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It helps to think of saying yes as doing a favor for her father, but in fact Natalie is starting to come around for other
reasons too. She and Austin have their Saturday-night dates, yes, but she doesn’t have a group of girlfriends in Vermont.
She hasn’t seen the Sisterhood together in one place since Theresa’s funeral. Until this week she and her sisters haven’t
all been in the same place since the Christmas after Theresa died. Maybe it will be good for them to leave the house and to
go somewhere they aren’t accosted by ghosts at every turn.
They take Mae’s car to Portsmouth because Natalie’s car seats are a pain to move and Jordan’s rental car is blocked in by
Mae’s car—and it’s too small anyway. It’s a reverse of their teenagerhood, when Mae was forever a passenger, never a driver.
The driver gets to choose the music, and Mae sings along to her Spotify playlist.
“When did you go country?” asks Jordan from the passenger seat. “Was it when you got the tattoos?”
“Zach Bryan is so mainstream,” says Mae. “Anyway, I do live in the western half of the country. It’s not a stretch.”
“Feels like you actually live in your car,” says Natalie from the back seat. “There’s so much stuff back here. Is this a baking dish?”
“It might be,” says Mae, without elaborating. “Where are we going?”
“Portsmouth.”
“Duh. But where specifically?”
“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” says Jordan. She clears her throat. She wants this to go well, she really does, but
she knows that her sisters are holding against her the conversation with the Realtor. If she can just get them to see the
logic of the situation, they might all be able to relax into the evening and enjoy being together. “Listen, you guys,” she
says. “About the house—”
“Nope,” says Natalie, and Mae says, “Uh-uh.”
“Wow. Did you guys choreograph that or something?”
“No,” says Natalie. “But I’m sure we’re both ready for a break from talking about it.”
“We are,” confirms Mae.
“Got it,” says Jordan. “Definitely noted.”
They luck their way into a parking spot on Congress Street. Back in the city, on a night out, Jordan might just be getting
into the shower right about now. The street is buzzing; some of the shops are still open, and people are pouring in and out
of the restaurants. There must be something on at The Music Hall, because there are swarms of people walking through the big
metal arch and toward the iconic pink building. It smells like the summers of Jordan’s youth, the heaviness to the air, the
sense that, even though you can’t see it, the ocean is not so far away. It smells like nostalgia and heartache.
“Is there still a wine bar here?” She could go for a very cold, very good champagne. One glass, maybe two.
“Let’s go here!” Natalie leads them to the door of The Goat and pauses to read the sign outside. “It’s Portsmouth’s only country
bar.”
“Were we looking for a country bar?” wonders Jordan.
“We weren’t not looking for a country bar.”
“Looks good to me,” says Mae, and Jordan says, “Well, yeah, it would,” and Mae rolls her eyes and says, “Sorry, Jordan, would
you rather go to the bar at the Wentworth?” (The Wentworth is the fancy Gilded Age hotel in New Castle, just a few miles east,
where Austin and Natalie had their wedding reception.) Yes, of course Jordan would rather go to the bar at the Wentworth, where they could look at the fancy pleasure boats in the harbor and drink
good wine, but she zips her lips. She’s with her sisters! They’re already mad at her! She can do a country bar!
Lucky again, two people are vacating the bar, leaving three empty stools in a row. The Shipman girls slide into the seats.
It’s been a long time since Jordan has been out with both of her sisters—she’d forgotten how they make sort of a spectacle,
a triangle of genetics and DNA. They look like each other, yes, but each with her own distinctive differences. Natalie’s hair
is longer, Mae’s face rounder, Jordan’s eyes a deeper blue, almost navy. “Here come the Shipman girls,” the hostess at The
Red Lion Inn used to say when they arrived for their Christmas dinner reservation each year. The receptionist at the dentist
would say the same thing. Jordan used to roll her eyes at the latter—Mae was so much younger, couldn’t Jordan have her own
dentist appointment?—but secretly she’d loved it; it had felt like being a member of a very exclusive club.
All of the female servers and bartenders at The Goat are wearing cutoff shorts and cowboy boots, and Jordan is put in mind
of the weekend she and Audrey once spent in Nashville. Drinking on Broadway, long mornings in bed at The Hermitage Hotel.
She’d summarized Audrey so quickly for Simone, but they’d been together for nearly four years, and when Jordan thinks about
her she still experiences a deep pang of regret and loss.
On the wall behind the bar, above the painted American flag, are the words WHISKEY THE PEOPLE.
“That’s my kind of wall painting,” Jordan says.
“Because you’re a patriot?” asks Mae.
“No, dummy, because I’m a whiskey drinker.”
