Modern Lovers (28 page)

I
t was officially the most horrible time of the summer, when everyone was starting to come back, unpack, do laundry, repack, and go to school, all while noisily updating social media with pictures of everybody hugging each other and their stupid siblings and their stupid dogs. Ruby had been dreading the end of August ever since graduation. When her entire class was off in the Hamptons or the Berkshires, it was gloriously easy to pretend that her life was still perfectly on track, and that nothing had gone disastrously wrong. But soon it would be September, the first September in twelve years (fifteen, counting preschool) that Ruby hadn't gone back to school, and she wasn't exactly feeling great about it.

That morning, she had woken up from a sex dream. In it, she and Harry had been at the beach, their beach, only it was completely abandoned, and it was only after Ruby realized that her body was covered in goose bumps that she noticed it was winter and there were huge mounds of snow all around them. She and Harry were kissing, and then they were doing it, and then he was on top of her, but instead of Harry, it was Dust. Harry/Dust opened his mouth and said, in a perfect Harry/Dust voice, “It's just you and me next year.” And that was so horrifying that Ruby sat up in bed and was awake for good at
seven a.m., which was practically a crime in and of itself on a summer morning.

Her phone had been blowing up all night—she almost didn't want to look at it, but she had to, because she was a glutton for punishment. There were six texts from six different friends, plus group texts—Chloe was inviting her to Bridgehampton for one last slumber party, Anika wanted to go do karaoke in Chinatown, Sully was going vintage shopping on Saturday, and did she want to come? All summer, they'd been off having adventures, and they wanted to squeeze as much of high school as possible into their last five minutes in the city. Ruby didn't want to get squeezed.

A new text came in—Sarah Dinnerstein:
MEET ME IN THE PARK? HAVE A JOINT.
Ruby imagined the whole scene: she'd meet Sarah, they'd smoke the joint, and then Ruby would punch her in the face. For Hyacinth. For her moms. It sounded like a pretty good way to spend the afternoon. They made plans to meet by the dog beach and then walk together to the hidden spot behind the natural playground, which was always empty except for sometimes when old men with radios would sit and listen to baseball games.

The walk to the park was sticky—Ruby was wearing as little as possible, but by the end of the summer in New York, you could be naked and still feel overdressed. She should have put on sunscreen; she should have worn a hat. By the time Ruby got to the dog beach, Sarah was waiting, in one of her countless hippie-dippie dresses that showed off her boobs, which weren't even that impressive.

“Hey,” Ruby said.

“Hey-o,” Sarah said, opening her arms wide for a hug. Ruby could smell the patchouli before they were even five feet apart.

“You know,” she said, stopping just before Sarah's arms could reach her, “I'm not sure I'm ready for that.”

“Is this about Dust? I'm so glad we're talking about it. Because he
told me that you knew, but then I thought he was bullshitting, and I really didn't want to leave for school with, like, unfinished business between us, you know?” Sarah put on her concerned face, which looked like the love child of a Gremlin and a pug, squashed nostrils pointing in the wrong direction.

“Fine, whatever, let's walk,” Ruby said, turning on her heel and walking down the hill into the woods.
If
she were going to college,
if
she were leaving New York, Prospect Park would be the thing she'd miss the most. Unlike Central Park, where you could always see identifiable buildings and therefore know exactly where you were in space, Prospect Park felt like the wilderness, filled with dark paths and secret corners. Whenever she came to the park with her moms when she was little, Ruby loved to scare them by running away and hiding behind trees, just off the path but tucked out of sight. Bingo would always find her first, but for a few minutes Ruby could pretend that she lived in a magical forest and that her mothers were witches or fairies and that she alone could save the world.

“I never come here,” Sarah said. “There are too many crackheads. And yuppies. Both.” Ruby didn't even respond. Sarah lit the joint, and they walked a little bit more slowly, curving by a small waterfall and then turning deeper into the wilderness. “I heard that there's a really big cruising spot right here. For gay sex.” Ruby raised an eyebrow. “Not that there's anything wrong with that, obviously, I'm just saying, that's what I heard.”

“I'm not the gay police,” Ruby said, taking the joint out of Sarah's hand.

