“Goldie. My mother would have loved knowing that.”
They both laugh. “Do you have a family?” she asks.
“Divorced,” he says. “Like half our generation.”
“Sorry.”
“But I have two kids. You?”
“Still married,” she tells him. Then adds, “Happily.”
“One of the lucky ones.”
She nods.
“I was at your stepbrother’s funeral. Steve Osner. He was your stepbrother, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. The family was devastated.”
“A military hero. He was my best friend all through school. The way Corinne threw herself over his coffin…I’ll never forget that moment.”
No one had told Miri about this. Rusty had been asked not to attend the funeral. She’d understood. She was pregnant again, anyway, and as sick as the last time. Daisy went with Dr. O to the funeral, as much to look after Dr. O as to mourn Steve.
“If only I’d been able to convince him to go to Lehigh with me,” Phil said. “Neither of us could stand the idea of Syracuse after my cousin’s death. You remember Kathy?”
“I do, and her green velvet New Year’s Eve dress.”
“It was an awful time.”
“Yes.”
“But Steve went and enlisted the second he graduated.” He shakes his head. “Maybe to prove something to his parents. Who knows? He was enraged by the divorce. Shipped out to Korea after basic training.”
“He walked into enemy fire, didn’t he?” They didn’t talk a lot about Steve’s death but Miri knows Dr. O blamed himself.
“Tossed a grenade into a bunker on Pork Chop Hill,” Phil said, “blew himself up along with the enemy. And you know, the war was basically over by then. But they kept fighting over that stupid hill, as if it mattered, as if it would make a difference. Such a fucking waste, excuse my language.”
“Dr. O’s never gotten over it. I doubt you ever get over a child’s death. He and Rusty named my second brother Stuart. It would have been too hard to have another son named Steven.”
It’s bittersweet, chatting with Phil, then Gaby, who takes Miri aside and asks if it’s true about Longy. “Was he really a mobster?”
“I’m afraid so,” Miri says.
“He sent me a basket of flowers after the crash. He was such a gentleman.”
“Yes,” Miri says, then adds, with a straight face, “and he was good to his mother.”
She doesn’t mean to be the last to leave. Or does she? Before she reaches the door, Mason says, “Sit awhile, Miri. Talk to me.”
He brings her a glass of wine. She sinks into the sofa, tucks her feet under her. She’s more relaxed now.
“Hungry?” Mason asks.
She shakes her head. Looks right at him for the first time. “Do you ever think about how young we were? My kids are older than we were.”
“Miri…” Hearing him say her name like that in a soft, slightly hoarse voice takes her back to the basement in Irene’s house, to the night they played Trust. He rests his hand on her arm, and just that is enough to make her tingle.
“I didn’t know how to hear your side of the story,” she says. “I didn’t believe there could be another side to the story.”
“My side of the story is easy,” he says. “I was an idiot.”
“I didn’t know how to forgive you.”
“I never blamed you for not forgiving me. No girl in her right mind would have forgiven me.”
“I couldn’t compete with her.”
“If it matters, I was never with her again. A few months later she married a guy who owned a bar, had another kid and died at thirty-nine of ovarian cancer.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yes.”
As she sips her wine, she can feel the pull. But she’s not going to do anything stupid. Never mind the devil on her shoulder whispering, Life is short and then you die.
He leans in, kisses her gently, waits to see if she responds. She does, then changes her mind. “I can’t do this.”
“I know,” he says. “Neither can I.”
It’s all about remembering, it’s all about being fifteen and in love for the first time. She can almost smell the winter air outside the Y, feel the oil burner’s warmth in Irene’s basement, see the kaleidoscope, the colors, the patterns—which reminds her—she jumps up, walks across the room and pulls a tissue-paper-wrapped package tied in red and white bakery string from her bag. She hands it to him. “I thought your daughter might like to have this.”
He rips off the paper, holds the kaleidoscope up to his eye, then hands it back to her. “Remember what I said when I gave it to you.”
She remembers.