Bittersweet Page 2

  “You'd get sick of ballet too, believe me. Same idea, different uniform, more pressure,” India said knowingly. Jessica had finally given up ballet that spring, after eight years, and India wasn't sure if she was relieved or sorry. She would miss the recitals, but not driving her there three times a week. Jessica was now playing tennis with the same determination, but at least she could ride her bike there on her own, and India didn't have to drive her.

  “At least ballet shoes would be pretty,” Gail said, standing up to join India as they began to walk slowly around the field. India wanted to take some more shots from a different angle, to give to the team, and Gail walked along beside her. They had been friends ever since the Taylors moved to Westport. Gail's oldest son was the same age as Jessica, and she had twin boys Sam's age. She had taken a five-year break between them, to go back to work. She had been a litigator, but had quit finally after she had the twins, and she felt she'd been gone too long now to ever consider going back to her old law firm. As far as she was concerned, her career was over, but she was older than India by five years and, at forty-eight, claimed she no longer wanted to be trapped in the courtroom. She said all she really missed was intelligent conversation. But despite her complaints, she occasionally admitted that it was easier just being here, and letting her husband fight his daily wars on Wall Street. Like India, her life was defined by soccer games and car pools. But unlike India, she was far more willing to admit that her life bored her. And there was a constant sense of restlessness about her.

  “So what are you up to?” Gail asked amiably, finishing the cappuccino. “How's life in mommy heaven?”

  “The usual. Busy.” India took a series of photographs as she listened distractedly to her. She got another great shot of Sam, and even more when the other team scored a goal against them. “We're leaving for the Cape in a few weeks, when school lets out. Doug can't come up for his vacation this year till August.” He usually tried to take it before that.

  “We're going to Europe in July,” Gail said without enthusiasm, and for an instant India envied her. She'd been trying to talk Doug into it for years, but he said he wanted to wait until the children were older. If he waited much longer, India always reminded him, they'd be gone and in college, and going without them. But so far she hadn't convinced him. Unlike India, he had no real interest in traveling far from home. His adventuring days were over.

  “Sounds like fun,” India said, turning to look at her. The two women were an interesting contrast. Gail was small and intense with short dark hair, and eyes that were two burning pools of fiery dark chocolate. India was long and lean, with classic features, deep blue eyes, and a long blond braid that hung down her back. She claimed she always wore it that way because she never had time to comb it. As they walked side by side, they were two very striking women, and neither of them looked anywhere near forty, let alone a few years past it. “Where in Europe are you going?” India asked with interest.

  “Italy and France, and a couple of days in London. Not exactly high adventure, or high-risk travel, but it's easy with the kids. And Jeff loves going to the theater in London. We rented a house in Provence for a couple of weeks in July, and we're going to drive down to Italy, and take the kids to Venice.” To India, it sounded like a wonderful trip, and worlds away from her lazy Cape Cod summer. “We'll be there for six weeks,” Gail went on. “I'm not sure Jeff and I can stand each other for that long, not to mention the boys. After ten minutes with the twins, Jeff goes crazy.” She always talked about him the way people did about irritating roommates, but India was always sure that beyond the grousing, Gail actually loved him. In spite of evidence to the contrary, India believed that.

  “I'm sure it'll be fine, you'll have plenty to see,” she said, though being trapped in a car with twin nine-year-old boys and a fourteen-year-old for extended periods of time didn't sound like India's idea of heaven either.

  “I can't even meet a handsome Italian, with the kids along and Jeff chasing after me, asking me to translate for him.” India laughed at the portrait Gail painted, and shook her head. It was one of Gail's quirks, talking about other men, and sometimes more than just talking. She had confided to India frequently that she'd had several affairs in the twenty-two years she and Jeff had been married, but she had surprised India by saying that in an odd way, it had actually improved their marriage. It was a form of “improvement” India had never been drawn to, nor approved of. But she liked Gail enormously, despite her indiscretions.

