“Hey,” she says, as if meeting in a bathroom is perfectly normal. She pulls down her jeans and sits on the toilet.
I stand there, mute. He is here is all I can think, heart racing, breathless.
Gina grabs a wodge of toilet paper and wipes herself. “When did you guys get here?”
“Maybe half an hour,” I manage to say. “We walked.”
“We weren’t planning to come, but his mother was threatening to make a tofu stir-fry.” She flushes the toilet and stands up to zip her jeans. She has a full Brazilian. A sudden self-conscious worry blazes through me as I picture my own old-fashioned pubic hair. Did it bother Jonas? Turn him off? He is used to something else. Smooth, childlike.
“Your turn,” Gina says.
I cannot look at her. I cannot look away.
She opens the medicine cabinet and finds a tube of Neosporin, squeezes some on the tip of her finger, takes a Band-Aid out of a box. “I did something to my foot earlier,” she says. “Just a little scratch, but it hurts like hell, and now there’s a blood blister. Jonas thinks I stepped on a crab.”
I watch her rub ointment on the wound in a tidy circular motion. She peels the little strips off the back of the Band-Aid, stretches it over what is clearly a nothing scratch, smooths both ends over her skin just so—lovingly. I’m fascinated by the care she gives herself, the importance of every gesture. It’s like watching one of those women who actually brush their teeth for the full two minutes. I wait for her to leave, but she takes a lip gloss out of her back pocket, leans in to the mirror. I have no choice but to sit down and pee with Gina two feet away, underpants around my ankles, the barest weight of Jonas’s ring nudging me through my dress pocket.
“I forced Jonas to drive here,” Gina says, making a pout, checking that her lips are perfect. “By the time he got home, it was the total witching hour for mosquitoes at our place. God knows where that man disappears to.”
My pee stops midstream in a tiny gasp, before starting again. Gina turns, looks at me, at if she is considering something. I still myself, like a deer sensing a hunter in the blind.
But she smiles. “You won’t believe this, and I probably shouldn’t tell you, but I used to think it was you.” She dries her hands on a guest towel. “It seems so ludicrous now. I actually followed him once. Turned out he’d been trying to find some osprey nest all summer.” She laughs.
“He loves these woods,” I say, and reach for the toilet paper.
Crossing the dorm on our way back downstairs, Gina says, “Have you seen the new master? Andrea did an amazing reno. She finally convinced Dixon to get rid of that hideous wallpaper. They’re gutting the kitchen next.”
“I grew up in that kitchen.”
“Yeah. But have you seen it?”
She will never know how close she came to losing him.
“This room must have been the ultimate teenage crash pad.” She gestures to the wall of bunk beds. “Jonas probably made out with some girl on one of those.”
“He was much younger than us.”
I follow her down the narrow staircase.
“But you must know if he had girlfriends or whatever,” Gina says over her shoulder.
My hair still smells of pond water.
* * *
—
My mother is exactly where I left her, Peter still perched on the arm of her chair. Citronella tiki lamps cut circles of light into the dusk.
“I’m getting a burger,” Gina says. “Want one?”
I scan the lawn for Jonas, feel a queasy tightening. I find him in the shadows beyond the grill. He is staring at me. He’s been waiting for me. I reach into my skirt pocket, close my fingers around the green glass ring, steady myself. “I think I’ll wait a bit.”
Gina crosses the lawn to him, wraps her arms around his waist, shoves her hands into his back pockets. Ownership. She must sense my stare, because she turns her head quickly, like a puma picking up a scent, looks out into the dark. Jonas whispers something in her ear and she smiles, turns back to him.
“Hey, wife,” Peter says. “Where’ve you been?”
“With Gina. Peeing.”
“Have some peanuts.” My mother passes me the can.
“I was upstairs in the kid’s bathroom. Gina opened the door from the dorm side without knocking and came in. Sat down and took a pee in front of me.”
“She’s vulgar,” my mother says.
“Your mother is on the warpath tonight.”
“I’m not on any war or any path,” Mum says. “I simply told Andrea that none of us likes the new landscaping she’s had done. It isn’t ‘woods.’”