The Wedding People

Chapter 10

They all sit against the sides of the narrow sailboat. The captain tells them not to lean too far back. “The boat will tip,” he says.

“Seriously?” Marla asks.

“Just kidding,” the captain says. “Though not really. There is, of course, a tipping point.”

Marla gives the captain a look, like a captain has no right to joke about tipping while they are trapped in open water, but Lila looks unconcerned. Lila sits perched on the boat like she’s sitting in her own living room—upright, poised, with the confidence of a woman who has systematically removed all of her body hair. Nothing bad can happen to a woman like that during her wedding week, not even in the middle of the ocean.

“So how about those Vacations in a Cup?” Lila asks, and Nat immediately opens the cooler.

“It’s Vacation in a Cups ,” Marla says.

“Excuse me?” Lila asks.

“The plural is actually Vacation in a Cups ,” Marla repeats.

“That’s how people have always said it,” the groom says with a smile, and Phoebe can recognize what Gary is doing because it’s what Phoebe does. He is trying to de-escalate the situation, trying to tease Marla’s comment into sounding funny. But Lila does not laugh.

“How do you know how the drink is pronounced?” Lila asks Marla, as if she is genuinely curious. “It’s a drink I made up.”

Before Marla can answer, Suz starts telling everyone the story of how Lila created the cocktail in their dorm one night and changed their lives for the better.

“Before that, we were always drinking stolen church wine,” Suz says.

“You stole sacramental wine?” Jim asks, looking at Lila like he’s both surprised and proud.

“For the record, I was never comfortable with it,” Lila says.

“Well, you certainly drank enough of it to get sick,” Nat says.

“It was… not award-winning wine,” Lila says.

Jim pretends to be a parishioner pausing before the Eucharist. “Excuse me, Father, is this a pinot?”

Everyone laughs, including Lila. Gary smiles, takes her hand.

“The last time we drank the sacramental wine, Lila vomited all night,” Nat says.

“The whole time she kept asking, Do you think we’re going to Hell, you guys?”

“After that, I swore I’d never drink again,” Lila says. “Unless the drink tasted like a vacation in a cup.’”

“And voilà, the Vacations in a Cup were born,” Nat says.

They spent many months during high school perfecting the recipe. And it’s clear that this is where the women want the conversation to stay—on the things they used to do together, the special, funny moments that had once bonded them.

“Right,” Marla says. “But if the singular is a Vacation in a Cup, then the plural has to be Vacation in a Cups.”

“That just sounds really dumb, though,” Suz says.

“Yeah,” Nat agrees.

“It’s not many vacations in one single cup, is it?” Marla says. “It’s a single vacation. Spread out in each individual cup.”

A heavy silence falls over the group. They are hardly away from land, and everybody already seems to have had enough of Marla. Lila just sits there, made speechless by her future sister-in-law, twice in one afternoon.

“Let’s drop it, Marla,” Gary says.

Gary says it with the weary tone of a brother who has been saying, “Let’s drop it, Marla,” his entire life. He puts his hand on Lila’s back and the gesture surprises Phoebe, even though it shouldn’t. There is nothing surprising here; they are a classic older man and younger woman combo. Gary is the stage and Lila is the song. Or maybe it’s more like, Gary is the house and Lila is the chandelier. Blond and dazzling in the way that suggests she’s never bought a loaf of bread at the store. And Gary, so handsome and sturdy, a man who is always bringing bread home from the store.

And yet, when she looks at Gary, she can only see the man in the hot tub, the man who once wanted to die. The man who read romance novels in college. She can feel that invisible wire between them, until Gary pulls Lila onto his lap and holds her close, as if he’s protecting her from his overbearing sister.

“For instance, you wouldn’t say, Please pass me some Sexes on the Beach,” Marla continues. “That just sounds gross.”

Nat and Suz look at each other and raise eyebrows, like there is nothing left to do at this point but ostracize the disturbance. Phoebe can tell that this is how they got through high school together, searching for each other’s eyes in the classroom, doubling over with laughter about a teacher who was more embarrassing than they were. But Lila doesn’t join in. She can’t openly mock her future sister-in-law, the future aunt to her children, the person who will be at her Christmas dinner table for all time.

