Jack is curled up beside me on the sofa, his head in my lap, reading something on his phone. From this angle, he looks like a sweet little boy, and my heart breaks. I lean down to kiss him, but he swats me away with the back of his hand.
“I’m still mad at you,” he says.
“Rude of them to make us wait. Make some room.” Peter squeezes in next to us on the sofa, trying not to spill his drink. “Sip?”
“After my swim.”
“I’ll have one,” Jack says.
Peter starts to hand Jack his glass.
“Don’t even think about it.” I stand up, shaking them both off me. “I’m going for my swim. Tell Jonas and Gina I’ll see them another day.”
“Should you be worried?” my mother asks from the kitchen.
“Thanks, Mum. Yes, they’ve probably all drowned. Or died in a fiery car crash.” I slam the screen door behind me.
“Your wife has been a complete nightmare since she woke up this morning,” Mum says to Peter. “Is she having the curse?”
“I heard you,” I shout, and storm down to the water’s edge.
Twelve swift strokes bring me out to the deep. I turn onto my back, arms akimbo, using only my frog legs to push me out deeper. Listen to the muffled sound of water bubbling past me.
In the middle of the pond, I turn over and do a dead man’s float, facedown, open my eyes and try to see. But my eyes can’t adjust to the pond-green gloam. My senses fail me here, in over my head. I imagine what it would be like to drown—to sink down into the underneath, trying to fight back to the surface, drink in water as if it were air.
1979. October, New Hampshire.
Outside the car window, New England autumn rushes past in a blur of yellow and red, the occasional dark punctuation of pine. It is Parents’ Weekend at Anna’s boarding school. Dixon, Mum, Becky, and I are driving up for the night to see her. I’ve never been to New Hampshire. “Neither have I,” Anna tells me when I call to say we’re coming. “We never leave campus. I’m stuck in a redbrick time warp with girls who play field hockey and live on Ex-Lax.” But the truth is, Anna is much happier now. She almost never comes home to visit. On long weekends, she stays with a roommate who lives closer to school.
Going up for Parents’ Weekend was Dixon’s idea. Mum wasn’t planning to go, but Dixon insisted. Anna is his goddaughter. He likes Leo a lot, he tells Mum, but marriages end, children don’t.
“Well, that’s not technically true,” Mum says.
“Don’t be grim. You’re starting to sound like your mother,” Dixon says, poking her in the ribs.
Frizzy Andrea and Dixon have split up. When their baby was born (at home in the bathtub), it was immediately clear it wasn’t Dixon’s. “I am many things,” Dixon tells us. “Brilliant, a sex god, an expert on Walt Whitman. But Asian is not one of them.”
“You’ll find someone,” Mum says. “You always do. In about two seconds.”
“True,” Dixon says. “But nothing that sticks.”
“That’s because you have terrible instincts and only date morons,” Mum says.
“It’s my Achilles’ heel,” Dixon says. “If I’d had any sense, I would have married you.”
“Obviously.”
“To be fair to Andrea, she was just following her own truth.”
“I rest my case.”
Dixon laughs. “Whatever. It was a cute baby, right, Becks?”
“Kind of,” Becky says. “His head was a weird shape.”
“That was temporary. Andrea’s birth canal was very narrow.”
Becky makes a gagging noise. “Can we please not talk about Andrea’s vagina, Dad?”
Becky and I are squeezed into the back seat between Dixon’s waxed-canvas duffel and a big Mexican straw bag of Mum’s that she’s filled with last-minute things Anna forgot to pack when she left in September.
“Why can’t it go in the trunk?” I ask.
“The trunk is full of crates. We’re going apple picking on the way home,” Mum says. “We’ll make apple butter,” she says when I groan. “Don’t let me forget to pick up some pectin, Dix.”
“Cool,” Dixon says. “Apple butter.” He turns on the radio, spins the knob past several staticky stations.
“Please keep your eyes on the road,” Mum says to him.
“No backseat driving.”
The only local station he can get to come in clearly is playing “Time in a Bottle.”
“Not this,” Mum says. “I can’t bear Jim Croce. Too maudlin.”
“Give the poor guy a break, Wallace. He was killed by a pecan tree.”
“Well, that certainly didn’t improve his music.”
Dixon grins and turns the volume up all the way. My mother puts her fingers in her ears, but she is smiling. She is always more relaxed around Dixon.
We turn off onto a country road bordered by running stone walls and stands of maples. It twines its way through open pasture, red-painted barns, endless apple orchards, trees still heavy with fruit. Anna’s boarding school is on a narrow lane, its entrance marked by two massive granite pillars and a discreet bronze plaque, tarnished and almost unreadable. Lamont Academy. The long gravel driveway opens suddenly onto wide lawns punctuated by trees so thick-waisted it would take three people to put their arms around the trunks.
