by Lisa Duffy
“Can you get me a toasted bagel with butter, a side of bacon, and an orange juice?” I ask, and she frowns at me but gets out of the car, sparing me the nutrition lecture.
Inside Sully’s, the door echoes behind me when it closes. I flip the switch for the lights and watch the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling flicker and turn white.
It’s eerily quiet—the lanes in front of me empty and the bar still dark—nothing like the noisy place it’ll be in a few hours.
There’s nothing nice about Sully’s—old-school candlepin is what Bent calls it. There’s no fancy disco ball hanging from the ceiling or plush leather booths. Just a jukebox in the corner and twelve lanes, each with a fiberglass bench and a table bolted to the floor.
But I love it here. Especially when it’s quiet like this. Bent says it’s because I grew up in Sully’s. From the time I was little, he’d take me here in the morning when my mother needed a break. Sully would cook breakfast, and they’d sit on one of the benches and eat while I crawled on the wooden lanes.
Sully became the owner after his parents died, but Desiree’s right when she says she changed the place. She created a website, put the menu online, added an events page and links for birthday parties and bowling leagues. Then she hired a new cook and had him add healthier options to the menu. And she told Sully to start carrying some decent wine and beer.
Bent’s not crazy about any of the changes. Earlier this year, Desiree told Sully they should start offering free Wi-Fi to customers, and Bent chimed in that she needed to just slow down. Not everyone cared about that kind of stuff.
“People come here to unplug. You know, talk to actual people.”
Desiree just raised an eyebrow at him.
“This from the last guy on earth still using a flip phone,” she quipped.
Sully stayed out of it, but not long after, there was free Wi-Fi at Sully’s, and everyone knew Desiree set it up, because she named the network Gohome_Bent.
That’s Desiree for you. As my friend Katie says, she gives zero fucks.
There’s a long table in the side room where we hold birthday parties, and I put the box on top of it and start on the gift bags. I hear the back door slam and voices in the hallway. Desiree turns the corner with Flynn behind her.
“They were selling studs at the coffee shop, so I picked one up,” she announces, winking at Flynn. She hands me a bag, while Flynn slumps in the seat across from me.
“You know I’m free of charge for you,” he tells her, a dopey grin on his face.
Desiree laughs and pats him on the head as though he were a puppy.
“I’ll be in the office if you need me,” she says. Flynn watches until she disappears around the corner.
When he finally looks at me, I’m two bites into my bagel. He puts his hands up, tilts his head at me.
“Sorry—don’t yell at me. I know you hate it when I flirt with her, but please . . . I’m barely upright.”
I’m about to say something snarky when his face stops me. His eyes are bloodshot, puffy, and red rimmed. His clothes wrinkled.
“Why do you look like you haven’t slept in days?”
“Because I haven’t. I worked last night and went out with some of the guys after. Guess I had a few too many. Woke up in my truck this morning—literally ten minutes ago. Don’t tell Desiree,” he says, as though this is the only thing that might ruin his chances with her.
I’m so stunned I almost choke on the bagel. Flynn puts his head in his hands.
“Wait—back up. You slept in your truck? Like in the parking lot?”
“Apparently. I woke up there.”
“How did your truck get here? I’m lost.”
“I drove it here last night. I was fine when I was in here. Then we went to that dive a couple doors down and someone ordered shots. I don’t remember anything after that.”
It takes a minute for what he’s said to sink in. When it does, my jaw drops.
“You were here? Like at Sully’s? Drinking?”
“Shh! Jesus, Libby.” He leans back and looks over at the hallway to Desiree’s office. “Talk a little louder, why don’t you.”
“What the hell were you thinking? They can lose their liquor license for something like that! Not to mention that Desiree knows you. Sully knows you. My father knows you—”
“Relax! The place was packed, and we were at a back table. One of the guys slipped me a rum and Coke. Besides, no one I knew was here. The bartender was that old guy who can’t see past his glasses anyway.”
