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“Yes. All right. Well, you – I mean, they – always seemed more resistant, I guess, and more free.”

He laughs, and for the first time touches me, putting a hand on my shoulder and sliding it lightly down my arm.

“More free? That’s a funny thing to say. How did you think we spent our time? Laying girls and doing gay Slavic dances?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“How, then?”

“I don’t know how to express it. Not so boxed-in, maybe. More outspoken. More able to speak out. More allowed to – both by your family and by yourself. Something like that. Perhaps I only imagined it. You always think things are easier somewhere else. I used to get rides in winter on your dad’s sleigh, and I remember the great bellowing voice he had, and how emotional he used to get – cursing at the horses, or else almost crooning to them. In my family, you didn’t get emotional. It was frowned upon.”

Nick lies back in the grass. But his hand still rests on my arm.

“That’s the most talking you’ve done so far, Rachel. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t –”

“I’m a tactless bugger, to mention it. I’m sorry. Well, I see what you mean, and in a way you’re right, I suppose, although at one time I wouldn’t have seen it. Argument never seemed much of an advantage to me then. My uncle lived at Galloping Mountain, and whenever he came down here, which luckily wasn’t more than two or three times a year, he and my dad would nearly kill each other. My uncle – my mom’s brother – was never actually a Communist, but he was pretty far left, you know, and the chief tenet of his belief was that it was a good thing for the Ukraine to be part of the U.S.S.R. My dad held the opposite view. He still believes the Ukraine should be a separate country. Incredible, eh? But that is his opinion, and he’ll never change it, not ever. The two of them didn’t just argue – they engaged in vehement verbal battle, storming away at each other like a couple of mastodons. Steve never minded – he was a lot more easygoing than I was. But it used to irk me like anything, because it was so pointless. Once I remember telling my dad I couldn’t care less what the Ukraine did – it didn’t mean a damn thing to me. That was true. But I shouldn’t have said it. Actually I wish now that I hadn’t.”

“Was he angry?”

“Yes. But that didn’t matter. He was angry at me half his time, anyway. No – it was just that it hit him. It was something he couldn’t accept, in the same way he couldn’t ever accept the fact that I never learned to speak Ukrainian. My mom was born in this country, and she spoke English to us. My dad tried for quite a while, but finally he gave up and spoke English, too, and this put him at a great disadvantage with us, although he never admitted it, maybe not even to himself. By him, not even the Queen speaks better English than he does. He has this gargantuan faith in himself, and I don’t know even yet if it’s real or just some kind of barricade. I hope to God I never find out, either.”

“It’s too bad, though, that you never learned his language.”

“Well, it had its points,” Nick says. “My grandmother came over when Dad came, and she lived with us until she died. She was a female warrior-type and sour as a crabapple. But whatever her disapproval was, it passed right over our heads. How many kids are lucky enough not to be able to exchange a word with their dear old grandmothers?”

He has this streak of flippant bitterness that I can’t reply to. I don’t know how to interpret it.

“We’ve talked enough for now,” he says. “Don’t you think so, Rachel?”

We are kissing as though we really were lovers, as though there were no pretence in it. As though he really wanted me. He lies along me, and through our separate clothes I can feel the weight of his body, and his sex. Oh my God. I want him.

“Let’s get rid of some of these clothes, darling,” he says.

I’m not good about physical pain. I never was. And how it would shame me, to have him know it hurt, at my age, with only one possible reason for it. I can’t. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt. The membrane