He reached across the table then to take her hand. “When we get home tonight, let’s have sex,” he said.
She nodded and smiled. Back at the house, Cam paid the babysitter—Coco, in their children’s eyes the goddess of the softball field, now thirteen years old—and drove her home. While he was gone, Eleanor lit candles in the bedroom and put on music and inserted her diaphragm —a new one. She checked on the children—all asleep, in their own beds for once—and climbed into the one she shared with Cam. No nightgown for a change.
The next morning, when she got up, he was already shaving.
“What happened to our plan?” she asked him. He laughed, a little ruefully.
“By the time I got back from dropping Coco off you were sound asleep,” he told her. “Never mind. You probably needed the rest.”
More than many men (Darla’s husband, Bobby, for instance, who reportedly had never changed a single one of Kimmie’s diapers, or given her a bath), Cam reveled in fatherhood. But it was abundantly clear that he was the fun parent, Eleanor the practical one. Eleanor was the parent who made sure the children got to bed at a reasonable hour and knew that if you decided to make s’mores in the fireplace at eight thirty, this was unlikely to happen. Cam was the one who built crazy snow forts and got them out of bed to see a meteor shower andoversaw the preparations for a Mother’s Day with breakfast in bed: waffles and maple syrup they’d made from tapping their trees, and a bunch of dandelions in a jar. “You wouldn’t believe how the kitchen looked when I got up,” Eleanor told Darla.
Never mind all that. Here at last was the thing she had always wanted above all else. Where Eleanor and Cam had always slept naked, skin touching skin, before the children, now there were small, warm bodies in sleeper suits that occasionally smelled faintly of pee separating the two of them most nights. Never mind that she wasn’t making children’s books anymore, and that editors no longer called her, or that she had to lose the twenty pounds she was still carrying from the last pregnancy, or possibly the one before.
This was her artwork. This family.
21.
Over the Coals
Summer came, and softball. In one of the last games of the season, Harry Botts, running in the wrong direction for a ball, slammed into Cam as he stood at first base. The impact broke Cam’s ankle. The snap of his bone carried all the way over to the hot dog wagon out beyond right field, where Coco was doing Ursula’s nails.
They had to borrow a couple thousand dollars from Cam’s parents to pay the medical bills. In one way, it was easier, not having to pack up all the children—preparing the many Tupperware containers of snacks, assembling the sweatshirts and shoes—and head out to games all those nights. But Eleanor missed the games. Not so much the softball, but the society of the women in the bleachers—watching the children in the grass, handing out Goldfish and boxes of Juicy Juice and sandwiches. Studying the figure of her red-headed husband guarding first base, his right arm outstretched, just waiting to get the next batter out.
Halfway through softball season, Eleanor ran into Timmy Pouliot at the liquor store, buying beer.
“I’ve missed seeing you at games,” he told her.
“Come to our Labor Day party,” she said. It was that time of year again already. “Bring your girlfriend.”
Eleanor and Cam had not yet made plans for their annual end-of-season potluck, but now—though money was in even shorter supply thanks to the broken ankle, not to mention a third baby—it seemed important to maintain the tradition. Cam was still on crutches, but able to man the grill. Eleanor fixed pitchers of mojitos, and Harry Botts came through with the beer. They set their stereo speakers inthe yard, blasting Blondie—the first album they’d bought on CD,Parallel Lines.Even with his ankle out of commission, Cam danced by the fire, as sparks rose around him in the darkness. Eleanor leaned against the porch door, holding tight to her son. Even then—not yet walking—he was the kind of child a mother couldn’t let out of her sight.
Eleanor had started doing the Jane Fonda workout, but she hadn’t come close to reclaiming her body. The one she used to have. She’d bought a sundress for the party, shorter than anything she’d put on in a while, with a halter top that exposed more skin than her usual.
It had disappointed Eleanor that Cam hadn’t noticed her dress. Handing out the ice cream bars to the kids (Sal and Lucinda Perrone’s son Joshie complaining, as usual, that someone had pushed ahead of him in the line), she’d gotten waylaid by one of her least favorites among the team wives—Jeannie Owen, who hadn’t been seen out of maternity clothes since 1978. Now she was pregnant with her fifth. Her oldest, Paulette, had an ongoing problem of constipation, she told Eleanor. She wanted to know Eleanor’s thoughts on enemas, though really, it appeared, she was more interested in sharing her own.
Darla—always quick to recognize a situation—called out to her. “I need you in the kitchen, El.”
They were clearing away dishes when she heard the roar of a motorcycle. It was Timmy Pouliot with that summer’s girlfriend on the back of his bike.
“Let’s see who Timmy’s brought with him this year,” Darla said. “The one he brought to your party last year would be hard to top.”
The new girlfriend was named Amber. She had on an outfit that reminded Eleanor of the actresses onThe Dukes of Hazzard,a show her children loved. Feeling suddenly ridiculous in her pink-and-green-striped sundress with its pointless ruffles and too-short skirt, she ducked into the bedroom for a sweatshirt to throw over her outfit.
After Timmy parked his bike and grabbed a beer from the cooler,he joined the other men at the spot in their field where Cam had set up horseshoes. Amber headed in the direction of the mojitos. She was a good ten years younger than any of the other women. She took a long swig of her drink.
She made her way to the horseshoe pit. Every man on the team watched as she crossed the lawn and bent over to toss her horseshoe.
Standing at the sink, Eleanor looked toward the barbecue. It was never difficult to pick her husband out in a crowd—the tallest man, the reddest hair. He had a beer in one hand, and the other on the shoulder of one of his softball buddies. He was the life of the party. If she’d never met him before, she could have fallen in love with him all over again that night.
He didn’t see her watching him. He was looking at Timmy Pouliot’s girlfriend. Who wouldn’t?
Eleanor caught her reflection in the window—the ridiculous outfit she’d chosen for the party, her hair, with the bangs she’d cut herself recently, in a misguided attempt to cover her frown lines.
She took out a Brillo pad to scrub the pan she’d cooked the ribs on.
“Need help?” A man’s voice, behind her. “I like that dress, by the way,” he said. It was Timmy Pouliot, carrying in glasses.
“Now I know you’re lying,” she laughed.