Instead, Lila looks at Phoebe for help.

“Well, what is it?” Lila asks Phoebe. Then she turns to Gary. “Phoebe actually knows everything. She’s an English professor.”

How funny it feels to be looked at by all the wedding people. All these strangers who can see her. They are waiting on her to speak. To say something that will settle the moment, return them to normalcy, neutralize Marla. Phoebe is moved to be called upon like this. For too long, she had felt stuck in the depths of her house, in the void of her depression, where she was not actually real. Where nothing was real. As if she had slipped out of the known world without anybody noticing, except for Harry, who would follow her around all day, up the stairs, down the stairs, into the bathroom where he would sit with his serious face and watch. When she found him dead two days ago, she felt certain it was all over for her.

But now here she is, in daylight, on a boat, with the wedding people.

“Well?” Gary says. “How do you say it, Professor?”

He looks over at her for the first real time since they got on the boat, probably because the rest of them are also looking at her now. It has become safe to stare, safe to rest his eyes on her. She wants to savor this feeling. Package it, drink it later when she needs it, when she is back at home in the dark of her bedroom tomorrow, feeling like a piece of shit.

“It’s Vacations in a Cup,” Phoebe says. “You have to pluralize the head noun, not the modifier.”

“But no one would ever say Sexes on the Beach,” Marla protests.

“Right, but that’s because ‘sex’ isn’t really a count noun and so it sounds unnatural to pluralize it.”

“A count noun?” Suz asks. “Huh?”

“I just mean we don’t say ‘We had two sexes,’” Phoebe clarifies. “We say ‘We had sex twice.’”

“Speak for yourself,” Jim says. “I had two sexes last night.”

Everybody laughs, except Marla, who looks half-irritated, half-impressed. “Did you study languages or something?” she asks.

“In college,” Phoebe says. “I thought I wanted to be a philologist.”

“But you’re not currently a philologist,” Marla says.

“No. But I also know that language is determined naturally by the people who speak it,” Phoebe adds, for Marla’s benefit. “That’s how we wind up with different languages. People in different regions make it their own. So, in theory, you can pronounce the drink however you want and ten years from now, it’ll be correct.”

“So it sounds like you’re saying there’s no right answer?” Gary asks.

“Spoken like a true English professor,” Phoebe says.

Everybody laughs.

“Well, now that we know the drink’s entire etymology, can we just drink one already?” Nat asks.

Suz pours everyone drinks, and it feels like the party has really begun. But Marla leans back against the boat, turns on her phone, and looks horrified.

“Oh, God,” Marla says.

Has she seen the sexts from Robert?

Phoebe waits for Marla to explain, but nobody from the group asks her to. Gary and Jim talk to Gary’s father. Juice quietly holds her dead virtual dog and looks out at the water. And Lila, Nat, and Suz seem set on ignoring Marla now. They are deep in giggly conversation about their past, the stolen church wine, the things they used to confess to priests, how attracted Suz used to be to Jesus, that time Nat told Father Leon she was gay—and it’s a place where the rest of them can’t go. Especially not Marla.

“Everything okay?” Phoebe finally asks her.

“I just realized my car registration is expired,” Marla says.

Phoebe wonders if she’s lying, but then Marla pulls out her wallet, starts typing things furiously into her phone. This is too much for Gary to ignore.

“Are you really reregistering your car while we’re sailing?” Gary asks.

“It’s a literal crime to drive an unregistered car,” Marla says.

“But you’re not driving a car right now. Do it when we get back on shore.”

“I’m a lawyer, Gary. I need to stay on the right side of the law. And I’m getting shockingly amazing service here in the middle of the sea.”

Gary looks down at his Vacation in a Cup. So does Phoebe. When she peeks, she meets Gary’s eyes. Gary raises his eyebrows and then they both smile. A big release that makes Phoebe feel giddy. Phoebe can’t help it—Marla is too much. But Phoebe doesn’t want to laugh at another woman for being too much, not even Marla. So she takes a big sip and she will admit: the drink is so fucking good. Because it’s so fucking terrible. Like Kraft mac & cheese. Like a Dunkin’ donut. The kinds of things Phoebe could never properly enjoy before, because she was too worried about her body, about sugar levels, about fructose. Even when she was drunk, she would binge by eating a bowl of flax berry cereal that would always make her shit at eight in the morning, give or take a few minutes.

