Treasure Island!!!

refrigerator and pretended to stare at its contents. “Nobody you know,” she told the Brita water filter.
    “How do you know? I might. I know people. I know more people than
you
know. Maybe I’ve already dated him.”
    “You are so competitive, it’s sick.”
    I laughed dryly. “Adrianna, I’m not trying to compete with you.”
    “You can quit fishing. I’m not going to talk about it.” She pushed the refrigerator door shut and stared dully at the photo magnets cluttering its face.
    “Well,” I said in my most magnanimous manner, “I think it’s wonderful news, even if you do carry on like a frantic dog, burying the bone in the yard. I’m sure he’s worthy of the mystery. And he signals the end of a long dry spell, am I right? It’s not Eddie Wisbey, is it?”
    Eddie Wisbey was a short, thick-set guy, red-bearded, who had repeatedly tried to start a contra dance club in high school.
    “You think you’re so funny,” Adrianna said.
    “I’m just trying to get my mind around who it could be. Seriously.”
    “I’m going to bed now.”
    “Okay. But listen.” I touched her elbow lightly. “Lovers can’t hide out forever. I understand,” I added gravely, “that you might not want Mom in your business. She can be so . . . well . . . embarrassing . . . and incredibly tactless, but I’m your sister. I’m more like a peer.”
    “I feel distinctly peerless,” Adrianna said.
    “ . . . So if you should need someone to vet him—you know, an ambassador from the family—I’d be happy to do it, and could do it nicely, without him even knowing I’m there to judge him. I know how to put guys at ease.”
    Adrianna stared at me, aghast. “Why would I want someone to ‘vet’ my relationship? Aren’t I a grown-up? And aren’t romantic relationships
about
trust and intimacy?”
    Trust and intimacy? Dear god! Of course, I’d caught the fumes of her psychobabble before. But this would be the moment when a person who actually believed that claptrap would drop the subject or simply leave the room. Instead Adrianna sighed, opened up the refrigerator again, and mechanically began eating mashed potatoes out of a container with her bare fingers. I pressed my advantage.
    “My offer wasn’t meant to be insulting, Adrianna. Really it’s not my fault if you have bad self-esteem. I
wish
I’d had more perspective on Lars’s personality early on. If someone I trusted had met him, say, last December, and given me a frank opinion, maybe I never would have moved in with him.”
    “We all met him. We thought he was nice. Nicer, at times, than you. You’re not really saying that if I’d told you to ditch him, you’d have done that? That’s crazy! As if you could run your heart by committee . . . ”
    “I don’t want to talk about Lars, that dumb asshole. I want to talk about
your
boyfriend. Come on. I’m your sister. When do I get to meet him?”
    “Never.”
    “At least tell me his name.”
    “No.”
    “Why? Give me one good reason.”
    “Because you have boundary issues. Because you’re mean-spirited and unsentimental about other people’s affections. Because if young love was a flower growing on your lawn, you would crush it under your heel.”
    “Jesus. Are you saying you’re in
love?
”
    “This conversation is over.” She licked a dollop of mashed potato off her wrist and lumbered off to bed.
     
    I guess I should have waited. She might have softened in time, and I certainly would have preferred to leave her to pursue her romance in privacy. But her words alarmed me. Two weeks, by my calculations, she had been seeing this guy and now she thought she was in love? And worse, that love was a flower? Given how little experience she had in the domain of personal relationships, I thought it my responsibility to keep an eye on her.
    I found my opportunity one Thursday afternoon when Adrianna came home around five o’clock—just to change her clothes, my mother told me; she was going out again.
    “Where?”
    “I don’t ask where,” my mother said.
    She was in the laundry room (folding, always folding).
    “I’m going out too,” I said. “Don’t be alarmed if I’m not back for dinner.”
    “In this cold weather?” my mother answered. “You don’t have a car. Where are
you
going to go?”
    I masked my resentment of her tone and muttered something, admittedly improbable, about fresh air and exercise.
    Adrianna was still in her room, scuffing around in her closet, so I had ample time