I didn’t know what MySpace was.
“I also know for a fact that he told at least one person Oppenheimer was a common name, so another Cornell student named Oppenheimer wasn’t anything to him.”
“Like Simon Peter,” I laughed. “He denied you.”
“Well, we denied each other. We just didn’t want to know each other here.”
“I think that’s sad,” I told her. “Where are we going now?”
We were going to a place called Carol’s Café, a location all but unchanged from Sally’s student days, apparently. Inside, out of the cold, we brought our coffee to a table. “I asked Paula if she could join us for lunch, at Moosewood,” she said, stirring sugar into hers. “I honestly don’t care if you go to Cornell or not, but you have to experience Moosewood.”
Paula had made her appearance late the night before, when both of us had run out of steam and were sitting side by side on the Victorian couch in the formal living room, watching Stephen Colbert on television. She was a tall woman, still broad shouldered and strong from the rowing she had done in college. She’d blown through cheerily that morning on her way out to the Ag Quad, leaving a kiss on Sally’s cheek that was far more sensual than I had ever witnessed a kiss on a cheek to be.
“She’d like to get to know you better,” said Sally.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m a carnivore. And isn’t Moosewood all the way on the other side of campus? Why did we come all the way up here?”
“Well,” Sally was stirring her coffee, “I was thinking, last night, that there was something else I wanted to talk to you about. And I wanted to show you the dorms, because you’re right, it’s sad what happened with Lewyn and me in college. I still think about it.”
“Another therapy goal?” I smiled.
“I’m afraid so. And the fact is, I did something really crappy to Lewyn back then. And he still hasn’t forgiven me. And he’s been absolutely right not to.”
“Oh. Well, it couldn’t have been that bad,” I said warily.
But it was. It was so bad that Sally actually began to falter as she told this story, which was all about a person named Rochelle Steiner who had been her freshman-year roommate, and her friend, and … well, this was actually a big part of the problem. “You can’t imagine,” Sally said, “how deep in denial I was. It was a catastrophe that I thought I might be gay. Obviously, people were, and they were out. Plenty of gay women here at Cornell, and Walden was totally ahead of the curve, a very gay-friendly place. And it’s not like I grew up in some Born Again home in Indiana. The world really was okay in 2000, or at least the part of it I was living in. But to me it wasn’t okay, and it wouldn’t be for a long time after that. So all during my freshman year I was sharing a tiny little room with this woman, and falling in love with her, and the effort it took to not let that out, or not even let it get through to myself, was just overwhelming. And then this incredibly unlikely thing happened. She met Lewyn and the two of them fell in love.”
I stared at her. “That’s … wow,” was all I could think of to say. “Inconvenient. Awful, actually.”
Lewyn had never mentioned a person named Rochelle Steiner. He had never mentioned any woman at all, not in a romantic sense, except the one from his master’s program.
“Rochelle Steiner,” I said aloud, hearing the name in my own voice.
“He lied to her, of course. Like I said. That was his contribution. But by the time he did that, I’d already been lying to her for months. I said I had a twin brother, and he went to college in New Hampshire. I don’t even know why I told her that. I was so angry at him. And her. All I could think of was how to punish them. So I brought her up to the Vineyard with me, and sprung her on him. On all of us, I guess. That was the same night, the night I told Dad what a horrible person he was.”