At times, now, she had the thrilling idea that her husband was falling in love with her—for the first time, actually. She was sad for the younger Alice, the eighteen-year-old who hadn’t known anything about the world; but she was happy for herself in this moment. It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together.
• • •
Peter and his father had invited more guests than ever to that year’s event: thirty-seven, by Alice’s count. Every bedroom was assigned, and every room in every outbuilding as well. Due to the number of single men and women who could not share a room, they’d even had to commandeer some of the Staff Quarters; for the staff members they’d displaced, they rented two unoccupied summer homes five miles to the south, and provided them with cars.
The first guest pulled in, and Bear ran toward the driveway to say hello. Alice, from her place in the sunroom, recognized the car immediately as her sister Delphine’s.
It had been three years since George’s death, and Delphine had continued to come alone for that time, always arriving in the same practical Buick that she staunchly refused to sell.
“Bear!” said Delphine. Through the glass, Alice could see the word as her mouth formed it. She and the boy had always had a special bond, a nice friendship. At each summer party, she treated him as an equal, brought paper and paint for him, sat with him for hours, talking with him about what he was learning in school.
Alice walked into the hallway, into the main room, where Peter and his parents were reading by the central fireplace.
“Delphine is here,” she said.
• • •
The crowd that year was eclectic. The usual suspects were there: the families of Peter and Alice; the Southworths, who would bring their toddler daughter, Annabel; the McLellans and their children; and also a handful of clients, and the obligatory artists.
Everyone complimented the food. Everyone complimented everything, actually; the decorations, and the flowers, and the musicians they had brought in, and the outfits that Alice wore, and Bear’s intelligence and good humor, and his handsomeness, too.
Throughout the week, Peter seemed different to Alice: his best self. He was happier, more enthusiastic. Relaxed, even. At times, she found him sitting on the lawn, reading a paper. Other years, he had seemed not to sit down at all.
• • •
One day, when most of the guests had gone for a hike up Hunt Mountain, Alice stayed behind. She was tired from a late night; she would take a short nap, she thought.
She went to her bedroom and stopped short.
Peter was there in her bed—awake.
He looked up at her. Surprised at first. Then he smiled.
“No hike?” he said.
“No,” said Alice. “I thought I’d rest for a bit.”
She waited, slightly nervous. The word rest was anathema to Peter; he didn’t enjoy resting himself, and didn’t appreciate it when anyone around him did either.
But he surprised her: “Come rest with me,” he said.
• • •
In the first year of their marriage, sex had been something requisite. There was always a mild embarrassment about it, on both their parts: from their first moments alone together, she had never truly felt his desire, but something more akin to duty, or a sort of condescending charity.
When Bear turned one, Peter had had rooms furnished for her that were separate from his, in both their Albany house and at Self-Reliance. He didn’t include her in this decision; merely presented both rooms to her, saying his insomnia required it.
Since then, she had slept alone.
Alice, still a young woman, sometimes felt desire so strongly that she did not know what to do with it. She lusted after friends, after strangers in the street. But, after a handful of rejections from Peter so brutal that they left her crying, she stopped making any attempt to engage him in that way. Attended to herself, instead, wondering if any other woman on the planet did what she was doing.
That day, though, Peter reached for her with a tenderness she had never felt before. He was gentle and forceful, all at once. She lay in bed with him afterward, astonished.
She cried: something she rarely let herself do in front of Peter.
“What is it?” he asked her, kindly.
She was crying, she said, because she loved him. And she did, in that moment: she loved him, and the life they had built together. But she was also crying because of all that she’d been deprived of to that point.
“Silly,” he called her, yet there was affection in his voice. And she let herself sink into him.
This, she thought, was what she had been wanting her whole life.
At last, it was here.
• • •
Everything was different. For the rest of the week, the two of them mooned after one another. Every moment they could, they sought one another out. Peter slept in her room—the one he had made for her. He went to his, on the other side of the hallway, only to change and dress in the morning.
Even Bear noticed: he came to them once, taking both of their hands in his, grinning as he looked into their faces, as if he could sense their love.
• • •
Usually, the Blackfly Good-by took place from a Saturday to a Saturday. That year, at their annual farewell dinner—a clambake put on by the staff in the traditional manner, on the beach—Peter stood up and called for everyone’s attention.
“Don’t leave tomorrow,” he said. “Stay an extra day.”
He looked around then, as if only just realizing the implications of his idea. “Warren!” he called—the name of the cook in those days. “Warren, we have enough food for tomorrow, haven’t we?”
