by Anita Shreve
"We wouldn't have said that," Nora said.
Having loosed her secret — and her anger — Agnes found that she couldn't stop herself. Later tonight, or tomorrow morning while driving home to Maine, she might cringe at the memory of this moment. But right now all she felt was relief. Tremendous relief at not having to hide the central fact of her life.
"You'd have thought it," Agnes said. "You've been thinking it. Just like I pitied you your whole marriage, Nora. Just like I'm wondering what's eating at Harrison. Just like I'm wondering what it feels like to have cancer and still want to get married."
"Agnes, stop it," Rob said.
Agnes ignored the scolding. "Why are we all pretending? We've spent every minute of this reunion hiding the things that are closest to our hearts. We were once all best friends. Now we're as good as strangers to one another. I don't expect you to tell me your secrets — I don't want you to. It's just that I've lived that duality all my life, and I can spot it a mile away."
Agnes knew that she'd gone too far, that she'd offended people she genuinely admired, even loved. She would not, however, take back what she had said. It was too late for that. There was only one more thing to be said before she left them.
"We're all so full of it," Agnes said, standing, "that we haven't even talked about the thing we're all not talking about. That night at the beach. It's a kind of cancer all its own, isn't it? We were all there. We all saw Stephen. We all watched him drink himself into oblivion."
Nora very quietly pushed her chair back and stood. Agnes watched as she walked behind the others to a door that perhaps led to the kitchen.
"We were all complicit in Stephen's death," Agnes added. "We knew he was a drunk, and yet we didn't keep a close enough eye on him. We didn't even notice he was gone until it was too late."
Agnes laid her napkin on the table. It might have been a gauntlet. "It was a lovely wedding, Bridget. I mean that truly. I think you're a brave, beautiful woman, and I wish you a happy life. Many, many years of a happy life with Bill."
Agnes glanced at Harrison and then over at Rob. She would not see them again. She could say good-bye, but the evening had already had more than its share of drama. She pushed her chair into the table.
Tomorrow morning she would wake and pack her orange duffel bag and get into her car and return to Maine. The drive would be long, and already Agnes dreaded it. The trip would be entirely different from the one she'd made just yesterday. Yesterday, she had had a life. She had had hope. She had neither now.
When Bill and Bridget left the table, Harrison stood. He said good night to Rob and Josh and Jerry, the only ones who remained, Agnes's pronouncement and exit having effectively ended the evening. Possibly, the men would move into the library for a nightcap, though Harrison had no intention of joining them.
Harrison pushed through the door at the far end of the private dining room, the door through which Nora had disappeared. He found himself, not unexpectedly, in the kitchen. Judy, who looked up from a small plantation of mismatched cream pitchers, seemed surprised.
"Where's Nora?" Harrison asked without preamble.
"I don't know," Judy said, perhaps taken aback by Harrison's abrupt manner.
"She came through here," Harrison said.
"Came and went," Judy said.
With his jacket hooked over his shoulder, Harrison searched the public rooms of the inn — the library, the sitting room, another room in which a wedding reception seemed to be in progress — but he couldn't find Nora. It was conceivable she had already doubled back and was in one of the rooms he'd just passed through, but he took a chance and headed for the long corridor that led to Nora's suite. When he turned the corner, he noted that Nora's door was half open, as if she'd dashed back to her desk to fetch a list or a bill.
Harrison pushed the door further open. Nora was seated in an armchair facing the double doors that led to the private veranda.
Harrison tossed his jacket onto the foot of the bed.
"You wanted a story?" he asked.
His question was brusque, rhetorical.
Nora said nothing.
"All right," Harrison said, ignoring her silence. "I'll tell you a story."
He stood with his hands on his hips confronting the woman in the chair, aware that his posture and his voice were full of anger. After a few seconds, however, he couldn't look at Nora as she sat with her legs crossed, holding her shawl closed at her collarbone, staring at the various rectangles of glass. He walked toward the double doors, putting his back to her. In the crenellated reflection, he could just make out the features of her face.