“What’s actually in this drink?” Phoebe asks. She sits back against the side of the boat and the wind picks up her hair. “It’s so good.”

“A vacation,” Gary says.

“Right,” Phoebe says. “But what kind of vacation? Like a beachfront condo in St. Thomas?”

Gary takes another sip as if he’s a sommelier. “I’m getting more, RV visiting Civil War battlefields in the South for three days.”

Phoebe takes another sip. “Really? I don’t taste any battlefields.”

“No?” Gary says. “You clearly don’t have a complex palate. Or a father who once dragged you to all the Civil War battlefields as a child.”

She laughs. He laughs. Jim just watches them talk as if the conversation is too weird to join.

“No, he was more of the we-already-live-in-a-tiny-fishing-cabin-on-a-river-so-we-don’t-ever-have-to-go-on-vacation kind of a father,” Phoebe clarifies.

“Oh, I didn’t know about that father,” Gary says.

There are some people in this world who remind you of exactly how you like to speak. She hasn’t met a person like this in a long time, not since she met her husband, which was why it was so painful when she started to forget how to speak to her husband. When she looked at him, she was too often reminded of what not to say, what never to mention, like ovulation, or depression, or anything that might carry a hint of sadness. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t tell him that Harry died. She didn’t want to give him any more proof of her unlovability, of her failure. Perhaps that’s why she just put a blanket over Harry and ran away, too.

“That father is out there,” Phoebe says. “Well, not technically anymore. He’s dead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Gary says. “So you’re a real orphan now.”

She blushes. The conversation.

“And surprise, surprise, being an orphan doesn’t feel like I imagined,” Phoebe says.

“The perks are even better than you thought?” Gary asks.

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Jim asks.

They all laugh.

“Phoebe used to dream of being an orphan,” Gary explains.

“Gary wants someone to beat the crap out of him,” Phoebe adds.

“I’ll have you know this explains nothing,” Jim says.

Phoebe takes another sip of her drink. “Oh, okay, I think I am tasting the battlefields now.”

“See?” Gary says. “It’s like just the tiniest note at the very end.”

Jim gives up on them and turns to Juice. “So how are you doing, my beautiful niece?”

Marla puts down her phone with a deep sigh.

“You on the right side of the law now?” Gary asks Marla, putting his hand around her neck, giving her a faux massage. It looks like an apology for being short earlier. “Don’t want any fugitives on this boat.”

“I know you’re making fun of me, so I refuse to answer that,” Marla says.

Sitting side by side, Phoebe can see that Marla and Gary look very similar. They both have dark brown hair, dark eyes. Long, angular faces they have inherited from their father, whose face is so long, he looks somewhat like a pelican at the bow. But Gary is a little soft where Marla is hard. Phoebe wonders if this is what losing his wife has done to him. If it has rounded out his edges. Or maybe it’s just the beers over the years that Marla likely refused, filling out his shoulders and his face.

“You think you’ll get to an age where your brother stops making fun of you, but no,” Marla says to Phoebe, “it will never happen. I’m forty-two and I am ready to accept this now.”

Then she offers a long list of all the things Gary did over the years to ruin her life, and yet, Gary is still the Golden Boy in their father’s eyes.

“No,” Gary says. “Roy is the Golden Boy.”

“Is Roy your brother?” Phoebe asks.

“Cousin,” Marla says.

“You talking about Roy?” Gary’s father shouts through the wind.

“See?” Gary says. “It’s like catnip to him. He can’t get enough of Roy.”

“Roy’s a goddamned hero,” Gary’s father says to Phoebe. “The only hero we have in the Smith family.”

“Every time,” Gary and Marla say in unison and then laugh. Laughing changes Marla’s entire face. She becomes soft like Gary.

“What did Roy do?” Phoebe asks.

“He was a sniper in Iraq,” Gary’s father says.