Lamont is bigger than I’d imagined, more formidable. Redbrick dormitories and classroom buildings climbing with ivy, a white clapboard chapel next to a marble-columned library. In the parking lot, students swarm their parents in relief and happiness. Anna is nowhere in sight. We find her sitting in the sun on the steps of her dorm. There’s a paperback in her lap. She is crying.
“How can Phineas have died?” she says, closing the book and getting to her feet. “I hate this book.”
“A Separate Peace is the ultimate preppy downer. Everyone knows that,” Dixon says.
“He was so handsome,” Anna says. “He was perfect.”
“Only the good die young,” Dixon says.
“That’s complete rubbish,” Mum says.
Anna and Mum stand slightly apart, like kids at a school dance, each waiting for the other to make the first move. It has never been the same between them since Anna was sent away. Mum has tried to make it up to her, but there’s a distance in Anna, a coolness that will never thaw—as if her past life is in the rearview mirror, still visible, but her eyes are only on the road ahead.
Mum breaks first, crossing the ground to where Anna is standing. “I’m so happy to see you,” she says, hugging Anna. “You look wonderful.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to make it,” Anna says.
“Of course we made it,” Mum says, bristling.
“You didn’t turn up last year.”
“Well, we’re here now.” Dixon puts his arm around Anna. “And what a gorgeous day. I need to find the john before I piss myself, and then I want the grand tour.”
“Jesus, Dad,” Becky says.
“Lily’s parents invited us to have lunch with them at the Inn,” Anna says.
“I thought we were having a family lunch, but that sounds lovely, too.” She smiles, but I can tell she’s disappointed.
“I want to show Elle my dorm room first.” Anna takes my hand in hers as if we’ve always been best friends.
Becky starts to follow, but Dixon stops her. “Have you seen the size of that tree, Beck? It must be two hundred years old.”
* * *
—
Anna has a triple—a big room with tall windows, a battered wood floor, and three single beds pushed up against the walls. On the windowsill, an avocado pit sprouts hoary white roots into a glass jar filled with cloudy water. Anna’s bed is unmade—I recognize her purple Indian bedspread. Two photographs are tacked on the wall above it. One is of Anna and her roommates standing in front of a swimming po
ol. The other photo is of the two of us climbing a tree in Central Park. We are laughing.
Anna sits down on her bed cross-legged. Pats the space beside her. The mattress sags at the edge when I sit down.
“So, guess what?” she says. “And you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious,” she says. “On pain of death.” She leans in. “I lost my virginity last weekend.” She sounds so proud of herself, as if this is some great achievement, and I want to say the right thing—something that sounds casual, grown-up. Anna is confiding in me. But all I can think of is mustiness, damp sweat, my mother begging. I pull at a loose thread on Anna’s bedspread. An accordion of cloth gathers in its wake.
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” I say.
“I don’t. He’s a friend of Lily’s brother. He’s nineteen. We were all there for Columbus Day.”
“What was it like?”
“Not great. But still—I’m not a virgin anymore.”
“What if you got pregnant?”
“I didn’t. I borrowed Lily’s diaphragm.”
“Gross.”
“I washed it first, duh. For, like, two hours,” she laughs.
“That’s still gross,” I say.
“Whatever. Better than getting PG.” She hops off the bed and walks to the window, picks up the avocado plant, holds it to the light. “I need to change this water.”
“I’m going to wait,” I say.
“Wait for what?”
“Until I fall in love.”
Anna puts the jar back down, says nothing, stands with her back to me, whatever window she opened between us, shut.
“Maybe I won’t wait. I don’t know,” I scramble. “I guess it sounds dumb.”
“No, I think it’s a good idea,” she says, turning to me.
“You do?”
“For you. Just not for me. I doubt I’ll ever fall in love. I’m not the type.”
* * *
—
We drive home in the dark. The car smells of fresh apples. Becky and I sit in back playing coochie catchers.
“Pick a number,” she says, going first.
“Three.”
She opens and closes the beaky paper mouth three times.
“Pick a color.”
“Blue.”
She unfolds the blue triangle to reveal my fortune.
Inside she has written: You will go to third base with a fat oily pig. She has the handwriting of an eight-year-old.
“You’re so gross,” I laugh. “Your turn.” I pick up my own catcher and put my fingers into the paper triangle slots. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Open. She points to red.
I open the flap.
“A mysterious stranger will soon come into your life.” She reads what I have written in a whisper. “And he will put his penis in you.”
“I did NOT write that. Psycho,” I say.
“Wait.” Becky leans across me and unzips her father’s duffel, careful not to let him hear. She pulls out a white book with no cover. “You think I’m gross?”
The book is filled with black-and-white drawings. Picture after picture of a couple doing it. The woman looks like the wife on The Bob Newhart Show, except naked. The man has long dark hair and a beard. He is wearing an open shirt and nothing else. His penis dangles out from the bottom of his shirttails. He’s revolting. I think about Anna having sex with that college guy. The thought of her with someone she barely knows makes me feel sad for her, and I wonder if, deep inside, she regrets it. Because once you do it, you can never undo it.
