Mother May I(70)

She’d waved that way, overconfident and immortal. “We were on that flowered sofa at that coffeehouse place with the pool table. What was he going to do, drop trou and pin us both down in front of the waitress?”

My mouth had dropped open, literally, to hear that this had happened in public. I’d also been relieved. It felt safer. Less serious. When I told Trey this story, he’d laughed at my tone, telling me that back in his day Spencer’s Boho Hos danced sexy with each other, would even make out, looking coyly around to see what boys were watching.

“I think you must be the only girl who didn’t at least try kissing another girl at college,” he’d said. “Or the only one who wasn’t a Kappa anyway.” That was his ex-wife’s sorority, which I gathered had been Waspy and uptight.

That was all he’d said. Nothing about Lexie Pine or his own sad, related history. Not until now. I wanted to know why. I carried the question back into the den after I’d sent the email.

He was sitting stiffly on the sofa. He’d made coffee. I could smell it, though I’d been gone so long that the mug in front of him was empty. I couldn’t stand what the waiting had done to his face, lining it with stress and shame and impatience. He was braced, anxious to hear whatever I would say. So I simply asked.

“Why did you never tell me?”

He blinked, surprised. “It’s not something I’m proud of.”

“I get that. But still.” Even as I said it, I realized that my faint disapproval about Betsy’s much milder experiment wouldn’t have encouraged him to open up.

He looked away, and I felt his impatience growing along with his discomfort. “It’s not something I wanted to remember. Ever. It’s certainly not a thing you tell a woman you hope to marry.”

I didn’t like that. It was too close to saying, Not a thing you tell your wife. We told each other everything. We were partners. I had kept nothing from him.

Fresh on the heels of that thought came another. You never told him about kissing Marshall.

Instantly my mind filled with excuses. It had happened three years before I even met Trey, when I was a freshman myself. It had meant nothing. Telling him would have made it seem more important than it was and perhaps strained the couples friendship Betsy and I were working to grow between us and our husbands.

But it had happened. The old, trace memory was alive in the soap and cedarwood smell that I’d caught earlier, when I hugged him. Marshall and I were never huggy or touchy with each other. Perhaps that kiss was why.

It had happened on a long weekend when Bets and I came home to do our laundry in her mom’s big washer, free. She asked if I would go over to Marshall’s house and check on him. The idea made me uncomfortable, but he was my friend, and I could see how much it mattered to her. She was still in love with him, I thought, which made me wonder what the hell she was doing, going wild at Georgia State. It wasn’t like she’d traded a boyfriend for an education; she almost never went to class.

I agreed, on the condition that Bets would use her fake ID and get me some wine coolers. I couldn’t imagine being dead sober and asking stoic Marshall how his broken heart was mending.

He was a mess, of course. He tried his quiet, tough-guy thing on me, but I’d never seen such sad eyes.

We ended up hanging out, watching game shows, drinking until we both had a good buzz on. He made me promise to tell Betsy he was fine. I agreed, even though I knew I wouldn’t lie to Bets. When I got back, I told her he’d been a complete wreck. I think it was a relief for her to hear that. It meant that he still loved her, too. She left Georgia State a couple of months later, mid–second semester, instead of getting every penny’s worth of adventure by waiting to officially fail out.

Her time at college had been like an acting job, I thought when it was over and she was packing cheerfully for home. Maybe college was that way for a lot of people. A chance to try on different selves. I’d done my experimenting with fresh identities from the safety of a stage, but Bets had had to do it in real time. For months I’d watched her try on a hundred girls, one after another, like slip dresses. And yes, some of those girls were selfish or rash or thoughtless. Pleasure seekers. Rule breakers. They had also been her best performances; she had a spark and a sizzle in life that didn’t translate to the stage.

In the end she remembered herself. I could almost see her stepping away from a pile of discarded costumes. She hugged me tight good-bye, and it was my old Betsy in my arms. Herself, but grown. Done playing. Ready for something real.

But on that long laundry weekend when she sent me to check on Marshall, he didn’t know that within three months he’d have her back. He was so sad that I kept patting him, squeezing his hand, leaning into his shoulder as we watched TV.

When the wine coolers were gone, I got up and said I needed to get home. He thanked me for coming, then got up, too, and pulled me into a real hug. It was strange to feel his tall, muscular body shaking, so weak. I wondered if he was actually crying. I’d grown up in the rural South with no father, no brothers. I’d never seen a grown-up male person cry. I pulled back far enough to see his eyes, and yes, they were wet. I was moved by this, and our faces were so close that I could smell wine coolers on his breath, sweet and tangy. I think we leaned in at the same time.

It wasn’t much of a kiss. Lip on lip, our mouths only slightly open. Our tongues brushed, just barely, but I learned the blackberry taste of him.