When I came downstairs dressed for Thanksgiving dinner, Winnie looked at me and said, “Thanksgiving, Jane. Not a wake.” I suppose Winnie could have used a little more tact, but that wouldn’t have been Winnie.
I already felt awkward. When I went through the clothes in my suitcases, I couldn’t find anything flattering. I had the green suit, but I didn’t think it was appropriate. I knew how I wanted to look, or had some vision of it. With the possibility of seeing Max again, I wanted to look self-assured. I should have worn the suit. If anyone could make clothes that would instill instant confidence, they’d make a fortune. Isn’t that what clothes are really about? I chose a black dress since, as everyone knows, you can wear black almost anywhere. I think the problem was that it was old and shapeless and my stockings were opaque. I usually wore tights, because they were more comfortable and so thick they hardly ever ran. My shoes were flat and sensible, which would have been fine on an ordinary day, but at the moment I was wishing for a bit of a heel. My wardrobe was a consequence of my own indifference. Once I met a woman who joined a Cuban religion, and when she became a priestess, she had to decide on one color to wear for the rest of her life. She chose white. I thought this was a wonderful plan, so simple. Black was my spiritual choice.
“Fashion magazines have just passed you by, haven’t they, Jane?” Winnie asked. She didn’t mean to insult me; she meant to improve me. Still, I didn’t know how she became such an authority, she of the powder blue jogging suit. This afternoon the jogging suit had been replaced by a paisley skirt and a matching sweater set with pearls. Her shoes were flat, but more like ballet slippers than the Doc Martens I was wearing. The pearls made her look very lady-of-the-manor. She wore matching earrings. It wasn’t that she looked good; it was that she looked right.
Charlie came downstairs in chinos and a sweater. He was balding a bit at the crown and not especially handsome, but he appeared solid and reliable and there is something attractive about that. You could find Charlie’s type in bars all over Boston lifting a beer and rooting for the home team. Max hadn’t been like that. He had the kind of good looks other men were wary of. Bentley had even mentioned it and Bentley himself was urbane and polished in his own drunken way. Bentley loved referring to Max as “Hubbell,” Robert Redford’s character in The Way We Were. “In a way he was like the country he lived in, everything came too easily to him,” Bentley would say.
“The man was living in a basement,” I reminded him.
“Oh, Jane, I never thought you were so lacking in imagination.”
“And in the movie Robert Redford was the living, breathing ideal of what the country had to offer, and it was Barbra Streisand, the Jewish one, who had to struggle.”
“She could have stopped struggling anytime,” Bentley said. “She just insisted on unhappiness. Some people do.”
“Maybe a scarf,” Winnie said. I hardly thought a scarf was going to turn me from plain Jane into a new, more extraordinary version of myself.
Winnie disappeared for a few minutes and when she came back she had a blue velvet scarf, still in its original package. When she hung it around my neck, I had to admit that it was an improvement.
Winnie stepped back and looked at me. “I’m very good at this,” she said. “I should start a business.”
Before we left for the big house (which is what Winnie called the senior Maples’ five-bedroom farmhouse), I rushed back to my room. It was at the back of the house and had a view of the field between the two houses. The smell of manure didn’t bother me. I liked it. It was mixed with the smell of hay, and fallen leaves, wood-burning fires, and autumn. My room in Winnie’s house was white and blue, the furniture was Shaker style and simple. It was a calm room, with a desk, a large shabby chair, and a generous ottoman where I liked to put my books, my journal, my glasses, and the stories I was reading.
I sat at the desk and picked up the phone to call Bentley to wish him a happy Thanksgiving. He didn’t pick up so I left a message. It occurred to me to call Teddy and Miranda. They weren’t there either, and when I spoke to their machine I pretended that it was both of us, Winnie and I, who had thought to call them. Priscilla was at her sister’s and I had misplaced the number.
The five of us, Winnie, Charlie, the two boys, and I, walked across the field. The older Maples had placed a walkway of fieldstones between the houses, because without them there were times when you would find yourself ankle deep in mud. I remembered those muddy March days from my years at Wellesley when there was nothing you could do but slog through it. We called it “the ubiquitous mud.” That reminded me that I was scheduled to speak at Wellesley after New Year’s. It was over a month away and I was already nervous, but that was nothing compared with the way I felt about the possibility of seeing Max again.
Winnie insisted on carrying all five pies, and when they were piled into her arms they reached the tip of her nose.
“I don’t want your mother to think we are coming empty-handed,” she said.
“We aren’t coming empty-handed,” Charlie said. “What does it matter who carries them?”
“You know your mother. I don’t want her to think I’m being lazy.”
“My mother would never think that,” Charlie said. Lights were on in every window in the house. It was a chilly afternoon and the sun had given up trying to make an impression.