Becky turns the page to a different illustration: the woman is leaning against a wall. The man is on his knees with his face in her crotch.
“Blech,” Becky whispers. “Can you imagine anything more disgusting? She probably tastes like pee.”
“Ewww.” We start laughing so hard it hurts.
“What’s the joke?” Dixon asks from the front seat. “I want in.”
Becky shoves the book back in her dad’s duffel.
“We were reading,” I say.
“Elle, you know reading in the car makes you sick,” Mum says. She opens the glove compartment and takes out a plastic baggie. “Just in case.” She hands it to me. “But for god’s sake, if you do feel sick, try to hold it until we can pull over. The smell of vomit makes me want to vomit.”
4:10 P.M.
I let my lungs ache until, unable to bear it another second, I wrench my head out of the water, breaking for air. Something bites my ankle, sharp, quick. I panic, feeling its pull. Jonas pops up out of the water in front of me. He laughs at the look of panic on my face.
“Are you insane? I thought you were a snapper.” I swim away from him, furious, but he grabs my bikini bottom.
“Let go.”
“I’m not letting go.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“I’m not.” He yanks me closer to him. “You know I’m not.”
“You were late.”
“Your children are fish. They wouldn’t come out of the water.”
“I know.” I sigh. “Sometimes I want to put their boogie boards through a wood chipper. I don’t know how Peter has the patience.”
We tread water, apart but together.
“Gina senses something,” I say. “There was a weird moment when I first got there.” In the distance, Maddy and Finn chase each other around on the shore. Behind them, my mother hangs a white linen tablecloth on the line. I hear a door slam, the linger of Gina’s laugh. Jonas hears it, too. I look away from him.
“It’s all right,” he says.
“It’s not all right. There’s something wrong with me. I should be filled with agonizing guilt. Instead, on the beach with Gina, I felt smug. Like I’d won. That heart in the sand.”
“You have.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“It is,” he says. One of the things I’ve always loved most about Jonas is his ability to admit his fault lines, a shrug-shouldered peace with who he is. “I love Gina. But I carry you in my bloodstream. This isn’t a choice.”
“Of course it’s a choice.”
“No, it’s what I have to do. And I accept that. That’s the difference between us. Acceptance of the choices we made.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” Whatever secrets my stepsister Rosemary revealed when Peter and I were in Memphis last week, however much it may have changed how I think about the past, Jonas and I will always have to be the sacrifice, the penance. “I’m not going to leave Peter.”
“So that’s it? This just ends?” Jonas says. He looks away from me to the wild, uninhabited side of the pond. Gazes at the reeds, the rushes, the place where we first became true friends: a small boy, hidden in the tree line, straddling the low-hanging branch of a tree, patient, pin-drop quiet; and a gangly, angry girl who wanted to die that day. The tree is still there, but its branches now reach high into the open sky.
Jonas sighs. “So many years.”
“Yes.”
“It grew so tall.”
“That happens.”
He nods. “I love the way trees grow up and down at the same time. I wish we could do that.”
All I want to do is kiss him. “You should swim back.”
“I told Gina I’d walk home from the far side of the pond and meet her back at the house.”
“No. Swim back to her.”
Jonas looks at me, his expression unreadable. “All right,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see you at the camp.”
“Maybe,” I say, hating everything about this: the distance left by the shift of his body away from mine, the familiar hole I carried for so many years inside of me opening back up. But I have to let him go, even if this, us, is what I’ve wanted my entire life. Because
Jonas is wrong, this is wrong, and it is too late. I love Peter. I love my children. There isn’t any more than that.
I watch him swim away, watch the space between us widening. And then I’m swimming after him, pulling him under the water with me, kissing him hard and long, there in the blur, hidden from the knowing world, telling myself it will be the last time.
“Are you trying to drown me?” he says when we come up gasping for breath.
“It would make things easier.”
“For fuck’s sake, Elle. I spent my whole life waiting for last night. Don’t take it back.”
“I have to. I’m going to. I just can’t face it quite yet.”
“Don’t,” he says.
We butterfly our way across the pond, tandem-legs splashing, winging for lift, throw ourselves onto the little sandy beach, sit side by side in the warm air.
12
1980. April, Briarcliff, New York.
Sunday. We’ve had a wet spring, but today is perfection, the sun strong, everything green and blossoming. Joanne has asked my father to clear out his boxes from her parents’ attic. We drive up the Hudson with all the windows rolled down. Since Joanne and my father split up, we’ve been spending much more time together. He’s been making a big effort with me and Anna—he even drove up to visit her at boarding school. But I can’t help knowing that if Joanne were still around, he probably wouldn’t be.
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