Oh God, I thought, of course.
“So what’s the story?” I asked. “What’s with this new look?” Putting my hand to my own mouth to indicate the mustache.
And he shrugged and said, “Thought I’d go for something different. Got tired of the Einstein stuff.” Then he said, with almost an excited expression on his face, “I think I look like—” And he named a famous actor. “Don’t you?”
It was many, many years ago that I had last seen William without any facial hair—we were young, practically kids. And now he was not young.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe. A little bit.” I could not see the connection between William and the actor he had just named.
Then William said as he glanced around again, “It’s nice in here.” He added, “Small. And messy. But nice.” He sat down uncertainly on the edge of the couch.
“You look like your mother,” I said. “Oh my God, William, your mouth is your mother’s mouth.” And it was true: His lips were thin, as his mother’s lips had been. But his cheekbones were prominent in a different way, and his eyes, oddly, did not seem as large. I realized he had lost weight.
Sunlight from the morning was streaming through the window that looked out over the river.
William said, “Hey Lucy! Richard Baxter came from Shirley Falls, Maine. Not from up where we were.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
William said, “Remember you went to Shirley Falls?” And I nodded, and he said, “Well, I was researching him and found out that’s where he came from. Cool, right?”
“I guess so,” I said.
Then William said, squinting up toward me, “Lucy, will you go to the Cayman Islands with me?”
I said, “What?”
And he said, “Will you go to the Cayman Islands with me?”
I said, “When?”
And William said, “This Sunday?”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
And he said, “If we wait any longer we get into hurricane season.”
I sat down slowly in a chair by the window. I said, “Oh William, you’re killing me.”
And he just shrugged and smiled. Then he stood up and slipped his hands into his pockets. “Look,” he said, nodding downward and then glancing up at me almost childlike. “These aren’t too short, right?”
The pants were khakis, and in fact they were a little bit too long. I said, “No, they’re fine, William.”
He sat back down on the couch across from me. “Let’s just go, Lucy,” he said. The sunlight was in his eyes, and I got up and closed the blinds.
“Man, you really are just killing me,” I said, sitting down again.
And then he seemed to get sad. He said, “Sorry.”
I watched him as he sat there with his elbows resting on his knees, looking down at the floor. And I thought: William, who are you?
But it was more than that: I had a slight trepidation run through me, and it was a strange feeling.
William finally looked at me beseechingly. “I wish you’d come with me, Button,” he said.
His calling me that was odd. I mean it felt odd to me. Not natural or something.
I said, “What’s the book you’re reading?” And he held it up. It was a biography of Jane Welsh Carlyle. I said, “You’re reading that?”
And William said, “Yeah, have you heard of it?” And I said I had read it and I loved it, and he said, “I know. I like it too, but I just started it.”
“What made you choose that biography?” I asked.
And he gave a small shrug and said, “Oh, someone suggested it. Some woman.”
“Ah,” I said.
Then he said, “I thought I should start to understand women more, so I’m reading it.”
This made me laugh, a genuine laugh, I thought it was funny. And he looked at me as though he didn’t quite get what was so funny about that.
“The woman who wrote it is a friend of mine,” I said. And he looked only vaguely interested.
Then he said, “Just come with me to the Cayman Islands. We’ll leave on Sunday and come back Thursday. We’d have three days there.”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” I said. “Is that soon enough?”
William said, “I don’t know why you don’t just say yes.”
“I don’t know either,” I said.
And then we spoke of the girls. I said I was trying to have a vision like my mother had had about me being pregnant—only I was trying to have it about Chrissy. “But I can’t,” I said. “I don’t know if she’ll get pregnant or not.”