A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
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No, not plait, braid. Bangs. She marshalled the different words, distracting herself by doing so.
The road curved through the shadow of the trees. There were huge, elegant conifers here with branches like trailing skirts that looked black in the bright light.
There was more grass in front of the new buildings, a curving bank of it, and across the grass a scatter of people. The senior members of the various faculties pursued their research throughout the year, so there were more parked cars here, and the doors of the dining commons were open.
Dinah headed diagonally across the lawns. In front of Matthew’s building a handful of people were playing frisbee. She watched a boy in a baggy white shirt leap up and twist in the air to make a catch. Several voices called out and then the disc floated on from his hand in a smooth arc. All the figures were leaping now, their hair and clothes rippling and Dinah imagined how a director might freeze the frame to capture a single image, a blurred smiling face in a swathe of hair and an outstretched hand to signify, what, youthful abandon, confidence, freedom?
For the life that you live.
Perfume, trainers – sneakers – or low-fat yoghurt?
She was smiling with pleasure at the sight of the frisbee players when she realised that one of them was Matthew.
He was wearing khakis and a blue shirt that had pulled loose, and a peaked baseball cap she had never seen before. It was jammed low over his forehead to keep the sun out of his eyes and his hand was reaching up in a salute as he called out.
‘Sean! Over here, look.’
Sean Rader had been part of Matthew’s old team in London. It was part of the agreement Matt had made that he should be able to bring two of his key people over to New England with him. Dinah had met Sean often, back in London. He was a small, tense man with a corrugated frown. And now he was out in the four o’clock sunshine playing frisbee and shouting. These were all people who worked with Matthew. The boy in the white shirt was a technician, and there was a little dark-haired woman PhD and Jon Liu, Matt’s deputy director, and half a dozen others.
The frisbee skimmed again on a long curving path towards Matt. He caught it two-handed and as he leapt in triumph he looked to Dinah so taut and springy, and so unquestionably comfortable within himself and in his place, that the coloured lenses of familiarity fell from her eyes.
The naked vision made her shiver in the afternoon’s heat.
How was it that she had driven across town needing to talk to this man rather than that one, or another altogether? She was gazing at a stranger, a man she didn’t know in any way, who lived a life with which she was unacquainted.
Disorientation rocked her. She put out a hand to steady herself in the rushing air.
Someone had sent the disc spinning away on the wrong trajectory. There was a chorus of jeers and the players ran after it in an eager pack. The woman PhD stumbled on the bank and landed on her outstretched hands, but she pushed herself up again and ran on, anxious not to be left out. The shadow of his cap’s peak cut sharply across Matt’s face.
Dinah did not want him to see her here. She could only think of getting away before anyone noticed her. She shrank backwards, two or three steps, then turned and fled for the shelter of the trees.
‘It was only a frisbee game,’ Nancy said. ‘Why are you so angry?’
They were in the Pinkhams’ yard, laying out cutlery and paper napkins. Nancy had had her hair cut in the summer and it stood out in a cottony floss around her face, making her look not many years older than her little girls. ‘Even Todd plays it.’
‘It wasn’t the game. I’m not angry.’ Dinah couldn’t express to Nancy the failure of recognition and the confusion that had come with it, or the sense of loss at being excluded from a closed circle of shared interest and common purpose that mocked what her marriage had become.
Matt was happy here.
How had that obvious fact somehow escaped her? She was lonely; Matthew was considerate and careful of her, almost as if she were an invalid, but on his own account he was happy.
‘Damn it. Nancy, I sound a miserable shrew, don’t I?’
‘Uh-huh. You don’t deserve him. And oh boy, are you a misery. You never come over here and make me laugh when I’m ready to scream, do you? You aren’t funny or cute or a great mom or anything?’
‘Aren’t I?’
‘Shit, Dinah, what’s wrong? You know you are.’
Simple. On the face of it.
Dinah shook out a gingham cloth and twirled it like a matador cape. The boys were up in the trees hanging candle lanterns from the branches. Todd had lit the barbecue and there was the scent of charcoal. Later there would be a full moon.
‘I miss home,’ she offered pathetically, trying to explain something away. She patted the cloth over a table and smoothed the wrinkles.
‘Sure you do. Anyone would.’
‘About Matt, you know? There’s all this talk of how busy he is, and the research, and all the other administration work to keep up with and the travelling to lectures and conferences and the pursuit of funds. And then I go round there and they’re all playing bloody frisbee?’
‘Listen up. That’s the way it is. You have to let them have their importance. It’s the same with Todd, the hospital hours and the crises and being the only one who can do anything right. They have to show us they’re out there hunting and gathering. They’re men, aren’t they?’ Todd was an intern at the local hospital.
Nancy’s plump-cheeked face was smooth and shining within the halo of hair. Dinah felt a surge of affection for her and ashamed of deflecting her friendly concern with only a sliver of the truth.
They had not become close friends. Nancy made Dinah feel cynical and partial and foreign. They spent a good deal of time in and out of each other’s houses, and Dinah was sparky and ironic in her company, but it was as if with her clothes and manners and eccentric theories of motherhood she was playing the role of a certain kind of Englishwoman to meet Nancy’s expectations.
‘You’re right, darling. Men are men and all too explicable, and woman are supreme beings full of wit and insight and beauty. Now then, where shall we put all this bread?’
‘French loaves, if you don’t mind. Maria Berkmann has only been back for four days but I think if I have to listen to any more about Lyon and Côtes-du-Rhone and TGV pronounced tay jay vay, I shall start hollering.’
‘Thanks for the warning. Otherwise I might have put the noise down to the hopelessly unGallic Californian Chardonnay.’
Laughing together, the two women went on laying out plates and knives.
When they finished Nancy said, ‘You don’t want to worry about Matt. Just let him get on with what he wants to do because he’ll do it anyway, regardless.’
That much was true. Matt always got what he wanted. He worked out in his methodical way precisely what it was, and as soon as he had identified it he went ahead and got it. He was never blurred, never impetuous or unconsidered. Dinah knew him so well, and yet he could reveal himself to her as a total stranger.
‘You’re probably right.’
‘I know I’m right.’ Pleased with herself, Nancy gave a little affirming nod. ‘I’ll tell you something else. You should do something for yourself, instead of just for your husband and kids. You should get yourself a job.’
‘Right. Hillary Clinton could probably use a little help. I’ll call her.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘Nancy, I know you are. Thank you.’
Todd appeared dressed in a lemon-yellow Ralph Lauren Polo shirt. Nancy turned to him at once.
‘Todd,