  “Maybe Italy will make Jeff more romantic,” India suggested, slinging her ever-present camera over her shoulder, and glancing down at the small, electric woman who had once been a terror in the courtroom. That, India found easy to imagine. Gail Jones took no nonsense from anyone, and certainly not her husband. But she was a loyal friend, and in spite of her complaints, a devoted mother.

  “I don't think a transfusion from a Venetian gondolier would make Jeff Jones romantic. And the kids with us twenty-four hours a day sure as hell won't help it. By the way, did you hear that the Lewisons are separated?” India nodded. She never took much interest in the local gossip. She was too busy with her own life, her kids, and her husband. She had a handful of friends she cared about, but the vagaries of other people's lives, and peering into them with curiosity, held no magic for her. “Dan asked me to have lunch with him.” At that, India cast a glance at her, and Gail smiled mischievously at her.

  “Don't look at me like that. He just wants some free legal advice, and a shoulder to cry on.”

  “Don't give me that.” India was uninvolved in the local scandals, but she was not without a degree of sophistication. And she knew Gail's fondness for flirting with other people's husbands. “Dan has always liked you.”

  “I like him too. So what? I'm bored. He's lonely and pissed off and unhappy. That equals lunch, not a steamy love affair necessarily. Believe me, it's not sexy listening to a guy complain about how often Rosalie yelled at him about ignoring the kids and watching football on Sundays. He's not in any condition for anything more than that, and he's still hoping he can talk her into a reconciliation. That's a little complicated, even for me.” She looked restless as India watched her. According to Gail, or what she said anyway, Jeff hadn't excited her in years, and India knew it. It didn't really surprise her. Jeff was not an exciting person, but it made India think as she listened. She had never actually asked Gail what, in her opinion, was exciting.

  “What do you want, Gail? Why bother with someone else, even for lunch? What does it give you?” They both had husbands, full lives, kids who needed them, and enough to do to keep them out of trouble and constantly distracted. But Gail always gave India the impression that she was looking for something intangible and elusive.

  “Why not? It adds a little spice to my life, just having lunch with someone from time to time. And if it turns into something else, it's not the end of the world. It puts a spring in my step, I feel alive again. It makes me something more than just a chauffeur and a housewife. Don't you ever miss that?” She turned to India then, her eyes boring into hers, much as they must have done cross-examining a defendant in the courtroom.

  “I don't know,” India said honestly. “I don't think about it.”

  “Maybe you should. Maybe one day you'll ask yourself a lot of questions about what you didn't have and didn't do, and should have.” Maybe. But to India, at least, cheating on her husband, even over lunch, didn't seem like the perfect answer, far from it. “Be honest. Don't you ever miss the life you had before you were married?” Her eyes told India she wouldn't tolerate anything less than full disclosure.

  “I think about the things I used to do, the life we had before. … I think about working …and Bolivia …and Peru …and Kenya. I think about the things I did there, and what it meant to me then. Sure I miss that sometimes. It was great, and I loved it. But I don't miss the men that went with it.” Particularly since she knew Doug appreciated all that she'd given up for him.

  “T
hen maybe you're lucky. Why don't you go back to work one of these days? With your track record, you could pick it up again whenever you want. It's not like the law, I'm out of the loop now. I'm history. But as long as you have your camera, you could be right back in the fray tomorrow. You're crazy to waste that.”

  But India knew better. She knew what her father's life had been like, and theirs, waiting for him. It was more complicated than Gail's perception of it. There was a price to pay for all that. A big one.

  “It's not that simple. You know that. What am I supposed to do? Just call my agent tonight and say put me on a plane to Bosnia in the morning? Doug and the kids would really love that.” Even the thought of it was so impossible that all she could do was laugh at it. She knew, as Gail did, that those days were over for her. And unlike Gail, she had no need to prove her independence, or abandon her family to do it. She loved Doug, and her kids, and knew just as surely that he was still as much in love as she was.