Marion Maple came to the door and opened it wide.
“Come in, come in. We’re all starving,” she said.
“But this is what time you told us to come, Marion,” Winnie said.
“Yes, dear, of course.” Marion kissed Winnie on the forehead. Marion had a substantial body, generous in all areas. She wore an ankle-length velvet skirt. She reminded me of a jolly Mrs. Claus. Marion turned to me. “You’re looking especially well, Jane.” She had to say it, though I knew it wasn’t true. I was looking the same as I always looked—unadorned.
“Thank you,” I said.
Lindsay and Heather came rushing toward us from the recesses of the house. They scooped up their nephews and smothered them with kisses that the boys suffered without complaint, though when they were finally left alone, I saw Theo wipe his cheek with the back of his hand.
“Jane, we’re so glad you’ve come,” Lindsay said. “Have you met any famous authors lately?” I often met famous authors. Sometimes I published them in the Review, but I had no recent stories to tell. “I’ve been writing fiction at school,” Lindsay said. “Experimental stuff really.”
I wasn’t fond of “experimental stuff.”
“That’s wonderful, Lindsay,” I said. Heather and Lindsay were both wearing short plaid skirts that made them look like they were fresh from the lacrosse field.
“Lindsay can’t wait,” Heather said.
“For what?” I asked. Charlie handed me a cup of mulled cider.
“Didn’t Charlie tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That Max Wellman, the famous author, might come for dessert. You know, he wrote that book Duet for One that they made into a movie.”
“I only said might,” Charlie said. “He’s in the city and might not feel like driving out.”
“I hear he’s absolutely knock-down, drop-dead gorgeous,” Heather said.
“I’m the one with an interest in writing,” Lindsay reminded her.
“I’m talking about an interest in men,” Heather said.
“Isn’t he a little old for you girls?” I asked. They were only in their early twenties and Max was my age.
“What’s a few years when a man is gorgeous and successful?” Lindsay asked. “I think a man that age is looking for someone young and energetic.”
And fertile, I thought.
“Lindsay, you haven’t even met the man and you’re ready to marry him,” Marion said, laughing. She had two red circles on her cheeks from sitting too close to the fire.
Marion was able to sit because she had hired a woman named Gabriella to make and serve the meal. We were all so used to having help. Sometimes I wondered if it wouldn’t be better for us to do it ourselves. I wouldn’t have minded having a job to do. I needed something to distract me. Lindsay’s argument seemed so obviously true: why wouldn’t Max, having exhausted every supermodel in New York, come back looking for the right girl with whom to start a family, and why wouldn’t he look for someone young?
Both Lindsay and Heather were good choices. They were the sisters of an old friend and came from a welcoming sort of family. Lindsay and Heather were both very pretty in the way that youth has of being pretty—unself-conscious, lithe, athletic. They were both lacrosse stars at Wheaton. Maybe Lindsay was the more attractive one, with her straight red hair and green eyes, but Heather had plenty to recommend her. She was a little shorter than Lindsay and her hair was dark and curly. Her eyes were blue with a green tinge and she had a warmth about her. In that way, she reminded me of Marion, and maybe Heather would someday attain her girth, but for now both girls were just as lovely as any man could wish for.
The wine flowed at dinner and I helped myself every time it was offered. By the time we gathered around the fire in the living room I was teetering on the edge of being drunk. It started to snow lightly and we were the picture of a happy family on Thanksgiving. The television was on in the corner so we could watch the football games, but other than that, we looked like a family might have looked before television was invented. We fell into the soft chairs and sofas. I stared at the fire. The snow probably meant that Max wouldn’t be coming, so I settled down to what I thought would be a dull but predictable evening.
I felt displaced and melancholy, but as the “extra” woman soon learns, these feelings must be kept to herself. What she turns on the world has to be a false and happy face. A social face. It’s what everyone expects, and after a while it becomes what she expects from herself. The role of the single woman when attaching herself to another person’s family is to be cheerful and helpful. The idea is to get yourself invited again so you can be just as miserable as you were the last time you were there.
The Maples were open and hospitable and everything a family should be, but I didn’t have much in common with them. They weren’t a bookish group, despite Lindsay’s literary pretensions. And I, for better or worse, always felt most at home in a book. This might have been a social weakness, but it was also my greatest strength. It gave me my purpose. Without my feeling for words, I would have no center. When I started the Euphemia Review, I was fairly sure I had no genius of my own, but the irony was that I did have a genius—I had a genius for nurturing genius.
It was important to have a purpose. Winnie had her husband and children, and as soon as you have children, you can stop looking for a purpose in life. Your purpose is always there, running around, messing up diapers, needing food, education, toys, and experience. Children are a built-in purpose. Maybe that’s why so many people have them.
