The Sun in Your Eyes Page 12

  “We didn’t build infidelity into our relationship.”

  “Right. Andy would never stray.”

  Lee’s pronouncements on my husband’s nature made me feel proprietary toward him, even toward his capacity to be unfaithful. Her presumptuousness bothered me, as if deep down she knew Andy better than I did.

  “Remember that night you met Rodgers? The night that Andy and I—”

  I cut her off. “Yes.”

  “Well. Andy wasn’t that into it. I mean, he was into it but he wasn’t—this is going to sound awful—he wasn’t as grateful—as I expected him to be?”

  I didn’t want to hear this. But, perversely, I did.

  “Yeah, well, Andy’s not an idiot,” I said. “He knew he was being used.” Could you extricate utility from friendship? It would be like trying to remove the egg from a soufflé.

  “That’s what I mean. He let me use him and then he let me know he was letting me use him. In a kind way. All I’m saying is Andy is a kind person. He doesn’t hurt people on purpose.”

  “But I do?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  I thought she might be about to say that she was the one who hurt people on purpose, but she didn’t say that.

  “I know you. And I think I still know Andy. And I think you two are going to be fine.”

  Reflexively, I wanted to ask her if she was so sure about that. But at heart, I wanted her to be right, wanted us to be fine. Part of me also wanted to believe she still knew me as no one else, not even Andy, did. When Andy and I were planning our wedding, Lee flew in from California early in the week. I imagined that she would steady me but also provide an escape during the tense days leading up to the event. She would save me from the surprisingly unrelenting demands of my mother. I had the thought that if Lee wasn’t there, the wedding wouldn’t be as worthwhile. That if she was there and impressed by it, it would mean more. The wedding, when I considered it in this light, didn’t have all that much to do with Andy. Kirsten, her tea lights, and her vintage dress, came to mind and instead of striking me as shallow and superficial, her approach to matrimony impressed itself upon me as a model. I confessed this to Lee.

  “You’re not fetishizing an aesthetic in order to distance yourself from real human feeling.”

  “You make Kirsten sound like a fascist.”

  “A pretty, put-together fascist. Whatever else is going on, don’t the trains always run on time for that girl?”

  “Whereas you and I get stuck in stalled cars.”

  “You get stuck. I get fucking derailed.” She released the curling iron and my hair fell into what Kirsten, guest-blogging on a lifestyle site, would call loose, romantic waves. “Oh, perfect,” said Lee, regarding her handiwork. “We’ll do it exactly like this tomorrow.” It was only when she arrived at my apartment the next morning, styling tools in hand, that I realized the knot in my stomach had been worry she wouldn’t show. Maybe that was why Lee still figured in my life: to be a lightning rod and to be the lightning itself.

  AFTER SPENDING A night in a Narragansett bed and breakfast, we met Bill Carnahan at the marina where he docked his yacht. Carnahan and his wife welcomed us aboard a forty-foot motor boat, what he referred to as their “smaller cruiser,” the one that he captained himself and that required no crew, which meant it would just be the four of us out there. Before too long, we were anchored and floating somewhere in Block Island Sound.

  As it turned out, my knowledge of yacht culture, which had to that point relied mostly on music videos from the 1980s and James Bond movies, wasn’t entirely off the mark: the exclusive tone, the trashy heart. The day was so brilliant, the surfaces so shiny, that the sun bounced off the railing of the deck and sliced through our champagne flutes when we toasted to “new acquaintances and old habits.” Carnahan had the look of an actor in a high-production-value commercial for cholesterol management, erections, or retirement funds—exactly what handsome graying men in JFK-at-sea clothes are meant to sell. He leaned back on a white leather cushion, his hands locked behind his head, legs crossed to reveal a tanned inch of bare ankle between his chinos and Topsiders. “What did I tell you? Worth your while?”

  Carnahan’s wife, Kara, stirred in her chaise.

