Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

The second time she passed the park, she saw the twins clearly. Again sitting in silence, alone with their ice cream, staring straight ahead, licking. Phoebe slowed down. She looked for Andrea’s car-or the Chief’s?-because what would the twins be doing all the way out here on their own? Phoebe parked in front of the market. It felt like her heart had a zipper that was being pulled up-and down. Up-and down. She did not see Andrea’s car. Nor the Chief’s. So maybe the kids had come on their bikes. All the way to Sconset? Was Andrea negligent?

The twins did not see Phoebe. They did not appear to see anything except their ice cream. Phoebe was overcome with the desire to make them smile. To make them happy. Could she do it? If she approached them, would they acknowledge her? Of course they would-she had known them their entire lives, she had spent countless Sundays in their presence. But how did they think of her? They called her Phoebe, not Auntie Phoebe, even though Delilah was Auntie Dee and Andrea was simply Auntie. So Phoebe was not Auntie Phoebe, that was okay, she wasn’t their aunt like Andrea was, nor was she the mother of their dearest friends like Delilah was. She was just some strange childless woman who hung out with their parents and who spent most of her time checked into the Dope Motel.

She was different now. Would they be able to tell?

Should she offer to take them to her house and let them swim in the pool? Up-and down. The twins! The thought thrilled her.

A girl walked out of the Sconset Market swigging from a bottle of Diet Pepsi, and the kids stood up and threw away their soiled napkins and the nubs of their cones. The girl was… Andrea. No. It was Kacy. Phoebe’s heart whistled. She let out a soft Sancerre burp. She was relieved that there was a responsible person out here with the twins. But she was deflated, too. The twins were darling and wholesome. They were Hansel and Gretel, and she, Phoebe, was some kind of witch.

Kacy and the twins extracted their bikes from the rack. The twins mounted their bikes and the bikes wobbled, like fawns standing on new legs. Then they balanced themselves, they pedaled and gained speed. They were steady and confident, and Phoebe smiled as she watched them go.

She wanted something, but it was not the twins.

It was like a bad dream. It was the middle of the night, pitch-black. Now that Phoebe was off the Ambien, she needed the shades drawn and the air-conditioning on full blast in order to sleep. But the storm woke her up. Lightning flashed around the edges of the shades and the thunder sounded like someone on the second floor was picking up large pieces of furniture and then letting them drop. That wasn’t the scary part, however. The scary part was Addison sitting up, eyes wide open, watching her. He was not wearing his glasses, and for a second, she didn’t recognize him.

“Jesus, Add!” she said. She liked even this, however: the ability to be startled, to be frightened.

He said, “The present.”

She said, “What?” Though she knew, right away.

“What was the anniversary present?” he said. “That you gave Tess?”

She looked at her husband. He was staring at her, but could he see her? She had an urge to… what? Jump out of bed and run into the storm? Run down to the basement and hide in her cedar closet?

“It’s none of your business,” Phoebe said. “Is it?” This last little bit was a dare on her part. If Tess is your business, tell me why. Tell me she was your lover. Tell me you were in love with her. But Phoebe didn’t want to hear him confess. She knew what she knew, but he didn’t know what she knew, and that meant it wasn’t real. Phoebe realized in that instant that with or without the drugs, she had always chosen to live in a fantasy world, and she wanted to keep it that way.

She touched Addison’s shoulder. He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and his flannel pajama pants; the AC was set at something like fifty degrees. It was so cold he claimed he could see his breath. He did not respond to her touch, even though it had become some kind of crazy rule (established, she knew, by crazy Phoebe) that they did not touch in bed. Her medication had not only sapped her sex drive, it had made her irrationally afraid of sex. Or she was afraid of sex because in recent years Addison had only pursued her when very drunk, when he was rough and he hurt her. They had had a lovely, tender sex life years and years ago, back when they were both different people. Now, along with everything else, Phoebe found herself interested in sex again. Her body resumed its humming rhythm; she had actually gotten a period, and even the blood and the cramping had seemed, if not wonderful, then at least natural and right. A return to life. She was a woman again.

It had occurred to her that what she wanted was a sex life, a sensual life. Hours with Addison where they touched and teased, kissed and stroked, gave each other massages and took candlelit baths. She wanted to climax under his finger, or with him pumping inside her. Would it be difficult to get something like this under way? Addison had tried everything both holistic and black-market to get Phoebe interested in sex again-porn videos, vibrators, scented oils, Barry White CDs, Anaïs Nin-and nothing had worked. Would it be the same now, only in reverse?

She stroked his arm with what she meant to be a suggestive up-and-down motion. Again her heart did its zippering and unzippering. Up-and down. She was pulsing between the legs.

“Do you want to make love?” she asked.

He looked at her. Again the empty, blind-man gaze. “I want you to tell me about the present.”

Thunder. A crack like a very big bone breaking, and then the rumble.

“I won’t.”

He fell onto his side as if shot. Phoebe would not accept this. She crossed the invisible boundary into Addison territory (he had the western half of the bed, she the eastern) and slid her hand beneath the drawstring waistband of his pajama pants. She touched him, hoping. But he was shriveled, flaccid. She retracted her hand and thought of apologizing.

And then Addison started to sob.

Still, she thought, she wanted something. If that something was Addison, she could wait it out; she could be as patient as he had been. She could fix their relationship-sew the head back onto the doll, rescue the fallen soufflé.

She found the poem-or it found her-on the hottest day of the summer. Addison came home from the office at four and said he wanted to stay in the pool until nightfall.

“Okay,” Phoebe said. “Just as long as you keep your head above water.” This was said lightly, though Phoebe worried that Addison would pour himself four or five bourbons, lie on his inflatable raft, fall asleep, and inadvertently slip to the bottom of the pool without her noticing. Another drowning.

He couldn’t get into his swim trunks fast enough. Addison, who was always fastidious, very sloppily emptied his pockets all over the granite countertops too close to where Phoebe was attempting both to brew iced tea and to shred a rotisserie chicken for chicken salad. Phoebe had never been much of a cook, but she had watched Delilah make chicken salad a hundred times (watched her through someone else’s prescription eyeglasses, it seemed now). It was easy. Shredded chicken, celery, chives, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and the secret ingredient, straight out of Mary Poppins-a spoonful of sugar. Tonight, Phoebe thought triumphantly, they would eat a dinner she’d prepared herself.

When Addison opened the door to go out to the pool (full Jack-over-ice in hand), the hot wind lifted the poem off the pile of debris evacuated from his pockets-the money, the change, the business cards, the single piece of root-beer-flavored hard candy, a couple of pieces of pilled red felt-and it wafted into the melee of ingredients that was to become the chicken salad.