Chapter Three Augusta
Three
Augusta
Pump And Dump
Colin Nickerson peed in the shower. He kept a plastic bottle of Tums gas chews in his car, he had a slight unibrow, he frequently wore undershirts with holes in the armpits, and yet, as Augusta looked at him across the kitchen, she honestly thought he was the handsomest man she’d seen in her life.
Not that she’d tell him that. They weren’t that kind of couple at all.
In fact, Colin was more likely to read her an entire article from the business section of the paper than tell her she was pretty, but still, most days Augusta felt like she’d hit the marriage jackpot.
Augusta had known Colin since she was eight years old.
He was her older brother’s best friend, a big fifth grader when she was a lowly third, a high school senior when she was a shy, redheaded sophomore.
They rarely spoke in her own house, Colin and Eben were too busy running through the kitchen grabbing snacks on their way to basketball, holed up in his room playing video games, or slamming car doors in the driveway as they took off for practice, a concert, a movie two towns away.
But when they all moved back to Greenhead in their twenties, Colin seemed to see Augusta for the first time.
Instead of dashing through the kitchen with a handful of Oreos, he would pull out a chair and ask Augusta about her day.
When he came over with iced coffees, he’d get an extra for Augusta, creamy and gritty with sugar in the bottom.
When he finally asked her to dinner, Augusta was so happy she felt like she might pass out at the table.
After that first date, they were a couple.
They stayed up late talking at night, filling in the gaps of their semishared childhood.
Time after time Augusta would think she knew a story—the night Colin and Eben drove to Boston to see Green Day and some idiot knocked out their headlight in the parking garage—only to learn that she’d been suckered into the family-friendly version, that in fact Eben had chugged three beers and nailed the mailbox at Colin’s parents’ house.
At first Eben seemed bemused by the entire thing, unclear on why his friend was hanging out with his little sister, but he didn’t object, and eight years later it was hard to remember a time Colin hadn’t been hers.
“Do you have cash for the babysitter?” Colin caught her looking at him and he smiled.
He was trying to get their son, Charlie, to eat a piece of broccoli hidden inside a meatball, but Charlie wasn’t buying it.
Charlie pinched his lips shut and turned his head so far to the side he briefly looked like an owl.
“We can just do Venmo.”
“I hate doing Venmo with babysitters. We pay Zoey twenty an hour, but we pay the other ones twenty-five, and if Zoey’s Venmo settings are public everyone will see, and we’ll have to match.
” Colin gave up on the broccoli and just shoveled plain meatballs into Charlie’s mouth.
Jane, who was six, had already finished her dinner and was delicately eating a popsicle, her white collared shirt covered in pink drips.
“I think you can make it private in your own settings?” Augusta suggested, opening the fridge.
“Don’t teenagers know how to see everything we do online? I just assume they can all hack into our accounts.”
“Zoey’s too attractive to be a hacker. It’s the homely teenagers you have to worry about,” Augusta joked.
She pulled out three little bottles of breastmilk and began decanting them into one.
The liquid had separated into various states of thickness, some pale and thin as skim, some nearly butter.
She gently shook them, the white solids sliding down the side of the plastic bottle like yogurt, and she gagged.
It was so gross. One of the bottles of breastmilk was green.
She died a little imagining Zoey, the eighteen-year-old babysitter, seeing it and wrinkling her nose, so she shoved that bottle to the back of the fridge behind the lettuce.
When Zoey arrived, Colin ran upstairs to change his shirt and Augusta walked her through the contents of her pantry, pointing out the cheddar popcorn, pistachio nuts, the bag of crunchy chocolate cookies.
She knew half the reason teenagers agreed to spend a Saturday night in her house was the chance to gorge on junk food, so she kept an entire stash purely for Zoey.
Augusta had done her share of babysitting back in the day, and she had fond memories of eating Cheez-Its and watching late-night talk shows until the parents stumbled in the front door, buzzed and trying to hide it, handing her a fistful of bills while she surreptitiously wiped orange cracker crumbs from her chin.
In the car Augusta fired off a text to Bailey and Van, letting them know they would be at the restaurant in ten minutes. She reached over and put her hand on Colin’s knee, giving him a sweet little squeeze. “Colin, can I ask you a favor tonight?” she asked.
“Be the designated driver so you can have a martini.”