  “I love this,” she said, rolling on her side to face us. She was going for languid, but a hardness about her—blond, freckled, late-forties lip and eye work, diamond jewelry, slim white jeans and a loose white top that in the breeze conformed to her remarkably alert breasts—made her action stagey. As did the trace of a rough Northeastern accent she tried to rid herself of. “You get out here and you almost forget where you came from.” Kara Carnahan, in all likelihood, came from an unpleasant place you could never completely forget. “I remember, Bill, the first time you asked me to the beach house. I was expecting the Hamptons. But practically every other yard had a car in it on blocks.” Her disbelief was palpable.

  “No, it’s America out there.” Bill nodded landward.

  “What does that mean?” Lee asked. She was sitting next to him and inched closer.

  “It means they like their trans fats.” He reached his hands toward her face and lifted her red sunglasses onto the top of her head so that he could look straight into her eyes. She didn’t blink in the gleaming whiteness, but returned his gaze with beckoning skepticism. “Now don’t frown. I know what you are. You’re a sophisticated, progressive, cosmopolitan type who is so sophisticated, progressive, and cosmopolitan you’ve come out the other end. You think there’s dignity out there, right? You think there’s something noble and romantic and dare I say authentic about small-town bullshit salt-of-the-earth struggles. That it’s all one big Bruce Springsteen song? Well, it ain’t, babe. It’s a murder ballad. It’s a fucking freak show. It’s the fucking American nightmare.”

  “If it’s so intolerable, what are you doing there?”

  “I didn’t say it was intolerable. I said it was a fucking freak show. I happen to like freak shows. By the way, you have the loveliest eyes. Blue like those Dutch dishes. Delft blue.”

  “I’d say it’s more of a Wedgwood, babe,” said Kara, exchanging with her husband a look that belied another attempt at languor. Carnahan shook his head and looked to the skies, all God help me but I love this woman!

  Carnahan then continued his assessment silently, looking Lee up and down. Which is what Flintwick had done. Which is what most people, myself included, did. Only when we did this, it involved a kind of surrender, a giving in to our own desire and curiosity about this woman. Carnahan’s stare was colder, less impressed. It registered Lee’s beauty as a snake might identify its next snack. Lee must have encountered this reaction before—she didn’t flinch—but it struck me that I hadn’t. I had relied on her allure, had successfully used it for my own benefit so often in the past that I didn’t know if I was more frightened now to consider what that made me or to watch Lee fall short.

  With a tight smile, as if something wasn’t going according to plan (as if there was a plan), Kara suggested a light lunch and how would Bill like to come help her prepare it in the galley?

  “Lunch! I like it. Let’s do it.” He clapped his hands and followed his wife, but not without glancing back at Lee, a glance that promised his return and left little doubt as to where his thoughts would be in the meantime, before slipping below. Carnahan had assured us that this was merely a nautical prelude to a viewing of the Haseltine photographs, but the longer we stayed out there, the more concerned I grew that we might never make it back.

  “He likes freak shows,” I said.

  “I know,” said Lee. “But we’ve come this far. And it’s not like we can go anywhere now.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “They’re probably down there preparing a cheese plate or something.”

  I rose to my feet too quickly and nausea took hold. Seasickness? Morning sickness? The former provided a convenient cover for the latter, though the Carnahans may have had their suspicions when I decline
d a mimosa, opting instead for orange juice. (Bill said “fresh-squeezed,” and you wanted to find a decontamination station.) Lee rubbed my back slowly but it didn’t help.

  The Carnahans returned from the galley, Kara with a tray of sandwiches and Bill carrying an extra baguette like a sword. Neither of them had fetched implements with which to tie us up, but they still looked as though that might be their intention. At the sight of the food I remembered I was hungry all the time now. It didn’t matter that I was nauseous or that the Carnahans watched us eat as though they were fattening us up for slaughter. I downed everything on my plate and went for seconds.

  “We should talk about your father,” said Bill.

  “I’m curious to know why you find him compelling,” said Lee, “why you wanted those pictures.”

