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Jordan thinks about Memorial Day and about Bernadette’s hand on her leg.
“Sometimes,” she says for a third time, and they all laugh.
Jordan isn’t in a mood to make small talk with someone she doesn’t know, so she excuses herself to use the bathroom.
Washing her hands, she looks in the mirror and replays Natalie’s words—sometimes I forget that you only have time when it suits you.
How dare she. Jordan has been the older sister as long as Natalie has been alive.
Natalie has no idea of the responsibilities
placed on the eldest! Hold your sisters’ hands crossing the street. Help Mae with her homework. Pick up Natalie from speech
and debate. Give, give, give, and who’s giving back? When she comes out, Simone is standing there.
“You okay?”
“Of course.” Jordan knows that just under the surface of the words is the truth, and if Simone were to scratch ever so gently
it would be uncovered. Bernadette. Samantha Braddock. Natalie. The presence of Kara and the absence of Theresa. The Realtor.
The house. Each thing is piling up on top of the next like stacking cups, and the stack is about to tumble. “Why wouldn’t
I be okay?”
“You look upset.”
“I’m fine.”
Simone laughs, not unkindly. “Classic Jordan. You always used to say you were fine even when you weren’t.” Jordan doesn’t
know what to say to this, so she says nothing. “You can talk to me, you know. If you ever need an ear. I can be an ear.” This,
thinks Jordan, is just what she’d been wishing for the day before, an ear! And now here’s Simone, fixing her sea-glass eyes
on Jordan and offering it, her words like a jump in the ocean on a hot day.
“Natalie just got all over me for some ancient history, and I’ve got this thing with my boss . . . Never mind, though.” She
could go on and on, but she won’t. “I shouldn’t get into it. It’s really not just-ran-into-you material.”
“I was always scared of Natalie,” Simone admits. “All the way back when she was—what was she that summer? Fifteen? I wouldn’t have wanted to cross her.” Even if Simone is exaggerating (and she probably is), this makes Jordan feel better, like
her corner is not empty. “Listen,” Simone goes on. “The offer for the ear stands, okay? I’m around.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey, I want to say hi to your sisters! Is that okay?”
“Sure,” says Jordan. “I believe they are glued to their bar seats. What about Marnie, though?”
“She left. She wanted to check on her cat. She’s really attached to her cat.”
“Fair enough,” says Jordan, leading Simone back to the bar. She’s glad Simone is there to diffuse some of the tension with
Natalie. Greetings, hugs, etc.
“We’re doing shots!” Natalie tells her.
Jordan says, “Not this again. We’re not twenty-two, Natalie.” She’s torn between her anger and her desire for her anger to
be gone.
“Who cares. There’s not a maximum age. Simone, will you do a shot with us?”
Simone assesses the Shipman girls and asks, “How’re you getting home?”
“Uber,” they say together.
“I have my car,” says Simone. “I’m not drinking tonight. Do your shot. I’ll be your Uber.”
“Yay!” say Natalie and Mae together.
Jordan sighs. “Just one teeny-weeny shot before we go,” Natalie says to Jordan.
“Fine,” Jordan agrees, knowing it’s a bad idea, because one shot before you go is always, always a bad idea and it only ever
makes you feel better for about four minutes. “But make it bourbon, okay?”
“Bartender!” calls Natalie, and Jordan cringes, but the bartender comes over, and she says, “That’s what I’m talking about, ladies!
” when Natalie orders a round. The shot burns going down, because you aren’t supposed to shoot bourbon, you’re supposed to sip it, but if that’s the biggest mistake Jordan makes this week she can live with it.
“Should we do another?” asks Natalie.
“No,” says everyone, and Jordan adds, “Oh my god, you’re drunk on two drinks and a shot; when did you become such a lightweight?”
“Do you think we’ll be in trouble with Dad if we come home drunk?” asks Natalie, ignoring Jordan’s question.
“Uhhhh,” says Mae. “Is that a thing that happens to adults?”
“I think you’re safe,” says Simone. “I’m sure your father has been drunk before.”
“Actually, I’ve never seen Dad drunk,” says Natalie.
Mae says, “At Dad and Kara’s wedding—” and then claps her hand drunkenly over her mouth.
Natalie and Jordan turn on her. “I’m sorry, what?” cries Jordan.
“Nothing.”
“No, not nothing. You said something about the wedding.”
“No wedding,” says Mae, speaking in the space her fingers leave as they part.
Jordan and Natalie exchange a glance, confused. Jordan, who feels instantly sober, says, “Mae? Were you at Dad and Kara’s wedding?”
Mae removes her hand and says, “Possibly.”
Everything shifts then—everything.
“This seems like a good time to call it a night,” says Simone.
“It’s only ten o’clock,” says Natalie. Her eyes are shooting daggers at Mae. “I think we can stay a little longer.”