“Then Roy wrote a memoir about it,” Gary says.

“And someone turned it into a movie,” Marla adds.

“Phenomenal film,” Gary’s father declares to Phoebe. “Jude Law.”

“It wasn’t Jude Law,” Marla corrects. “Jude Law is like fifty now.”

“You’re thinking of that movie where Jude Law played a Russian sniper,” Gary adds.

“I know who Jude Law is,” Gary’s father says.

“Okay, fine, whatever. The point is, Dad watches it at least once a year and then immediately calls us to say that Roy is the only true hero in the family,” Gary says.

“I mean, I went to law school for you, Dad!” Marla says.

“I thought you went to be a feminist?” Gary’s father asks.

She elbows him. “That, too,” Marla says. “But honestly, what was the point of going to law school if your dad doesn’t respect it?”

“Oh, stop it. You’re the goddamned mayor!” Gary’s father says. “Of course I’m proud of you.”

Marla sips on her drink.

“Anyway, that’s Roy,” Gary says, and they all laugh.

“Roy got really wasted last night, huh?” Marla says.

“Speaking of,” Jim says, and hands Gary a beer, because yes, yes, there are only so many Vacations in a Cup he can have, and then the two men start telling everybody about the actual vacation they went on before the pandemic.

“A cross-country road trip we all took together after,” Jim says and then trails off. He takes a sip of beer and then a sip of Muscle Milk.

“We went camping in the Wind River Range out in Wyoming,” Gary says.

“Taught this one how to fish, huh?” Jim says, and elbows Juice. “And remember when that bunny got eaten right in front of us?”

Juice nods. “A hawk just picked it up right in front of us.”

“It was gruesome,” Jim says.

Phoebe can feel Jim trying to impress them all with his stories of adventure and battle and death. She scans his face for evidence of his sister. Was Wendy a brunette, too? Did she have the same big oval eyes? The same aggressive stance, always leaning forward a little too much when she talked? Jim has the energy of someone who should be an investment banker or a car dealer or a wedding singer, someone who is out there in the world, but this is probably because Phoebe is a reader, always expecting people’s careers to match their personalities exactly. In real life, Jim is an engineer.

“In my free time,” Jim tells Phoebe, “I’m building a seaplane.”

“That’s impressive you know how to do that,” Phoebe says.

“He doesn’t actually,” Gary says.

“You build it,” Jim says. “That’s how you learn. And actually, you become certified, too. In the state of Rhode Island, you build a plane and voilà, you’re a certified plane mechanic.”

“But how do you know it’s a good plane?” Phoebe asks.

“Oh. You don’t,” Jim says. “Not until you’re up there.”

“But then it’s too late,” Phoebe says.

“That’s right,” Jim says.

They all laugh, and Lila finally looks over. For a second, Phoebe feels like she’s in class and she’s gotten in trouble. But for what?

“Jim, are you talking about that plane you haven’t even bought parts for yet?” Lila asks, and the group falls silent.

“Well, now I’m fucking not,” Jim says, and everyone laughs again.

Marla leans back against the side of the boat, satisfied now that she’s on the right side of the law. The boat tips in her direction, and her drink spills all over her shirt.

“Shit,” Marla says, and Suz comes over to refresh her cup.

“So you’re a professor?” Jim asks Phoebe.

Phoebe can feel Lila and Gary both watching them now, as if a match is being made, like maybe this was Lila and Gary’s plan: for Jim to meet someone at this wedding, finally settle down.

“I am,” Phoebe says, even though it feels less true as they get deeper out to sea. She feels very far from her old life out here on the ocean with the wedding people. She hasn’t checked her email in one full day. Her students are supposed to be reading something for tomorrow’s class—Shelley—but Phoebe already knows she will not be reading Shelley tonight. She will not make it back in time for class, and yet she feels no guilt. Only relief. Only the good feeling of the steady wind on her cheek. The sweet drink in her cup. The knowledge that she has finally done something she never thought she could do—she has made it out of the dark bedroom of her life. She is here .

“That’s cool,” Jim says. “Very cool. Wasn’t much of an English guy myself.”

