Bittersweet

CHAPTER 3

FOR THE next three weeks, India moved through her life feeling like a robot. She fixed breakfast, drove the kids to school, picked them up, and went to every activity from tennis to baseball. For the first time in years, she forgot to take her camera with her, and suddenly now even that seemed pointless. She felt as though she were fatally wounded. Her spirit was dead, and it was only a matter of time before her body followed. Somehow, with what he'd said, and the illusions he'd killed, India felt as though Doug had sucked all the life out of her. It was like letting the air out of her tires. And now, everything she did seemed like an enormous effort.
She ran into Gail constantly, as she always did, and knew she was still seeing Dan Lewison. They had had lunch several more times, and she had made allusions to meeting him at a hotel somewhere. India could guess the rest, but she didn't really want to know, and she didn't ask Gail any questions.
She didn't tell her about what Doug had said, and when Gail noticed that she was depressed, she assumed it was still about the assignment she hadn't taken in Korea.
And India never did call Raoul Lopez to get off the roster. It was the last thing she wanted to do now. All she wanted to do was get away to Cape Cod, and try to forget what had happened. She thought maybe she'd feel better about him again with a little distance between them. She needed to regroup, rethink what he'd said, and try to feel better about him, if she was going to spend the rest of her life with him. But how did you feel the same again about a man who had essentially said he didn't love you, and to whom you were nothing more than a convenient companion? A man who discarded the career you had given up for him, however worthy it had been, with a single flippant gesture. Every time she looked at Doug now, she felt as though she no longer knew him. And he seemed to have no suspicion whatsoever that what he'd said to her had caused major damage. To Doug, it was business as usual. He went into the city every day on the 7:05, and came home for dinner, told her how easy or hard the day had been, and then read his papers. And when she seemed less inclined to make love to him than she had been previously, he put it down to the fact that she was either tired or busy. It never occurred to him that she no longer wanted to make love to him and had no idea what to do about it.
In the end, it was an enormous relief to her when she and the children finally left for their vacation. She had packed everything they needed in three days. They never wore anything fancy on the Cape, just shorts and jeans and bathing suits, and they left most of it there when they left at the end of the summer. But the children always came up with new things they wanted to bring with them. She managed to avoid Doug almost entirely the last week, as he was meeting with two sets of new clients, and spent two nights in the city.
And on the morning they left, he stood on the lawn waving at them, and he almost forgot to kiss her goodbye. When he did, it was hastily, and without much emotion. And for once, she didn't mind it. The kids and the dog were in the station wagon with her, and their bags were in the back, crammed in so tight it took three of them to close the door, and he shouted to her as they drove off, “Don't forget to call me!” She nodded and smiled, and drove away, feeling as though she had left a stranger behind her. He had already told her he couldn't come up the first weekend, and he had told her the night before that it looked as though he wouldn't make it up over the Fourth of July either. He had too much work to do for his new clients. He thought she was an exceptionally good sport about it, when she didn't complain, and thanked her for it. He never noticed that for the past few weeks, since their dinner at Ma Petite Amie, she had been unusually quiet.
It took them six and a half hours to drive from Westport to Harwich, and they stopped several times on the way, at McDonald's. And the children were all in good spirits. They could hardly wait to get to the beach and see their friends there. As they talked about it on the way up, and what they were going to do as soon as they arrived, only Jessica noticed that her mother was distracted. She was sitting in the front seat, next to her mother.
“Something wrong, Mom?”
India was touched that she had noticed. Doug certainly hadn't. He had been business as usual right to the last minute, and seemed almost relieved to see them go, so he could devote himself full-time to his new clients.
“No, I'm fine. Just tired. It's been pretty busy getting ready to leave.” It was a plausible reason for her distraction. She didn't want to tell Jessica she was upset with her father. It was the first time she had ever felt that she and Doug had a serious problem.
“How come Daddy isn't coming up for the first two weeks?” She had noticed that her mother was quieter than usual for weeks now, and she wondered if they had had a fight or something, though usually her parents seemed to fight less than other people.
“He's busy with new clients. He'll be up for the weekend in a couple of weeks, and he's going to spend three weeks with us in August.” Jessica nodded and put the earphones to her Walkman on, and for the rest of the trip India was lost in her own thoughts as she drove the familiar road to Massachusetts. She did it every summer.
She had talked to Gail the day before, and they were leaving that weekend for Paris, but Gail was as unenthused as ever. If possible, even a little more so. She'd been having a good time with Dan Lewison, and hated to leave him now, particularly knowing that it was the kind of relationship that would survive neither time nor distance. By the time she got back, he would have moved on with his life, and begun to settle into his new routine, and would have connected undoubtedly with the flock of hungry divorcees waiting to devour him. And all Gail had to offer him was the occasional clandestine afternoon in a motel, and there were plenty of others waiting to do that. She had no illusions about their importance to each other. And just listening to her talk about it depressed India still further. She wished her a good trip, and told her to call when she got back. Maybe she and the kids could come up to the Cape for a few days later in the summer while Jeff was working. And Gail said she'd love that.
