“That’s completely idiotic,” I say. “And Nanette sounds like a bitch.”
Dad smiles. “Well, about that, Miss Elle, you are right.” He stands up, dusts off his trousers. “Let’s load this stuff up and get the hell out of Memory Lane.”
* * *
—
Nancy hugs us goodbye at the door. “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” she says. “I’m certain Dwight will be home any minute now. He was just returning a book.” She stands on the porch, waving.
I watch her dwindle out of sight. “Nancy seemed so sad. Lonely.”
“Dwight’s a good man—great poet—but he has his demons. Marriage isn’t always bliss,” my father says.
* * *
—
Two days later, my father receives a panicked call from Joanne. Dwight Burke’s body has been pulled out of the Hudson River. He had been missing since Monday morning.
“He went to see his friend Carter Ashe,” Joanne tells my father. “They ended up having one too many bourbons. You know how he is. Mother didn’t want him driving, convinced him to stay the night. According to Carter, Daddy drove down to the river at sunrise. ‘To shake off the night before.’”
“No better cure for a hangover than a cold swim,” my father says when he tells me about the drowning. “But that river can be a mighty beast.”
4:30 P.M.
There is nothing more beautiful than Jonas wet from a swim. Black hair slapping at his neck, dripping and rough-cut. Barefoot, wearing nothing but old shorts, his glowing skin, watchful pale green eyes. He picks a leaf off a bush and carefully removes its spine, its tracery, lays the delicate silhouette on the palm of my hand. He crushes the torn-away green of the leaf and waves it under my nose.
“Mmm.” I breathe in its raw, minty smell. “Sassafras.”
“Did you know Native American tribes used it to cure acne?”
“Very romantic.” I laugh.
“Quick walk to the sea?”
* * *
—
The sun has poured a molten river onto the ocean. A cormorant plunges into liquid gold. Waves swell without cresting. Plovers peck their way around the sandbars in search of sea lice and razor clams. There are still a few late-afternoon stragglers. We sit in a hollow at the top of the dunes, hidden behind a screen of poverty grass. I am in love.
“There was a seal hauled up on the beach earlier,” Jonas says. “Finn and I walked down to see it. Huge gash in its blubber. Looked like a shark had tried to take a bite out of it.”
“Why do all those idiots at the beach still get excited when they spot a seal in the water? They’re everywhere now—they’re like the pigeons of the sea.”
“Seals are quite extraordinary. They can drink salt water and distill it into fresh. They separate out the salt in their urine. I wrote a paper about it in fifth grade. As I recall, I posited the idea that someone should figure out a way to make a saltwater distillery out of seal bladders.”
“What a peculiar child you were.”
Jonas trickles grains of sand through his fingers. “So, what did you and Peter do after you left the beach?”
“I don’t know. Nothing really.”
“When we arrived, he thanked us for hanging with the kids. Said it was nice for you two to have some ‘alone time.’”
“Jonas.”
“Sorry.” He looks ten years old. “I can’t help it.”
“You can.”
He threads a sharp blade of grass between his thumbs, strings it tight, blows through the hole, a low foghorn tone.
“Fine,” I say. “But you asked. We threw our wet towels in the back of the car, pulled off onto a dead end in the woods, and had sex. It was nice. It’s been a while.”
“You’re lying.”
“He’s my husband, Jonas.”
“Don’t.” He stares at the ground, hair falling across his face. I can’t see his eyes.
I sigh. “We went to Black Pond for a quick swim, and then I sat on the porch and read my back-issue guilt pile of New Yorkers while I waited for you. What took you so long? I was going crazy.”
Jonas looks up now and smiles. “God, I am so fucking in love with you.”
Far away, on the flat glassy sea, a fat seal head breaks the water’s surface. I watch it appear and disappear up the shoreline.
“I’m in love with you, too,” I say. “But I’m not sure it matters.”
1980. October, New York.
Orchestra has gone late. We are rehearsing for the middle school winter concert. I am second flute.