“I'm sorry it's been such a lousy summer,” Peter said sadly, sitting down on the bed, as Katie put a stack of sweaters away in a box with mothballs.
“It wasn't that bad,” she said kindly, glancing at him over her shoulder from the top of a short ladder.
“It was for me,” he said honestly. He had been miserable all summer. “I've had a lot on my mind,' he said in an oversimplified explanation, and Kate smiled at him again, and then her eyes grew serious as she watched him. She was thinking of her father.
“So has my dad. This hasn't been easy on him either.” She was only thinking about Vicotec. Peter was thinking about the extraordinary woman he had met in Paris. Olivia had made coming home to Katie nearly impossible. Kate was so independent and so cool, so willing to function without him. They didn't seem to do anything together anymore, except see their friends at night occasionally, and play tennis with her father. He wanted more than that. He was forty-four years old, and suddenly he wanted romance. He wanted contact with her, he wanted comfort, and friendship, and even some excitement. He wanted to snuggle next to her, and feel her flesh next to his. He wanted her to want him. But he had known Katie for twenty-four years, and there was very little romance left between them. There was intelligence, and respect, and a variety of shared interests, but he didn't stir when he saw her lie next to him, and when he did, she usually had phone calls to make, or a meeting somewhere, or an appointment with her father. They seemed to miss every opportunity to make love, to be alone, just to laugh sometimes, or sit around and talk, and he missed it. Olivia had shown him just exactly what he was missing. And in truth, what he had with her, he had never had with Katie. There was a kind of heady excitement to everything he did with Olivia that took his breath away. Life with Katie had always been more like going to the senior prom. With Olivia, it was more like going to the ball with a fairy princess. It was a silly comparison, and it made him laugh when he thought about it, and then he saw that Katie was staring at him.
“What are you smiling at? I was just saying how hard this has all been on my father.” He hadn't heard a word she was saying. He'd been dreaming of Olivia Thatcher.
“That's the price you pay for running a business like ours,” Peter said matter-of-factly. “It's a huge burden, and a tremendous responsibility, and no one said it was going to be easy.” He was tired of hearing about her father. “But I wasn't thinking about that just then. Why don't you and I go somewhere? We need to get away.” Martha's Vineyard hadn't been the restful vacation it had been in previous years. “Why don't we go to Italy or someplace else? Maybe the Caribbean, or Hawaii?” It would be different and exciting just being there with her, and he thought maybe a trip like that would put a little life back into their marriage.
“Now? Why? It's September, I have a thousand things to do, and so do you. I have to get the boys into school, and we have to take Mike to Princeton next weekend.” She looked at him like he was crazy, but he was persistent. After all these years, he had to at least try to keep them together, “After we get the kids settled in school then. I didn't mean today, but maybe sometime in the next few weeks. What do you think?” He looked at her hopefully as she came down the ladder and he wanted to feel more for her than he did. But the agony was that he didn't. Maybe a trip to the Caribbean would change that.
“You have to go to the FDA hearings in September. Don't you have to prepare for that?”
He didn't tell her that no matter what her father said, he had no intention of going, and he wouldn't let her father go either. They couldn't perjure themselves on the remote chance that all the problems would be solved sometime before Vicotec hit the market. “Let me worry about that,” was all he said to her, “just tell me when you can get away, and I'll plan it.” The only thing on his schedule were the congressional hearings on pricing he had finally agreed to appear at. But he knew that, if he had to, he could postpone his appearance. It was more a matter of courtesy and prestige than a life-and-death situation. To him, their marriage was far more important.
“I've got a lot of board meetings this month,” Katie said vaguely, and opened another drawer full of sweaters. And as Peter watched her work, he suddenly wondered what she was really saying.
“Would you rather not go away?” If that was the case, he wanted to know it. Maybe there was something bothering her too, and then he had a sudden thought that hit him like a bolt of lightning. Had she had an affair too? Was she in love with someone else? Was she avoiding him? It could have happened to her too after all, though it had never even occurred to him, and he felt suddenly foolish at the realization that she was just as vulnerable as he was. She was still attractive, and fairly young, and there were a lot of men she would appeal to. But Peter had no idea how to ask her if that had happened. She was always fairly cool, and somewhat prim, and asking her if she'd ever had an affair was out of the question. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at her as she threw some more mothballs in another box of sweaters. “Is there some reason why you don't want to take a trip with me?” he asked as bluntly as he could, and she finally looked up at him, and gave him an answer which annoyed him greatly.
“I just don't think it would be fair to my father right now. He's upset about Vicotec. He has a lot on his mind. I think it would be really selfish of us to go lie on a beach somewhere while he sits in the office and worries.” With difficulty, Peter tried to hide his aggravation. He was sick of worrying about Frank. He had been doing just that for eighteen years now.
“Maybe right now we need to be selfish,” Peter pressed her. “Doesn't it worry you sometimes that we've been married for eighteen years, and we don't pay much attention to us, or what we need, or our marriage?” He was trying to say something to her, but not set any alarms off while he did it.
“What are you saying to me? That you're bored with me, and you need to see me on a beach somewhere to put a little spice into it again?” She turned around and looked at him and for a moment he wasn't sure how to answer. She was much closer to the truth than he would have dared to tell her.
“I just think it would be nice to get away from your father, and the kids, and our answering machine, and your board meetings, and even Vicotec. Even here, we're hounded constantly by the fax machine, or at least I am, it's like being in the office, with sand. I'd just like to go away with you somewhere, where there are no distractions and we can talk, and remind ourselves of what it was we were crazy about when we first met, or when we got married.”