Chapter 28 #2
“But then the craziest part is that she didn’t die. I didn’t join your club after all. She had like a one percent chance of survival, and she lived. She’s seventy-eight now and still doing okay.”
“Wow,” Emily said. “Well… I’m glad to hear that.”
“But in those few months when I thought she was dying, I managed to fuck up the best thing that had ever happened to me.” Cara said this last part in a rush of breath. Then took another big sip of her wine.
She was the best thing that had ever happened to Cara? A mountain of unspoken what-ifs suddenly sat between them, and Emily twisted her wedding band nervously around her finger. “It was a long time ago,” Emily said. “I’m sure many better things have happened to you since then.”
Cara offered her a half-smile. “Well, I’m not married, like you.” She stared at Emily, like maybe she wanted to know more, about Cecile, about her life now, but Emily bit her lip, not willing to share any of that.
“I understand,” Emily said instead. “I forgive you. It’s in the past. Let’s just forget all about it, okay?”
Cara smiled for real this time. “Maybe we could… be friends again. You know, text each other from time to time.”
But Emily shook her head, understanding that once she left this table, this city, she was going to have to compartmentalize Cara in the back of her mind, where she had already been for years.
She didn’t want to think about that mountain of what-ifs.
She couldn’t handle thinking about them in the middle of the night, when she woke up, sweating, claustrophobic.
When she inwardly cringed every time one of the boys called her Emma (Cecile’s attempt at something cute—a mixture of Emily and Mama).
She couldn’t think about another path her life might’ve taken whenever this one felt too hard.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.
For once, Emily was the first May sister to arrive in Coronado, given that she had just rented a car and driven down from LA.
She’d been warned by one of the other conference goers that the two-hour trip could take six if she hit traffic, and so she left LA at five on Sunday morning and pulled up onto Ocean Boulevard before seven thirty.
Nate was crossing the street in his wet suit, board under his arm, just as she parked. He saw her, grinned, waved, and jogged up to the convertible she’d rented.
“Fancy way to arrive this year.” He patted the hood affectionately.
“I just came from Santa Monica,” she said, shrugging.
Nate stared at her for a moment, his eyes searching her face. Then he said, “Who’s in Santa Monica?”
She thought guiltily again about her lunch with Cara.
Not that she had anything to feel guilty about.
But still. Cara had followed it up with a “great to see you again!” text that Emily had yet to respond to.
(She was not going to respond. She had told Cara point-blank that they couldn’t text.
Still… she hadn’t been able to bring herself to block her either.) “Not who,” she corrected Nate now. “What. Conference for work.”
“Ahh.” Nate grinned. “How was it?”
Boring as fuck. Emily loved her job working side by side with Cecile at the museum, but she still had very little true passion for aquatic life. And sometimes she thought those fucking orcas would be the death of her. “It was great,” she lied. “Super fun. Oh, I brought Mal some whale pins!”
“She’ll love that,” he said. Maybe because she was literally a child of the ocean, but Mallory was obsessed with all aquatic life. Last May, she’d regaled them with dolphin facts all week long after they’d spotted some jumping just offshore.
“Did you get to the pier while you were up there?” Nate asked.
Emily shook her head. “No time.” She wasn’t quite sure why she was lying to Nate, who wouldn’t care in the least about her accidental Ferris wheel ride with Cara. But it seemed easier just to reject everything that had happened across the board.
“Ah, well. Maybe next time. I’ve actually been telling Mal I’d take her to Belmont Park over in Mission Beach. Maybe we could all go together one night this week? Mal’s super excited to see her three favorite May aunts.”
Emily nodded. “Sounds like fun. I’ll run it by the scheduler when she gets here.”
Nate laughed. Then he held up his surfboard. “Hey, maybe I can get you back on the board this week too. What do you say?”
“No fucking way.” And then Emily thought again about Nate’s surfing lesson all those years ago. How she had been in so much pain afterward, it was possible she’d hallucinated something in Grandma Vera’s armoire that had never even existed.
On Wednesday night, Mallory, Emily, and Nora rode the Giant Dipper at Belmont Park while Julia and Nate stood below, watching the coaster car rise, their feet planted firmly on the ground.
Though the amusement park at Mission Beach was just a short drive over the bridge from Coronado, this was the first time the May sisters had made it here.
