She said she’d see me the next day at ten A.M. I had a jitney reservation for six P.M. It was the weekend I’d go up to Nyack with Alex.
I got out of the Aurora and she went up the drive.
The rottweilers never barked when Nevada was on the scene.
I walked over to the Ford, around to the driver’s side.
“Do you feel okay about driving Huguette?” he asked.
“I have the hang of it,” I said. “She’s good company, too.”
“Has she got the hang of leaving Roundelay without stopping somewhere to phone this Le Vec?”
“She hasn’t made any calls that I know about.” It was true. But it had been only one week. He didn’t ask me if she had made any purchases—like a man’s leather Gucci wallet and a Whitney Houston CD. (“Does Martin speak English?” I’d asked her when she bought it. She’d said that he knew the English in songs.)
Nevada said, “The Fourth of July they’re having a big celebration out in Montauk. Fireworks, rock bands, a surprise appearance by Cog Wheeler, that sort of thing. Do you know The Failures?”
“Who doesn’t? They’re opening at Sob Story the next day.”
“Huguette has never seen an American Fourth of July. I think she’d like to go.”
“Are you going to take her?” I knew he was angling for me to go along.
“I can’t go to those affairs. My presence in the audience spoils it for everyone else.”
I knew what he meant. That first weekend when Alex and I went to a movie, we saw Billy Joel get mobbed while he was in the ticket line with his daughter—and they were used to seeing Billy Joel in that town. I could imagine what would happen if Nevada showed up anywhere.
I said, “My birthday is Saturday night, the third. Alex will arrive late that night and stay till Monday.”
“I could get three tickets,” he said.
“We’ve made plans, Mr. Nevada.” We hadn’t. But neither of us liked those grungy Seattle bands, and a threesy wasn’t what we had in mind for my birthday celebration.
Nevada lit a Gitane, then said, “You’d have the use of the Aurora, of course. I’d reimburse you for any expenses the three of you incurred. It’s a hot ticket, Lang.”
“I thought I told you—”
He cut me off. “You told me. But you seem to enjoy her.”
“I do enjoy her. It isn’t that.”
“Have you told her about yourself, Lang?”
“No.”
“Why should you?” He sounded like my mother.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I shot back.
“Lang, Lang, listen to me: Someone once wrote ‘Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.’”
I figured he’d dug that one out of Bartlett’s.
I said, “Someone else once wrote: ‘If my lies you believe, then I might let you breathe.’”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then opened them and growled, “I wasn’t much older than you are when I wrote that. You’re a pain in the ass, Penner!”
He took off in the old Ford, heading through the gates of Roundelay.
That was when he first started calling me by my last name.
NINETEEN
“ALEX! OVER HERE!”
“Here’s Alex!”
“Hello, Alex!”
There were around thirty guests at the twentieth-anniversary party for Alex’s parents.
We rode up to Nyack with an aunt of Alex’s who was meeting her husband there.
There was a gingerbread house overlooking the Hudson River, high on a hill, with a yard filled with Alex’s family
I remember a Robert Frost poem I memorized in eighth grade: the one about two roads diverging in a woods, and someone taking the one less traveled by.
It was a little borrowed glory to help me through dark days when I was beginning to accept what I was.
That Sunday everyone seemed to have taken the road most traveled by. Alex and I were the odd couple. No room in the ark for the likes of us.
Peter, Alex’s twin, clapped his arm around his shoulder and called out, “Uncle Henry? Get a shot of me and Alex!”
A man pointed a camera at them as I stepped aside.
Then Peter pushed a redheaded girl in between Alex and himself, saying: “Uncle Henry?”
Uncle Henry obliged.
Peter said, “Alex, this is my girlfriend, Tina Lopez.”
“How do you do, Tina? This is my friend, Lang Penner. Peter? You remember Lang.”
“Hi.” Peter never said my name, nor met my eyes when he greeted me.
“Hello, Peter and Tina,” I said.
Tina had a camera too.
Tina said, “Alex and Peter? Hold still!”
Uncle Henry said, “Tina? Will you take a picture of me with Alex and Peter?” He handed Tina his camera.
Peter said, “Tina? Let Lang take the picture, and then you can get in here.”
I took the camera from Tina. I took the picture.
“Alex!” a woman called. “Come and see your cousin. You haven’t seen Timmy since he started walking!”
I wandered around by myself for a while. I went into the house to use the bathroom, which was adorned with photographs of Alex and Peter and Mr. and Mrs. Southgate, in all sorts of poses, in all seasons, at all ages.
I looked at the books in the shelves lining the walls, and I flipped through a copy of Time magazine. I petted the cat asleep on the couch and watched the party from the window for a while.
Then I went out in the yard to the grill, where Alex’s father was outfitted in cook’s regalia, complete with a tall, white, mushroom-shaped chef’s hat.
He was an older, heavier version of Alex, basting ribs and wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
“I thought you were in the Hamptons, Lynn?”
I never bothered correcting him anymore.
“I am, but not all the time.”
“So I see. Well, make yourself useful. Pass that tray of ribs around.”
I went from couple to couple until I came to Alex’s mother, settled into a sling chair with a martini. She was a good-looking woman with black curly hair, feeling no pain. “Hello, Lang. I thought you were in the Hamptons this summer?”
“I am, but not all the time. Congratulations on your anniversary!”
“Thank you,