"So I'll skip the part," Harrison began, "where I spend most of my junior year and all of my senior year watching this girl — this girl I've had a crush on since that fateful day in October — from a distance. And then up close and personal when I discover, much to my surprise, that she's the girlfriend of my putative best friend, Stephen Otis."
Harrison paused.
"'Crush,' I think, is not an entirely accurate word in this case," he continued. "I could use the phrase 'in love,' couldn't I? But you'd doubt me because you'd think that to love someone, one must have at least the barest beginnings of a relationship. But since this is my story, we'll dispense with semantics and just take it on faith that I was, indeed, in love with this girl, from a distance as I've said, and then rather up close, though not, sadly, close enough to touch, because she was, again as I have mentioned, the girlfriend — true love? — of my roommate."
Harrison crossed his arms over his chest.
"So we'll skip that whole part," he said, "and go directly to that night on the beach, which, if memory serves, was the third Saturday in May. A night when the water temperature would have been forty degrees, which — and you may not know this — will cause a man to die in less than thirty minutes. The air temperature, factoring in the windchill, never rose above forty-five degrees Fahrenheit that night. You with me so far?"
"Harrison."
"So I'm at this party, which is taking place at a beach house that belongs nominally to a couple named Binder from Boston who use it only in the summers, but in essence belongs to the privileged of Kidd Academy, who think nothing of breaking and entering a temporarily abandoned house. Said house being one point three miles from the boarding school, a fact that will take on some significance later on."
Harrison had not remembered that fact in years.
"And let's see," he continued, "who is there with me at this party? At which, I should point out, there seems to be an inordinate amount of booze, courtesy of Frankie Forbes, who had, two days earlier, dropped off at the beach house — for our convenience — ten cases of Budweiser, numerous bottles of wine, and for the hard drinkers among us, several fifths of Jack Daniel's." Harrison paused. "Good old Forbes. Precious friend to the class of nineteen seventy-four. Where would we have been without him?"
And where exactly would Forbes be now? Harrison wondered. Had he become a drunk? No, too canny for that. Forbes probably had a house somewhere on the coast of Maine, all purchased, of course, with profits from the willing students of Kidd.
"So, who's at the party?" Harrison asked again. "Jerry Leyden, who is at all the parties, not because he particularly likes to drink but because he's a student of human behavior. He likes to observe and then draw conclusions about the observed, these tidbits to be stored and parceled out upon occasion for sport or for further advancement. Jerry would have made a marvelous spy, I always thought, but instead elected to parlay his exceptional talents into sharp business skills, wheeling and dealing his way to the top of the food chain in New York City, no mean feat. So there's Jerry and his girlfriend, Dawn, who, I understand, is now a sheep farmer in Idaho. And who else? Rob Zoar, doubtless fully aware of his sexuality though not yet prepared to announce it, nineteen seventy-four being a good two decades before the era of Gay Alliance clubs on high school campuses. Rob, the quintessential good egg, is mildly drunk on beer — b
uzzed, shall we say — and is also something of an observer of human behavior, though, unlike Jerry Leyden, not for political ends. There is no Josh in his life as yet, though who knows, there might have been — a sophomore boy? a headmaster? — human nature being as various as it is.
"There are perhaps fifteen others — no, twenty, at least — at the party, well into its midpoint by now, curfew dictating the arc of any social engagement at Kidd. The beach house must be vacated by ten forty-five in order to sprint back to the dorm and be in our rooms by eleven. You remember curfew, Nora?"
"Harrison, why are you doing this?"
