Thirty-three
Jennifer,
Nothing much worth writing about happened between Doc and me at first. Almost no touching, not even a lingering look in town. It was complicated. His wife had died a few years before, but I was certainly married, and with children, though they were grown. Doc still had children at home. There was one remarkable moment that first summer, and it became a touchstone for us.
One night when your grandfather was having dinner after golf with his pals at Medinah outside Chicago (or so Charles told me), Doc used some connections to get us into the Yerkes Observatory. Yerkes was strictly a scientific observatory back then, home to the largest refracting telescope in the world and not open to the public. At night, no one would be there.
So imagine the two of us sneaking across the parklike lawns, briefly holding hands, approaching the Yerkes complex of buildings with the three huge domes silhouetted against the summer night sky. Then we climbed the wide steps and entered the most beautiful marble halls I have ever seen.
Doc had a flashlight and we followed the beam up the back staircase until we reached a door that opened into the largest of the domes. I was stunned by how large it was inside, like a sports stadium in the round. A telescope in the center pointed up through a slit in the dome to the cobalt sky beyond.
“Watch this, Samantha. You won’t believe it,” he said. “Ready?”
“I think so.” I wasn’t really sure.
He pulled a lever, and the floor we were standing on—at least seventy feet across—began to lift us upward. Suddenly we could actually look into the fixed eyepiece of the telescope.
It was Friday, the beginning of the weekend, and I knew that Charles would be driving up from Chicago soon. Still, Doc and I dared to stay in the cavernous dome for over an hour. The stars were dazzling, as if the universe was putting on a display just for us. He talked about the fact that what we were watching in the sky had actually happened hundreds of years before, and then Doc admitted how long he’d secretly wished to be alone with me like this.
“I wished for it, too,” I confessed. Wished, prayed, fantasized, almost every day since the Red Cross dinner.
We kissed under all those billions of twinkling stars. Then we kissed again, longer and harder. But that was it. There we stood, two people falling in love but separated by my marriage, our families, but especially his children, who were still at home with Doc.
He eventually drove me to the corner of Knollwood Road—anddidn’tkiss me when I got out of the car, though, God, I wanted him to. I entered the house and found that Charles was sleeping. I had hoped I wasn’t going to have to make up a story, but I shouldn’t have worried.
I undressed quietly, and when I was under the sheets, I looked into Charles’s face. To my surprise, I didn’t feel any guilt about my adventure with Doc that night—but I did have an interesting thought. I wondered if Charles would notice anything different about me in the morning.Would he notice that while he slept, I’d become happy?
Thirty-four
WHEN I ANSWEREDthe phone by my bed, it was barely 6:40A.M.and I got a surprise that I wasn’t prepared for. Brendan spoke into my ear. “Wake up, Jennifer. The lake is calling.”
I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I began to smile and then I put my bathing suit on. I felt like a kid again, and it was good. I felt free.
Outside, I joined Brendan in a jog that turned into a full run to the lake. Finally both of us were screaming his semimaniacal war whoop, which actually made all the sense in the world. The water was freezing, fricking cold at that hour.
“It’s not even seven,” I sputtered as I did a stiff, chilly breaststroke beside him.
“Perfect time for a swim. I have a new mantra: ‘Live every day from the crack of dawn until I can’t keep my eyes open a second longer.’”
Okay. Who can fault a philosophy like that, especially since his spiritwascontagious. We swam over to Sam’s dock and hauled ourselves up. He shook off some water, then rolled onto his back. I did the same, and lying next to each other, we stared up at the morning sky. Itwasperfect, actually.
“Takes you back,” I said.
“Or maybe forward,” he mumbled under his breath.
I was aware that my right side from shoulder to ankle was touching Brendan’s left side. The pressure made my body tingle, but I didn’t move.
When he turned his face toward me, I avoided his eyes. So he put his hand on my waist and pulled me even closer. I wasn’t expecting it, but the heat that flashed through my body almost melted my swimsuit.
And then Brendan kissed me on the lips. A good, long kiss, a really nice one.
And I kissed him back.
And neither of us said a word, which was exactly the right thing to do.
Thirty-five
FROM THE MORNINGof the kiss, Brendan and I spent more and more of our time together. To be perfectly honest, I knew exactly what this was—a sweet, fleeting summer romance. And so did he, I was sure. We hadn’t even “done anything,” as the popular saying goes.
