it can happen again.”
We continued the story, incident by incident, breath by shared breath, as if we were one person all those years. We remembered his house with the yellow door, the black car, the thick white rug, the jasmine tree in a pot, his yukata and olive skin. And, Colette, the music.
Marijuana lapsed into the Italian wine I’d brought, and Colette produced freshly baked oatmeal bread and a tub of peanut butter. She had furniture, clothes, dishes, shapes of her own. I caught a sniff of the interior of her fridge, later used her bathroom and saw his toilet things neatly stacked on the tub’s edge. Scissors, toenail clippers, razor, Brut.
Our talk surged forward as if we needed to pass through each phase of our shared life just to get to this point.
We were lying on the couch, half drunk, unable to finish a story because we were laughing so hard, when he came in. His shadow crossed the rug before us, elongated by the evening light. Colette pulled herself together and made the introduction.
“Nelson,” Colette waved. “I’d like you to meet my sister, Jean, who you’ve heard so much about.”
We kissed gently, on the lips. His beard grazed my cheek. He was dark, older, long-haired, and wore a blue turtleneck and jeans. He must have heard a piece of the conversation, or felt a tone.
“Going over old times?”
He said it lightly, but I felt caught out, guilty. Colette looked once at me, then almost visibly moved her heart from us to him and said, “Maybe that’s all we have now.”
My own heart crumpled as if kicked. Colette, I could not bear what you said, its naked tone, the grave disloyalty. The man was there, smiling and wise.
Chapter Three
Jean steps down the precarious log stairway along the cliff face, reaching at one point for a non-existent handrail. Not built yet. She nearly hurtles into the darkness of watery cold Juan de Fuca Strait before regaining balance. She sits on a step and pauses for breath and nerve.
The sea air is almost too pungent, piercing her nostrils way back into her head.
She thinks of calling Colette’s name. The dark is suddenly frightening. She has left the range of the coach lamps and the fluorescent bug-zappers mounted on poles in the garden.
She cups a hand to her mouth and cries a wolf wail — “Ow-owww”—then holds her breath and waits, her ears filling with the racket of crickets and the rhythmic slap of waves.
“Ow-owwww”: the answering call from below. Again Jean lets one go, full-throated and animal proud, and slips down the remaining steps, one after the other, on her behind.
She wobbles to her feet on the final step.
A tall, slim shape is pressed flat against the shoreline, the posture so familiar Jean could sketch its silhouette without looking. She waits until she feels the sureness of sand beneath her feet and nearly speaks. But a flurry of words screams through her head like a flock of birds, knocking her off balance again. She strains at the darkness, hoping to be masked a while longer.
The shape moves toward her, soundless over sand. Suddenly Jean is wrapped in an embrace so tight that sea and sky disappear and she’s a small rock surrounded by a wiry starfish. She can feel her tears wet Colette’s shoulder, and her ears, blocked since the plane’s descent, pop at last. A rush of clear warm sound pumps in, and she can hear the roar in her veins, a sound like the sea, only higher.
“Come and sit on my rock,” says Colette.
She leads them to a stone platform, far enough from water so they won’t get wet, yet near enough so the largest waves peter out inches away, leaving a clogged outline of silt and seaweed. Jean perches cross-legged, scraping her knee against the remains of an oyster.
“When did you get here?” She hugs herself, chilly now that Colette has pulled away.
“Early morning.”
“You must be beat.”
“I am.”
The sea fills up the silence.
I saw you with him, she begins numbly. But even thinking the words causes a swell of nausea. There will be a reply and explanations, descriptions, and reasons drawn. Too clearly. So she finds herself bone-silent again. When she leans forward something invisible presses tautly against her belly.
“Your hair looks good,” she offers.
It’s been cut short and sticks up straight like a hairbrush.
Colette runs her fingers through it. “You don’t think it looks too butch?”
“Naaah.”
They are silent, each monitoring the other’s shallow breathing.
Last winter, Colette came to New York to visit. Jean had cleared the weekend and planned it start to finish-but Colette wanted to go off on her own. She’d leave the apartment dressed in something she’d just bought on West Broadway, something with wide shoulders, and not come back till early morning. She said she needed to explore on her own, find her own piece of the city. Only on the final night did they curl up on the sofa over steaming mugs of cocoa, Colette pale from lack of sleep, and talk like old times. Colette spoke of Nelson, whom she intended to marry. “What if he’s the wrong guy?” she kept asking, then started to laugh. “You’re supposed to know, Jean.” No wonder she was confused, with Yoshi just left in some penthouse apartment, towel wrapped around his waist, smooth chest glistening with sweat.
Colette reaches into an inner pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”
“No, thanks.”
“Good for you.”
Jean watches as Colette inhales, only the lit tip visible in the darkness. Her movements are as natural as if she needed the smoke for breathing. She looks like a young guerilla, darkly handsome like the Middle-Eastern soldiers on the six o’clock news. Does Yoshi find her exotic? Innocent?
“Did you get a chance to look at the garden?” asks Colette.
“A little. It was nearly dark when I arrived. What do you think of the house?”
“I like it,” says Colette. “Hopelessly bourgeois, of course—but it’s got style. It’s like one of those Mobius strips: the outside’s inside and the inside’s outside.”
Jean nods. Maybe she should smoke. It looks so intense and reflective.
“What do you make of the secret announcement?” she asks. “Dad just smiles and taps his pipe.”
“I know,” snorts Colette. “We’re supposed to keep guessing. But I’m not that curious.”
“Neither am I,” says Jean quickly, then adds, “Maybe they’re going to announce that after all these years they’re not married and we’re illegitimate—”
“And now that they’re getting older they’ve decided to tie the knot,” completes Colette. “Not
