upstairs and put the toys away,” I said.
Winnie looked at me as if I might have gone insane, but the boys went off to the laundry room immediately. When they came out, each was holding a side of the basket. Together, they dragged it upstairs. Winnie raised her eyebrows.
“They never do that for me,” she said.
“Element of surprise.”
Winnie shrugged and sighed. “I wish they’d do that for me.”
Charlie came back from the kitchen with a short glass containing an amber liquid.
“That’s not tea,” Winnie said.
“It’s Glenlivet.”
“You’d better put the pies in the freezer or they’ll never last until Thursday,” Winnie said.
“Done,” Charlie said. “Can I get you a drink, Jane?”
“It’s only two o’clock, Charlie. I don’t see why you have to start drinking so early,” Winnie said.
Charlie gave me a look that seemed to say that Winnie was the reason, but then he walked over to her and kissed her on the nose. “Thank you for worrying about me, dear. What would I do without you?”
What I didn’t know about married people could fill the Boston Public Library. Maybe if I kept my eyes open, I’d learn something, though what good it would do me at this point was an open question.
“You’ll never guess who we ran into at lunch,” Charlie said to Winnie.
“Who?” she asked, sounding not the slightest bit interested.
“Max Wellman.”
“Who?”
“You know, my friend Max Wellman.”
Winnie may not have known who Max Wellman was, but I was experiencing hot sweats and heart palpitations, all symptoms of panic. I hoped that’s what it was. Weren’t those also symptoms of menopause? I was only thirty-eight. It had to be panic.
For fifteen years I had managed to get only as close to Max as his clippings, but now he lurked around every corner.
Winnie poured herself more tea, though it had to be lukewarm.
“You must have heard of Max Wellman, Jane,” Charlie said. “He’s a famous author.”
“I have, but I didn’t know you knew him, Charlie.” I tried to keep my voice steady.
“From college. Have you read his books?” Charlie asked.
“All except for the last one.” Every time one of Max’s books came out, I’d run to the bookstore. Then I’d take the book home and devour it. I don’t know what I was looking for. Clues about Max? What sort of clues? With this latest book,
“Well, if Jane’s read this Max Wellman’s books, why haven’t I? You know how much I like to read, Charlie. Why haven’t you brought these books home?”
“We have every one of them upstairs in the study,” he said.
“The least you could do, then, is point them out if he’s someone you know. How do you expect me to better myself out here in the absolute buttocks when you don’t share anything with me and when you won’t buy me a kiln?”
Charlie slumped. “It’s boondocks, not buttocks.”
“You don’t support me artistically,” Winnie complained.
“I support you in every other way.” He raised his voice and drained his glass.
“No need to be like that, especially in front of my sister.”
“Anyway, Max is here in town. He’s staying with his sister in Boston. She and her husband just rented a fantastic house on Beacon Hill for the winter.”
“That’s our house,” I said in a small voice.
“What?” Charlie asked.
“Brainchild, that’s our house. The Fortune family house,” Winnie said. “You know very well that Father rented it out for the winter.”
“I didn’t make the connection.”
“There’s no reason you should,” I said.
“I feel stupid. I’m so sorry, Jane.”
“What about me?” Winnie asked. “I think I deserve an apology, too. It was my house, too. I have been shamed, by association.”
“There is nothing shameful about renting your house out for the winter,” Charlie said.
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? It is the way
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I think.”
“You just don’t know anything about the history of families.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m more concerned with my family’s present than its history,” he said.
“That’s because you don’t have a history to speak of. Second-generation English is hardly a history.”
“And you came over on the
We didn’t, but we had as many generations behind us in America as you could without coming over on that particular boat. Still, what did it matter in the twenty-first century?
“Anyway, I invited him for Thanksgiving,” Charlie said.
“Who?” Winnie asked.
“Max.” Charlie seemed exasperated. “Isn’t that who we were just talking about?”
“Without asking me?” Winnie said.
“My parents are the ones having it,” Charlie said.
“Did you ask them?”
“I don’t have to.”
There was a small bit of skin hanging from my thumb and I began to chew on it.
“Don’t do that, Jane. It will get all bloody,” Winnie said. Charlie looked over. I saw myself as he must see me—dour, dry, somber, bookish, and lacking in style.
“Anyway,” Charlie said, “Max isn’t coming. He’s spending Thanksgiving with his sister.” Thank God, I thought. “But he might come over for dessert.”
Something banged hard on the floor upstairs and one of the boys shouted.
“Oh, Charlie, can you see to that?” Winnie asked. She had that fainting-couch look to her, as if any movement was beyond her strength.
“I will,” I said.
“No, Jane, I’ll go,” Charlie said.
He went upstairs.
“I think my husband is getting bored with me,” Winnie said. “I don’t know why. It’s as if everything I ask him to do is an ordeal. We haven’t had sex in a month.”
I didn’t like this kind of heart-to-heart. I wasn’t crazy about heart-to-hearts in general, but I especially hated them when they included the subject of sex. I wasn’t a prude, exactly, I just had never been one of those girls who discussed breasts, periods, and boys. My mother said that I had never really been young, but I had been young, only in a different way.
“I’m sure he loves you,” I said.
“That’s just the easy thing to say. But you’ve never been in a long relationship, and in a long relationship things fade.” She touched her hair. When she was younger it was a more sunny shade of blond. “You know what we need?” she said.
“What?”
“A girls’ day out.”
I couldn’t remember ever having had a girls’ day out with Winnie. I had gone shopping occasionally with
