17. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GRETCHEN
I hate watching Brady leave, and to be honest, I’m sick and tired of people interrupting our time together. But when I hear what Cherry has to say, it’s all heavy enough that I probably wouldn’t be in a real sexy mood afterwards anyway.
We exchange pleasantries, and after learning that she’s no longer in the hospital but is now at home on bedrest, I discover that Arrow never told her about this trip to Arizona.
“Really? She didn’t mention it?” I ask.
“Nah, but this happens from time to time,” Cherry replies. There’s a slight change in her octave, though, reminiscent of a child who’s been caught sneaking candy after bedtime.
And so we begin a passive-aggressive verbal tug of war.
She shares nothing further; I hesitate to deliver the details of Arrow’s private, family-related e-mail.
For one thing, I don’t want to gossip, but also, I don’t want Cherry to tell Arrow that I was snooping around in her personal business. Instead, I play dumb.
“What’s in Tucson? The girls thought you might know.”
“Her sister lives there.”
“I didn’t know Arrow has a sister.”
“Yeah – a twin, actually. ”
“Wow. Really?” So it’s the sister on the fridge .
“She keeps it all pretty quiet, because she and her sister have kind of a strained relationship.”
I wait for more, but Cherry stops there. So, I fish. “You guys are pretty close, right?” I ask.
“Best friends since elementary school.”
“That’s sweet; I didn’t realize that.”
“Yup,” she says, but that’s it. I wait through another awkward moment of silence, piecing together that Cherry either knows what’s going on with Arrow and doesn’t want to tell me, or might actually not know… and what if Arrow needs help? My conscience pulls at me.
“If I share something with you, will you promise to keep it a secret?” I ask, my resolve eroding like the bluffs at Cahoon Hollow Beach.
There’s a pause. “I guess. I mean, it depends on how serious it is.”
I appreciate her honesty. “You really don’t know what’s going on with Arrow at all right now? Like, you swear you don’t know why she left for Arizona out of the blue?”
She sighs. “Like I said, she’s got family there.
But this time, specifically? No, I don’t know.
” Another pause. “Is her sister okay? Is something bad going on?” There’s concern in her voice.
It’s genuine. Just tell her the truth. It’s the right thing to do.
Also, who’s to say that the other girls won’t say something to Cherry?
“I saw something I shouldn’t have seen,” I admit.
“What?”
“An e-mail. ”
“From?”
“Someone at a place called Desert Breeze.”
“Oh.” She sounds sad but not surprised.
“I didn’t mean to see it,” I continue, explaining about how when a computer shuts down too fast or the wrong way or whatever, when it restarts, it saves your pages.
“Don’t worry,” she assures me. “You don’t strike me as the diabolical type. What did the e-mail say?”
I tell her the gist of it.
“Fuck,” Cherry says under her breath.
“It’s bad, right?”
“Yeah,” she concedes. “Listen, Summer. I believe you have a good heart, so I’m going to lay some truth on you and I need to know that you’ll hold it in the strictest of confidence.”
“I will. I promise.”
She sighs. “We’re from Plymouth, originally. Growing up, the three of us were like the Three Musketeers: me, Joyce, and Jenny.”
“Joyce and Jenny?” I repeat.
“That’s Arrow’s real name. Jenny’s her sister.”
“Shut up. Arrow’s real name is Joyce ?”
Cherry laughs. “Yeah. It’s always been a point of contention for her. That’s why she never lets anyone keep their name when they come to work at Cosmo. ‘No one’s going to pay top dollar to take pole lessons from some grandma named Joyce,’ she used to say.”
“That’s too funny,” I reply.
“Can’t hate; she’s definitely right,” Cherry says. “Plus, I think she prefers anonymity. Dancing can make you feel exposed. By changing your name, it’s like you put on a fake persona and don’t have to feel so close to it emotionally.”
“I get that.”
“Anyway, Joyce and I went to 4Cs together after high school. We were totally coasting, but Jenny was the put together one. She was super smart. She went to Tufts, and she was studying to be a dentist. Everyone was always on Joyce. ‘Why can’t you be more like your sister?’ they’d ask.
It drove her crazy, but she figured, whatever.