Julia immediately understood why as she stared at the giant, rickety-looking wooden coaster in front of them.
“I want to throw up just looking at that thing,” Julia said.
Nate grinned. “I feel like I’ve seen you do that before.”
He said it so easily, like the memory had been rolling around in his head on a loop for years, the way it did for Julia sometimes. Her heart lurched in her chest, or maybe it was her stomach. “That was my only time on a roller coaster, in Santa Monica with you,” she said softly. “One and done.”
Nate laughed. “Very wise. I’ve never seen someone vomit that much.”
Julia blushed, embarrassed by the memory, even ten years later. “I’m so sorry. That’s really horrifying.”
But Nate just shrugged like it hadn’t even fazed him.
She gestured toward the Giant Dipper. “You didn’t have to wait down here with me.”
Nate shook his head. “I like waiting with you. Besides, I haven’t seen you much this week, and this gives us time to talk. How are you doing?”
She forced a smile. How was she doing? She had the urge to tell Nate that her marriage had been pronounced terminal. Stage four. It wasn’t even on life support, it was hopeless. Instead, she said, “I’m good. How about you?”
“Can’t complain. Mal’s doing great. Work is good, and in three weeks it’ll be summer, and I’ll have a two-month vacation.”
“Teaching is the life,” Julia said. Veronica had gotten a job at a local coffee shop for the summer but didn’t have her license yet, and Julia was already stressed about how she was going to make all the driving work between Veronica’s schedule and her own.
“Money could be better,” Nate said. “But we get by.”
“Oh God, are we not paying you enough to manage the rental?”
Nate lightly put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re paying me too much. I told you a few years ago you could stop. I’d do it for free. It’s not that big of a deal. I live next door.”
He had told her that. And she had told him absolutely not. He deserved to be compensated for his time. He’d told her then that sounded like lawyer-speak, and sometimes family just did favors for each other.
“Well,” Julia said. “If you feel you deserve a raise at some point, just tell us. When you agreed to this seventeen years ago, prices were a little different.”
“Seventeen years? Has it really been that long since Vera died?”
Julia nodded. “It’s crazy because sometimes I still catch myself thinking about her, and I picture her at her house in Coronado, and then… it takes me a minute to remember all over again she’s gone.”
“So… I guess that means you’ve been married for sixteen years, huh?” Nate whistled softly.
“How do you even remember that?” Julia laughed. “I can barely remember myself.”
“Well… easy. The next year after Vera died… you got married. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. Then he opened his mouth, like there was more he wanted to say, but he closed it again without saying anything else.
If she and Ted stuck to their verbal agreement, they would get divorced after nineteen years, not quite making it to the platinum anniversary of twenty. For some reason, that thought filled her with the deepest sense of failure she’d felt since the therapist’s office, and she sighed.
“Goddamn,” Nate said after a moment. “How did we get so old?”
Julia punched him lightly on the arm. “Speak for yourself, old man. I’m still and always will be a whole year younger than you.”
Nate grinned. “That’s true. And you still look exactly the way I remember you looking at eighteen too. You haven’t changed one bit, Jules.”
She laughed again. “You’re really full of shit.” But she thought about Nora last summer insisting she was still hot. Did Nate think that too? Her cheeks burned at the thought.
He met her gaze, and his expression was totally serious. They stared at each other just like that for another moment, eyes locked, unmoving, until Emily and Mal emerged from the exit of the coaster, holding hands and laughing. Nora walked slowly behind them, looking a little green.
“Julia, that was so awesome!” Mal exclaimed. “You should come with us.”
Julia put her arm around Mal and gave her squeeze. “Absolutely not. I love you to death, Mal. But there is no way I’m ever getting on that thing.”
Five months after she left her sisters and Coronado, Nora went to a party on election night.
It was hosted by Cathay Peters, a big-name old-school Broadway actress who had played her mother, Rhea, in Hera.
Nora had been thrilled to score an invite, and she texted her sisters a selfie from Cathay’s gorgeous Upper East Side brownstone as the returns started coming in: NBD!
Just watching the glass ceiling break with a room full of Broadway royalty and fancy champagne! !
Emily quickly texted back a selfie of her and Cecile on the couch in matching red plaid pajama pants and MADAM PRESIDENT T-shirts. Cecile and I just stress-raided the boys’ Halloween candy and are watching results in our pjs.