Where Love Goes Read online

  JOYCE MAYNARD

  WHERE LOVE GOES

  For eight years, Joyce Maynard was the author of the nationally syndicated column Domestic Affairs. Currently a contributing editor for Parenting, she is a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and writes frequently for The New York Times and other periodicals. A native of New Hampshire, she now lives in Marin County, California, with her three children.

  BOOKS BY JOYCE MAYNARD

  Where Love Goes

  To Die For

  Domestic Affairs

  Baby Love

  Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties

  Copyright © 1995 by Joyce Maynard

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States in hardcover by Crown Publishers, Inc., a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1995.

  Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following: “Passionate Kisses,” Lucinda Williams. 1988 WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP., NOMAD-NOMAN MUSIC, LUCY JONES MUSIC. All rights administered by WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission. “If I Needed You,” Townes Van Zandt. COLUMBINE MUSIC, INC.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Crown edition as follows:

  Maynard, Joyce

  Where love goes / by Joyce Maynard.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3563.A9638W48 1995

  813’.54—dc20 95-7337

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78762-0

  Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com/

  v3.1

  For Chris. Aurora borealis.

  Is it too much to ask

  I want a comfortable bed

  That won’t hurt my back

  Food to fill me up

  And warm clothes

  And all that stuff

  Shouldn’t I have this

  Shouldn’t I have all of this and

  Passionate kisses, passionate kisses

  Passionate kisses from you

  Is it too much to demand

  I want a full house

  And a rock and roll band

  Pens that won’t run out of ink

  And cool quiet

  And time to think

  Do I want too much

  Am I going overboard

  To want that much

  I’ll shout it out to the night

  Give me what I deserve

  Cause it’s my right

  Shouldn’t I have this, shouldn’t I have this

  Shouldn’t I have all of this and

  Passionate kisses passionate kisses

  Passionate kisses from you

  —LUCINDA WILLIAMS, “Passionate Kisses”

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Spring

  Summer

  Fall

  Winter

  Spring

  Fall

  Author’s Note

  SPRING

  There’s this game Claire plays now and then when she goes to the supermarket. Wheeling her cart through the aisles, lifting the one-percent milk down off the shelf in the dairy case, she entertains herself with the idea that one of these days a man might wheel his cart up alongside hers and kiss her so passionately she would toss her coupons into the middle of the frozen foods. “Come away with me,” he says, snatching her up like the most wonderful delicacy in the gourmet section.

  Her too-full cart could be discouraging to these men, so when she plays the game, Claire takes care to include among her family-size packages of English muffins and ground beef a few items that say other things about her besides that she’s a mother. Things that are also true: That she is a lover of garlic and goat cheese for instance. That while she doesn’t need expensive wine, she doesn’t get the cheapest stuff either. That the color she favors is red.

  She always checks their ring finger first. And she is always careful to keep her own ringless fingers plainly visible. If there’s a man who really interests her at the seafood counter she may buy calamari, She always buys herself flowers and kiwi fruit, or a mango. Smoked trout. Jalapeños. Never Little Debbie cakes. Never Vaseline or toilet bowl cleaner. If an old Beatles or Dylan song comes on the Muzak, as they do so often these days, she sometimes finds herself singing a few bars under her breath. She might stand there picking through the strawberries while he chooses a melon. She may hold a bunch of rosemary to her face and breathe deep. Nothing more than that.

  Only three times in all the years since her divorce has Claire actually struck up a conversation with one of these bachelor shoppers. Of those three, one invited her to share the steak he was buying at his backyard hibachi later that evening. She could tell the minute he opened his mouth that it wasn’t a good idea. One man asked her what you did with Jerusalem artichokes, then explained that his mother had asked him to pick some up. One of these men pointed to the mussels and said, “I hear they’re an aphrodisiac.”

  Still, Claire plays the game. It’s just one of the ways she gets through her days, allowing herself the hope that a man who would love her wildly might be just one more aisle away.

  The funny thing is that today just such a person has come to this same supermarket with a shopping list of his own. His list does, in fact, include Little Debbie cakes, because he has an eight-year-old daughter who likes them in her school lunches. A daughter but no wife. And sometimes, as he picks out the groceries for another long week of caring for her alone, he plays the same game Claire does. Only in his game the person who comes along somewhere between Produce and Frozen Foods is a woman. A woman who looks, in his fantasies, like Claire.

  He walks in the electric-eye doors at just the moment she is pushing her cart out to the parking lot, in fact. Maybe he sees her in passing, but her cart is full of bags, so even if he does, he’d probably assume she’s married. They just miss each other.

