In the Age of Love and Chocolate

“So did I. But I was so angry with you. Besides, wouldn’t you have hated me if I had come back? That’s what I told myself. If I relent, she won’t love me anyway. So better to have some dignity.”

“High school relationships aren’t meant to last forever,” I said. “It seems like we’re talking about other people. I don’t even feel sad anymore when I think of it.”

“Aren’t you the most fantastically evolved young adult on this deck?” He picked up his old paperback book.

“What are you reading anyway?” I asked.

He held up the book.

“The Godfather,” I read.

“Yes, it’s about an organized-crime family. I should have read it years ago.”

“Are you learning about me?”

“Indeed,” he said with mirth in his voice. “I finally understand you.”

“So?”

“You had to open that club and you had to do everything you could to make it succeed. All that had been decided long before I ever met you.”

* * *

In August, the weather turned miserable. I could not wear my long dresses and sweaters anymore, which meant showing more of my skin than I was comfortable with. Win’s mother suggested that we go swimming in the river. She insisted that swimming would be good for my recovery. She was probably right, but I didn’t know how to swim. I had been born in New York City in 2066, the summer the pools had been drained to conserve water. “Win could teach you,” Ms. Rothschild said. “He’s an excellent swimmer.”

Win gave his mother a look that was a pretty close approximation to what I was feeling about the idea of him teaching me to swim.

“Jane, I would rather not,” he said.

Ms. Rothschild shook her head at her son. “I don’t like it when you call me Jane. I’m not clueless, Win. I know the two of you were romantic once, but what difference does that make? Anya should learn to swim while she is here. It will be good for her.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even have a swimsuit.” I had never needed one.

“You’ll borrow one of mine,” she said.

In my room, I put on her swimsuit, which hung on me. The swimsuit was pretty modest in cut, though I still felt incredibly exposed. I threw on a T-shirt, but you could still see a bit of the scar that was below my collarbone.

If Win noticed it, he did not say.

Not that he would have. The boy had always had manners.

When I got into the water, he didn’t say much actually. He told me to get on my stomach. He held me up. He demonstrated how to kick and how to move my arms. It took me no time to catch on. I was good at swimming, which was easy compared to walking.

“It’s too bad they didn’t have a swim team at Trinity,” I said. “Maybe I should say it’s too bad there weren’t any pools in New York City.”

“Maybe your whole life would have been different.”

“I would have been a jock,” I said.

“I can see that. The famous Balanchine aggression would have been useful in athletic competition.”

“Right. I wouldn’t have dumped that lasagna on Gable Arsley’s head. I would have had productive channels for my anger.”

“But if you hadn’t dumped that lasagna on Gable’s head, how would I have known where to come and meet you?”

I swam a bit away from the deck. After a minute, he swam after me. “Not so fast,” he said. “You’re still a beginner.”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me to him so that we were facing each other in the water.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I think my mother is as manipulative as my father.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother, with her absurd and transparent notion that I should teach you to swim. And my father … I think he has the idea that if he can get us back together, then he’ll have redeemed himself for 2082.”

“Ridiculous man,” I said. “It was really 2082 and 2083.”

“But one must ask the question: Is the only reason that stupid boy ever liked you because his ambitious father objected? Isn’t that what you always told me? My point is, maybe Dad’s plan is faulty. Because maybe those cute young people need obstacles, you and me. Maybe once the star-crossed become unstar-crossed, Romeo gets bored with Juliet.”

“Well, there are still a few obstacles,” I said. “I was married, and no matter how you look at it, it was basically a marriage of convenience.”

“You’re saying I should consider the fact that you are a person of low morals, ethics, and character to be an impediment.”

“Yes, that is what I’m saying.”

He shrugged. “I knew that about you a long time ago.”

“And I killed someone. In self-defense, but still. And my body is broken. I’m pretty much like a fifty-year-old woman. I move about as fast as my nana.”

“You look okay,” he said. He tucked a curl behind my ear.

“And the timing is wrong. I want to come to you when I am strong and beautiful and successful.”

“Do you want me to say that you are all those things still, or will you roll your pretty green eyes at me?”

“I will roll my eyes at you. I have a mirror, Win, though I try to avoid it.”

“From where I am, the view is not that bad.”

“You haven’t seen me naked,” I said.

He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how to respond to that.”

“Well, it wasn’t an invitation, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was reportage.”

“I’m”—he cleared his throat again—“I’m sure it’s not so bad.”

“Come closer,” I said. I thought I’d settle the matter. I lowered the scoop neck of my T-shirt to show him the large, bumpy pink scar from my heart surgery and the one from where the sword had gone all the way through.

His eyes grew wide and he inhaled sharply. “It is a bad scar,” he said in a subdued voice. He put his hand on the scar that ran below my collarbone, which was dangerously close to my breast. “Did it hurt?”

“Like crazy,” I said. He closed his eyes and looked like he might kiss me. I pulled my T-shirt back up. I swam over to the dock, my heart beating just short of an attack, and I climbed up the ladder as quickly as I could.

XXIII I BID FAREWELL TO SUMMER IN A SERIES OF UNCOMFORTABLY EMOTIONAL VIGNETTES

“I HATE WHEN SUMMER ENDS,” Ms. Rothschild said, waving her hand in front of her face. I had found her crying in the farm’s library. “Don’t mind me, though. Come sit for a spell.” She patted the place on the couch next to her. I returned Persuasion to the shelf—I’d worked my way through all of Jane Austen that summer—and then I sat down. Ms. Rothschild put her arm around my shoulders. “It has been a good summer, hasn’t it? You look a tiny bit plumper and rosier, I think.”

“I feel better,” I said.

“I am glad to hear it. I hope you have been happy here. It has been delightful having you and your sister. Please come back anytime. I am thankful to my ex-husband for thinking of it. I always liked you, you know, even when Charlie was so dead set against the match with Win. We argued about it quite a bit back then. He insisted it