Chapter 14 #2
They walk on in silence, a wonky front wheel pulling the shopping cart to the right. Does Morgan expect her to cook Lacy dinner? Cece realizes he didn’t say exactly how long he was going to be. No matter—she’s helping out a friend in need.
“You’re not a vegetarian or anything, are you? Or have any food allergies?”
Lacy gives her head a shake, deep into her phone, freshly painted nails flitting across the screen like water striders on a placid pond.
She’s gone nonverbal now. Not great. For the first time, Cece feels like the curtain’s been lifted, ever so slightly, on Morgan’s life, beyond his eclectic book collection and expert home-cooked meals, beyond his paint-spattered forearms and quiet eyes—to reveal what, exactly?
Cece should feel some sense of satisfaction, or perhaps contentment, but she’s surprised to find herself disappointed, even saddened by the state of his life.
An unstable job, ongoing custody battle, and a kid…
these are not the outcomes of a life well planned.
“Have you ever had nachos for dinner?” Cece asks, hoping to break through to the girl.
“No way. Dad wouldn’t allow it. Does that even constitute a meal?”
Finally. She speaks! “You clearly haven’t had Barry’s famous nachos.”
“Who’s Barry?”
“My dad. And trust me. They’re amazing,” Cece says, detecting something close to a smile on Lacy’s pale lips.
They do the rest of their shopping with purpose, Cece ticking off the essentials—ground pork and beef, taco seasoning, Colby Jack, tomato paste, and jalapenos.
Her father’s recipe always called for black olives, but Cece remembers how she and Wynonna would always pick them out, and she assumes Lacy’ll do the same.
At the checkout, a teenage boy with neck pimples wearily scans their items, and Cece does her best to ignore the total on the receipt.
It’s been a while since she’s gone grocery shopping for two.
On their drive home, Cece finds herself apologizing for the state of the car.
Lacy shifts in her seat, discarded to-go bags and empty water bottles crinkling beneath her feet.
She cranes her neck and surveys Cece’s back seat. “What’s all that?”
Cece had almost forgotten about the heaps of clothes: rubber waders, nylon shorts, long-sleeved shirts, and a sun hat. “Work stuff.”
Lacy looks at her quizzically. “You work at a shipyard, too?”
“Me? No. I don’t know the first thing about fixing boats. That’s my oyster-farming gear.”
“I didn’t know you could farm oysters.”
“To be honest,” Cece says, shifting gears and taking the hill, “I didn’t know much about the business either before I started, but it’s pretty cool. I’ll show you sometime if you’d like.”
“I hope not,” Lacy says. “No offense, but I don’t plan on spending a lot of time down here. This whole shared-living thing is just temporary until my parents sign the new custody agreement.”
They come to a stop at an interminably long red light. Without a steady breeze this morning, the air is heavy and thick. An old Cadillac rolls through the intersection, base thumping. Cece fiddles with the air-conditioning in vain. “Is that what this morning was about?”
Lacy looks like she might give Cece the silent treatment or make a snide comment, but she doesn’t. Instead, the girl turns her attention back to her phone and says, “My mom thinks I should stay with her full time.”
A voice inside Cece’s head is telling her to stop, leave it alone, but something—her curiosity about Morgan, her growing attachment to Lacy—won’t let her. “What about you? Don’t you like spending time with your dad?”
“Sure,” Lacy says, her voice indifferent and distracted, “but all my friends are in Providence. Plus, he’s the one that decided to move away. It wasn’t so bad splitting time between them when he lived nearby.”
Even if she wants to tell Lacy there are all sorts of reasons why people break up, or parents decide to separate and move away, Cece can’t argue with her logic.
She should know—thinking about her mother, desperate for a third act in life, or her, abandoning Jonathan at the thought of wedding bells, then returning… for good.
The light flicks green, and Cece coaxes the car into first. Lacy lets out an audible sigh and slips her phone under her thigh.
Proceed with caution, Cece thinks to herself. The girl’s just started opening up to her. “Everything okay?”
“Just my friend Brittany. She’s all into this boy from Bishop, and I keep telling her to be careful.”
