The Shore, page 18
If I work every weekend shift they’ll give me at the Buccaneer, then I can do it sooner than you think.
You might love Chicago. Would you make your plans fit someone else’s if he wasn’t the kind of guy who would do that for you too? Would you admit if you were only moving far away for him, and not for yourself?
5/10/98
Subject: re: sorry?
To: brian-dunne@rutgers.edu
From: margotmeyer@stanthonys.edu
I know we promised we’d say if it was too much, right, if these emails started saying too much?
I’m the one who has to ask for a break now.
I’ll be honest: I can’t answer your questions yet. I’m glad you asked them, and I can promise I’ll be honest in answering them for myself because you did.
I can’t handle knowing so much about you, at least for now.
You will build that house, and it will be beautiful. Claire will come, or she’ll leave. You have to tell her about it first, tell her the whole plan, see if she’s too cool for it. I think it’s perfect.
If I ever go back to the Buccaneer, I’ll ask around to see who bought the most falling-apart place in town and made it beautiful.
PS–this email address changes in a week when I graduate, so if you write it will bounce back.
Evy and Liz closed the laptop and let their eyes adjust to the dark. The emails had built a little buffer between the earlier evening and the fatigue that finally found them. Their cold fried shrimp had tasted bland and rubbery, the high-pressure shower had hardly felt like a tickle, the sounds of the neighbors’ voices were silenced with a closed window and the hum of the air conditioner, their stunned senses were all dulled in the pressure chamber of his fresh absence.
“She broke his heart there for a little while,” Liz said. “What if she had never shown up again?” Soon they would hand these over to Margot, but tonight they guessed at the still-missing details, rereading all the sly ways their parents told each other they were still in love all that time.
“He didn’t want her back until she was sure, though,” Evy said. She guessed the Serious Chicago Guy was a banker with money to burn, but Liz insisted he must be cooler than that—someone who made art and drank at underground bars. Either version would have been a counterpoint to Brian’s smaller barrier-island dreams. Was Margot lonely the whole time in Chicago, or were there some afternoons looking at Renoirs at the Art Institute up close and nights out seeing shows and doing tequila shots with her friends, where she forgot all about Brian?
They would fill in the missing parts of their parents’ story forever, arguing over who had wanted whom more, over whether the way their parents reached out to each other was ever possible for anyone again now that the computers their parents had had to find and sit down in front of were in everyone’s pockets at every moment, now that messages were constant, expected, a new art and language that hadn’t existed when Brian and Margot were young.
Margot
Between her cabernets that night, she had one of Brian’s Coors Lights. It went down like water and tasted like the end of summer, which it was now, again. How many thousands of these beers had Brian poured for other people, to pay for this house?
* * *
When she drove back from Chicago, she had gone straight to Seaside. She spent an hour on the beach alone and then went into the Buccaneer. She wore her yellow dress over her swimsuit, and she fed the jukebox a stack of quarters. The humidity had faded, and the almost-September sky went brighter blue. Her hair was loose and damp.
She picked “Rosalita” so everyone would hey hey hey along at the end like they always did here when that song played, and when Brian saw her he abandoned his place behind the bar and walked toward her; the crowd parted or he pushed through them. He swallowed half his beer and handed her one.
Could he see, up close, where the freckles had come out across her shoulders? Those expensive earrings someone else had bought her? She stared at his thin, ripped Buccaneer T-shirt and said, “I was hoping you’d be here.”
No one wanted summer to end, but it was almost Labor Day. “God, it is so good to be home,” she said, even though she didn’t live here yet. She sat at the bar while he finished his shift.
When they got to the bungalow, it was the stop-everything time of evening when the sun hazed gray and pink over the bay, and the cattails rustled. He said that when he bought the house, it stunk of cigarettes and cat shit inside and had knee-high weeds outside. Brown water-stained wallpaper peeled in the hallways, and small dirty windows barely let in any light, obscuring the whole view of the bay and the bridge. That was the only kind of house a teacher could buy here, a mess no one else wanted to touch. He’d painted the shingles navy and the front door red, mulched under the bayberry and beach plum trees, and added seagrass and stones.
Big-bulbed white lights hung across the pergola. Inside, he showed her where he’d knocked down the interior walls to let light flow through. She ran her fingers along the edge of the lacquered kitchen table.
Some Sundays in Chicago, she had been so lonely, even when she was with other people. He said some Mondays he was so tired after working all weekend, on the house and at the bar, that he missed his exit for school and pulled into a rest stop to crunch peppermint Life Savers to wake up. He showed her where he’d fixed a huge leak and rewired the lights. It had taken all of two winters and it still wasn’t done.
“So, you’re heading back to Chicago soon, then?” She knew he wouldn’t take her into the other rooms in the house without knowing.
“No,” she said. “Not heading back anytime soon.” She didn’t want to ruin the moment or say too much. All she owned fit in a suitcase, and she had never built more than a three-shelf bookcase with an Allen wrench. Margot admired the small details he had paid such attention to in this house. She would ask him later what he would have done if she had never shown up at the Buccaneer, but he would only shrug and say, “You’re here.”
