The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [16]
It has been four and a half years since the first time they trespassed in this house, since they first made love in an upstairs bedroom. It was after they’d gone swimming in their clothes. She told him she knew about a house that was abandoned. She remembers the way he unbuttoned his shirt and let it drop to the floor. How different he looked without his shirt — years younger, looser, like someone from the mills she might once have gone out with. He crouched over her and began to lick the salt from her skin. She felt dizzy with the heat. Beneath her own lips, the skin of his chest was tangy, silky with fine hairs.
Jack passes through the front room and waits for her at the bottom of the stairs. The house is still unoccupied, has been for decades. It was once a convent, and then it belonged to a family from Boston who used it as a summer house. It has been for sale for years, and she wonders why the house never sells. Perhaps it is the dormitory effect of the many bedrooms, the single bathroom at the end of the hall.
He holds out his hand. She decides, as she climbs the steps with him, that he means to give her the present in the room where they once made love. So she is not surprised when they enter a room with walls of bright lime green. In the corner, a daybed is covered with a flower-print spread. But the most striking item in the room is a red chair, a simple kitchen chair that has been painted with a fire-engine red lacquer. The chair shines in the sunlight — the red chair against the lime green against the blue of the ocean through the window — and she wonders, as she has wondered before, in what flight of whimsy the painter chose such startling colors.
— I got a call from Vision, he says at once.
— Vision?
— A start-up airline, British and American, jointly owned. Fast growing, out of Logan. In a few years, I could get an international route.
He smiles, the triumphant and complex smile of a man who has planned a surprise and pulled it off.
She puts a foot forward, about to go to him.
— And if you like this house, we’re going to buy it.
The sentence stops her. She puts her hand to her chest.
— You’ve been here? she asks.
He nods. — With Julia.
— Julia knows about this? Kathryn asks incredulously.
— We wanted to surprise you. The house is a wreck. It needs work. Well, obviously.
— When did you come here with her?
— Two weeks ago. I had a layover in Portsmouth.
Kathryn tries to remember. She sees the days of December as blocks on the pages of a calendar. Each trip seems to blend into the next. She cannot precisely remember any of them.
— Julia knew about this? she asks again.
— They’ve accepted our offer, Jack says.
— Our offer?
She feels slow and doltish. The surprises are piling up before she can sort them out.
— Wait here, he says.
Shaken, she crosses the room and sits on the red chair. The sun from a side window makes an oblong of bright hot light on the bedspread. She wants to crawl into the light to warm her hands and feet.
How could he? she wonders. About such an important matter? This isn’t simply hiding a box in a bureau. There were other people involved. Real estate agents. And Julia. Is Julia capable of keeping such a secret? Perhaps for a surprise, Kathryn answers herself. And Jack is good at secrets.
She shakes her head. She cannot conceive of making an offer on a house without Jack.
When he returns, he has a bottle of champagne and two glasses in his hands. She recognizes the glasses from Julia’s cupboard.
— I love it that you’re here, he says. — I love seeing you here. She watches as he pops the cork. She thinks: But this is what Jack does best, isn’t it? He makes things happen.
She wants to feel happy. In a minute, when she has digested the news, she thinks she will feel happy.
— You’ll commute to Boston? she asks.
— I’ve timed it. Fifty minutes.
My God, she thinks, he’s been here and he’s timed it already. He pours the champagne into the two glasses and hands her one