The Paper Palace(30)

Peter and I sit down on the bank. He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket. Lights it. “Do you remember the first time you brought me here?”

“Our very first summer.”

“I still think it may have been the most romantic moment of my life.”

“Well, that doesn’t say much for the rest of our life together.”

Peter laughs, but what I’m saying is true. I had brought him here for a late-afternoon swim. Later, when we made love on the beach, I suddenly remembered the naked couple, the woman’s legs wide open, the fleshiness of it all, and I’d moaned loud enough to make the pond echo. Peter had come then. I have always known there was something bad in me, a secret perversion I have tried to hide from Peter. That I hope he will never see.

“Look,” he says, taking my hand, “I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

“For this morning. For last night. I know you were upset that I didn’t read Anna’s poem.”

“I was upset in the moment. But Jonas read it beautifully. And reading it for her every year is all that really matters.”

“Still, I’m sorry. I acted like a boor, and I regret it.”

“We’d all had too much to drink. You have nothing to apologize for. I promise.” Nothing.

“Just now in the car when I put my hand on your thigh, you flinched.”

“I didn’t flinch,” I say, hating myself for the lie. “In fact, I wish you would do that more often.”

He stubs his cigarette out in the sand, looks at me with skepticism, as if making sure I’m telling him the truth. “Well then, good.” He leans in, kisses me. His lips taste of smoke and salt. A few feet away from us, a box turtle slides off a log into the shallows.

I stand up, start stripping off my bathing suit. “What about that swim?” I cannot have sex with him now. Not after what I have just done with Jonas. I cannot wrong him this way, too, humiliate him. He grabs at me, but I dash away—dash for the water that I hope will purify me. Peter chases me, naked, flapping. I swim, breathless, toward the shadowy side of the pond, trying to stay ten strokes ahead. But he is faster, stronger, catches me from behind, pleased.

“Got you.” He presses his erection against my rubbery back.

“Rain check,” I say, wriggling out of his hold. “We really do need to get home.”

“Five minutes won’t make a difference,” Peter says.

“Exactly.” I laugh. “I need at least ten.” Then I dive away from him, swim for the beach, for my clothes, for what feels like my soul.





1979. July, Vermont.


Row upon row. A sea of quivering green. I have never seen so much corn. William Whitman’s cornfields are endless, formidable. They move up and over the hills toward his farm like an enemy battalion. Whitman is Leo’s oldest friend. They’ve been best friends since elementary school. Sunday is Whitman’s birthday, and we’ve been invited to spend the weekend on his three-hundred-acre farm in northern Vermont.

“Whit moved up here from Philadelphia a few years back, after his wife died,” Leo says now as we drive the long dirt road that will, Leo promises my mother, eventually arrive at the farmhouse. She is certain we have made a wrong turn. “Left everything behind him in the rearview mirror—fancy law firm, beautiful home in Chestnut Hill.”

“I think we were meant to take that last left fork,” Mum says.

“What did she die of?” I ask. Conrad and I are squashed up against opposing windows in the back seat to make room for a large, dinged-up guitar case in the middle seat.

“Well now, that’s a terrible story,” Leo says. “Whit and his son Tyson were away on a father-and-son bonding weekend. Ty must’ve been around ten at the time.”

“Bonding weekend?” Mum says, trying to read a road map in the fading light. “That sounds unpleasant. Possibly a bit profane.”

Leo laughs. “Hardly. Indian Guides. Big Owl, Little Owl . . . Mighty Wolf, Mighty Cub. Sit around the campfire. Bead. Whittle arrowheads.”

My mother looks at him blankly, as if she can’t even absorb the concept.

“Like Cub Scouts,” Leo explains. “At any rate. They got home from their camping trip on Sunday night. Louisa was lying in the foyer, stabbed so many times her dress had turned red. Whit said young Tyson stood there, silent. Not a sound. Not a tear. Then he lay down on the marble floor, curled up close against his mother’s body, nose to nose, searching her dead, open eyes. Like he was trying to find her soul, Whit said.”

“That’s so sad,” I say.

“Boy never recovered. Barely speaks.”

“He’s a retard,” Conrad says without looking up from his Mad magazine.

“Conrad.” Leo keeps his voice controlled, but the warning is unmistakable.

“He’s totally retarded,” Conrad says to me in a stage whisper. “I met him.”

Leo’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. Since Conrad moved in with us last year, Leo has been making an effort to avoid any conflict. It’s important to him that Conrad isn’t unhappy living with us. But no matter how nice Leo is, it’s pretty obvious Conrad wishes he were back home in Memphis and that, like Anna, he wishes his mother had chosen him. Most of the time, he stays in his room—Anna’s old room—with the door shut, listening to ABBA and Meat Loaf, lifting weights or watching M*A*S*H on his rabbit-eared TV. His room stinks of feet: nauseating, moist, and sour.