  “I consider myself to be a collector. In my younger days, I used to collect records. I liked Jesse’s stuff, sure, but I was never much of a concert-goer. Never picked up a guitar. Now I collect people, in a way. Hedge fund, shmedge fund. I collect. My art advisor said David Haseltines were a must, no collection would be complete without them. But what I love about the photographs is that they transcend my personal bullshit. Not only do they not want anything from me, they don’t give a shit about me. They don’t even care that I’m looking at them. I don’t know if that’s because of Parrish or because of Haseltine. Either way, I think I’m drawn to them because they have absolutely nothing to do with me.”

  Lee kept her composure, even as doubt, derision, and, finally, interest, crossed her face. Kara, meanwhile, was rhythmically clicking the tines of her fork against her teeth and I nearly lost it. I reached for more bread.

  “You go for it,” said Bill, “I like that.” He moved in toward me and brushed a crumb from the corner of my mouth. Then he placed his hands squarely on my shoulders and kissed my forehead, like some kind of dark rite. I wanted to wipe the kiss from my brow before it seeped into my bloodstream, permeated my uterine wall, and contaminated the tiny heart now developing inside of me.

  “Are you all right, Viv? You seem a little sunstruck. Why don’t you go below for a bit and relax. Put your feet up. We’ve got a whole theater down there. What’s your poison? Home improvement shows? Prestige dramas? Absurdist faux-documentary sitcoms? Prime seventies-era Hollywood? Snuff-film webisodes of blood diamond mining? We’ve got it all.”

  “I’ll keep her company,” said Kara brightly. “I’ve been dying to talk to you about THATH. Huge fan.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine. Really.”

  Lee, understanding something I apparently didn’t, gave me a dissuading look, a French-person pout. As though she were resigned to being left alone with Carnahan. Her fatalism sent a wave of panic through me, and I squelched it with obedience.

  Kara led me down into the cabin where she disturbed the hush by vigorously fluffing a couple of pillows along a burgundy velour banquette.

  “Sit, sit!”

  I sat.

  “You can relax! It’s okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have beautiful skin.” It sounded taxidermic. Still, I thanked her and told her my father was a dermatologist, which she responded to by telling me her father had been a prison guard. Even in my discomfort, or maybe as a way to my dispel my discomfort, I thought how much Frank would love every word out of this woman’s mouth. How would he have written this? When the show’s budget had been bigger, Frank extricated a character from a bad maritime situation with the arrival of a cruise ship. He also considered a pod of Good Samaritan dolphins.

  “So, I want to know. What’s going on with my girl Romola?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m supposed to be working on that now.”

  “I want Romy to be happy, and I know that goes against the grain or whatever, but she’s been through so much! She deserves some peace. Let her keep her baby.”

  “What about Peyton?”

  “It’s a dilemma. But I like Peyton best when she’s mean. I’ll take Peyton the bitch over Peyton the good mother any day.”

  “Can’t she be both?”

  “Ha. You sound like a professor. Is this what you’d call a teachable moment?”

  “I didn’t mean to be pedantic. I wonder sometimes if Peyton can have it both ways. Without slipping back into a vegetative state. But, you know, I’m feeling better already. We could probably go back up.”

  She poured me a glass of water and kept talking. “It’s tough. I don’t think that women really can have it all today. Something’s gotta give. The village is gone.”

  “The village?”

  “The village that used to raise your kids for you and go bowling with you and be all up in your business. I grew up in that village, and it had its advantages. But it didn’t have yachts.”

  The longer our conversation continued, the more ludicrous it became, and I wondered if I hadn’t underestimated Kara at the very moment when I should have been on highest alert. If that wasn’t her intention all along. We had been down there for over half an hour. God knows what was going on above deck. I told Kara that whatever it was that had come over me had completely passed, thanks, and I really wanted to see those pictures of Jesse, it would be a shame not to, since we’d come all the way here. Wasn’t it time to go join Bill and Lee and head back?

