The Last Romantics(29)

Caroline and Renee talked for nearly an hour, circling what they knew and what they could reasonably keep from Noni. They made a rough plan: Renee would attend the meeting, gauge how serious the college was about expelling Joe, and try her best to talk them out of it. Then together she and Caroline would devise a story. Why was Joe off the team? An injury seemed the most plausible explanation; he’d sprained an ankle late last year, and Coach Marty had always been concerned about that left knee. They would protect Noni. Isn’t this what they’d always done?

Caroline clicked off the phone. Still sitting on the grass, she realized that her lower back ached, her legs hurt. She tried to stand but stopped herself. She felt . . . what exactly? An internal stirring, a glancing discomfort. She became aware of an insect hum in the air and the swirling pollen that floated lazily across her vision and that peculiar fecund fullness to the trees and grass, even the clouds overhead, that seemed to Caroline uniquely southern. Bexley would never see a rosebush like that rosebush. Ripe. Bursting.

Again Caroline tried to stand, and again the discomfort was enough to make her pull back. She wondered if Nathan was within earshot. No. He was inside with the frogs. It was time, Caroline believed, for their supper.

And then she noticed a dark wetness on the grass and on her legs. More than a scraped knee.

Using the hammock as a shaky support, she pushed herself to standing and immediately felt a rush of liquid between her legs and a tight, twisting pain. No, she thought. No. She was thirty-four weeks pregnant. It was too early.

“Nathan!” Caroline called, and folded into herself.

*

“So the day Louis was born was the day they kicked Joe off the baseball team,” Caroline told me. “Renee came up with the knee-injury story. Renee dealt with the college.”

We were sitting at the top of the stairs. I had been running a fingernail over a groove in the molding, marking a line in the thick white paint, and now I stopped.

“And how is all this happening again?” I asked.

“Well, Joe’s drinking too much. Cocaine, other drugs, too, probably. He had some kind of heart episode recently. Renee is worried he’s putting himself at risk, but he denies it, of course. She thinks Joe needs an intervention. And she wants the three of us to do it together.” Caroline paused. “I think he just needs to grow up. He needs his own doctor for starters. Why does Renee keep doing this?”

“Joe doesn’t do coke,” I said.

“He’s done it for years,” replied Caroline. “You never noticed?”

I shook my head. But maybe. What had I seen? Joe’s repeated trips to the bathroom, a joke about too much coffee, his runny nose and bloodshot eyes. A jumpiness, an elation. In college there had been plenty of pot, that musty-sweet smell in his hair and on his clothes. Last Christmas at Noni’s house, Joe always with a gin and tonic in hand, sodden lime slices on every table, every countertop.

“Ace gets him the drugs,” Caroline said. “That’s what Renee says.”

In the past few years, Joe and Ace had become friends once again. During college they’d drifted, but now both lived in New York, both worked long hours inside towering office buildings. Joe had described Ace to me as a different person since our summers at the pond. No longer aggressive and lost, no longer trying to impress with bravado and risk taking. I had believed my brother.

In the space of this past hour with Caroline, a gaping hole had opened. Joe and Renee and Caroline stood on one side, me on the other, the youngest, the baby, alone.

A surge of feline whimpers came from the bedroom, and Caroline and I looked toward the door.

“We need to deal with the cat,” said Caroline.

“Okay, I’ll wait out here,” I replied, not looking at her.

Caroline sighed and closed her eyes and then immediately opened them again. “I know! I’ve got some oxy,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Chronic back pain,” Caroline said. “You try carrying two babies in your uterus for thirty-nine weeks. Let’s go find some tuna.”

Caroline and I left the house and drove to the Hamden main street in search of cat food. In the cramped, dusty aisles of a corner grocer, we found two tins of tuna fish. Caroline also bought a pack of Marlboros.

Inside the parked car, Caroline lit up.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

“In high school,” Caroline replied. “I still think about it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. Just don’t tell Nathan. He’d probably divorce me. Too unwifely.” Caroline inhaled deeply and exhaled out the window in a long, forceful column of smoke. “Oh,” she said, and closed her eyes.

With her eyes closed, head back, my sister looked different. Surrendered, I thought. Abandoned, adrift, lost. She’d given in to the pull of the nicotine, the problem of the cats, the stress of the new house. Caroline was always so cheerful and in control, secure in the way of life’s major acquisitions—love, children, home—that her good mood seemed to me a given. What reason could Caroline possibly have to doubt anything, to spend even one night staring at a dark ceiling? But of course she had her breaking point. We all did.

I considered Joe’s job at Morgan Capital: his dazzling office, the boat parties and bonuses. And Sandrine. A yearlong courtship capped with that engagement ring, an acorn-size solitaire that sat high on her finger and seemed to suck all the light from any room. Next week Joe’s boss, Kyle Morgan, was hosting the engagement party. One hundred guests had been invited, a jazz quartet hired, caterers and waiters, bartenders and florists, and a color scheme of green, pink, and white. It was an event almost as grand as the wedding itself. That’s what Sandrine had wanted. Sandrine and her ponytail, her pale pink nails. At that brunch last month, she’d absently pushed the diamond in circles around her finger. With each pass I’d wondered what it felt like to play with a ring that beautiful, to understand its promise and possess it so completely.