Interstitial #6
“Why not?” You always make things so complicated, Jordan.
“Well. This is my job, Simone. This is my career. My income. This is what I’ve been working for since college.”
“Wouldn’t someone else snap you up? Another firm that does what you do?”
“Bernadette’s tentacles reach far and wide in our world,” says Jordan. “She knows how to bury people. If she wants to destroy
me, she can.”
“But if you want to destroy her, you can do that,” Simone points out. “You know all the tricks she knows. And you can call this journalist right now and tell
her everything.” They both look at Jordan’s phone, lying face down on the bar between them.
“I don’t think I’d do that.”
“Doesn’t even matter if you do,” says Simone. “It matters that she knows that you can. You have her over a barrel the same
way you think she has you.” Jordan imagines Bernadette, in wide-leg trousers and a stretch-linen waistcoat, her arms jacked
from the time she spends in the upper-body section of the Peloton app, holding Jordan over a barrel.
Simone is right!
“But maybe you don’t want to go to another firm anyway,” says Simone. “Maybe you want to start your own. Be your own boss.”
This has always been a dream of Jordan’s, as tender and precious as a new plant shoot, so fragile she’s never even said it
aloud. It’s like Simone has peered into her soul.
“I want to do that,” she whispers.
“So do it!” Simone slaps the bar, flushed and triumphant. “Do it, Jordan. I know you can. You’ve always had this drive and
ambition, always. Don’t waste it. Use it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long, long pause while all of this sinks in: Simone’s kindness toward her, her belief in Jordan, and, in turn, Jordan’s
burgeoning belief in herself. “What are you thinking?” asks Simone eventually.
“I’m thinking that I’m hungry,” Jordan realizes. “I’m so hungry!” She thought she’d never want to eat again after lunch and beer at Petey’s, but suddenly she’s ravenous.
“I know exactly what you need,” says Simone. She calls over Hector, who has had the nerve to turn his attention to new customers
at the far end of the bar, and says, “One order of Parker House rolls, please, Hector.”
“You got it.”
When the rolls arrive, Jordan decides they are the best things she’s ever, ever tasted, so soft and buttery, with flavors
of garlic and rosemary: heaven in a basket.
“Simone!” says Jordan as they’re making short work of the rolls. “I’m such a jerk. I’ve only talked about myself. Let’s get
one more. I want to hear what’s going on with you.”
Simone looks at her watch. “I’d love to, but I’m meeting someone.”
“But I want to hear more about your business! Your life!”
“We’ll talk about me next time, I promise. And you have to get home for dinner, right?” Jordan has told her that they only
have two family dinners left. On Saturday, to keep things looking good for the open house, they’re going to go to a restaurant.
Maybe they’ll come here! She imagines Caspian knocking over the delicate cocktail glasses or squishing the buttery rolls in
his chubby hands. Maybe they’ll go to Flatbread in Portsmouth instead.
Then it hits Jordan like a sack of rocks: What next time? Calvin is selling the house. All at once she feels as desolate as
she knows her sisters have felt all week.
“We’ll probably get an offer on Sunday, Simone. I’m not sure I’ll ever be back here.”
Simone slides off her barstool. “You’ll be back, Jordan Shipman. The state of New Hampshire isn’t going anywhere.”
Outside, at the edge of the parking lot, they stand close to each other. “Do you need a ride home?” asks Simone.
“It’s, like, a two-second walk.” Jordan laughs. “I think I can make it.” But she doesn’t move. “You smell the same,” she tells
Simone. “Like limes.”
“You know, smell is the most nostalgic of all the senses.”
“Right.” Jordan inhales one last time, so deeply that she hopes to save the scent forever, and then she says, “Thanks for
this, really. It helped me so much. Seeing you, talking it out—it all helped.”
“I’m glad,” says Simone, all smiles.
Jordan looks at Simone, at her blond hair and her freckled skin and her sea-glass eyes. She feels like she’s seeing her more
clearly than she’s ever seen her before—and that Simone is seeing Jordan clearly too.
“I’m sorry I kissed the guy in the Obama shirt,” says Simone. “He was cute, though. Do you remember how cute he was?”
Jordan shakes her head.
“Well, he was really cute.”
Jordan laughs. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get past it.” She wonders how things might have been different, if they would have stayed
together longer or if they would have broken up over something different but equally silly and dramatic.
“My problem,” says Simone, “is that I like everybody.”
“That’s funny,” says Jordan, her heart full of nostalgia and longing. “I have the exact opposite problem.”
When Mae comes down the stairs before dinner Kara is looking at a photo of Calvin and Theresa’s wedding. “Look how puffy these
dresses are!” she says, holding out the photo to Mae.
“Is it strange that my dad put this one back out with the rest of them?” Mae wonders aloud.
“I think it would have been stranger if he hadn’t,” Kara says. “It’s your family history.”
“You’re not insisting all of these photos be removed and then burned?” she asks Kara.
“I’m not really an evil stepmother,” says Kara. “I only play one on TV.” Mae smiles.
She takes the frame from Kara. She’s seen this photo a thousand times, but she’ll never get enough of it. It’s 1984, early
May, and her mother and father are standing with their wedding party in front of the showy star magnolia in the Boston Public
Garden. The bridesmaids—Theresa’s two sisters and her two best college friends—are in peach. Lots of peach. Here’s Theresa
in capped sleeves, full skirt, a train that went on for days. It might be the hair and the puffy dresses, but every woman
looks a little like Princess Diana, and the men, with their side-parted, slightly feathered hair, could all be John Travolta.
They’d been married at Trinity Church, and somewhere in their house in Lenox, Mae knows, are photos of the ceremony inside
the rough-textured stone walls of the church, surrounded by the famous stained-glass windows.
Her parents are so young and so beautiful that it takes Mae’s breath away. In this picture Theresa is three years younger
than Mae is now. Mae looks, trying to read something in her eyes, in her wide, imperfect smile. Her mother had lived almost
four decades after her wedding day, and yet died too young.