  Arms full of groceries, Claire kicks open the back door of her house to find her ex-husband, Sam, in his painter’s pants and sleeveless T-shirt sitting at the kitchen counter sucking a Popsicle. Their daughter Sally has her leg up against the sink doing one of her ballet stretches. Travis, Sally’s boyfriend, is braiding her hair. There’s an unfamiliar-looking girl perched on the counter—also eating a Popsicle. The Beastie Boys are turned up loud. Somebody must have said something funny right before Claire came in; they are all laughing. Nobody makes a move to take one of the grocery bags, although when a container of yogurt falls out the bottom of the bag that has been giving way, Sally picks it up, opens it, and reaches for a spoon. “Thank God you finally got a little decent stuff to eat, Mom,” she says. “I was starting to think we were living in Rwanda or someplace.”

  Claire drops the bags on the floor, unable to make it one more step to the pantry. She wishes she’d taken the time to put on her eyeliner before she left for the store this afternoon. Claire has been working at the children’s museum even longer hours than usual this week, in the final stages of getting the Pioneer Room ready for next Saturday’s opening. Her hair’s a mess.

  Even now—five years since she and Sam parted—she still likes to look her best when he sees her. He had predicted when she left that she’d eventually realize how lucky she had been to have him, and come back on her knees. “I mean, no offense, but you’re not exactly Cindy Crawford,” he told her.

  “I know that,” she said. Hadn’t he commented once that her brea
sts had started to look like udders?

  “That’s what breast-feeding does to a person,” she told him. Breastfeeding and gravity.

  Why should it be that having children should cause such wreckage to a woman’s body while a man can father those same children and still possess the body of a twenty-year-old? Still, it didn’t seem like too much to ask that the man with you shared your bed might look up now and then when you pulled your dress over your head. Even if you had been married twelve years.

  “One of these days after you’ve finally left you’re going to wake up and realize you had a good thing going,” he used to tell her. “Nice house. Great kids. A husband who doesn’t drink or smoke or hang around in bars.…”

  “I need to feel there’s somebody on the face of this earth who just plain adores me,” she told him.

  “You know your problem, babe?” he said. “You listen to too many songs on the radio. You still believe every single thing you heard the Beatles sing on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ when you were ten.”

  Now here he is, five years later, sitting in the kitchen of the house she bought when she moved out, come to collect their children for the weekend. The last time Claire came home from work to find him sitting in her kitchen this way, she asked him to please wait outside while the kids gathered up their stuff.

  “Why do you have to be so unfriendly to Dad?” Sally said to her. “You think it feels good to him, standing out on the steps like that?”

  “I never go inside our old house when I pick you up at your dad’s,” Claire wanted to say. “You think it’s pleasant for me, parked in the driveway, studying my old perennial beds where his girlfriend has planted all those dumb chrysanthemums?” She doesn’t say these things because, among other reasons, as far as Sally’s concerned, Melanie’s just the cool college girl who used to babysit for them and still comes by to say hi when she’s home from college for vacations. From what they say, it appears that Pete and Sally believe their father hasn’t had a girlfriend in five years.

  Sally returns to the kitchen carrying her overnight bag and her Walkman. Sam crumples up his Popsicle wrapper and pitches it at the trash can.

  “Good shot, man,” says Travis.

  “You play hoops?” Sam asks him. Travis says he used to be on the high-school team but he quit on account of his skateboarding.

  “Maybe we could go one on one sometime,” says Sam. “Of course, you’d probably whip my butt. I’m out of shape at the moment.” He bounds out the door carrying Sally’s bag.

  “Can you believe my dad?” says Sally to her friend, who Claire suddenly realizes is a girl she’s seen dozens of times. Valerie. Only the last time Claire laid eyes on Valerie she didn’t have blue hair and a nose ring.

  “You should see his stomach. It’s like a washboard,” Sally tells Valerie. Claire is a slim person herself, but her own stomach is mottled with stretch marks.

  “Your dad’s hot, all right,” says Valerie. “Cuter than any of the guys in our class, that’s for sure. Present company excluded, of course, Travis.”

  “Sam was telling me about this book he read that has these hallucinogenic mushrooms and this shaman-type guy called Don Juan,” says Travis. “I can’t believe you’ve got a dad that actually reads books about tripping on mushrooms. All mine ever does is check the stock reports.”

  “Not only that,” says Sally. “You should see him on a skateboard.”

  Claire is still unpacking groceries through all this. Broccoli, pears, grapes. Spaghetti sauce, frozen pizza, Honey Nut Cheerios. Two gallons of milk. More Popsicles. Sally lives on those. Moving back and forth between the cupboards and the refrigerator and the pantry, she feels practically invisible, except for the one time when Valerie’s leg is blocking the door to their cereal cupboard and she moves it.

  “Eat some real food over at your dad’s, okay?” Claire says to Sally. “Protein.”

  “Jeez, Mom,” Sally says. “Can’t you ever let up on being such a mother all the time?”

  “Mine is the same way,” Valerie says. “I ate a slice of turkey this morning and I thought she was going to have an orgasm, she was so happy.”

