Interstitial #11
Natalie used to scroll through the comments on her videos, and if she saw one from Mae (slayyyyy, Mae might comment, or love this so much!) she’d smile and heart it, but did she wonder what Mae was doing right then, how she was feeling? Did she wonder if anyone
had broken her heart or stolen her money, left her blowing in the wind like a sheet on a clothesline?
Mae is lying in Jordan’s bed, her eyes open. The lights are off, but she can see her sister’s face because of the moon. Natalie
smooths Mae’s hair back from her forehead and pulls the sheet up and tucks it in along the sides, the way their mother used
to when they were little. Mae watches her.
“Mae,” says Natalie. “So what. You made a mistake.”
“There’s something wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you! Mistakes are what your twenties are for.”
“How come nobody told me that?”
“We don’t talk about it enough. Your twenties can be hard. You have so much collagen still, and that’s a blessing, but in
every other way, these years aren’t always so great.”
Mae doesn’t say anything, but Natalie can see that she has her attention, so she goes on.
“You’re used to traveling along the same path as your peers, because you’ve been doing it forever, and then, boom, you’re all going at different paces.
You feel like you’re the only one who isn’t engaged or hasn’t found your career or
bought a house.”
“I literally cannot imagine ever buying a house,” says Mae. “That seems so complicated.”
“It is and it isn’t,” says Natalie. She considers. “Actually, it is pretty complicated. But the point is, this shitty thing
that happened to you, it sucks, but you’ll recover from it. You’ll move on. You’ll grow up. When I was twenty-two, twenty-three?
I was a hot mess. I was having fun, sure, but it was messy.”
“No you weren’t.”
“I swear. Burning hot.”
“But I’m so much older than twenty-three.”
“Okay, so when I was your age? We were one year into owning a dairy farm! I was covered in manure most days. No social life, no friends, a barn that needed rebuilding, a mud season that wouldn’t quit, a baby and a toddler.
No idea what I was doing. Do you think I didn’t have days when I woke up and wondered what the hell had happened, what path
I was on? Nobody teaches you how to be a grown-up, Mae. It’s trial and error. Lots of error.”
Mae closes her eyes. “That makes me feel so much better,” she says softly. “To know that you were once a hot mess.”
“Many days,” says Natalie, “when the cameras are off, I still am. Now, let’s get some sleep. In the morning, we’ll figure
all of this out.”
When she opens the door she sees Jordan standing there, taking in every word.
They tiptoe back down the stairs, and in the kitchen, they consider each other.
“You did a good job,” Jordan says. “You were great in there.”
Natalie shakes her head. “We’ve done a terrible job as big sisters,” she says. “It’s not just the recent money thing. She’s been struggling for a long time.”
“Terrible,” agrees Jordan. “Mom would be crushed.”
“Absolutely crushed,” Natalie says. “I get so caught up in my own life—”
“Me too,” says Jordan. “Definitely me too.”
“I told her to join a club!”
“At least you told her something.”
“We should have known something was going on when we saw all the tattoos. That’s nothing against tattoos in general, but such
an abundance is very un-Mae-like.”
“Yeah.” Jordan shakes her head. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“One of us has to take her home with us, right?”
“Like a rescue dog?”
“Very similar to a rescue dog. But a little better on the leash.”
“I would have scanned that code too,” Natalie confesses. “Especially if it was a really nice speaker.”
“I don’t think I would have,” says Jordan. Then, reconsidering, “I don’t know. Maybe I would have. I definitely would have
reported it immediately when all my money was gone, though.”
“Wait,” says Natalie. “That’s your bed that I just put Mae into. Should I have tucked you in with her?”
Jordan shakes her head. “I’ll find somewhere else to sleep. It’s not just the snoring. I think I’m going to sleep outside.
On the patio.”
“Ooooh,” says Natalie. “Under the stars.”
“Want to come?”
“I do,” says Natalie. “But I’d better go back to the kids.”
“We used to sleep on the patio once a summer, remember?”
Natalie nods. “Always in August. But we had to wait until Mom and Dad went to bed because Mom thought we’d get kidnapped.” There’s nothing like falling asleep to the sound of the waves. “Kidnapped from a patio! In Rye! You can’t even see the patio from the street.”
“She also thought we were going to get roofied any time we went out.”
“Upon reflection,” says Natalie, “I guess a person can get kidnapped from anywhere.” Now that she has kids of her own she’s
much more understanding of her parents’ fears. There is so much to be afraid of.
“And then we’d have to wake up early and sneak upstairs to our rooms.”
“But we’d wake up early anyway, because of the sunrise.”
The sunrises at Jenness are absolute stunners, throwing prisms of color over the water, backlighting the really early surfers
in red-gold, shining a spotlight on the humps of the Isles of Shoals, six miles out to sea. You can’t sleep through that,
and there is absolutely no better way to wake up.
The sisters are quiet for a minute, remembering the long-ago mornings, the sandpipers skittering across the sand. They never
slept as well as they thought they would on a patio chair so they’d crawl into their actual beds and sleep for a few more
hours, emerging when the rest of the family was well into their day. “Morning, lazybones,” Theresa might say to them, and
they’d let her think that so the night could remain their secret.
Natalie helps Jordan gather blankets from the basket in the sunroom and carry them out onto the patio. She helps her wipe
the dew from the cushions, and when Jordan is settled in one of the loungers, she covers her with the blankets. This is the
second sister she’s tucked in tonight! It’s just past two o’clock by now; first light is less than three hours away. The stars
are bright and close, and the moon, one day away from full, is mighty.