“Very likely,” Sally said. “But I have a super clear concept of what’s happening right here. I never want to see you again.”
“Oh, Sally,” Johanna said. She was crying. Phoebe, in her arms, was also crying, but likely not for the same reason. “Please don’t say that. He’s your brother.”
“He came out of a petri dish!” she howled. “So did I. So did that.” She flung out her hand toward Phoebe, propelling a handful of sand that fortunately did not reach either parent or child. “I don’t think that constitutes a bond. I never did!”
“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” said Salo, who had stepped closer to Johanna.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Sally. “As if you have any authority here.”
“I beg your pardon,” our father said, more angry than she had ever seen him.
Sally hauled herself up, dripping sand, then she stepped close to him and said, very quietly: “Please tell me you don’t think I’m that stupid. You are a terrible father. And I’ve known for years.”
“What did you say?” Johanna said.
“What did she say?” Harrison said.
Salo, the only one who knew what she’d said, said nothing.
And for a long, excruciating moment no one moved or spoke again.
“Right,” said Sally at last. “I think that’s everything. I’m out.”
“Sally, don’t leave!” our mother cried.
“Been nice knowing you,” said Harrison, with glee, and Sally wanted to tell him what an appalling person he was, too, but someone had blocked her exit, and he did it first.
“Harrison,” said Lewyn, from the bottom of the log steps. He looked terrible, deflated, obviously devastated, but somehow not yet through with either of them. “That was a horrible thing to do.”
“Oh, please. You don’t need any help from me, fucking your life up. Either of you.”
“I meant about Sally. Why did you have to tell everyone that?”
“Why did you have to tell me that, Lewyn?” Harrison said cruelly.
“I shouldn’t have,” he said.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” said Sally. “In case you want to put this all on him. He’s a cruel bastard and always has been, but I might have expected more from you. Or is this radical truth some part of your religious conversion?”
Lewyn turned to her.
“Because you’re not the only one Rochelle confided in, you know. I mean, could you not have picked a less asinine thing to want to be than a Mormon?”
“Yow!” said Harrison. “That shit actually rubbed off on you? From the roommate?”
“What are you saying?” It was Salo. He hadn’t moved or said a word since Sally had leaned close to him and spoken. “What does he mean, you want to be a Mormon?” And when his son said nothing, he looked at them all, one by one by one: the weeping wife and toddler, the trio of flailing young adults. Not one of them would ever know what he was thinking, though much time would be spent, and considerable pain derived, from wondering.
They went back inside, the triplets into their bedrooms, where they commenced not speaking to one another, and it was nearly silent on the upstairs floor of the cottage apart from a whimpering Phoebe Oppenheimer, who was nobody’s immediate priority, and the hushed scene unfolding in Salo Oppenheimer’s office as a marriage of twenty-five years jolted to its end.
For the record, he did apologize. He said that our mother had not deserved this. He said that she would have whatever she needed, for the rest of her life, and the kids, too, of course. It wasn’t like that. In fact, he honored her and every one of her choices. Every one. But he had an early flight: 6:20 from the Vineyard to Boston, 7:45 from Boston to LAX.