“So, um...how’re your parents?” Renee said finally. “They good too?”
“My mother’s in Paris. I assume she’s fine.” Now Blue put the menu down, looked directly at her. “My father’s been dead for three years, so I wouldn’t know how he is. Hot, probably.”
“Oh.” Renee’s eyes had that wet shock to them, like an open cut just before it bleeds. “I didn’t know.”
“How would you?” Blue said.
For years after their falling out, Blue had waited for Renee to reach out to her. All she’d wanted was an apology, acknowledgment of what had happened, a sign that Blue was a loss that Renee was not willing to incur. She kept hoping. And was angry at herself for hoping. And still hoped, because so often the only person who could heal a wound was the one who caused it. Eventually she burned out her emotions on the cycle and stopped thinking about it entirely, which in some ways felt worse—the emptiness where feeling should be. Then when her father died a few years ago, all that hurt resurfaced. Who else but the friends you’d grown up with would understand the complicated feelings around losing a father who was, at once, not a good father and also the only one you had? Renee should have been there. She should have at least known about it. Called. Or sent flowers. Even just a card. Something.
Blue stood abruptly. She couldn’t sit in this anymore. Some vaporous feeling was swelling, threatening to saturate her like a cloud turning to rain. “I’m getting a drink. The waiter is taking too long.”
As she headed to the bar, she saw Hannah still outside with her phone to her ear, her red hair wild as ocean spray, her white summer dress trembling in the breeze. She made such a sad portrait. Blue considered going out to her. But then Hannah looked up, lifted her free hand to wave and returned her attention to her call. Blue glanced back at the table, at Renee looking stranded as a shipwreck.
Whatever. Good.
The bar was loud and crowded. She carved a path to the bartender and raised her hand to alert him. He was handsome and surfer-tousled, looked like a wealthy college kid on summer break.
“Scotch and soda and a shot of tequila, please.”
He rested his forearms on the countertop. “Can I see your ID, young lady?”
“What? Oh...” She went for her wallet, a pleasant blush heating her face.
“I’m just joshing ya,” he said, laughing, as he went to pour her drinks.
The blush turned to a sting. Right. Of course.
He put the drinks on the bar and she slammed down the shot. Handed him cash with a big tip he didn’t deserve. As soon as the money left her hand, she realized she’d done it to make herself look important and instantly she was sick with herself.
Around her the restaurant was emptying of families with children. Now it was mostly couples dining together, first dates and long-term marriages, everyone paired. Blue tried to remember the last time she’d even had a crush on anyone. There was that one guy at the bar on Fifty-Second who she thought might like her—he’d chatted her up all night and she was sure he was going to ask for her number. But then he’d followed her into the bathroom and asked her to go down on him. Called her a fat bitch when she refused. She tried to let herself cry in the taxi home but she couldn’t. By that time all of her tears had solidified into some dense, immovable block in her chest.
Oh, and there had been Patrick at work. He had a sweetness to him, a bit of low self-esteem, but he wasn’t bad looking and sometimes he made her laugh. A coworker had mentioned that he liked her—though Blue found that hard to believe—but no door had ever opened to cross over into a relationship. She didn’t know how to act like anything except a buddy. In fact, the more she liked a guy, the more inclined she was to chum it up. She had no clue how to flirt or seduce or even show mild interest. That was the part that was too hard. To dare to let herself be seen as a woman, a potential lover, to risk revealing her own want to be seen as that. She always imagined it being met with revulsion. Anyway, the new secretary had made her move on Patrick. Candy was her name. Jesus, it was like a bad porno. And maybe that’s what he wanted, because Blue had attended their wedding last year.
On some level Blue knew she was complicit in her singleness, recognized the hardness in herself, knew that it was people’s softness, their tender spots that made other people love them, and she had those—it wasn’t that she didn’t have soft spots, too—only she didn’t know how to show them. If one slipped out for even a moment, she’d rush to cover it with a joke or a curse word. She didn’t know how to stop doing that. It felt like survival.
Instead she’d trained herself to make love not matter. And while sometimes when she was alone in her apartment she would lie on her couch in a ball, her arms tucked inside her knees so the squeezing weight would feel like a hug, for the most part she’d accepted that there were some things in life she wouldn’t get to have. But now because of Jack...because his reappearance online made her remember, made her miss...
I’m such an idiot, she thought, to have let myself dream.
She sighed, headed back to the table hoping Maya and Hannah had returned.
She found Renee still alone, fiddling with her engagement ring. Twisting it to the left. Twisting it to the right. Twisting Blue’s guts right along with it. Not that she wanted to be engaged. God, no. She had no interest in marriage. But she wanted love. To even know it for a moment, just once in her adulthood. It seemed so little to ask. But instead Renee had found exactly the love she always dreamed of while Blue had spent the last twelve years totally, profoundly deprived of it, her once bright hopes torn down like drapes. And Renee to blame for it all.
“Look,” Renee said as Blue sat down without speaking, “can we just start over?”
It was so Renee to want to pretend nothing had happened. To clear it from the record like a questionable call in a Little League game.
“Hi, I’m Renee.” She smiled, encouraged Blue to play along.