She’s sitting between Natalie and Mae, and to Mae’s right is a guy by himself, maybe in his early forties, who might or might
not be eavesdropping.
“I can’t do whiskey.” Mae wrinkles her nose.
“I can,” says Jordan. “I can do whiskey all day long.” She peruses the bourbon selection—it’s actually pretty good! Okay!
She sees Buffalo Trace and Woodford Reserve and even Blanton’s.
“Sisters?” says the guy, leering, and Mae nods and tilts her body slightly so that a little bit of her back goes toward the
guy. Good job, Mae, says Jordan in her head. She forgets sometimes that Mae has been out in the world for many years now. She knows how bars work.
“Should we start with a shot?” Natalie suggests.
“Whoa,” says Jordan. “I didn’t know earth mothers did shots.”
Natalie rolls her eyes. “I never called myself an earth mother. Earth mother to me implies ill-fitting outfits.” Jordan snorts, delighted. The funny Natalie has come out tonight. Mae’s phone buzzes
and she glances at it and turns it over, but not before Jordan sees that the text is from someone named Hal.
“Who’s Hal?”
“My boss.”
“Which boss?” Jordan can’t keep track of all of Mae’s jobs. She seems to be at once underemployed and also quite overemployed.
“Dog boss.” She chews her fingernail and says, “What should I get? I’m driving. I can only have one drink; I have to make
it a good one.”
“We could Uber,” suggests Jordan. “And pick up the car tomorrow.”
“I’ll get a ticket,” says Mae.
“If you do, I’ll pay it,” says Jordan.
“You promise?”
“Promise.”
“Yes!” says Natalie. “Okay, so let’s do shots. Bartender!” This is how Jordan knows Natalie is already tipsy from the wine
they had with dinner. Sober people just signal for the bartender or catch their eye; nobody actually calls out the word bartender, just as nobody in New York actually yells “Taxi!” as they’re signaling for a cab.
“Sisters?” asks the bartender, and they nod. “I love that. Sisters are the best. I always wanted a sister.”
“I like your tattoo,” Mae tells her. The bartender has a small goat tattoo on her wrist, just like the goat brands on the
burger buns here. “It shows real workplace commitment.”
“Thanks.” She smiles. “I like all of yours.”
Jordan presses her lips together; respectfully, she disagrees. She hates that Mae has so many tattoos now. She hates that
she looks like—well, like someone she is not. Or never used to be. Their mother would be so upset to see Mae’s pretty skin
marked up like this, like a dark, angry costume that doesn’t really fit. “We can’t do whiskey shots,” says Jordan. “That’s
not very sophisticated.”
The bartender shrugs. “No judgment. We’ll pour anybody a shot of anything.”
“Tequila?” asks Natalie hopefully.
“Who are you, Natalie?” asks Jordan.
“It’s been a long week.”
“It’s only Wednesday!”
“Exactly.”
“How about no shots,” says Jordan. “How about cocktails?”
Natalie sighs and says, “Fine.” She orders a Goat-a-Rita, and Jordan deliberates between a Golden Hour Spritz and a bourbon, neat.
She chooses the bourbon. (They are beyond golden hour by now.) Mae gets The Red Door, with espresso, vodka, Irish cream, and cold brew—named, they speculate, after the bar that closed a decade ago.
Jordan would be up all night if she drank that. Oh, to be in her twenties again!
It’s fun to be out with her sisters. The first hour passes so fast, the way time used to pass in college bars, when you look
up from hanging out with your friends and the night is nearly over, the bar about to close. Natalie brings up the summer Jordan
babysat for the family with triplets; they spend a good long time speculating about what white-collar crime the father got
investigated for. The summer a pipe bomb washed up on the beach and Calvin was the one who called the authorities. The time
Natalie dared Mae to eat a whole Seafood Platter from Petey’s by the end of the day and she ate the last bite at 11:57. Every
single Third of July party at the Beach Club.
Jordan feels the joy of this night like an ache in her heart, like nostalgia for something that isn’t yet over. Natalie seems
to have put her worries about the magazine article on the back burner, which means that for tonight she’s not asking Jordan
for something Jordan doesn’t want to give, and Jordan doesn’t have to deal with the messy truth that while she would hang
from her fingernails for Natalie and Natalie’s family, she would not do the same for Natalie’s “brand.” If her sisters don’t
want to talk about the house, that’s okay by Jordan. She’s not going to let herself think about Bernadette; she’s stuck to
her vacation guns and ignored her calls both yesterday and today. She’s feeling almost . . . calm and balanced. Jordan doesn’t
believe in heaven, but if she did she knows Theresa would be there, looking down at her three girls together and smiling.
She would also tell Mae not to drink coffee so late in the day.