Chapter Seventeen Augusta
Seventeen
Augusta
A Shimmer Of Truth
Augusta hadn’t spoken to Fran in two months when they ran into each other on the boardwalk at Crane’s.
It was the longest they had gone without speaking in their lives, even counting the time they were twelve and Fran burned off a piece of Augusta’s hair with a flat iron and Augusta called her an idiot.
Augusta wanted to walk right by, she was still furious Fran had told Caroline about Colin and Eben, but the children greeted each other with the extravagance of astronauts returned from space, falling all over one another and hugging, dropping buckets and towels and blocking the ramp for anyone else trying to get past, and so Augusta herded them all over to the benches so they could carry on with minimal obstruction.
“I GOT A GIGANTAMAX MEOWTH!” screamed Hale.
“THAT’S FOUR HUNDRED DAMAGE!” screamed Charlie.
“It’s like TWO FIFTY.” London scoffed dismissively.
“You should keep it in the plastic so you can sell it.” Jane sniffed.
“If I have to have one more conversation about Pokémon, I am going to commit myself to a sanatorium,” said Augusta. She wasn’t ready to forgive Fran, but seeing their kids together was cracking something open inside her.
“We could talk about dinosaurs instead,” offered Fran. “Or ninjas?”
“Submarine mechanics?” Augusta raised an eyebrow.
“Perfect.” Fran smiled. “I’d love that.”
They ushered the kids down the boardwalk and across the hot sand to the town side of the beach, where all the Greenhead residents congregated.
They laid out their blankets and chairs and Fran helped Augusta set up the little tent for Beatrix, even though now she was too busy crashing around and trying to eat seaweed to stay put.
Augusta didn’t bring up Colin, didn’t bring up the New Yorker story, and Fran seemed to want to follow her lead, so they drank canned seltzer and slicked on sunscreen and handed out goldfish just like they had every summer for years.
“Did you hear about the scandal in the bullfrog group at camp?” Augusta asked, raising her eyebrow.
“No, what happened?”
“The second-grade boys were all naming their penises and yelling the names during water sports. The counselors had to take them aside and then tell the parents.”
Fran laughed. “Hale named his penis a few months ago.”
“What did he name it?” Augusta widened her eyes merrily.
“ ‘Princess Penis.’ ”
“What?” Augusta cackled. “At least he’s using the correct anatomical language.”
“Hey, your brother asked me to send him a bunch of pictures for his website.” Fran wiped sand off her water bottle and took a glug.
“Eben did? What website?” Augusta asked, confused.
“For finding a baby to adopt. Did he ask you? Or maybe he already has all the same pictures you have,” Fran hedged awkwardly.
“I knew they had decided to adopt, but I didn’t know where they were in the process.” It stung to realize Fran knew more about her brother’s life than she did.
“They’re working with an agency, but they have to make this website so that birth mothers can check them out. Pictures of them together, pictures of their house, little paragraphs about what they do for work and why they would be a good adoptive family.”
“That’s so sweet,” said Augusta quietly.
Fran tried to lighten the mood. “The funny part is that Eben says he and Max mostly have pictures of them drinking wine with friends, or shirtless at the beach. They have hundreds of pictures of them at parties and none of them in collared shirts.”
Augusta giggled. “Even when Max wears a collared shirt, he has at least four buttons undone.”
There was a mom camped out just down the beach wearing a T-shirt that said “Good Vibes” in loopy script.
She was screaming at her kids for getting sand on the picnic blanket.
Augusta tipped her chin at the lady, raising her eyebrows, and Fran laughed.
Their own children were digging a pit by the water, and Augusta squinted, trying to figure out what Hale was using to dig.
It seemed to be a spatula. Where on earth had he found a spatula?
She was pretty sure he’d brought it from home.
“How are your folks doing?” Augusta asked, putting more sunblock on her arms.
“Not great,” Fran admitted. “My dad’s having financial issues.”
“Did he lose his job?”
“No, you know how my brothers are with gambling? They put some of the apps on my dad’s phone and he let his betting get out of control.”
“Does he have a gambling addiction?” Augusta asked, wide-eyed. She didn’t even know anyone who gambled.
“I don’t think so? But he lost sixty grand, he already had forty in other debt, and the bank is threatening to foreclose on the house.”
