The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [19]
It was better not to remember.
—A comedic writer would make of it a farce, Thomas said. The confessions in different rooms, and so on.
—The comedic writer might not be a Catholic, she said.
* * *
They negotiated a path that ran between low scrub. The cottages were boarded up, waiting for summer owners to return. No cars were allowed on the island, and she wondered how such houses were built. Did walls and tiles and chimneys come across by boat?
—Islands always remind me of the Isles of Shoals, Thomas said. A hellish place.
It was a moment before she remembered and understood. The realization stopped her on the path.
He turned to see where she had got to. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been back there any number of times.
It was a kind of bravery, she thought, the ability to look the worst in the face. Would there be a grave, a marker? How could such a sight be borne?
—What happened to Regina? she asked when they had walked on.
—She’s in Auckland now, and has two children.
—Auckland, New Zealand?
—We write occasionally. She works for a pharmaceutical company.
The difference in air pressure between the disastrous and the mundane was making Linda light-headed.
—Her husband owns a sheep farm, Thomas added.
—Not permanently scarred, then.
Thomas began to roll his shirtsleeves. Well, who would know?
They stopped at a small white house with bright blue shutters that had been turned into a teahouse for those who had made the journey on foot across the island. Linda, surprised that she and Thomas had walked as far as they had, was perspiring inside her silk-like blouse, its synthetic material seeming considerably less clever a purchase in the unseasonable heat. She untucked the blouse and let it billow over her jeans. She felt a coolish breeze stir around her midriff. Her hair was sticky at the back of her neck, and she freed it with a swipe of her hand.
—Hungry? Thomas asked.
The choices were a table with a cloth inside the shop or a bare picnic table outside. They took the latter, anchoring napkins with glasses and a ketchup bottle. They sat side by side, looking out at the water, which was brilliant apart from shadows cast by a few scattered benign-looking clouds. Thomas sat close to her, either deliberately or having no awareness of private space. Their arms touched here and there from elbow to shoulder, a proximity that distracted her. She saw the interior of a car, a Buick Skylark convertible, white with red leather interior. She would not have known the year. The top up, the windows steamed, a policeman shining a flashlight through the wet and opaque glass. Did every teenager of that era have such a memory?
—I’m supposed to be on a panel, Thomas said. I’m playing hooky from an interview right now.
She did not have interviews, apart from a phoner in the morning.
—When is your panel?
Thomas looked at his watch. At four o’clock.
—There’s a ferry at two-thirty, she said. What’s it on, the panel?
—“The Phenomenal Ego of the Contemporary Poet.”
She looked at him and laughed.
He turned slightly and raised a foot to the picnic bench, leaning an arm on his knee. Thomas had always had trouble with leverage, had developed back problems, even as a boy. Something to do with the ratio of his height to the width of his bones. His slouch had always given him an appealing lankiness.
A teenage girl came shyly to the table to take their orders. The menu was limited: cheeseburgers, fish burgers, and hot dogs. Linda didn’t trust the fish. She ordered a cheeseburger. I haven’t had one of those in years, she said.
—Really? Thomas asked, genuinely surprised. Did you ever have a lobster again?
—Oh sure. You more or less have to in Maine.
She wanted to move apart from him, simply to dispel the tension. She was aware of physical flaws: her own, which didn’t bear thinking about; nicks in the table; a support that was slightly loose; a crust of dried ketchup below the white plastic cap. Boats that had come around the lee side of the island were hitting