They got to the main road, and Ruby tucked the joint into her hand. The coast was clear, and they walked through the playground, which was empty. The hidden spot was empty, too, except for an old guy in a tank top doing half push-ups on a bench, but he wouldn't bother them. That was another thing Ruby would miss about New York, if she were leaving: she'd miss how much space people gave you.
You could have a fucking sobbing fit on the subway and no one would mess with you. You could barf in a garbage can on the street corner and no one would mess with you. If you were giving off invisible vibes, people respected that. People thought New Yorkers were rude, but really they were just leaving you to your own stuff. It was respectful! In a city with so many people, a New Yorker would always pretend not to see you when you didn't want to be seen.

“So, he told you?” Sarah said, once they were sitting on a bench in the shade.

“He didn't have to tell me. It's pretty obvious that you guys are together.” Ruby passed the roach back to Sarah and pulled a cigarette out of her bag.

“Oh,” Sarah said. “No, I mean, we are, but I meant about your parents' place.” She clipped the roach and held it still until it had cooled down, and then tucked it into her little crocheted weed necklace. “About the fire.”

“He told me that you did it by accident, basically on purpose. That's what he told me.” Ruby stared at Sarah, whose eyes were streaked with red, like little peppermints.

Sarah giggled. “Are you serious? Then why would you come and meet me? Jeez, Ruby! Are you going to kick my ass?”

“I was thinking about it,” Ruby said. She crossed her arms, but then she couldn't smoke, so she uncrossed them again and just cracked her knuckles instead.

“Oh, my God, Ruby, no!” Sarah waved her hands like they were stuck on a deserted island and she was trying to signal a passing airplane. “It was Dust! That's what I was trying to talk to you about! Dust totally set the fire! I was right there. We were in the little alley, you know, behind Nico's house, and behind Hyacinth, and Dust was all, ‘Let's go down here and see if we can get into the kitchen, I want some of that cheese'—what's that cheese you guys have?”

“Mozzarella?”

“No, the fancy kind, on the sandwich with the eggs and the cucumbers? It's like cream cheese, only sort of sour? Anyway, he was like, ‘Let's see if we can sneak in there after Ruby closes,' which, I grant you, would have been a fucked-up thing to do anyway, but it probably wouldn't even have happened. Anyway, so we get to the fence, and we could see the people leaving, and you and the other guys cleaning up, and then I look at Dust, and he's got this little wad of newspaper and his lighter, and he's trying to light the fence. I was like, ‘What the fuck?' and he was like, ‘Sarah, this doesn't concern you,' and I was like, ‘Hell yes it does, if you go to jail for setting something on fire, because obviously I'm the one who's going to have to hire a lawyer, you know?' And so I went back into Nico's house, and then a little while later Dust came back in, and then we all heard the sirens, and I was like, ‘Shit.'”

“He told me that you set it by accident, with some candles.” Ruby couldn't tell if the fogginess in her head was the weed or what Sarah was telling her. “But you're saying that Dust did it? Actually on purpose?”

Sarah giggled again. “I know it's not funny, but seriously, Ruby, you are way, way weirder than I thought. How many times do I need to say it? Dust set the fire. On purpose.”

“And he's your boyfriend.” Ruby knew she sounded like a moron, but her brain wouldn't make better sentences. She felt like she was trying to talk with her mouth full of cotton candy.

“It's pretty serious,” Sarah said, happy to switch topics of conversation. “We've been talking about moving in together, up at school. He could get a job, maybe audit some classes. Dust wants to be an architect, did you know that? He's got all these models at his house, little things he's built. He's really good.”

“You've been to his house?” This was the twilight zone. It must be the weed. Sarah was probably saying something completely different. Maybe Ruby was still asleep! That must be it.

Sarah looked offended. “Of course I've been to his house. I'm his
girlfriend
.” She narrowed her already beady eyes at Ruby. “You never went to his house?”

“What makes you think that I'm not going to call the police?” Ruby was flushed, and sweating. She piled her hair up on top of her head and stuck it there with a big plastic clip. The old guy was peeling off his tank top and laying it over the back of the bench. He dropped to his knees and started doing crunches, squeezing his wrinkled brown belly together over and over again.

“I would, if I were you.” Sarah shrugged. “I mean, obviously, I don't think you should, because I don't want him to get into trouble, but I think that if I were you, I totally would. It's up to you. We'll be gone soon, you know? Like, who would it help? He's not going to set your house on fire. He's not even going to be here.”

