Chapter 6
THERE WAS ONE DETAIL Emily had failed to share with her sisters since she’d come home from France: She didn’t have a job.
And not only that, but she seemed entirely incapable of getting one.
Not for lack of trying either. She’d interviewed at every museum in Boston, for every single open position, all to no avail.
So the entirety of her income, at the moment, was the checks Julia sent monthly for her share of the Ocean Boulevard rent.
After all their expenses to redecorate, refurnish, pay property taxes, and pay Nate to manage, and after they split what was left three ways, her monthly check was barely enough to cover the rent on her shitty studio apartment.
It wasn’t really that she’d meant to lie to them.
At least, not at first. She’d told her sisters about an interview at the Museum of Fine Arts a few months back, and for whatever reason Nora had (wrongly) assumed she’d gotten that job.
Then Nora mentioned to their father in front of everyone at Julia and Ted’s wedding that Emily had gotten an amazing new position, and Emily couldn’t just blurt out the truth.
All she’d done was sip her amaretto sour and nod.
Months later, Emily realized she might have to come clean to her sisters when they started emailing about their flights for their first annual sisters’ week at Grandma Vera’s in May.
That’s when it occurred to her: She couldn’t afford to buy the plane ticket.
She was going to have to ask their father, or God forbid Julia, for help.
Or maybe she could email her sisters and say she couldn’t go at all?
She could lie and say that week no longer worked for her, even though they had, months ago, very specifically coordinated all their schedules to make sure all of them could go in May like they’d always done.
Julia might take the train up from DC just to strangle Emily with her bare hands if she suddenly bailed on them now.
And besides, she couldn’t risk it. What if Julia decided her not coming for the week meant she wasn’t doing her part to get the monthly share of the rental income?
“What are you sighing about?” Helen rolled over in bed, propped herself up on her elbow, and stared deeply at Emily, as if her face would give away the answer. Helen took a drag on her cigarette and then held it out to Emily. “You look like you need this more than me right now.”
Emily shot her an appreciative smile and took the cigarette.
Actually, scratch that. There was more than one thing she’d been keeping from her sisters since she’d returned from France. They didn’t know she smoked now. And they didn’t know about Helen either.
She took one slow drag on the cigarette and then handed it back to Helen. “What am I always sighing about?” she finally said. “Money. What else?”
“How much do you need?” Helen asked.
Emily shook her head, unwilling to give Helen an answer.
Helen was a senior at Tufts, on a full scholarship.
She didn’t have any money either. They’d met in Paris, at a bar, two American girls abroad from Massachusetts.
Being in Paris together had given them this sort of ethereal connection, but now that they’d been back in Boston for six months, sometimes Emily wondered if they actually had anything real in common.
And even with Helen here, in her bed, lying next to her naked, wisps of smoke trailing up around her pretty cherubic face, Emily already understood that whatever existed between them was fleeting. She couldn’t take her money.
“Don’t worry about it,” Emily finally said. “I’ll figure something out.”
When Nora stepped out of the taxi on Ocean Boulevard, she was surprised to see a strangely familiar car parked out front: the 1988 red Pontiac Sunbird that all three sisters had learned to drive in.
Dad had given it to Emily her senior year at Smith when Nora was a freshman at Northwestern.
Julia hadn’t needed a car in law school in DC.
Nora had nowhere to park it on campus as a freshman, and Dad said it was taking up too much space in the driveway.
That was how the sisters’ car had become Emily’s by default.
Nora had long planned to try to get Dad to buy her a car when she graduated. If she graduated.
But she shook that thought away. Nora hadn’t told her sisters what she was considering, and she couldn’t this week either. Not unless she wanted it to immediately get back to Dad. Neither Emily nor Julia could keep a secret.
She ran her hand lightly across the familiar hood of her former high school car. What was it doing here? Parked on Ocean Boulevard? Emily couldn’t have possibly driven it all the way from Boston. Could she have?
For some reason, that unexpected thought made Nora feel unsettled as she wheeled her roller bag up the front walk.
But it wasn’t really the sight of her old car that disturbed her.
