She reminded me a bit of myself when I was her age, and I couldn’t help brooding on how Brad and I had both changed. We’d sunk into routines and habitual conversations that threatened to smother us.
Skye said she loved boating, adding that she and Joe didn’t do it often enough. I agreed with her about loving the experience of a fast-moving boat. Racing across the lake, feeling the power of the motor, the wake like a white ribbon unfurling behind us, and the endless expanse of deep blue water on all sides gave me an incredible feeling of exhilaration, impossible to duplicate. I hated that using our boat was confined to a single week every summer. I think Brad hated it too, but somehow, no matter how often we talked about taking more long weekend trips, it never happened.
After looking around a bit, Joe wanted to know all about the mechanics of the boat. As Brad went over its capabilities, answering what sounded like fairly knowledgeable questions, I could feel Brad starting to warm to our new friends. Despite their easy money from a family that sounded loaded, Joe was more down-to-earth than both of us had realized.
Joe and Skye weren’t married, but they acted like a married couple. They were very affectionate for two people who had been together for over ten years. As I considered their body language, I told myself to turn off Brad’s therapy brain. It had a way of creeping into my own thoughts far too often. The tendency came from years of listening to him fight his own inclination to observe and analyze the marriages of friends and members of our families, even utter strangers.
Reading Brad’s twice-weekly blog posts also contributed to this tendency to analyze and form opinions about others’ marriages. Maybe I was simply comparing those marriages to my own. I was never sure.
Brad was very discreet with the confidence people placed in him. More than discreet: almost paranoid about inadvertently revealing even the tiniest piece of information about the couples he counseled. He never mentioned his clients in the blog, not even small, unidentifiable details. The blog never discussed the relationships of anyone we knew. It was all theory, with stories that came out of case studies from grad school, fabricated situations, and our own marriage. I was honestly fine with him writing about some of the challenges the two of us had faced over the years. He liked helping people and I didn’t mind, at first.
After a while, the parts of our marriage I read about in his blog seemed nothing like the real-life situation I’d been a part of. When I told him this, he asked me to change whatever I wanted so the stories were closer to how I remembered the event. But that was a lot of work. And it was his blog. It was almost scary to see how my memories and what he wrote drifted further and further away from each other, until it felt as if he was lying to all those hungry, eager, opinionated readers. And they were very opinionated. During the past year or so, I’d stopped reading it altogether, especially the comments.
Whenever he chose a topic that he thought might expose too much, he asked me to read it and make changes before he posted it. I rarely changed more than a word or two. Both of us were very open people. Hiding who you are, trying to cover up your flaws, is not the recipe for a satisfying life and solid relationships, marriage or friendships. Brad said that repeatedly, and I agreed, in theory. Very often, life is nothing like the theories we cling to.
By the time the four of us were sitting on the back deck, the sun was starting to set. We were drinking white wine and Brad was telling stories about some of our boating trips. Joe ate them up. It was clear Brad’s ego was being stroked, but he didn’t seem to notice. If he did, it wasn’t bothering him. I’d been right to invite them to dinner. They were easy to talk to and their presence meant we didn’t have to start the serious conversation Brad wanted to have. Yet.
After I made sure everyone was settling in, I excused myself to work on the lasagna. I loved the tradition of making lasagna on our first night at Tahoe. There was something about gently placing wide, soft noodles over meat and cheese that made me think about the slow unraveling of tension in my muscles. Even though I’d been firm that I liked to be alone while I cooked, sometimes catching up on social media or texting with my friend, Kate, Skye kept popping into the kitchen asking how she could help me. Each time, I gently chased her away.
Brad had always loved that I preferred to cook alone. He said it seemed as if I created mystery around food preparation. I went into a secret place and created a meal by magic, appearing with a fully formed, multi-course dinner that I’d conjured out of nothing.
When the lasagna was in the oven, I rejoined them on the deck, bringing a second bottle of wine and a tray with glasses of water and lemon slices as well as a dish of olives.
I refreshed everyone’s wine and settled into one of the lounge chairs.
“We didn’t even ask your last name,” Skye said. She popped an olive into her mouth, chewed, and then eased out the pit onto one of the small spoons I’d placed around the olive dish for that purpose. Skye’s lips, pursed around the olive, looked like they belonged to a child. She was several years younger than Joe, younger than Brad and me. It wasn’t important, but it made me wonder how old she’d been when the two of them got together. She must have been a teenager.
“Fromm,” Brad said.
“Joe is Marchant and I’m Smith,” Skye said.
I laughed, then caught myself and smiled at her. “I’m not making fun of your name, but for as common as Smith is supposed to be, you hardly ever hear it.”
“I know, right?” Skye tapped her phone. “Found you on Facebook. I’m friending you right now.”
I picked up my phone. “And I’m accepting right now.”
“Come on, Brad,” Skye said. “Don’t ignore my invitation.”
“I don’t use Facebook much,” he said.
“He doesn’t,” I said.
“But you’re on there,” Skye said. “I can see your face.”
Brad stood and walked to the edge of the deck. He leaned one elbow on the railing and gazed out over the water. “I’ll accept it later, but don’t be offended if you never see anything from me.”
“I won’t.” She looked at me, her lips slightly parted, giving her a vulnerable appearance.
Brad turned. “It’s because of my therapy practice. I can’t be interacting with anyone who’s a potential client. Which is almost anyone. I can’t risk crossing boundaries with current clients. And because of my blogs, a lot of people I don’t even know will try to connect. So I just make it a policy to avoid using it as much as possible.”
“That makes sense.” Skye picked up her glass and took a sip of wine. She turned her attention to me. “But you use it a lot, right?”
“I do.”
Skye ran her finger across the screen, scrolling through my feed. “Yeah, you do. I see that now.”
We put away our phones and began talking about our favorite movies.
When the lasagna was done, we sat at the dining table facing the floor-to-ceiling window, the table artfully arranged to provide maximum views of the lake. The architect had given a lot of thought to designing a house that made the view front and center in as many rooms and outdoor areas as possible. I expected the house was equally spectacular buried in snow, looking across impossibly blue water at white-shrouded mountains, but we’d never been there during winter.