The neighbors’ voices carried through the window as they always would, laughing like they still had a lot of summer left. “You want to see the rest of the house?” he asked.
He said the bedroom wasn’t done yet, but she was already pushing open the door. The dim room was almost bare: a queen bed on a frame with a blue sheet, a coat of white paint, a brass garage-sale lamp on the floor. He kissed her, hesitant, then familiar and warm, and then he reached for that swimsuit under her dress, and she kissed his neck that still tasted of salt from surfing at sunrise. She said the house was beautiful. She thought of the postcards she’d sent him from Spain that said wish you were here.
Part III
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Liz
When your throat closes and goes hoarse and dry, when your voice cracks into an older-sounding, lower octave, settle into it. Excuse yourself and fill up one of the little paper cups near the water cooler over and over until the wax wears off the edges and the paper dissolves on your tongue like the bland host the priest shoves toward your mouth and you swallow.
Stand under the stained-glass window of St. Agnes in her rainbow glow, listening to the thunk of the kneelers and the rise and fall of prayers unpunctuated, uninterrupted by his loud AMENS.
Uncle Pete gives the eulogy and it’s a relief that it’s all about baseball, but then he looks at you and Evy when he says “his girls,” but he can’t quite finish that part, he has to go back to the baseball.
Evy
Inhale incense, your grandmother’s mothball-scented dress and her perfume, the dentist-office smell of the funeral home. Exhale the mint-tinged carbon dioxide your body is still making because you’re still here.
Stand so close to your mom and Liz that your fingers brush against their dresses, but face forward, turning toward all the kinds of embraces people give: bony hugs and pillowy fat-tummied hugs, stiff hands placed on shoulders, uncertain quick pats, and delicate, waist-encircling squeezes. Your eyes tire, your underarms dampen, and your breath sours as the hours go on and on, as most of the familiar and strange faces blur into each other, saying the same phrases. Except Jimmy, who says, “Hey, take it easy,” instead of “I’m so sorry.” Everyone else is in a suit, and he’s got on his flowered shirt. When he moves to Hawaii in the fall, he’ll post pictures of humongous waves, captioned with quotes from old surfing movies and your dad’s initials.
Your friends encircle you in synchronized chatter, steer you away from everyone and into a corner they commandeer. On your phone, find the picture of you as a kid, on your dad’s shoulders, on the beach, the one where he’s wearing that old Pearl Jam concert tour T-shirt. Post it and caption it with his birthday and the date he died.
When Olivia stands close, hug her.
Liz
Stand until your flats give you blisters along the edge of your little toe. Dead skin hangs off, limp and graying, chafing against itself until you rip it off and press a sweaty Band-Aid against it: the quick exposure to air and then the comfort of the pad pressed against the skin.
You can do this and other people can’t.
Evy
Your dress doesn’t look like everyone else’s. Olivia helped you pick it out: a floral flowy pattern and gold sandals, because the dresses your mom bought for you made you feel like a nun or a judge and this dress makes you feel like you’re floating. It has navy in it, and some of your aunts always have to make some little comment about what you and Liz are wearing anyway so why not make it about this dress.
Liz
Wear a black sheath dress, cut to flatter your hips and collarbone, a deep almost-black navy. It wasn’t on sale, and the girl who helped you left you alone, then brought another size without asking, held it high in the air as she walked it from the fitting room to the register and then folded it lovingly between two pieces of tissue paper. She walked the whole bag around to hand it to you instead of shoving it across the counter like they do in other stores.
Your dress gets a little outline of white in the underarms from your deodorant, but the fabric absorbs it. The people who made this dress knew women would sweat in it. This dress is here to shield you and keep you cool on the inside, this dress is here to hit you above the knee in the right place, this dress has pockets for more mints and a folded-up twenty-dollar bill your grandpa gives you and the soft, fresh Kleenex you keep to give your mom.
Evy
Hailey, Cameron, and Olivia stay. Hey, I know: sloth videos, Hailey says, and then you’re all huddled around her phone awwwwing at them.
You steer clear of Aunt Eileen, you can’t with her today.
Aunt Melissa stands next to your mom for an hour. She’s moving people along and shutting it down when some relative gets going too long or confuses generations. She takes your mom outside, where all the Casserole Bitches are sitting in a circle in the Adirondack chairs, and your mom stays out there almost an hour with them. From their faces you can tell they’re saying nice things to her before leaning in close to share the good gossip she’s missed in the last few months.
Liz
Everyone raises their drinks when Robbie gives an Irish toast: “May your joys be as deep as the oceans, your troubles as light as its foam. And may you find sweet peace of mind, wherever you may roam.” Everyone else will think it’s all about the ocean, or maybe heaven, but you know it’s also a nod to those exhausting hours at the Buccaneer when your dad wouldn’t shut up about the foam on the beers.
Eat some small dry sandwiches, the crunchy edges of a baked ziti, tiny nibbles of fruit. Drink LaCroix, Diet Coke, scalded coffee, cold water, two swigs of whiskey from a cousin’s flask, then eat again: banana bread, room-temperature fried chicken, a sheet cake with no message written on it.