“It’s still not cool, Flynn—Desiree’s my aunt. They could get in a lot of trouble—”
“I know, Libby! Look, it’ll never happen again. I promise. That’s why we left and went to another bar. It was stupid. I know that. Don’t be mad. Okay?”
I nod, and he breathes in deep, rubs his temples.
“What are you doing here anyway?” he asks through his fingers.
I don’t answer him because there are piles of small toys on the table and a stack of Happy Birthday gift bags in front of me. Flynn spent the last year talking with scouts from division one colleges for basketball. But he’s also in every one of my honors courses. Even hungover, he’s smart enough to figure out what I’m doing.
I glance at the clock on the wall behind him.
“I should be asking you that. Aren’t you going to be late for basketball?”
“I already missed tip-off. Besides, I’d be trash out there today. The guys will be better off without me.”
Flynn’s played in a Saturday-morning basketball league for as long as I can remember. He never misses it. Neither do any of the guys he normally hangs out with—basically all the seniors on our high school team.
“So what guys were you with if you weren’t with all of your friends? Nice ones, obviously, since they left you drunk . . . in a parking lot . . . by yourself. Why didn’t they just drop you at home?”
“Maybe I told them I’d just sleep it off—I can’t remember anything. It’s not like I expected them to babysit me.”
I can feel the words forming in my mouth, a lecture about how stupid it was for him to get so drunk that he blacked out, but when I look at him, he’s staring at the table, a defeated look on his face.
“Here. Eat this. It’ll help.” I spread out my napkin in front of him and put the rest of my bagel and the side of bacon on it. I twist the cap off the orange juice and hand it to him.
“I love you,” he says, and puts the bottle to his lips, draining it in three gulps.
I work on the bags while he inhales the food. When he’s done, he reaches over and grabs a bag, starts filling it with the toys on the table.
We settle into our own two-person assembly line. Flynn launches into how Anna invited him to some family shindig down the Cape, and he didn’t know how to get out of it until he found out it was the same weekend his brother was coming home. I interrupt him midsentence.
“Wait. Jimmy’s coming home?”
Flynn nods. “Prodigal son returns. Let’s see what he can fuck up next.”
I’ve secretly had a crush on Jimmy for my whole life. Or since I met him in sixth grade. But he’s also older—like, I-don’t-even-know-when-he-graduated older—and probably the reason Bent isn’t crazy about Flynn.
Jimmy’s always in trouble with the police about something. Or he had been until he joined the army.
“I thought he was deploying somewhere. Like overseas.”
“He is, but he’s coming home first. Not sure for how long. Maybe a month or two.”
I catch his eye. “You don’t sound thrilled.”
He shrugs. “I don’t want to see my mom get hurt again. Supposedly he’s a changed man—sober and whatever. But he put her through hell. Made the house like a war zone with all the fighting. Like she didn’t have enough to deal with raising us alone and he has to be a bigger dirtbag than my father with the drinking and drugs.”
When Flynn was little, his father took off and died not long a
fter somewhere down in Florida from a drug overdose. He doesn’t talk about him often, but when he does, it’s never with any nostalgia. He still refers to the day his father left as National Goodbye Motherfucker Day.
Katie and Erin always get upset when he says it. They fawn all over him and try to make him feel better. Tell him things like his father had a disease and he lost his way and they know that his father really loved him. All of which are probably true.
I don’t ever say anything because I know the other truth. That Flynn’s glad his father’s gone. That life got easier after he left. It’s why I only ever talk to Flynn about my mother.
He knows what it’s like to love someone and want them to leave at the same time.
Above us, the speakers crackle and music fills the room. Desiree has one of her yoga playlists on, and some sort of flute plays with birds chirping in the background.
Flynn looks skyward, blinks his eyes. “What is this shit?” he asks.
I open the tissue paper, start stuffing the bags. Flynn isn’t helping anymore, and when I look up, he’s studying me.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You know what I love about you, Plural?”
“Knock it off and stuff the bags. There’s going to be thirty kids here by lunch, and I haven’t even started on the streamers.”