"I'm telling you a story, remember?" he asked her reflection in the glass. 'And, yes, my story has a plot, though a sordid one. But I'm getting to that. I was speaking of the others present at the party. Bill and Bridget making out in a corner. We begrudge them nothing. Agnes O'Connor is sitting on the couch talking to Artie Cohen about. . . what. . . let's see, the Vietnam War? And there are many others, but some of this is a blur, because yours truly was well into his cups by then. Not as drunk as some, mind you. Not as stoned as others. No, I was somewhat more than buzzed but less than wasted. Certainly less wasted than Stephen, who may have been combining Jack with THC. Hence the bloodshot eyes, the faltering steps, the wet kisses. Yes, I did see those, Nora. And let us not forget his fabulously charming laugh, which tended toward the hilarious and infectious, rising above the crescendoing symphony like a piccolo gone nuts." ,
"You're drunk now," Nora said.
"Do you think so?" Harrison asked, briefly swiveling in her direction. "Not happily, I can assure you. Not in the tiniest bit happily."
He turned back to the windows and uncrossed his arms, a little of the starch leaving him. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and examined himself in the door frame. A mullioned man.
"Also at this party is the aforementioned girl," Harrison continued. "And I, being a seventeen-year-old boy in love — yes, what the hell, we'll use the phrase — with a beautiful but untouchable girl who seems, if I may say so, more than a little annoyed with Stephen — for his drunkenness, possibly, but more, I think, for his crude possessive gestures: the dramatically wet kisses, the public overtures to enter one of the mildewing bedrooms — follow this girl into the kitchen, where she has gone, ostensibly for water, but I think to be by herself. A chance our hero — that would be me — cannot afford to miss. I find her not at the tap but rather sitting on the really-not-very-clean floor, arms covering her head. A girl in distress. Definitely."
Harrison remembered Nora wedged into the corner, a small animal gone to ground.
"I squat down in front of her," Harrison said, "and ask her what is bothering her, though I, who have been watching her every move and being as astute an observer of human nature as are our Jerry and our Rob, already know. I lift the distressed girl to her feet. And as will sometimes happen with seventeen-year-olds, a comforting embrace morphs into something rather more, producing in the boy at least a feeling akin to rapture, if not actually rapture itself. And in the girl? Who knows? One likes to think some rapture reciprocated. Certainly the kisses, passionate and protracted, suggest strong feelings on the part of the girl — and perhaps even relief? Was there relief? I think so. And then there was a kind of fumbling embrace and the girl's hand is under my shirt, slightly above my waistline, a detail I have remembered my whole life. Imagine that. Twenty-seven years spent remembering one tiny detail."
"I don't want to hear this," Nora said.
"Somehow the girl and I got turned around," Harrison continued, ignoring her, "and my back was digging into the metal band of the molding of the Formica counter, and I was, to put it simply, thrilled to be holding this girl I'd wanted to touch for months. This girl who admittedly did not belong to me — if one human being can be said to belong to another — but who appeared to be giving herself to me with some abandon. So I might be forgiven for thinking that this girl shared some of the same feelings I was having: namely that we had, albeit by a circuitous and not entirely blameless route, found each other."
Harrison paused, not wanting to leave this moment in his narrative — a moment he could feel in all its immediacy, a moment he hadn't ever been able to duplicate, despite years of trying.
Nora put a hand to her eyes.
"But such sublime pleasures," Harrison continued, "if stolen, must be paid for, no? And thus the sudden lurching into the kitchen of Stephen Otis, who could not fail, despite his altered state, to note that his roommate and his girlfriend were locked in passionate embrace."
Harrison remembered Stephen's sudden face, his expression of disbelief, the jackhammer of guilt pounding inside his own chest.
"We might have blown apart then," Harrison continued, "but to the girl's credit, she did not move away from me, a non-gesture for which I will always be grateful. Though, in retrospect, that non-gesture might have given us both pause, since it was that lingering embrace, that disinclination to untangle limb from limb, that put a period instead of a question mark at the end of Stephen's exclamation, which, as I recall, went something like, What the fuck."
It went precisely like What the fuck, Harrison recalled.
