The Stars Are Fire(10)

Grace doesn’t know how to answer this. Does he mean slow down the lovemaking? She can hardly slow down something that never happens.

“You can sit up now.”

Grace does as asked, drawing the gown across her breasts, which he has already seen and palpated. The office smells the same each time she visits—a mix of chemicals she can’t name. When she was a child, the smells frightened her, and she had to be dragged across the threshold. Now she finds them an odd comfort.

“You’re not happy about this, are you?” he asks as he wipes his hands. He is getting to be an older man, she sees now, his hair nearly white, his glasses not quite hiding the bags under his eyes.

“It’s too soon.”

“In some countries they wouldn’t say so, but they wear out their women. We don’t want to wear you out though, do we?”

She already feels worn out. She thinks of all the extra years of diapers and bottles.

“But you’ll be in the enviable position, five years from now, of having had your babies, and of having a close-knit, ready-made family.”

She forms a snappy reply, but there’s no point in taking out her anger on this kind man who wants only to help.

“The pregnancy and delivery will cost eighty dollars,” he says. “I know it’s more than Tom cost, but I had to raise my prices by five dollars this year.”

“That’s fine,” she says.

Abruptly he says to get dressed, and then he leaves the room. If he had something to tell her about the pregnancy, he would have. She and the baby must be all right.

The waiting room is full of patients.


Beautiful day melds into beautiful day. The beach becomes so crowded that not a single blanket will fit after ten o’clock in the morning. Claire begs for the wading pool as soon as she wakes up. Grace dangles Tom in the tepid water. The icehouse runs low, and there are days at a time when Grace has no refrigeration in the kitchen. She and Rosie begin to shop every day at Gardiner’s so that they can eat what is fresh and not be worried about cold storage. The corn is good. The tomatoes are fleshy. Cantaloupes are as small as softballs, and watermelons enormous. At night Gene and she eat the watermelons outdoors and spit the seeds into the grass.


One evening, after the kids are asleep, Gene says, “Let’s go to bed.”

Grace doesn’t know whether this means that he is tired or that he wants to make love.

She has her answer in the bed, when he faces her, side by side. His penis is hard, and he makes her feel it, but when she lifts her leg and shifts so that he can enter her, his penis softens. Grace, worried because she knows she has to make this work, begins to stroke him, but she must be doing it wrong, because he stops her hand and says, “I’m sorry.”

She says, “Don’t be.”

After they have broken apart, Grace wonders, for the first time, if Gene is somehow just as perplexed as she is. Might he, in his own way, be trying as hard to make sense of the marriage he is in? Grace doesn’t feel a flood of love, however, but rather a sensation of pity. She doesn’t want to pity her husband.


A fine haze is on the horizon when Gene drives Grace and the children to his mother’s house, now officially Gene’s. It’s located four miles to the south of Hunts Beach and sits on a promontory with a view of rocky shore and ocean. Grace has been to her motherin-law’s home only half a dozen times, twice memorably before the wedding when Mrs. Holland was barely able to conceal her distrust of what she called Grace’s “wiles,” the ones that got her pregnant and ensnared her son before he had completed his studies. Grace thought then, and does so now, that Merle couldn’t possibly have believed, during an intelligent moment, that her son shared none of the blame.

The Ford climbs a winding drive to the house, a well-kept Victorian, painted green with white trim that emphasizes the intricate woodwork around the doors and windows and along the wide front porch. Mr. Holland, before he died, owned stocks and bonds, about which Grace knows nothing except that they provided Merle Holland with a comfortable income. Gene takes Tom in his arms, and Grace holds Claire’s hand as they step up onto the porch. Grace turns to take in the sweep of the coastline. Gene fiddles with a set of keys, and they are in.

Her husband’s face tightens as he enters the dark house with its long hallway to the back, its enclosed sitting room to the right, and the turret room to the left. Grace wonders if her husband is sad or horrified. He opens the French doors to the sitting room. Grace wants to open every window. She rolls a fringed shade to let light in, and Gene scowls as if she shouldn’t have done that.

“The view is great,” she says.

“The sun will let in the heat,” Gene announces, as if parroting an oft-repeated statement of Merle’s.

“Do you think the furniture will mind?”

“Don’t touch anything,” Gene says to Claire, but the warning, Grace knows, is for her.

Ignoring him, she raises the shade.

In the scrutiny of the bright sun, the house shows its age. The wallpaper, a maroon pattern, reveals white plaster where it’s peeling. All the woodwork has been stained a dark mahogany. Claire clings to Grace’s leg, but Grace has no need to cling to anyone.


Did the lack of light twist the plant that grew here? Moving quickly, she passes through a dining room with a table no child has ever been allowed to eat at and into the kitchen with its back windows overlooking the garden. The room, painted pale yellow and white, is a haven. Claire, feeling it, runs along the linoleum, and Grace finds her wooden utensils to play with.