knew that he wasn’t fooling around when he told her he liked her a lot, and after dating three months told her he loved her, and after dating six months, he asked her to marry him. She said yes.
They had had the extravagant wedding both their parents wanted. She was a virgin and Mortimer was patient, gentle, and sometimes funny in bed, so that as she turned their small rented Boston apartment into a home, she discovered she was eager for the evening and the night. She had fallen in love with the man she married.
* * *
—
Mortimer continued working as an insurance investment manager. They bought a large house in the right neighborhood, using loans from their parents for the down payment. Eleanor gave Mortimer a daughter and, seven years later, a son, and sadly, as the years went by, the passion of the early months of marriage flickered and died. Eleanor was overwhelmed with her babies. She had help from her nanny, but she had responsibilities to help her husband, too—dinner parties, cocktail parties, joining the proper clubs. Mortimer worked even more assiduously at the insurance company, and he left for work each morning with an eagerness he didn’t have when he was alone with Eleanor.
Still, Mortimer had been a diligent father, blocking out time to be with his family as if referring to an invisible chart. Every June he took them on a vacation for two weeks. To London. Paris. Florence. Alaska. Brazil. He arranged special tours and went along with Eleanor and their two children, his presence serious and watchful, making it obvious that he wanted his children to learn more about the civilized world and not giggle with each other about penises on statues. When the family returned home, Mortimer went back to work in Boston, and Eleanor brought their children to the island, where they were wild with joy at being liberated. They rode bikes, raced around with friends, bought candy, swam and swam and swam beneath the hot summer sun. They stayed up too late, they went days without eating broccoli or Brussels sprouts, they camped out in a tent in the backyard, they played outdoors after nine o’clock when the sky was dark and they could run free.
As the children grew older, Eleanor talked with other summer mothers who were concerned about problems their adolescents could cause. They worried about alcohol and pot, but not the harder drugs, which weren’t as prevalent then. They worried about unwanted pregnancies, and car accidents, especially car accidents. Every summer at least one group of kids drinking beer would end up in a car crumpled on the Milestone Road where the long, straight ten miles tempted the driver to get up to a hundred miles per hour, even though the speed limit was thirty-five. No one was killed in the accidents, but there were some spectacular injuries.
Alicia and Cliff always whined that it was a drag on the weekends when Mortimer came to the island. He insisted on playing tennis with them on Saturday, and sailing with them on Sunday, and both nights eating at the yacht club, where he always commented on their manners. Mortimer told Cliff that his hair was too long. He told Alicia that she was getting fat—he told her that at the dinner table in the club dining room, and Alicia had politely excused herself and gone to the ladies’ room, returning with eyes red from weeping.
Other men and women liked Mortimer, and sought him out. The men mostly wanted insurance advice, and the women wanted to flirt, because Mortimer really was unusually handsome. Alicia and Cliff seemed perplexed at their father’s popularity, when he was so unlikable to them.
During that period of their marriage, Eleanor found it stressful having her husband around, especially on the island, in her family’s house. She tried to enforce her husband’s rules while at the same time allowing her children to have fun. She’d let them drink Cokes even though they had sugar. She told them that if they ever got drunk to call her and she’d come get them and not lecture them. She didn’t want them to drive drunk, and as far as she knew, they never had. It was an enormous responsibility, raising children, and taking care of teenagers was a roller-coaster ride.
Gradually, Eleanor fell out of love with Mortimer. She cared for him. She was grateful for him. Mortimer seemed to find his excitement in the numbers at work.