I knew the truth. Regina still loved Forrest. She couldn’t help it. The plan she’d cooked up, in which I was to play a vital role, wasn’t really about supporting future divorce actions. It was about finding a way to stay married.
I could relate to Regina’s inability to give up on Forrest. As angry as I was at him for what I viewed as his abandonment of me, I was in the same boat. As many times as I reminded myself that he was cheating onhis wife, and that he’d done this repeatedly—every summer for years, it turned out—I couldn’t hate him. I couldn’t help smiling when he came in the door with a bagful of lobster rolls for us, or when he whipped out his ukulele, as he still did on occasion, passing around a bag of kazoos—one for each of us—and burst into one of his made-up songs. Times like those, all was forgiven. I’d forget I was supposed to be mad at Forrest, the guilt would return that I’d agreed to help his cold and unlovable wife prepare her case against him.
I never bought Regina’s theory that Forrest would go after her as an unstable person or take her children away. He might have a weakness for women in tight, low-cut dresses—clearly he did—but he wasn’t cruel.
And he was a loving parent. There were days when Regina barely spoke to Hayward and Jilly, days when she hardly got out of bed, and other days (many of these) when her chief form of communication with her children lay in her typewritten instructions for their lives. Whereas even at his worst—preoccupied with Brenda, and more than that, obsessed—Forrest never neglected the children. They were captivated by him. So was I.
Still, I embarked on carrying out my assignment. Regina and I were in this together now—two women who had been betrayed by the same charming, irresistible but unfaithful man. If I had lost the tender affection of the one person in this family I truly adored, as it seemed I had, I’d shift my loyalty to the one who still took an interest in me. And so the same intensity of feeling that had once fueled my total devotion to Forrest now attached itself to Regina.
I didn’t want to let her down. I wanted to please her. I wanted to make her proud of me.
“These girls don’t know what they’re doing out there,” Regina said. “They have no understanding of the sport of tennis.”
Her remark caught me off guard. I remembered what Forrest had said about Regina having played tennis herself when she was younger, but it was hard to picture. Nothing in how she was now suggested awoman who’d won doubles tournaments once. These days the game seemed not simply to bore her but, more than that, to irritate her.
I could have said a million things concerning my views on tennis, a sport that now occupied my thoughts every hour of my day, much as Forrest had done once. Jonathan had recently invited me over to the club, where I got to join a group of die-hard players to watch the semifinals of the Volvo International being played in Vermont, in which John McEnroe had defeated Jimmy Connors—both of us McEnroe fans, naturally. Some of the points they played felt so exciting I could barely breathe.
With the Labor Day match and my dreaded return to New Jersey less than a month away, I worried now that functioning as Regina’s detective was cutting into my ability to work with Jonathan on my tennis game.
I wanted to win that tournament.
52
Another Way to Stay Skinny
It was a late afternoon at Wonderland. They were having game night at the club, and the whole family had gone over there to join in the festivities. Having seen Regina in one of her Lilly Pulitzer dresses, I figured that, for once, she must be going over with them. This left me alone in the house—always an intoxicating experience.
I figured it was a good opportunity to check out Forrest’s desk. Maybe I’d find a receipt from some restaurant meal, a lock of red hair. A book of matches, even—the kind of thing Nancy Drew would come up with in the novels I’d loved when I was younger.
I heard an odd, muffled sound coming from the bathroom. This went on for a few minutes.
I tiptoed down the hall. If it was a raccoon or a possum—animals I’d observed a number of times on my bike rides around the back roads of Lake Catherine—I wasn’t sure I wanted to confront it. On the other hand, I was in my investigative mode. I needed to know what was going on.
The sound was coming from the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door was shut. I hid in Jilly’s room, thinking of what to do next.
Then came the sound of the toilet flushing. A few moments later, the door swung open. Regina came out. She didn’t spot me. She was holding a towel to her mouth.
I’d heard about this from girls at my school. Overheard, mostly, because I wasn’t one of those girls other girls told things to. I just knew this was what some girls did who wanted to stay really skinny. Usually the ones who were already skinnier than anyone else in our class.
Regina hadn’t left the house after all. She’d been here the whole time, and she had just made herself throw up. She had taken off her Lilly Pulitzer dress for this. She was wearing her slip.
From my hiding place around the corner, I watched Regina walk slowly back to her bedroom. A moment or two later, she emerged, wearing the Lilly Pulitzer dress again, along with a pair of pink shoes I’d learned to call ballet pumps.
She headed downstairs. I heard the front door close, followed by the sound of her car—the Jeep—starting up. She was off to join the rest of the family at the country club, I figured. As if everything was normal.
53
Overheard over Ice Cream
The children and I were at the Caboose, getting our ice creams after sailing lessons. We had just settled into our usual spot at one of the picnic tables, with our bikes leaned up against the side of the building. I’d long since given up my one-cone-a-week vow, along with the idea of sticking to lower calorie sherbet, though thanks to tennis I had trimmed down anyway. Each of us had gotten two scoops, with jimmies.
A few tables over from us, a couple of women were eating fried clams. I didn’t recognize the one whose face I could see. The other one had her back to me, but her voice was instantly recognizable, as was her hair. Hurricane Brenda.
She didn’t see me. Maybe she wouldn’t even have recognized me if she had. Brenda was not the sort of person who paid attention to people like me—someone else’s teenage babysitter. Never mind that I was babysitting the kids of the man she was having sex with. I was pretty sure she didn’t recognize Jilly and Hayward either. Brenda struck me as the kind of person who mostly paid attention to herself.
She leaned in to speak with her friend, though she seemed to make no effort to lower her voice. It was almost as if she wanted to be overheard. She was probably accustomed to getting attention, and liked it.
“I’m telling you, Lorraine. Nobody ever touched me the way he does,” she said. “It’s like his tongue wants to reach into the depths of my soul.”