She understood that much as she walked up the steps, onto the porch.
It was more the sight of Grandma Vera’s house, which technically was no longer Grandma Vera’s but a weekly rental for tourists that was now one-third hers.
From the outside, the house appeared exactly the same as it always had her whole life: a stately white Victorian with a large lattice porch, sitting just across the street from the beach.
But now, Grandma Vera was no longer inside.
She took a deep breath as she opened the unlocked screen door and walked in.
She’d glanced through the pictures Julia had emailed of the interior refresh and new furniture, but somehow seeing it in person felt different.
Grandma Vera’s pink-and-blue-seashell walls had been turned neutral and beige; there were modern white leather couches where the old blue velvet tufted ones had been, and even the kitchen cabinets had been repainted white.
Nora bit back tears as she looked around.
It suddenly felt as if Grandma Vera had not only died but also been erased.
“You’re here.” Emily’s voice cut into her thoughts, and Nora looked up and saw her walking down the steps just off the kitchen. Emily sounded irritated, as if Nora had shown up late, though her flight had landed exactly on time.
“Where’s Julia?” Of her two older sisters, Nora would take Julia over Emily most days of the week. Except for maybe Saturday nights. Emily liked to go out and have fun. Julia was always tucked in bed before ten.
“I’m right here.” Julia walked out of the kitchen.
“I saw the Sunbird outside. Did you drive?” Nora said, turning back to Emily. “From Boston?”
Emily shrugged. “I wanted to do a road trip.”
“Why? That’s a really long road trip,” Nora said.
Julia nodded. “Not to mention dangerous. All that distance by herself.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Jul, it’s a new fucking millennium. Welcome to the twenty-first century, where a woman can even drive across the country on her own.”
Julia frowned. “Am I not allowed to worry about your safety, Em, when you decide to drive three thousand miles all by yourself? You know I read recently that driving tired is worse than driving drunk.”
Emily rolled her eyes again.
Nora already felt bad she’d even asked. The last time she’d seen her sisters had been at Julia’s wedding four months earlier, and sometimes she forgot how an innocent question could potentially be a spark that quickly became a flame.
When they were younger and all lived together in Dad’s house, they were close, bound by their shared experience, but they had bickered through most of their teen years, and were still doing so now that they were all in their twenties and out in the world.
Sometimes it felt like they had more differences than common ground.
“We’re not going to fight all week, are we? ” Nora asked.
“Probably,” Emily said, plopping herself down at the dining room table. A large rectangular glass table, not the oval chestnut one Grandma Vera had had forever, Nora noticed now.
Julia shook her head. “I certainly didn’t come all this way to argue.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Nora asked, sitting down at the table.
“Give me a minute.” Julia stood and ran up the stairs.
When they had come here to visit Grandma Vera when they were younger, Nora’s favorite activities were exploring the beach, digging holes and burying each other, roasting crabs and marshmallows, and singing by the backyard firepit when it grew chilly at night.
They’d sit on the porch early in the mornings when the sky was still gray and the sun hadn’t quite burned through and read books, stopping to identify the military planes as they burst through the low cloud cover overhead, landing at the base just down the island.
Grandma Vera, having once been married to a navy admiral (her second husband), was quite the expert.
But none of that sounded vaguely appealing to Nora now.
Maybe it was because she was no longer a little kid, or maybe it was because Grandma Vera had made being here fun.
Julia ran back down the steps, clutching a manila folder. She removed two papers and handed one each to Emily and Nora. “I made us a schedule,” she said.
“Of course you did,” Emily murmured under her breath.
Nora glanced at the paper. Julia had written down every meal, who was in charge of it, what they would be eating.
And there was an activity for each day of the week and night.
Runs down Ocean Boulevard beginning at nine a.m. Beach time in the afternoon, weather permitting.
Shopping on Orange Avenue and at the marketplace on the other side of the island by the ferry landing.
Grilling crabs at night and fish taco Tuesday, which Nora noticed she was assigned to. She suddenly felt exhausted.
“Do we need all this?” Nora asked. “I mean, we don’t have to be doing things together every single second that we’re here, do we?”