Lucy sat on the bed with the phone in hand. The Munch room was attractive and warm, the walls painted a spicy reddish-brown that contrasted perfectly with the crisp white trim, the bedding a colorful geometric pattern. And the giclée prints, such as Four Girls on a Bridge, or Summer Night at Asgardstrand were nice. It was only the nightmarish The Scream, with its gape-mouthed anguish and palpable suffering, that brought the mood down. Once you caught sight of it, you couldn’t focus on anything else.
As Lucy pressed the speed-dial button, she stared at the openmouthed figure clutching his ears, the bloodred sky above him, the blue-black fjord below. She knew exactly how he felt.
Her stomach flipped over as Alice picked up.
“Hello?” Her sister’s voice was wary.
“It’s me.” Lucy took a shallow breath. “Is Kevin there with you?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
It was a different kind of silence than they had ever shared before. Choking, chilling. Lucy had practiced many ways to have this conversation, but now that it was here, she couldn’t get the words out.
Alice spoke first. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
Lucy found refuge in anger, clinging to it like a survivor with a life preserver. Supposed to say? “You could tell me why you did it,” she said.
“It just happened. Neither of us had any control over it.”
“You may not have been able to control your feelings,” Lucy said, “but you could have controlled your actions.”
“I know. I know everything you’re going to say. And I know it doesn’t help for me to say I’m sorry, but I am.”
“Alice. Every time in your life that you’ve said ‘I’m sorry,’ to me, I’ve always said it was okay. But this is not okay. It will never be okay. How long have you been doing it?”
“You mean how long have we been dating, or—”
“Having sex. When did you start having sex?”
“A few months. Since Christmas.”
“Since—” Lucy broke off. There wasn’t enough air in the room. She was breathing like a landed fish.
“We haven’t gotten together all that often,” Alice said quickly. “It was hard to find the time to—”
“To sneak around behind my back?”
“Kevin and I should have handled this differently. But I didn’t take anything away from you, Lucy. You and Kevin had grown apart. It was obvious things weren’t going well between you.”
“It wasn’t obvious to me. We’d been together for two years. We shared a house. We had sex just last week. So from my perspective, things were going pretty fu**ing well.”
The word didn’t come easily to Lucy—she wasn’t one of those people who could swear naturally. But it felt good to say it right now. Appropriate to the occasion. And she could tell from Alice’s silence that she hadn’t thought Lucy and Kevin were still sleeping together.
“What do you expect is going to happen now?” Lucy asked. “Am I supposed to forgive you, and forget all about my relationship with Kevin, and make small talk with the two of you during family get-togethers?”
“I know it will take time before that can happen.”
“It won’t take time. No amount of time would be enough. You’ve done more than break my heart, Alice. You’ve broken our family. What’s supposed to happen now? Was it really worth it to steal my boyfriend?”
“Kevin and I love each other.”
“Kevin only loves himself. And if he cheated on me, don’t you think he would do the same to you? Do you think anything good can come of a relationship that started this way?”
“He has a different relationship with me than he did with you.”
“Based on what?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking, what is the difference? Why you and not me?”
“Kevin wants someone he can be himself with. You’re so perfect, Lucy. You have standards that no one can live up to. Except, apparently, you.”
“I never said I was perfect,” Lucy said unsteadily.
“You didn’t have to. It’s the way you are.”
“You’re actually trying to blame me for what you did?”
“We joke about what a control freak you are,” her sister said ruthlessly. “Kevin said you couldn’t handle it if he left a sock on the floor. You’re so busy controlling everyone and everything, you never stop to notice what’s right in your face. I can’t help it if Kevin wanted me more. I don’t push him the way you do. And in the future you’re going to keep losing boyfriends if you don’t change.”
“I didn’t need your help in losing this one,” Lucy said unsteadily, and hung up before her sister could reply.