Simone catches the bartender’s eye and says, “These three are ready to settle up.”
Jordan pays the bill, waving away Natalie’s credit card. Mae, that little traitor, who isn’t meeting her or Natalie’s eyes, doesn’t even offer to pay.
They have to walk two blocks to Simone’s car, and during those two blocks Mae starts at least a dozen sentences.
“You guys, it wasn’t—”
“I was only—”
“It’s just because—”
Natalie and Jordan walk ahead of her. They don’t want to hear anything Mae tries to say. When they’re in the car, with Simone
in the driver’s seat, Jordan beside her, and Natalie and Mae in the back, Jordan turns around and says, “So, you were at the
wedding?” Classic Jordan—she wants the answer, but on her own time. Simone, to her credit, simply drives. The streets are
dark, mostly quiet; the moon is full. The water, in glimpses behind the rock walls, glows.
“I got invited, so I went.”
“We all got invited,” says Natalie. “We agreed as a group to boycott.”
Mae inhales, exhales on the answer. “I changed my mind. I called Dad and told him I wanted to go. He bought me a plane ticket,
and I went.” She can hear the uncertainty in her voice, and she doesn’t like it.
Natalie says, “This is unbelievable. And you didn’t tell us?”
“I didn’t tell you because you would have reacted exactly the way you’re reacting now.”
Natalie snorts. It’s the snort that gets to Mae. “You know what? I don’t have to explain. I don’t have to apologize.”
“Yes, you do,” says Jordan. “You have to do both.”
Even Mae doesn’t recognize the steeliness in her own voice. “I don’t. I think Kara is nice. I like her. I think you’re both too hard on Dad and Kara, okay?” Each emphasized word feels like she’s delivering a punch.
“We’re not hard enough,” says Natalie.
“I miss Mom as much as you guys do—”
“Apparently not,” says Jordan, under her breath, but still Mae hears her, and is infuriated. She tries to hold her voice steady.
“Of course I do. You know I do. But I think Kara is good for Dad. And Dad is good for Kara. If you took even a second to get out of your own heads and get to know her you’d see that
too. You’re not even trying.”
“I don’t want to get to know her,” says Jordan.
“Me either,” says Natalie.
“Well, who cares? Who cares what you want? This is not about you.” They both stare at her, at this person with a very un-Mae-like tone of voice, these harsh words.
Then she softens. “I wanted to go to the wedding. I wanted to go. I wanted us all to go, but I knew you wouldn’t. I was happy to be there.” She pauses and then says, “It was a really
nice wedding. I’m not sorry I was there. I was lonely, and I felt less lonely being there.”
In the moonlight she sees something shift in Jordan’s posture.
Simone clears her throat and they all startle, as though they’ve forgotten about her, as though they thought they were being
transported by a driverless car. “If I may,” she says. “I know this conversation is none of my business, but I just want to
say, you guys had an amazing mom.”
A great silence falls. Mae is the first to speak.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Yeah,” says Jordan.
“We did,” says Natalie.
“I know that. You know that. But tell me about her as though I’d never met her.”
“Now?” asks Jordan.
“Here?” asks Mae, glancing at Natalie.
“Now,” says Simone. Her hands are shadowy on the steering wheel. There is the quiet tick of the turn signal, the glow of the
moon. “Here. Natalie, you go first.”
“Well,” says Natalie. She appears to be thinking about it, and then to come to some internal resolution. She shakes her head
quickly the way she used to do as a kid when she got ocean water in her ears. “Okay. The first thing is . . . she was constitutionally
sound.”
“Great!” says Simone encouragingly. “Say more.”
This is what Natalie chose? thinks Mae. But then Natalie goes on, and they all start nodding along, because it’s true. “I
mean, she was healthy. That’s it! Maybe her immune system was built up from being around kids all the time, at school and
at home, but she never got the colds the rest of us got. Never got the flu. Always took care of us when we got sick. Honestly,
I don’t remember her being in bed a day in her life. Do any of you?” They all shake their heads. “That’s why it was such a
shock when she got Sick with a capital S.”
Mae’s eyes are moist.
“That was lovely, Natalie,” says Simone softly. It’s as if Simone has turned into a pastor and they are all part of her congregation.
But it’s working, the pastor vibe. “Mae?” says Simone.
“She had beautiful handwriting,” says Mae, looking at her wrist, just visible from the streetlights and the moon.
Jordan goes next: “She had gorgeous legs, but she hated her stomach.”
“She always knew who the shyest kid in the class was and she never called on them without warning. She was allergic to humiliating people.”
“She hated rodents as pets but she let me have one anyway.”
“Until you killed it.”
“Right. Until I killed it.”
“She never went to Italy.”
“Or apparently Paris.”
“Her pancakes were not great.”