The Paper Palace(105)

“I grew up in that kitchen.”

“Yeah. But have you seen it?”

She will never know how close she came to losing him.

“This room must have been the ultimate teenage crash pad.” She gestures to the wall of bunk beds. “Jonas probably made out with some girl on one of those.”

“He was much younger than us.”

I follow her down the narrow staircase.

“But you must know if he had girlfriends or whatever,” Gina says over her shoulder.

My hair still smells of pond water.



* * *



—

My mother is exactly where I left her, Peter still perched on the arm of her chair. Citronella tiki lamps cut circles of light into the dusk.

“I’m getting a burger,” Gina says. “Want one?”

I scan the lawn for Jonas, feel a queasy tightening. I find him in the shadows beyond the grill. He is staring at me. He’s been waiting for me. I reach into my skirt pocket, close my fingers around the green glass ring, steady myself. “I think I’ll wait a bit.”

Gina crosses the lawn to him, wraps her arms around his waist, shoves her hands into his back pockets. Ownership. She must sense my stare, because she turns her head quickly, like a puma picking up a scent, looks out into the dark. Jonas whispers something in her ear and she smiles, turns back to him.

“Hey, wife,” Peter says. “Where’ve you been?”

“With Gina. Peeing.”

“Have some peanuts.” My mother passes me the can.

“I was upstairs in the kid’s bathroom. Gina opened the door from the dorm side without knocking and came in. Sat down and took a pee in front of me.”

“She’s vulgar,” my mother says.

“Your mother is on the warpath tonight.”

“I’m not on any war or any path,” Mum says. “I simply told Andrea that none of us likes the new landscaping she’s had done. It isn’t ‘woods.’”

“That was very politic of you, Mum.”

“If she didn’t want my opinion, she shouldn’t have asked me what I thought of her improvements in the first place.”

“Your mother told her it looks bourgeois.” Peter laughs.

“If she’s going to lecture us all about native plants, she shouldn’t do an herbaceous border.”

Across the lawn, the younger kids are playing horseshoes in the dusk. Jonas and Gina come toward us, balancing paper plates and drinks.

“Maddy should put on more bug spray. The mosquitoes love her,” I say.

Jonas pulls up a chair beside me, puts his hand on my arm. “Mind if we join you?” he says to everyone, but only to me.

I stand up. “I left my wine upstairs.”

This time I lock the bathroom door from both sides, leave the lights turned off. I lean against the windowsill, listen to the sweep and rustle of the trees, the wafting murmur, the tinkle of glass and conversation. Ever since I was old enough to question my own instincts, my mother has given me the same piece of advice: “Flip a coin, Eleanor. If the answer you get disappoints you, do the opposite.” We already know the right answer, even when we don’t—or we think we don’t. But what if it’s a trick coin? What if both sides are the same? If both are right, then both are wrong.

My wineglass is on the bathroom windowsill where I left it. Downstairs on the deck, Peter and Jonas are talking. Peter says something, and Gina laughs, throws back her head. Both men smile. It’s surreal, unfathomable. Only hours ago, it felt like the world was daydreaming, suspended in the sky. I stare into the dusk, picturing the old abandoned ruin, the quiet of the woods, Jonas’s frank, open-eyed stare. I slide down the wall, pull my knees to my chest, cocoon myself, sucker-punched. I have made my choice: to give up this love that pulses, aches—for a different kind of love. A patient love. A love love. But the anguish is raw. Outside, I hear my mother calling out across the lawn to where Dixon stands at the grill, demanding a hamburger. “Bloody,” she shouts. “So I can hear it moo. And please do not lecture me about salmonella. I’d far rather die from diarrhea and dehydration than eat gray cardboard meat.” I hear Peter’s full-throated, easy laugh. “I swear, Wallace. One of these days I really am going to have you committed.”

When I come downstairs, Jonas is at the kitchen sink running his hand under cold water.

“There you are.” He takes his hand out of the water and holds it up. There’s a red scalding, a sear mark, running diagonally across his palm. “I was getting your mother a hamburger. I grabbed a metal spatula that was lying on the hot grill.” He leans back against the butcher block counter. I want to eat him, his lazy, languid confidence. Ingest him, absorb him.

“Come over here,” he says softly.

“You need butter.” I go to the fridge, find a stick of butter, peel back the waxy wrapper. Jonas puts out his hand and I rub butter over the sizzled skin. His fingers close over mine. I pull away, put the butter back in the fridge.

“Elle?”

“What?” I say, my back to him. Whatever he has to say, it will be unbearable.

“I doubt Dixon wants a smear of my burnt skin on his toast tomorrow morning.”

“Right.” I take the butter back out of the fridge, break a chunk off the top, throw it in the trash, find a clean dish towel and toss it to him. Contain myself. “Wrap it in this for now.”