When she finally stopped sneezing, she examined the book. “I’ve been wanting to read this!” she said, which wasn’t a complete lie as she had wanted to read it, before she did read it, a few months ago.
“Actually,” said Charlie, tugging on his ear, which was what he did when he felt a bit awkward or shy. (She already knew that about him. She already adored that about him.) “I don’t know anything about it. I just bought it because the picture of the girl on the front cover reminded me of you. I don’t know why.”
The girl on the front cover looked like a whimsical princess, and there was something about her expression that secretly reminded Gemma a little of herself too. It was her best self. The self she would be on a tropical island, on a perfect day, wearing a floaty dress and possibly a straw hat. A day when she didn’t sneeze or drink too much and nobody got offended or had to rush off and everybody got everybody else’s jokes. A day when Gemma had no memories except the good ones. A day when everything was funny and fascinating just the way it should be.
It delighted her that Charlie could recognize that self.
Wasn’t there some rule that said you had to marry that sort of man—fast?
She walked downstairs in her swimsuit and found Maddie, still naked and in her floaties, banging away on her xylophone. She was sitting on the sofa next to Nana, who was sloshing her bare feet around in a bucket of water.
“Oh good, Gemma!” said Nana. “I was just thinking. If I die in this heat, make sure they don’t have the funeral next Wednesday. That’s bingo day at the club. Everybody would be put out. Tell them to have it on Thursday.”
“You’re not going to die.”
Nana looked offended. “How would you know, Miss Smarty-pants?”
“Why don’t you come swimming with Maddie and me?”
“Because I don’t want to, thank you very much.”
Maddie tossed aside her xylophone with a clatter and threw her arms around Gemma’s leg. “Swim!” At least someone was in a good mood.
Lyn and Michael’s swimming pool was magnificent, a curving turquoise shell with glittering views that made you feel like you were swimming in the harbor.
“Gem! Look!” demanded Maddie. She leaned forward with her bottom sticking out behind her in imitation of a grown-up’s dive, her head squashed between upstretched arms. Then she launched herself into the pool, landing splat on her tummy. Her floaties kept her bobbing on the surface.
Gemma dived in next to her and swam along the bottom of the pool, feeling the voluptuous relief of immersion in a silent, cold, chlorinated world.
But it wasn’t as if she were in love with Charlie or even in a relationship yet.
They didn’t have nicknames, private jokes, photos of happier times, or joint friends who would be shocked and sad. No forthcoming social events. No joint purchases. It would be painless and clean. Just one sharp slice of the knife: “Charlie, I’m sure you understand. You’re Italian after all. Family comes first.”
“Look, Gem! Look!”
Maddie waded up the stairs and out of the pool, water dripping, and stood on the edge of the pool with her arms held high. She looked like a slippery little seal.
“Ooooh!” applauded Gemma as Maddie did a star jump into the pool and bobbed back up to the surface, gasping and choking, her hair flat across her face. She seemed to be under the impression that other people swam only for the pleasure of seeing her perform various awe-inspiring tricks.
“Maybe you could try and shut your mouth next time,” suggested Gemma. “You’ll swallow less water.”
Maddie patted the surface of the water with flat palms, so that drops of water flew in her eyes, and gave a loud chuckle, to indicate she was being funny now.
“Ha!” cried Gemma, splashing herself in an equally hilarious manner, while she thought about what Cat had said in Lyn’s office: “She’ll break up with him eventually, anyway.”
She wasn’t joking or being sarcastic. She said it as if it were a fact. She thought it was inevitable. Of course, the two of them had been teasing her for years about her growing accumulation of ex-boyfriends. Lyn had even given her a book called Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives and helpfully indicated with a Post-it note the chapter on the stupid thing she believed Gemma was doing. But still, Gemma had thought, rather idiotically she now realized, that they were as surprised as she was each time she broke up with another boyfriend.
Perhaps they already knew what Gemma secretly feared, that she wasn’t actually capable of genuine, serious love. Sure, she was capable of an infatuation, like the one she was currently experiencing with Charlie, but they were right, it probably wouldn’t last.
For weeks, sometimes months, she adored her men—and then one day, without warning, it hit her. Not only was she over the infatuation, she actively disliked the guy. She remembered sitting on a beach with the plumber who liked country music.
“Where’s the bottle opener?” he said, frowning and scrabbling through their basket.
And that was it. I don’t like you, she thought, and it was like an icy cold breeze whistling around her bones.
Some people lacked hand-eye coordination. Some people were tone-deaf.
Gemma lacked the ability to stay in love with somebody.
“Gem! Look!”
“Ooooh!”
They sat down to eat Christmas lunch at the long table on Lyn and Michael’s balcony. The table was set beautifully with tasteful Christmas decorations, the harbor glinted beside them, and the sun reflected rainbows in the crystal of the glasses.
It seemed to Gemma that the setting called for another, more functional, better-dressed family—especially today, when everybody had red faces and there was a discernible bubbling of hysteria just below the surface.
There were loud pops and insults as people pulled at their Christmas crackers far too aggressively. Cat and Dan nearly wrenched each other’s arms off. People began to read out the jokes inside their paper crowns in loud sarcastic voices. Nobody listened except for Michael, who genuinely found them funny, and Nana Kettle, who kept missing the punch lines. “Eh? What did the elephant say?”
Maxine and Frank sat next to each other, which was a disconcerting sight. In fact, Gemma couldn’t remember the last time she’d seem them sitting together. They seemed to be overcompensating by being excessively animated and polite to each other.