Blue just stared. Early on in her job she’d learned that silence was often the most powerful response. It shrunk other people. Made them squirm with discomfort. She could actually see the uneasy fidget in Renee’s eyes. She tried to enjoy it, this momentary revenge. Instead, a guilty twinge. Why did acting in anger always make her feel like a bad person? Even when it was justified. Men probably didn’t feel that way—they weren’t conditioned to always “play nice” and “be soft.” As if denying women their rage made them less likely to be prey. Just the opposite, in fact. She took another gulp of her scotch.
“Okay...that’s a no then,” Renee said, smile falling. “I just thought... I mean, we were best friends for like thirteen years...” Renee shook her head. Looked like she might cry. “Whatever. Never mind.”
Blue made herself impenetrable. She could do that with her mind. Erect an invisible shield around herself that no words—not even best friend—could breach. It felt like a superpower. She wondered if everyone had it. “That was a long time ago,” she said.
Renee winced. “Not that long ago. I still know the name of every crush you’ve ever had, every teacher you ever hated, every band you ever obsessed over. Yes, even O-Town.”
She was clearly looking for a smile but Blue wouldn’t give it. She wondered why Renee suddenly cared so much when she couldn’t have been bothered for twelve years. She’d ask her but then it would look like the answer mattered.
“I also know you love peppermint ice cream and hate the word chunk and that there are exactly nine goldfish buried in your backyard, every one of them named Freddy. You were like a sister to me.”
Blue scanned the restaurant. Still no sign of Maya. She was probably hiding out in the bathroom, texting some random dude, imagining a peace treaty might be drawn up in her absence. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
The waiter appeared with their food and drinks. They retreated into themselves like two boxers into their corners as he set everything on the tab
le. “Let me know if you need anything,” he said as he backed away slowly, sensing tension, and then turned and darted off.
“I don’t know either,” Renee said, defeated. “Forget it.”
An unexpected and traitorous lump blossomed in Blue’s throat. She swallowed it back. Hardened herself against it. “I will.”
Renee was playing with her engagement ring again. She was like freaking Gollum the way she kept gazing at it. She caught Blue eyeing it.
“You know,” she said, “I was always a little bit jealous of you.”
Blue was too surprised and curious to resist. “Me? Why?”
“Oh, I dunno. You were just so much tougher than me. Still are, obviously.”
“I hate that word,” Blue said, surprised by her own disappointment. What had she wished Renee would be jealous about?
“It’s supposed to be a compliment.”
Blue eyed the bread basket with longing. All she wanted was to stuff her face with carbs. “In my experience, people who define women as tough don’t let them be anything else.”
Renee considered that. “I guess I’m just saying that I...admired how you were never desperate about boys the way I was. You never needed to be in a relationship. I don’t even know who I am when I’m alone.”
I don’t know who you are either, Blue thought, anger returning. She reached past the calamari for the bread, slathered a roll with butter, shoved it into her mouth. To hell with it. “Anyway, who says I’m alone?”
Renee’s face lit with surprise. “You have a boyfriend? I didn’t know... I just assumed...”
Blue sat back, folded her arms. Of course you did. Also screw you.
“Sorry. I just...hadn’t heard you mention anyone. So...so you’re seeing someone?”
“Look, I really don’t feel like talking, if you don’t mind,” Blue said.
“Okay, then, that sounds like no. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with being single.” Renee grabbed some of the calamari she’d said she wouldn’t eat and shoved it into her mouth. Shook her head. Looked out the window where the last glow of purple sky had been swallowed by darkness.
“Jack.”
Renee turned. Squinted. “What?”
Blue’s stomach buzzed, electrified. “I’m seeing Jack. You remember Jack. Superhot guy from the last time we were here. We have a date tomorrow night, actually.”
Renee’s mouth dropped, just as Blue hoped it would. Only Blue didn’t feel the satisfaction she was looking for. She felt positively sick with the fact that she’d said that, that she’d lied, and worse, that she’d felt she had to lie to prove she wasn’t unlovable. Only she hadn’t proved anything except that she was subscribing to some stupid patriarchal idea that her worth was determined by having a man.
Thank God Renee was leaving after dinner. Otherwise she’d have completely screwed herself. Otherwise she’d be expected to produce Jack.
HANNAH
Hannah had ended the call with Vivian, then stood for a moment in a state of numb detachment listening to the knock and slosh of water against the docks, the bustle of people going in and out of the restaurant, the music floating out and drifting over the water. By the jetty a large tugboat glided solemnly past, like something from another era, old and mournful as the sea.
As she started back, she saw Renee and Blue framed within the restaurant window, and she was struck by how old they looked, older than their age, or at least older than how they lived in her—those young girls she once knew with all their effervescent hope.
Her own reflection floated in the glass. Ghostly, disembodied, true.
