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park ourselves there, and Maira starts concocting a marinade for the three lamb chops sitting raw and ugly on a white platter.
    Why don’t people plan something vegetarian when they have a dinner guest they don’t know? Why does the vegetarian always have to be the one who ruins the menu? I’m just about to tell her that I’m a vegetarian, when the front door opens.
    “Hey there!” a woman calls down the hall. “Where are those beautiful blue-eyed boys?”
    “More company?” I ask.
    “My partner, Larissa.”
    Oh, okay. I need a private little minute with that piece of information. So there’s no he at all? Well, of course they’re lesbians, because she surely doesn’t mean “business partner,” not judging by the kiss Larissa lays on her, dipping her like a ballroom dancer.
    “Larissa, this is Hope. She’s saving our collective ass, so supper is in her honor. Crack a bottle of that Riesling, will you?”
    Lesbians. Okay. Not a big deal. There were a couple of dykes who lived at the farm for a while. And then there’s Kyle, the old gay guy who shoes the horses, but other than that and the odd queer Woofer, I don’t knowmany people like...like that . Larchberry is all Man-shall-work-the-fields-and-build-things-and-repair-all-that-breaks, while Woman-shall-also-work-the-fields-and-raise-babies-and-cook-and-clean-and-sew, and then together we shall smoke pot and sing folk songs and let our babies run around naked.
    Larissa hands me a glass of wine. “Are you old enough to drink?”
    “I told you, she’s a hippie kid.” Maira gives her a peck on the cheek. They don’t look like lesbians. But then, I don’t know what lesbians look like, except for the two at the farm, who just looked like each other: miserable, each with a long, dirty braid and a big butt. “You’ve had wine before, haven’t you?”
    “Lots.” I nod. “We make it at the farm. Blueberry wine.”
    Why, I wonder, do I have the urge to bolt out the door and never come back? I’m not against queers or anything. That isn’t it. Larchberry might be isolated, but it is as left wing as it gets, and all the parents work really hard to raise us as liberal freethinkers.I have no problem with diversity, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like a heavy, unpleasant weight has parked in my stomach. Orion pops into my mind, and thinking about him always makes me squirmy. He was such a mistake. I try to think of something else, like picking blueberries, but instead I get a flash of one of the nights in the barn, with the candles and the blueberry wine. I cannot believe he lied to me about being married and then thought that giving me a puppy would make it all better.
    “I missed you,” Maira says. She and Larissa kiss full on, and I get those sexy butterflies in my belly along with a flash of Orion and me kissing on the bluff above the river just before we’re about to jump in. Do I miss him? Is that what this is about? How can I miss him? He was all wrong. Maybe I’m just lonely. Well, not maybe. Am. I am lonely.
    Maira goes back to preparing supper, and Larissa gets onto the floor with the babies, who are not quite crawling on a sheepskin rug in a patch of sunlight. The whole scene is like an ad for hardwood flooring in one ofthose posh interior design magazines. I sit with my wine and wish I could go home. Not to Joy’s, but to Larchberry. I’ve had enough of Brooklyn and enough of me. I don’t get myself these days. I’m my very own stranger. And I miss everybody, mostly my parents. But even if I went home, they wouldn’t be there.
    “So tell us how your visit’s been so far,” Maira says as she tops up my wine.
    When I finish telling them, they’re both staring at me, wide eyes all sympathetic.
    “It sounds awful. Do you want to stay here?” Maira points at the ceiling. “We have a million spare rooms up there.”
    “Thanks, but I’ve got my sister.”
    “But it sounds like a nightmare!” Maira tucks the lamb into the oven.