Ben was still touching the book. But he was watching her.
“Papa!” The panic was back in Frances’s voice. “There you are. Don’t look at Cassie’s room. It’s a mess.”
“It’s a pristine and perfect room,” he said, not even pretending to look away from Audrey.
In the sunroom they drank coffee in the white Spode cups. The sun shone through Ben’s hair to his scalp. Sue led them into silly conversations. Beach club membership rules, Bonwit’s new charge card.
They went back and played another rubber, Frances with her father. They didn’t have the cards but Sue let them win, bidding low, passing unnecessarily, making mistakes. Sue wanted Frances to have Audrey’s experience of a victory with him. But Frances was not his girl and a half. Audrey felt him beside her, felt the heat of his arm though it never touched hers, felt his eyes on her hand when she played a card, felt they were speaking the whole time, though later she would wonder what on earth she thought they were saying.
She hoped Frances would invite them to stay for lunch as always. It was past one by the time the second rubber was finished and she was starving. But she didn’t. She was ushering them out. She had two hours alone with her father now before the kids came home. They left the den and moved toward the light. Audrey would be expected to say her goodbyes and drive away. It was like discovering a sun and being expected to move in the opposite direction. She wanted at least to have her own goodbye. She said at the very last moment, just as Sue went out the door, that she had to use the ladies’ room. There was one just off the kitchen but she went to another one, the one near Molly’s module. It smelled of middle school perfume, lemon and lilies. She took her time.
He was still in the lobby when she returned, looking at an article on the wall, “Modern Magnificence,” about the house. She could hear Frances in the kitchen, washing the cups by hand.
“Goodbye,” Audrey said, without conviction.
He took her arm and brought her to the glass windows that looked out at the pool, already covered for winter, where Frances could not see them from the kitchen. His lips were like his hands, plump and warm, wetter than she had imagined. He took her lower lip in his teeth and tugged gently. He moved to her cheek and let out a moan in her ear. She felt him grow hard against her.
“Papa?” Frances called from the kitchen.
They pulled away.
“Is it a secret, where you live?” she said quickly.
His grin blossomed. “Of course not. Graham Street. Portland, Maine.”
Frances had taken off her shoes again and she came around the corner without sound. “What’s in Portland, Maine?”
“Just a place I lived once. I was on the second floor, above a sort of grimy hair salon. It was an old sea captain’s house that had been broken up into apartments. Not a very wealthy sea captain, I don’t think, no view of the sea. But a pretty mansard roof.” He’d stuck his hands in his front pockets, pulling out the fabric casually, reminding Audrey of boys in her youth after close dancing.
“I didn’t know you’d lived in Maine,” Frances said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Thank you for today,” Audrey said and kissed Frances on the cheek. She glanced briefly at him. “Nice to meet you.” She tried to make it as flat and bland as she could, as if they were really saying goodbye.
It wasn’t easy to drive two hours north and two hours home while her kids were at school without anyone noticing her absence. The first time she did it, Becky threw up at recess and had to go to Elinor’s house because no one could reach Audrey. She said she’d been shopping and lost track of time. Another time, Russell hit his head against a desk and had to stay on the cot in the school office for hours. “Where were you?” he wailed all the way home. And then in December, Larry came in from the garage and asked how in the heck the new Mustang had gone nine thousand miles already. She felt the blood drain, but he laughed and said, You head down to Atlantic City every time you drop the kids off? And she saw he didn’t expect an answer.
That first time, she didn’t even know what she was looking for. She just drove up and down Graham Street, two and seven-tenths miles, believing she would just know it. Had he said a number when he’d said Graham Street and she’d forgotten it? Old sea captain’s house, he’d said. Not wealthy. No view of the sea. Hairdresser on the bottom floor.
It was only driving home that she had remembered the roof. A kind of roof. It began with an m. She didn’t know roofs. She casually asked Larry one night coming home from a dinner party about the kinds of roofs there were.