The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [117]
“Last night at your house?” she says. “That was a disaster.”
“It was OK,” he says.
“No, it wasn’t,” Linda says. “She hated me.”
“She’s overprotective.”
She puts her face in her hands. “I can’t believe I wore that sweater without a bra,” she says.
“I loved it,” Thomas says. He touches her breast and stops, an animal waiting for the signal to approach.
“It’s OK,” she says.
“Whatever it is, you should tell someone.”
“I would tell you if I could,” she says. She thinks a moment. “I would tell God if I could.”
“Isn’t He supposed to be able to see and know everything anyway?”
“It’s part of the contract. You have to be able to tell Him what you’ve done.”
“It’s illogical.”
“Well, of course,” she says.
______
“I don’t want to be rude,” Thomas says a few minutes later, “but do you really think God cares?”
The question doesn’t shock or even surprise Linda. It’s a query, phrased differently, that has gnawed at her for some time: the illogic of caring whether Darren sleeps with Donna before marriage when the Holocaust has happened. Logic demands common sense: God can’t possibly care about premarital sex in the face of all that horror. Yet the thought that He might not care fills her with despair.
Thomas removes Linda’s sunglasses, and she squints.
“Take yours off, too,” she says, and he does. They sit face to face.
“I have to ask you this,” he says.
“OK,” she says, ready for anything. Curiously buoyed up in fact.
“Please tell me what happened.”
But her confidence is false. She opens her mouth to speak and can’t.
Thomas puts his head back against the seat and shuts his eyes. She runs a finger down his chest. Beyond them the sun sets. The sparkle in the dunes goes out, and the temperature drops.
“Where did you live before here? Before the Home, I mean?” he asks.
“Marshfield,” she says.
“Oh.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I guess there are quite a few things I don’t know about you.”
She is silent.
“Where did you go in the summers?”
“Thomas.”
“Can’t you just answer one lousy question?” A testy note in his voice she has never heard before stiffens her shoulders.
“What is this?” she asks.
“When you go to Confession,” he asks, “do you confess letting me touch your breast?”
She pulls her blouse closed.
“Will you tell the priest about last night? About when I lifted your skirt?”
She is tight-lipped, staring straight ahead.
“Will you?” he asks.
She puts her sunglasses back on.
“How detailed do you have to get?”
“Thomas, stop.”
The diamonds on the windshield are gone. She pulls her coat tightly around herself. “Take me home,” she says.
“I just want to understand what you’re all about,” he says.
The wind from the ocean rattles the loose bits of the Skylark and waffles against the windows. There is frost inside the car as well, she realizes. She can see their angry puffs of breath.
“I guess I’m angry,” he says.
“With who? With me?” she asks.
“I guess I’m angry at you.”
“Good,” she says, hugging the door now. She begins to button her blouse.
“I’m not angry at you,” he says.
“You should be,” she says.
“Why?”
“I’ve spoiled something for you, haven’t I?”
“That’s a myth.”
“It’s in your bones. It’s not a myth.”
“Linda. Look at me.”
She refuses. “Speaking of not knowing everything about a person, why don’t you tell me why you’re carrying drugs for Donny T.?”
“So what if I do?”
“So what? So fucking what if you do? You could go to jail, that’s what.”
“Linda, look at me. Please.”
She relents and turns.
“This is it,” he says. “You’re it. If I know anything in my bones, I know that.”
She is silent.
“You’re my family, for Christ’s sake. You’re my lover and my friend and my family.” He pauses. “I assume I’m yours.”
It might be true, she thinks. It might be possible. And what a relief that would be, she thinks. A