Sally shrugged. She had momentarily run out of words. She was waiting for Lewyn, now.
“She’s adorable.”
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?”