Chapter 19
In his baggy sweatpants and faded University of Tennessee Swimming T-shirt, Barry more resembles The Dude than the once-proud athlete Cece recalls so vividly from her adolescence.
He stalks the perimeter of the detached garage in Wynonna’s backyard like an animal wary of a trap.
In a bind, Devin had called in a favor of his friend who was a local contractor, and he’d started converting the garage into a proper guesthouse.
Devin had even lent a hand to speed things along, cutting out windows and putting up drywall.
If he’s bitter about having to park his shiny truck on the street, he’s hiding it well.
The place still needs plumbing and electric, but it looks better than anything Cece could have expected. She is thankful for Wynonna.
The air in Charlotte is sticky like molasses.
The sisters, side by side, watch their father.
From inside the house, the sound of children roughhousing.
Devin is grilling steaks for dinner on the deck that overlooks the subdivision, where Cece imagines he can see fifty houses identical to this one.
Maybe she’s been too hard on her sister, too judgmental.
Wynonna seems happy; her family is big and loud and must fill up her life in ways Cece could never imagine.
“Go inside, Dad. Check it out,” Wynonna says. “Just don’t touch anything. We’re still waiting on city inspectors.”
Cece’s back barks from the merciless U-Haul seats.
She’s made the drive from New York with her father in two days, only stopping once at a profoundly disappointing Best Western for a night of fitful sleep.
Barry had wanted to make the drive in a single shot, but his bladder had quickly put an end to those aspirations.
Wynonna runs a hand under her nose and sniffles. Cece pulls her close, and then her little sister is trembling, her voice woolly and low. “I’ll never forgive Mom.”
Cece doesn’t say anything for a long time. Barry moves from room to room in the garage, his figure determined and plodding. “I know you’re angry,” she finally says.
“And you’re not? You don’t just give up. That’s not how marriage works.”
“I’m more resigned than anything.”
“I just can’t fathom it, Cece. Mom. At her age? Starting over. It’s laughable.”
“She did try, Wynonna. Maybe we wish she would have tried for longer, but she couldn’t. And now she’s trying to make up for lost time…I can’t blame her for that. I know the feeling.”
Wynonna stiffens, shoulders tight, back rigid. “I can’t forgive her, Cece. I just won’t.”
“No one’s asking you to, Wynonna. Certainly not me.”
One of the boys bursts through a sliding door, and Wynonna quickly wipes her tears and conjures a smile before he asks for the precise location of a toy.
Wynonna scrunches her eyes, thinks for a moment before she says it’s in the den under the coffee table.
The boy scampers off, confident in his mother’s superpower.
She is no longer her little sister, Cece realizes, not really.
This life, this family—this is her creation, her monument to humanity.
A triumphant yelp from an open window—the toy has been found, just where Mom said it would be.
“Thanks for taking Dad,” Cece says. “Really, I don’t know what I would have done.
” And it’s true. When Kim had informed everyone of her intentions to move out, Cece is ashamed to admit her first concern was not for Barry’s well-being, but for his living situation.
Who would look after him? Who would take him in when they eventually sold the house?
It couldn’t be her; she didn’t even have a place of her own, not really, and the thought of caring for her father just when Rayburn Oyster was expanding seemed like a cruel twist of fate.
“It’s nothing,” Wynonna says like she really means it. “We have the room, and the kids will love having him around. Once we get some furniture in there, it will feel like a real home.”
“You’ve built a good life down here, Wynonna. Have I ever told you that?”
“You should visit more.”
“I will. I don’t know why I haven’t.”
Wynonna puts an arm around Cece as if to absolve her of any guilt. “You’ve been a little busy.”
“Understatement of the summer.”
“And now?”
“Less complicated. I met someone.”
“What’s his name?”
“Morgan.”
“What do you like about him?”
Cece rests her head on Wynonna. She’s always been taller than her sister; she got their father’s genes—taller than most, back broad, legs long.
Nestled in the crook of Wynonna’s shoulder, Cece looks at the twilight world sideways.
Bats squeak overhead, their bodies seamless and fragile against the indigo sky.
“He makes me feel like I’m living life, not just passing through it,” she says.