He finishes the last of his Muscle Milk, and Juice says, “You know that’s not really milk.”

“I know,” Jim says. “It says right here, This Product Contains No Milk.”

“Then why do you drink it?”

“Because I don’t want it to be milk,” Jim says.

“That makes no sense,” Juice says.

The captain takes them to Fort Adams, to an old lighthouse, and as they circle around it, Jim asks more questions as if he really wants to get to know Phoebe. What do you teach? What are the students like? Does it feel good up there, knowing everything? She can feel him advancing toward her, like he knows they are destined to fuck, the two unmatched partners on the boat. She can feel everyone watching out of the corner of their eyes, hoping it’ll happen, as if they are on a TV show.

It’s a relief when Juice finally taps Phoebe’s shoulder.

“Can we do it now?” Juice asks, holding up the virtual dog so Phoebe can see.

Phoebe looks at Gary, even though it’s clear that Juice is asking Phoebe and nobody else. Phoebe remembers this feeling, too. How going over to her next-door neighbor’s house and eating dinner there was somehow easier than sitting in her own kitchen with her family, because Mr. and Mrs. Blank would ask her questions about her book report, about her concert recital, and she could say anything in response because the Blanks didn’t matter to Phoebe at all—they were just neighbors and she didn’t need their love, yet somehow got it because of this. She could even ask them about her own mother, what she used to be like, what she used to sound like, and when Mr. Blank cleared his throat before he answered, she didn’t feel that tense knot in the middle of her chest every time her father did.

“Yes,” Phoebe says.

“What do we do?”

Anything would be better than what Phoebe did. She should have buried him. Harry deserved a grave. He had been Harry , she would have said over his tiny tombstone, our little psychiatrist who never solved one problem.

“First, it’s customary to say something about the deceased,” Phoebe says. “Something you love. What did you love about Human Princess?”

Juice says something about Human Princess always being there for her in her pocket, the dog always being such a good dog, something she could hold whenever she was nervous during school presentations or at night. Phoebe can see Gary leaning toward them, trying to hear what his daughter is saying, but her voice is too quiet. The wind too loud.

“And now do other people say something about Human Princess?” Juice asks.

Phoebe thinks it’s amazing how easily children ask questions. They don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. They know that they don’t know everything, and it’s a little jarring to Phoebe, a woman who spent her entire career pretending that she had been born knowing everything. Bob had suggested it, said it can be precarious for a female scholar to be caught asking too many questions, and so she sat at happy hour with her colleagues, and she nodded her head, and listened to them talk about the Protestant Reformation or the printing press in early America and how their students lacked a basic understanding of history, and when the conversation got too dark, too depressing, too angry (which it always did by the end of happy hour), her husband would say, “But honestly, I think my students teach me so much more than I could ever teach them.” Phoebe raised her eyebrows, waited for him to catch himself on the bullshit, because that was just something they said on their teaching statements in order to not sound like assholes, no?

But now she understands what he meant. There are so many things Phoebe doesn’t know anymore. Things children know that Phoebe has forgotten, like how to look at a green plastic circle and see a beloved dog.

That’s how she got in trouble, Phoebe thinks. When she was alone, she stopped seeing the meaning in things. She stopped writing in her journal, stopped making elaborate meals, stopped combing her hair, let Harry just stay there on the basement floor, because what did it really matter? What did anything matter when she was alone?

But everyone on the boat is so quiet, staring at the green little dog, it starts to feel like a real funeral.

“May I hold her?” Jim asks.

Juice gives him the dog, and Jim talks directly to it.

“You know, Human Princess, I remember when my sister bought you,” Jim says. “She was so excited that I remember thinking, Wow, that’s real love, you know? When you get that excited by the thought of making someone else happy. So thank you for making my niece happy.”

“Dad?” Juice asks. “Your turn.”

Gary looks startled. But he comes forward. He takes the dog in his hands. He is quiet for a moment.

“Jim is right. We were very excited to bring you home to Juice,” Gary says. “We knew you’d be a great dog and you were. Thank you for keeping my daughter company all these years. Thank you for being here when—”

Then Gary pauses, looks down, as if he’s about to cry. Phoebe looks over at Lila, who is unreadable in this moment, with her head down, her hands in her lap like she’s at church—though Phoebe already knows Lila well enough to imagine what she’ll say later.