Five
It was exhausting, the exertions your mind went through after a breakup. Past events had to be recalled and parsed, conversations reevaluated. Clues were matched together like socks from the dryer. After all that effort, the wonder was not that you had broken up, the wonder was that you hadn’t noticed all the signs.
“Most people don’t have the time to put something in context at the moment it’s happening to them,” Justine said. “Most of us are too busy remembering the dentist appointment and trying to get to work on time, and remembering to clean the fish’s bowl before it gets tail rot.”
“I can’t believe how easily Kevin lied to me,” Lucy said. “I thought I knew him so well, and it turns out I didn’t know him at all.”
“That’s how betrayal works. People can’t hurt you unless they get you to trust them first.”
“I don’t think the goal was to hurt me,” Lucy said. “But somewhere along the line Kevin’s feelings for me changed, and I didn’t notice. Maybe he just fell in love with Alice, and it’s as simple as that.”
“Doubt it,” Justine said. “I think Kevin used Alice as a way to get out of the relationship with you, and now he’s stuck with her.”
“Even if that’s true, I need to understand why he fell out of love with me.”
“What you need is a new boyfriend.”
Lucy shook her head. “I’m taking a break from men until I can figure out why I keep ending up with the wrong ones.”
But her friend was having none of that. “I know a lot of great guys. I can fix you up with someone.” Justine was involved in nearly every kind of group or club in Friday Harbor. She volunteered for charity drives and fun runs, and sponsored a local women’s self-defense class. Although Justine’s involvements with men often lasted no longer than a patdown from a TSA agent, she had the knack of staying friends with the guys she had dated.
“Of course,” Justine said reflectively, “you may have to lower your standards just a little.”
“My standards aren’t high to begin with,” Lucy said. “All I want is a man who takes care of himself but isn’t a narcissist … who works but isn’t obsessed with his job, and is confident without being arrogant … and isn’t still living with his parents when he’s in his thirties, and doesn’t expect that taking me for a romantic dinner at a local restaurant on the first date is automatically going to lead to the removal of my clothes. Is that so unreasonable?”
“Yes,” Justine said. “But if you can forget that laundry list of qualities, you might find a pretty decent guy. Like Duane.”
She was referring to her current boyfriend, a biker who dressed in leathers and rode an ’81 Harley Shovelhead.
“Did I tell you I’m doing some work for Hog Heaven?” Lucy asked. It was the biker church that Duane attended.
“No, you didn’t mention it.”
“They commissioned me to replace that big window at the back of the building. I’m using some suggestions from the congregation. The horizontal part of the cross is going to be made with stylized motorcycle handlebars.”
“Very cool,” Justine said. “I can’t believe they could afford you.”
“They couldn’t,” Lucy admitted with a grin. “But they were such nice guys, I couldn’t turn them away. So basically we did a barter deal. I’m doing the glasswork for them, and whenever I need a favor in the future, I’m supposed to call them.”
After Lucy had moved out of the house with Kevin and into the room at Artist’s Point, she worked in her studio for nearly two days straight. She emerged only to catch a few hours of sleep in her room at the bed-and-breakfast, and returned to the studio before daybreak. As the biker church window took shape, Lucy felt an even deeper connection to her work than usual.
The church congregated in what had formerly been an old movie theater. The room was small and windowless except for the stained-glass panel that had recently been installed in the center of the front wall where a movie screen had once been. The entire building couldn’t have been more than twenty feet wide, with rows of six seats on either side of the aisle. “We’re aiming for heaven,” the pastor had said to her, “because hell won’t have us.” Lucy had known exactly how to design the window after those words.
She coupled the traditional lead came method—joining pieces of glass in a framework of soldered metal—with a modern technique of gluing a few sections of vibrant flash-glass plates to larger pieces of glass beneath. It had given the window extra depth and dimension. After working a glazing compound into the spaces between the lead and glass, Lucy soldered a matrix of reinforcement bars to the window.