  “They might like it better in the end than you getting bored and crabby.” It surprised India to hear her say that, and she looked at her friend with a questioning expression.

  “Am I? Crabby, I mean?” She felt a little lonely at times, and maybe even nostalgic about the old days now and then, though not often anymore, but she had never become seriously dissatisfied with what she was doing.

  Unlike Gail, she accepted the point to which life had brought her. She even liked it. And she knew the children wouldn't be small forever. They were already growing up rapidly, and Jessica had started high school in September. She could always think about going back to work later. If Doug let her.

  “I think you get bored, just like I do sometimes,” Gail said honestly, facing her, their children all but forgotten for the moment. “You're a good sport about it. But you gave up a hell of a lot more than I did. If you'd stayed with it, by now you'd have won a Pulitzer, and you know it.”

  “I doubt that,” India said modestly. “I could have wound up like my father. He was forty-two when he died, shot by a sniper. I'm only a year older, and he was a lot smarter and more talented than I was. You can't stay out in that kind of life forever. The odds are against you, and you know it.”

  “Some people manage it. And if we live to be ninety-five here, so what? Who will give a damn about it when we die, India, other than our husbands and our children?”

  “Maybe that's enough,” India said quietly. Gail was asking her questions she almost never allowed herself to think of, although she had to admit that in the past year it had crossed her mind more than once that she hadn't done anything truly intelligent in years, not to mention the challenges she'd given up. She'd tried to talk to Doug about it once or twice, but he always said he still shuddered to think of the things they'd done in the Peace Corps and she'd done after. Doug was a lot happier now. “I'm not as sure as you are that what I would be doing would change the world. Does it really matter who takes the pictures you see of Ethiopia and Bosnia and on some hilltop, God knows where, ten minutes after a rebel gets shot? Does anyone really care? Maybe what I'm doing here is more important.” It was what she believed now, but Gail didn't.

  “Maybe it isn't,” Gail said bluntly. “Maybe what matters is that you're not there taking those pictures, someone else is.”

  “So let them.” India refused to be swayed by her.

  “Why? Why should someone else have all the fun? Why are we stuck here in goddamn suburbia cleaning apple juice up off the floor every time one of the kids spills it? Let someone else do that for a change. What difference does that make?”

  “I think it makes a difference to our families that we're here. What kind of life would they have if I were in some two-seater egg-crate somewhere crawling in over the trees in bad weather, or getting myself shot in some war no one has ever heard of, and doesn't give a damn about. That would make a difference to my children. A big one.”

  “I don't know.” Gail looked unhappy as they started walking again. “Lately, I think about it all the time, about why I'm here and what I'm doing. Maybe it's change of life or something. Or maybe it's simply the fact that I'm afraid I'll never be in love again, or look across a room at a man who makes my heart leap right out of my chest looking at him. Maybe that's what's driving me crazy, knowing that for the rest of my life Jeff and I are going to look at each other, and think okay, he's not great, but this is what I got stuck with.” It was a depressing way to sum up twenty-two years of marriage, and India felt sorry for her.

  “It's better than that, and you know it.” At least she hoped so, for Gail's sake. It would be terrible if it wasn't.

  “Not much. It's okay. Most of all, it's boring. He's boring. I'm boring. Our life is boring. And ten years from now I'll be nearly sixty and it'll be even more boring. And then what?”

  “You'll feel better when you go to Europe this summer,” India said kindly, as Gail shrugged a shoulder in answer.

