“Some of them feel like they have to,” Jesse said. “To survive.”
“It takes courage,” I added, “to be vulnerable. You know that.”
“Were you afraid?” Kim asked, eyes wide.
“Terrified,” I said.
Jesse gripped my hand again — warm, one finger wrapped around my knuckle. “It takes work,” he said. “You push through the fear. Again and again.”
“And if you’re lucky,” I said, “you find someone who’s willing to do that with you.”
“There’s that luck again,” she said, grimacing facetiously.
“Destiny,” Jesse said. “You have to have faith that it will happen.”
She arched her eyebrows. I saw in her eyes that Jesse was speaking a foreign language.
“It’s luck,” I told her. Somehow, luck seemed more reassuring. Luck wasn’t anyone’s fault.
The timer rang and Jesse started to rise.
“No, no, no,” I said, tossing my napkin on to the table. “I’ll take care of it. You entertain our guest. You’re the charming one.”
The lasagne was perfect, golden in the middle, brown and slightly crunchy around the edges. I carved into it with the spatula and pulled out three large squares. When I returned with a steaming plate in each hand, Jesse and Kim were laughing together. They looked remarkably comfortable, as if this were any other evening. As if they were still in college, the whole world just a figment of the future.
“I hope it’s not me,” I said, settling Kim’s plate before her.
“No,” she said, “don’t worry. I was just telling Jesse about one of my students. He was under the impression that Virginia Woolf had written Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
“And how did you disabuse him of that notion?” I asked, turning Jesse’s plate as I laid it down so that the garlic bread was on the left, where he liked it.
“Very delicately,” she said. “You have to be careful with their precious little eighteen-year-old egos.”
I went back for my own plate and fetched the bowl of freshly grated Parmesan. “Will you be happy to be done with teaching for a while,” I asked, taking my place again, “or do you think you’ll miss it?”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll miss it,” she said, slicing into the lasagne. A burst of steam escaped, and she put her fork down to wait for it to cool. “But I’ll be back in the classroom eventually. Shaping those little minds.”
“What about the really little minds?” I asked. “You won’t miss that?”
She lifted her glass and looked into it contemplatively. “I’ve never felt called to raise children,” she said. “This isn’t about that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I need to hear it. Again.”
“That’s understandable.” She drained her glass and reached for the bottle.
Jesse, in mid-crunch on his garlic bread, suddenly perked up. “I, on the other hand, am a completely different story. My biological clock has been ticking since I was six.”
“Six?”
“Oh you should have seen me, stealing my sister’s baby dolls away. Whenever she wasn’t looking, I’d kidnap one of them and start sprucing up its outfit.”
Kim laughed and turned to me — wide-eyed and curious, like Oprah.
“I was more into Barbies myself,” I admitted. “I liked glamour, not diapers.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Jesse said with a wink.
Kim sprinkled cheese over her lasagne, shaking the spoon gently to get an even layer.
Jesse was right: I was anxious. I tend to blurt things out when I’m anxious. “I get tested every three months,” I said to break the silence, “like clockwork.”
Kim smiled and bowed her head. “I know, Nick,” she replied. “Jesse told me.”
“I just wanted to make sure you knew,” I said. “Clean bill of health.”
Jesse rolled his eyes. “We’ve already had this conversation, honey. We’ve covered all the bases.” He had such a firm jaw, almost square, with a delicate cleft that was nearly impossible to shave properly.
I nodded. They had had the conversation already. She’d asked all her questions; Jesse had asked all of ours. I should have been satisfied with that. But when Kim had called yesterday, telling us it was time, I suddenly regretted being only a vicarious part of the discussion. I wasn’t vicarious tonight, and I wasn’t going to be vicarious later on, either.
I put my fork down and took a deep breath. I’d learned that much. I’d learned how to shut off the racing of my mind. But at times like this, it seemed like a full-time job. I refilled everyone’s glass as an excuse to drain my own.
I fetched another bottle from the sideboard and poured. The Pinot felt smoother on my tongue than the tart Chardonnay. It went down more easily.
“I just want the experience,” Kim said at last, her features softened by the third glass of wine. “And time’s slipping by. I’ll be thirty-five in June, you know. I just want to know what it’s like. Is that crazy?”
“No,” Jesse said. “That makes total sense. Hell, if I could do it, I would. I’d love that experience.”
I laughed. “Honey, if you could do it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Kim still had a crush on Jesse — that much was obvious. The way she looked at him now, the way her eyes glowed when she turned from me to him didn’t help my anxiety at all. It was as if there was an understanding between them, an agreement that I hadn’t signed. I took a deep breath and told myself that I was not the third wheel this time.
As if reading my discomfort, Jesse looked up from his plate and smiled at me, his eyes bright and hopeful. I unfolded my leg beneath the table and touched his foot with my own. His smile broadened.
“It’s time for dessert,” he said, rising from the table. He gathered the plates into a pile, Kim deftly scooping in one last bite before it vanished from in front of her.
I sat back in my chair. I hadn’t eaten much. Even though my stomach was churning with hunger, I hadn’t been able to get down more than a few bites. I took another sip of wine. My insides would be all liquid before long.
Jesse returned in a moment and settled dessert plates in front of us — our casual set, the ones with lithe dancers drawn on them in silhouette, striking various ballet poses. Each plate bore an eclair from our favourite neighbourhood bakery, huge chocolate-drenched pastries that ordinarily made my mouth water. I took another breath to avoid throwing up.
He unscrewed a bottle of orange muscat and began pouring it into liqueur glasses. I picked up mine as soon as he’d lifted the bottle away, but he gently slapped my hand. “Not yet,” he said. “We have to toast.”
I dutifully put the glass down. Kim was already digging into her eclair, the cream oozing on to her plate, obscuring the extended leg of a ballerina in arabesque.
“To the gift of love,” Jesse said, his glass in mid-air. Kim and I lifted ours towards him and clinked.
I’ve always hated double entendre.
I sat. I drank. I waited. The eclair sweated, untouched, before me.
“Well,” said Jesse at last, wiping a drop of cream from his lip with a napkin, “now what?”
I stared into my glass — through it, to a world painted orange.
Kim giggled and settled her fork on to the empty plate. “You boys are so coy,” she said. “Can’t we just say it, for heaven’s sake? We all know why we’re here. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”
“Not for me,” I said, still gazing into the muscat.
She laughed. “But you have done it before, haven’t you?” She paused. “Sleep with a woman, I mean.”