hushing. I’m supposed to let her sort everything out—as Thorpe reminds me time and again—but biology’s an autocrat, wouldn’t you agree, and inevitably I’ve got to rise and witness the unfolding disaster for myself. And once you’re up, you’re up. It’s an hour or more before you can disentangle yourself from the ties of motherhood and find your typewriter again. Sometimes Thorpe wanders in, bemused, while I’m still on the kitchen floor playing horsie with Jack and Maggie, and I’ll look up and say accusingly, One more, you said. Let’s have one more baby. And Thorpe will scoop Maggie or Jack (or both) into the air and say, Twins run in your family, beloved, not mine. Anyway, which one of them would you send back?
So we muddle on, me writing freelance for whatever magazine will have me, and Thorpe teaching botany to dewy undergraduates at this small college at the western edge of New Hampshire where we’ve chosen to settle, God knows why. Each June, we board one ocean liner or another and cross the Atlantic to spend the summer in Switzerland with the aunties and Gammy. (Wilfred dubbed her that when he was a year and a half old, and it stuck.) This June, it happens to be the same ocean liner selected by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for whatever whim presently moves them to Europe. What are the odds?
As it happens, our paths don’t cross until the fifth evening of the voyage. This is mostly because the Thorpes—a botany professor and his journalist wife, together with their three small children—are traveling cabin class, wedged together in a berth on D deck near the engine room, whereas Wallis and Edward occupy a massive suite of staterooms on the main deck, near the center of the ship where the noise and motion are at a minimum, don’t you know. Also—and if you haven’t traveled by ocean liner across the Atlantic with three small children, you might not fully comprehend what I mean by this—our hands might have been a little full.
Still. On the fifth night, which is fair and warm, my husband pays one of the stewardesses to mind the children for the evening, while he whisks me away to the glamour of the second-class dining room for drinks and dinner à deux, all dressed up, just like old times. He’s looking especially handsome. The burnish on his strawberry-blond hair might be fading a trifle, and he still walks with a hint of a limp, but the sight of Thorpe in his dinner jacket never fails to set my heart thumping and my back itching with the memory of a certain sea grape tree on an island, far away. After dinner there’s dancing, and after dancing we spill onto the deserted promenade deck for what my husband likes to call a spot of kissing. Mind you, we’ve both drunk a great deal of champagne, and as soon as I inhale Thorpe’s good, clean smell, the kissing turns serious, and there we are, necking desperately against the railing like a pair of teenagers, Thorpe’s wicked hand down the front of my dress, when some damned kids start yelling for their mama and papa and spoil the fun. Especially when they turn out to be our kids, followed by the exhausted stewardess we hired to prevent just such an interruption. Oh well.
But Thorpe responds in good humor. He swings Maggie into one arm and takes Jack’s little palm in his other hand, and Wilfred trots along after them, explaining how he tried to get the twins to stay in bed, really he did. I look around for the stewardess, but the ship has swallowed her up. Not that I blame her.
Now, it’s June, remember, and we’re fairly far north, and even though it’s past ten o’clock, the sun hasn’t quite set. The air is filled with this incandescence, this golden light, and for an instant or two I allow myself the pleasure of watching my husband bear our children down the deck, gilded in sunshine. The beauty of it drenches me. I think my heart stops. And that’s when I spot them.
God only knows how long they’ve been standing there like skeletons, not twenty yards away. She’s wearing a long, sleeveless dinner dress in her favorite shade of blue, and her chest and neck and arms are crusted in jewels. He’s wearing a dinner jacket identical to that of my husband. The years have not been kind. Her features have