Real Life(45)

“We should be better. I should be better. I’m sorry,” Miller says firmly. This is kindness too, Wallace thinks. Of a different sort. What he does not know—and maybe, just maybe, it’s not important—is whether this kindness is just an extension of their friendship or something else, or if that question itself, the uncertainty, is a rebuke, an insult, a miscalculation. What is the source of kindness? What causes people to be kind to each other? “Wallace?” Miller asks after a moment. “Okay? I’m sorry.”

Wallace nods, his head still against the table. Miller’s thumb resumes its scratching glide across Wallace’s neck.

Kindness is a debt, Wallace thinks. Kindness is something owed and something repaid. Kindness is an obligation.

The kettle goes shrill on the stove. Someone is making coffee for the group outside. The windows are open, and the world smells like summer turning to fall. There is a certain crispness. Miller, in the darkening room, opens his mouth and then closes it. He puts his head on the table, too, and they’re sitting there like two ducks with their faces in the water. It’s harder for Miller, who has a long neck, but he’s making it work somehow. Wallace wants to laugh at him.

The house exhales into the cool of the evening. Crickets in the garden, eating the leaves. Under the table, Wallace reaches for Miller’s hand and takes it.

Voices from outside. Steps on the back stairs, coming up. Emma, slapping into the kitchen in sandals, smelling like dogwood and coconut.

“I’m so tired,” she says. Her voice is warped. She’s a little drunk. “But coffee won’t make itself.” There is the sound of her clattering about, making busy with small tasks. Miller is smiling at him, blinking slowly. Wallace could sleep forever. “Are you coming outside?”

Miller’s smile is slow in coming, but he lets Wallace’s hand go. Emma is in the kitchen, at the counter. The rich, dark scent of coffee joins them—she’s making pour-over, less acidic and smoother than brew. The water over the grounds in the filter is hissing softly, settling in, the faint trickle of the water like rain. Wallace sits up in his chair. Emma’s face goes dark.

“I guess I’ll have another beer,” Miller says. He gets up from the table, and Emma takes his spot, folding her legs under herself.

“Wallace, don’t get mad at me—” she says. It’s the slow windup. He stiffens. She’s chewing on an apple slice. “What was that at dinner? It wasn’t like you.”

“What would be like me, Emma?” he asks low, quick. She looks a little startled by the question, by his tone, which is not neutral or kind. She resents his resentment.

“You aren’t like this. This isn’t who you are.”

“Nobody said a thing to him when he was suddenly a demographics expert, did they?”

“That isn’t the same. You might have really hurt Cole,” she says.

“Hurt Cole? Me? And not his philandering boyfriend?”

“You don’t know what’s going on with them, Wallace. You don’t get to decide how someone else’s life is run, what is okay for them. That isn’t your call. You should have asked him in private.”

“Oh,” Wallace says, nodding severely. He takes some of the apple slices for himself. He peels back their slick skins until their white flesh is bare, sees how they begin to oxidize, these naked, tender things. “Privacy. So now we understand the concept of privacy.”

Emma’s eyes widen at this. She gets on her knees beside him and puts her finger into his chest.

“You are so selfish,” she says. “I told our friends about your loss to help you. You told everyone about Cole and Vincent’s mess to hurt them. It’s different.”

“It seems like that should not be your call, Emma,” Wallace says. The delicate skin of her throat pulses.

“Oh, so you think I’m controlling too. Wonderful. Well, you and Thom can have a fucking pity party about it. See if I care.” She waves her hand at him, dismisses him. She’s in his face. Their argument is quiet, contained to the air between them. Wallace glances over her shoulder, through the veil of her hair, into the kitchen.

“I never said that,” he says. “I just mean—no one ever sticks up for me.”

“That doesn’t make it all right to go ruining people’s lives.”

“Sure. I’ll just take it, right? I’ll just take my licks,” he says. Emma presses her palms to her face. She gives a full-body shudder. Wallace’s stomach hurts. “Anyway, where’s Thom?”

“Don’t,” she says.

“Where is he? What’s going on? We might as well have your mess too.”

“Thom didn’t want to come,” she says. “Does that rhyme? Thom didn’t want to come because Thom wants to stay home and read because Thom hates my friends.” There’s a singsong quality to it, this story she’s telling him. She pushes back from the table, gets up. Wallace follows her.

In the kitchen, the two of them look through the back door to the yard, where the others have stretched out on flannel blankets. Yngve has flicked the switch for the white string lights that hang from the tree—it’s all very soft and very white out there now, under the sky, which is angled and dark. They’re drinking beer from cans and bottles. More folk music, more guitar, something by Dylan, he thinks. Yngve is lying back, and Lukas has put his head on Yngve’s stomach. They look silly and in love, which is something Yngve would never admit, could never bring himself to admit. Enid and Nathan sit together, filled with a sadness that they cannot articulate without fracturing their relationships, because Yngve will always choose Lukas and Lukas will always choose Yngve; they don’t have to say it to know it’s true. It’s a trust that can exist only in silence, he realizes. They can’t speak because to speak would be to dissolve it.