Barry emerges from the garage, his silhouette more upright and buoyant than before.
He makes his way toward his daughters in the dying light, sandaled feet padding the grass, his steps lighter.
Devin calls out to tell everyone dinner is served.
Kids rumble through the house. Somewhere, a neighbor’s dog yaps.
Barry embraces his daughters, pulls them close and holds them tight.
“I count myself lucky,” he whispers. “Who’s got it better than me? ”
Cece wants to say something, protest her father’s optimism in the face of most certain tribulation, but it is easier to stay like this—together—and let be what will be.
The late-summer crowds have descended on Mystic.
Up the coast, I-95 brims with cars, swollen like a flooded river as families make their yearly pilgrimages to Newport and the Cape.
The more ambitious, those who seek natural and pristine beaches void of human interference, venture farther north, to Harpswell and Brooklin.
They pass by these once-great centers of American industry brimming with New World promise with names like New Bedford, and Providence, Salem, and New London, impatient and hurried.
American flags line Bank Street, and Cece is thankful for those who don’t stop in this fair city.
Without any traffic, it takes her fifteen minutes to get from Mamacoke Cove to the beach.
On account of the holiday, Richie had called it at noon after they’d finished surveying the spot where they’re intending on installing the first thirty oyster spat bags.
Even though the business is still being picketed by Lorraine and a few remaining NIMBY zealots, they decided it was best to proceed while the weather was good.
She is still threatening to sue, but Cece and Richie have come to the conclusion she’s more bark than bite.
After paying the twenty-five-dollar parking fee, Cece digs her bathing suit out of the back seat and changes in the car, driver seat reclined, a thick orange beach towel wrapped around her midsection.
There is nothing that reminds her more of summer than this—hot fabric against your thighs, the floormat rough and pebbled under your bare feet.
Flips-flops on, beach bag full of all the necessities—outrageously protective sunblock, a dog-eared book, and a floppy hat—she makes her way down the path toward the beach.
From the food truck, the sizzle of hot dogs.
Kids shout and clamor in front of an Italian-ice cart, their bodies toasted by the sun.
The air cools as Cece nears the beach, the path grows narrow, the dunes rising steeply.
There is a moment where she can smell the ocean before she sees it, and Cece slows, her heels sinking in the sand, and she breathes in deeply—the brine and baked sand—and she is paralyzed with happiness.
As she crests the hill, only a teary-eyed boy with a boogie board breaks her reverie.
He wails—something about his older brother not sharing.
She surveys the beach, the Sound curling up its sandy leg one wave at a time.
Mothers wade in the shallows with diapered toddlers.
A few regulars in swimming caps do laps beyond the buoys, their strokes steady and even.
Cece’s heart beats double time. She’s about to check her phone when she sees them, hugging the string of boulders at the far end of the beach.
Morgan, his dark blue linen shirt billowing in the wind, stands and waves.
Cece holds her hand over her chest and presses down on her collarbone, just to make sure she isn’t dreaming.
Lacy, a tangle of limbs, rises up from the sand onto her elbows and beckons Cece enthusiastically.
“Richie’s working you to the bone,” Morgan says after Cece puts her things under the umbrella. Lacy’s lying facedown, the sea drying on her back, headphones on.
“I’m doing it to myself. We’re trying to get all the bags installed before winter,” Cece says. Now that Cece’s a supervisor, she feels even more responsibility for the project’s success, and she’s overseeing everything during the expansion process, from the hiring to the deliverables.
“Well, look at you,” Morgan says. He glances at Lacy, whose face is turned away, and steals a kiss.
It’s a foreign sensation, being this way out in public.
Cece still hasn’t gotten used to this new reality, waking up in his bed—now their bed, she supposes—and sitting together on the front porch sipping coffee before work.
They are together, irrefutably. An item, one might say.
And how strange it is! They’ve fallen into the patterns of daily existence that make Cece feel like they’ve done this already in some previous life.
Cece keeps waiting to be struck with a sense of panic or fear that they’ve moved too quickly, that they’ve misjudged each other terribly, but no such feeling arrives.
“Gross, I heard that,” Lacy says and blows a raspberry into her elbow.
“Be nice,” Morgan says, his voice more embarrassed than stern.