LITMIR.BIZ

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numbers at orientation, but when she said she was sure they’d see each other again soon, he had a feeling they would. It was on the second day of classes. He was sitting in his 8:30 AM film class, and as soon as the lights went out, she appeared beside him. We really should get some breakfast. That was her greeting. Then she tapped his knee, and he followed her out the door. With that, the pattern was set: If the professor was showing a film and both of them happened to make it to class that day, they left as soon as the lights went out. It was only a month before they were having sex.

      Gwen had signed up for the first orientation session available, and apparently she hadn’t made any friends in her group, none that she mentioned anyway. She said she’d stayed in her room during the scavenger hunt. That’s when she’d painted her nails shamrock green.

      “Did you like the tour?” Brad asked.

      “It was a tour. Here’s this building, here’s that one. It was fine, I guess.” Gwen plucked a crouton from her salad bowl, then added, “It was good to get out of Greenwood Park for a few days. Just change life’s window dressing.”

      Brad smiled. That phrase—change life’s window dressing. It was so Kara. Was Gwen even conscious of where she’d picked it up?

      She was talking now about the art program in New York. It started in a week, right after her graduation. “Mom thinks it’ll be depressing to be up there, but I don’t know what could be more depressing than sitting in the house all summer listening to her and Randy and the two Bobbies.”

      “The two Bobbies?”

      “The twins: Bobby and Tommy. Did you see them? They look the same, they act the same. I really can’t tell them apart.” Gwen said this with a wave of her hand, a gesture of dismissal with which Brad was familiar. Only if this had been Kara talking, she’d have had a cigarette in her hand, and she’d have ashed behind her, most likely on another person.

      “You don’t mean that,” he said.

      “I’m sure it’ll be a relief to have me out of the house,” Gwen continued. “Then Mom can focus all of her energy on family number two.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “The Randy Bunch. It’s a much simpler family. No dead father, no dead Kara, no bad behavior. I’m sure they’ll have a much better summer without me.”

      “Don’t say that.”

      “It’s true,” Gwen said. “She can’t wait for all this to be done. Once I’m gone and all the crap with Kara is passed, I bet she becomes a Cub Scout mother, really hurls herself into it. They went camping this spring. My mother, who gets manicures like other people go to church.”

      Brad wished he could offer her something useful. “People handle grief in different ways,” he managed after a minute. Gwen didn’t respond. She picked through her salad. It wasn’t a comment worthy of a response, Brad knew. Then he asked, “Did you know Kara was engaged?”

      Gwen sucked on her straw, and the bottom of the tea bubbled up with the suction. “Mom always said Kara was full of surprises.”

      “She never mentioned him?”

      “No, she did. A little. But not that they were, like, together. Did you have on glasses at the funeral?” she asked suddenly.

      “No, these are brand new,” he said. “What do you think?”

      Gwen studied him a moment. “They look pretty good,” she said. “Very Clark Kent.”

      “Why thank you,” he said. “I’m still getting used to them.”

      “I’ve had mine since I was three.”

      “I remember,” he told her, and he gave her a wink.

      “Oh, yeah,” she said, and they held each other’s stare. “Do you remember that time you and Kara took me out for ice cream in downtown Wilmington?”

      Brad nodded vaguely. “Sort of,” he said.

      “That’s one of my favorite memories of her,” Gwen said, retiring her fork to the side of her plate. “It was right before Kara left for New York, sort of a good-bye visit. Do you remember how insane the house was? The Bobbies had just been born and at least one of them was always screaming, and my crazy Aunt Nadine had moved in to help out. Y’all were barely there for an hour before Kara was like, let’s go, and you drove me to The Creamery.

      “I’d never been there because ice cream always made me sick, but Kara gave me this medicine she said would help. I thought she was making it up, but she said not to worry—if I puked, Mom would blame her, not me. So I got blue bubble gum–flavored ice cream, and it was like the greatest thing I’d ever eaten. And then I didn’t get sick. I thought she was magic. Turned out it was just a lactose supplement—she gave me a whole box of them. But I remember feeling like she’d invented ice cream.”

      Brad dimly recalled being exhausted by the whole visit. A noisy lunch. A trip to Walmart. This ice cream run. But he’d been a twenty-four-year-old whose girlfriend was about to move away. Hearing about it now, he was sorry he hadn’t paid more attention to what the visit meant, at least for Gwen. That trip ended up being his last visit to the house, until the funeral.

      “Before she left for New York,” Gwen added, “I remember she told me not to think about how far away she was, that I should call anytime I wanted—even after nine o’clock, if I could get away with it.”

      “And did you?” Brad asked.

      “Yeah, but she usually didn’t answer,” Gwen said with a laugh.

      Brad smiled. “That was pretty much my experience, too.”

      VAL was in the kitchen when Brad got home. Books and colored folders littered the dining room table. “I’m planning final exams,” Val called out to him. “Sorry for the mess.”

      Brad braced himself outside the kitchen doorway. The radio was tuned to NPR, talk of another suicide bombing outside of Baghdad. Then he walked into the kitchen. She had her back to him for a few seconds, then turned around and immediately asked, “What are you wearing?”

      He’d decided to be nonchalant about the glasses. “Oh, yeah, these,” he said. “I popped by the eye doctor the other day because I was having a little trouble with distance. Turned out I needed glasses. I picked them up today. What do you think?” He pulled a bottle of wine out of the pantry, then reached around Val to get a glass from a cabinet.

      “I didn’t know you were having trouble seeing.”

      “It’s a very mild prescription,” he said, his back to her. He uncorked the wine and poured himself a glass. A pot of soup was simmering on the stove. “Chicken noodle?” he asked.

      “Vegetable barley,” she replied. She studied him now, her bottom lip pulled in under her teeth.

      “Smells good,” he said, and he sipped his wine. “So, do they look okay?”

      She was angry. He could tell. But then she relaxed her mouth. It was nice to see one of her again. “They do,” she said. “You know, I could have helped you pick them out.”

      “Oh, you’ve got exams to deal with . . .”

      “It’s hard to pick out frames alone.”

      “Do they look bad?”

      “No, I’m just saying. You could’ve asked me.”

      “I’m sorry. Next time.”

      They stood in silence for a minute. A voice on the radio speculated about Iran’s interest in nuclear weapons, and Val snapped it off. “I don’t have the energy to be frightened about that right now.” Then she met his eyes. “They look fine. They make you look kind of like Clark Kent, actually.”

      He chuckled. The moment was passing. “That’s what Gwen said,” he told

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