Susanna and Sam had sex once, in their sophomore year at Princeton. Both were drunk, though not as drunk as they afterward remembered. The mechanics had worked but for both it was a mortifying experience. Sam had no interest in foreplay; a quick ejaculation was the most he wished for. Susanna felt abandoned, stranded with wrenching emotions she couldn’t express. They hadn’t even gotten fully undressed. Minutes after they’d finished, Susanna slunk back to her dorm room.
The next morning at breakfast, Susanna moved quickly to restore law and order. “Let’s never do that again,” she said. They were facing each other across the table in the Mathey dining room.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I was drunk.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Susanna said. “It was a bad idea and a worse experience, and it won’t ever be repeated.” She paused. “Or talked about.”
“Can’t I tease you about it?” Sam asked.
“No, not yet, maybe not ever,” Susanna said. “I’m too embarrassed.”
“In my family, that’s the time to start making fun,” Sam said. “It speeds recovery.”
“How did your mother stand the five of you?” Susanna said.
“She drew the line at blood. And if an older brother picked on a younger brother, she might call him out, except if it was Jack being picked on. The Teflon Kid.” Sam shook his head. “He’s amazing. He’s a genius. He’s a dickhead.”
“There should be a book about the five of you,” Susanna said.
“We have the title: The Five Famous, Fierce, Forceful, Faithful, Fabled, Fortunate, Fearless Falkeses. Harry made it up when he was ten, in the spirit of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, but out-adjectiving it. Mom praised Harry for including ‘fortunate.’?”
“Self-fulfilling title, I’d say,” Susanna said. “You are famous, famous for Princeton.”
“Harry left off ‘fruity,’?” Sam said. “He didn’t know then. I didn’t know then.”
“Stop that,” Susanna said.
“You aren’t entering into the spirit of things,” Sam said. “I can’t keep bringing you home with me if you’re too well behaved.”
“Where’s all that ‘He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother’ stuff?” Susanna said.
“Harry believes that. ‘We few, we happy, we band of brothers.’ Only marines feel that way. Real brothers have the long knives out. The first murder was fratricide, and it only took one generation. Whoever wrote the Bible knew his onions. Mom said her goal was getting Tom to twenty-one with the rest of us still alive.”
“Will I ever be able to joke about last night?” Susanna asked.
“Yes,” Sam said. “It’s our lavender moment. September 18, 1985. Next year we’ll celebrate our first anniversary. I’ll buy you a lavender bouquet. You’ll buy me a lavender tie.”
“For a gay man, you’re horribly insensitive, and mean too,” Susanna said.
“It’s time to explode the myth of the sensitive gay man, once and for all,” Sam said. “I’m the middle of five boys. I wouldn’t have survived if I’d been sensitive. The baby, Tom, is sensitive. Straight and sensitive. It’s been rough for him.” He smiled. “Anyway, you weren’t looking for sensitive in me.”
“No,” Susanna said. “You’re a beast a lot of the time. I like the guyness of you. I think that’s what confused me last night—in my drunken stupor.”
“I was curious,” Sam said. “That’s settled.”
—
Sam didn’t want Susanna to have a baby with someone else. He thought it should be his baby. The idea of a sperm donor, “some anonymous, muscled-up onanist,” as he put it, “with decent college boards and blond wavy hair,” enraged him. He told Susanna she shouldn’t go the donor route.
“But I’m not,” she said. “A friend has offered.”
“Is he gay?” he asked.
“No, straight,” she said. “You don’t know him. He’s a friend from work. Charles. Blond, tall, a bit nerdy, very smart. Stanford. He’s younger than I am, thirty-two.”
“Will he be the dad, on the birth certificate?” Sam asked.
“We’re talking about that.”
“I don’t like it,” Sam said.
“You can be the godfather,” she said.
“How are you doing it? Turkey baster?” he said.
“None of your business,” she said.
—
Sam insisted on celebrating September 18 every year. He and Susanna would go out to dinner. He’d bring her a lavender rose for each year. Susanna went along in bad humor, not seeing the original event as a night to remember. “It’s like America celebrating the Bay of Pigs,” she said.
On their seventeenth anniversary, Sam took her to Balthazar. She had had her fill; she gave him a box of monogrammed lavender stationery from Mrs. John L. Strong, one hundred cards and envelopes. “They cost four hundred and ninety-five dollars,” she said. “OK,” he said. “We won’t do this again.” Susanna ordered steak au poivre, the most expensive dish on the menu. “I’d like a Barolo,” she said. “You might like the crow.”
Sam took a deep breath. “Crow may be just the thing,” he said. “More than you know. We should order a bottle of Barolo.” He then told her about Harry’s clash with his mother over the Wolinskis.
Susanna didn’t get angry, as Sam had thought; she was quiet. “What?” he said. Susanna shook her head.
“If you’d told me this earlier, I’d have wanted to put a hit on Harry as well as Vera. Now I don’t know what to think. I think Harry’s onto something. I think your father knew Vera at some point but…” Susanna stopped.
“But what?” Sam said.
Susanna shook her head again. “I can’t believe he would have two babies with another woman. Maybe one, an accident. Even that’s hard to believe. It must be awful for everyone.” She stopped again. Sam waited this time. “Harry shouldn’t have said that to your mom, that she knew. Even if he thought she did, even if she did. He must be a mess.”
“We’re all pretty much a mess, except Jack and Mom, though you can’t tell with Mom. She never lets on, not to us, at least.”
“What do you expect? You’re all blaming her, if not as savagely as Harry. You all still act like babies with her and with each other,” Susanna said. “Me too.”
Sam ordered a second bottle of Barolo.
“So,” Sam said, “where are you in your baby-making plans?”
“Moving along,” Susanna said.
“Would you marry me if I were free?” Sam said.
“No,” Susanna said. “Why would I do that?”
“You love me,” Sam said.
“I see,” she said. “A Rock Hudson husband.”
“Would you let me be the baby’s father?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Andrew.”
“I’m going to split with him anyway,” Sam said. “I want a baby and I’m going to have one, one way or another.”
“We can raise them together. They can be friends,” Susanna said.
“You don’t believe me,” Sam said. “Wait and see.”
“I’ve waited, I’ve seen,” Susanna said.
“How can you be so coldhearted,” he said. “You know we should be having a baby together.”
“I woke up one day and realized I wanted a baby more than I wanted your baby,” she said.