Your dad’s Subaru won’t start when you turn the key. You have to move it out of the driveway to make room for Uncle Pete’s car. Your dad taught you how to use the jumper cables, so you do, without asking anyone’s permission. That engine turns over like a champ, humming over the whoosh of the air conditioner, the too-loud NPR station echoing inside the car. You back it out and reposition it, and then you think about scrubbing the small streak of grease off your hand and leave it there instead.
Evy
Olivia touches up your makeup, using concealer to offset the dark circles under your eyes. It’s a good excuse to close the door to everyone for a few minutes and sit on the edge of the bed together.
Later Hailey shows you sympathy texts from everyone at Sal’s. Hailey can be like this too, really trying. You can tell she feels awkward because she’s biting her nails. “You guys don’t have to stay,” you say, but she, Cameron, and Olivia do.
You can’t get to Liz without talking to a hundred other people, so you text u ok? come hang out over here so you don’t have to listen to Aunt Eileen for another hour!
You and Liz slept in the same bed last night. The two of you will leave your dresses on the floor of her bedroom and jump into the ocean later, sit around on the screen porch in your wet swimsuits, fall asleep in the same bed together again without showering. Liz mouths, I’m good, across the room before Hailey shoves a phone screen in your face and hugs you again.
Liz
Sonia is home from Florida early for the funeral. She’s listening to Uncle Pete over at the kitchen island, literally stuck, because someone opened the refrigerator door and she can’t move around it. You and Sonia will sneak into your room to play Cloud Campaign II later while everyone is still here, picking up where you left off, pausing for you to tell her about your night with Gabe, but you won’t see her a lot the rest of the summer. She’ll pick up all the shifts no one else wants at the Tilt-A-Whirl to make up for all that time at her grandma’s, and hook up with one of the guys who runs the bumper boats for a couple weeks. But the two of you will finally beat Cloud Campaign II by October; it will take a whole weekend.
After your mom comes inside, she sits on a barstool. She’s gesturing with one hand and cradling a glass of red wine with the other. She takes off her blazer and lets her hair down from the taut low bun, and she looks very tired but comfortable, flanked by Aunt Melissa like a sentry.
Two hours into this thing, you want everyone to leave, but Carl and his wife, Diane, are standing next to you, presenting a plate of salami, cheese, and olives wrapped in plastic, and Diane is losing her shit. Diane is melting down and crying so much she shreds up her tissue, and Carl introduces her as he presents the salami (“This is Diane. We brought an antipasto. For the family. Condolences. Very sad.”).
You’ve never met Diane before, and you don’t know exactly how Carl knew that your dad died. (He said something between the salami presentation and the Diane explanation, but Carl mumbles a little.)
But really what is up with Diane, what do you say to Diane, why is Carl not comforting Diane or whisking Diane away, why is Diane your thing now?
When you try to figure out whether Carl has told Gabe your dad is dead, it comes out, “Do you want some dip?”
Gabe has been texting you, and you’ve been telling him you’re sick. He keeps sending get-well-soon GIFs. Diane is calming down, focusing on removing the plastic wrap from a second salami and rearranging the cheese, stealing crackers from a plate she didn’t bring, doing a few signs of the cross that end with kissing her thumb, which is not how your family does it, and squeezing your aunt’s hand from across the food table and saying, “Condolences. Very sad.”
Diane moves through this room of strangers with such brazen emotion; her gestures, her hair-sprayed updo, her gray-and-black-geometric-patterned blouse, her purse, everything about her is bigger than your family’s versions. Your relatives are sitting on the edges of the kitchen chairs, making neat stacks with the paper plates, talking in hushed voices, darting away one at a time to snatch empty cups from every surface whether people are done with them or not; but there’s Diane, heaping a plate with food and crying again when she comes back to stand near you and Carl.
“Your dad, he was a good guy, didn’t know him well but knew him,” Carl says. “You got a job waiting for you next year if you want to take the rest of the summer off.”
“Oh, I definitely want to come back this week,” you say. You were supposed to consider it for a minute. It’s still a little while until Labor Day, and the idea of whole days with nowhere to be makes you uneasy. “Can I come back?”
Carl will probably tell Gabe your dad is dead, and Gabe will be very confused, or very mad that you didn’t tell him your dad was about to die. Who knows with Carl, though.
“More dip?” you ask Carl again.
Finish the scripted, public performance before the long, private improvisation with the slamming of the screen door when the last person leaves.
Evy
Olivia hands you an ice water garnished with a cucumber. She steers you away from your other texting, nail-biting, sloth-watching friends. She’s spent half an hour in polite conversation with your grandma, who gave her a Panera gift card with six dollars on it and said, “Evy likes the soup there.” Olivia’s motions are deliberate. When she doesn’t know what to do, she doesn’t guess, she asks.
She sits down next to you, angles her back toward the rest of the room. Your other friends all signed a card with a picture of a bridge on the front, but Olivia slips you her own card, on thick cream-colored cardstock with a blue and gray watercolor design on the front and no cheesy prewritten message. The whole inside will be filled with her handwriting, the same tight cursive she covers journal pages with at the end of class if there’s extra time, and when you read it later, you’ll call her and talk until late.
