Rochelle turned to Sally, and she was full of ice. “Oh no. You don’t get to be the victim, Sally. This may be a surprise to him, but it isn’t to you. So who’s ashamed of whom? And why would you tell me your brother went to a junior college in New Hampshire?”
“She said that?”
Unnoted, Harrison and Salo had arrived.
“A junior college? Really?”
“I told you a two-year college,” Sally said lamely. “Which it is. You just inferred it was a junior college. Which it actually also is, kind of.”
“It absolutely is not!” Harrison scoffed.
“If you don’t mind, Harrison,” said his brother, “this really has nothing to do with you.”
“What does it have to do with?” our father asked. He’d accepted a flute of Champagne from one of the waiters. The waiters, Sally saw, had all gone quiet now. “I know I came late, but could somebody catch me up?”
“Well, I might have a few of the details wrong,” said Harrison, now with his own Champagne flute to hand and a definite note of merriment in his voice. “But unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, that young lady is your son Lewyn’s girlfriend, and also your daughter Sally’s roommate, and neither of them saw fit to tell her they were related or even knew each other. Which means that this is either a farce or a revenge tragedy. But if I were her I would be extremely pissed.”
“I am extremely pissed,” Rochelle confirmed, nodding. “But I’m mainly sad. I’m sad that neither of them could share something so … well, basic with me. I mean, why?”
Lewyn shook his head. He had come closer, step by step through the sand. He was nearly on Rochelle’s side of the aluminum tray now. All that food. He couldn’t imagine who’d eat it now.
“You’re not a triplet,” Sally heard herself say. “Maybe you’d understand.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Johanna. “You have no idea how lucky you’ve been to have one another. Some children grow up without anyone to lean on. They have to take care of their parents alone, and deal with horrible situations alone. And you’ve always been so close!”
All three triplets turned to look at our mother. All three looked away. In this, at least, they were in accord.
“Wait,” said Harrison. And there was something in the sound of it that made Sally grow cold. “Wait a minute. Lewyn, didn’t you say your girlfriend was the one who told you Sally was a lesbian? That’s what you said!”
Whoosh, whoosh. Sally had to lean over. A moment later she was spitting up red wine onto the sand. Well, this is punishment indeed, she thought. The wine and spit sank into the sand. Had Rochelle really said that word? About her? And to Lewyn, whom she would never, ever look in the eye for the rest of her life? Or Harrison, for that matter. Never, never, never.
“Don’t be absurd,” Johanna said, but she sounded horribly uncertain.
“Lewyn,” Rochelle said. Then she slapped his hand away. Somehow he had gotten close enough for that.
“Well, it makes sense,” said Harrison. “I mean, you live with a person for a year, there are things you know.”
“Jesus, Harrison, shut up.” It was Lewyn. He was weeping.
“That’s not true,” our mother was saying to no one in particular. The caterers had backed so far away they were out of the ring of firelight. “I mean, she had a boyfriend in high school, didn’t she?”
In point of fact, she had not had a boyfriend in high school. She’d had a friend who was a boy who liked other boys, and who was as deep in denial as Sally had been until about sixty seconds before right now. Her life as a lesbian ought to have begun years earlier, but it hadn’t. It was beginning now, and in full familial glare, and with this terrible feeling of longing upon her like a net. I wish, she thought, but she couldn’t wish. It all got drowned in the sound of the waves and the terrible drone screaming in her head.