Rapture

"Oh boy." Jeff tried to force a laugh, but it sounded weak. Triffids came to mind, the few times he had gone there in search of someone or something, the driven people he had met, the whole depressing scene. But Bonnie had kicked away the last block that held him back, and Jeff found that the words finally began to come easily to him. "Yes, I guess I am, or I have been. For a long time I never thought about whether I was lonely or not. After the divorce, I just worked and worked, and worked some more. Loneli ness is something you have to sit down and think about-you have to notice it one way or another. If you stay busy enough, you can get by for quite a while. But that doesn't mean it goes away. It does catch up with you sooner or later, like an illness that doesn't have any symptoms until it develops to a certain point...."

"Critical mass," Bonnie said.

"Yes. Exactly."

And what's beyond critical mass, Bonnie wondered. She had seen enough of Jeff over the past forty-eight hours, in bed and out, to get a clear impression of the man. He was more than lonely; he seemed to be possessed of strange demons. She had seen it in the stiffness of his manner, in his hunger for physical contact, in the way his eyes moved and his skin tightened across his face when he didn't know what to say. She had seen it immediately in the mirrored sunglasses and what he'd done to his hair, and in his willingness to go along with whatever she wanted to do (which was probably because he couldn't think of anything to do himself; he had very little spontaneity). And she had seen it again this morning. He'd gone out by himself for a few minutes and then returned to announce that he'd rented a car and they were going for a drive. That was fine, but as soon as they were on the highway heading south, it became clear he didn't know what to do next. Get off at Quincy? Braintree? Weymouth? Assinippi? He wanted to be the man, the one in charge, but he just didn't do a very good job of it-a fact that seemed to haunt him all the time.

Finally they had stopped in Plymouth for lunch at a fish shack and then a look at the Rock. They had proceeded on as far as Sagamore, where Jeff had decided abruptly that he didn't want to drive to the end of the Cape after all. So they meandered back north along the old coast road until they'd come across this neglected, unprepossessing patch of sea front. It wasn't much of a beach and it wasn't pretty, but they were near Manomet Point, and there would be people around if the weather were better.

"I think I reached that point when I met your mother again last year," Jeff said nervously. "Critical mass, or whatever you want to call it."

"Really?" Bonnie sat up, brushed some sand off her sweater, and dug her boot heels into the hard ground. "What did Mom say or do to ... ?"

"Nothing, really. But seeing her old family house for sale, and then meeting her after so many years, well, it made me sit back and think. I'd been rushing through my life, but like a zombie, blind to everything but the work in front of me. When I got back to California, I was still thinking about it, and I realized what I had been missing. All those years, I hadn't really been enjoying life at all. I decided that it wasn't too late and that I could change my life; it didn't even matter if I made mistakes or it didn't work outbecause the important thing was that I try, that I make the effort."

"That's good," Bonnie told him. "That's healthy."

He gave a short, bitter laugh. "And the funny part is, as soon as I started changing my habits I discov ered that I had a lot more freedom than I would have guessed. It came as a shock to me, but at the same time I liked what I was doing. I knew immediately I was right.*

"You were Rip Van Winkle," Bonnie said.

"In a way, yes. That's right."

'Were you in love with my mother?" Bonnie thought she knew the answer to the question already, but it was time to make Jeff talk about it. They had skirted around it all weekend, but he could hardly bring himself to get it out in the open and face it with her.

"Was I ..." Jeff echoed. He didn't seem to understand what she was asking.

"When you were in high school together."

"Oh, well. Maybe I was," he replied vaguely, shaking his head and smiling oddly. He should have expected a blunt question like that from Bonnie sooner or later. In fact, he had seen it coming after yesterday's question. But he still felt an enormous dread, even with the moment at hand, and he wasn't sure what to say. "That was a long time ago. I was a teenager, and who knows what teenagers think and feel? I've spent a weekend with you, but I can't pretend I really know or understand you."

Bonnie absently nudged a piece of broken shell, but she was not to be diverted. "Are you now?" she asked. "Are you still in love with her now?"

Jeff lit a cigarette, turning his face away from her. He stared at the bay, at his feet; he brushed his hair back with his hand. Finally he faced the girl again.

"Yes," he said simply, quietly.