Chapter 7
“Veronica is six months now,” Janet said to Julia, as Julia stood in front of the freezer, showing her the stash of milk the Friday evening before she left. By then, there were close to fifty tiny bags, and the rows went back four deep.
“Not until the end of next week.” Julia would, in fact, miss Veronica’s six-month birthday while she was away, a thought that had almost made her reconsider going, or ask her sisters if they could switch their week.
But remarkably, the Ocean Boulevard house had grown quite popular with tourists and was rented out every single other week all summer.
And Julia couldn’t just not go. This was only the second annual sisters’ week.
If she did that, then they might as well give up on the whole thing right now—Em and Nora would never be able to keep things together without her.
And she couldn’t abandon Grandma Vera’s wishes just like that.
“I’ve arranged the milk front to back,” Julia explained to Janet now, brushing her fingertips along the icy bags. “The oldest milk is in the front, and it’s all labeled, so it should be very easy. Self-explanatory, really.”
Janet grinned. “Like I said, Veronica is six months. I’ll start introducing some rice cereal when you’re away. Maybe a little yogurt.”
Julia took a deep breath before replying.
They’d hired Janet because she was experienced, older, in her sixties, and had once been a preschool teacher.
She knew children in and out. Ted called her Mrs. Peace of Mind.
Julia secretly thought of her as Mrs. I’d Like to Give Her a Piece of My Mind.
“Don’t introduce anything new while I’m gone.
” Julia forced her tone to remain calm, even, like she was in court.
“She’ll be six months and one day when I get home.
I’ll introduce rice cereal then. For now, milk should be enough. ”
Mrs. I’d Like to Give Her a Piece of My Mind raised her eyebrows into tiny silver arches. “If that’s your preference. I can always supplement with a little formula while you’re away,” she tsked. “She did just fine with it last week.”
“What? Veronica isn’t supposed to have formula.
That’s why I pump!” Breast is best. Every child-rearing book she had read (and she had, of course, read them all) had said that.
The upcoming week away had her pumping at least twice a day, sometimes three, at her desk.
Even before April, she’d been pumping at least once at her desk, and at home in the morning and night too.
She had turned herself into a goddamn cow because breast is best. All so that Janet could just… give her daughter formula.
Janet laughed. “It’s your first child, Julia. Wait until the next one. You’ll throw that darn pump away.”
And then Julia, perhaps egged on by hormones, or the feel of her raw nipples suddenly and inconveniently leaking milk on her shirt, unleashed every bit of frustration she’d felt since Veronica was born.
“Janet,” Julia said in her calm, even lawyer tone. “You’re fired.”
Nora marveled at the New York City skyline from afar, the way the Twin Towers gleamed like beacons of hope on the other side of the Hudson as she caught a glimpse of them out the taxi window on her way to Newark Airport.
The city felt, from here, like the dollhouse she’d had as a little girl.
Everything that was supposed to be big turned small.
On the highway in New Jersey, she felt suddenly, weirdly boundless.
Empty. Nora loved the noise and lights of the city, the way the tall buildings and people surrounding her always made her feel like she was a part of something.
She had left it only once since she’d moved here last summer, to go to DC to meet baby Veronica after she was born in November.
But it had been six months, and now from the back seat of the taxi, she found herself staring at the skyline, feeling like leaving it behind was the same as giving up.
But she wasn’t giving up. It was just a week.
Just seven days with her sisters in Coronado.
Still, she felt this weird sensation in her gut, like the moment she left this grind she wouldn’t ever be able to bring herself to go back to it.
The truth was, a singing-waitress job at the Moonlight Diner was the best role she’d been able to get this past year.
It was so far from Broadway, or even off-off-off-Broadway.
She’d told herself at least she was singing every day.
For money! But every night she was exhausted and came home to her tiny apartment in Brooklyn with swollen ankles, her hair reeking of French fries.
If that was living the dream, she’d started to question the dream to begin with.
As she got to the airport now, her cell phone jingled inside her backpack, and she dug it out.
Dad’s number ran across the small front screen, but she refused to actually flip open the phone and talk to him.
They had agreed to her moving to New York under the condition she would try it for one year.