The phone call with Vivian had left her guilty, especially the surprise in Vivian’s voice when Hannah explained that she wasn’t in DC. She and Vivian had spent so much time together over the years as they teamed up to care for Henry. But it was complicated for Hannah. When she and Henry had first started dating, Vivian had taken her in almost like a surrogate daughter. She went out of her way to include Hannah for dinners and holidays, even got her a birthday present each year. Hannah loved being a part of Henry’s family. At Christmas they sang carols around the piano and on the Fourth of July Vivian would make a picnic and they’d all go down to the National Mall and watch the feathery plume of fireworks light up the Washington Monument. Sometimes Hannah would catch his parents nuzzling or laughing with Henry over an inside family joke, and it was all so warm and also confusing. In some way Hannah found it hard to trust, didn’t quite understand it. Happy families seemed almost fake to her; there was no part of her brain that had developed to understand this strange phenomenon. It was so far from what she knew.
After what happened to Henry, Hannah had few people to turn to. Her own mother was too fragile, too absent, had no empathy reserves to offer. Their relationship persisted as one of avoidance—a polite phone call once a week where nothing was ever really said because nothing would be heard. Hannah accepted that it would never be any other way. But Vivian was available to her; she not only understood her sense of loss but shared it. The two of them lived it together, day in and day out, in that care facility. She knew Vivian blamed herself for what happened to Henry, for being out late that night, for leaving him home alone. And probably his dad had blamed himself too. He’d suffered a fatal heart attack only a few years after. Vivian said the grief was what killed him. There were just so many endless repercussions to that night.
But Hannah couldn’t imagine that Vivian did not blame her as well, blame her the most. After all, it never would’ve happened if she and Henry hadn’t been dating. She assumed Vivian was still nice to her simply because she needed an extra hand with Henry. If anything happened to him, she was certain Vivian would have no more use for her. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t told her she was going away for a few days. She was too afraid to remind her of the vast difference in their fates, that she’d be on vacation with her friends while Henry was stuck in a long-term care facility, his mind a turned-off TV. And all because of them.
A piece of memory broke free, floated up.
The four of them driving home from Check’s party that night. Her hands on the wheel, Renee adjusting the radio beside her.
“Maybe we should cruise around a little so we can sober up,” Renee had said. “And by ‘we’ I mean Blue. I think she’s having a harder time with the separation than she’s letting on.”
“From Jack?” Hannah had asked. They all knew Blue was lovesick over him, had talked about little else ever since they’d returned from Montauk.
“No, from us. College. That we’re all leaving each other.”
Hannah glanced in the rearview mirror, saw Blue slumped like a rag doll in the back seat, eyes closed, lost inside a boozy, weedy spin. Hannah understood it. She was struggling with their impending separation too.
“It’s still a month away!” Maya said, poking her head through the divider. “All the more reason to live it up while we’re still together.” She leaned forward and cranked up the radio, and soon they were singing along to it, loud as a crash, the black night rushing through the windows as they sailed across Rock Creek Parkway, an aisle of infinite sky above the tree line.
The music seemed so right, and that sultry summer air was pouring into the car through the open windows and so Hannah drove on aimlessly, no rush to get home anyway. She took a right turn and then another. How many times had they done that? Just taken right turns until they landed somewhere interesting. They knew DC by heart, or at least Hannah thought she did. But she was distracted by the music, the laughter, and somewhere she lost track of the turns, and then the neighborhoods started to look unfamiliar, seedy, the sky blacker, the streetlamps fewer—surrounding them in that darkness of neglect.
“You guys,” Hannah said, “I think we’re lost.”
* * *
Now as she slammed through the noise and the restaurant crowd toward Blue, who sat with her arms fol
ded across her chest, toward Renee looking longingly at the bay as if she wanted to throw herself into it, Hannah understood, really understood, that they’d been lost ever since.
Blue and Renee looked up as she snaked her way over to the table.
“Everything okay?” Blue asked.
Hannah took her seat. The room was heightened with laughter and high chatter, the lighting softer now, the black night hugging the windows.
“She said it was,” Hannah said.
“Oh, good, I was worried,” Renee said.
“No reason to be,” Hannah said.
The tears came, immediate and unbidden, like breathing.
“Oh no,” Blue said. She looked helplessly at Hannah and then at a waitress passing by as if somehow she might be able to help. Finally she grabbed the napkin in her lap, shoved it at Hannah. It was covered with crumbs and cocktail sauce.
Hannah wanted to laugh. Thirty years old and Blue still didn’t know what to do with emotions. But instead her tears only came harder.
Renee offered her a clean napkin and then reached out and grabbed her hand.
“I don’t know why I’m crying,” Hannah said. “She said he was okay.” But something was wrong. Some unidentifiable piece. What was it? “I just have a bad feeling.”
When was the last time Vivian had called for no reason? She couldn’t remember. And now her mind was replaying the phone call, the moment she’d asked if Henry was okay. Had there been a pause before Vivian answered?
Dread, heavy, the color of ash, settling inside her.
“She never said why she was calling,” Hannah said. “When I told her I was here, she said she didn’t want to bother me. Just to call as soon as I got back. But she didn’t say why.”
“But she didn’t mention a problem?” Renee said.
“Right.” But there had been a pause. Hannah was sure of it now. “I shouldn’t have come. That’s the bottom line.” She should’ve known there would be a price to pay for leaving him.
East Coast Girls Page 14
