Chapter 3 #3
Cece remembers what the bartender told her last night, about the neighborhood tearing each other apart over Rayburn Oyster’s planned expansion.
Lorraine’s a scientist; surely, she knows all about the ecological benefits of oysters, and it’s not like her house overlooks the cove.
Still, Cece treads carefully. “Sure did. At an oyster farm nearby.”
“As long as it’s not with Richie Rayburn, you’re good in my book.”
“Never heard of him,” Cece says quietly.
“Lucky for you. He’s a real SOB. Thinks he can just bully his way into our community. But we’re organizing.” Thankfully, Lorraine doesn’t seem interested in expounding on her hatred for Cece’s current employer. First Morgan, now Richie. Some luck Cece’s got.
“You really aren’t coming in?” Lorraine asks as she bobs in the water. “It’s touching ninety already.”
Cece shakes her head. She hasn’t so much as dipped a toe in a pool since blowing out her shoulder (for the third time) her junior year during a tournament in Albany.
It’s not the injury that stops Cece; it’s the memory of her father, calling her a quitter for refusing to get another surgery, the look on her mother’s face while he berated her, passive and indifferent.
It’s also the extra loans she’d had to take out after quitting the swim team and losing her athletic scholarship.
It’s a lot of things, but Lorraine doesn’t need to know all that.
Back inside, Cece decides she can’t ignore Wynonna’s phone calls anymore.
By her count, there are at least four she hasn’t returned.
Since the breakup, her sister has made a habit of checking in on her, a gesture Cece finds herself simultaneously appreciating and resenting.
She’s the older sister; shouldn’t the roles be reversed?
The sound of shrieking children fills the background when Wynonna picks up.
“Just returning your calls,” Cece says, “but you sound busy.”
There’s some shuffling and muffled castigating. “I’m always busy. I can’t believe Devin talked me into a second kid. It’s madness…How’s…Where are you again?”
“New London.”
“What’s in New London?”
Cece resents these simple questions that lay bare the inadequacy of her plan. “Nothing. I just had to get out of Stamford.”
“Do you have a job up there or something?”
“Kind of.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m working on an oyster farm.”
“Are you okay?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Who’s everyone?”
Cece draws the blinds on the cottage windows. “Mostly you and Mom.”
“You’ve been through a trauma.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit dramatic? I’m the one who left Jonathan. You remember that, right?”
“Of course, Claire, of course, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still hard.”
Cece hates it when Wynonna uses her full name.
It makes her feel like she’s in trouble, like she isn’t the older sister, like she wasn’t the one who carried all their parents’ expectations, their aspirations and anxieties.
By the time Wynonna arrived, Barry and Kim had mellowed: no AP classes, no hard push to pursue sports, no early curfews.
It was as if they were raised by wholly different parents, and on more than one occasion, Cece must remind herself that none of this is Wynonna’s fault.
“I’m fine,” Cece says. “Can we not talk about this? How’s North Carolina?”
More muffled threats, something about eating food off the ground. “Sorry, what? Were we always such a nightmare as kids? I swear, I can’t remember ever putting Mom through the stuff these two get up to.”
“That’s because it was usually Dad taking care of us. Mom was always at the office.”
“No way. Mom was in the city a lot, but we always had sitters.”
“Yes, he did, Wynonna. That was when his business was still getting off the ground and he worked from home. You just don’t remember because you were too young.”
“I think I would have remembered something like that.”
This is typical for their conversations, unable to agree on even the simplest of facts.
They’re blood, and Cece loves Wynonna, would do anything for her, but sometimes she can’t fathom how sometimes it feels like they’re living on separate planets governed by completely different rules.
None of this should surprise Cece. They’ve never rowed to the same cadence, so it was predictable when Wynonna settled down soon after college, moving to Charlotte, where she had zero job prospects or friends to raise a family.
“All Devin’s business is down here,” she’d said. “It just makes sense.”
Cece had tried not to judge, but she couldn’t help question whether Wynonna was actually happy. Marriage, popping out babies, furthering the species in the face of most certain climate destruction—did any of it make sense?
“Let’s just agree to disagree,” Cece says.
