“It’s all right,” he says.
“It’s not all right. There’s something wrong with me. I should be filled with agonizing guilt. Instead, on the beach with Gina, I felt smug. Like I’d won. That heart in the sand.”
“You have.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“It is,” he says. One of the things I’ve always loved most about Jonas is his ability to admit his fault lines, a shrug-shouldered peace with who he is. “I love Gina. But I carry you in my bloodstream. This isn’t a choice.”
“Of course it’s a choice.”
“No, it’s what I have to do. And I accept that. That’s the difference between us. Acceptance of the choices we made.”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” Whatever secrets my stepsister Rosemary revealed when Peter and I were in Memphis last week, however much it may have changed how I think about the past, Jonas and I will always have to be the sacrifice, the penance. “I’m not going to leave Peter.”
“So that’s it? This just ends?” Jonas says. He looks away from me to the wild, uninhabited side of the pond. Gazes at the reeds, the rushes, the place where we first became true friends: a small boy, hidden in the tree line, straddling the low-hanging branch of a tree, patient, pin-drop quiet; and a gangly, angry girl who wanted to die that day. The tree is still there, but its branches now reach high into the open sky.
Jonas sighs. “So many years.”
“Yes.”
“It grew so tall.”
“That happens.”
He nods. “I love the way trees grow up and down at the same time. I wish we could do that.”
All I want to do is kiss him. “You should swim back.”
“I told Gina I’d walk home from the far side of the pond and meet her back at the house.”
“No. Swim back to her.”
Jonas looks at me, his expression unreadable. “All right,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see you at the camp.”
“Maybe,” I say, hating everything about this: the distance left by the shift of his body away from mine, the familiar hole I carried for so many years inside of me opening back up. But I have to let him go, even if this, us, is what I’ve wanted my entire life. Because Jonas is wrong, this is wrong, and it is too late. I love Peter. I love my children. There isn’t any more than that.
I watch him swim away, watch the space between us widening. And then I’m swimming after him, pulling him under the water with me, kissing him hard and long, there in the blur, hidden from the knowing world, telling myself it will be the last time.
“Are you trying to drown me?” he says when we come up gasping for breath.
“It would make things easier.”
“For fuck’s sake, Elle. I spent my whole life waiting for last night. Don’t take it back.”
“I have to. I’m going to. I just can’t face it quite yet.”
“Don’t,” he says.
We butterfly our way across the pond, tandem-legs splashing, winging for lift, throw ourselves onto the little sandy beach, sit side by side in the warm air.
12
1980. April, Briarcliff, New York.
Sunday. We’ve had a wet spring, but today is perfection, the sun strong, everything green and blossoming. Joanne has asked my father to clear out his boxes from her parents’ attic. We drive up the Hudson with all the windows rolled down. Since Joanne and my father split up, we’ve been spending much more time together. He’s been making a big effort with me and Anna—he even drove up to visit her at boarding school. But I can’t help knowing that if Joanne were still around, he probably wouldn’t be.
Dad has packed us a picnic: ham-and-tomato sandwiches, pears, sweet pickles, a bottle of beer for him, a Yoo-hoo for me. He’s in a great mood.
“I couldn’t see the back of Joanne fast enough, but I am sorry to lose Dwight and Nancy. They’ve been good to me. We’ll stop somewhere first to have our lunch. I don’t want to turn up early.”
“I loved that house. It had the nicest smell.”
“Nancy will be glad to see you. She’s been in a bit of a blue patch since Frank went away to college.”
I’m relieved Frank won’t be there. The thought of his moist upper lip, his revolting thick-bodied snake, still makes me nauseous. “I haven’t seen them in so long. Anna and I used to stay there all the time.”
“Not all the time,” Dad says. He pulls off into the parking lot of the Tarrytown train station. “There’s a decent little picnic area on the other side of the tracks.”