Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

“I’m pretty much not great,” Elizabeth said. She pulled the bottle of wine out of her bag and handed it to Zoe.

“Let’s go back to the house before we open this, okay? I don’t think a DUI is going to help any of us.”

Elizabeth puffed out her lower lip and turned toward the window. “It’s just been a weird summer. And there was no toilet paper on the train.”

Zoe murmured her disappointment with LIRR and then didn’t say anything for the rest of the ride, but held out her hand for Elizabeth to hold in the center well, above the cup holders.

• • •

The rental house was small but cute. An easy sell. It had one bedroom and a pullout sofa, which either Zoe or Jane had already pulled out, and a small kitchen/dining room. It smelled like salt, and there was sand underfoot. Jane was grilling something outside on the deck when they walked in, and Zoe slipped the tote bag off Elizabeth’s shoulder and set it down on the floor.

“We’re back!” Zoe called, even though the sliding door to the deck was open and there was no way that Jane could have missed their entrance. “She’ll be fine,” Zoe said, and patted Elizabeth on the arm.

“Is something wrong?” Elizabeth asked, steadying herself on the kitchen counter. The wine sloshed in her stomach. She should have eaten lunch. She shouldn’t have had so much to drink. She should have stayed home.

It was so pretty out at the very end of the island — Elizabeth always forgot that. It was an occupational hazard, sizing up real estate. Montauk was a decade behind the Hamptons, but ahead of the North Fork. The houses were small, and most of them were a short drive away from the main street, which, after all, didn’t have that much. But who was Elizabeth kidding? She didn’t care about selling beach houses to the party animals she’d been on the train with, or to their calmer older brothers with wives and toddlers. Brooklyn was bad enough. She didn’t need to deal with people who had so much disposable income that they were buying a second house.

“I think I need to sit down,” she said, and then collapsed onto the pullout sofa, leaning against the foam backrest with her legs extended in front of her.

“Me too,” Zoe said. “But hang on.” She walked around the sofa bed and out onto the deck. Elizabeth watched as Zoe put her arm on Jane’s back and then rested her head on Jane’s shoulder. They were facing away, pointed toward the wild grass and, somewhere in the distance, the ocean. It was impossible to tell if they were talking, but they didn’t move for a few minutes, except when Jane picked up her tongs and flipped something over on the grill.

It was a pretty night — there was a steady breeze, and the sky was washed with pink. Elizabeth wished that she and Andrew had a place like this, a modest hut somewhere in the country — why hadn’t they ever done that? All their vacation time had always seemed so precious, especially after Harry was born — his day camps and art classes, his creative-movement classes in Prospect Park, where the children just rolled around in the grass at a coordinated time every week for two hundred dollars. In theory they were free to go wherever they liked, and they had traveled some — a trip to Mexico when Harry was eight that horrified Andrew’s parents, a drive up the California coast wherein they learned that Harry got carsick when there were lots of turns, and so they drove on the highway instead, getting to San Francisco four days earlier than planned. One trip to Italy. It was scattershot, random. Elizabeth had gone to the same girls’ summer camp every summer of her life, then Cape Cod for August, and she’d wanted to give Harry more adventures. But instead they’d just stayed home, with views of Argyle Road and the Q train rumbling in the distance.

Zoe kissed Jane on the cheek, and then Jane turned around to wave at Elizabeth. It was all going to be fine. Elizabeth raised an invisible glass their direction. “Clink,” she said.

• • •

They ate at a small round table outside. There were ants, but nobody cared. Jane opened the wine that Elizabeth brought, and they drank it all, though Elizabeth had to squint a bit to make sure she had one glass and not two. Grilled fish, an avocado salad, little mussels that popped open over the flames. A peach tart made upside down, so the little peaches looked like they were mooning you. Fresh whipped cream. Elizabeth wouldn’t divorce Jane either.

“So, what’s this place he’s been going, Lizzy?” Jane asked, forking a flaky piece of fish into her mouth. “It’s Buddhist? Or something?”

“Or something,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t really know. I think they do yoga, and maybe have orgies. They sell juice. Kombucha? Is that different from juice? It seems like a nightmare, but what do I know? I’m a square.” She poked the bowl of whipped cream with a finger and then licked it off. She was truly drunk now, and feeling loose.

“You’re not a square,” Zoe said.

“You’re a little bit of a square,” Jane said, and Zoe pinched her on the arm. “What? There are worse things to be. Also, kombucha is totally different than juice. It’s fermented. Like beer. Do they make it themselves? That seems a little bit dodgy. And they sell it? Are they licensed to do that? I would look into that, if I were you. Or if I were trying to get them in trouble.”

Elizabeth lowered her head to the table and then bolted back up. The room spun. “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about trouble lately. Did Zoe tell you what Andrew did? Before the yoga, I mean?” In her head everything was a straight line, and it was all pointing backward. “He slept with Lydia. When we were kids. Not just once. If it was just once, eh.” She waved her hand in the air like she was signaling a waiter for the bill. “If it was just once, that would be one thing. But this was over and over and over again, when we were together. And so when I signed his name on the form, he’s just picturing his bare ass, you know? And I’m thinking it’s about him being a snobby cinephile or something. Ha!” Zoe and Jane both looked confused, but Elizabeth forged ahead. “I mean, I wouldn’t want my naked butt in a movie either, even if it is some eighteen-year-old’s adorable butt. It’s still my butt, you know? So that’s why I’m mad. Because it’s not like I never thought about it. I’m not a saint! But if I had, I would have told him before we got married, or at some point in the last seven hundred years.” Elizabeth swiveled her head toward Jane, pointing a finger. “Speaking of, did Zo ever tell you about the night we al most got together?”

“No,” Jane said, amused now. “She didn’t. Do go on.”

Elizabeth put her hands up next to her face, forming a little wall blocking Zoe from view. “This is totally different, of course, because nothing happened. But at Oberlin, we were at her apartment one night, watching Bonnie and Clyde , and she put the moves on me.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bonnie and Clyde ,” Zoe said. “Who’s in it, again?”

“That’s your response?” Jane looked tickled, and leaned forward. “Tell me more, Lizzy.”

“Nothing happened,” Elizabeth said, waving her hands in front of her face and accidentally flinging a fork into the bushes. “But it could have.”

“Wait, are you being serious?” Zoe put her hand on Elizabeth’s arm to steady it in the air, narrowly avoiding being clonked on the head.

Elizabeth dissolved into giggles. “Is this for her benefit?” she said, talking as low as she could. She looked at Zoe, beautiful Zoe. She was wearing a loose white button-down shirt, and it looked like something in a store window, with a breeze from an unseen fan blowing the hem just so. Sometimes Elizabeth thought that if she’d met Zoe a little bit earlier, or a little bit later, her whole life could have been different. Not that she and Zoe would have ended up together, but that every domino started a new chain. Maybe it wouldn’t have been Andrew — maybe it would have been the redheaded boy in her English class or the spazzy drummer they got to replace Lydia, who she’d once seen getting out of the shower and thought, Oh .