“Even Dust isn't going to be here,” Ruby said, more to herself than to Sarah. She took a long drag of her cigarette and then let it drop to the ground. “Fuck it,” she said. “Fuck it all.” Ruby stood up and walked away without saying good-bye. Behind her, she heard Sarah start to sing some Bob Marley, and so Ruby jogged until she was out of earshot and out of breath.

E
lizabeth arrived at the Montauk station with nothing but a prickly straw hat, a bottle of wine she'd plucked out of the fridge, a toothbrush, a bathing suit, and a clean pair of underwear, all of which were jammed into a tote bag on her shoulder. The hat had been scratching her arm since the Atlantic Terminal station, but the train was crowded, and there was nothing to be done. Add one more wound to the pile. The train car was full of frat boys and other summertime revelers at full tilt, and so Elizabeth decided to stay seated until they'd all stumbled off. She wasn't in a rush. The invitation had barely been real—she knew that. But she also knew that she needed to get out of the city, and that Zoe was her friend, and if Jane didn't like it, well, tough. She'd had two glasses of wine at home and another two on the train, which was way more than she ever drank, especially during the day. Even though the train had stopped moving, it still seemed to be swaying slightly, and when the rest of the car was empty, Elizabeth clutched the back of her seat and stood up, knocking her forehead on the baggage rack overhead.

The Kahn-Bennett Subaru was waiting, just as Zoe had promised. Elizabeth waved and squinted, trying to make out who was inside, and hurried as quickly as she could, though her flip-flops kept sliding
off, and then she'd have to chase them a bit. When she finally made it to the car, it was only Zoe.

“You okay?” Zoe asked. She looked great—summer was her season. Her skin was clear and glowing like bronze, and her hair was pushed off her face with a colorful scarf. Bingo poked his head out of the backseat, and Elizabeth leaned over and let him lick her on the nose.

“I'm pretty much not great,” Elizabeth said. She pulled the bottle of wine out of her bag and handed it to Zoe.

“Let's go back to the house before we open this, okay? I don't think a DUI is going to help any of us.”

Elizabeth puffed out her lower lip and turned toward the window. “It's just been a weird summer. And there was no toilet paper on the train.”

Zoe murmured her disappointment with LIRR and then didn't say anything for the rest of the ride, but held out her hand for Elizabeth to hold in the center well, above the cup holders.

•   •   •

T
he rental house was small but cute. An easy sell. It had one bedroom and a pullout sofa, which either Zoe or Jane had already pulled out, and a small kitchen/dining room. It smelled like salt, and there was sand underfoot. Jane was grilling something outside on the deck when they walked in, and Zoe slipped the tote bag off Elizabeth's shoulder and set it down on the floor.

“We're back!” Zoe called, even though the sliding door to the deck was open and there was no way that Jane could have missed their entrance. “She'll be fine,” Zoe said, and patted Elizabeth on the arm.

“Is something wrong?” Elizabeth asked, steadying herself on the kitchen counter. The wine sloshed in her stomach. She should have eaten lunch. She shouldn't have had so much to drink. She should have stayed home.

It was so pretty out at the very end of the island—Elizabeth always forgot that. It was an occupational hazard, sizing up real estate. Montauk was a decade behind the Hamptons, but ahead of the North Fork. The houses were small, and most of them were a short drive away from the main street, which, after all, didn't have that much. But who was Elizabeth kidding? She didn't care about selling beach houses to the party animals she'd been on the train with, or to their calmer older brothers with wives and toddlers. Brooklyn was bad enough. She didn't need to deal with people who had so much disposable income that they were buying a second house.

“I think I need to sit down,” she said, and then collapsed onto the pullout sofa, leaning against the foam backrest with her legs extended in front of her.

“Me too,” Zoe said. “But hang on.” She walked around the sofa bed and out onto the deck. Elizabeth watched as Zoe put her arm on Jane's back and then rested her head on Jane's shoulder. They were facing away, pointed toward the wild grass and, somewhere in the distance, the ocean. It was impossible to tell if they were talking, but they didn't move for a few minutes, except when Jane picked up her tongs and flipped something over on the grill.

