“You know, without these, I can’t see anything. What’s funny is that it’s like nobody can see me, either. Isn’t that strange? I kind of feel invisible.”
I absolutely could have done it. Should have done it, long before. Why hadn’t I? Why hadn’t I taken her in my arms and pressed my mouth to hers and told her how I felt, consequences be damned? Who’s to say I couldn’t give her just as good a life? Marry me, I thought. Marry me instead. Or don’t marry anyone at all. Stay just as you are, and I will love you forever, as I do now, because you are the other half of me.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
Then she did; she turned her face away and retched onto the sand. I held her hair back as all the lobster and champagne came up and out of her.
“I’m sorry, Tim.” She was crying a little. “I’m so sorry.”
I lifted her to her feet. She was mumbling more apologies as I draped her arm over my shoulders. She was close to dead weight now. Somehow I managed to haul her up the stairs and prop her in a chair on the divan on the porch. I was at a total loss; how would this look? I couldn’t take her up to her room, not with Stephanie there. I doubted I could have gotten her up the stairs anyway without waking the entire house. I drew her upright again and carried her to the living room. The sofa would have to do; she could always say she’d had trouble sleeping and come downstairs to read. A crocheted blanket lay across the back of the sofa; I pulled it over her. She was fast asleep now. I got a glass of water from the kitchen and put it on the coffee table where she could find it, then took a chair to watch her. Her breathing became deep and even, her face slack. I allowed some more time to pass to be certain she would not be sick again, and got to my feet. There was something I needed to do. I bent over her and kissed her on the forehead.
“Good night,” I whispered. “Good night, goodbye.”
I crept up the stairs. Dawn wasn’t far off; though the open windows, I could hear the birds beginning to sing. I made my way down the hall to the room I shared with Jonas. I gently turned the handle and stepped inside, but not before I heard, behind me, the snap of a closing door.
The cab rolled up the drive at six A.M. I was waiting on the porch with my bag.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“The bus station.”
He glanced up through the windshield. “You really live in this place?”
“No chance of that.”
I was putting my bag in the trunk when the door of the house opened. Stephanie came striding down the walk, wearing one of the long T-shirts she slept in. It was actually one of mine.
“Sneaking off, are you? I saw the whole thing, you know.”
“It wasn’t what you thought.”
“Sure it wasn’t. You’re a total asshole, you know that?”
“I’m aware of that, yes.”
She rocked her face upward, hands on her hips. “God. How could I be so blind? It was totally obvious.”
“Do me a favor, will you?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Jonas can’t ever know.”
She laughed bitterly. “Oh, believe me, the last thing I want is to get mixed up with this mess. It’s your problem.”
“Feel free to think of it that way.”
“What do you want me to tell them? As long as I’m being such a fucking liar.”
I thought for a moment. “I don’t care. A sick relative. It doesn’t really matter.”
“Just tell me: did you ever think about me in any of this? Did I even once cross your mind?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Fuck you,” she said, and strode away.
I lowered myself into the cab. The driver was filling out a slip of paper on a clipboard. He glanced at me through the rearview. “Kinda rough, pal,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve been there.”
“I’m not really in the mood to talk, thanks.”
He tossed his clipboard onto the dash. “I was only trying to be nice.”
“Well, don’t,” I said, and with that we drove away.
19
I left them all behind.
I did not attend graduation. Back in Cambridge, I packed my belongings—three years later, there still wasn’t much—and telephoned the biochemistry department at Rice. Of all the programs I had been accepted to, it possessed the virtue of being the farthest away, in a city I knew nothing about. It was a Saturday, so I had to leave a message, but yes, I told them, I’d be coming. I thought about abandoning my tuxedo; perhaps the next occupant would get some use out of it. But this seemed peevish and overly symbolic, and I could always throw it out later. Waiting outside, double-parked, was a rental car. As I closed my suitcase, the phone began to ring, and I ignored it. I carried my things downstairs, dropped off my key at the Winthrop House office, and drove away.
I arrived in Mercy in the middle of the night. I felt as if I’d been gone for a century. I slept in my car outside the house and awoke to the sound of tapping on the window. My father.