“Um, yes. Can I actually ask you two favors?”
“Sure.”
“When we talk about the newborn stuff, can we make it all sound fun?”
“Make having a newborn baby sound fun?”
“Yeah.” Augusta paused. “Or if not fun, exactly, just not terrible?”
“Okay, not terrible. Got it.”
“And maybe also don’t talk about what a psycho I was?”
“So don’t talk about how you wouldn’t let my mother hold the baby?” Colin asked.
“No.”
“Or the time you cried because I got orange juice with pulp?”
“No.”
“What about how you bought five different strollers?” Colin teased.
“There was a logic to it at the time,” said Augusta defensively.
“I just want Bailey and Van to both be really excited about the baby.” She had asked them to dinner to give them advice on infants—the pediatrician, the feeding, the boring pieces you had to organize in advance so that when your life exploded and you were so tired you didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, you’d at least have the right kind of burp cloths to mop it all up with.
But, Augusta admitted, it was more than that.
She wanted to make sure Bailey and Van were in this together, that they realized how much easier it would be if the baby had two parents.
Augusta knew, better than anyone, how hard it was to raise a child when the dad was off fucking someone else.
“You do realize you’re trying to ‘Parent Trap’ your friends, right?” asked Colin.
“What? Don’t be silly, Colin. I’m not trying to ‘Parent Trap’ anybody.” Augusta laughed. “But even if they don’t want to admit it, you know Bailey and Van are in love with each other.”
“We’re just going to ignore the fact that Van has a girlfriend?”
“Who? That girl with the glasses?”
“Caroline Lash.”
“She’s not his girlfriend.” Augusta rolled her eyes.
Caroline Lash was probably a nice person, but as far as Augusta was concerned, she was a peripheral character.
Sure, Caroline seemed content to follow Van around in the woods listening to him talk about mushrooms, and he probably liked the attention, but compared to his lifelong love for Bailey, Caroline Lash was a fling.
They pulled into the parking lot at the 1640 Hart House and Colin came around to open Augusta’s door, taking her hand as they walked down the grassy path.
The Hart House was a Greenhead institution, built back with the arrival of the Puritans.
First a family home, it then became an inn and tavern, the place James Cagney or Eleanor Roosevelt would stay in the summer.
Augusta loved it there, but even she recognized that it was hilariously New England, full of self-important plaques and people eating pot roast in low-ceilinged rooms where women were once accused of witchcraft.
As the hostess led them down the narrow hall to their table, Augusta smiling hello to various acquaintances along the bar, she spotted her father and his second wife sitting in the Keeper’s Room, the little brown dining room with braided rugs and rickety wooden chairs.
Augusta quickly ducked in to kiss her father on the cheek. “Hi, Daddy, hi, Samantha.”
“Augusta, I love your dress.” Samantha had a husky smoker’s voice that always caught her by surprise. “How much was it?” Samantha was forty-two, only six years older than Augusta, and had the social skills of a chatbot.
“Oh, ha, I’m not sure,” Augusta hedged awkwardly.
“Bring the kids by some weekend,” George suggested. “Let’s get everyone on the boat.”
They wouldn’t—her father liked the idea of grandchildren far better than actual grandchildren—but Augusta pretended she would and waved goodbye, following the dark hallway down to the tavern.
Far in the back of the restaurant, by the brick fireplace, was a table set for six.
Van and Bailey sat at their places, light from the candles in hurricane lamps dancing on their faces, but between them were two uninvited guests: Caroline Lash and a ridiculously handsome stranger.
Colin caught her eye and gave her a panicked look.
“Augusta!” Bailey jumped up. She was wearing a white dress and her hair was so artfully tousled it almost looked like she’d spent a day at the beach instead of an hour with a Dyson Airwrap. “Danny O. was at the bar! He’s visiting his parents this week!”
Now that she heard his name Augusta did sort of remember the handsome stranger. Danny had been a few grades older than them, and he’d gone to high school at Hamilton-Wenham. Bailey had hooked up with him in a boat on a trailer parked in the driveway at a house party their freshman year.
Augusta tried to hide her annoyance as she took her seat between Colin and Van.
When the server came around to take drink orders she studied Caroline.
She was wearing some kind of vintage sundress and hardly any makeup.
She looked twenty-two. Why was she there?
Had Van invited her, or had she insisted on coming along?