It was a pretty night—there was a steady breeze, and the sky was washed with pink. Elizabeth wished that she and Andrew had a place like this, a modest hut somewhere in the country—why hadn't they ever done that? All their vacation time had always seemed so precious, especially after Harry was born—his day camps and art classes, his creative-movement classes in Prospect Park, where the children just rolled around in the grass at a coordinated time every week for two hundred dollars. In theory they were free to go wherever they liked, and they had traveled some—a trip to Mexico when Harry was eight that horrified Andrew's parents, a drive up the California coast wherein they learned that Harry got carsick when there were lots of turns, and so they drove on the highway instead, getting to San
Francisco four days earlier than planned. One trip to Italy. It was scattershot, random. Elizabeth had gone to the same girls' summer camp every summer of her life, then Cape Cod for August, and she'd wanted to give Harry more adventures. But instead they'd just stayed home, with views of Argyle Road and the Q train rumbling in the distance.

Zoe kissed Jane on the cheek, and then Jane turned around to wave at Elizabeth. It was all going to be fine. Elizabeth raised an invisible glass their direction. “Clink,” she said.

•   •   •

T
hey ate at a small round table outside. There were ants, but nobody cared. Jane opened the wine that Elizabeth brought, and they drank it all, though Elizabeth had to squint a bit to make sure she had one glass and not two. Grilled fish, an avocado salad, little mussels that popped open over the flames. A peach tart made upside down, so the little peaches looked like they were mooning you. Fresh whipped cream. Elizabeth wouldn't divorce Jane either.

“So, what's this place he's been going, Lizzy?” Jane asked, forking a flaky piece of fish into her mouth. “It's Buddhist? Or something?”

“Or something,” Elizabeth said. “I don't really know. I think they do yoga, and maybe have orgies. They sell juice. Kombucha? Is that different from juice? It seems like a nightmare, but what do I know? I'm a square.” She poked the bowl of whipped cream with a finger and then licked it off. She was truly drunk now, and feeling loose.

“You're not a square,” Zoe said.

“You're a little bit of a square,” Jane said, and Zoe pinched her on the arm. “What? There are worse things to be. Also, kombucha is totally different than juice. It's fermented. Like beer. Do they make it themselves? That seems a little bit dodgy. And they sell it? Are they licensed to do that? I would look into that, if I were you. Or if I were trying to get them in trouble.”

Elizabeth lowered her head to the table and then bolted back up.
The room spun. “You know, I've been thinking a lot about trouble lately. Did Zoe tell you what Andrew did? Before the yoga, I mean?” In her head everything was a straight line, and it was all pointing backward. “He slept with Lydia. When we were kids. Not just once. If it was just once, eh.” She waved her hand in the air like she was signaling a waiter for the bill. “If it was just once, that would be one thing. But this was over and over and over again, when we were together. And so when I signed his name on the form, he's just picturing his bare ass, you know? And I'm thinking it's about him being a snobby cinephile or something. Ha!” Zoe and Jane both looked confused, but Elizabeth forged ahead. “I mean, I wouldn't want my naked butt in a movie either, even if it is some eighteen-year-old's adorable butt. It's still my butt, you know? So that's why I'm mad. Because it's not like I never thought about it. I'm not a saint! But if I had, I would have told him before we got married, or at some point in the last seven hundred years.” Elizabeth swiveled her head toward Jane, pointing a finger. “Speaking of, did Zo ever tell you about the night we
al
most got together?”

“No,” Jane said, amused now. “She didn't. Do go on.”

Elizabeth put her hands up next to her face, forming a little wall blocking Zoe from view. “This is totally different, of course, because nothing happened. But at Oberlin, we were at her apartment one night, watching
Bonnie and Clyde
, and she put the moves on me.”

“I don't think I've ever seen
Bonnie and Clyde
,” Zoe said. “Who's in it, again?”

“That's your response?” Jane looked tickled, and leaned forward. “Tell me more, Lizzy.”

“Nothing happened,” Elizabeth said, waving her hands in front of her face and accidentally flinging a fork into the bushes. “But it could have.”

“Wait, are you being serious?” Zoe put her hand on Elizabeth's
arm to steady it in the air, narrowly avoiding being clonked on the head.

