“Is this true, Sally?” our father said. “It’s fine, of course, but is it true?”
She couldn’t move her head. She managed only to raise her hand.
“I’m not staying,” Rochelle announced. “I mean, just to get that out of the way. Thanks for inviting me. If you did invite me.” She directed this to no one in particular. “But I’m going to leave now.”
“Don’t do that,” said Lewyn. “We can talk.”
“We can’t talk. We’re not going to talk. Jesus Christ, Lewyn, what is there to talk about? You have a lot of shit to work out, obviously. And it’s not that I don’t sympathize, because I do. I think you’re a sweet, wonderful person, but there’s a seriously big hole in you, and if you don’t figure out what that is you’re just going to start stuffing it with, I don’t know, a crazy religion or some other bullshit.”
“That’s not true,” he said. Though he suspected it was.
“What crazy religion?” Harrison said with what sounded like actual interest.
None of your fucking business, Lewyn thought.
“I’m not discussing this with you,” he said. “I need to talk to Rochelle.”
“No. No.” She actually held up her hand. Then she walked over to Johanna and said, with bizarre politeness, “It was nice meeting you, albeit briefly. You have very interesting children.”
Harrison, on the far side of the feast, guffawed.
“And you, Mr. Oppenheimer,” said Rochelle, picking her way over the sand to him. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk. Or, actually, meet.”
“Me, too,” said Salo. He took her hand and shook it. “Who are you, exactly?”
Rochelle, unaccountably, laughed. “I’m the complete idiot who’s been living with your daughter and in a relationship with your son.”
Sally wouldn’t look at her. Sally had, at some point, gone down on her knees in the sand and was holding her own arms so tightly that her wrists ached. She was still in the terrible loop of what Rochelle had said to Lewyn, and Lewyn to Harrison, and Harrison to every person here, from our mother and father to the four members of the Lobster Tales catering crew. Now each of them knew something about her that no one else had known, until a moment ago.
Never, never, never.
Whoosh.
“Good-bye, Sally,” said Rochelle Steiner, and she plowed on past, her short legs nobly struggling through the deep sand.
“Wait!” Lewyn rushed after her. “I need to…”
Rochelle didn’t even turn. Away she went up the log steps to the house, with Lewyn flailing behind her.
“Most entertaining!” Harrison said brightly, after a moment.
“You are such an asshole!” Sally exploded.
“Sally,” our mother said pointlessly.
“How could you say that!” she howled.
“Say what? You don’t have to be ashamed, Sally. It’s 2001! Nobody cares.”
I care, she wanted to say.
I wasn’t ready, she wanted to say.
I didn’t know, was what she really wanted to say, but not to him. That would only make it worse.
“It’s none of your fucking business. Anyway, never mind. I’m leaving in the morning, and I hope you have a lovely life. Go play with the white supremacists in Virginia. But stay away from me.”
“You don’t know the first thing about what I’m doing,” Harrison said. “You have no concept of what’s going on in this country.”