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slides off the couch and gets right down on the floor to pet her. “Shh, you can go back to sleep,” she tells Cinnamon, like
a miniature mother, but now Leo is stirring too.
“You’re so good with animals,” Mae tells her. “Do you want to live on a farm when you grow up?”
Evangeline nods and says, “I think I want to be a large-animal vet.”
Mae says, “Like a large person who is also a vet, or a vet for large animals?”
Evangeline giggles. “A vet for large animals.” She tells Mae about the vet who comes to their farm to give vaccinations, help out with births, check on new calves hours into their existence.
They call him Dr. George, and he drives a red farm truck.
(“Dr. George is superhot,” Natalie once told Mae.
“Like, he’d be July in a vet-of-the-month calendar. ”)
“I think that sounds like a noble pursuit,” says Mae. “I really do. And I don’t think you should wait until you grow up either.
I think you should be a very small large-animal vet. You could be that as soon as today.” Evangeline giggles again. Mae is
killing it with this crowd!
Two things happen next.
Cinnamon rises and gives one of those full-body shakes that means she’s ready to rock. Then, before either Mae or Evangeline
can stop her, she flicks out her tongue toward the coffee table, faster than a lizard. The tooth is gone.
In the sunroom Jordan finds Evangeline sitting on the floor between the two dogs. They’re both waiting and watching while
Evangeline lines up tiny treats on the table. “Wait,” Evangeline says to Leo, and then to Cinnamon, “Wait.” She sounds exactly
like Mae, commanding and patient. Then she releases them: “Okay!” And the dogs go crazy, snuffling along the table for the
treats.
“Where’s Auntie Mae?”
“She went to get me a tissue.”
Jordan looks closely at Evangeline. Her bottom lip starts to wobble. “What’s going on?”
Evangeline slaps her hand over her mouth like there’s a creature in there she doesn’t want to let out. “Nothing,” she whispers
into her hand.
“Are you sure?”
Her eyes fill, and she says, “Cinnamon ate my first lost tooth.” She points to a hole in her mouth.
“Oh, no! How’d that happen?”
“It was on the table. She stuck her tongue out. And now I can’t leave it for the Tooth Fairy even though I didn’t know if
I wanted to.”
“I think we can write a note,” says Jordan, “explaining what happened. I can help you.” Evangeline is bringing out a gentleness
Jordan didn’t know she had.
“Okay,” whispers Evangeline from behind her hand, “if you think that will count.”
“It definitely counts. I have it on good authority. Do you want to go find your mom?” Evangeline nods. “Go ahead. She’s in
the kitchen with Caspian. Where’s Scarlett?”
Evangeline removes her hand and then says, “Upstairs on the iPad.”
“Ah.” Jordan knows that Natalie is very strict about the kids using the iPad. This goes with her homeschooling-farm-rearing-family-first
persona. Scarlett must have spotted a loophole and decided to dive right into it, like a proper middle child, no different
from what Natalie herself would have done if iPads had existed when they were kids.
(What comes around goes around, Theresa might have said, had she been here, and a sharp pain hits Jordan somewhere—her soul?—when she realizes that she isn’t.)
Just after Evangeline exits the room, Mae enters. The dogs rush up to Mae, maybe eager to share the tale of what she missed
in her absence. She’s holding a tissue in one hand and her cell phone in the other. “Evangeline went to find Natalie in the
kitchen,” Jordan explains.
“Okay,” says Mae. She’s looking at her phone. Jordan looks more closely at Mae. Mae wears an expression that, for lack of
a better description, Jordan might call grouchy. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing is going on. Why do you ask?”
“Because you look like a dog ate your first tooth.”
Mae makes an annoyed face.
Jordan remembers Mae, at twelve, getting her period for the first time three days before Christmas. Jordan had been home from
college for the holiday, and she’d been the one to pick Mae up from school because Theresa had been teaching her own class
and Natalie had been in school herself. She’d felt very important and motherly, showing Mae the corner of the bathroom cabinet
where all the supplies were kept, giving her Advil and a heating pad in case she had cramps. But she knew the real mother
would be home in just a few hours. Now she’s not the backup, she’s the main event.
“I wish Dad wasn’t selling the house. I was hoping to stay.”
“Not that again,” says Jordan.
“Yes, that again. To anyone with a heart, this is a big deal!”
“I have a heart, thank you very much. I just have a brain to go with it.” She pauses. “How long were you hoping to stay?”
“I don’t know. Until I save some money. Or forever.”