  “Maybe. I doubt it. We've been there before. Jeff will spend the entire time bitching about how badly they drive in Italy, hating whatever car we rent, and complaining about the smell of the canal in the summer in Venice. He's hardly a romantic figure, India, let's be honest.” India knew that Gail had married him twenty-two years before because she was pregnant, and then lost the baby after three months, and spent another seven years after that trying to get pregnant, while fighting her way to the top in her law firm. India's life had been a lot simpler than Gail's had been. And her decision to give up her career had been less agonizing for her. Gail was still asking herself if she'd done the right thing nine years after retiring when the twins were born. She had thought that she'd been ready to do it, and it was obvious now that she wasn't. “Maybe having lunch with other men, and having an ‘indiscretion’ with them now and then, is my way of compensating for what Jeff will never give me, for what he isn't, and probably never was.” India couldn't help wondering if her affairs only made her more dissatisfied with the life she was living. Maybe she was looking for something that didn't exist, or wasn't out there, not for them at least. Maybe Gail was simply unwilling to admit that, for them, that part of their lives was over. Doug didn't come home from the office with roses in his arms for her either. But India didn't expect that from him. She accepted, and liked, what they had grown into. As he did.

  “Maybe none of us will ever be madly in love again, maybe that's just the bottom line here,” India said practically, but Gail looked outraged.

  “Bullshit! If I thought that, I'd die. Why shouldn't we be?” Gail looked incensed. “We have a right to that at any age. Everyone does. That's why Rosalie left Dan Lewison. She's in love with Harold Lieberman, which is why Dan isn't going to get her back. Harold wants to marry Rosalie. He's crazy about her.”

  For an instant, India looked startled. “Is that why he left his wife?” Gail nodded. “I really am out of it, aren't I? How did I miss that one?”

  “Because you're so good and pure and such a perfect wife,” Gail teased. She and India had been friends for a long time, and were each the kind of friend the other could rely on. They provided each other with total acceptance, and India never criticized her for the men she slept with, although she didn't approve or fully understand why she did it. The only explanation was that Gail had a kind of emptiness that nothing seemed to fill, and hadn't in all the years that India had known her.

  “Is that what you want, though? To leave Jeff for someone else's husband? What would be different?”

  “Probably nothing,” Gail admitted. “That's why I've never done it. Besides, I guess I love Jeff. We're friends. He just doesn't provide much excitement.”

  “Maybe that's better,” India said thoughtfully, mulling over what Gail had said to her. “I had enough excitement in the old days. I don't need that anymore,” India said firmly, as though trying to convince herself more than her friend, but for once Gail was willing to accept what she said at face value.

  “If that's true, you're very lucky.”

  “We both a
re,” India affirmed to her, wishing she could make her feel better. She still didn't think that lunch with Dan Lewison, and men like him, was a solution. Where did that lead? To a motel between Westport and Greenwich? So what? India couldn't even imagine sleeping with someone else. After seventeen years with Doug, she didn't want anyone else. She loved the life that she and Doug shared with their children.

  “I still think you're wasting your talent,” Gail prodded her, knowing full well it was the only chink in India's armor, the only subject on which India occasionally dared to ask herself pointed questions. “You should go back to work one of these days.” Gail had always said that India's talent was so enormous that it was a crime to waste it. But India always insisted she could go back to it later, if she wanted. For now, she didn't have the time or the inclination to do more than the occasional story. She was too busy with her kids, and didn't want to rock the boat with Doug. “Besides,” she teased Gail, “if I go back to work, you get to go out to lunch with Doug. Do you think I'm that stupid?” They both laughed at the suggestion, as Gail shook her head, her eyes dancing with amusement.

  “You have nothing to fear. Doug's the only man I know who's even more boring than my husband.”

  “I'll accept that as a compliment on his behalf,” India said, still laughing. He certainly wasn't exciting, or even colorful, but he was a good husband, and good father. That was all she needed. He was solid, decent, loyal, and a good provider. And besides, no matter how boring Gail thought he was, India loved him. She didn't have the lust that Gail had for intrigue and romance. She had given all that up years before, and before Gail could say anything else, the whistle blew and the soccer game ended, and within seconds, Sam and Gail's twin sons had come thundering over to them.