Whoosh, whoosh.
“I know! I love all my children, obviously, but from the minute this girl arrived, she was: Now the party can get started! It’s so interesting how they come out, isn’t it? Sally liked to be still. She didn’t like anything fussy or anything touching her. Her brother was so cuddly, we called him the baby-barnacle.”
To Sally’s surprise, Rochelle laughed. “I just met Harrison,” she explained.
“Mom?” said Sally. But she had nothing to say after that, so she went silent again.
“Oh, Harrison. He learned to read at two. It was ridiculous. I’d take him to the bookstore on Court Street and get him a whole stack of books, thinking, this will keep him busy. The next day he’d come in and say he was done and needed more. He read like my father used to smoke, just end to end. He still does, probably. Harrison, not my father.”
Johanna was standing over the baby, holding her by the arms, and Phoebe was babbling, swinging, leaning toward the packed aluminum tray. “Let’s get you another corn, cookie,” said Johanna. “No, I meant Lewyn. Lewyn was the baby-barnacle. I miss that.”
“Mom,” Sally said. “You should try some of Rochelle’s wine.”
“No, I’ve got Champagne somewhere. We opened one of the bottles. It’s over on that table. Do you want any?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she called out, “Lewyn! Come meet Sally’s friend.”
And then they stood—Sally, Rochelle, Johanna—the three of them in a row, stock-still between the fire and the churning sea, as Lewyn turned and turned to stone. He gaped at them, his mother and his sister and Rochelle, trying to make pitiful sense of how they could possibly all be in the same place, all at the same time, all here, all now. Sally nearly felt sorry for him. She nearly felt devastated for him.
“I don’t understand,” Rochelle finally said.
“I’m sorry,” said Lewyn, going right to the quick of things. He was still far away, but they all heard it.
“You know each other?” Johanna said brightly. “Oh, well, Cornell. Of course.”
Rochelle said nothing. There seemed to be an entire interchange underway between her and Lewyn, and Sally, watching it, felt herself become not more regretful but more inflamed. This was connection, and it was obvious: the two of them, staring at each other as if everyone else—our mother, the baby sister, herself, the caterers, for God’s sake!—were somewhere else. That the two of them should have gotten so far, buoyed by Lewyn’s great lie, was appalling. Yes, Sally thought, he deserved this moment. He deserved every single awful thing he was obviously feeling, and she had nothing to regret.
“Well, Lewyn,” Rochelle said at last. “And I guess this is the family retreat you mentioned.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Maybe it was all he was capable of.
“And Sally is your sister. It’s ridiculous, actually.”
It was many things, but not, Sally thought, ridiculous. The wine she’d gulped, and the wind, and the smell of the food. She felt as if she might be sick.
“What is?” said Johanna. “Do you know each other from a class?”
“From the bus,” Rochelle said, recalling her manners. “We met on the bus back to Cornell, back in the spring. He told me—” She broke off, shook her head at her own stupid credulity. “He told me Oppenheimer was a common name. But why, Lewyn? I mean, what was the point?”
“I wouldn’t mind knowing that, myself,” said Sally. “I mean, thanks a lot. Am I such an embarrassment you couldn’t admit we were related?”
Rochelle turned to Sally, and she was full of ice. “Oh no. You don’t get to be the victim, Sally. This may be a surprise to him, but it isn’t to you. So who’s ashamed of whom? And why would you tell me your brother went to a junior college in New Hampshire?”
“She said that?”
Unnoted, Harrison and Salo had arrived.
“A junior college? Really?”
“I told you a two-year college,” Sally said lamely. “Which it is. You just inferred it was a junior college. Which it actually also is, kind of.”
“It absolutely is not!” Harrison scoffed.
“If you don’t mind, Harrison,” said his brother, “this really has nothing to do with you.”
“What does it have to do with?” our father asked. He’d accepted a flute of Champagne from one of the waiters. The waiters, Sally saw, had all gone quiet now. “I know I came late, but could somebody catch me up?”
“Well, I might have a few of the details wrong,” said Harrison, now with his own Champagne flute to hand and a definite note of merriment in his voice. “But unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, that young lady is your son Lewyn’s girlfriend, and also your daughter Sally’s roommate, and neither of them saw fit to tell her they were related or even knew each other. Which means that this is either a farce or a revenge tragedy. But if I were her I would be extremely pissed.”
“I am extremely pissed,” Rochelle confirmed, nodding. “But I’m mainly sad. I’m sad that neither of them could share something so … well, basic with me. I mean, why?”
Lewyn shook his head. He had come closer, step by step through the sand. He was nearly on Rochelle’s side of the aluminum tray now. All that food. He couldn’t imagine who’d eat it now.
“You’re not a triplet,” Sally heard herself say. “Maybe you’d understand.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Johanna. “You have no idea how lucky you’ve been to have one another. Some children grow up without anyone to lean on. They have to take care of their parents alone, and deal with horrible situations alone. And you’ve always been so close!”
All three triplets turned to look at our mother. All three looked away. In this, at least, they were in accord.
“Wait,” said Harrison. And there was something in the sound of it that made Sally grow cold. “Wait a minute. Lewyn, didn’t you say your girlfriend was the one who told you Sally was a lesbian? That’s what you said!”
Whoosh, whoosh. Sally had to lean over. A moment later she was spitting up red wine onto the sand. Well, this is punishment indeed, she thought. The wine and spit sank into the sand. Had Rochelle really said that word? About her? And to Lewyn, whom she would never, ever look in the eye for the rest of her life? Or Harrison, for that matter. Never, never, never.
“Don’t be absurd,” Johanna said, but she sounded horribly uncertain.
“Lewyn,” Rochelle said. Then she slapped his hand away. Somehow he had gotten close enough for that.
“Well, it makes sense,” said Harrison. “I mean, you live with a person for a year, there are things you know.”
“Jesus, Harrison, shut up.” It was Lewyn. He was weeping.
“That’s not true,” our mother was saying to no one in particular. The caterers had backed so far away they were out of the ring of firelight. “I mean, she had a boyfriend in high school, didn’t she?”
In point of fact, she had not had a boyfriend in high school. She’d had a friend who was a boy who liked other boys, and who was as deep in denial as Sally had been until about sixty seconds before right now. Her life as a lesbian ought to have begun years earlier, but it hadn’t. It was beginning now, and in full familial glare, and with this terrible feeling of longing upon her like a net. I wish, she thought, but she couldn’t wish. It all got drowned in the sound of the waves and the terrible drone screaming in her head.
“Is this true, Sally?” our father said. “It’s fine, of course, but is it true?”
She couldn’t move her head. She managed only to raise her hand.
“I’m not staying,” Rochelle announced. “I mean, just to get that out of the way. Thanks for inviting me. If you did invite me.” She directed this to no one in particular. “But I’m going to leave now.”