“Mom.”
“We have the Lobster Tales people coming over around four. We should be here for that, they might need help carrying stuff down to the beach. Will that give you time for your errands?”
Sally looked at her watch. Rochelle’s ferry would dock in forty-five minutes. And the boys, where the fuck were they with her car? With Harriet’s car.
“Can I borrow the Volvo?” she asked.
She would pass Harrison and Lewyn on the Edgartown Road, but her head was so full she didn’t notice, and the boys, in Harriet Greene’s old Ford, didn’t notice her, either. They were on their way back from Katama with two bottles of Champagne for that night’s “celebration” of their birth. The Champagne was Veuve Clicquot. Harrison had developed a preference for Veuve Clicquot in Virginia, he informed his brother as he handed over Johanna’s credit card.
“So that’s what you did down there?” asked Lewyn when they returned to the car. “Guzzle Champagne and toast the little people?”
“I don’t know that I’d waste good Champagne on the ‘little people.’ I think sharing ideas with thinkers who are focused on improving our country is pretty much all I’ve been wanting to do since they let me wash off the finger paints in elementary school. Not that there’s anything wrong with art.”
Lewyn eyed his brother, who was driving. Harrison’s hands were not, he noted, in the sanctioned ten-and-two position.
“Well, I’m glad to see that college has broadened your worldview.”
“College has extended my worldview. College has deepened my worldview. I think that’s how it’s supposed to work. Is that how it’s working for you?”
Lewyn smiled. “I’d say so. I’ve made some interesting friends. I’ve found something I care about, intellectually.”
Harrison snorted.
“And I have a girlfriend.”
His brother flinched. Yes, there was pleasure, deep pleasure, in the moment. Lewyn saw Harrison struggle not to turn his head.
“Really.”
“Really. Thanks for your good wishes.”
“No, I’m just … well, little Lewyn. I can’t say I’m not a mite surprised.”
“You don’t need to say it. Because who could possibly be interested in me, am I right?”
Harrison smiled. They were passing the airport. A private plane was gliding in to land.
“Is that how you feel about yourself?”
Lewyn set his jaw. He could catch Harrison off guard, for some fleeting advantage, but he could never outmaneuver his brother. Not in the long game.
“You’re such a charmer, Harrison.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean, who else could say something like ‘a mite surprised’?”
“Who else indeed,” Harrison agreed, grinning at the road ahead.
“And your own love life, if I might inquire?”
“Well, I had some very pleasant evenings with one of the young ladies at the center in Virginia.”
(This was a considerable exaggeration. Harrison had indeed flirted with a cute Sweet Briar junior named Maddie, an intern in the director’s office. He had even considered asking her out on a date, but there wasn’t a single evening of presentations or even unscheduled conversation—especially unscheduled conversation—that he had been willing to miss. So he’d let it go.)
“Well, that sounds … a mite pleasant indeed.”
“Yes. But no. This is not so much on my radar right now. I’m more concerned with the cerebral. And as you’re well aware, I got an earlier start on this type of thing.”
The light changed. They turned toward home.
“I believe it has been mentioned,” said Lewyn. “What was it, sixth grade?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“And she provided the condom.”
“That is hardly the salient fact,” said Harrison, taking obvious pleasure in not denying this. “Please don’t think I’m unhappy that you’ve caught up a bit. I’m relieved, actually.”
“Well,” Lewyn shook his head, “I’m sorry to have worried you.”
(It was here that our parents’ Volvo sped past them in the other direction.)
“Not worried,” Harrison said. “But of course I was ever so slightly concerned about you both. You ripped your heart out over that airhead actress at Walden. What was her name?”
Of course Harrison knew her name. The girl, by then, had starred in two independent films and been on the cover of New York magazine. Not even Harrison could miss that. Besides, she hadn’t been an airhead, more’s the pity.
“And Sally of course. I worry about Sally. She’s never even had a boy ask her out.”
Lewyn’s antennae rose. It was right there. Right there. And he was helpless against it. And the words hammered away inside him, howling for release—say it, say it. It wasn’t a question of whether it was right. He knew it wasn’t right. But he was operating on a far more primitive level. Say it, say it, say it. So he did. What else was he capable of doing, really?
“I wouldn’t read much into that, Harrison. Sally’s a lesbian.”
Silence. More explosive than anything even Harrison could have thought up to say, and Lewyn listened to that, feeling the pleasure rush, rush, all through his body. Speechless, both of them. Lewyn sensed the tightness in his cheeks and knew he was smiling. No, grinning. Madly.
“How do you know that?” said his brother through clenched teeth.
“My girlfriend told me.” This was a grace note, a twist of the dagger, with a flourish!
Harrison was looking over at him. This was unsafe driving.
“Yo, watch the road,” said Lewyn.
“And how does your girlfriend know?”
He sounded skeptical, but of which element—the revelation about Sally or the fact of Lewyn’s girlfriend—it was hard to say.
“That, I decline to answer,” said Lewyn, settling into this wholly unfamiliar perch: the upper hand.
“Well, how do you know it’s true, then, Lewyn?” said Harrison. He seemed to be reaching for his customary smugness, but he couldn’t quite get there.
“We both know it’s true, Harrison,” he said.
He loved this. He was admiring the words even as he said them. Then he started admiring the words he didn’t say: You mean you never figured that out? And you, The Smart One? Maybe not quite as smart as you think you are …
“I can’t say I’ve given Sally’s sexuality much thought, to be honest.”
“Clearly.”
They turned off the road onto the long, shared driveway, passing the Alberts’, the McConaughys’, the Lowells’, and the Abernathys’. The Abernathys were long gone, but none of them had ever laid eyes on the new owners, Houstonians who had vastly overpaid for their overblown “cottage” but were never there.
“Not that it matters,” Harrison tried one last time before the final turn to the house.
“Obviously,” Lewyn parried. “Except, you know, to our sister.”