Jim pats Gary on the back. Eventually, Gary composes himself. Chokes out the final few words.

“Anyway. We really appreciate that, little fella. Rest in peace.”

Gary wraps the dog up in a napkin like it’s a soldier. Hands Human Princess to Phoebe, which makes her feel like the girl’s mother, who should have some words, too.

“Thank you,” Phoebe says to Juice’s dog, but also to Harry.

Thank you for keeping us company. Thank you for being the only witness to our marriage. Thank you for always waiting for us in the mornings outside our bedroom door, and especially that night you sat outside the shower, keeping careful watch. Because Harry always knew when something was wrong. And something was very wrong—Phoebe was ten weeks pregnant and she was bleeding. Look at the blood, she kept saying—and Matt brought her to the shower, put his hands between her legs, as if to catch it. Or maybe to just to feel it. To be a part of it. After, Harry followed them silently to the bed, and Matt curled around Phoebe, and Phoebe curled around Harry.

“I really loved you,” Phoebe says, because now that the horror of it is over, Phoebe can feel the good part—this love for her little family, the one she had and the one she never will have. It is so strong, it makes her sob momentarily in her hands. Nobody says a thing, except Juice.

“Did you like, know my dog?” Juice asks.

Phoebe laughs. They all laugh. Phoebe wipes her tears and looks up to see Gary returning her gaze, smiling.

“No,” Phoebe says. “I didn’t know your dog.”

Phoebe didn’t know the dog. Didn’t know her mother. Didn’t know her daughter. Didn’t even know if it would have been a daughter, but she imagined the girl so many times, how they would read plays aloud in the open field behind their house, because there would be an open field. Phoebe would make sure of it. They would take the girl out to the field, and teach her how to dance, how to skip. They would find frogs. They would go camping. They would tell stories at night and in the morning, too, and Phoebe would show the girl how to write the story down, bind the pages together with yarn, as her father had once showed her. She wanted to give that same feeling to her child. She wanted to teach her child how to create, how to make a lot of applesauce from scratch and harvest strawberries and when the child would fall asleep, Matt would make them strawberry cocktails and they would curl up and watch a terribly wonderful awful movie that they’d seen a million times, like Terminator or Dune or all the Austen adaptations.

This vision of her family sustained her through her entire marriage, through all five rounds of IVF. When she injected the drugs into her belly fat, she thought of the girl, her little fingers plucking the strawberries. She pictured these fingers so often, and so vividly, at a certain point, she couldn’t imagine them not existing.

But they won’t. They never will.

“Now we let her go,” Phoebe says.

“Should I just throw her in the water?” Juice asks.

“Maybe lightly toss,” Phoebe suggests.

“Goodbye, Human Princess,” Juice says, and as she holds the dead dog above the water, Phoebe thinks, Goodbye, Harry. She hears it inside her head like the final lines of Ophelia in Hamlet : Goodbye Harry. Goodbye daughter. Goodbye mother. Goodbye father. Goodbye husband. Goodbye, goodbye.

But before Juice releases the dog, Marla shouts, “You can’t actually drop it in the ocean! That’s littering.”

“It’s not littering, it’s my dog , Aunt Marla.”

“It’s plastic,” Marla says. “It’ll take millions of years to decompose.”

“ Decompose ?” Juice cries.

“We do ask that you keep all your belongings inside the boat,” the captain says softly.

Juice looks at Phoebe as if she is making a choice about who to be, and Phoebe makes a choice, too.

“Go ahead,” Phoebe says, because fuck it. If she is going to live, she’s going to live differently this time. “Let’s have our funeral.”

Juice drops the dog in the ocean. When it’s immediately swallowed up by the white foam of the water, Juice actually laughs a little. It’s the glee of a child who has done something she shouldn’t, and Phoebe feels it, too, which is why she waits to get scolded by someone.

