Chapter 8
“Take a look at these,” Lorraine says, retrieving a handful of pamphlets and dropping them in Cece’s lap. “Just got them back from the printer.”
They are surprisingly good quality, the paper thick between her fingers. The front page depicts an idyllic wetlands. Below, in bloodred letters:
Stop the Destruction of Mamacoke Cove!
Rayburn Expansion Means More:
More Traffic!
More Pollution!
More Environmental Destruction!
On the inside pages:
If you want to make your voice heard, sign below to let your town legislators know that you oppose the overdevelopment of Mamacoke Cove and the destruction of historic New London.
We can’t let big-money interests make decisions about our town.
Just like you, we want to create new jobs for New Londoners, but not at the cost of what makes our city special.
If Rayburn Oyster Company is allowed to expand, there’s no telling how many other companies will follow and overdevelop the area we call home.
By signing this document and providing your email address, you agree to be put on our mailing list to receive weekly updates.
We will be organizing protests, lobbying efforts, and a show of force at the next zoning commission hearing. Make your voice heard!
The pamphlet is tantamount to NIMBY propaganda, the worst kind of fearmongering.
Rayburn Oyster isn’t some kind of giant corporation, but that doesn’t serve the narrative, so the truth’s been warped, or done away with altogether, it seems. When Cece had initially heard about the opposition to the company’s expansion, she found herself sympathetic to the nature lovers, who argued the cove’s natural beauty would be ruined by more oyster racks and boat traffic, but now she’s hardened against Lorraine’s cause.
“What do you think?” Lorraine says, snapping her eyes from the road to gauge Cece’s excitement.
“They’re something.”
“Aren’t they? We’ll paper the town with these things. Rayburn doesn’t stand a chance. You’ll have to tag along next time we go out to get signatures.”
“Absolutely,” Cece says. She won’t, of course, but she can’t tell Lorraine that.
She needs to stay in her good graces for as long as possible.
Then again, maybe she should help the cause…
Why is she so intent on defending a company who’ll most likely fire her within the week?
No matter, Cece thinks. Today isn’t the day for ruminating.
Crammed between her already sweating thighs, her phone vibrates: It’s good to hear from you, Cece. I know you don’t need me worrying about you, and I know you said you need your space. I just hate the way we left things.
Space. She’d asked for space. What is this space that Cece has been so preoccupied with?
Why did she think space—physical, emotional—was the panacea for her ills?
What had it accomplished? Looking back on the last month, Cece surmises that she’s filled it with floundering loneliness and poor decisions.
“I just don’t understand what this FIRE movement is about. I mean, what compels people to do such things?” Lorraine shouts into the wind.
Cece starts typing and then stops. “What is it?”
“FIRE: financial independence, retire early. The whole NPR interview was about these people, people your age who are dead set on retiring in their forties. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
The term sounds vaguely familiar. Cece catches her face in the side mirror, freckled from the sun, wrinkles setting in around the corners of her mouth.
Screen swiped open, she fires off a response, an invitation.
Me too. What’s the worst that can happen?
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Cece doesn’t expect Lorraine to understand. It’s not her fault she’s a boomer. She can’t be blamed for her home’s skyrocketed value or her tenure-track gig at a small liberal arts college. “People are trying to figure out the best way to live.”
“That’s not living. Socking away seventy percent of your income, living like some monk, waiting for retirement. What’s the point of making money if you don’t spend any of it? Young people should be traveling, having fun…Fun, Goddammit!” Lorraine says, slapping the steering wheel.
Three dots—Jonathan’s responding. “You’re offended by this thing…the FIRE movement.”
“No…not offended, just miffed. What would drive someone to spend their twenties and thirties—the best damn time of your life—penny-pinching and budgeting? It makes me sad. Sad is the word I was looking for.”
I want to see you, Cece. I’m at my parents’ place. House-sitting.
Cece wants to say something to Lorraine about wage stagnation, housing scarcity, and student debt, but she suddenly finds the conversation uninteresting and tedious. Jonathan’s parents’ place is only twenty minutes from Stonington. Cece pulls up the distillery’s website and sends him the link.