Mae flops on the couch, and suddenly she’s the defiant version of Mae. This version doesn’t show up very often, but when she
does, watch out. Mae was the baby who was chill until she wasn’t, easygoing until she wanted (or didn’t want) one thing, just
one single thing, and then she dug in her heels so hard she simply could not be budged.
They used to call it the Storm. The Storm is brewing.
The Storm is on the horizon. Hope the Storm passes quickly.
(Mae hated the Storm joke, it made her furious, so Jordan is careful not to bring it up now even though she’s really tempted.)
Only Theresa could negotiate the Storm; she’d put on her metaphorical Hunter boots, zip up her waterproof jacket, and wade
right in. Sometimes she’d get batted away, but more often she’d get Mae to see reason.
You can’t wear a bathing suit to school because it’s January, but you can wear it in the bathtub tonight.
We are not having chocolate for dinner because I made roast chicken but I’ll make chocolate pudding for dessert.
For the zillionth time in the past two years, and at least the thirteenth time today, Jordan wishes her mother were here.
Jordan looks at the tattoos on Mae’s arms. She had started so small and innocuously—a hip, an ankle, the small shooting star
on one forearm—but now she has dozens, and that seems to Jordan to be a whole different direction than adorable. She looks
more closely and sees something on Mae’s right wrist. She reaches for Mae’s hand and holds it, opening the wrist out so she
can see it. Mae doesn’t pull back, she holds her arm steady, and when Jordan meets her eyes they’re both tearing up. “When
did you get this?” Jordan whispers. “How come I didn’t notice it before?”
“This was one of my early ones,” says Mae.
Jordan traces the tattoo with the index finger of her other hand. Love, Mom, in Theresa’s distinctive handwriting, a precise cursive, the same cursive she wrote her grocery lists in, her thank-you
notes; the same cursive she lamented over and over again that kids were no longer taught with regularity.
“There’s a whole section on the website,” says Mae, her voice catching. “Handwriting tattoos. It’s really popular as an in memoriam thing.” Jordan nods, too affected to speak. Several seconds pass, and then Mae takes her hand back, says, “I really, really
wish I could live right here forever.”
Instead of going through all the reasons why this makes no sense, Jordan says, “That sounds really lonely. Especially in the
winter.” In the winter, she’d see only surfers and dog walkers on the beach. Portsmouth remains lively, but life on the waterfront
shuts down. Most of these houses are summer homes.
Mae takes a deep, shuddering breath and for a moment it seems like she’s not going to say anything at all.
Then she stands and walks to the window, looking out at the water.
The tide is in, so the beach is smaller, but it’s still bigger and wider than most beaches around.
It’s still the best beach. Mae says, “To me it sounds less lonely than the rest of life feels now.”
“Mae!”
She turns. “It’s true.”
“I thought you loved it out there in Boulder.”
“I did. I used to. Sometimes I do. But it feels different now.” The last time Jordan visited Mae in Colorado was before Theresa
got really sick. They’d all gone as a family for a long weekend. Even Natalie, who’d left the farm for two nights. They’d
all loved the way the sun set behind the mountains; the way people were so much more laid-back and friendly than they were
on the East Coast; the way you could witness the country’s western expansion in the hard-packed hiking trails; the land beyond
the city, which went all the way to the horizon, unbroken by the thick woods that line the highways in New England.
Has it really been that long since Jordan has been out there?
“What’s different?”
Jordan’s phone buzzes and she flips it so she can see the screen. It’s Bernadette, of course. She flips it over. It feels
important that she give Mae her full attention.
“It got different after Mom died. It turned out to be a really hard place to grieve, you know? It’s so—dusty.” Jordan moves
closer to Mae so that their hips are touching. Poor Mae, all lonely and dusty and sad. “Everything there feels transient.
People are always moving in, moving out, working all these small jobs to try to get them to add up to one job. Me too. Next
year I’ll be thirty, and I don’t even have health insurance.”
In retrospect, Jordan realizes this is not the hill to die on, but before retrospect arrives she says, “Hold up. You don’t
have health insurance?”
Mae bristles. “Jesus, Jordan. That is so not the biggest of my worries right now.”
“Does Dad know?”
Mae’s voice rises. “I don’t know if Dad knows!” The Storm is coming back.
Jordan’s voice goes louder to match Mae’s. “You have to have health insurance, Mae!”
“God, Jordan. Get off my back.”
They both stop, because Evangeline is there, as unobtrusive as a butler, saying, “Mommy wants to know if Auntie Mae can help
her in the kitchen.”