I stopped and looked around. I didn’t know. “I’m having a good time,” I said. The thumping in my chest sped up.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. He squeezed my hand.
I unhooked from him and pointed with the hand he’d held. I could have used my other hand, but I didn’t. “Oh! Look!” Fitzbillies had put new cakes on display. We crossed the street and stood in front of the window, arms touching. There was one with a pirate ship on top of a delicate icing sea. There were little white tips on the blue waves, to show how wild the water was.
“That’s why I’m here,” I said, still pointing. “That’s why I like science. It’s bigger than me. Like the ocean is bigger than a ship. A ship isn’t trying to control the ocean, or make the ocean. A ship is just trying to get along with the ocean, and figure it out. If you get to know the way the ocean works well enough, you can ride it. You can, like, go for this amazing ride…” I put my hand over my mouth. Sometimes I blather.
“That’s why I like science too,” he said. He didn’t think what I’d said was weird. He didn’t think it was profound or impressive or intimidating either. It was just ordinary conversation. It could happen every day.
“I love it here,” I said, meaning it.
He put his arm around my shoulders. I let myself lean a little.
“So do I,” he said.
That’s not the time I had to push him away either. He walked me the rest of the way home and we pecked good night in front of St. Peter’s Terrace.
Telling Linda from Ginny wasn’t quite the job done. There were still the rest of the pictures to sort out, which was now much easier work but even so required thoroughness and effort.
“Is there anything after she turned four?” I asked Liv. She grabbed a small pile and handed it to me. These were mostly photos from puberty onward. Gretchen had the typical adolescent awkwardness and animation, and I could tell her sight had dimmed considerably. The fashions were laughable. The house behind her looked homey and plain. She looked happy. The photos usually had friends in them, boys and girls matching her age.
“I guess her mom was less interested in being the center of attention once their lifestyle changed,” I said. Previously, Linda had put herself into most of the photos. In these she was always behind the camera.
“That’s just age plus vanity,” said Nick. “The last time I have a photo of my mum and me together I’m in a chorister’s robe.”
“Are there any of her dad?” Liv asked.
“He’s the one in the white dinner jacket with a martini glass in his hand.” Gretchen was suddenly there. She didn’t need to tap a cane in her own home. Liv stammered, embarrassed to have been caught prying.
Gretchen overrode her. “Do you have the photo to hand?” She leaned against the doorframe while Nick fished it out. “Jim” was written on the back. “He was my mother’s accountant. They remained good friends. They were never really lovers. Well, of course they were, but I mean in the social sense. They were never a couple. He was kind to me. He always had a toy or something in his briefcase for me, I remember that.” She smiled. This seemed a genuinely pleasant memory to her; there was nothing of the deprived or abandoned about it. “Their friendship ran its course. The only thing she’d ever really been devoted to utterly was me.”
“Do you want us to keep this one out, to frame it?” Liv asked.
“He’s not a ‘daddy’ to me, dear. He was just a friend of Mother’s. I don’t need to have him on display.” She moved to face the window. I think she could see strong contrasts-light and shadow. “Nick, do you have the one on the island to hand? There are palm fronds and such. It’s Mother, Aunt Ginny, and me. We were all laughing. I remember when that was taken. Mother’s Pekingese had run off with a cutlet from the kitchen and was wrestling it on the carpet. We all laughed instead of stopping him. We spoiled that thing rotten.”
Nick found it. “I could scan this and have it blown up for you. It would be really nice in eight-by-ten.” He was gallant at heart, and earnest and courteous.
“Thank you, Nick, I’d like that,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. Good boy, I added in my head, as if she were scratching him behind the ears too. She was so cold to me and Liv, but with Nick… Sometimes what he inspired in others made me laugh.
If he hadn’t been so good with people, I wouldn’t have ended up in this position. I would have sidestepped the whole thing. But everything he did was so spotless in its motivation that going along with him always seemed the right thing to do.
Since the night we’d kissed on the way home, Nick hadn’t changed his demeanor toward me. He was, as ever, courteous and attentive, but there was no new possessiveness or pushiness. I would have bolted at the first sign of it.
The only outward show of his interest was the way he looked at me. But he’d looked at me that way for as long as I had known him.
When my old boyfriend Jeremy and I had started having sex, when I was sixteen, the most awkward part had been finding where to do it. I was too tall to manage in his car. Our parents were all home in the evenings. We had siblings with varying schedules in and out of our houses after school. My cousin Rain had solved the problem by letting us use her house when her dad was away on business. Rain didn’t have a mom, and her dad traveled a lot. She was in college and spent a lot of time at her boyfriend’s anyway. So that gave us the place to ourselves on some afternoons or weekends-whatever we could arrange around my cello lessons and Jeremy’s soccer.
I refused to do it in Uncle Joe’s bed or Rain’s bed; that would just have been gross. So we’d put a sheet on the couch in the TV room. We had to bring our own sheet. This is what I mean about it being complicated.
The TV room was on the back side of the house, with the lumpy couch. The good couch was in the front room, but being there would have necessitated closing all the blinds, which would have looked suspicious. There was no air-conditioning, so when it was hot we had to be quiet because of open windows; all the windows had to be open for a cross breeze if you didn’t want to choke on the heat. We’d turn on the TV to further mask the sound; we’d have sex to cartoons or talk shows and sometimes we’d just crack up. It was all very cloak-and-dagger. And of course we used condoms. Preparing to do it was this huge effort of planning each time, which means sex, to me, had this incredible lead-up with logistics and scheduling and packing. I don’t think of it as improvisational.
So, unless he sent me an explicit invitation, Nick was going to take me by surprise.
It was daytime when we visited the Sedgwick. It wasn’t like a dinner date, or anything else self-conscious. The Sedgwick has dinosaurs and fossils and rocks. I like geology.
I flitted around the gem room, admiring the bright colors and natural sharp facets. I took off my jacket. He watched me. He leaned back on the red cushion of a window seat.
“You are gorgeous,” he said, and it wasn’t casual.
I was really pleased. I wasn’t thinking ahead. I did that duck-the-head-shyly thing, to show I was both modest and delighted.
“Come on,” Nick said, tugging my arm. He pulled me past the plesiosaur and iguanodon skeletons and unlocked a stairwell. He prodded the button to call the elevator. When the thing came it had one of those old iron grilles, which he shoved aside for entry. He pressed me against the back wall of the box and kissed me.
I didn’t see him again, even though he wasn’t yet gone. We avoided each other. Of course we did. I’d made an idiot of myself. He’d offered me something, and I’d acted like I wanted it, and then I’d gotten angry, and sick, and who does that? Who acts like that? Who’s going to kiss a girl he’s watched throw up, who’s going to want a girl who throws up over a kiss? I’d messed up everything. I’d messed up something good.
I think I did it to protect myself. Which is roundabout and stupid, but I think it’s what I was trying to do. I remember long ago thinking about Jeremy, “He means the whole world to me.” I meant that at the time, really meant it, and that was how big my world was: It was as big as the ten blocks between my house and his. You could have told me there was more, you could have drawn me maps and told me myths of a bigger world, or other worlds, or however you wanted to define whatever there was outside of that space, but the whole world as far as I could perceive it and touch it and cared about was the size it was. It had him and me in it, and my parents, who made a mess of things. And that-not him, or my parents or the mess, but really the size of my world-is why I’ve done everything I’ve done since, and why I came here, and why I pushed Nick away.