Jonas and I were sharing a bedroom, the girls another, located at opposite ends of the house with Liz’s parents in between. When we’d come here during the academic term, we’d had the place, and our choice of sleeping arrangements, to ourselves. But not this time. I’d expected that the situation would lead to a certain amount of creeping around in the wee hours, but Liz forbade it. “Please do not shock the grown-ups,” she said. “We’ll all be shocking them soon enough.”
Which was just as well. By this time, I had begun to tire of Stephanie. She was a wonderful girl, but I did not love her. There was nothing about her that made this so; she was in every way deserving. My heart was simply elsewhere, and it made me feel like a hypocrite. Since the funeral in New York, Liz and I had not spoken of my mother, or her cancer, or the night when we had walked the city streets together but in the end had chosen to step back from the abyss and keep our allegiances intact. Yet it was clear that the night had left its mark on both of us. Our friendship, until that time, had flowed through Jonas. A new circuit had been opened—not through him but around him—and along this pathway pulsed a private current of intimacy. We knew what had happened; we had been there. I had felt it, and I was sure she’d felt it too, and the fact that we’d done nothing only deepened this connection, even more than if we’d fallen into bed together. We would be sitting on the porch, each of us reading one of the mildew-smelling paperbacks left behind by other guests; we would look up at just the same moment, our eyes would meet, an ironic smile would flash at the corners of her mouth, which I’d return in kind. Look at us, we were saying to each other, aren’t we the trusty twosome. If only they knew how loyal we are. We should get a prize.
I intended to do nothing about this, of course. I owed Jonas that much and more. Nor did I think Liz would have welcomed the attempt. The connection she shared with Jonas, one of long history, ran deeper than ours ever could. The house, with its endless warren of rooms and ocean views and shabbily genteel furnishings, reminded me how true this was. I was a visitor to this world, welcomed and even, as Liz had told me, admired. But a tourist nonetheless. Our night together, though indelible, had been just that: a night. Still, it thrilled me just being around her. The way she held her drink to her lips. Her habit of pushing her glasses to her forehead to read the smallest print. How she smelled, which I will not attempt to name, because it wasn’t like anything else. Pain or pleasure? It was both. I wanted to bathe in her existence. Was she dying? I tried not to think about it. I was happy to be near her at all and accepted the situation as it stood.
Two days before our departure, Liz’s father announced that we would be eating lobsters for dinner. (He did all the cooking; I’d never seen Patty so much as fry an egg.) This was for my benefit; he had learned, to his alarm, that I had never eaten one. He returned from the fish market in the late afternoon bearing a sack of squirming red-black monsters, removed one with a carnivore’s grin, and made me hold it. No doubt I looked horrified; everyone had a good laugh, but I didn’t mind. I loved her father a little for it, in fact. A lazy rain had been falling all day, sapping our energy; now we had a purpose. As if in acknowledgment of this fact, the sun emerged in time for the festivities; Jonas and I carried the dining table out to the back porch. I had noticed something about him. In the last couple of days, he had adopted a manner I could only describe as secretive. Something was afoot. At the cocktail hour, we drank bottles of dark beer (the only proper accompaniment, Oscar explained); then on to the main event. With great solemnity, Oscar presented me with a lobster bib. I had never understood this infantile practice; no one else was wearing one, and I felt a bit resentful until I cracked a claw and sprayed lobster juice all over myself, to an explosion of table-wide hilarity.
Imagine the perfection of the scene. The table with its red-checkered cloth; the ridiculous bounty of the feast; the golden sunset streaming toward us across the sound, then sinking into the sea with a final flash like an elegant gentleman tipping his hat in farewell. The candles came out, polishing our faces with their flickering glow. How had my life led me to such a place, among such people? I wondered what my parents would have said. My mother would have been pleased for me; wherever she was, I hoped its rules included the power to observe the living. As for my father, I didn’t know. I had severed all ties completely. I saw now how unfair I’d been and vowed to get in touch. Perhaps it was not too late for him to make my graduation.
When we’d finished dessert—a strawberry-rhubarb pie—Jonas clinked his glass with his fork.
“Everybody, if I could have your attention.”
He rose and moved around the table so that he was standing next to Liz. With a little grunt of effort, he turned her chair so she was facing him.
“Jonas,” she said with a laugh, “what the hell are you doing?”