Page 14 of Summer Light on Nantucket

Blythe followed her friend into the kitchen and then, a glass of iced tea in hand, out to the back deck. Sandy’s garden was beautiful—a work of art. Blythe drifted along the flower beds with Sandy, admiring the deep purple iris, the clusters of pansies with their sweet faces, the clematis sweeping up and over the picket fence, the petunias spilling from window boxes, and roses, deep blood-red roses, everywhere. The hydrangeas were just waking up from winter and the cold spring.

“This is luscious, Sandy. An overabundance. I don’t know how you do it. Do your girls help weed and water?”

“Are you kidding? Flowers bore them. Look, they’ve set up the badminton net at the far end of the yard, and they’ll be complaining all summer that it’s so far away and they have to walk through ‘all those plants’ to get to it.”

Sandy sat in a pale blue patio chair and Blythe took the red one.

“I’m finally getting to the part of my life where I feel at home,” Sandy said. “My twenties were so confusing. I thought I’d study art in Paris. Live in a garret, bike everywhere with a baguette in my backpack, drink at Deux Magots. Then I met Hugh and entered another stage of life. Then the twins. It was so hard, the hardest thing in my life, those first few years when they were babies. God, all the nights I was up with them with a flu or croup or a tummy ache. It seems like years I walked with a child attached to each leg. Now they’re thirteen, and obsessed with sports, and I can take a breath.”

“Just wait,” Blythe warned. “Once their hormones really hit, you’ll wish they were toddlers again. I’ve taught seventh and eighth grade, so I thought I was prepared for teenagers, but when it’s personal, it can be grueling.” She laughed gently.

“Are you worried?” Sandy asked.

“For my kids? Of course. Also, I’ve been asked to teach full-time in our local middle school next year.”

“You told me you enjoyed substituting there.”

“Yes, but that’s a completely different job. If I teach, I’m responsible for the kidslearningsomething. I’d have to upscale my skills with technology. Girls are carrying their phones in their bra straps. Guys are playing video games in class. How much are they going to learn about what a comma is orCatcher in the Rye?”

“I’m completely certain that if you decide to teach full-time, you’ll do a fabulous job. You always have.”

“Maybe.” Blythe stared down into her iced tea, as if to find the answer there.

After a moment, Sandy asked, “How’s Daphne?”

Blythe smiled. “She’s my rock. Wrapped up in her plans to save theworld. She’s already gone over to Maria Mitchell. I’m glad she’s obsessed with environmental causes. Sheisscrawny. She eats well, but she hasn’t filled out yet.”

“And the others?”

“Holly is still sweet and easy. Teddy—he’s thirteen. He’s got hair on his upper lip and probably elsewhere, but I give him his privacy and hope that Bob tells him how to be a man. Shaving and deodorant and all that, whatever turns boys into men.”

“Is it hard, seeing Bob with another woman?”

Blythe laughed. “To be honest, it’s a relief. A few years ago, I told Miranda that her bad grades were going to make Bob blow a gasket. Teddy wanted to know what a gasket was, so I googled it. I told him, ‘It’s a mechanical seal which fills the space between two or more mating surfaces.’ Teddy had laughed like a donkey at the term ‘mating surfaces.’ I wondered if that meant our children were gaskets filling the space between me and Bob. It kind of hit home, made me realize how drab our marriage was.”

“All marriages are drab now and then,” Sandy pointed out.

“Yes, but Bob and I were so distant from each other emotionally. We didn’t hate each other, but we didn’t love each other, either. Plus, I didn’t like it that he was never home, never attended a child’s recital or baseball game or doctor’s appointment. We both knew we’d married too young, too fast. Someone said sometimes you have to marry the wrong person to get the right children, and that’s the way we explained it to the kids. After three years, I think the kids are okay with everything. Although I think Teri might be embarrassing with her long bouncy hair and overflowing bikinis.”

“She’s gorgeous, Blythe. The men don’t consider her embarrassing.”

“I know. I do know. And I know she loves Bob more than I could. More than I did. I’m glad for Bob. Do you think men need bolstering as they get older, and women just relax?”

“I think some men need bolstering, but many women do, too. I get what you’re saying, Blythe, but you’re only forty-five.”

Blythe stared into her iced tea for a moment. “I get it that you think I need a man in my life. Sex and love and all that. But honestly, Sandy, I’m just fine right now. I’m relaxed. Well, as relaxed as anyone can be with a houseful of teenagers.”

“Aren’t you lonely? Wouldn’t you like, I don’t know, someone on your side, someone who is interested inyou? Someone toholdyou?”

Blythe shrugged. “I can always hug Holly. Oh, I know what you mean, Sandy. You want me tobe withsomeone because you and Hugh are so bonded. I’m just not sure that’s for me.Of course,I cared for Bob when I married him, and I know he loved me, in a way. But we were young. We were a pair, two lost souls finding comfort and—normality. We were together, not alone. Somewhere along the way our lives became all about the children. It’s like our marriage just wore out.”

“Like a tire that’s worn off its tread.”

Blythe laughed. “Yes, just like that. We’d become co-chairs of our family. We’re both happier now.”

“You have to admit it’s unusual for a divorce to be so easy.”

“The hard part was staying together. We shared the children, but we were completely disinterested in each other. Last year when I was talking to Bob’s mother, she told me that Bob was laughing again, the way he had laughed as a boy, full-hearted, happy. She hadn’t heard him laugh like that for years.”

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