I stood there, dumbstruck. Condensation from the glass in my hand dripped down my arm. Jean finished her drink and poured another.

“That’s not what they tell you,” she went on, gesturing emphatically with her drink. “It’s supposed to be a good idea. My mother said, ‘Marry your best friend, and you’ll always be happy.’ Mike and I met in college, at Appalachian State. He was getting a business degree, and I was studying to be a schoolteacher. I wanted to teach elementary school. Can you picture that? Me, surrounded by five year-olds.”

“Yes,” I said, exhaling slowly. “I can picture that.”

Jean laughed. “I would have loved it, I think. I love children. Their little sticky hands and faces. Susan was the cutest little thing. You’ve seen the pictures of her in the hallway? Our hall of fame, Mike calls it. Are you sure you don’t want another glass of tea? You’re awfully red in the face.”

“No, no thank you.”

“Well, I’ll take your glass, then.” She took my glass and put it in the sink. Then she sighed. “Mike. He dotes on Susan. He dotes on me, too.” She shook her head. “When I met him, he swept me right off my feet. We spent every waking moment together. I stopped spending time with my girlfriends, quit my sorority and all of my clubs. I put all of my eggs in one basket, and now see what’s happened. He’s off at work six days a week, sometimes until nine o’clock at night, and here I am. No more children to raise, no grandchildren on the horizon.”

“You have your job,” I said. “Avon and Cutco.”

“Sales.” She rolled her eyes and polished off her second drink. “Going into people’s houses, abusing their hospitality, and then asking for their money. Can you feature it? When I visit people, I want to talk to them.”

Hilton Head, I thought. I planned to call Susan that night and warn her. All we needed was Jean disappearing on another wild bender. Then Susan would have to cancel and the beach trip would be off, or, worse yet, my mother would come.

“I’m going to go now,” I said. “Thanks again for the tea.”

She shook her head sadly. “If the marriage doesn’t ruin the friendship, the friendship ruins the marriage. It really does. You cut yourself off from everyone else, and then where are you? Sad and lonely.”

“You didn’t warn me,” Susan said.

“I got distracted. By Hunter. That was the night he came back, bringing me a car. He’d been AWOL for three days, remember? He came sailing home as if he’d just been out to the grocery store, all smiles, and handed me the keys to that Pinto.”

“I don’t suppose it would have done any good. Nothing I could have done would have stopped her.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, you know, the old time machine question. I can’t change anyone now, so why do I think I could have changed them then?”

She yawned.

“It’s getting late,” I said, yawning in response. “I should probably go.”

“Don’t. You still haven’t told me why it was that my going out with Brad again upset you so much. You knew about him—it didn’t mean anything.”

“I don’t suppose it did.”

She slid down the couch and sat beside me. When she put her arm around me, I didn’t move away. I didn’t move at all.

“I wasn’t ready to come out,” she said softly. “You must understand that. Think of what my father was going through. I didn’t want to be something else for him to worry about. I know I didn’t express that to you properly. I didn’t say the right thing. But we hadn’t talked for more than a month.”

“Not since the night you left the beach house, after your father called to tell you what had happened.”

“I shouldn’t have run out like that. I should have stayed to talk to you, to tell you that it didn’t matter, that we’d work it out between us.”

“But it did matter,” I said, pulling away slightly. “Not to me, I’ve told you—but it mattered a lot to you. I left messages on your answering machine. I wrote to you. I drove over to Chapel Hill and knocked on your door. I made a complete fool out of myself, and when I finally saw you, you were with Brad. You were on your way out. I asked what you were doing and why you were doing it. I was angry.”

“That’s when I said . . .”

“That your father could only handle one disaster at a time. I was another disaster to you.”

She winced. “I don’t remember it that way,” she said. “I don’t mean that you’re wrong—I’m sure that’s what I said, but I didn’t mean to suggest . . . you weren’t a disaster to me. Our relationship wasn’t a disaster. Never. I meant coming out, telling my father that I was a lesbian. Surely you can see that now. It was a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding that’s gone on for seventeen years?” I shook my head. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt me. We were having problems before all that happened. I didn’t see it very clearly at the time. I was walling you in. I was possessive, jealous. I was young. You were looking for a way out, and Hunter and your mother blasted a hole big enough to drive a truck through.”

“We might have worked it out.”

“I was seventeen. You were nineteen. Not good ages for a lifetime commitment.”

She sighed. “I’ve never been good at commitment.”