The woman clearing turned out to be named Sophie. She was petite and pale-skinned, black-eyed, delicate yet direct. “So you’re the one who’s known Lacie since forever,” she cried. “What was she like in high school? You have to tell us.” But before I could answer she was distracted by a book on the mantel. “Oh, have you read this yet?” she called to Lacie, and the lightness of her tone convinced me she had no idea what I had done.
Next I was introduced to Dylan, who reminded me of a cloudy day at the beach, sandy brown hair and freckles. While shaking her hand I wondered: did none of Lacie’s friends know the story? It would be just like Lacie to be discreet.
I didn’t have time to riddle it out. “Dylan gave you the bed,” Lacie was prompting.
“Oh God, thank you,” I obediently cried, and Dylan said it was no problem, they were getting rid of it anyway. Trash, I told myself, you sleep on other people’s trash. But I smiled.
After Sophie and Dylan came Anna, a soft, milky redhead with a twisting mouth. “You’re both writers,” Lacie exclaimed, and we shook hands warily, but when she heard I was working with Portia Kahn, her green eyes widened. “She’s got a great list.”
There was no Ian yet, but other than the occasional glance at the door, Lacie didn’t betray any reaction to his tardiness. We gathered round the dining-room table, now set with silverware and cloth napkins, and Lacie, singing, lit two tall green candles. They all knew the prayers, and slowly scooped their hands before their eyes. I tried to follow. Once I caught Lacie’s eye and she smiled apologetically, as if to acknowledge this new part of herself. Later we passed covered bread, and sipped delicate quarter-glasses of wine from jam jars. “Shabbat,” Sophie purred happily, leaning back in her chair.
Then the sacred mood, so sudden and fragile, vanished, and we were just five women eating soup. The tom kha gai was oily and fragrant, a warm coconut broth with lemongrass and tender strands of chicken. We all exclaimed over it, but Lacie, laughing, said it was stupidly easy to make. Dylan said that all soups were easy, that was what was so fantastic about them, and we were off, idly sailing the sea of conversation: a mutual friend, Jenny (mutual to all of them, I mean), who used to inflict ghastly lentil soup on her dinner-party guests; Jenny’s move to Oakland last summer with her girlfriend; Oakland; San Francisco; rent. Mostly I listened, and tried not to slurp my soup.
The talk drifted from girlfriends to boyfriends. Anna had recently been in Bar Harbor, closing up the summer home of her husband’s family, but to all the coos of I love Maine she only shook her head. “I spent the whole weekend convinced I had Lyme disease. Is there Lyme disease in Maine? Do you guys know?”
Dylan, laughing: “Did you even see a tick?”
“No, I just…got a rash.” She turned to me, explaining, “I’m a total hypochondriac, but then I actually get sick. It always turns out that I was right to worry.”
“I don’t think that’s hypochondria. I think that’s just being aware.” Was I being obsequious? I was having that weird thing where my head felt too big and my teeth grotesque. I couldn’t stand the attention, so I rushed to grab more of it. “It’s like with me and this toothpick. I still think I was right to freak out.”
“What’s you and the toothpick?” Lacie asked.
“Oh.” I rolled my eyes. “Once I thought I had swallowed a toothpick.”
The toothpick was a useful story, insofar as it made people laugh, and presented me as a neurotic (read: intelligent) mind, but I had never told it in New York before, and the stakes of this particular telling felt oddly high.
I made sure they were all looking at me before I added, “I didn’t sleep for days.”
Laughter, thank God. Dylan said, “You were worried about it coming out the other end?”
I made a mock solemn face. “Yeah, I mean, it can kill you.”
Anna, laughing: “How did you swallow a whole toothpick?”
But I was distracted by a man in the doorway with big blond curls and scruff on his face: Ian. “Hey,” he said, uneasy at interrupting our chatter and yet somehow at ease in his uneasiness. “I brought some bread,” he announced, holding up a loaf wrapped in one of our tea towels, and just like that, I knew their relationship was real.
“Ian!” they all cried, and lightly Lacie rose to her feet. Maybe she kissed him on the cheek—I’m not sure. When she reached his side, I found myself averting my eyes.
I had forgotten how big and blond he was, with gold curls of hair and little scabs of dried plaster on his arm. He wore Carhartts and red plaid; he came into the living room still wearing his boots, and Lacie didn’t say a word. He kissed all the women on the cheek, and when he got to me he exclaimed, “Rose!” and wrapped me in a big hug. He hugged me so hard my feet left the floor. “You’re here!” he kept exclaiming, as if he hadn’t known. “You’re in New York!”
“It’s true.” I was back on the ground, grinning like a fool.
“Amazing.” Happiness like water trembled behind our smiles.
Then we remembered the others. Lacie slipped off to the kitchen to fix him a bowl of soup, and he poured himself into her chair, graceful despite his bulk. “What are we all talking about?” he asked.
“Hypochondria,” Sophie said.
“Toothpicks,” Dylan said.
“I was swallowing them,” I said, thinking it would be funny, but Ian only nodded. Were we all being girly, too giggly over white wine? I wanted to separate myself from the women I had been so eager to join just a moment before, but how could I when I was the one holding the floor?
“I was eating fish tacos,” I explained. “This was in Nebraska. They were held together with toothpicks. I was with”—but I found myself suddenly unable to say my boyfriend—“Alex,” I finished lamely. Later I would see Lacie, too, refer to people by their first name rather than as my sister or my friend—it was kind of a trick for engendering intimacy—but at the time I felt like a country rube, assuming everyone knew everyone else in my world.
“And in the middle of eating his second one, there was this crunch. And Alex was like, totally matter-of-fact, Oh, a toothpick.”
I mimed picking a toothpick out of my mouth.
“And I was like, Oh my God. That’s what that was.”
Barks of laughter. Dylan gasped out, “You didn’t know it was a toothpick?” Ian smiled.
“Yeah, I had bitten something hard, like a few minutes earlier, and I didn’t know what it was, so I swallowed it.” Beat. “So of course we went to the ER.”
More laughter. Ian’s smile deepened, but clearly he was only being polite. I became frantic to wrest a real laugh from him.