The Ocean Between Us. Susan Wiggs
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a hollow air, as though waiting to take a breath. It was funny how houses each had their own personalities, thought Grace. This one was self-consciously cute, with Bavarian-style windows and halfhearted gingerbread trim. It was her least-favorite type of house—a meandering floor plan, boxy rooms, open hallways that amplified noise. The Navy’s idea of officers’ housing was that size matters.
She wandered out onto the porch to watch the kids drive away. Whidbey Island lay so far north that in summer the sun lingered late, painting the sky with deep shades of pink and gold she’d never seen anywhere else. The sight filled her with wistfulness, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on the reason.
The tread of a footstep startled her briefly, and she turned to see Steve there. “Hey, sailor,” she said, instantly getting over the brief moment of surprise. Every once in a while, she forgot he was around. A Navy wife either had all of her husband or none of him. There was no in-between time.
The Bronco’s taillights glowed at the intersection, then disappeared around the corner. A bittersweet feeling swept over her as she watched them go. They looked so independent, heading out into the evening by themselves. She turned to Steve with a heart full of need. “I hate watching them go.”
“Brian’s a good driver.”
“It’s not that. I hate the idea that they’re leaving.”
“Summer’s not quite over yet,” Steve pointed out, clueless.
“I don’t mean school,” she said. “I mean for good.”
“What, do you want them to stay?”
God. He didn’t get it. She turned to the porch rail, planted her elbows on it and stared out across the yard, a cramped rectangle of beaten-down grass trampled by countless families that had lived here before. Far in the distance rose the mountains in a glittering robe of gold, unreachable.
“Don’t get all pissed off at me, Gracie. I didn’t make the rules. The point of raising kids is to prepare them to be independent, so they can leave and find their own lives.”
Logic wasn’t what she needed right now. She needed…she didn’t know how to put it into words. “I’m not mad at you,” she said.
“Then what’s this?” he asked, touching her forehead with his finger, then with his lips. And just like that, her annoyance melted. “You’re frowning.”
She smiled up at him. “Not anymore.”
“Good.”
They stood on the porch together and silence lingered, punctuated by the cry of a gull and the shouts of children playing down the block.
The neighborhood was an uninspired cluster of plain but neat houses designed for wayfaring Navy families. This section was known as officers’ country, housing squadron skippers, executive officers, captains and commanders, lining streets named after aircraft or astronauts. Some of the places had million-dollar views of the mountains to the west, but the Bennetts’ place faced another house that looked just like it.
As they walked back inside, a few lights came on in the windows across the way. The strange wistfulness that had weighted her chest all day pressed harder now, and she felt as though she might burst. Discontent had crept up on her, entered through a side door. Everything around her was changing, and she felt compelled to change, too.
She wanted to talk to Steve, really talk, the way they never did anymore. She wished he would notice her mood, ask her what was on her mind. That would be the day, she thought. She cleared her throat. “Steve.”
“Yeah?”
“When I was out shopping for school clothes with the girls, I looked in the mirror and realized that I’ve turned into a fat lady.” She just blurted it out. It sounded so stupid, spoken aloud.
“What?” he asked.
“Fat and forty.”
“Aw, Gracie,” he said. “You’re not fat and you’re—” He paused, and she could see him doing the math in his head. “Not forty.”
“Okay, a stout thirty-nine, then.”
He chuckled and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair and inhaling as though he’d forgotten the scent of her. And maybe he did forget, she thought, slipping her arms around the familiar muscular torso. Maybe, when he was six months at sea, he forgot the way she smelled, the texture of her hair and the way she tasted. Funny, she had never asked him.
Though she’d known him half her life, there were facets to him that remained a mystery. She pictured the carrier as an alien spacecraft that sucked up five thousand earthlings and took them away for long periods of time, doing experiments on them in the guise of training exercises. Then the earthlings were returned to their home planet, altered in subtle ways.
When he returned from a cruise, his hair was often different. He might have a faint scar from a healed-over cut. Sometimes he grew a mustache. During the first Gulf War, when he returned from a cruise that had run three months longer than scheduled, she even had the strange sense that his whole body chemistry had changed. She remembered running her fingers through his hair so thoroughly that he asked what she was doing.
“Looking for the alien probes,” she had replied.
And even though she might momentarily forget he was in the house, she never, ever forgot how he smelled and tasted, what the beating of his heart sounded like when she leaned her cheek against his chest.
“Where did that come from?” he whispered, rubbing her back.
“What?”
“This forty-and-fat self-flagellation.”
He made her sound so silly. She shouldn’t have spoken up. He couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t fix what he didn’t know was broken. For that matter, she didn’t know exactly what was broken.
“I told you,” she said, taking another stab at explaining. “A three-way mirror in the dressing room. The kind where you see yourself from behind—and you realize you’re turning into a dump truck. And I’m not flagellating myself. Although if it were a means of fat reduction, I suppose I’d give it a try.” She studied his face by the dying light of the evening. He had the square-jawed, all-American look of a career officer on his way up. The lean body of a warrior. And the kind of smile that made women pause in whatever they were doing and find some reason to sidle up for a closer look.
“I don’t think you can understand this,” she said. “You still fit into the same size Levi’s you did twenty years ago.”
He cupped the palm of his hand and skimmed it down her side, as though mapping the imperfect topography of her body. “I don’t understand how you can look in a mirror and not like what you see.”
For the first time in their marriage, she flinched at his touch. “I’m not fishing for compliments. I swear I’m not.”
“And I’m not doling out compliments. This is the truth. You’re the mother of my children, Gracie,” he said, bending down to kiss her. “You’re beautiful to me.”
And just like that, she let her troubles dissolve. He had, in addition to the physique of a deity, a certain boyish sincerity and fortunate sense of timing that made him irresistible to her. She pressed herself against him, welcoming the growing heat of intimacy. Her eyes drifted shut. She became absorbed in his embrace and in the dreamy promise created by his gently probing tongue. She knew they would make love tonight and that it would be wonderful. It was one of the things she could depend on in her marriage.
“Better?” he whispered.
She nodded, because it was easier than trying to make him understand.
He kissed the top of her head and stepped back.
“You always do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“You’re