“You and your brothers can’t swing a loan?” A hundred grand was a lot, sure, but somebody had to have it in savings. Or in stocks they could sell if they had to.
“We’ve been chipping away at it, we’ve knocked out twenty-five thousand dollars to keep him afloat, but my brothers and I don’t have that much cash lying around.”
“What about RJ? He must have a lot of cash flow from his business?”
“I’m not asking him. It’s my family, I don’t want to make it his problem.”
“Fran, that’s insane.” Augusta stared at her with disbelief. “You’re a couple.”
“But we don’t share accounts. He has his money, I have mine. It’s not fair for me to ask him.”
“Fran,” Augusta said firmly. “I know I’m the last person who should be giving advice on marriage right now, but from the outside it looks like you’re making life too complicated.
RJ loves you. He wants to marry you. He’d be happy to share his money with you.
You’ve been holding him at arm’s length for years—but why? Just let him help.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” Fran whispered. “Something happened in Hawaii.”
“What?” Augusta stared at Fran. Now that Augusta was looking closely, Fran seemed tired; the circles around her eyes were dark and puffy.
Her T-shirt was an old one, her hair was in a messy ponytail, which was sort of par for the course, but all together Augusta saw that Fran was hanging on by a thread.
“I met someone,” Fran whispered. “His name is Cal. We didn’t kiss or anything, but I fell asleep in his bed.” She started to cry.
“Oh, Fran.” Augusta moved next to her and put her arm around her shoulders. “But you didn’t kiss him. You just slept!”
“I feel so guilty, but I don’t even know if it was a mistake, like, I might do it again.
I felt something so intense with Cal. When I was with him, I felt like I was twenty again, just so easy and light.
And I took pictures of us together and I can’t stand to delete them, and I hid them on my phone, and I just feel like the worst person in the world. ”
“Honey. You’re not the worst person in the world. You’re just in this in-between thing where you don’t get what you need from RJ, but you aren’t allowed to get it anywhere else. You’re stuck.” Augusta rubbed Fran’s arm.
“I love RJ, but while I was in Hawaii a switch flipped for me. All these things I used to find cute and funny now feel childish and dumb. He’s loud and he’s messy and he’s just like another kid for me to take care of. He’s always been like this, but suddenly it just annoys the fuck out of me.”
“Living with a man is always kind of annoying.”
“But when I read the way Caroline Lash wrote about him—it was so mean, but something had a shimmer of truth. He just looked like such a jackass. It’s like the optical illusion of the vases that are also people’s faces—once you see it you can’t stop.”
“Yeah, Caroline’s story was…revealing.” Augusta frowned.
“I’m so sorry about everything,” Fran said. “I’m so sorry I told her about Colin. I was overwhelmed by what I did with Cal and I was having an emotional meltdown and I just sort of vomited it out. It was such a betrayal and I’m really, really sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Augusta said, and held Fran close, and Fran started crying even harder, shoulders shaking until she calmed down, wiping her eyes and nose. Augusta kissed her cheek and Fran smiled at her sadly.
They moved on, feeding the children sandwiches, fixing hats, spearing straws into juice boxes, and helping locate towels, but Augusta kept thinking about Fran and Caroline.
Fran had been nothing but kind to the girl.
She’d been the most welcoming of the entire group, and this was how Caroline had repaid her.
It made Augusta understand why her circle of friends was so tight and closed off, why Greenhead and Gloucester were too.
Every time you opened yourself up to an outsider you made yourself vulnerable.
There was safety in old friendships, even if those friendships were imperfect, in knowing the loyalty ran so deep.
Caroline had elbowed her way into their lives and then pulled out a knife.
Caveman
Every day the children brought something disgusting home from camp: A plastic tub of slime that was studded with bits of dirt and hair, a dreamcatcher made of yarn and crusty sharp seagull feathers, a rock glitter-painted green, a robot constructed of empty toilet paper tubes from the bathrooms of strangers.
Augusta pretended to admire it all and then ordered everyone into the bath, dumping in half a cup of strawberry-scented soap.
She scrubbed their feet until the facecloth turned brown, she rubbed at blue marker on wrists and elbows, and she even tried to get at the dirt under their fingernails with a nailbrush until their screaming and crying became too operatic.
They looked like they had been gardening, like they were potters, like they had been scratching their way through underground tunnels.
They were horrifying, they were summer children.