It was late that afternoon when they got to the house in Harwich, and India got out and stretched her legs, and looked at the clear expanse of blue ocean with a feeling of relief. Being here was just what she needed. It was a lovely place, a comfortable old Victorian house, and she always found it blissfully peaceful. They had friends with summerhouses nearby, some from Boston, others from New York, and India was always happy to see them. Although this year, she wanted to spend a few days by herself, with the children. She needed some time to think, and regroup, and recover from the blow of what she'd felt ever since their fateful dinner. For the first time in fourteen years, once they'd settled into the house, she didn't even want to call Doug. She just couldn't. He called that night to make sure they'd arrived. He spoke to the children, and then India.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, and India assured him that everything was fine. The house had been cleaned by a service that week, and was in good order. No leaks, no broken screens or damage from the winter.
She reported it all to him, and he seemed satisfied with what she told him. And then he surprised her with his next question. “Why didn't you call me when you got there? I was afraid something might have happened.” Why? Since hearts and flowers were of no importance to him, what did it matter if she called him? What would that have meant to him? The loss of someone reliable to take care of his children? He could always hire a housekeeper if something happened to her.
“I'm sorry, Doug, We were just busy opening the house and getting settled.”
“You sound tired,” he said sympathetically. She had been for the past few weeks, but he had never noticed either her fatigue or her depression.
“It's a long drive, but we're all fine.” Both children and caretaker were alive and well, as was the Labrador retriever.
“I wish I were there with all of you, instead of here with all my clients,” he said, and sounded as though he meant it.
“You'll be here soon,” she said sympathetically, anxious to get off the phone. She had nothing to say to him at the moment. She felt sapped of all her energy. She had nothing to offer him right now, in light of what he'd said to her, and he didn't seem to understand that. “We'll call you,” she said easily, and a moment later they hung up. As usual, he didn't tell her that he loved her. It didn't matter anyway. It was apparently a word that, at this point in their lives, meant very little to him.
She went back to the children after that, and helped them make their beds, since the cleaning service hadn't done it. And once they were all in bed, she slipped quietly into her darkroom. She hadn't been in it in nearly a year, but she found everything in the same meticulous order she had left it. And when she turned the light on, she saw the wall of some of her father's favorite pictures. There was one she had put up there of Doug too, and she stood and stared at it for a long moment. He had a handsome, familiar face that she knew better than any face in the world, except her children's, but she had known his for longer. And as she looked into his eyes in the photograph she saw all the coldness she had discovered there in the past three weeks, and everything that was missing in them. She wondered why she hadn't seen it sooner. Had she wanted to believe there was something else there? That he still loved her as he had in their youth? That he was still in love with her, as she had believed he was, until he told her how unimportant love was in a marriage? She could hear the words again as though he had just said them to her …what you need is companionship …decency … respect …someone you can rely on to take care of the children. She wondered now if this was really all he wanted. It was so much less than she wanted from him. She turned away then to look at a photograph of her father. He had been tall and thin, and looked like Doug in a way, but there was laughter in his eyes as he looked at you, something happy and excited and amused about his entire demeanor. He had had a funny little tilt to his head when he talked to you, and she could imagine him being in love at any age. He had been so young when he died, only forty-two, and yet he seemed so much more alive in the photograph than Doug did. There had been something so vibrant about him. She knew her mother had suffered from his absences, and their life had been difficult for her, but she also knew how much her mother had loved him, and how much he had loved her. And how angry her mother had been at him for dying. And India could remember as though it were yesterday how devastated she had been when her mother had told her what had happened. She couldn't imagine a world without her father in it somewhere. It was hard to believe he had been gone for twenty-eight years now, it seemed like an entire lifetime to her.
There were her photographs framed on the walls of the darkroom too, and she looked them over carefully for a moment as she stood there. They were good, very good, and captured a feeling and emotion that was almost like looking into a painting. She saw the ravaged faces of hungry children there, and a child sitting alone on a rock holding a doll, crying, while an entire village in Kenya burned behind her. There were faces of old men, and injured soldiers, and a woman laughing with sheer joy as she held her newborn baby. India had helped deliver it, and she still remembered that moment. It had been in a tiny hut somewhere outside Quito when she was in the Peace Corps. They were fragments of her life, frozen in time, and framed, so she could look at them forever. It was still hard for her to believe that all of that was gone from her life now. It had been an exchange she had made, a fair trade she always thought, only now she wondered. Had she gotten enough in return for what she'd given up? She knew she had when she thought of her children. But beyond that, what did she have now? And once the children were grown, what would she have then? Those were the questions she could no longer answer.
She checked the chemicals and the equipment, and made some notes, and then quietly turned off the light and went back to her bedroom. She took off her clothes and put her nightgown on, and then got into bed and turned off the light, and lay there for a long time, listening to the ocean. It was a peaceful sound she forgot every year, and then remembered when she came back here. It lulled her to sleep at night, and she lay listening to it when she woke in the morning. She loved the solemnity of it, the comfort it offered her. It was one of the things she loved about being here. And as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, she savored the fact that she was alone here this time, with only her children, her memories, and the ocean. For now at least, it was all she wanted.