But the captain doesn’t scold. He starts doing something to the sails. The others have restarted their conversations. The funeral is over. They skid along the water, while the adults return to being wedding people on a boat. They drink like nothing happened. But something did happen. Phoebe can feel it as Juice leans into her. And Gary must feel it, too, she thinks, because he looks wistful, like he knows he just watched something important happen in his daughter’s life but is not sure what to do now.

“Hey, how about some ice cream?” Lila says, coming over to be a part of it all. She hands Juice a little sandwich from the cooler.

But Juice doesn’t want it. She holds it up to the light because she’s suspicious of even that. “This isn’t really ice cream, you know.”

“What do you mean, it’s not ice cream?” Gary asks.

“These things don’t melt. It’s not real food.”

“Well, you don’t have to eat it, I guess,” Lila says. “I just thought you might be hungry.”

“Well, I’m not.”

Gary gives Lila an apologetic look, and Juice puts the ice cream sandwich down on the seat next to her. Juice opens her phone and calms herself by reading the Wikipedia page for the Cornwall Inn. Lila returns to her friends on the other side of the boat, and Gary follows his bride. Phoebe can feel Juice’s whole body relax against her as she reads aloud.

“So the hotel was built in 1844,” Juice says to Phoebe. “By a man named Albert Schuyler. He built it for his mistress.”

Gary slides his arm around Lila, and the two of them kiss.

“Hey ho!” Jim shouts, and everybody cheers.

Phoebe is ready to believe in them as a couple. She waits to hear what it sounds like when Gary and Lila talk directly to each other. She wants to understand what makes them laugh. How they flirt. She is ready to accept things as they are. But after they kiss, they are entirely public-facing, embracing their guests, telling stories to them, and not each other. And every so often, Gary looks back at Juice and Phoebe like he wants to say something. Eventually, he does.

“Juice, please throw the sandwich away if you aren’t going to eat it,” Gary says. “It’s melting on this man’s boat.”

“It’s not actually melting, though!” Juice says. “See?”

Juice is sort of right. It doesn’t really melt. It still keeps its shape, which Phoebe admits is disturbing. But her father is not impressed. The father can only see litter. “Throw it out,” he says.

“Fine!” Juice yells.

Juice throws the sandwich overboard, and Marla says, “See? I knew this would happen. Littering is a slippery slope,” and Gary says, “Drop it, Marla,” and then looks at Juice like he’s about to punish her but doesn’t. He returns to his bride, and Juice looks out at the water like she’s contemplating something damning about her father, or Lila, or her life in general, but Phoebe knows she’s just trying to keep herself from crying. Phoebe knows this move. She watches Juice pick up her phone again.

“Do you think he really loved his mistress?” Juice asks.

“Excuse me?” Phoebe asks.

“Albert Schuyler.”

“I suppose he must have,” Phoebe says. “You don’t make buildings for people who are just sort of okay.”

But it’s a different kind of love, Phoebe knows. The wife is the reason the man becomes the architect. The mistress is the reason the architect keeps building. The blueprints of his dreams that he may never realize, so he keeps it in his drawer.

“Good point,” Juice says. “Though to be honest, I could never love anyone named Albert.”

“Alberts are people, too,” Phoebe says.

Juice cracks up. She repeats the line to herself, “Alberts are people, too.”

Juice continues reading to Phoebe about the hotel in hushed tones, like she’s telling a secret story after bedtime, and Phoebe is surprised to find herself genuinely interested, though she doesn’t know why she’s surprised, since this is exactly the kind of thing that she likes to think about.

By the time they are almost back to the wharf, everybody seems drunk and happy again. Gary and Lila are laughing at something Nat is saying. Marla and Jim are deep in conversation with Marla’s father about Roy. And Juice is really leaning on Phoebe now like she’s a bookend. As the people prepare to get off the boat, Phoebe closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to move. Like when Harry was on her lap and he was so cute, Phoebe wouldn’t even take a sip of coffee. Phoebe doesn’t want to ruin the moment.

But then they are docked, and Phoebe looks up at the wharf, at all the people and the houses and the new life that waits behind it.

“That was so fun,” Lila announces as she stands up.

“So fun,” Suz agrees.

Nat holds up her camera. “Kiss!”

And so they kiss.