“I’ll be making margaritas,” Peter says.
“Salt me a glass,” Gina says.
In the car, Peter puts his hand on my thigh. “Alone at last, gorgeous.”
“No thanks to you. I was trying to get rid of them. They’ll come back to the camp and hang around ’til dinnertime.”
“But now we have a few free hours. I thought we could have a swim at Black Pond.”
He leans over, nuzzles my neck. “A naked swim,” he says in his “suggestive” voice. “That bathing suit makes me horny.”
“My ratty old black bathing suit makes you horny?”
“My ratty old white wife does, actually.”
I laugh. This is the thing about Peter.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun.” He reaches between my legs, strokes my thigh where my sarong has fallen open. “When was the last time you had sex in a public place?”
My leg flinches. The memory of Jonas’s hand. “You know what? That’s a great idea,” I say, trying to cover it. “We haven’t been down there in ages.”
“Excellent,” he says, but he takes his hand away.
10
1979. June, Connecticut.
Through the large plate-glass window in my grandparents’ dining room, where I’m setting the table for dinner, I can see all the way across the low hills to the neighboring farm. Up against a barbed-wire fence, their cows chew the cud. The last bronzing light of the summer day flashes the tops of the trees beyond. My father and Joanne are getting divorced. He tells us it’s because he missed his girls too much and Joanne refused to move back to the States. He chose us. We are spending June together.
In the living room, where they are watching the six o’clock evening news, my father and Granny Myrtle are arguing in low voices. I tiptoe around the dining table, placing a silver fork on each napkin, silver knife to the right, trying to listenin, careful not to make a sound.
“What hogwash,” I hear Granny Myrtle saying to him. “That insufferable woman cuckolded you. And I’d call it a blessing in disguise.” She turns the volume on the television up a notch. “I must be going deaf in my old age.”
“You’re wrong, Mother,” my father says. “I missed the girls.” But there’s a limpness in his voice that makes me think of empty rooms.
“Those two girls are the only good thing you’ve managed to accomplish,” she says.
I hear my father get up and go to the bar, hear the sound of ice cubes landing in his bourbon glass.
* * *
—
Anna lies on her twin bed in our room off the kitchen, staring at the ceiling. “I have to get out of here,” she says when I come in.
We’ve only been here two days, but already she wants to leave. Her boarding school roommate Lily has invited Anna to spend three weeks at the family’s summer “cottage” in Newport. “They belong to the country club. Her brother Leander is a pro in the tennis shop.”
“You don’t even know how to play tennis,” I say.
“God, you’re annoying.”
“If you leave, I’ll have nothing to do.”
“I have no interest in being stuck here for a month, just because Dad decided to come home.” She stands up and fishes a magazine out of her bag, flops back down.
I watch her read.
“Stop looking at me,” she says.
“Do you want to go swimming tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go for a bike ride?”
She ignores me.
I sit on the edge of my bed, looking around the room. “If you had to choose between Tab and Fresca for the rest of your life—if you could only have one—which would you choose?”
“I don’t have to choose.”
“I know, but hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically, I may hit you if you don’t shut up.”
“Dad will be sad if you leave.”
“Please,” she says. “He has zero right to put us on some big guilt trip. He deserted us. And now that he’s back, we’re supposed to be grateful?”
There’s a soft knock on the door. Dad pokes his head in. “There’re my girls,” he says brightly. “Dinner’s almost ready. Mother made a pot roast.”
“I’m not hungry,” Anna says.
He sits down on the bed next to her. “What are you reading, kiddo?”
“A magazine.” She doesn’t bother to look up.
“You girls must have grown a head taller since I saw you at Easter. How was spring term?” he asks Anna. “Your mother tells me you got an A in French. Mademoiselle, tu es vraiment magnifique!”