“Poor woman. What a sad life.”
I watch my mother stir the sauce slowly, round and round. I hesitate. “Leo went back to her. Did you know that? They got remarried.”
“I did not know that. I assumed he was dead or in prison.”
“There was a wedding picture on the mantel. A photo of them on a cruise. Just an ordinary-looking older couple.”
She picks up a cucumber and starts peeling it. “Let’s not talk about Leo. As far as I’m concerned, he died a long time ago. He was a bad man. I don’t like to think about him, and you shouldn’t, either.”
She takes the bottle of white wine from the counter, pours some into a glass.
“Isn’t that cooking wine?”
“It’s wine,” she says, drinking it down.
“I need to talk to you about Leo, Mum.”
“Eleanor, people will be arriving soon and I’m trying to cook. So, whatever it is will have to wait.”
Jonas and I haven’t spoken since I called him from Memphis yesterday, from the dizzying sidewalk outside Rosemary’s house. When I see his mother and Gina appear at the door, my stomach does an odd drop—something familiar and yet forgotten. It takes me a moment to realize what it is: I am nervous, excited, anticipating his arrival. It is the strangest sensation, like a sense memory from my past—something I haven’t allowed myself to feel in so many years; and yet there it is.
But Jonas isn’t with them.
“He insisted on taking a shower even though he’d just had a swim. Complete waste of water,” his mother says, coming in through the screen door.
“He’s right behind us.” Gina hands my mother a bottle of wine. “I brought white.”
“We’re drinking red,” my mother says, taking it to the kitchen.
“Ignore her.” Peter comes over and gives Gina a hug. “She’s been an utter cow all afternoon.”
“Be fair,” I say, though I completely agree with him. “This is always a difficult day for her.”
“You’re right,” Peter says. “I take it back.”
“I’m sorry I never got to know Anna,” Gina says. “She seemed like a cool person.”
“She was,” I say. “The coolest.”
My mother comes out holding a platter of cheese and crackers.
Jonas’s mother waves it away. “I’ve cut out gluten and dairy. My arthritis.”
“You should have told me,” Mum says, annoyed. “I’m serving pasta. But we have olives.”
“How was Memphis?” Gina asks.
Peter sighs. “Muggy. Tired.”
“I’ve never been,” Gina says.
“Elle liked it.”
“I did. It’s a city full of ghosts,” I say.
“Do you want wine or a ‘drink’ drink?” Peter asks Gina.
Over Gina’s shoulder, through the screen, I see Jonas walking down the sandy path. His hair is wet and messy. He’s barefoot, in torn Levi’s and a blue chambray shirt. His cheeks are flushed. He looks like he did when we were young. Lighter on his feet, clear. When he sees me, he smiles: not his usual “happy to see his old friend” smile that I have grown so accustomed to, but something more, intimate and open, as if to say: finally, after all these years, we can look at each other without the scrim of shame between us.
Peter gets up from the dinner table, stretches. “That was delicious, Wallace. What’s for pudding?” He lights a cigarette and wanders inside to the shelf where Mum keeps a stack of old LPs next to what may be the world’s only living Victrola.
“We have fresh pears and sorbet. Who wants coffee?”
A scratchy Fleetwood Mac song comes on. “Did you actually purchase this album, Wallace?” Peter calls from the living room.
“It was Anna’s,” she says. “Aren’t you going to read the Shelley?”
Every year, on the anniversary of her death, Peter reads us Anna’s favorite poem, “To a Skylark,” the prayer she asked for at her funeral. It is a sacred ritual.
But tonight Peter says, “I’m too tired and too drunk. Can someone else do it?” and flops down on the sofa.
Gina pulls her chair over to him, and they start some pointless conversation about restaurants in Bushwick.
I feel like punching them both in the face.
Dixon picks up the battered book, peers at it, then hands it to Jonas. “My eyes aren’t what they once were,” he says.
Jonas finds the page.