A Summer Affair: A Novel - By Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,5
Claire found the TV maddening—the channel surfing, the sports. Jason drove a pickup that was as huge and black as a hearse, a gas- guzzler he affectionately called Darth Vader. Darth Vader? Claire said, incredulous that she had married a man who treated his truck like a fraternity brother or a pet. The kids like it, Jason said. The truck, the love affair with the tube, the sneaked cigarettes, and the early morning breakfasts at the Downyflake so that Jason could touch base with his subs and hear about new business—all of it served to push Claire to the brink.
But there were also many wonderful things about Jason. He worked hard and provided for his family. He prided himself on being simple and straightforward, honest and true; he was the right angle of a T square, the bubble in the level, always locating the center. What you see is what you get. He adored the kids. He had a foot soldier in their son J.D. J.D. helped Jason with projects around the house: rolling paint onto walls, turning the screwdriver while sucking intently on his bottom lip. I’m Dad’s wingman. They built a go-cart using an old lawn mower engine; they went scalloping together and pulled cherrystone clams out of the wet, marshy sand with a tool Jason had fashioned from a piece of PVC pipe. You’ll never go hungry with the Crispin men around! Jason was exemplary with the girls, too—father of the year. He delivered Ottilie and Shea to dance lessons, he bought them bouquets on the day of their dance recital, and he whistled louder than anyone else in the audience. He tirelessly explained that Ottilie was an old-fashioned French name. We wanted something unique, he said, beaming with pride.
When Claire got pregnant with Zack, things were going smoothly. She was working on a huge commission for her best client, Chick Klaussen: a sculpture for the entry of his offices on West Fifty-fourth Street in Manhattan. She planned to be finished with the commission right before the baby was due. Jason was happy because he was, deep in his soul, a procreator. He would have had ten kids if Claire was willing, a stable of kids, a posse, a football team, a tribe: the Crispin clan.
When Claire was thirty-two weeks along, she was in the hot shop working on the Klaussen commission. She had a week or two of work left at the most. At the most! she promised Jason, even though her doctor wanted her to stop. Too hot in there, he said. Not safe for you or the baby. Claire was working very hot, it was finish work, shine and polish, she was not drinking enough water, and she fainted. She hit the floor, cut her arm, broke two ribs, and went immediately into preterm labor. On the MedFlight jet, they told her she would most likely lose the baby. But Zack had lived; they took him by emergency C-section, and he spent five weeks on a respirator in the NICU. He lived, Claire healed.
Jason was shaken to his core. He had been standing there as they sliced Claire open—Claire, whose body had sucked in two bags of IV fluid in less than thirty minutes, so advanced was her dehydration—and he had fully expected them to pull out a stillborn. But then, the cry. It was a revelation for Jason; it was his born-again moment, the moment when an adult man who thought he knew everything learned something about the human condition. He sat next to Claire’s bed as Zack spent the first of thirty-five days in the NICU, and he made Claire promise she would stop working.
For a little while, he said. Have a studio finish the Klaussen commission.
This was as close as he came to blaming her. But no matter—Claire blamed herself, as she had blamed herself for Daphne’s accident. Her blood type was the rare AB positive: the universal acceptor. And that was all too fitting. Give her the blame, the shame, all of it: she had no boundaries, she would take it on. She agreed to stop working; she gave the Klaussen commission to a glass studio in Brooklyn to finish.
Zack captured Jason’s heart—and Claire’s heart, too—because they came so close to losing him. Even now, seven months later, Claire woke up in the middle of the night, worrying about the lasting effects of her fall. She watched Zack, willing him to respond to her in an age-appropriate way, wishing that