Chapter 16
But right now, the museum is long closed. It’s dark out.
And I have a hickey. I pull out my phone to look at my reflection again and rub the unsightly thing like it’ll scrub off. It looks ridiculous. Ridiculous. And hot? No.
My nipples tighten. Disgusted with myself, I leap up from Margie’s sofa and throw my apartment keys and some essentials into my purse. I reach for my crutch.
“Where are you going?” Margie asks, looking up from her magazine.
“Back to my apartment. I’m not going to hide.”
“It’s late!”
“It’s not even eleven.”
Margie purses her lips thoughtfully but doesn’t say anything for a bit. She’s already made her feelings about Jack known, in addition to all the things she’d like to do to him for “hurting” me.
“And don’t do anything stupid to Jack. Okay?” I say.
She looks mildly guilty. “I may have signed him up for a shit ton of MLM websites. Oh, and about a dozen used car dealership listservs. If he isn’t already being spammed by skin care and dietary supplement offers, he will be.”
“Margie! I told you I was the one who kissed him and then lobbed an insult at his head when I made him stop. And where did you even get his email address?”
“Internet search? His work email was public… Okay, okay! I screwed up. It’s just that I don’t like seeing you upset. It’ll probably all go to spam anyway. Bright side? Maybe he’s in the market for a gently used Camry.”
When I’m just about ready to go, Margie follows me to the door to lock up. She holds me by the shoulders, peering seriously into my eyes. “If you need me—doesn’t matter what time—you call me, and I’ll come to your place. Okay?”
I smile and hug her impulsively. “Love you. Won’t come to that. And I wouldn’t dream of tearing you away from La tonight.”
Margie’s blush is the first I’ve ever seen on her. “Take the day off of work tomorrow and rest, fool.”
A little while later, I climb the stairs to my place, moving slowly with my crutch. Jack’s muffled voice drifts into the hall.
You should knock, I think. And say…what, exactly? Sorry I made out with you—twice—and then bailed, but you gave me a hickey bigger than the one I got from Johnny Song at Melissa Ortega’s quinceanera in ninth grade, so we’re even?
I try to let myself into my apartment quietly, tiptoeing through the dark as best I can with a crutch to my room.
My phone vibrates. My stomach clenches at the sound, though Jack’s TV is loud enough to drown out the vibration.
I hear a second voice in there with Jack.
It sounds like Moth is over. I look at my phone. Mom.
Honey, I haven’t heard from you. Are you okay?
A thought takes hold. I switch apps, confirming that I don’t have much time, and then rush to dress by the light of my cell phone. It isn’t even five minutes later that I’m back out the door, on my way to the Port Authority.
The sea is inescapable in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, surrounded as it is by the Atlantic’s brackish waters.
But it’s also in the air, clinging to your skin and leaving you looking exceptionally dewy if you’re in town longer than a heartbeat.
The salt clings to your hair, making for some killer body, but the wind renders it impossible to run a brush through.
The town has a special smell, especially at night when the sunbaked buildings cool.
I breathe it in—all that briny evening air—and am flooded with memories as I walk from the bus depot to Mom’s place.
Walks to school. Prom. Waitressing at Gretchen’s Diner and making fun of the shoobies—our nickname for tourists—with the other locals.
Walking with Mom on the beach after Dad left us. Holding her as she cried.
I was eternally grateful for our home’s proximity to the bus depot when I discovered the wonders of…
anyplace other than here. Mom’s house is up ahead, faintly lit by a streetlight and the single bulb at the top of her steps that she always leaves on at night.
The house is a small, nondescript beige box set atop pilings to elevate it against flooding.
The white lattice skirting the entire perimeter obscures those pilings.
It’s a handful of blocks from the beachfront McMansions owned by summer vacationers, but, except for that shared sea air, it might as well be on a different planet.
I pause in front of the house with a sigh and look around me. A cricket sings in the distance. Mom’s door opens. She was watching for me.
“Hi.” I climb the stairs with my crutch.
I notice with a spasm of sadness that my mom’s face is more lined than the last time I saw her, her cheeks drooping into jowls I don’t remember being there before.
Her hair has a bunch more white. Or maybe I’m just imagining it since I’m long overdue for a visit.
