Lies She Told(20)

“You do not.” She leans back and assesses my figure. “You’re what? A size four?”

I pat my belly, rounded from the preparation for a nonexistent zygote.

She lowers her voice. “Being too thin makes it harder to conceive.”

I try not to bristle. Chris means well, though she’s under the mistaken impression that home remedies and old wives’ tales can cure infertility. Every time I see her, she’s gushing about a new vitamin supplement or sex position that some questionable study has linked to improved conception rates.

“What are you in the mood to eat?”

Chris places a bright radish into my cart. “For your salad.” She pinches my waist. “I’m relieved that you’re here. Honestly, I couldn’t have made it through another dinner alone with my parents.” She tilts her head toward her basket. “My mother’s antiquated dating advice demands too much medication.”

I wince for her. “What’s her latest suggestion?”

“Christian Mingle.”

I snort and continue to the fresh fish display. “Doesn’t she know you’re looking for a Jewish doctor?”

Chris elbows me in the side. “Anything other than a Scots-Irish prosecutor from Pennsylvania. Come to think of it? No lawyers at all. George has poisoned the well.” She turns her attention to the glass-eyed whole fish in the display. “How is David?”

I shrug. “He ditched our romantic weekend.”

“Well, people can’t be romantic all the time.” She elbows my side. “Lest we forget, you had the lighthouse.”

Tears burn behind my eyes, no doubt triggered by the hormones. I force a laugh, as though they’re fueled by mirth rather than melancholy. “That was a while ago.”

I could never forget the lighthouse.

*

Montauk is home to the oldest lighthouse in New York State, a pristine white cylinder sitting on a bluff overlooking the Block Island Sound, surrounded by scraggly sea grasses and sheared rocks. Chris and I would hitchhike to it as teenagers, grabbing rides from the young moneyed set who rolled into town every summer with their foreign sports cars and January bank bonuses. Someone was always happy to give a couple of jailbait locals a ride to a secluded state park, especially if you hinted that the Atlantic Ocean wouldn’t be the best part of the view. I loved it there. For ten dollars and a pair of burning thighs, I could press my nose to the glass in the lantern room and watch the ocean stretch to the horizon before falling off the edge of the world. After my father left, I would imagine that’s what had happened to him. The cartographers had lied. The world was flat and he’d gone over.

Chris must have told David it was my favorite place. One winter break, long after the summer crowds had abandoned their beach houses, he asked if I wanted to go for a drive. He had this cherry-red Ford F-150 that his dad had gifted him for high school graduation. David wasn’t a pickup type of guy, but the bed of the vehicle had been big enough to cart all his belongings from Texas to Manhattan. I think he loved that truck for that. It had let him leave without a trace.

I climbed into the cab without any idea where we were going except that it would be colder than the city. David had told me to wear gloves and my down jacket, the one I thought made me look like a roll of Rapid Fill packaging. He’d put on a black ski jacket and cargo pants. The pants should have tipped me off—he’d needed pockets.

We drove for three hours listening to Sigur Rós’s lead singer wail in his unique mix of Icelandic scat, the voice drifting in and out of the piano riffs like a warm wind, each too nervous to interrupt much. By the time we arrived at the lighthouse, it was well past midnight. I’d never seen the park after dark. The building and grounds closed at sunset, and the park rangers policed it strictly in the summer. Without a car, I’d never been able to come past high season.

Millions of stars speckled the sky. They stretched across the landscape in glowing waves, an endless school of phosphorescent algae swirling in a black ocean. Looking through the truck’s moonroof, I could understand how ancient explorers had navigated at night and named constellations after animals. Finally, there were enough pinpoints of light to trace the lines.

David asked that I stay inside the truck while he took things out of the bed. I listened to him banging around the back, trying to guess the reason for this whole surprise trip by the flashes of him in the headlights with bulky items tucked beneath his arms. I waited with the heater on full blast until he tapped the passenger window with the butt of a flashlight. He grasped my hand and led me over the snow-dusted grasses to a narrow strip of sand. There on the rocky beach, he’d laid out a plaid blanket. Massive hurricane lanterns weighed down the corners, each containing glowing candles. At the edge of the blanket, there was a basket with wine and a pyre of driftwood.

The wind ripped through my coat. David noticed my shivering and hurried us over to the woodpile. From one of his bulky pants pockets, he produced a lighter. Newspaper beneath the logs immediately glowed red and yellow. David wrapped his arms around me as we waited for the driftwood to catch.

I’d never seen anything so beautiful. The red and yellow flames from the paper gave way to an electric blue with purple tips. Driftwood, David explained, burns differently than white oak or pine. Something about being soaked in salt water gives the flame electric colors.

“Did you learn that in Boy Scouts?” I asked.