The Perfect Age by Heather Skyler

Author:Heather Skyler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

IN BED THAT NIGHT, Kathy is wakeful, listening to Edward’s breathing in an attempt to decide whether or not he is asleep. She pictures Helen on the other side of the house, strewn languidly across her twin bed, sleeping the dreamless, peaceful sleep of someone who has released a burden, shed an accusation that must have been constructing itself inside her for a while now, at least a month, maybe more? Kathy has been sleeping with Gerard for five weeks, but before that there were signs, of course there were signs, that they cared for each other. And her daughter was there to witness everything: Kathy’s visits to the pool; the way her voice tended to get girlish and high in his presence (why hadn’t she been able to control that?); her frequent laughter as they spoke, laughter that must’ve carried easily across the water to her daughter, high up in that queenlike chair.

Helen was quiet at dinner, eating little, then asking to be excused before anyone else finished. Leo picked her up at eight, then returned her at ten, and Helen made no mention to any-one—not even Jenny—about what transpired in her time away from home. Kathy knows, as she lies here beneath the silent ceiling, that her daughter is having sex, and now Kathy cannot even counsel or accuse her with any sort of authority. What right does an adulterer have to judge another?

Beside her, Edward releases a small cough, and Kathy turns toward him, onto her side, grateful that he’s still awake. “Edward?” she asks quietly.

“Mmm?”

“Helen’s upset with me, and I can’t sleep.”

His eyelids tremble and then open before he turns onto his side to face her. “What is she upset about?”

Here’s her chance, she thinks, to release herself into the darkness, to tell her husband everything she’s been doing wrong this summer. But he waits for her answer with such a gentle serenity settled into his features, the remains of sleep, she supposes, that she can tell him nothing. Besides, what would be the point? To make herself feel better? To cause him pain? “I don’t know why she’s angry with me,” Kathy says at last.

“I have an idea why,” he says.

She holds her breath, waiting for the second accusation of the day.

“She probably doesn’t like it when you spend time at the Dunes. It’s her territory, you know? I have to admit, it was a bit strange seeing you there myself the other day.”

A cooling feeling of relief closes over her. He doesn’t know. “I’m not there very often,” she explains. “Once in a while I get there early, but that’s all.”

“I know, but she’s a teenager. Remember what it was like to be sixteen? I’m sure you didn’t want your mother anywhere near you.”

Kathy tries to picture her mother during her own sixteenth year but can only recall an image of her sitting on a car hood, smoking, a red scarf covering her hair, cat-eyed sunglasses glinting rhinestones. It is a picture disembodied from

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