY on it. “I figured you could use something to sleep in.”

Cissy and Madeleine begin to make up the couch. Harry wanders into the kitchen and starts rinsing glasses. I debate having a last drink but then decide against it. It’s already past one in the morning. Instead I say my good-byes, kiss Maddy good night, tell Claire to sleep well and that everything will look better in the morning, and head out to the familiar path that leads through the narrow strip of trees that separates our two houses.

I can imagine Claire, having calmed down, thanks to a few gulps of brandy, getting under the covers on the couch. Madeleine would be there, making sure her newest charge is comfortable and well looked after. Ned, Cissy, and Harry would have already gone up. Then Maddy would have left too, turning off lights, leaving Claire alone in her temporary bed, staring up at the ceiling, happy as a child.

SEVERAL WEEKS PASS. SUMMER RAGES ON. THE STREETS OF Manhattan bake in the fierce sunlight. To Claire, the breezes and salt water of Long Island are just a memory. She has been banished to the ordinary world, one inhabited by coworkers, college friends, deliverymen, strangers on the subway. Like Eurydice, she will never again walk in fields of flowers.

Claire has not seen the Winslows. There is no reason why she should. She returned to the city the day after her fight with Clive. Harry and Ned had gone to Clive’s to get her bag and retrieve her rental car, but when they pulled up, no one was home and her possessions had been thrown into the front seat.

Even though Harry and Madeleine had asked her to stay and been so kind, she felt like an intruder, a stranger taken in under false pretenses. She would forget about them. Their lives, which had temporarily intersected with hers, would now continue along a different path.

I thought about her on a few occasions during the days that followed. Hers was an unfinished story, and I wanted to know more of it. What would she do? What turns would her life take? And then it seemed she had disappeared for good.

Until one night Harry announces to Maddy and me over dinner in the kitchen, “I meant to tell you. Guess who I saw today?” He had been in New York, lunch with his agent, a few errands. “Claire.”

“How is she?” asks Maddy.

“She looked well. I was walking out of the restaurant and talking with Reuben, and all of a sudden, I almost knocked her down. What are the odds of that?”

“I liked her,” I say. “Poor thing was wasted on Clive. What a horse’s ass.”

“Maddy liked her too, didn’t you, sweetheart? At least I thought you did. We were standing there chatting about this and that, and she asked warmly after you both, and Johnny, and Ned and Cissy, and she looked a little blue, so I thought, what the hell, and invited her out for the weekend. At first, she said she couldn’t, but I insisted. Hope you don’t mind. She needs being taken in hand. Maddy, you’re just the person to do it, too.”

Maddy does love a project. Even as a child she was always taking in strays. I remember sitting up nights with her, helping her watch over a dying rabbit or chipmunk which the local cat (my cat, incidentally, but she never blamed me for it) had eviscerated. She would keep them warm, use an eyedropper to give them water, and inevitably bury them in the woods in one of my mother’s shoe boxes.

“I’m glad you invited her, darling,” she says. “But we can’t have her sleep on the couch again. Where will she sleep? Aren’t Ned and Cissy coming?”

“Don’t worry about that,” I offer. “They can stay with me. I have lots of room.”

“Great,” says Harry. “Thanks, Walter. And Ned and Cissy can give her a ride out.”

ON FRIDAY THEY ARRIVE, LATE. THE TRAFFIC IS PARTICULARLY hellish on Fridays, especially during the summer. What had been a ninety-or-so-minute drive in my childhood can now stretch out to three hours or more, even for people like me who know the back roads. The farms that used to line the roads are almost all gone. The old potato barns are nightclubs. The quaint little stores where I had once bought comic books and penny candy and donuts are high-end boutiques selling cashmere sweaters and virgin olive oil. Last year an Hermès opened in the old liquor store. The beach and the sunsets are just about the only things that haven’t changed.

Claire is greeted with hugs and kisses. Her face is bright with welcome. She looks lovely. “I brought this for you,” she says as she presents Madeleine with a large, brightly wrapped box.

“It’s heavy,” Madeleine says. “What is it?”