"The girl said nothing, and I said nothing," Harrison added, "a demonstration of extraordinary poise, I think now, in light of potential calamity. Who knows what a drunk will do when crossed, when betrayed? Newspapers and TV shows are full of such scenarios. The girl left us both then, I remember, trailing her hand along my arm, a distinct commitment to a future. A gesture that filled my yearning heart with joy and perhaps even bravado. I leaned against the counter, arms braced on the Formica, waiting for the punch or at the very least some spittle. Stephen, never the most articulate of men when drunk, said only, You fuck, swinging old Jack not in my direction but in his, and swigging impressively — I recall being impressed — from the square-cut bottle. And then he lurched away.
"I was . . . what was I? Elated? Sober? Relieved? Sexually delirious? I needed to find the girl, to touch her again. To tell her that I loved her, which seemed as urgent a message as I'd ever had to deliver. Said message still undelivered, I might add. So I went in search. Quickly darting out to the porch. No Nora there. Then back through the squalid rooms of the chicken coop that passed for a beach house. No Nora there. Had she gone back to the dorm? A decision that would have been sensible, yes, but a dull ending to my tale."
Harrison studied the floor, reluctant to enter the portal of this particular part of his story, the only bit that really mattered.
"So I went out again to the porch. And there, to my horror, was Stephen, whom I was decidedly not looking for. Stephen was stumbling and, I could scarcely believe this, crying."
"Please, Harrison," Nora said.
"He said — and I quote — Oh man, oh fuck. Repeatedly. Not knowing I was standing there. I thought he was distraught at having found the girl and me in the kitchen, and I was moved. I spoke. I said something. Maybe only his name. Stephen. He turned and saw me. I was keeping my eye on the empty and potentially lethal bottle in his hand. He said, Oh, shit, I can't go back in there."
Harrison paused.
"I took a step toward Stephen, and he yelled, Don't come near me! We started to back away."
Harrison stopped now on the brink of revealing a detail he had never told anyone. But he had come to Nora's room to do this, to tell this story, which had to include this terrible fact.
"And that was when I smelled him," Harrison said quickly.
Nora covered her eyes with her hands.
"I've shit myself, man, Stephen said."
Nora rose in one motion from the chair and walked to the bed. She sat at its edge.
"This was a phenomenon I'd heard about but never witnessed," Harrison said, "this extreme manifestation of inebriation. I was struck dumb, astonished, made ashamed by the pure physicality of being drunk. I was, if I'm not mistaken, actually frozen in place.
"I'm goin' in the water, Stephen cried.
Wash out the pants. You get me somethin', man. Steal it from the closets. Anything."
Harrison glanced at Nora.
"Stephen turned," Harrison said, "and started toward the porch steps that led down to the beach and the water. Stephen, don't, I said.
"What? he asked. What?"
Harrison bit the inside of his cheek and stared up at the ceiling, remembering.
"The water wasn't rough, but it wasn't entirely calm either. You could see the white edges of the waves. What was I to do? Realistically? Stephen had to wash himself off. He couldn't let anyone see. Better to let the others think he'd gone for a quick swim to sober up than that he'd shat himself, no?"
Harrison took a long breath.
"I started down the steps with him, but he turned and shouted at me to stay where I was. He was still crying."
Harrison could hear the tightness in his voice.
"There wasn't much light that night, and I could just barely make him out as he walked out onto the beach. He kind of stumbled to the water's edge and waded up to his knees."
Harrison swallowed hard. "But, you see, realistically, I could have helped him, couldn't I? I could have given him my own pants, walked back to school along the beach in my boxers, and snuck into the dorm before anyone saw me."
And Harrison wondered for the thousandth time why he had not done that.
"Stephen kind of lost his balance and sat down in the sand. He let the tide wash over his legs. I could see him struggling to undo his belt."
"Harrison," Nora said, and he steeled himself to finish his story.
"And then I heard this noise behind me," Harrison said. "A door opening. I turned, and it was Jerry Leyden. Come out to find me. Or Stephen. Because the story of what had happened in the kitchen had spread through the beach house like proverbial wildfire, and our Jerry, ever on the scent of the new and interesting in human behavior, wanted to speak to one of the protagonists."
