Chapter Twelve
Twelve
“It’s like the whole town just went to sleep,” Flo marveled.
She was sitting on the narrow little sill on one of the dormer windows in my room, staring at the street, which had emptied out for the summer.
All the vacation houses were shuttered for the end of the season; the bright beach towels were gone from the fences, there were no children shrieking, and no baseball commentary or pop music drifting through the still air.
The picnic tables at the lobster shack were empty, even though it was the middle of the day, and there was only a single lonely yacht slicing across the water.
“I guess it kind of did go to sleep,” I said absently as I opened a box of books. I’d found a little teak bookshelf in the stack of furniture out under the tent and moved it up to my room. I wouldn’t feel at home till I had my books around me. “It’s hibernating until next summer.”
“The campground was nearly empty when we left too.” Flo sighed. “Are we going to be the only people here for the rest of the year? Won’t that be weird?”
We’d waved the Overbecks off that morning, watching as the rental truck turned the corner of Tinker Street and disappeared down Beach Road, heading home to Pittsburgh.
I missed them already. This all seemed powerfully real now that Flo and I were alone in the house.
And apart from Elton next door and Jake down on the corner, we did seem to be the only people left on our street.
Flo sighed again, the sound heavier. “I hope I like my new school.”
She was sliding into the doldrums, I could feel it.
I’d taken her into Rockport earlier to buy school supplies, spoiling her with money I didn’t really have, letting her choose an expensive tin of colored pencils and a new backpack.
I had a tight ball of anxiety in my chest, remembering all the new schools I’d attended as a kid, all the first days and being introduced to walls of judgmental faces, knowing I wasn’t like the other kids, knowing they’d find me weird, knowing I’d be sitting alone at lunch.
“I feel you,” I said fervently. “I hope I like my new job.” Which also started on Monday.
Flo lapsed into silence, staring moodily out the window as I unpacked my books.
“Do you think Jake could get the old radio cabinet thing working?” she asked abruptly. “Can I go visit his puppy and ask him if he’ll come fix it? I found all these old records in the room with the clothes, and I want to play them.”
“Don’t bother him now, babe, it’s the lunch rush.”
She snorted. “There isn’t anyone there.”
“Well, then definitely don’t bother him. I don’t want you alone with strange men.”
“Mooooom,” she said in drawn-out frustration. “It’s Jake.”
“I said no.” I looked up and saw her restless irritation. “If you need something to do, go unpack the rest of your things.”
“I’m sick of unpacking.”
“Then go outside and pick me some lilacs.” It would be nice to have lilacs in my bedroom the first night I slept here.
She pulled a face.
“Read a book?”
“I’ll be reading books all year in school. I don’t want to waste the last two days of summer vacation reading.” She cocked her head. “Why don’t we go have a couple of lobster rolls and give Jake something to do. Then I can pet his puppy, because you’ll be there.”
“I need to keep unpacking, Flo-bug.”
“But we’ve never even had a lobster roll! Don’t you think that’s sad, given we live in Maine?”
“Flo, I seriously need our stuff unpacked before I start work on Monday.”
She gave me a look I rarely saw. A kind of wobble-lipped look, like she might cry. My heart sank. I hated it when she cried.
“What if I help you unpack the rest of this stuff, really quick, and then we go?” she said, blinking away her upset, still trying to find a way to get what she wanted.
The tightness in my chest constricted even further. She’d been such a good sport about this move, and all she wanted was to walk to the corner, pet a dog, and eat lunch with me.
“You’re going to hate lobster rolls,” I warned her, as I capitulated.
“I bet I won’t hate lobster rolls as much as I hate Moxie,” she said as she collapsed beside me and grabbed a handful of books out of the box.
“You’d hate Moxie too if you tried it.” She began stacking my books on the shelves, pushing the hardbacks into one row and the paperbacks into another.
“Those records I found are probably worth a fortune,” she chattered at me.
“We could sell them online, you know. Dad says vintage vinyl fetches a lot of money.”
I made a noise to let her know I was listening and opened another box.
“I’ll take photos of them all, if you want, and work out if they’re in mint condition.
Dad says you get more money for mint condition.
” She paused as she pulled an envelope out of a book.
“Hey. You’ve got a letter here you haven’t opened.
It must have got packed away by mistake.
