Page 17 of Saltwater

“They were very close,” she repeats.

“Should I be jealous?” Freddy asks to lighten the mood. And it almost works.

“No,” Helen says. “Just a youthful indiscretion.” She smiles, but it’s tight. I know the smile. The world knows this smile—the one she gives when interviewers push too far, when the paparazzi get bored and camp outside the gates of their Bel Air house.

“You remember those, right?” I say to Freddy. To take the pressure off Helen, but also because he deserves it. And because it makes it seem like we’re old friends giving each other a hard time, which, I realize, we might be under different circumstances.

A shadow blinks across his face; I’m too close to the nerve. Before he can answer, Naomi says, her voice wobbly, “Marcus knows all about indiscretions.”

Her eyes are dark in the dim light. It takes me a beat, but I see it: her pupils are so blown they nearly eclipse her irises.

“About what?” Marcus says.

I can’t tell if he really didn’t hear her or if it’s a practiced attempt to defuse the situation. Naomi likes to call the office multiple times a day. She likes to know where he is. His schedule. Who he’s golfing with.

Marcus knows all about indiscretions.

“We all make mistakes, right?” Freddy looks at Marcus, like he might find reassurance there, and then at me. I don’t offer him anything, but Richard does.

“Of course we do,” he says.

Freddy smiles, his relief immediate.

“But,” Richard says, “we are also the product of our mistakes. Regretting them is a waste of time. They are part of us.”

Richard holds his hand over his solar plexus and closes his eyes. He makes a circular motion. The diners at the surrounding tables are watching. Since Sarah’s death, Richard has very publicly foundenlightenment, self-actualization, forgiveness. He plays the aging-guru part expertly, with long, graying hair pulled into a tight bun, a distinctive face, lined and a little hollow below the cheekbones. Blue eyes. Flowing linen clothes. He loves, I think, that it sets him apart from, lifts him above, his brother. His bon vivant, expansive brother. A materialist to Richard’s spiritualist. He likes, too, that it makes him different from the Richard Lingate of 1992. The one who didn’t murder his wife, but might have.

Richard’s eyes open; Marcus rolls his. He hates this enlightenment bullshit. Particularly because behind closed doors, Richard Lingate is the same. Even this performance is about controlling the public image.

“Oh god, Richard,” Naomi says, “not this again.”

“Transcendental meditation,” Richard says. “It will change your reality—”

“Has it changed yours?”

The response from Marcus is sharp. I’ve heard him, in private, blame his brother for what happened thirty years ago:He’s an idiot.Always was.But he’s family.

I expect Helen to say something, but she flips her knife over and over and over. She won’t look at him. This is how it’s been all these years. She just takes it. The pronouncements. The evangelizing. All of it. Fighting only makes him worse. If only her father had really found enlightenment, things might have turned out differently.

A suffocating silence settles on the table.

“When I was in college,” I say, the lie easy, “my mistake was that I used to steal alcohol from the corner gas station. One of us would flirt with the cashier while the rest of us shoved bottles of wine into our jackets and pants. It would have been so much more efficient if we could’ve gotten to the hard alcohol, but that was always behind the counter.”

No one responds, and maybe I’ve overplayed my hand. But isn’t this why they brought me along? To break up the dynamic? To offer one truth and a lie? Because I’ve stolen so much more than alcohol. Even if it was harmless enough—a mistake—and only from people who wouldn’t notice. Mostly from people who wouldn’t notice.

I want them to laugh. To change the subject. But they’re all watching me. Even Helen.

Then the waiter is there to take our order. I still haven’t chosen what I want. But it doesn’t matter. They don’t let me order. Marcus does it for all of us, listing a litany of dishes.

It’s small but it’s irritating. Like an insult said so quickly you spend hours trying to remember it. Helen has had a lifetime of this. I wonder if they were like this when Sarah was alive. If they did the same thing to her. If that’s why she killed herself. If that’s what she did.

“Sarah used to steal,” Naomi says after the waiter has left.

It startles me. Did sheknowI was thinking about Sarah?

“Let’s not talk about Sarah,” Marcus says. He moves the bottle of wine out of Naomi’s reach. I can’t tell if it’s meant to be a subtle or pointed gesture, but I notice it. I also notice his watch, a vintage Rolex Padellone with a moon phase dial, his father’s. A watch worth more than my mother’s house. My mouth is dry.

“She didn’t steal,” Helen says.

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