Three Junes by Julia Glass Page B

mirror.
    “Oh, he
likes
women,” she said. “Of course he likes women. In a way, I suppose, he may like women better than most blinking men do!”
    “Maureen, you’re speaking in riddles.”
    “I am not.” She laughed, and at last she turned around. “Paul, you’re being dense. For the benefit of wordsmiths here, I meant
like
as in ‘fancy.’ What did you suppose about that boy he brought here from Cambridge last summer? Did you think they were nothing more than literary pals?”
    “Did he tell you something?”
    “Of course not. Oh, Paul.” She sat beside him on the bed, but she was still laughing when she put her arms around his neck.
    “This isn’t something to laugh about,” he said.
    When she said, “Is it something to cry about?” Paul supposed she meant to reassure him, but he felt mocked. She had called him dense; whether or not he was, this was how she saw him: opaque and obstructive as fog. And in a secret rage, he refused to believe that there was one thing, significant or not, she could claim to hold over him when it came to knowing his son.
    He thought of the five years that passed after their marriage before she was willing to start having children. Maureen told him how important it was they take the time to enjoy each other alone before children; she said she would know when the time was right. In their third or fourth year together, he began to fear that she had deceived him when she expressed the desire for those four hypothetical boys. By then both his sisters had babies, and though Paul’s father never said anything explicit, there were unmistakable piercing looks across the table at Christmas and other holidays which brought the larger family together. Paul imagined that his father was telling him he had made
two
grave mistakes in his marriage: not just the mistake of marrying down but the mistake (or bad luck) of choosing a barren wife. Paul’s father would never have dreamed that his son, still loving his wife’s very willfulness, its comforting power, would have let the issue of heirs be a
decision,
least of all hers.
    And then, of course, just as Paul knew he would have to force the question, Maureen quite happily announced that she was pregnant. The pregnancy, she claimed, had surprised her as much as it did Paul. Not a doubt crossed his mind at the time, but Paul has long since realized how unlikely such a “slip” would be for a planner like Maureen. And back then it would hardly have mattered: All his festering resentment dissolved (as did his father’s, especially once he learned it was a boy). Still, as he saw her attention turn inward, if rightfully so, he had a moment of panic: In those years alone together, how much had they actually stopped to
enjoy
each other, as Maureen had insisted they must? They had laughed a great deal, fought little, made love often and in a fever; but why had Paul felt such a constant undercurrent of worry? He wondered if this tension had always been a part of his nature; the more understandable tensions he had felt in the army stood like a wall against the penetration of memory beyond them. Perhaps those tensions themselves had simply become a habit. Small price to pay for remaining alive.
    THE SEA IS CALM, as if to repent yesterday’s misbehavior. The sky is lavender blue. Paul stands with Jack at the bow, looking toward Naxos, its tall peaked silhouette. It is an exceptionally green island—a burnt, wry green. Jack is telling Paul how Naxos is an island for hikers, not for lazy middle-aged tourists the likes of Solly and Ray. The men have been acting chilly toward Jack. Once on the boat, they made a show of leading their wives to the opposite end of the deck.
    “But you, Paul. You have the spirit. You’d like it.”
    Paul thinks, Perhaps I will. Perhaps, after Crete, he will not head back to Athens. But he keeps this thought to himself, so the two men stand together silently, watching this island slip away. As it does, another looms