“It’s not about how they look in a bikini, you know?” he told her. “At some point you gotta get off the bike.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Riding away on the back of a motorcycle sounds pretty good to me right about now.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “Let’s go.”
She only had half an hour, she told him. Right about now, Cruella de Vil would be kidnapping the dalmatian puppies and taking them off to that castle of hers, to turn them into fur coats. In the old days she would have worried how it would be for Toby, seeing that. She would have had to tell him in advance that they were going to be rescued in the end. But Toby, now, would probably not even take in what happened on the screen.
“I’ll get you back to your grocery cart in plenty of time,” he told her.
Out in the parking lot, he realized the problem.
“Oh, jeez, I don’t have a helmet,” he said. “I’ve never been the helmet type, but you should be wearing one. With those kids and all.”
She told him she preferred feeling the wind in her hair.
She put her arms around his waist. This was just standard practice for a passenger, she reminded herself. But it felt good just taking in the feel of his body this way.
“I never rode on a motorcycle before,” she told him. With the engine running, she had to yell.
“You don’t really need to hold on so tight. But I like it.”
Her breasts had been pressing against his back. She loosened hergrip. They were rounding a corner now, heading west out of town in the direction of the sunset. She leaned in.
“You’re a natural,” he called out over his shoulder.
She would have been happy to keep going, far from this place, toward the ocean or the mountains. But he took his promise seriously. They were back at the supermarket parking lot by the half hour mark. She hopped off the bike and arranged her hair, that had been blowing in all directions. She could feel her heartbeat.
“Next time, I’ll take you to this road I know where there’s this great boulder. From the top, you can see the world. We’d just need a couple hours.”
“That was just what I needed,” Eleanor told him.I wish I had a river I could skate away on.
“Call anytime,” he said. He took a pen out of his pocket and took hold of her hand in a way that made her think, for a moment there, that he was going to kiss it. He uncapped the pen and opened her palm. He wrote his number on it.
After he dropped her back at the parking lot and drove away on his bike she retrieved her cart and paid for her groceries. Cam was in the yard when she got home. Her husband did not look up as she pulled the car in and lifted the groceries from the back.
Alison—Al—was upstairs, the place she spent most of her time these days. Ursula was playing Candy Land with Toby. She had taught him to work the spinner, but she moved his pieces for him. From the living room, she could hear her younger daughter’s sweet, high voice, patiently explaining to her brother, not for the first time, why she had to move his piece all the way back to the Molasses Swamp. Not that Toby showed any indication he minded. Ursula just liked to pretend he would care who won.
Putting the groceries away, Eleanor allowed herself to think about the hour she’d just spent.
Timmy’s body was completely unlike her husband’s. More solid and substantial. Not as tall as Cam, but a burlier build, where Cam was lanky. If she had placed her hands on her husband’s stomach, asshe’d done with Timmy, she would have been able to feel every rib, but Timmy liked his beer.
She opened a bag of frozen peas and set them on the counter, put the water on to boil. Ursula came in the kitchen, in search of snacks.
“What’s that on your hand?” she asked.
“A number I wrote down off a bulletin board,” she said. “Some guy who sells cordwood.”
After, it occurred to her that this was the first time she’d ever lied to one of her children.
That winter Cam enrolled in a program to become a physical therapist. There was a place in Boston with once-a-month weeklong immersion classes and summer intensives designed to get a person through the program in three years. He was thinking he could see clients out in the barn after he got his certification, he told Eleanor. Clear out his tools. Put in nicer floors maybe. Eleanor could keep her workspace out back. It didn’t take up that much room.
“I want to be more of a contributor around here,” he told Eleanor. “A good physical therapist can bring in a nice income. It could make a big difference. Take some of the pressure off you. And I might learn some new techniques for working with Toby.”
“Whatever,” she said.
Coco was off at school now—a place called the Center for Holistic Studies in Vermont, where they taught Reiki and massage and yoga, which Cam (Cam and Toby, she said) had inspired her to explore. Home on Christmas break, she stopped over to see them. She’d made tie-dye shirts for the children and bigger ones for Cam and Eleanor.
Coco thought the physical therapy idea was great, of course. Coco thought everything Cam did was pretty great, but physical therapy in particular.
