“Mine doesn’t. Not that that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about rewarding her for a selfish and insane and utterly immature decision by reassuring her she can abdicate her responsibilities anytime she wants.”
But that wasn’t it at all, thought Sally. Or not entirely. Our mother had so loved being a mother, the Maypole around which her little ones danced, perpetually competing for her attention. Who wouldn’t feel alive and necessary under those circumstances? The basic responsibilities for food and shelter and safety, the encouragements and rituals, the special time with each of them. And what came after that? Only the frantic appeasement of her meandering partner, the children peeling off to begin their separate widening gyres, and then their outright, heartbreaking departures. When Sally thought of it, she wanted to cry, despite the fact she herself had howled to get away. She was still howling. She was howling right now.
“Hello.”
Rochelle was there, shockingly, in the kitchen doorway, one hand on the doorframe, the other holding that bottle of wine they’d bought in Vineyard Haven. Sally was dumbstruck to see her. For a blessed moment, in exercising her generous loathing for Harrison, she’d forgotten all about Rochelle.
“Hello,” Sally heard Harrison say. “And you would be the roommate.”
“And you would be … I’m guessing here … the brother?”
“I am that,” Harrison said. “Most assuredly.”
“Then I, most assuredly, am the roommate. Rochelle Steiner.”
Harrison took a step toward her. He had always been the taller of the boys, by a significant margin, but now, with Rochelle as the yardstick, Sally suddenly realized that Lewyn had surpassed him. Harrison wouldn’t like that. “A pleasure,” said Harrison, extending his hand.
She watched the two of them shake hands. It was surreal, but not, she supposed, as surreal as it might be about to get.
“I guess you’re ready for this,” said Rochelle, holding up her bottle and nodding at the pair of wineglasses Johanna had left on the countertop.
“I’m always ready for good wine,” said Harrison, sounding like a complete git.
“Actually, there’s Champagne,” said Sally. “We just didn’t have enough flutes, apparently. Would you like something now?”
Rochelle shook her head. “I’m so happy to meet you,” she told Harrison. “I can’t say I’ve heard too much about you. I just know the basics. You go to college in New Hampshire, right? I don’t know the name of it.”
“It’s called Roarke. For another year, yes,” said Harrison. “Then I transfer to Harvard.”
Rochelle’s eyes widened. She herself, Sally knew, had applied to and been rejected by Harvard. But who hadn’t?
Harrison hadn’t. And leave it to him to insist on saying so.
“That’s very exciting. You know that already?”
“Most of us know where we’re going after Roarke. A couple of the others are also heading to Harvard.”
Sally watched her as she attempted to process this: a two-year college sending multiple graduates to Harvard? It did not compute, obviously.
“A few to Yale and Stanford. And,” Harrison smiled, with deeply disingenuous rapport, “other Ivy League schools. A couple.”
“That’s quite the student body,” Rochelle said. “What do you study there, nuclear physics and advanced game theory?”
He shrugged. “Well, you can study whatever you want. I’m doing a fairly strong core curriculum, but I’m mainly interested in economic and political philosophy. Also, I’m in charge of the chickens, so I’ve learned a good deal about poultry in general.”
Rochelle looked at Sally. It was hard to tell whether she was angry or merely mystified.
“Roarke? That’s the name of your school?”
“Yes. I’m not surprised you don’t know it. It’s all male, and somewhat off the radar.”
She nodded. “I see.”
And now you know why I never talked about him, Sally nearly said. But that hadn’t been why she’d never talked about him.
“Our mom’s gone down to the cookout,” she told Rochelle. “We could go, too, if you’re ready.”
“Don’t forget Dad,” her brother said.
“Oh. Dad.” She weighed her options. She didn’t really want to leave these two alone in the kitchen, not even for as long as it took to go upstairs. “Would you do it?”
He paused. She saw him entertain, then reject, some caustic word or rebuff. It struck her with some horror that he was actually attempting to be less awful than he naturally was. Because of Rochelle? Because—and this was nearly incomprehensible—he had some wish to appear to his best advantage, for her? Rochelle? That Rochelle Steiner could seem to have such a power over not one but two of them (not two but all three of them, if she was truly, for once, being honest with herself) was a notion in utter conflict with anything rational. But what did it matter, the effort to be rational? It wasn’t rational to have told her roommate she had one brother, not two, or that one of those two might have been living in the next dorm over, all through the past year. It wasn’t rational to have lured Rochelle here for some ill-thought-out act of aggression, against whom she still wasn’t sure. Also, it wasn’t exactly rational to be dropping out of college in spite of the fact that your grades were fine and you weren’t even leaving the town where your college was located. (And this—it now, somewhat belatedly, occurred to her—was precisely what she was about to do. Or had she already done it? And without any clear idea why.)
Harrison went upstairs. Sally reached for Rochelle’s wine, took a corkscrew from the drawer, and opened it. She poured two generous glasses.
“Technically that was for your parents,” Rochelle reminded her.
“I’ll make sure you get the credit.” Sally took a gulp. It seemed to taste very good. For a bottle they’d chosen for its label, that was lucky. “Come on,” she said. “No telling how long those two will take.”
They stepped outside. The night was windy and more fragrant than before, and the ocean made its ambient whoosh, whoosh, the soundtrack of her childhood summers. She felt for the familiar log steps and heard, from below, the laughter of strangers: the caterers, probably, happy in their work. She was grateful for the dark.
“Oops,” said Rochelle behind her.
“You okay?”
“I spilled some wine in the sand. I forgot what it’s like to walk on sand.”
Her mother and the baby were together on an unfamiliar blanket near the long aluminum pan, which was heaped with ears of corn and foil-wrapped bags of mussels and clams, on top of which were the lobsters and mounds of seaweed. She made herself not look around for Lewyn, but went straight to Johanna and said, “Mom, this is my friend, Rochelle. She brought you a bottle of wine.”
Rochelle stared at Phoebe. She was trying, Sally knew, to place her. “Mrs. Oppenheimer, so nice to meet you. And who is this?”
The baby was fussing a bit. She had a fistful of our mother’s shoulder-length hair in one hand, and a partial ear of corn in the other. Her cheeks were covered in butter.
“This is Phoebe,” said Johanna. “Sally’s sister, of course.”
Oddly, Rochelle nodded, as if the “of course” settled everything.
“It’s so kind of you to let me come,” said Rochelle. “I’m sorry we’re only meeting now.”
“I am, too!” said our mother, with an eagerness that stung. “I wish we’d been able to come up and visit, but…”
“There’s not much to do in Ithaca,” Sally pointed out. She was, only now, looking around for Lewyn. And there he was on the other side of the firepit, his back turned, talking to two of the cooks. The waves were louder here. He hadn’t heard them. He didn’t know yet.
“Well, I don’t care about that. I care about seeing my children.”
“And how old is Phoebe?” Rochelle asked brightly.
“Fourteen months. Walking up a storm.” The baby was set down in the sand, whereupon she released both hair and corn and made for the fire. “No you don’t,” said Johanna, going after her.
Rochelle turned back to Sally. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”
Sally shrugged. She had momentarily run out of words. She was waiting for Lewyn, now.
“She’s adorable.”