* * *
Outside, from the driveway, Sally looked up to see our father turn away from the window.
“You called it a cottage.” Rochelle was gaping up at the house, hands on her narrow hips, and shaking her head.
“Everyone calls their house a cottage on the Vineyard. It’s like reverse snobbery. There’s plenty bigger than this. And this one’s older than most. I think it was built in the thirties. That’s like the stone age here.”
“It’s so pretty. I love this color gray.”
“They’re all like that. Seriously, it’s an ordinance or something. You have to ask permission if you want your house another color.”
She could smell the good smells of the lobster bake, coming up from the beach. Rochelle was looking over at the path down between the dunes. “What is that?”
“Oh. We’re having a family clambake tonight.”
“That sounds so fun! It was so nice of your parents to let me come. And I can’t wait to meet your brother.”
“My brothers,” Sally said automatically. Then, realizing what she’d done, she said: “My brother’s around here somewhere. I don’t know. Let’s go inside.”
Inside, she watched her friend take in the main room with its shiny wooden floors, and the built-in corner cupboard which held an older and bulky television no one ever watched and a stack of crumbling board games no one ever played, and the glorious spectacle of the ocean, visible through the living room windows. She noted, through Rochelle’s eyes, the basket of baby toys at the bottom of the stairs, and wondered what she should say about them, but the question didn’t come, and they went upstairs. Somewhere, a sink was running, and the door to the master bedroom at the end of the hall was closed. Our father’s office door was also closed.
“We’re in here,” she said.
Rochelle put her red bag on the twin bed Sally obviously wasn’t sleeping in, and went into the bathroom.
I’m doing this wrong, Sally thought, watching the door close behind her. Though it was probably nearer the truth that there wasn’t a right way to do what she was doing, or had already done.
From out in the corridor she heard our parents’ door open, and the descending clomp of an unhappy woman carrying a child. “Salo, are you coming downstairs?” Johanna called up from the bottom of the stairs.
“When I’m off the phone,” she heard our father say.
He had been on the phone when Sally returned from her walk on the beach. He had been on the phone when she left for Vineyard Haven. Apparently, he was still on the phone. Whom was he talking to?
She had a pretty good idea whom he was talking to.
In the bathroom, the toilet flushed, and with that utterly pedestrian sound something inside her clarified. The house, and all the people in it, known and unknown, known but unknown; hers was not the only story underway, she understood. I need to go talk to Lewyn, Sally thought. Like, right now.
“Listen,” she said when Rochelle came out, “I’ll be right back. I want to go ask my mom something.”
“Should I come?” said Rochelle.
“No, no, I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.” And Sally left her there, rooting around in her shiny red bag for a sweater.
She went downstairs to the kitchen, where she found Johanna pulling Champagne out of the fridge: two bottles that hadn’t been there this morning.
“Have you spoken to Dad?” our mother said.
“No,” Sally said. “Not since this morning.”
“I’m very irritated.”