” She handed it to me, then resumed her chatter about how to sell vintage vinyl.
My heart gave a lurch as I stared down at the letter. It was the one that had arrived on the day I’d first started scrolling treasure houses. The one Suni had handed me as we ate pizza and discussed which state we should live in. Hazelton FCI was stamped across the envelope.
Tina.
I folded it and tucked it into my pocket. I glanced at Flo, but she was more interested in hurrying through the boxes so she could get to the puppy than in my letter. Thank goodness, because she still didn’t know about Tina and I wasn’t ready to tell her yet. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready.
“Flo, I’m just going to, uh, grab a glass of water from the kitchen,” I lied, slipping out of the room. “You’re doing a great job.”
Opening Tina’s letters was like sticking your hand in a box without knowing what was in there.
I felt guilty and vaguely nauseous as I headed downstairs and out to the back porch.
We’d pulled the decaying screens out and cleared everything except the swing and the heavy old wireless radio.
The old records Flo was obsessed with sat in careful stacks.
Shakily, I tore open the envelope, so full of nervous energy that I paced as I skimmed her words, barely taking anything in.
My stomach was in a knot, my heart racing, my hands sweating.
My whole body was preparing for bad news.
Tina had loopy, girlish handwriting—her Gs were big curls and her Os looked like bubbles about to pop.
But there was no bad news. Her letter was chatty, full of gossip about her friends at Hazelton.
Over the years, she had made a lot of friends in prison.
And she’d once scored a lot of dope and pills from those friends.
I’d stupidly thought being locked up would help her, that she’d get clean, but the federal prison was even worse than the state prison.
The one and only time I’d gone to visit her, she’d been high on some kind of tranquilizer, barely even cognizant of my presence.
But she certainly hadn’t been tranquilized when she’d written this letter.
It was speedy and manic, leaping from topic to topic like a cartoon frog leaping onto lily pads.
She told me how her roommate had found out her husband was cheating on her, and how he’d still had the nerve to turn up for his conjugal visit, and that Skye and Julia (whoever they were) were hooking up.
Tina herself had a bit of a thing going on with one of the guards.
“We got talking about Real Housewives, of all things!” she wrote, her loops getting even loopier.
“Isn’t that crazy?” The letter went on like that.
Only at the end of the final page did she stop talking about herself long enough to be curious about me.
“Tate, that’s the guard I’m friendly with, asked me if you went to college and I said yeah, she’s clever, my girl.
Not like her mother, haha! But when he asked me if you graduated, I couldn’t remember.
You did, right, Angel? And was it economics or accounting or something like that?
I know I should know, but you know me, I’m a ditz. ”
I folded the letter sharply and put it back in its envelope. It hadn’t been economics or accounting. It had been statistics, at Carnegie Mellon, where I met Tim. And where I got knocked up. So no, I hadn’t graduated. Instead, I’d raised a kid and worked in a medical center.
But Tina knew none of that. Tina didn’t know much about me at all, because I didn’t tell her anything. She didn’t even know where I lived—she was still addressing letters to Suni and Wayne’s house, as she’d done for years.
Even though it was my choice not to tell her about my life and it wasn’t a choice I regretted, it still hurt that she didn’t know me. It was a razor-sharp old hurt, deep to the bone.
“Flo!” I strode to the hall and called up the stairs. “Flo! Forget the books, let’s go for lobster rolls.” All of a sudden, unpacking seemed much less important than taking my kid to lunch on her last weekend of summer vacation.
Debussy was down at the Oxeye Hardware Store (and Lobster Shack).
That giant orange fluffball seemed to own the whole town.
Doris left a bowl of kibble out for him in the general store, and he often loitered at Jake’s so he could be there to gobble up scraps.
Today, since there wasn’t a crowd of summer folk dropping food for him, Debussy was sprawled on one of the picnic tables, sunning himself.
He acted oblivious to Hazel the puppy’s intent stare.
She was tied up to the post again, staring at Debussy with laser focus.
There was now a big comfortable dog bed on the porch next to her, and a bowl of water.
There was no sign of Jake, so Flo rang the brass bell that hung beside the service window.
“Hey, neighbor,” Flo called, when Jake finally appeared. “Hey, neighbor” was what everyone in Oxeye said when they popped into our house.