East Coast Girls (ARC)

by Kerry Kletter

  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

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  dude, imagining a peace treaty might be drawn up in her ab-

  sence. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  The waiter appeared with their food and drinks. They re-

  treated into themselves like two boxers into their corners as he set everything on the table. “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 dis-

  appointment. 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…ad-

  mired 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 return-East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 169

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  ing. She reached past the shrimp cocktail 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 cala-

  mari 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.

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  HANNAH

  Hannah had ended the call with Vivian, then stood for a mo-

  ment 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, disem-

  bodied, 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 to-

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  gether 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 un-

  derstand 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

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  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

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  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 folded 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

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  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.

  “I think you’re worrying over nothing,” Blue said.

  Over nothing.

  She knew Blue didn’t mean it like that. At least not con-

  sciously. But how could she explain to them how essential

  Henry was to her, even in his condition? How could she make

  them see that he still gave her so much when the notion of love was consigned to what a person could do rather than just the

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  fact of them being there and always there and never stopping.

  The times when she would climb into Henry’s bed, feel his

  heart thump against her own, nestle her face into the com-

  forting sleep-smell of his neck, were the only times she was

  ever truly at peace, the only times her breathing settled and the fears retreated and everything in her stilled.

  He was still the love of her life, her whole world. If any-

  thing happened to Henry, she wouldn’t survive it.

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  MAYA

  In the restaurant parking lot, Maya strapped on Andy’s helmet, the breeze off the water blowing warm and gentle as a whisper.

  “Where to, ma’am?” he asked, wearing that same boyish

  grin he had when he first spotted her in the bar.

  “Take me to the place your dog loved most in the world,”

  she said.

  “You really want to go to Tucson?”

  She gave him a look.

  “I’m serious, he loved it there. He was smitten with a lab-

  radoodle named Bernice. Wouldn’t look at me for a week

  after we left.”

  “Maybe the place he loved second best…”

  “That would probably be my neighbor’s pool. Which is why

  they put a big lock on the gate.” He climbed onto the bike.

  Maya got on behind him and pressed herself into the

  strength of his back, feeling a sense of deep relief in the touch, like stepping into a hot shower after getting caught in bad

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  weather. “Take me to the pool,” she said. “I know how to

  break a lock.”

  He laughed and revved the motor and flipped up the kick-

  stand with a practiced flick of his boot. Soon they were launching onto the unlit road toward town, roaring past the moonlit g
leam of the bay, faster and faster, as if they were winged.

  “Woo-hoo!” Maya yelled into the night. Glorious and wild

  and set free. This was what mattered. Not bills, not loans, but soaring, but life. The ephemeral lust to touch something bigger, to merge with it. The wind moved through her, ignited

  her. She was a sparkler. She was the Fourth of July. She was

  bursting out of herself in the same way she’d felt the first time she had sex, bungee jumped, stole her parents’ car before she had her license, moments that felt lifted from life, in defiance of suffering. At sixty miles an hour in open wind, the boundary of her body disappeared. She was air and night and speed, vast as the universe, lit up as the stars.

  “Do a wheelie!” she called over the roar, though she wasn’t

  sure he had heard her. She laughed to herself imagining Han-

  nah’s horrified face if she could see her now.

  Andy pulled onto a side street near town, the bike slowing

  to idle, the ride over and yet somehow still happening inside her. He parked in front of a modern A-frame house, the sudden quiet like a dive under a wave, and led her by the hand

  into the backyard. There a floodlit pool glowed in the dark

  as if a small corner of blue sky had been carved into the lawn.

  “All right, Houdini, let’s see your skills,” he said as they

  reached the gate.

  Maya tried the lock, considered her options and then sim-

  ply scaled the fence like a criminal.

  “Resourceful,” Andy said, laughing, as he followed. “I like

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  that.” He walked up to her, stood so close she could feel the heat coming off his body, feel the charge between them in

  that one inch of space. He smiled down on her, adoringly,

  the way one might smile at a puppy, with gentleness and gen-

  erosity and forgiveness for anything she might ever do, and

  something softened and yielded deep within her as if all she’d ever wanted was to be forgiven. For what, she didn’t know.

  His hands found her hips, his fingers grazing them gently as

  he drank her in, and then he leaned down and kissed her. He

  smelled like mint gum and beer, his chest earth solid against hers, and she became all body, no thoughts, only bliss and

  wanting as he led her down onto a lounge chair.

  She opened her eyes.

  They gazed at each other.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said, goofy and sweet. As tough as he looked, there