quiet place where the two of them could be happy campers while working on their books. She told him we’d already paid for a room at an inn we weren’t going to use, and suggested he drive up and be our guest there.
“That would be so cool,” Trish said. “Even though I only met your dad a couple of times, I fell in love with him, Charlie, and used to wish he’d been my father. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I mean, it’s like I miss him because I wanted to know him and never did, and maybe now my chance has come. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I said again.
“We all miss you, Max,” Seana was saying. “We do. And that includes me because I become very sad when I’m away from you.”
“Me too,” I said, and I asked Seana to ask my father if he wanted to say hello to his beloved son.
“He says he only called because he misses us and that I should say ‘Goodbye and good luck’ to you,” she said a moment later.
“That’s the title of my favorite Grace Paley story,” Trish said. She rested her head against Seana’s shoulder. “But you’re still my favorite author, so there’s no need to be jealous.”
Seana was asking Max to repeat something, and she held the phone near us so we could hear him.
“Good night, my dear children,” was what he said then. “And don’t forget to be kind to one another.”
I heard a clicking sound, and then a dial tone.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“That’s it,” Seana said.
“Well, that’s his hang-up, I suppose,” I said.
Trish laughed. “You always had a way with words, Charlie. Even Nick used to say so, and he could really put out the word-play stuff when he got rolling.”
“Do tell,” Seana said.
“All grass is flesh,” I said while I massaged the back of Trish’s neck. “That was one of Nick’s lines. All grass is flesh.”
“Okay then,” Trish said. “And now I have an important question. Does what you said before about the room at Ocean House mean you’re going to crash here tonight?”
“Of course,” Seana said.
“Oh I do love you,” Trish said, and she kissed Seana on the cheek.
Seana placed the pipe on my lap, took Trish’s face between her hands, and kissed her on the mouth.
“Wow!” Trish said when they separated. She took the pipe from me, closed her eyes and inhaled. Then she and Seana flicked tongues with each other for a while, after which, while they kissed and hummed, I filled the pipe again, and tamped the good stuff down without spilling any.
“Essence of Nick,” I proclaimed some time later. “A new fragrance for a new generation!”
I thought my inventive sloganeering might inspire words of praise from Seana, but she was too deep into Trish—without my having noticed, Trish had unbuckled her coveralls and let the shoulder straps hang down—to be aware of me. And I was too stoned to be surprised or shocked by what was going on, or to wonder much about why it had never, until this moment, occurred to me that the relationship between the mother and daughter in Triangle might have been based on experiences Seana had been having through the years with women.
“What about me?” I asked quietly.
“Your time will come, sweetheart,” Seana said, but without turning away from Trish. “Be patient.”
“Patience is one of the cardinal virtues,” Trish said. “She’s also one of my friends—Patience Roncka. She grew up in the Portuguese community, and she’s my best friend here. She met Nick early on, but she never really knew him—not in the biblical sense, I mean.”
“Neither did I,” Seana said. “Did I miss anything?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh Charlie, you’re wonderful too,” Trish said, and she turned to me, her eyes on fire with happiness.
In the morning, Trish was first to wake up, and she whispered that she could hear Anna talking to herself in her crib, and would have to leave us for a while.
“This is like a dream come true,” Trish said. “Correct that. It’s not like a dream come true because it is a dream come true since I imagined the whole thing—well, some of it, anyway—before you ever got here.”
“So which was better,” Seana asked, “the dream or the reality?”
Trish laughed. “I’m not telling,” she said.
“Smart girl,” Seana said.
“I feel like I’m living in a book you wrote just for me.”
“For us,” I corrected.
“For us,” Trish said. “Even better.”
“My pleasure,” said Seana, who was spooned against my back, her breasts warm against my skin.
“God, I hope so!” Trish said.
I took Seana’s hands in mine, at my chest, and pulled her closer while I tried to take in what was going on—what was actually happening. My head was clear, and my senses alert—I’d rarely if ever had hangovers from smoking pot; rather the opposite—I’d usually woken up especially clear-headed after a night of smoking the stuff. I knew, of course, that I’d been drawn to Seana from the first time I’d met her, and had often fantasized moments like this, but now, even though the moment I was living in seemed a dream come true for me the way Trish said it was for her, there was a difference, I wanted to say: because of the fact that I’d known Seana for more than twenty years—for most of my life!—what had happened and what was happening seemed very natural somehow—as least as inevitable and familiar as it was wonderful…
“And oh—wait a minute,” Trish said. She was propped up on an elbow, facing me. “Before I go, I have to tell you something—a secret I’ve been saving. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” Seana said.
“Okay. Here it is: Before you came, I took a chance and went off my meds—my anti-depressants.”
“Me too,” Seana said.
“You went off your meds?” Trish said.
“Yes, and a good thing too, to judge from the results.”
“I mean, are you really on meds?” Trish said.
“Many of our finest writers are on meds,” Seana said. “Mine’s Celexa—twenty milligrams, once or twice a day, depending. RPN, as they say. And you?”
“Cymbalta—sixty milligrams a day, and it’s a killer—wreaks havoc with my sexuality and my digestive system.”
“Sixty is too much,” Seana said. “Try going down to forty.”
“I’m not on any anti-depressants,” I said.
“Poor Charlie,” Trish said, kissing me on the nose. “So forlorn. But we love him anyway, don’t we?”
Seana nuzzled the nape of my neck. “Mmmmm,” she said.
Trish got out of bed, dropped an orange muu-muu over her head, then kissed each of us, me on the forehead, Seana on the back of her neck, and, stepping over toys and around baskets of laundry, called out to Anna that she was on her way.
“Did Max ever tell you about his Uncle Ben?” I asked when Trish was gone.
“No,” Seana said. “Max never told me about