Elizabeth dissolved into giggles. “Is this for her benefit?” she said, talking as low as she could. She looked at Zoe, beautiful Zoe. She was wearing a loose white button-down shirt, and it looked like something in a store window, with a breeze from an unseen fan blowing the hem just so. Sometimes Elizabeth thought that if she'd met Zoe a little bit earlier, or a little bit later, her whole life could have been different. Not that she and Zoe would have ended up together, but that every domino started a new chain. Maybe it wouldn't have been Andrew—maybe it would have been the redheaded boy in her English class or the spazzy drummer they got to replace Lydia, who she'd once seen getting out of the shower and thought,
Oh
.

Timing was everything—that was more and more obvious the older you got, when you finally understood that the universe wasn't held together in any way that made sense. There was no order, there was no plan. It was all about what you'd had for breakfast, and what kind of mood you were in when you walked down a certain hallway, and whether the person who tried to kiss you had good breath or bad. There was no fate. Life was just happenstance and luck, bound together by the desire for order. Elizabeth understood why so many people believed in God—it was for precisely this reason, so they'd never have to close their eyes and think,
What
the fuck did I do to my life?
She had a storm-cloud headache brewing, the kind you could see coming six miles away. Cumulous clumps of regret were already low on the horizon line, but she couldn't stop herself. It wasn't funny; none of this was funny. “I don't think she'll be jealous, Zo.” Elizabeth tried her best to smile, and then she tried her best to keep her eyes open. It had been such a long day. Sleep sounded good, especially since she was half sure that she was already dreaming. She gripped the lip of the table with both hands and set her forehead down between them.

A glass of water appeared in front of her, and Elizabeth drank it. Both Jane and Zoe were helping her up, and then pulling down the sheets on the fold-out sofa. She rolled over and said good night, but the words didn't come out.

•   •   •

T
he sun was bright, and it took Elizabeth several minutes to remember where she was. The windows were in the wrong place; so was the door. Slowly, the previous evening came back to her.

“Oh, God,” she said, and yanked the sheet up to her chin.

“Hi.” Zoe was sitting at the table outside with a cup of coffee and her laptop. “Jane's a late sleeper.”

“Good morning,” Elizabeth said, scooting up so that her back was against the cheap foam back of the couch. She rubbed her eyes. Her mouth felt like sandpaper. “I don't usually drink that much.”

“I know,” Zoe said. “Come out here.”

Elizabeth rolled off the sofa bed. The floor was cool. She grabbed the knit blanket that she'd kicked to the floor at some point during the night and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was early—before seven, probably, and the only sounds they could hear were seagulls and waves. Elizabeth settled into the chair next to Zoe. “That hurt,” she said. “My whole body hurts. I'm too old for this.”

“Tell me again what you were saying last night,” Zoe said.

Elizabeth hid her face. “Oh, come on,” she said. “I was drunk.”

“Yes, you were. But I want to know what you were talking about.” Zoe leaned forward, her face serious but soft. “Tell me. Not the part about Andrew. The part about us.”

Elizabeth wasn't sure what was more embarrassing—the fact that she'd kept the secret for so many years, or the fact that she remembered it at all. There were layers of shame, ending with the moment that she was sitting in, with the salt air and the smell of Zoe's coffee, which smelled both completely delicious and like it might make her
throw up. “Okay,” Elizabeth said, and she started at the beginning. When she was done—TJ, the hallway, the two of them on the stairs—Zoe was smiling.

“I do remember that,” she said. “I definitely was hitting on you. Pretty hard, too. If someone did that to Ruby, I would call it sexual assault. It's appalling! You should have called campus security and gotten a ride home.”

“But you don't remember
Bonnie and Clyde
?”

“Not a second of it. That's how beautiful you were, Lizzy.” Zoe reached over and squeezed Elizabeth's cheek. “So, were you interested?”

“I was interested. I mean, I loved you! I love you! You were like a goddess to me! But I didn't know about, you know, all that. I was too scared. And plus, there was Andrew.”

“Who was having sex with Lydia.”

“Who was having sex with Lydia! God!” Elizabeth let out a huge gulping laugh. “The irony.”

Zoe took a slurp of her coffee. “Isn't it so funny, to think about whatever we were doing a hundred years ago, as if it actually mattered? I had so many girlfriends who I thought I was going to be with forever, you know, go on old-lady bird-watching cruises with when we were eighty, or whatever, and then we'd break up in six months. I can't even picture their faces. And when I met Jane, I thought we'd be together for six months! And here we are. So. I don't know.”