  “BY ALL MEANS. We’ll go up there. Give me a sec, okay? Gotta powder my nose.” I didn’t know if this meant she needed to use the toilet or something else. All I knew is I was getting tired of trying to read between the lines when I didn’t know where the lines were. Alone, I took out my phone, thinking I might try Frank, as though I had lost the right to call on Andy. That’s when I saw this:

  Hi love. How’s the trip? Not too much going on here. Someone at work gave me a copy of that old David Foster Wallace essay on TV. Started reading it at the gym this morning and got distracted by the treadmill’s video screen. Hall and Oates trapped in a giant drum kit.

  Does this make me part of the problem? Or is the problem so outdated that I’m not part of anything anymore?

  Hope everything is ok. Call when you can.

  “Shall we?” Kara returned, and I stowed my phone. Her eyes shone with anticipation, prepared to be delighted by what we might find on deck. Which turned out to be Bill, lying in Kara’s chaise, a skipper’s cap angled on his head. Lee stood by the railing, staring out at the water. Hard to tell if her hair, which sort of always had a rolled-out-of-bed look to it, had been mussed by Bill or by the wind. The bleached-out sun cast longer shadows before it slid behind clouds, the searing white and blue of the late morning giving way to a leaden afternoon.

  “Hello, womenfolk,” Bill said.

  “We interrupting?” asked Kara.

  “Lee and I were just enjoying the silence of each other’s company.”

  “I’m thinking it’s time to head in,” said Kara. “See those photographs you all are so hot about.”

  “Yes,” said Lee, tuning in. “I do really want to see them. And we’ve already taken up a lot of your day.”

  “You could say we’ve taken up yours,” said Bill. “You only have so much life energy. I’m so pleased you consented to expend it on me.” He wasn’t looking at Lee or at his wife. He’d set his sights on me, as if it was my turn.

  That’s when I thought: I’m out. I’m done. I want to go home. I pictured Andy at the gym, trying to be healthier, for his sake, for mine, and for the sake of our child.

  The Carnahans left us to go steer the boat.

  “You know,” I said to Lee, “the whole self-destructive daddy-issues thing stops being glamorous and just gets sad after a certain point.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about whatever you let Carnahan do to you while I was down there with his freak wife.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “So what was all that about the life energy you expended all over him?”

  “Nothing happened. I swear. I bet you would have preferred if it had? Would that
make you feel better? I’m sorry if I didn’t debase myself in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed.”

  “You think I like seeing you put yourself in that position?”

  “Yes, I think it works for you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. And this is ridiculous, what we’re doing.”

  “I told you nothing happened. Nothing, really. So I’m not turning back, not now. But if you want to go, just say so.”

  “It’s just that you’re dragging me into something that’s really no good.”

  “I’m dragging you?”

  “Yes. I have a life and I’m fucking it up here with you.”

  “You’re not actually trying to blame me, are you? You chose to sleep with Rodgers. You chose to blow off work. I didn’t force you to do anything.”

  No, it wasn’t force. She had thrown me a rope that I had grabbed onto, and to pull apart its twisted strands demanded more resolve than I could muster. Woven in there still was the old ingrained inclination to protect her, which had always been a way of protecting myself. I didn’t know who I was angry with anymore. Both of us, probably. Fine, I would go with her to the Carnahans’ house, I told her, but that was it. Fine, she said. Fine.

  AROUND THE TURN of the millennium the MBTA overhauled the train station where my father would always pick me up in college. When Lee started coming home with me for Thanksgivings, we would arrive at the small, one-story brick depot and find two empty seats among the discolored fiberglass chairs while I called home on a pay phone. The most up-to-date equipment in that room was a vending machine sponsored by a psychedelic fruit drink brand that existed briefly in the early nineties. A few years later, with the realization of high-speed rail service, the old building was torn down and a proper station was built for Boston’s swelling commuter population. Spacious and spiffy, its technological polish suggested efficiency and comfort. It was sleek and we were impressed by the degree to which we were impressed. So it was all the more jarring to see my father when he showed up at the new station in a shearling coat I’d never seen him wear in person, only in old photos. He looked like a time traveler. An unsettlingly young Jonathan Feld had slipped through a hole in the fabric of the universe and materialized here. As though he weren’t my father at all, had yet to be. I didn’t know how to talk to him.