Finishing the project around two in the morning, she stood back from the worktable. She felt a thrill of satisfaction as she looked at the window. It had turned out exactly the way she had envisioned—reverent and beautiful, a little quirky. Exactly like the biker church congregation.
It had felt good to do something productive, and focus on something other than her own problems. Her glass, she thought, skimming her fingertips over a gleaming translucent panel, had never let her down.
* * *
Lucy had put off calling her parents about her breakup with Kevin. Not only did she need time to think about what had happened and what to do next, but also she was certain that by now Alice would have called them and put her own spin on the situation. And Lucy wasn’t going to waste her emotions or her energy on a useless battle. Her parents would take Alice’s side, and Lucy would be expected to keep her mouth shut and fade into the background.
The Marinns had moved to a condo close to Cal Tech, where Phillip was teaching part-time. They flew up to Seattle every two or three months to visit their daughters as well as keep in touch with friends and colleagues. The last time they had visited, they had been displeased to learn that a generous birthday check they had given Lucy had been spent entirely on a new Jet Ski for Kevin.
“I had hoped you’d buy something nice for yourself,” her mother had scolded Lucy gently in private. “Or gotten your car fixed up and repainted. Something for your benefit.”
“It benefits me if Kevin is happy.”
“How soon after you received that check did he mention wanting a Jet Ski?”
Nettled by the question, Lucy had replied casually, “Oh, he didn’t mention it. I was the one who came up with the idea.”
Which hadn’t been true, of course, and her mother hadn’t believed it anyway. But it had bothered Lucy to realize that her parents didn’t like her boyfriend. Now she wondered what they would make of him dumping one sister in favor of the other. If it was what Alice wanted, if it made her happy, Lucy suspected they would find a way to live with it.
However, when her mother called from Pasadena, her reaction was different from what Lucy had anticipated.
“I just talked to Alice. She told me what happened. I can’t believe it.”
“I couldn’t either, at first,” Lucy said. “Then when Kevin asked me to move out, I started believing it.”
“Were there any signs? Did you have any idea this was coming?”
“No, I had no clue.”
“Alice says that you and Kevin were having problems.”
“Apparently,” Lucy said, “the problem we were having was Alice.”
“I told Alice that your father and I are incredibly disappointed in her, and that we can’t support this kind of behavior. For her own sake.”
“Really?” Lucy asked after a moment.
“Why do you sound surprised?”
Lucy gave a disconcerted laugh. “Mom, in my entire life, I don’t ever remember hearing you or Dad say that you were disappointed in anything Alice did. I thought you and Dad were going to ask me to accept Alice’s relationship with Kevin and just get over it.”
“You lived with that man for two years. I don’t know how you could ‘just get over it.’” There was a long pause. “I can’t imagine how you got the idea that your father and I would approve of Alice’s actions.”
Her mother sounded so genuinely bewildered that Lucy couldn’t repress an incredulous laugh. “You’ve always approved of whatever Alice wanted to do, right or wrong.”
Her mother was quiet for a moment. “I admit, I’ve always tended to overindulge your sister,” she eventually said. “She’s always needed more help than you, Lucy. She’s never been as capable as you. And she was never the same after the meningitis. Mood swings and depressions…”
“Those could also have been caused by being spoiled rotten.”
“Lucy.” Her mother’s tone was reproachful.
“It’s my fault too,” Lucy said. “I’ve enabled Alice as much as everyone else. We’ve all treated her like she’s a dependent child. I’m not ruling out the possibility that she’s had to deal with some long-lasting effects from the meningitis. It’s just … at some point Alice has to be responsible for her own behavior.”
“Do you want to come to California for a visit? Get away for a couple of days? Dad and I will buy you a ticket.”
Lucy smiled at the obvious effort to change the direction of the conversation. “Thanks. That’s really sweet of you. But all I would do is sit around there and mope. I think I’m better off staying here and keeping busy.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m taking it day by day. I think the tough part is going to be running into Kevin and Alice—I’m not sure how I’m going to handle that yet.”