The conversation moved on to another story about a band Rob had dealt with, then to Charles and his job, and then to Nadine and her pregnancy. Around and around and around, though they kept skipping her. Intentionally … or by accident? She began to tune them out, watching the sous chefs scramble to and fro, mixing things, adding items to sauce pans, searing pieces of fish.
After the waiter took their orders, Rob looked at Charles. “So how’s your mom?”
Joanna snapped to attention. Charles paled. “She’s hanging in there.”
“Still doing all that stuff at the school?” Nadine asked.
Charles nodded. “Still ruling with an iron fist.”
Nadine glanced down at her menu. Rob took a sip of water. Of course they didn’t know about what had happened at the school. Not everyone’s lives circled around Swithin.
“There’s a new headmaster at Swithin, isn’t there?” Rob crossed his arms over his chest.
Charles nodded. “Jerome retired.”
“He did?” Nadine widened her eyes. “When?”
“At the beginning of this year,” Charles said.
“Wonder what the new guy’s like,” Nadine mused. “Maybe another stamp collector?”
The three of them laughed. No one filled Joanna in on the joke, so she ducked her head and took a hearty sip of wine. A stream of waiters carefully wheeled a tall chocolate cake with a single sparkler candle poking out the top to a nearby table. As they sang Happy Birthday to a beautiful older woman in a brown and white poncho, Rob and Charles began to reminisce about their days on the high-school debate team. Their coach, Gregory, would take them to an Indian restaurant in Malvern Friday nights whenever someone had a birthday. Remember the sitar player? Remember the poetry readings? Gregory took them to hear Bill Clinton, then just the governor of Arkansas and the Democratic candidate for president, speak at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Do you think he and Schuyler really had a thing?” Nadine leaned forward on her elbows.
“That never happened.” Rob shook his head. “It was just a rumor.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, some girls saw them talking and completely misconstrued it,” Charles said. “Remember?”
“Huh.” Nadine wound a pale strand of hair around her finger. “Greg always had eyes for the girls, though. Definitely Schuyler … and Bronwyn, too.”
Bronwyn. Joanna curled her toes. Charles breathed in, his face agleam. And just like that, Joanna knew he was going to bring her up. He was seriously going to talk about Bronwyn right now. Her heart pounded with resentment.
“Did you guys ever haze?” she blurted out.
Everyone stopped and looked at her. Charles clapped his mouth closed. He laid the piece of bread he’d been chewing back on his plate.
“What?” Nadine said.
“On the debate team,” Joanna explained. Her mouth felt funny, way too large. “Like, for newcomers. Freshmen. Did you ever, like, make them eat toilet paper? Stand outside on a winter day in their underwear?”
“What, like in a frat?” Rob bit off the word frat and held it tautly between his front teeth.
“Like bullying?” Nadine said at the same time.
“I guess,” Joanna answered.
“We didn’t do anything like that,” Rob said slowly, looking up at the pagoda-shaped light fixtures, as if trying to remember. “If the newcomers sucked, they didn’t debate. If they were good, they did.”
“What about on your sports teams?” Joanna asked. “Basketball? Football?”
She could feel Charles’s foot pressing down on hers. But when they were first dating, she’d explicitly told him that she didn’t like hearing about Bronwyn. It had been part of their early arguments, those first sticking points all couples needed to work through. It had been a difficult thing for her to say that to him, for she’d felt so vulnerable and petty. The conversation was still so clear to her; was it for him?
“We don’t have a football team.” Nadine said slowly, raising her shoulders.
“Wrestling?” Joanna tried.
“Joanna,” Charles growled.
He gave her a private glance. But she wasn’t going anywhere dangerous with this. She was just asking questions. “I always knew frats and sororities hazed,” Joanna said, turning to Rob and Nadine. “But I’ve been reading this article that it’s sort of prevalent in high-school sports, too.”
Nadine shook her head quickly. “Our school isn’t really like that.”
“Maybe it’s more of a public school thing,” Rob volunteered sweetly.
They were silent for a while, staring at their empty place settings. Out of the corner of her eye, Joanna saw Charles’s finger digging into the surface of the wooden table, as if to carve a groove. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he looked up. “So, Nadine. Are you having a shower?”
Nadine nodded, and then glanced guiltily at Joanna, whom she hadn’t invited. Joanna looked down. “It’s going to be at my mother’s house,” Nadine said. “In Wayne. I’ll send an e-mail.”
“Did you track down Bronwyn again and ask her to it?” Charles asked.
Joanna breathed in sharply. Charles glanced at her, his expression eerily neutral.
“Because you guys were friends, I mean,” Charles went on. “Does she even know you’re having a baby?”