“It’s three thirty in the morning. I told you to just leave the key under the mat. ”
Mom accepts my hug and presses her cheek to mine. “I couldn’t sleep knowing you were on the road. No good comes of being out this late. You should’ve waited until morning to come. You could have just taken the early bus out and—”
“Lemme hop in my DeLorean real quick and right that wrong. See you in the a.m.”
“Smart mouth. Come in.” She chuckles and bustles me toward my childhood living room, forever festooned in the Christmas colors and holiday decor she loves.
A crystal vase of plum calla lilies, the exact size of the hole in my bank account this month, rests on an end table.
I take a seat. The room feels smaller to me, like walking the halls of your old elementary school.
I shift on the sofa. It shouldn’t feel that way.
Sure, I’ve seen Mom sporadically, but mainly in neutral territory—restaurants, a cousin’s house.
It’s been a good year since I’ve been back in this house.
“It is nice to have you here. I just wish you’d waited until morning is all. Here’s some tea. No caffeine, so you can sleep. I just made a pot.” Mom hands me a cup and sits across from me with her own cup.
“Thanks.” I play with the sugar cube on the pink-and-white saucer.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just tired.”
“You took the day off of work. And you came all the way out here in the middle of the night for nothing? Are you here to stay? It’s about time, honestly.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Tomorrow we can go look at that house—”
“Mom, I really don’t want to move back.”
“But why?” She sets her cup down, the browbeating to come evidently requiring all her faculties.
“Because…” I don’t want to have this conversation, and especially not in the middle of the night, but I know her. She won’t leave it be.
“This place has always felt like one of those flowers that blooms once a year for a few hours before its petals clamp up tight until the next time. And I always felt trapped inside.”
There’s a melancholy to seasonal towns like this, full of life and activity during the summer and then a shuttered ghost town of eight hundred residents the rest of the year.
“I don’t want to feel that way ever again. Maybe that’s why I love New York so much. All that activity, all the time.”
“Oh my God, you got a therapist, didn’t you? Why? You want to pay someone to listen to you talk about how I’ve ruined your life? Someone to tell you how awful your mother was, even though I’m the one who stayed? Who struggled to provide a life for you after your father left us?”
“I’m not seeing a therapist, Mom. I— God, this place. It’s time to get to bed. It’s really late.”
“You say you hate this place, but you don’t. If you did, why did you come?”
“Because I love you, and wanted to see you.” I set my cup down with a clatter and run my hands over my face. “And because I kissed a guy. And then I hurt his feelings. It’s a long story… And I’m kind of terrified of what happens next.”
I peep up at her through my fingers. “Do I apologize to him? Tell him what I really think of him? Why can’t I just let things happen like a normal person?”
“Did you ever stop to think you’re feeling that way because you’re subconsciously avoiding settling down and putting down roots in New York?
You wanted to come home. You came home.” She stands, gathers up my cup, and then pauses, a sympathetic and knowing expression on her face.
“We can talk more in the morning. Your bed is made up. I freshened the sheets.”
By the time I pad into the kitchen, my crutch barely needed, it’s clear my mom has been up for hours. She’s curled the ends of her short hair so that it dusts the underside of her chin, and she’s wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a tee from Joe Canal’s Discount Liquor.
It took me way too long to fall asleep, my mind busy replaying my last interaction with Jack over and over. But at least I’m dressed for the day. The digital clock atop the stove still calls me a lazy bitch, though: quarter past noon.
Mom turns and hands me a plate. “I made you some eggs. I only had wheat bread.”
“Wheat is good, thanks. Do you have coffee?” I pull a fork out of a drawer and lean against the counter, picking at my plate.
“Tea is better for you. Hot water in the kettle.” Without coffee, I will literally die, but it feels churlish to demand it when she’s made me breakfast. “Hurry and eat. We need to go.”
“Go where?” I ask around my mouthful of eggs, but she’s already grabbing her handbag.
“We’re going to be late. Come on.”
I chase after her with a makeshift breakfast sandwich. Minutes later, we turn onto Greenly Street. Disbelief dawns. She would not. But sure enough, she did. We roll to a stop in front of the home that once belonged to the late, great Cathy Santini, she of full-size-Halloween-candy-bar fame.
A realtor—tall, fair-haired, and relatively fit—waves from the porch. His light-blue eyes and white eyebrows give him a washed-out look.
“Brian!” My mom waves back as she exits the car.
Brian. I frown, a memory niggling. Maryellen’s son Brian asked about you the other day, you know? I ran into him at the grocery store. He’s a realtor now.