Chapter 11 #2
If it was on the schedule, in pen, no less, it was happening, so Wednesday, after a two-mile morning walk, afternoon beach yoga, and shopping on Orange Avenue, all three of them showered and changed into clothing that in varying degrees showed something off: Julia picked a pale pink maxi dress and wore a little pink lipstick that reminded everyone she might be a mom and in her thirties but she was still cute, Nora dressed in fitted jeans and a crop top that showed off her sculpted abs from a year of intense dance routines, and Emily put on denim shorts and her Florida sweatshirt, a reminder that she was killing it in graduate school.
Julia pulled a bottle of rosé from the fridge and Nora shot her a look. “Em and I were gonna drink that later,” Nora protested.
“Well, we can’t show up empty-handed,” Julia insisted, wishing she’d thought ahead to buy some fancy champagne, something that appeared celebratory, while they were out shopping earlier.
But the truth was she had blocked this little get-together from her mind until about an hour ago, when she’d found herself rooting through the clothes she’d packed for the week, deciding if she had anything suitable to wear.
“It’s fine, bring the wine. Nora, I’ll buy you a margarita at Miguel’s after dinner,” Emily said. “You too, Jul.”
“We’re all going to need it,” Nora muttered under her breath. But if Julia and Emily heard it, they’d ignored her; they were already walking down the porch steps, across the front lawn.
Julia reached Nate’s front door first and raised her hand to knock, but then she heard the sounds of voices, shouting, from inside. You never do! a woman’s voice said.
Well, you never give me a chance! Nate sounded angry, an emotion the May sisters had rarely, maybe never, heard in his voice in all the many years they’d known him.
Julia and Nora exchanged looks, but Emily walked past them and rapped hard on the metal part of the screen door. “Nate,” she called before trying the handle. It was unlocked and she let herself in. “Nate, hello,” she called out again. “We’re here.”
It suddenly got very quiet, and then Nate appeared from the kitchen, Becca trailing a few steps behind him, barefoot and wearing a tiny yellow sundress that, in Julia’s opinion, didn’t leave enough about her (fake?) breasts to the imagination.
Nate suddenly broke into a smile and gave Emily a big hug.
He patted Nora affectionately on the shoulder and then offered Julia a wave.
Julia handed over the bottle of rosé, placing it in his raised hand. Nate tried to pass it off to Becca, but she shook her head and didn’t take it.
“I’m so sorry,” Becca said flatly. “I have a migraine. Can we reschedule dinner?”
“Reschedule? They’re only here one week a year.” Nate’s voice rippled with irritation.
“Migraines suck,” Nora said sympathetically. “I get it.”
Julia didn’t know Nora got migraines, and she stared at her youngest sister for a moment, trying to figure out whether she was being sincere or acting.
“I should go lie down. I’m so sorry to be rude,” Becca said, not actually sounding very sorry.
“No, not at all.” Julia waved away her concern. “Please, go rest if you don’t feel well. And we can always have dinner here… next May?” She looked at Nate, and his frown creased deeper.
“We’d been talking about Miguel’s for tonight anyway,” Emily said. “Julia needs her yearly oversized margarita fix.”
Nora giggled. Julia had never been able to drink more than half of their giant house margarita, and even that made her loosen up to the point of verging on being hilarious.
“No,” Nate said firmly, turning toward Becca. “Bec, you should go upstairs and lie down. But I have enough shrimp to feed all of us.” He turned back to look directly at Julia. “You’re all already here. Please don’t leave.”
Becca’s face fell a little, like maybe Nate had just failed some test the May sisters didn’t quite understand, but then she quickly reversed course into a small smile. “Of course. Go on ahead and eat without me. I’ll catch you next year, girls.”
Girls? The three May sisters all exchanged a look. “Feel better,” Nora called out as they watched Becca walk up the stairs.
“Let me go throw the shrimp on the barbecue,” Nate said evenly. “I’ll be right back to open this wine.”
“Nate, are you sure you don’t want us to go?” Julia asked. “We don’t want to impose.”
“Absolutely not,” Nate said. He was already walking toward the fridge, where he pulled out a giant tray of skewered shrimp.
Julia suddenly thought about the shrimp he’d grilled for her that time she’d come over right after Grandma Vera died, when they first talked about renting the house.
The way she had felt that night, flooded with grief and the sudden, sharp longing to be a teenager again.
How far she felt from that girl now. But still, somehow, even at thirty-one, being here in Nate’s kitchen, like this, that same longing rose up in her chest.
As they ate Nate’s shrimp, no one mentioned Becca.
Instead, Nate told his favorite Grandma Vera story (which was the time he’d watched her perform onstage as Sally Bowles in Cabaret with his mom when he was a little kid).
Nora wanted everyone’s thoughts on the series finale of Friends—which only Emily had actually watched, and Nora acted offended when she said it was just okay.
Emily pointed out that she now had something in common with President Bush, who fell off his bike the week before, which made Nora giggle and say, I saw that and I immediately thought of you.
