“Well, make up your mind,” I said. “Do you want me to offer to help or do you want me to pretend I don’t notice?”
He smiled again, and this time it gave me this sudden glimpse of what his face used to look like. At the same time, it was as if there was a little bit of air let out between us with all the bluntness, and things became more comfortable.
We got a little drunk. I didn’t ask him any more about the war, and he didn’t ask me about my strange breakdown the first and last time we’d been in the cottage together. I told him how Mother is trying to marry me off. He told me more about fossil collecting, which bored me to tears.
And we talked about you. He initiated it.
“Now, Allstock,” he said, after we’d finished our last bites.
“Lenore,” I said.
“Allstock.” He leaned back against the wall looking at me seriously and intensely. “I’ve got a personal question for you, since we’re asking those kinds of questions. Who’s your invisible friend? The place settings? The putting flowers out for someone who never shows up? Who died?”
I stared down at my plate in the flickering of the fire, embarrassed again, but not as much as before.
“I have a friend in America,” I said finally. “I just imagine she’s here.”
Because he seemed to be waiting for more, and no one ever asks me about you, I told him how we grew up together, how when war was brewing your parents took you to America to get you out of harm’s way. How I’m planning to follow you there so we can be lifelong neighbors.
He smiled. “And how long has she been gone?” he asked.
“Since just before the Lusitania,” I said.
“So since we were kids.”
I nodded.
“So she is your imaginary friend.”
I looked at him, annoyed.
“Well, Allstock . . .”
“Lenore.”
“I’m sure you’ve changed so much—with everything that’s happened, and just . . . getting older,” he said. “And her too. It’s inevitable that you’d both be completely different now. It’s likely that if you met again, you wouldn’t like each other. So what’s the point of having imaginary tea together?”
“I haven’t changed,” I said.
His eyes flickered with doubt. “They’ve been in mourning at your house,” he said. “Who died? Your father?”
“My brother. And please shut up with that look.” I pushed myself back, away from him.
“I can’t stand sad looks either, believe me.” He cupped his hands on either side of his lips and lifted them in a pretend smile. “That better? Sorry, but my lips got bombed into a permanent frown.”
I smiled, despite myself. There was something about the way he treated the most horrific things that made me feel like I could breathe.
“What was your brother like?” he asked lightly. As if he were asking Do you have plans Saturday? or How is the pie?
I surprised myself by answering honestly. “He was closest to me in age, out of all of us,” I said. “People always called us ‘the twins.’ He always stood up for me. And teased me. But on the important things, he always stood up for me.”
“You’ve lost your almost-twin,” he said, thrusting the almost-empty wine bottle into my hands. “Well, you deserve the last drink then.”
I thought how we were treading in a dangerous place. To not enrage me about Teddy, one has to walk a thin line of comprehension without pity. I wanted to pull away from the subject, and uncharitably, it seemed like a good moment to catch James off guard. “When do your parents get back from their expedition?” I asked.
He did look momentarily caught.
“They’re on their way back now,” he asserted after a moment, gazing everywhere but at my face (though to be fair, that’s generally the way he talks).
I wonder if he thinks he has to pretend to come from money because he assumes I do. And I want so much to know his real story. But I didn’t push it. It’s not that I feel sorry for him—though it’s sad to see how he thinks about his face all the time. It’s clear in the way he rubs at it, runs his hands over his ear and his half-ear as if he can’t believe their shape, and touches his lips self-consciously.
“You’re no good at pretending you don’t notice,” he finally said as I watched him. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe you should wear a fake mustache to distract people,” I offered.
He let out a loud booming laugh, which startled me enough to make me laugh too. I think it was the first time I’ve laughed in months.
“Well, it’s been nice,” he said, tapping his lips. “And I think I haven’t thought about how bad my body feels for about an hour. Maybe it’s the wine.”
I stood to go, knowing it was my cue.
We said good-bye at the door.
I haven’t seen him since. At least I didn’t flinch again when we shook hands good-bye.
All right, Beth, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this is just like one of our books, like Beauty and the Beast. But I’m too superficial and selfish to be Beauty, and he’s not going to turn back into a handsome prince like the Beast. Anyway, when I meet my soul mate he won’t be sarcastic and he’ll always call me by my first name.
But to put your mind even further to rest, James told me something else: he’s engaged to a girl in London who is very beautiful. I didn’t believe it until he showed me her photo, which he keeps in his rucksack with whatever other few things he’s unable to live without.
It makes me relieved for him, and a little for myself. That there doesn’t have to be that question lingering over us. And we can really be actual friends.
MAY 1, 1919
Dear Beth,
I hope there’s nothing wrong and that you’re just too deliriously happy and preoccupied to write. I’m going to keep writing to you, because I assume you want to hear about my exciting life here where every day is just about the same.
The only interesting thing, as usual, is the cottage and James the Giant.
For a month or so after I last wrote, given that we run on different times and in different worlds, I didn’t see him at all. But those weeks we did communicate through things we left for each other: jars of honey, bird bones, little rocks he’s broken in half—quartz and pyrite. I left him a note telling him I hoped he was feeling better, and he left me a note saying he hoped I was going on lots of dates like Mother wants me to.
Finally, last Saturday my parents were away for a conference on machinery. So bright and early, I got up and strolled down across the pasture to the woods to check in on him.
James was in the clearing, sawing sticks for the roof.
“Is this really what you do with all your time?” I asked.
He let out a laugh. “It occupies my mind,” he said, straightening up and letting his saw drop onto the ground. (There are things I hadn’t noticed about him at night—the veins of crinkled skin stretching across his face and down his neck look like the roots of an old, gnarled tree.)