Jenny got the book smarts but Joyce got the street smarts. ”
“Uh huh,” I say.
“So fast forward two years. Me and Joyce got our Associate’s degrees from 4Cs.
Her parents came to the graduation, but Jenny didn’t come down from Tufts.
She had some big biology final or something.
After graduation, Joyce and her folks went out to dinner in Hyannis, and then her parents drove home to Plymouth.
They had to get home early because the next day they were leaving early in the morning for a vacation – just her parents, not Joyce. But they never made it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Her parents were killed in a car accident on the way to the airport.”
“Oh my God.”
“I know. It was the worst thing you could ever imagine. I was with Joyce when she got the call. They were driving at like four in the morning for an early flight. They were supposed to go to the Bahamas – what’s that big resort there?
Atlantis? I think that’s the name. They were supposed to celebrate their 25 th wedding anniversary there.
So they were headi ng up Route 3, and it was basically empty, but then a car came flying at them out of nowhere.
It was going the wrong way down the highway at top speed, like something out of a horror movie. Like the driver had a death wish.”
“Holy shit,” I say.
“I know. He was totally high. They said he died on impact.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, and Arrow’s mom was in the passenger seat. The car flipped over and the first responders couldn’t get her out in time.”
“What about her dad?”
“He went through the windshield. Wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”
I exhale, thinking about my own parents and what something like that would do to me. There would be no coming back from it. I’d be devastated. “That’s unthinkable.”
“That’s why she runs tow lot.”
I connect the dots as she says the words. It’s not just a good business practice. Tow lot is a life or death situation to Arrow. All of a sudden, it means everything that I’m responsible for it. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I know. It’s a lot.”
“What does this have to do with Arizona, though?”
“Well. I’m sure you can imagine that Joyce had some survivor’s guilt, but there was also a part of her that was so grateful she got to see them one last time.
Meanwhile, Jenny fell apart, only we didn’t know it at first because she was heavily medicated at the funeral, and as soon as it was over, she went back to Boston.
She still had two years left of dental school, and she’ d made a life for herself with her college friends and whatnot.
Joyce was heartbroken. She felt like Jenny was the only family she had left, and she was choosing not to deal with any of the aftermath of it.
Joyce had to handle everything. Big things, like funeral arrangements, but also the small things that nobody thinks about, like cutting off her parents’ cell phone service and managing their home in Plymouth.
Cleaning out their closets. Donating their clothes to Goodwill. All that stuff.”
“By herself?” I ask.
“Well, she had me. But Jenny wanted nothing to do with any of it.”
“That’s so sad.”
“I know. It really hardened Joyce. She got her first tattoo then – the one with the shattered heart pierced by an arrow. We were worried about Jenny but Joyce was also really mad at her. At the time, we didn’t realize that Jenny was going through her own guilt about not having come to the graduation, not being able to have that one last dinner with them as a family.
She was beating herself up about it pretty bad. ”
“I get that. I’m sure I’d feel the same if it were me.”
“Me too,” Cherry agrees. “It got worse, though. She got into prescription drugs. I don’t even know the names of all the shit she was taking.
She was getting it from the dental office where she was interning.
But when her internship ended, she needed a new supplier.
That’s when she met Ricky.” She clears her throat.
“He was bad news. She met him on the internet. But not, like, on Hinge or Tinder or some normal place. Craigslist . Can you believe that? And then, she went all the way out to Arizona to meet him during winter break.”
“Craigslist? Is that even a thing anymore?”
“Maybe for apartment rentals, but it was never a thing for dating! I don’t know why she thought she should look there. Sadly, like I said, Jenny never really had much in the way of street smarts. That was more Joyce’s department.”
“That makes no sense, then. Why would Arrow – uh, Joyce – let her go?”
“Jenny lied. Said the trip had something to do with school. She never told any of us she had met someone. And she came back – well, not home, but to school – and continued behaving normally. So, you can imagine Joyce’s surprise when out of nowhere, a few months later she dropped out and told us she was moving to Arizona permanently.
She only had a few credits left, so it was crazy, right?
Like, why would you do that? Nobody understood what the hell she was thinking. Turned out she was pregnant.”
“Oh. Shit.”