It seemed we had nothing more to say about this, and so we sat in companionable silence for quite a while as he smoked and the sun shone down. Then Bob asked, “Remember when we used to read newspapers? Real ones?” And I said, “Yes, the Sunday Times was kind of given the whole morning.” Then I said, “Why did you ask that?” And he shrugged and said, “I miss it, that’s all. I miss the everyday part of it, the reading of all sorts of things I didn’t know about. I mean every so often I do buy the paper, but it’s so much easier to just get the news on my computer.”
I sat forward and told Bob about a lecture I had heard maybe ten years ago at Columbia University about the internet and all the changes it was bringing. I told him how this lecturing man said that there had been three major revolutions in the history of man’s world: the first, the agricultural revolution; the second, the industrial revolution; and the third was this social revolution—meaning the way the internet was changing the world. I said, “And what I most remember was that this guy told us that—because we are in the middle of it—we will not live long enough to see how it plays out in this world.” I told Bob that it made me think of my sister and how she got her news probably on the internet in places I would never think to go to.
And Bob, who was squishing out his cigarette on the side of the bench, said, “Yeah, you make a good point. I think how the internet has made so many things—good and bad—possible.” He stuck the cigarette butt back in the cigarette pack, which is what he always did.
As we stood up to start our walk back, I said, “William told me about his prostate, and I want to thank you for getting him to your doctor for his blood tests. That was so good of you.”
“Well, sure” is all Bob said.
I almost said, Talk about God being love! But I did not say that.
When we got back to the house before he got into his car, he opened his arms and said “Big hug to you, Lucy,” and I opened my arms and said “And to you too, Bob.”
* * *
It was seven o’clock by the time William pulled into the driveway.
* * *
—
He came—almost—bounding into the house, he had taken his mask off on the way to the house, and he said, “Lucy! She’s wonderful! Lucy, she loves me!” This is what he said, with his big brown eyes positively shining, and oh dear God I was so glad.
* * *
—
I said I would cook that night so that he could tell me everything. And so he sat at the table and spoke more rapidly than I could ever remember him speaking. “I have a sister!” He kept saying this, and shaking his head. “Lucy, I have a sister.” He told me they had met on the steps of the library, that they recognized each other immediately “not only because we were the only two old people on the steps” but because they recognized each other. Even with their masks on. “The minute I saw her, I thought, It’s you!” And he told me that she had said the exact same thing. And so they took their lawn chairs and sat on the large area of grass in front of the library, and they talked and talked and talked.
Lois said that she had gone to the university, that all her kids had gone there, and that her eldest grandson had graduated from there two years ago June. She said that she’d met her husband there, and then he had gone to Tufts for dental school. She said that her youngest brother, Dave, ran the Trask farm—the potato farm—she had grown up on, with his son, Joe. And then she asked about William’s daughters, she was especially kind about poor Bridget being stuck with her mother’s loser boyfriend, she had been so nice about that, and when William told her about Chrissy’s miscarriages, he said to me, “Lucy! She got tears in her eyes! She said she had miscarried twice and she felt just awful for Chrissy.”
* * *
—
And then they talked about their mother, Catherine Cole. Over and over they went on about what Catherine had come from, and why she had married Lois’s father, and why she had left him for the German, as Lois referred to William’s father.
I sat watching William from across the table. In all the years I had known the man, I did not think I had ever seen him so happy.
* * *
—
Only later that night, as I lay awake, did I realize that William had been lonely. In spite of me, and our girls, and Bridget, and his other two wives, William had felt alone in the world. And now he had a sister. Inside myself I wept. From happiness and sadness both.
* * *
—
And then right before I fell asleep a thought went through my mind: that William had chosen to come to Maine during the pandemic because he had a sister here. He must have been hoping this would happen, a resolution between them. Otherwise he would have taken me to a house in Montauk. But we had come to Maine.
Could that be true? I wondered this as I fell asleep.
ii
I began to think that my mind was not right.
I could not remember things. I would start a sentence and then not remember where I was going with it. Bob said, “That happens to me too. I think it’s just Covid mind.”
But it did not go away. If anything, I thought it might be getting worse. And there was also, in my head, a sense of confusion. When I walked into my bedroom, for example, I would think: Now, why did I come in here? It made me think of Michael and his “brain fog” that had come with the virus, but his brain fog had gone away, and I did not have the virus. But honestly, there were times I could not remember why I had walked into some room. And in the kitchen, making coffee, for example, I thought that my motions were slower as I placed the filter into the coffee machine. It was disconcerting: I felt old.
* * *
—
I mentioned it to William and he didn’t seem to have any response. I said, “But have you noticed?”
And he said, waving his hand, “You’re fine, Lucy.”
I did not feel fine.
* * *
One evening I watched something on my computer. It was about physics and how we have no free will. I watched it, feeling that I could not understand it that well, but I sort of—a little bit—understood what they were saying when they said that all things have already happened, that there is no past or present or future. That interested me. I asked William what he thought—I explained it to him after I’d watched it—and as I explained it I remembered how the previous summer in Maine, going to find his half-sister, he had said to me one night that very seldom did people choose to do anything; they just did it.
Now he looked at me from his chair across the room—he had been reading a book—and shrugged. “I’m not a physicist, Lucy.”
“I know, but what do you think?”
He shifted his legs. “I think they could be right. But so what.” Then he said, “It kind of explains your mother’s visions, though.”
“I know,” I said, “I thought the same thing. But what do you mean ‘So what’? Seriously, William, this is interesting to me. If everything is predetermined, then”—and I looked around the room—“what are we doing here?”
There was a small smile that came to half of his mouth, but he looked tired. “I know. I think that sometimes.”
“But what are we doing here?” I persisted.
“What I’m doing here, Lucy,” he said, “is I’m trying to save your life.” He paused and then said, “But think if you had gone to Italy and Germany for your book tour like you were supposed to. You might be dead. And you just didn’t go.”
“I know. For no reason,” I said.
“I know that.” He picked up his book again. “No past or present or future. It’s interesting, I agree with you.” But then he shrugged and said, “Who the hell knows anything, Lucy.” And he started to read again.
iii
I dyed my hair. I have had my hair colored with blond highlights for years, but now my hair was coming in brown—with only a few wisps of gray—and when my hair is brown I feel that I look like my mother, which is a thing I cannot bear. So I went to the drugstore and looked at the packages of color, and I chose one and came home and followed the directions, and within two hours my hair was back to being blond. It had come out perfectly!
* * *
—