“Bishop…”
“It’s a fancy private school. I don’t even know where she met him, but he’s been texting her nonstop, trying to convince her to come to some party…Brittany doesn’t wanna go without me.”
“How would you even…” Cece trails off. This isn’t her territory. “You’re not interested in going?”
“A party? Thrown by Bishop boys? Plus, I’m convinced it’s some kind of She’s All That situation. Why else would he invite some random public school girl?”
“How do you know about that movie?”
“She’s All That is like the original O.C. Brittany and I are obsessed with it, which makes this whole thing even more annoying. She should know better!”
“Well, it sounds like you’re a good friend. Brittany’s lucky.”
“You don’t have to say stuff like that,” Lacy says.
“What do you mean?”
“Like you’re my parent.”
Cece is flustered but determined not to let on. The day isn’t even half-finished, and the last thing she needs is for the girl to see just how ill-equipped she is to be trusted with any kind of supervision. She needs to maintain the veil of adulthood as long as possible.
Lacy nudges some garbage on the floor with her foot. “Are you my dad’s girlfriend or something?”
Cece can only keep her eyes on the road, mindful not to slam the brakes and send them careening onto the sidewalk. She hears herself say something that doesn’t sound half-bad, confident but not dismissive. “I sure hope not. I already have a boyfriend.”
This piece of irrefutable evidence doesn’t seem to sway Lacy, who seems fixated on the mundane view of underpasses and gas stations outside the car window. “My bad. Forget I said anything.”
Drop it, Cece thinks, take the win, but she can’t help herself. She wants to know. She needs to know. “What made you think I was his girlfriend?”
Lacy’s already back on her phone again. “Just the way he looks at you, I guess.”
Cece is suddenly hyperaware of how she might appear. Hand white-knuckling the gearshift, shoulders hunched forward, strands of hair in the corner of her mouth. Get a hold of yourself, Cece Downing!
The nachos are a hit, and to Cece’s relief, they seem to have bought her some cachet with Lacy, which takes the edge off the news that Morgan’s running late.
From his intermittent text messages, Cece discerns that all is not going well, and even while her anxiety crescendos at the idea of having to entertain Lacy for a few more hours, she’s determined not to let on about it.
Luckily, Bernard is providing endless amusement.
The dog is grateful for the unrelenting attention from Lacy as he spreads himself out on the living room floor, whimpering for more belly rubs.
Cece peruses the on-demand movie options.
Lacy had suggested they have an O.C. marathon, but Cece thinks the girl can expand her horizons a bit.
After Lacy nixes Notting Hill (too British) and Roman Holiday (too old), they land on You’ve Got Mail (Tom Hanks, the volleyball guy?).
Lacy’s intrigued by the idea of a world when the internet was strange and new.
The three of them—Lacy, Bernard, and Cece—settle into the couch.
The movie feels older than it should: no cell phones in sight, the Upper West Side void of chain stores, the city itself seemingly exclusively populated by White people.
Even so, Lacy seems interested, the times between glances at her phone getting longer and longer.
The movie isn’t anything groundbreaking, but Cece welcomes the innocuous distraction from her current life.
She doesn’t want to watch something that makes her think too hard.
And despite the film’s predictability, Cece finds herself full of loathing for Tom Hanks (even if he’s gallant and dashing) and cursing Greg Kinnear’s ostentatious character.
Lacy agrees wholeheartedly. Meg deserves better!
They shout in unison at the television screen.
It’s been ages since Cece’s seen the movie, and the end catches her off guard, the way it tugs at her heart.
She has to turn away and dab at the corners of her eyes with her shirtsleeve to hide her tears.
It’s embarrassing. She never used to cry about anything—movies, books, life—but now it seems like anything will send her over the edge.
Lacy doesn’t need encouragement to share her opinions.
She has lots of questions about why everyone thought Tom Hanks was attractive back in the nineties.
And while she mostly enjoyed the movie, she didn’t like how Tom Hanks’s character hangs out with Meg Ryan’s character multiple times even after he discovers she’s the woman he’s been talking to online.
“Think about it,” Lacy says, folding her legs underneath her on the couch.
“He basically tricks her into falling in love with him.”