And Julia wanted to know whether everyone thought Scott Peterson was guilty or innocent.
(Everyone said guilty, except for Nora.) Then Nora and Emily left to go get their margaritas at Miguel’s, and Julia asked Nate if he wanted to take a walk down Ocean Boulevard to the Del.
He hesitated for a moment before saying yes, that he would just run up and let Becca know and meet Julia by the street.
Outside, the night air was ripe with the scent of freshly bloomed honeysuckle.
But an evening fog had rolled in across the water and the sweet-smelling air was also surprisingly chilly.
Julia shivered as she crossed the street and waited for Nate, and she considered going back for a sweater.
But then Nate was running down his porch steps, heading toward her, and she couldn’t move.
A wave of nostalgia rolled over her, warming her from the inside out.
In that moment, Nate looked exactly the same as he had at fifteen, nineteen, twenty-seven.
The scent of honeysuckle and the ocean. The chill of the night air.
It was all so achingly familiar. And she suddenly felt the way she had at all those ages too.
For a moment she was overcome with some emotion she couldn’t exactly put her finger on.
“Thanks for suggesting this, Jules. Getting out of the house is exactly what I needed,” Nate said as he reached her.
She smiled at him. “Becca okay?”
Nate nodded but didn’t elaborate. He unzipped his hoodie, took it off, and handed it to Julia. “Here—you look cold.”
She hesitated for a second but then took it.
She was swimming in the long sleeves, in the way it smelled like him, like the ocean and sandalwood.
And the summer they first started dating when she was seventeen.
“Thanks,” she said softly, as they walked down Ocean Boulevard toward the Del, side by side, the way they had so many times over so many years.
“You know,” Julia said after a few silent moments. With her sisters gone, suddenly she felt like she wanted to say something real. “If you need me to go back there and beat her up for you, I will. If it would help.”
Nate laughed, a full-bodied genuine laugh that shook in his chest. “You sound even dumber saying that than I did a few years ago.”
Julia smiled, glad to hear Nate sounding more like Nate than he had all night.
She wanted to say something else then, something about how even the name Becca sounded so harsh, and Nate himself was so soft and comfortable, like this sweatshirt of his she was borrowing.
But she didn’t know how to articulate that without it coming off wrong. Finally, she said, “Are you happy?”
“Do you want the truth?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Always.” It was funny how the years could pass, but once she and Nate slipped back here, walking on this path just by the roar of the Pacific Ocean, everything that had happened, everything that would happen, it all felt so far away and out of reach.
It was just the two of them, again, every thought and hope and fear drowned out by the rush of waves so close.
“I’m really not sure,” Nate said. “I don’t even know if I understand what happy means.”
Then you should not marry Becca, she thought. But what she said instead was, “I don’t think anyone really does.”
Nate bit his lip, and maybe he wanted to ask her if she was okay again, or why she wasn’t trying to explain the definition of happiness to him. Wouldn’t a happy person know how to explain it? “How’s the baby?” he finally said.
She thought of the bright red blood pooling in the toilet, but of course he didn’t know about that.
That wasn’t what he meant. It’ll be okay.
We’ll try again, Ted had said, kissing the top of her head gently later that night in bed.
And she knew they would. But trying for the past two years had already felt like so much work.
Ted had processed the miscarriage as a blip, something that could easily be fixed, redone.
While she had been feeling hollow for weeks, feeling—when she first woke up in the morning and remembered what had happened—like the sense of loss could swallow her whole.
She hadn’t told anyone that though, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell Nate now either.
“V is a little person now,” she said instead, because of course that’s what he meant when he’d asked about the baby: Veronica.
“Three going on thirty. The parenting books say threenager for this phase.”
Nate laughed. “That’s awesome,” he said. “Now I’m picturing her like a tiny teenage version of you.”
“A little bit.” In some ways she was, but Veronica had gotten Nora’s thick brown curls and flair for the dramatic, and in a lot of ways, she reminded Julia most of teenage Nora.
“I can’t wait to be a dad,” Nate said.
“You’ll be great at it,” she said, and she meant it. Though she felt something like disappointment catch in her chest when she thought about Nate’s future threenager looking and acting something like Becca.
Up ahead the Hotel del Coronado started to come into view, the red triangular roofs of the buildings laced with white twinkle lights.
It was amazing the way this historic hotel had been here for over a hundred years, and how every May she had been coming here, it still looked exactly the same.
Beautiful. Twinkling. Majestic. Emerald City.
Vacation spot to kings and presidents and movie stars.
The white-and-red hotel never changed. If nothing else in her life was constant, at least this was. She said that to Nate now.
“I heard there’s actually a major renovation in the works.” He nodded up ahead toward the hotel. “Probably long overdue.”
“Well, no matter what they do to it,” she said, “I hope they don’t change the character. It’s beautiful just the way it is.”
Maybe she was just talking about the hotel or maybe she was saying something about Nate and Becca too.
Nate nodded. “Everything and everyone changes, Jules. That’s just life.”