“Ed is fine,” Jonathan said. “Nothing’s changed. We’ve got the best people keeping up with it. If anything, the numbers look better than they did last month.”
Polly Hotalling looked at my husband the way you look at theperson who is telling you what you wanted to hear, the thing you weren’t expecting to hear. “He’s okay?”
“Well, he has chronic lymphocytic leukemia, it’s nothing you’d want, but he’s managing it. For the most part, it doesn’t affect his life. Someday it will, but that’s not what’s happening now.”
Polly took a small step towards him and Jonathan put his arms around her. “Are you sure?” she asked. Her voice came out as a small croak from the front of his shirt.
He patted her back like a baby. “As sure as anyone can be under the circumstances. This is emotional stuff. We all love Eddie, we all want what’s best for him.”
“I just thought ...” she began, but she didn’t feel the need to finish. She had already said what she thought.
“Go put yourself together and let Daphne and me handle the kitchen.” Jonathan took off his blazer. “They’ll be back before you know it. No boat ride lasts forever.”
She looked up at him and smiled, wiping her eyes on a dish towel. “You won’t tell him I said anything?”
Jonathan held her eye. “Not a word.”
She left the room relieved, the dish towel still in her hand. I don’t think she remembered I was there, though she walked right past me. When she was gone, Jonathan and I stood there, trying and failing to make sense of it all.
“How did you know it was chronic lymphocytic leukemia?” I asked him, when what I wanted to say was, Eddie? Leukemia?
“Because if it were some other kind, he’d be dead.” Then Jonathan rolled up his shirtsleeves and started on the dishes.
In other circumstances, seeing my husband lie with such fluency might have alarmed me, but in these circumstances, I feltnothing but grateful. How do we talk about death but to lie about it? I had asked Eddie if we were going to die in the car up at the raspberry farm. “I don’t think so,” he had said to me that night. “I mean, of course we will eventually, everything does, but I don’t think you and I are going to die in this car.”
I wondered if this would turn out to be the eventuality of which he spoke.
I carried the glasses and plates to the sink, then hunted around until I’d found containers for all the leftover food, then I put the food away.
Nearly an hour passed and still the boat did not return. We had no idea what had become of Polly. We had cleaned up and put away every trace of lunch and then gone back to the sunroom and out those same glass French doors to sit on a wicker love seat that looked out over the water. Jonathan and I agreed to say nothing about Skip or Polly or Eddie for as long as we were in the house, or, better still, for as long as we were in Connecticut. To pass the time, we looked at the housing prices in Darien on Jonathan’s phone, and when we got tired of that, we looked at the water.
“We could go home,” Jonathan said. “Leave them a note.”
I was just saying I’d give the whole thing another half hour when, in the distance, the Chris-Craft swung into view. They were going fast, a tall arc of spray above their wake. When the boat came closer in, we could see that both men were standing, and when they saw us, they waved and we waved back.
“You never know what the day will bring,” Jonathan said.
We watched the boat slow, then make its way to the dock. Eddie and Skip tied the lines and then got off like two old men, Skip helping Eddie up and then Eddie, safely on the dock, turningaround to give Skip his hand. A few times they stopped to laugh about something we were too far away to hear. They were both wearing sunglasses and baseball caps.
Polly came outside as they were climbing the stairs and sat down in the wicker chair beside us. She wore a different blouse now, still in the family of dark pink. She must have been watching for the boat from a window somewhere. “Look at them,” she said to us. “Every time they get together, they’re kids again. Can you imagine having a friend like that for your entire life?”
“No,” Jonathan said.
“My sister,” I said.
Polly shook her head. “Doesn’t count.”
Eddie, coming up the stairs, waved his hand over his head. “Ahoy!”
“Was it glorious?” Polly called.
Skip, a few steps behind Eddie, stopped to catch his breath. “There’s still water in the bilge. The boat’s spent so much time in the yard getting fixed that I might as well not have a boat and the goddamn thing is still leaking.”
“I’ll call on Monday,” Polly said.
“A boat sits in the water all day long,” Eddie said. “Logic dictates that it’s going to get a little water in it.”
Skip shook his head, still on the same step. “That’s like saying logic dictates the house will have a few termites because it’s sitting on dirt.”