  Sam comes back into the kitchen and drapes his arm around his daughter. He evidently knows the words to this particular Beastie Boys song. He always plays the hippest radio stations when he goes out on framing jobs.

  “Before you go, Sam,” says Claire, “I need to talk with you a second.”

  “So,” Sam says to Sally, ignoring Claire, “you got your stuff all packed? What do you say we hit the road?” He punches Travis on the upper arm and gives one of Valerie’s dreadlocks a gentle tug. “Catch you later, huh guys?” he says.

  Pete re-enters the kitchen. “You coming, Dad?” he says.

  “Just a second, Pete,” says Claire. One of the eggs she was putting in the egg tray of their refrigerator has just broken in her hand. She wipes a bit of yolk off on a towel. “I needed to remind your dad about the money for your cleats.”

  “Coming, Pete,” says Sam.

  “Wait,” says Claire. “The cleats cost fifty-eight dollars. I need to know if you’re going to come through with your half. Not like Sally’s trip to Quebec City last month and the snowboard boots you told the kids you’d help pay for.” Claire always manages to provide these things for her kids, but it’s a stretch on her museum director’s salary.

  “This isn’t the time or the place for that kind of talk, Claire,” Sam tells her. “You know we both agreed we wouldn’t have money discussions in front of the children.”

  “Believe me, I wish we didn’t have to do this,” says Claire. “But every time I call you up to talk about it, you’re busy. When I send you bills, you don’t respond.”

  “Really now, Claire,” he says. His voice is a whisper almost, a hiss. “You should be ashamed of yourself, doing this to our children.”

  Claire breathes deep, the way she has learned in yoga class. “What am I supposed to do, then?” she says quietly. “What do I tell Pete about the shoes?”

  Sam bends so he’s eye-level with his son and puts a hand on each of his shoulders, the way a dad would in a TV show. A dad like Bill Cosby maybe, or Robert Young on “Father Knows Best.” “You shouldn’t have to worry about this money nonsense, son,” Sam tells Pete. “I’m sorry you had to hear this crap. Of course you can have the cleats.”

  “You always tell them that,” says Claire. She still has an egg in her hand. She wants to throw it at him. “But you never end up paying.”

  “You and I both know I give you money every month, Claire,” he says. He speaks slowly, with exaggerated enunciation, as if he were talking to a very young child, or a person who is slightly retarded. And what is Claire supposed to do, stand there on their back porch explaining to their children that Sam’s two hundred and thirty dollars a month hardly covers Popsicles and cereal these days, much less cleats? Ask him how much that motorcycle helmet cost that he bought last month, or the new mountain bike that Pete was bragging about the other day?

  “My dad’s bike has twenty-one speeds,” Pete told Jared. “But he can ride up Mount Lowell and he doesn’t even have to use the highest gear.”

  “Do you think I’m magic?” says Claire. “And whatever our children need that you can’t see your way to providing, you figure I’ll always come up with it, anyway?”

  “What I think is, you need to get a grip, Claire,” says Sam. “I hope you’re still talking with that therapist.”

  “Give me a break,” Claire says. “Maybe I wouldn’t get this way if you didn’t leave it to me to take care of everything. Sally’s friends might think I was pretty cool too, if I could just breeze in off the basketball court and sit around with them listening to tapes.” She got up at five-thirty this morning to go over to the museum and whitewash the walls of the one-room schoolhouse so she could be back home in time to wake the kids and get them off to school.

  “Why do you have to bring my friends into this, Mother?” Sally says. “Why do you
always have to make a scene? Just once can’t you lighten up?”

  “Come on, kids,” says Sam. “Let’s get into the car. Your mother’s just a little hysterical right now, but she’ll calm down. What do you say we pick up some Chinese food?”

  They hurry into his pickup, with its Grateful Dead sticker on the back window—a row of rainbow-colored dancing bears. As he opens the door on his side, Sam looks back at Claire one last time as she stands on the sidewalk. He shakes his head with a look of pity. He gets into the driver’s seat and turns the key.

  “Hold on a second, Pete,” Claire says, through the open truck window. “I wanted to remind you about your President report. It’s due Monday, right?”

  “Just the oral part,” he says. He starts to tell her something else, about the diorama of Teddy Roosevelt hunting in South America, but the truck is pulling away while he’s still talking. Pete calls out something to Claire. She can’t hear what.

  “Love you,” Claire calls out. Not that they’ll hear her. As the truck disappears down the street, she can see her son stick his baseball cap on his father’s head. She sees her daughter’s long, slim leg outstretched on the dashboard, and Travis, hoisting his skateboard under his arm and loping down the sidewalk with Valerie. Her blue dreadlocks blow in the wind.

  Claire goes inside.

  Sam told Claire the night they met that he couldn’t wait to have kids. He asked her to marry him within a couple of days. She said yes. Years later, when it had long since become plain to her how little real enthusiasm or interest he felt for her, she would sometimes ask him, “Why did you marry me, anyway?”