I’m on my way to a distillery in Stonington with a friend. It would be good to see you.
After weeks of silence and denial—yes, denial—it feels good to write something so direct, to send it out into the universe, come what may.
Cece loosens her seat belt. She should have peed before they left.
Her mind drifts. She still remembers the first time she’d seen the house in Weekapaug, driving up the white-pebble driveway framed by English lavender and drooping peonies, the grand New England shingle-style home emerging, framed by the ocean.
Something in Cece softens, has been softening for quite some time, perhaps.
What had she thought? Hadn’t she hoped they might vacation there during that summer and every summer after that?
Hadn’t she allowed herself to wonder whether they might inherit the property one day?
Lorraine leans forward and spits on the side mirror, working her thumb counterclockwise while she says something about needing to get the car washed.
Was friend the right term? Certainly not.
Cece doesn’t know what constitutes a friend these days, but right now, she’s grateful to her landlord, if only because she hasn’t seemed to take Cece’s flightiness personally.
Sure, Lorraine’s a little out there, and she’ll undoubtedly evict Cece from the pool house if she discovers who she’s working for, or has slept with, for that matter, but right now, scalp tingling, the world hazy and soft, these are merely details, inconsequential details.
The distillery is housed in an old velvet mill.
Sun pours down through the skylights onto the buffed concrete floor.
The space is spartan: high-top tables are sprinkled around the cavernous room; on the back wall, a makeshift gift shop offers up T-shirts and baseball caps.
The operation—a massive copper boiler outfitted with a serpentine array of curving steel tubes—sits behind a glass partition.
The whole thing reminds Cece of those old diving suits, the ones with the bulbous metal helmets and circular glass windows.
Willa and Thomas, Lorraine’s friends, are her near carbon copies, jumbled gray hair, Birkenstocked feet, the scent of patchouli oil pungent.
They bring a flight of rums to the table, and Cece acts like she can tell the difference between the light and dark.
Mostly, it all tastes like sugar and caramel.
Thomas fetches a bag of freshly made popcorn from an old-timey machine in the corner.
Everything’s on the house, and Cece is happy—stomach warm, fingertips buttered and salty.
Willa and Thomas require no encouragement to tell their story: met in DC at an anti–Vietnam War protest in 1971, fell in love, moved to New York City, made their nut in the real estate market, and eventually retired up here, where they decided the best way to spend their golden years was making small-batch rum inspired by their many trips to Martinique.
“And how did you all meet?” Cece asks, her finger feeling sluggish and delayed while she points between the group.
“Ages ago,” Lorraine says with a smile, “I had a research fellowship based out of Caracas, and I did a lot of bopping around to all those little islands. St. Lucia, Barbados, and Martinique, which is where I met these two. They might not look like it now, but they could dominate a karaoke machine.”
There is more talk of the old days, when everything seemed easier, when life wasn’t dragged down by the heaviness of things.
Would Cece ever look back on this precise moment and think the same?
She finds herself envious of Lorraine’s life—the places she’s lived, things she’s seen and done.
Would such a life have brought Cece happiness?
Probably not—they are not the same, cut from entirely different cloths; and yet she wonders, waving off another flight, opting for water instead in the hopes of appearing mildly sober if Jonathan decides to show.
There’s talk of a grand tour, but Cece declines.
To her relief, no one seems to care, too absorbed in talking about the glory days: the time Lorraine slept with a French aristocrat and got everyone invited on his yacht; the night they snuck into an all-inclusive resort and charged everything to a stranger’s room.
Cece doesn’t know how long the group’s been gone when she looks up from her phone to see Jonathan standing before her, brown hair tousled, a white linen shirt half-tucked into his khaki shorts.
Face tanned, the whisper of a beard on his cheeks, he has an easy look about him that fills Cece with a strange sense of belonging, like she’s come home after a long trip away. “May I sit?” he says.
Throat tightening, Cece resists the urge to cry. Inexplicably, tears well. The rum, she thinks. The rum. Get a hold of yourself. “Of course.”
“Where’s your friend?”
“My friend.”
“You said you were here with someone.”