“I love that we’re sitting in a bowling alley bar, stuffing party bags for kids, and Zen music comes on and you don’t even miss a beat. Like it’s the most normal thing in the world.”
“Remind me not to feed you again. You get all weird.”
One of the rubber balls on the table rolls off and bounces behind me. Flynn stands up and follows it. When he reaches it, he whips it at the far wall, where it zings back at him. He catches it in one hand, turns in midair, and throws it again. Nimble and graceful and powerful at the same time. The reason he’s Paradise High’s star basketball player.
“And the real Flynn Winter is back,” I say, watching him.
“You always bring me back to life, Plural. You know that,” he tells me.
And just like that, we’re back to being us.
8
Quinn
She never works on Saturdays. But it’s the twins’ birthday party, and they asked last week if she’d go, and how could she say no to two pairs of hopeful eyes staring at her?
Well, obviously Quinn didn’t know, because now she’s strapped into the passenger seat of Madeline’s minivan, the twins in the back screaming HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME over and over at the top of their lungs and Madeline explaining that meeting Quinn at the bowling alley would have been fine but driving together seemed logical, since Madeline drives right by Quinn’s new place.
Quinn nods and doesn’t let her expression show how ridiculous this sounds because Quinn’s new place is nowhere near the bowling alley, and the reason Quinn is in the car at all is because less than an hour ago, Quinn’s cell phone rang, and it was Madeline, nearly hysterical.
She’d put Quinn on speakerphone, a child wailing in the background, and Madeline had shouted frantically over the crying, “Quinn! Nate can’t find his backpack, and he refuses to get in the car, and he says you had it last!”
Quinn had closed her eyes and counted to three before she answered. “The backpack is in Nate’s closet. Remember, Nate and I decided that was the best place for it?”
“Well, he doesn’t remember that. Nate, come here and talk on the phone. Hold on, Quinn. He’s hiding from me. I’m getting him.”
Quinn had breathed out slowly while she waited. Madeline had finally returned to the phone, asking Quinn if they could just PICK HER UP ON THE WAY because Nate only wanted to see HIS KINNY.
Quinn had agreed and hung up. This wasn’t the first time Madeline had called on a weekend when she was alone with the twins. And Quinn wasn’t surprised the call was about the backpack.
Weeks ago, Nate had started talking about not going to kindergarten in September. Quinn had steadily ignored him, answering with, mm-hmm or I know whenever Nate listed the reasons he didn’t want to go—he’d miss Quinn, or school was stupid (he’d heard that from Jake, his teenage neighbor).
Quinn wasn’t concerned—this was just Nate.
Preschool and karate class and tumble time at the gym—Nate had the same reaction to the beginning of every new event. He was anxious, nervous about trying new things. But on the first day, he’d go willingly with his teacher, and by the time Quinn picked him up from school hours later, he would have forgotten every fear. In all the years of being a nanny to Nate, she’d never had a single issue when leaving him, and kindergarten was going to be just like that.
Until last Friday night, when Madeline brought home backpacks and told the boys they were magic bags that would keep them safe all day. And only big boys—good big boys—could have a backpack like this.
Nick hadn’t even looked up from his dinner, but Nate had scooted down from his chair and grabbed the bag, eyes wide. He unzipped every pocket while Madeline looked on, beaming.
Quinn had left for the weekend and arrived Monday morning to find Nate sitting at the table wearing his backpack and Madeline sitting next to him, pale and tired and drawn.
She’d motioned for Quinn to follow her to the mudroom and explained that Nate had refused to take off the backpack since she’d brought it home.
He ate with it on. Went to the bathroom with it on. Slept with it on. He hadn’t even bathed since Friday because Madeline put her foot down, finally, and said she would not allow the bag in the bathtub.
“Why is he doing this?” Madeline had cried, as though Nate were subjecting her to the cruelest form of torture.
“Because you told him it was magic and that it kept him safe,” Quinn had said matter-of-factly.
