“Yeah, I can’t believe it never happened.”
Lynn changed the subject to their days on the debate team. “Do you remember the time Jean-Guy and I beat you and Louise in the provincial championships? You couldn’t get over it.”
“We had to argue against Quebec’s secession from Canada. With two French judges and only one English judge, that was the harder side to win.”
“Maybe. But you chose a bad strategy. Jean-Guy and I— ”
“ —Got lucky,” Ralph interrupted.
“Not at all. It was brilliant to have me speak in French and Jean-Guy in English. It blew the judges away.”
“Yeah, it was clever.” Ralph’s expression softened. “A sign of things to come, wasn’t it?” He motioned to the waiter to take away their plates.
She frowned. “You’ve eaten only half your steak.”
“That’s all I want. Would you like dessert?”
“What do you mean?”
“How about a nice crème brûlée?”
“No— What do you mean about a sign of things to come?”
“Adopting the French point of view as your own— Your love of men named Jean-something-or-other— Your dumping me in college for Jean-Pierre.”
Ralph ordered two crèmes brûlées.
“Make that one. I’m going to pass.” She got up from the table. “Excuse me— I’m going to the ladies’ room.”
Her love for Jean-something-or-other? Why had she agreed to this? Maybe for an opportunity—finally—to come clean . . . But maybe now, seeing each other again after such a long time, wasn’t the right time. She touched up her lipstick and ran a brush through her hair, still the same length it had been in high school and college. Short. She never let it grow out, her hair the only feature that has resisted the pull of time. But only with regular coloring. She’s added more wrinkles than Ralph has. No Botox for her. Let those crow’s feet creep toward her gray-green eyes if they must. Ralph always claimed her eyes were gray. She’s always seen them as green. Like his, hers can hold a gaze. Does he see hers as kind? Damn him— He’s as good looking as ever, still arrogant, still in control. He hasn’t changed. She brushed her hair back behind her ears.
“That’s not how I remember it— ” she said as she approached the table. Their waiter waited for her to sit, then placed a crème brûlée in front of her. “Compliments of the chef, Madame.” She nodded to the waiter and tasted a spoonful. “Please give my compliments to the chef.” Turning to Ralph, “You took up with your best friend’s sister.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t me with Jean-Pierre— It was you with Joan.”
“That was only after you began to see Jean-Pierre.”
“No, it was before. I asked if you wanted to discuss our term papers before we turned them in and you said you couldn’t because you had dinner plans.”
“I hardly remember.”
“Convenient. Let me jog your memory— Dinner with Jack and his sister. But Jack couldn’t come. You and Joan had dinner alone.”
“It was nothing.”
“Seriously?— A week later you took her skiing and left me behind.”
“That’s not how it was— Joan was part of a large group of us who went on the midterm ski trip— You didn’t even ski.”
“Maybe I would have if you’d asked.” She knew it was unfair to dredge this up after so long. But he’d started it. “Face it, you— “
“You face it. The truth is that you fell for him and his separatist cause. Christ, you married Jean-son-of-a-bitch right after graduation and began campaigning for the Parti Québécois!”
The people at the nearby tables stopped their conversations and turned their attention to Lynn and Ralph’s escalating argument. The waiter approached. “Is there something else I can bring you? A digestif, perhaps, compliments of the house, to accompany your dessert?” With a wave of the hand, Ralph dismissed the waiter’s intrusion. Lynn leaned across the table and spoke softly, “I tried to talk to you, but you’d have none of it. You said you weren’t ready.”
“Better late than never.”
“Sometimes not.”
At the hotel bar after dinner, Ralph ordered a cognac. Lynn nursed a seltzer-water-with-lime—she had a three-hour drive home. By tacit consent, they avoided the herd of elephants passing between them. After the evening’s drama, she wasn’t about to ask Ralph why he was still single, knowing that he’d counter by delving into the reasons why she and Jean-Pierre were living apart.
“You haven’t mentioned anything about Suzanne. At our high school reunion you said she was about to graduate from high school.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She could see that Ralph, thinking it safe territory, felt terrible for having asked. “Suzanne and her husband died in a plane crash. July 17th, 1996. My birthday. For seventeen years, I’ve avoided celebrating it.”
Ralph ran his hands through his hair and clasped them behind his head, his forearms pinched against his ears. “Oh my God, Lynn— I’m so sorry— That must’ve been devastating.”
“I think about her all the time.”
“On the phone you mentioned a grandson.”
“Jules. The only part of Suzanne who survived. He was staying with a nanny. Sixteen months old— ”
“You and Jean-Pierre raised him?”
“He doesn’t remember his parents. We are the only parents he’s known. He calls us Mum and Dad.”
“I’m sure it hasn’t been easy.”
Ralph was right about that. But maybe harder for Jules than her. Not because he’d been orphaned before having had a chance to know his true parents. Because— She decided the complicated story of Jules could wait. She wasn’t ready to tell it to Ralph. Another place she didn’t want to go. More of those than she’d first thought there would be when she agreed to this dinner. But unavoidable when you see someone again after a long time. A lot to catch up on, the inevitable prying into crannies where the mind has tucked certain events away, not for safekeeping but because the memories simply can’t be expunged, merely stowed as far as possible from where they can readily prey upon the mind. “It hasn’t.”
“Jules is seventeen now?”
“Almost eighteen. He’ll graduate in June.”
“Is he planning to go to college?”
“University of Toronto. Engineering.”
“What type of engineer does he want to be?”
“Mechanical or civil, I guess—he’s building model wind turbines for his science fair project this year. Floating windmills. Crazy-looking things.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah— What do you mean?”
“That’s Dieter’s specialty. When you called me the other day you mentioned you’d seen him recently.”
“At a town meeting. He represented International Wind Technologies.”
“A German company,” said Ralph. “He was recently put in charge of their North American operations.” Ralph filled her in on what she didn’t know about the Dieter of the present day. Their grade school and high school friend had followed his father’s footsteps and become a world-class engineer. “I bet Jules would like to