On some nights the electrical storm did not come until very late, sometimes not till the early hours of the morning. Then the thunder, rumbling in and breaking over the city, would awaken the two of us, and we would lie under our thin sheet, silent but quite awake. Martha would reach over and flick the radio on, and then light a cigarette, while in the dark we listened to the dance music which crackled from time to time with the storm. When the cigarette had been smoked all the way down and the thunder had moved from over our heads, we would roll our different ways and go back to sleep.
The weekends, however, were all blue skies and sunshine, and out on the rocks we must surely have looked as cheery as the next couple. We never missed a Saturday or a Sunday; we were there by eleven in the morning, and even at sundown, with half our newspapers blown away and our books still unopened, with a hamper full of cookie crumbs and wax paper and banana skins, we generally stayed on, after the others had drifted home, to watch the rosy dusk move in over the lake. Martha was particular during these months never to allow herself to feel rushed about anything; she stayed where she felt like staying just as long as she felt like staying there — except, of course, on those Sunday nights when we packed up early and were home and by the telephone promptly at six. For it was at six, twice a month, that she placed her call to Long Island, where Cynthia and Markie were spending their summer. And late on those Sunday afternoons there would invariably be a moment — I am pulling Martha by the hand up out of the water, I am just about to pour wine into her cup — when by the lake front it would become for us as it was in bed on those nights we were awakened by the thunder: What I feel Martha feeling toward me, what I know myself to be feeling toward her, is hate.
On the last Saturday of July I received a letter from my father telling me that he and Fay Silberman had set a date for their wedding. It was not to be until Christmas, but Mrs. Silberman was going off in September to visit her children in California, and both the affianced had agreed that she should give some definite word to her sons and daughters-in-law out on the west coast, for they would have to begin to make plans about what to do with their children when they came East in December for the wedding. I read the letter several times that morning, and carried it in my trouser pocket when Martha and I went down to the lake. That evening, when I slipped my trousers on over my bathing suit, I took the letter out and read it again. This time I could not manage to be merely resigned; resignation became gloom.
“Will it be large and fancy?” Martha asked.
“I suppose just the family. Her children and me. He doesn’t really say.”
“Well, Christmas is a long way off.”
“Still, it sounds definite.” I looked back to the letter for some reason my father might have given to explain having decided now for Christmas — a reason, that is, other than Mrs. Silberman’s wanting to give her family plenty of time to ready baby-sitters. But there were no reasons, only more news. “He’s going to spend August out at her summer place, he says.”
“You think that’s what he’s after — summer vacations?”
“I think he’s marrying her because, one, she’s pressing him, and two, he’s lonely and doesn’t know what else he can do. But I know he’s been putting it off. They’ve been engaged since last Thanksgiving. He’s not sure himself.”
“Where’s her summer place?”
I turned to the letter again. For all my readings of it, it was amazing how few of the words written in that large open hand I could manage to keep in mind. “East Hampton. He says I’m invited too. To get to know her.”
Martha was putting on her shorts over her white suit. It was not until she had zipped up the side and fastened the button that she turned back to me. “Why don’t you go?”
I answered as casually as she had asked. “Because I’m here.”
“I thought you might want to get away for a while, that’s all.”
Earlier in the afternoon, Martha’s lightheartedness had amused both Bill Lake and Frank Tozier, who, having stopped to visit for a few minutes, had wound up camped on our blanket for several hours, eating out of our basket. Now what could be seen of the lightheartedness was only the residue — the irritating part of the frivolity, the unconvincing part of the offhandedness. What with still trying to comprehend my father’s decision, I myself had no reserves of patience and sense, and I said, “Now what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She put a towel over her shoulders and sat down and looked out across the lake where a last water-skier was flying over the surface. “I just thought that if you wanted to see your father, you should certainly feel that you can.”
“Well, I feel that I can, if I want to.”
“What about Theresa’s baby?”
“What about it?”
“Don’t you have to wait for it to come?”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with anything, Martha. Did I seem to you to express a desire to go East and have a talk with my father? I didn’t mean to. What would I say? What is there to say? Last November he bought her a nice big ring and now they’ve set the date, and now he’s going out to the seashore with her. He’s entitled to his pleasures, if those are what he thinks they are.”
She took her watch from her pocket and when she put it on her wrist, I saw her look at the time.
“Would you like to leave?” I asked.
“… No. It’s lovely now.”
“Martha, are you asking me why I don’t go East, why I don’t do something about him?”
“No.”
“Because there’s nothing to do.”
“All I meant to say,” she said, smiling, “is that if you want to see your father, or, I don’t know, visit anybody, I don’t want you to think that you’re tied down here. That’s all. If something were to come up—”
“You want me to go somewhere?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“Then what’s depressing you?”
“Your father’s setting the date, I suppose. I suppose I’m only sharing your feelings.”
“Yes,” I said, “and what more?”
“Nothing.” She smiled again, then shrugged. “1 just felt like calling the kids. I don’t any more.”
“Don’t be silly. We’ll go home, you can call them.” The idea gave me my first real lift in hours.
“It’s not Sunday.”
“What’s the difference? It’s getting chilly here anyway.”
“I think I’d rather stay.”
“All right. We’ll stay.” I put the letter back into my pocket; tonight or tomorrow I would have to write some sort of answer — send my congratulations, my approval, my blessings. The hell with it.
A few seconds passed before I realized that I had spoken those last few words out loud. Martha leaned her head back on the rocks so that her loose hair was spread around her. I saw her mouth move and barely restrained myself from reaching out and placing my hand across it. I did not care to be told again that I had her permission to go East if I so desired.