“I meant in school,” Madeline had hissed, tucking an unwashed strand of matted hair behind one ear.
Quinn had worked with Nate all week, finally getting him to leave the bag in the closet. But since she’d left them last night, the backpack had emerged again.
So now Quinn is turned in her seat, looking at Nate. He’s stopped crying, but his face is tearstained and flushed.
“Hi, birthday boy,” Quinn says, and he peeks at her over the top of the backpack in his lap, his arms wrapped around it. The backpack is stuffed full. The zipper is only halfway closed. A giant light saber is sticking out.
Nick is in the seat next to him, unfazed. Quinn reaches her hand back, and Nick grins and gives her a high five. He needs a haircut, his blond hair nearly touching his shirt collar. His skin is honey brown from the sun, his blue eyes bright when she tells him he already looks bigger now that he’s five.
Quinn often wonders about their father, the sperm donor. The twins look nothing like Madeline, both blond and blue-eyed with round, dimpled faces and bodies that are off the charts for their age in both height and weight. Madeline is angles and sharp edges, rail thin with a nervous energy Nate inherited.
“I just wanted this day to be fun,” Madeline whispers from the driver’s seat. “But he’s been like this since he woke up. I don’t really care about the bag—it’s the tantrum he throws when I touch it. It’s full of his favorite toys. I’m afraid he’s going to throw a fit if the other kids try to play with them—and you know they’re going to want to play with them!” Madeline is gripping the steering wheel, the veins on her thin arms bulging.
“Did you tell him he’s getting new toys today? Maybe he’ll empty it?”
“Of course I told him. I’ve talked and explained and begged and threatened, and it’s just made it worse. I even bribed him with candy, great mother that I am. But you try—he listens to you more than me anyway.”
“That’s not true—” Quinn says, but Madeline interrupts her, looks in the rearview mirror at Nate, and calls back to him. “Natey Bear? Kinny wants to talk to you about your backpack. Will you talk to Kinny, honey boo? It would make Mommy soooo happy!”
Quinn feels her jaw set at the baby talk�
�she’d hoped Madeline would grow out of it once the twins were no longer infants.
“Whose birthday is it again today?” Quinn calls. She squints at them as though she’s forgotten.
Ours, they scream, and Quinn covers her heart, feigning surprise, and they both giggle.
“And who do we invite to birthday parties?”
“Friends,” Nick yells, and Nate looks over at him, smiles.
“And when we invite friends, they are our guests, right?” Quinn asks, nodding her head, and they follow her lead.
“And we’re nice to our guests because we’re happy they’re at our party. So—what are some of the ways we show our guests that we’re happy. We say . . .” Quinn pauses, waits.
“We say HI,” Nate shouts.
“Yup. And we say please and . . .”
“THANK YOU!” they scream.
“And what else? What do friends do with friends? It starts with shhh . . .”
“SHARE!”
They shout it so loud, Madeline puts her hand on her heart.
“That’s right,” Quinn says as Madeline pulls into a parking spot, turns off the engine.
The boys are already unbuckled, out of their car seats. Nick slides open the van door and jumps down to the pavement. Nate steps over his backpack.
“Leave that here,” he tells Quinn from the back seat. “I don’t want to share it.”
“Good choice,” Quinn tells him.
She holds up her hand, and he slaps it, then jumps out of the van.
Madeline is still in the driver’s seat, smiling at Quinn, but it’s a sad, wistful one.
“You’re a born mother,” Madeline tells her, and Quinn shrugs off the compliment, but the words settle inside of her, making it difficult to breathe.
Madeline doesn’t know Quinn’s pregnant—more, though—Madeline can’t know, not until Quinn has processed it, thought about what it means, especially with John missing.
Although she’s stopped thinking of John as missing. Left is the word she uses in her mind now when she thinks about it. John left her.
She has no idea where he is. Not the specifics, not the actual location. But he’s somewhere. Maybe with some unit. Perhaps back with the people he considers family. She can’t say how she knows this other than a feeling.