Heather and Lindsay were talking about a girl who was leaving school to get married.
“She’s only been there two years,” Heather said.
“Hasn’t even picked a major yet,” Lindsay said.
“I don’t think I’d do that. Not for any man.”
“I don’t know,” Lindsay said. “I think I’m going to be a writer, and a writer works mainly from experience, isn’t that true, Jane?”
“An education never hurts,” I said. God, I felt old. I would have liked to agree with her. I would have liked to be silly and frivolous, but I knew few writers—though there were some—who hadn’t had good educations.
“Hear, hear!” Marion said, lifting her glass. “Thank God for Jane and her good common sense.”
It should have made me feel proud, I suppose, to be known for my “good common sense,” but it didn’t. It was like being known for your “good sensible shoes” when you hankered after stilettos.
I got up and went into the kitchen where I found some dark rum on the counter and poured it into my hot cider. Gabriella was counting measures of coffee into the coffeemaker.
“Hello, Gabriella. How are you?” I asked. I knew her from other family parties. She was a fixture at the Maples’ house, though she didn’t live there. She had her own family in a working-class town a few miles away. I wondered what they were doing for Thanksgiving.
“There is more rum in the back cabinet,” she said, “for when you run out.” It was as if she knew I’d need more than the dregs of that bottle.
“Do you need some help with dessert?” I asked. “I could pile cups on a tray or fold the napkins.”
Gabriella turned from the counter and put her hand on her hip. She smiled. In my muddled state, I had the brief fantasy that only Gabriella understood me, that I’d be okay so long as I stayed in the kitchen.
“Are you a little drunk, Jane?” Gabriella asked.
“Not as drunk as I intend to be,” I said. I twisted one foot up against the other like a little kid caught doing something naughty.
“You’d better go back and sit down.” I left the warmth and brightness of the kitchen and returned to the living room.
“Anyway, I suppose he won’t come now,” Heather was saying when I slumped back into my chair.
Charlie looked up from the television. “If not this time, there’ll be another,” he said. “I’m going to sell him a house. He’ll be around.”
“He may be famous,” Marion said, “but is he a nice person? Don’t you think that’s the real question?”
“I’m sure he’s nice enough,” Lindsay said. “Writers don’t always have to be nice. They’re artists.”
The snow continued to fall. Just as I was settling down to my fourth spiked cider and comfortable with the idea that Max wasn’t coming, the doorbell rang.
“It’s him,” Lindsay said. She jumped from her seat.
“Calm down,” Charlie said.
“Really, girls. He’s just a man,” Charles Sr. said without looking up from the television.
“Well, it’s not like we have celebrities showing up on our doorstep every day of the week,” Marion said. She adjusted her bulk so that she was sitting straight on the edge of her chair. The girls looked like racehorses ready to burst through the starting gate. Charlie put out a restraining hand and went to the front hall.
There was the noise of greeting. A coat must be removed. A bottle of expensive wine must be handed over.
And then, there he was.
He was introduced to everyone.
I was last.
“Yes, Jane and I have met,” he said. He extended his hand. “Hello, Jane.” We might as well have been acquaintances who had bumped into each other once at a literary function.
His voice brought me right back to when I’d first known him. It had always affected me like a shot of adrenaline. He didn’t look exactly the same; he was thinner. He was more fit than he’d been, but I had liked him the way he was before, a little bulky, not fat, but solid.
“It’s good to see you again, Max,” I said with all the courage of a stout rum. Good to see him? It was great. It was as if his presence brought back every happy memory I’d ever had. But he was cavalier and distant. He acted as if I were almost a stranger.
Had I expected more? How could I have expected more?
“Well,” Marion said, “now that Max is here, I guess it’s time for dessert.”
“You didn’t wait on me?” he asked. This was an expression a New Yorker would use. Some of the Boston in him, even some of his accent, was gone.
“We were so full. We were waiting for dessert anyway,” Lindsay said.
We took our seats in the dining room, all of us, except for the boys, who had gone upstairs to play. Max was guided to a chair at the foot of the table. Heather and Lindsay sat on either side of him. Winnie and I were relegated to chairs nearer Charles Sr., who sat at the table’s head. Winnie looked sour. I could tell she was annoyed to be exiled so far away from our special guest, but I was relieved.
“So why have you come back to Boston?” Heather asked.
“I’m here for Thanksgiving.” Max stated the obvious, which allowed him to give an answer without really giving one.
She colored. “But Charlie says you’re looking for a house.”
“I am.”
“What they want to know, Max, and let’s just get it right out on the table with those pies, is do you have a girlfriend?” Marion asked.
“Mother!” both girls choked.
