into a small clay pipe. She lit the pipe, inhaled, held the smoke down in her lungs, exhaled, and passed the pipe to Seana.
“Sweet,” Seana said after she’d taken a long drag.
“Lovely, lovely,” I said after I’d let the smoke permeate my lungs and float up toward my brain. “This is quality stuff.”
“That’s because some of it’s Nick,” Trish said.
“Nick?!” I said.
“Did you really?” Seana asked.
“Uh-huh. Just a small sprinkling, though.”
“How wonderful,” Seana said.
I felt nauseated, dizzy. “You actually put some of Nick’s ashes in here?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” Trish said. “I thought of doing this—what we’re doing now—I mean I had it in mind ever since your phone call—as being a kind of private memorial ceremony Nick would appreciate, wherever he is. He’s part of us now…”
This was when Seana’s cell phone rang. “It’s Max,” she said, looking at the phone’s display screen and grinning. “His timing has always been impeccable.”
While Trish and I passed the pipe back and forth, Seana talked with Max, and told him we’d visited with Nick’s parents, were now visiting with Trish and her children, and that she’d found another home away from home—a quiet place where the two of them could be happy campers while working on their books. She told him we’d already paid for a room at an inn we weren’t going to use, and suggested he drive up and be our guest there.
“That would be so cool,” Trish said. “Even though I only met your dad a couple of times, I fell in love with him, Charlie, and used to wish he’d been my father. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I mean, it’s like I miss him because I wanted to know him and never did, and maybe now my chance has come. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I said again.
“We all miss you, Max,” Seana was saying. “We do. And that includes me because I become very sad when I’m away from you.”
“Me too,” I said, and I asked Seana to ask my father if he wanted to say hello to his beloved son.
“He says he only called because he misses us and that I should say ‘Goodbye and good luck’ to you,” she said a moment later.
“That’s the title of my favorite Grace Paley story,” Trish said. She rested her head against Seana’s shoulder. “But you’re still my favorite author, so there’s no need to be jealous.”
Seana was asking Max to repeat something, and she held the phone near us so we could hear him.
“Good night, my dear children,” was what he said then. “And don’t forget to be kind to one another.”
I heard a clicking sound, and then a dial tone.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“That’s it,” Seana said.
“Well, that’s his hang-up, I suppose,” I said.
Trish laughed. “You always had a way with words, Charlie. Even Nick used to say so, and he could really put out the word-play stuff when he got rolling.”
“Do tell,” Seana said.
“All grass is flesh,” I said while I massaged the back of Trish’s neck. “That was one of Nick’s lines. All grass is flesh.”
“Okay then,” Trish said. “And now I have an important question. Does what you said before about the room at Ocean House mean you’re going to crash here tonight?”
“Of course,” Seana said.
“Oh I do love you,” Trish said, and she kissed Seana on the cheek.
Seana placed the pipe on my lap, took Trish’s face between her hands, and kissed her on the mouth.
“Wow!” Trish said when they separated. She took the pipe from me, closed her eyes and inhaled. Then she and Seana flicked tongues with each other for a while, after which, while they kissed and hummed, I filled the pipe again, and tamped the good stuff down without spilling any.
“Essence of Nick,” I proclaimed some time later. “A new fragrance for a new generation!”
I thought my inventive sloganeering might inspire words of praise from Seana, but she was too deep into Trish—without my having noticed, Trish had unbuckled her coveralls and let the shoulder straps hang down—to be aware of me. And I was too stoned to be surprised or shocked by what was going on, or to wonder much about why it had never, until this moment, occurred to me that the relationship between the mother and daughter in Triangle might have been based on experiences Seana had been having through the years with women.
“What about me?” I asked quietly.
“Your time will come, sweetheart,” Seana said, but without turning away from Trish. “Be patient.”
“Patience is one of the cardinal virtues,” Trish said. “She’s also one of my friends—Patience Roncka. She grew up in the Portuguese community, and she’s my best friend here. She met Nick early on, but she never really knew him—not in the biblical sense, I mean.”
“Neither did I,” Seana said. “Did I miss anything?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh Charlie, you’re wonderful too,” Trish said, and she turned to me, her eyes on fire with happiness.
In the morning, Trish was first to wake up, and she whispered that she could hear Anna talking to herself in her crib, and would have to leave us for a while.
“This is like a dream come true,” Trish said. “Correct that. It’s not like a dream come true because it is a dream come true since I imagined the whole thing—well, some of it, anyway—before you ever got here.”
“So which was better,” Seana asked, “the dream or the reality?”
Trish laughed. “I’m not telling,” she said.
“Smart girl,” Seana said.
“I feel like I’m living in a book you wrote just for me.”
“For us,” I corrected.
“For us,” Trish said. “Even better.”
“My pleasure,” said Seana, who was spooned against my back, her breasts warm against my skin.
“God, I hope so!” Trish said.
I took Seana’s hands in mine, at my chest, and pulled her closer while I tried to take in what was going