A year ago, she’d believed that was all the time she needed.
She would show him! But now, she wasn’t sure she knew anything.
And she’d been ignoring Dad’s recent calls, as his voicemails and emails were both imploring her to go back to school in the fall.
At least get a degree to have in your back pocket.
Deep down she knew that if she picked up the phone now, she was going to have to admit that he was right.
The phone finally stopped jingling and then a few moments later the voicemail icon popped onto the tiny screen.
Nora listened to it: Nora, honey, why don’t you take this next week and talk to Julia about how important her education was to her.
Then she powered her cell phone totally off and threw it in her backpack.
Emily did not drive to Coronado this year. She had been tempted to, but the car needed brakes, and new tires, if it was going to make it all the way across the country and back. And in the end, buying a plane ticket was the cheaper option.
In the last nine months, Emily had broken up with Helen, quit smoking, and gotten an extremely boring but decently paying job as a teller at Fleet Bank. She had enough money saved for the plane ticket now, and she had enough vacation hours saved up to take the whole week off.
But still, as she waited at Logan, the little red letters next to her flight number flashing “Delayed,” she wished she had just used her credit card to fix up the car and driven after all.
It was too late now, and then she decided since she had nothing to do for the next three hours while she waited for her delayed flight, she may as well get a drink.
She wheeled her bag across the terminal and took a seat at an empty table at the bar.
It was just past nine in the morning, but she ordered a glass of Chardonnay.
If she had a few, maybe it would help her sleep on the flight, make the time pass more quickly.
Come to think of it, maybe she would have to adopt this plan all week.
Wine, wine, wine. It would dull Julia’s and Nora’s whine, whine, whine.
As she sipped her Chardonnay, she giggled at that thought.
“I also find a nice dry white hysterically funny.” Emily turned at the sound of the woman’s voice coming from behind her, suddenly embarrassed that someone had noticed her laughing into her wine, alone in an airport bar in the morning.
The owner of the voice raised an eyebrow, then her glass of white wine in a mock toast. She was older than Emily, or she at least gave off the vibe of being more elegant.
She had olive skin, bright green eyes, and shiny jet-black hair that hit at an angle just above her shoulders.
She was wearing a long, flowy emerald-colored dress that complimented her eyes, while Emily’s light brown hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she was in her travel clothes: old gray yoga pants and her ratty Smith sweatshirt.
“I don’t normally sit alone drinking and laughing, I swear,” Emily finally said. “My flight’s delayed. I’m headed to spend a week with my sisters, and I guess I’m just… pregaming.”
“Ahh, sisters.” She grimaced. “I have three. I totally get it. I’m Cara by the way.”
“Emily. And I only have two. But I’m the middle sister.”
“Oh, the dreaded middle sister! Same!” Cara laughed, stood, and wheeled her bag next to Emily’s table. “Can I?” she asked, gesturing to the empty chair. Emily nodded.
Cara took a seat, and Emily had this weird flash of déjà vu. She suddenly thought about Monica, the Cal student she’d met sort of randomly this same exact way, at Clayton’s Diner in Coronado when she was seventeen. The first girl she’d ever gotten drunk with and kissed.
“So where are you headed, Emily?” Cara asked, interrupting her thoughts.
For some reason Emily interpreted this as “What are you doing with your life?” forgetting that she was in an airport. “I have a degree in art history. My eventual goal is to become a curator, but at the moment, I work at a bank.” She took a big gulp of her wine.
And now it was Cara’s turn to laugh. “Your flight,” she sputtered in between laughs. “I meant where are you flying to?”
“Oh, right, of course.” Emily felt her cheeks turning hot and she pressed the backs of her hands against them.
“But now I’m much more interested in why you work in a bank.”
Emily shook her head. There was nothing interesting about it, not the job, nor the reason behind it.
It was the first job she had actually gotten since she’d finished college.
Money was money. “San Diego. That’s where I’m flying to,” she said instead, and she explained briefly about Grandma Vera’s house on Coronado Island, their one sisters’ week every May.
“Well, that sounds nice actually,” Cara said. “My sisters and I just bicker when we all see each other at my parents’ house near LA where we grew up.”