“You really aren’t gonna tell me how you’re doing?”
“Hey, don’t tell Mom or Dad about the oyster farm, okay?”
“I thought you were joking.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“Have you been responding to her emails?”
“Which ones? I can’t keep up with all of them.”
“She’s gonna flip about the oyster job.”
“Not if she doesn’t find out.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Is it, though?”
“It is if you actually tell me how you’re doing.”
Even though she isn’t so sure, Cece reaffirms that she’s fine, never been better, in a lighthearted voice she summons from some unknown source.
“So, it’s over. He hasn’t tried to contact you at all?”
Maybe because Cece hasn’t thought about Jonathan since yesterday morning, or maybe because she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to about this stuff, she finds herself telling Wynonna about his text message and trademark concern.
Wynonna doesn’t see a problem with any of it. Unlike Cece, who initially found it all infuriating and mildly controlling, Wynonna thinks it makes him seem genuine and thoughtful. “He made you happy, Cece,” Wynonna says, “maybe not all the time, but most of it, and that’s pretty good these days.”
“Is this why you called? To take his side?” Cece says bitterly, even as she remembers the good times: Jonathan spending the day on the bunny hill with her at Stowe during a family ski trip; Jonathan going across town to pick up dinner from her favorite Indian spot when she had to work late; Jonathan listening to her father’s old swimming stories at Christmastime, all with a smile on his face.
It seemed impossible to wholly villainize the man.
Of course, there was good in those four years, even if Cece doesn’t want to admit it, lest it confuse her.
“We’re sisters. I’m always on your side. Whether you think so or not. Breakups are hard, even when they make sense.”
Cece says nothing, fearful of the weakness pooling in her stomach like a clandestine lake, vast and unseen.
Questions invade her consciousness like nosy specters: Was she asking for too much out of a romantic relationship?
Has she ruined the only good thing in her life? Would Jonathan take her back?
Wynonna’s now talking about how she can’t ever imagine Cece being fired.
She knows how much the job meant to Cece.
She knows how hard Cece’s worked for her career.
And she isn’t wrong. But Cece doesn’t have the energy to share her sister’s outrage, her gripes and grievances, so she gives a few assurances and slides off the phone, sending love to Devin and the boys, whose faces she can’t quite recall, and promises to call next week.
After depositing her dirty yardwork clothes in the hamper, Cece takes a long, cold shower, doing her best not to think, just concentrating on the water drumming her eyelids. Cece’s never been one for meditation or the latest trends in mindfulness, but right about now, she could use some expertise.
Hair dried, armpits freshly scraped, Cece sits cross-legged on the twin bed and stares at her phone: I’m worried about you. Is this really what you want?
Want. Such a fickle word. Had she been too rash? Is she being too cruel? Why does Jonathan’s concern elicit such anger? Why is she so hell-bent on making a clean break…What exactly is it he’s done?
Cece doesn’t want to remember the specifics, pushing the ring into Jonathan’s palm and telling him it was over, insisting on staying at a Holiday Inn Express while she got the movers sorted.
She hadn’t handled the situation with grace or maturity, but Jonathan hadn’t given her a choice, refusing to believe she was unhappy, unsatisfied with her reasons for wanting to break up.
The truth is, Jonathan’s response to Cece’s firing had given her a preview, the veil had been lifted, ever so slightly, and Cece hadn’t liked what she glimpsed for her future.
It was a good future, a stable and productive future, but it was also a stifling one, a future in which she might find happiness, but only if she forgot herself.
And how does one say this to their partner of four years, a man whose only fault is that he is himself?
Cece certainly didn’t know how, and so she’d fled, U-Haul trailer in tow, up to this cramped cottage in New London, where she presently finds herself somehow still slightly hungover and wondering if she’s really thought all this through, and whether seeing Jonathan might not be such a bad idea after all.
Cece’s fingers hover over the keyboard, tantalizing and seductive.
In seconds, she can communicate every wish and whim and expect an immediate answer.
What a terrible gift. I’m okay, everything is fine, she thinks to herself, sliding the phone under her pillow and closing her eyes for a midday nap, the sound of Lorraine’s rusty loppers starting up again. Everything is fine.