A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
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That’s settled.’
They drove back across Franklin to the realtor’s office. Dinah trailed her arm out of the window and felt the concentrated sun hot on her skin. The street had an exhausted, end-of-summer air and the cars and shops were veiled with pale dust.
The house was nice. It was white clapboard, with green shutters at the windows and a raised porch that ran all the way round. Inside there were wide pine floorboards and the family room had an open hearth. They could take their belongings out of storage. Their English furniture would look well in the house.
The Stewards became the new family on Kendrick Street.
The Kerrigans next door gave a welcome party for the Stewards, and everyone in the street came, even old Mr Dershowitz from the end house and the quartet of postgraduate students who were renting for the year while the Berkmanns were in France.
Matthew was introduced over and over as the new professor at the university.
‘What is it you do, exactly?’ Dee Kerrigan asked him.
‘I’m a molecular biochemist. My particular field is protein engineering.’
Matt grinned, the way he did. He talked about his work to Todd Pinkham from across the street and George Kuznik, their neighbour on the other side, telling them what a privilege it was to be here to set up the programme for the university.
Dinah ate the chicken with black-eye beans that Linda Kuznik had brought, and listened and smiled. There was a lot of smiling to do, and she felt the kernel of herself shifting within this shell of politeness. These people were so friendly, with their warm questions and welcoming explanations, and in return all she could feel was isolated and estranged. Home was a long way away.
No, she reminded herself, this was not like her, that was not the way to think; this is home. She could make it so.
She tried harder to be responsive. There must be a way to direct herself into the current of goodwill on which everyone else was happily sailing.
‘I did have a job, back in England,’ she said in answer to a question of Linda’s. ‘In advertising, I don’t know yet what I’ll do here. Get the house fixed up, the boys into school, do the domestic map-reading for all of us. Matt’s going to be too busy.’
‘I hear that your husband is very brilliant.’
They both looked across the room to Matthew. He was describing something to the postgraduates, and making decisive chopping gestures in the air with his capable hands as he did so. There was a ripple of laughter. At the same time Dinah noticed a rushing stream of children headed by the largest Kerrigan child. Jack was watching a little to one side, rubbing at the frame of his spectacles, where they rested on his nose.
‘Yes,’ Dinah agreed. ‘He is.’
Brilliant was the word that went with Matthew.
‘Matthew Steward is exceptional,’ people said, colleagues and supervisors and professors. ‘He is an unusually brilliant young scientist.’
Dinah had once been eager to hear this praise and had treasured it, adding it grain by polished grain to the glowing heap of her love and admiration for him. She looked down at her empty glass.
‘Have you got enough liquor over here?’ Nancy Pinkham enquired. Without waiting for an answer she sloshed out more white wine from the bottle she was carrying, and then refilled her own tumbler. She blinked at Dinah over the rim as she drank.
‘So. Settling in?’
Dinah could see without looking too hard that Nancy was getting pissed, not angry as the word would mean here and at home would need the added off, but simply and eagerly pouring wine down her throat. The distinguishing of terms and the homely associations of the expression itself cheered her up, and so did Nancy’s relaxed way with the bottle.
‘Yes, thanks. I’ve found the way to the mall and I know where to buy coffee and the best bagels.’
‘And your kids?’ Nancy asked.
Merlin had appeared at Matthew’s side. His father’s hand rested on his shoulder as he talked, but Merlin was looking around for Jack.
‘When they get into school, they’ll be fine.’ That was next week. Dinah and Matthew had already met the elementary school head, and the boys’ class teachers.
‘Sure. Listen, come over one morning and have a drink. Coffee, even.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Mm. D’you know what?’ Nancy moved closer, so that Dinah smelt her perfume and the wine on her breath. ‘One of the graduate students said to me that you were kind of surprising-looking. For a professor’s wife.’
The disclosure implied a potential for intimacy between Nancy and herself that Dinah welcomed. The room seemed to change shape, becoming more familiar, enclosing her with all these well-meaning strangers. She forgot her separateness and found that she was laughing.
‘No pince-nez or grey hair in a pleat, you mean?’
Nancy pursed her lips. ‘Evidently.’
‘Which postgrad?’
‘Sorry. Not the cute one. One of the others.’
‘Well, just my luck.’
Nancy regarded her. She held her glass rakishly tilted.
‘I guess you make your own luck, don’t you?’
‘I suppose.’ Dinah directed her thoughts away into a vacuum, and then, once they were neutralised, let them slowly return to here and now. It was a long-practised technique.
‘Have some of this carrot cake, Dinah, won’t you?’ Dee Kerrigan asked.
‘Oh, Dee’s carrot cake is famous.’ Nancy wobbled on her high heels.
The party was slowly coming to an end. Mr Dershowitz had fallen asleep with his mouth open and his knobbed hands splayed on the arms of the chair, and there was an ominous absence of children except for the Steward boys. Jack was reading a book in the corner.
Matthew came to Dinah’s side. His hand rested on her hip, transmitting the semaphore of partners: time to leave now, wouldn’t you say? I’m ready if you are …
Dinah felt her physical connectedness to him. At that moment he was utterly familiar, solid and intelligible. Her husband. He was her anchor, her compass needle steadily indicating magnetic north. Her signals went back to him: yes, we should go now. Home to our very, very, very nice house on Kendrick Street …
They summoned the boys and said their joint goodbyes. The Kerrigans’ hospitality pursued them out of the front door and into the mild afternoon with offers of sitters and recipes and telephone numbers. As the Stewards walked the few steps across the grass beneath the sugar maple to their own door, Dinah thought that they must look like a neat, bright family in a commercial. For what? Something safe – medical insurance, breakfast cereal, building society? She played with copy lines in her head: one small step, a big jump, how many miles, miles to go before we sleep, dum dum deedum. Then she remembered with a shock that she didn’t do that any more. No more copywriting, no niche of her own. She was Matt’s wife, Jack and Merlin’s mother, this was Franklin, Massachusetts. Not London. Not Sheldon, the village in Hertfordshire where they had lived.
The heat had drained out of the air at last. The end of the summer, and the afternoon was cool with a seductive, resinous breath of autumn.
‘Enjoy yourself?’ Matthew asked her.
‘Yes. Yes, I did. I liked Nancy Pinkham.’
‘Joey Kerrigan’s a schmuck,’ Merlin said.
‘Is he? Why’s that? What does it mean, exactly?’
‘Dad, he just is, I can tell.’
Merlin’s