Now I have to tell the rest of the story another way, because I can’t keep pretending that what happened didn’t happen. It was this: we found a parking spot under a willow tree and left the windows down so Methuselah would be okay. Walking to the party, with my arm linked through Aunt Sophie’s, and the Boyfriend and the man who I now understood would never, ever be my husband, Sophie said, “I went to have my yearly mammogram, and they saw something. I have to go into the hospital on Tuesday afternoon and have it biopsied. If anything happens to me, I want you to promise to take care of Methuselah. I know I should say everything’s going to be okay, but I’ve got a premonition that it isn’t. Do you promise?”
This was bad news, said so matter-of-factly that, right away, I began silently denying it. Did Bryce know about this? Whether the Boyfriend was aware of it didn’t matter even slightly. Did my mother know? That was important. If she did, then maybe she could reassure me, because it was clear Sophie wasn’t going to. On the other hand, if she didn’t know, would I have to tell her? Or, worse yet, keep quiet about it? Sophie said, “Bryce is going to walk Methuselah for me after my biopsy.” (So he did know!) “I’ll have to miss that day at work, but maybe I can go in the next day. Look at that man over there, peeing against a tree. He thinks we don’t see him. The party must already be in full swing!”
I looked in the same direction but didn’t see anyone. “Right there!” she said, pointing. There were many trees. I squinted a little, though I didn’t really want to see a man peeing. But then I did see him: a guy tucking his penis inside his pants, turning and walking quickly away. “That didn’t even happen at the party at the Great Gatsby’s,” she said. “But I guess you can’t expect him to put everything in one book. I’ll write about it in my diary: that it was an omen. Fate was pissing on me.”
At least, I think that’s what she said. Methuselah was crying. We both turned and looked at the car, but now it was quiet.
“I think I’ll have a smoke. You go in and I’ll join you in a minute,” the Boyfriend said.
“I’ll stay with you,” Bryce said. “We’ll see you girls soon.”
We walked ahead, still arm in arm. I hadn’t answered her about the cat. I hadn’t said anything sympathetic or helpful or even acknowledged that I’d heard what she’d told me. I couldn’t think what to say. I, too, trusted her instincts. I couldn’t imagine life without her. And to be honest, I’d always had to fake it about liking Methuselah. I didn’t want to be a young old maid who lived alone with her cat. The thought of it resulted in tears filling my eyes. I wiped them quickly away with my free hand as Star exited the party barefoot, with lobsters raised like free weights above her head, and was chased, giggling, around the side of the house. I never saw either of them again, though I once saw a man with a similar mustache I mistook for Walrus when I was checking out of a CVS a couple of years later.
Another car bumped onto the grassy area: a Mustang convertible with a Vermont license plate, music playing loudly, an old Sinéad O’Connor song, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The driver and a woman in the passenger seat were laughing loudly, enjoying every tree root the car bumped over, the woman holding her sequined baseball cap to her head in an exaggerated way. So was her hat a joke? Why were so many women at the party wearing hats? Was Aunt Sophie serious in what she was suddenly saying about Bryce and Nathaniel intending to hook up with the man who’d been peeing against a tree? I turned to see Nathaniel cupping his hand around a match to light a cigarette, and Bryce stretching, slowly lowering his hands down his thighs to his knees, then lower, bending further. Was it a kind of preening, or just a postdrive stretch? A puff of smoke went up in the air. I wanted to be that smoke. To disappear. Instead, I listened from afar to my own voice as I lied about my affection for the cat. I let go of her arm. She brushed her hand lightly down my long hair I was too stupid to know was attractive to men, though later I practiced tossing it in front of a mirror. Aunt Sophie’s heels were higher than anyone else’s I’d seen — certainly higher than mine — but she walked briskly, with confidence. How did a person have confidence if they didn’t believe in the future? I wondered. In an hour or so, Aunt Sophie would be placing the little metal baskets inside her blouse, seeming to be having a good time, shocking people but making them laugh.
It was a rocky road to death, full of bumps and obstacles, with low-hanging branches that would slap you in the face if you didn’t duck, and there was always the danger that the underside of the car might sink deeply into a pothole and bottom out, leaving us all stranded. You could call for help, but how to describe where we were, surrounded by trees that blocked out the sun, an anonymous place at the end of an unpaved road, where man pissed on nature and puffed carcinogens into the air, sending up smoke signals to mix with the clouds.
The Boyfriend knew how to blow smoke rings. It was amazing for a few seconds until he stopped pursing his lips, silently puffing out the message of the day, and of every day: O, O, O.
ADIRONDACK CHAIRS
After Artigan’s death, Bea was afraid to weed the garden. Artigan had not died from the yellow jacket bites — though he was horribly allergic — but because as his shovel split their in-ground nest and they swarmed up as the first and last golden tornado he’d ever see, he fell backward over the stone wall and hit his head on a tree stump. Artigan had been doing some gardening for summer people who were not yet occupying their house. The blood was congealing when Bea arrived in the Heppendales’ truck to pick him up. She worked at the greenhouse, where there’d been a big run on lemon verbena. She and Tracy (who’d once worked at a vineyard in Sonoma) had come up with the idea that the greenhouse could offer a free wine tasting with music and gardening information. There was a tip jar, and they were a little embarrassed that people left so much.
I worked at the greenhouse, too, but I never had any bright ideas. The Heppendales raised my friends’ hourly wage and agreed that, yes, they should offer the back building for weddings. Alex Heppendale ordered Bea and Tracy new gardening boots from Zappos, along with a one-hundred-dollar gift certificate each for another pair of shoes. By July, when word had spread about the cocktails and gardening advice, business had almost doubled. Chilean chardonnay, supercold, in real glasses, with hors d’oeuvres and Mr. Heppendale and his daughter Alex (a Princeton graduate) circulating and offering tips about gardening… people in town went mad for it, as well as people from away. Mrs. Heppendale bought flouncy dresses and meant to attend, but found that, Friday after Friday, she had a headache.
On Saturdays, Artigan also worked at the greenhouse, tending the suddenly popular, slightly strange herbs and repotting orchids. Had he not died, he and Bea were going to test out the back building for their own wedding at the end of August. They’d already been a couple long enough for him to teach her to drive, for her to break his texting addiction, for them to consider sponsoring a child from the Fresh Air Fund the following summer, by which time they’d be legit. As a little girl Bea had believed in angels, but that was more or less because she loved girlie tchotchkes. My Little Pony was over the top, but even as she got older, she kept her fondness for barrettes decorated with sunflowers and bunches of cherries. Her hair was seventeen inches long, measured from the crown to its longest point. (Tracy had the idea, and I measured. I admit, we thought a lot about ourselves and very little about plants on our half-hour lunch breaks.)