Max smiled. He had a few lines around his eyes. His hair was still thick and still that sandy color that looked greenish in certain lights and brought out the green in his eyes.
“Lindsay wants to be a writer,” Heather said.
“Heather. He doesn’t want to hear about that,” Lindsay said.
“I do,” he said. He had developed a way of giving whomever he was talking to all of his attention. I’d heard that this ability was usually found in movie stars and politicians.
Heather cut Max a piece of pie. Between Heather and Lindsay he was supplied with pie for a solid hour and he ate every piece that was put in front of him.
“Well, I’m not a very good writer, not yet,” Lindsay said.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Max said. “Would you like me to read something?” He was more generous than I was. Of course, he had different motivation. Lindsay was particularly pretty when she cocked her head and smiled at him the way she smiled then.
“I couldn’t think of asking that. I couldn’t take your time,” she said.
“I don’t mind.” He ate a forkful of pumpkin pie. “I’ll be staying with my sister through New Year’s. I’m taking a long vacation and I’d be happy to read something.”
Lindsay put her hand to her chest. “Oh my God, you are the coolest.”
She swung her long red hair. I wondered if he would have been so quick to read something by a chunky girl with bad teeth.
He finished his pumpkin pie and Lindsay supplied him with a piece of apple.
“Charlie, when are you free to go looking at houses?” Max asked.
“Any time, Max. I’m at your disposal.” That was Charlie’s business voice. I’d heard him use it many times. “We could go tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, then. What will you girls be doing tomorrow?” Max asked.
Winnie, from the end of the table, said, “Jane and I are going shopping.”
“You are?” Charlie said. “What for?”
“Christmas, silly. Never too soon to get started.”
Max had been addressing Lindsay and Heather, but Winnie wanted to get into the conversation, so she took the only opening she could get.
“We might drive up north to go skiing for the day,” Lindsay said.
“You never told me that,” Marion said. “I thought you’d be here.”
“I just thought of it.”
“I think you should stay home,” Marion said. “I don’t get to see you girls nearly enough.” They came home at least twice a month, sometimes more.
“And you’re not such a great skier,” Heather said. Lindsay shot her a look.
“Why not spend the day writing?” Heather asked. “You have the whole day.”
“Yes, that would be fun.” Lindsay’s enthusiasm was forced, and when she thought no one was watching she gave her sister a dirty look.
“Tomorrow night Lindsay and I are meeting some of our college friends at a club in Boston. Why don’t you meet us there,” Heather said to Max.
“Why would he want to do that?” Charlie asked.
“It sounds fun,” Max said. “What time are you going?”
“We’ll be there at ten,” Heather said.
“That’s a little late for an old guy like me.” Max winked.
“Come on. We’ve read all about you. You go to all the best clubs in New York,” Lindsay said. That was an understatement. He had a reputation for being the biggest womanizer in Manhattan. The Literary Lothario.
“So I’m found out. I guess I’ll have to come.”
“Don’t forget,” Lindsay said. She put her hand over his and looked into his eyes.
The whole display was nauseating under any circumstance and I might have left the room to vomit, but I was on my seventh rum and cider and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand up.
I had never wanted to believe Max’s reputation. Magazines and newspapers aren’t always right. It could have just been a publicist’s way of getting him extra attention.
Watching him now, with his eyes boring a hole right through Lindsay’s head, I wasn’t so sure. He had definitely changed, but there was no way of telling how much.
Fortunately, dessert went on until late, and by the time the pies had been decimated, I could walk without falling over. Max had barely looked at me all evening. The few times our eyes met, we both looked away. Max was the first to leave, so at least he didn’t see me hobbling drunkenly over the flagstones on my way back to the house.
The children had already fallen asleep, so they stayed behind with their grandparents.
Winnie let me lean on her as we walked across the field. She gave me an odd look.
“Jane, I think you’re drunk.”
“Yes.”
“You hardly ever get drunk. I can’t remember the last time you were.” She paused. “That Max Wellman is quite the ladies’ man,” she added.
“That’s what they say.” My ankle twisted, but I didn’t fall. It was dark. We should have brought a flashlight.
“I thought you said you knew him,” she said.
“I did.”
“He said he would barely have recognized you.”
We were going up the walk when I tumbled into the shrubbery. I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Winnie and Charlie reached down to help me up, but each time they pulled me up, I fell back.
“Jane, I think you’re hysterical,” Charlie said, but he was laughing, too.
“You’re battering our bushes,” Winnie said.
I let them pull me from the hedge and help me upstairs. I remembered dragging the drunken Bentley up the stairs that first night with Max. I had no sympathy for Bentley then. I couldn’t understand an Evan Bentley who felt, at thirty-five, as if his best days were behind him, but then I hadn’t even tried.