Pearl

by Deirdre Riordan Hall

  I can practically hear her smiling. I didn’t peg her as someone with warmth in her heart, as cool as her exterior is, but I’ve learned she occasionally surprises with generosity.

  “He and I had a conversation,” she says in a terrible Scottish accent.

  “Huh?”

  “Pepper found his phone number in your things, and I called him for you, asked if it would be OK if you brought a special friend. I didn’t mention how hot you thought she was and how the two of you would keep him up all night with your moaning and groaning.” She laughs. “He thought it was a great idea. He doesn’t know what he’s getting into. It’s settled. You can thank me anytime.” She vibrates with how masterfully her plan has worked out.

  Grant and I stare out the windshield, both of us wearing buoyant smiles.

  “You’re like Cupid, a matchmaker, my sweet potato,” Pepper coos.

  “Shut it,” Sorel says and turns up the volume on the stereo.

  After driving for hours, we wind up on a long wooded road before the cement turns into gravel, then into dirt. Sorel pulls up the emergency brake in the sloping driveway. A log cabin perches on top of a hill with a panoramic view of the valley below.

  “This is where I spent summers. Welcome to the Randall Family Forest, Boring-burg. But for our purposes, it’s perfect.” We bring our luggage, following Sorel inside. “You guys get the room down here,” she says, pointing down the wood-paneled hall. “We get the master suite.” Sorel flashes Pepper a lusty look, and they disappear.

  Grant and I find the bedroom with a queen bed in the center, topped with a quaint pink-and-green patchwork quilt. The decor in the house bespeaks rustic comfort.

  Grant sets his bag down and steps toward me. “I missed you.”

  Our cheeks brush. “I missed me.” I press my face into his neck, inhaling deeply as he presses against me.

  “I wanted to make all your pain go away, but there’s not enough poetry or dinners or sneaking around to dislodge that kind of grief. I’m so sorry.” His pause is long enough for him to lean back and take the remains of me in.

  I don’t waver under his gaze. If there’s anything valuable left, I want him to see it, to snatch it before it disappears, to help me return to myself.

  “I want to take it from you, bury it somewhere far away, make you OK. I didn’t know what else to do, other than hold your place here.” He puts his hand over his chest.

  My own heart swells. We enter a secret place where time no longer matters. It’s just us. I am gone. I am his. He cups my jaw in his hands and draws my face close. I set hungrily into his lips for a long-overdue kiss. His pants and my leggings hit the floor. Our tops follow. He undoes my bra, and I sink onto the bed. Our legs intertwine. I leave the fire of the last year behind as we melt into each other.

  When Grant and I emerge from our room on the first floor, someone has painted the sky a pastel watercolor, reminding me vaguely of Charmindy’s work in Painting IV. We join Sorel and Pepper out on the back deck to watch the sun disappear behind the distant hills. They each have a beer, and Pepper goes inside to get more.

  I close my eyes, and for an instant, everything is right in the world. Memories of my mother are lifetimes, or at least miles, away. I forget my disappointment in myself for replacing living with pills. Just the setting sun, the fresh mountain air, Grant, a couple of good friends, and I remain. It’s better than oblivion.

  “OK. That was nice, but it is time to get this party started,” Sorel says, interrupting the moment of serenity and lighting up a cigarette. She claps her hands together and goes inside. After a moment, the speakers blare abrasive punk, and Sorel reappears.

  “My parents were just here, so they stocked the fridge. Minus the beer, which I acquired thanks to my pal Mitch. You’re welcome,” she says, shooting us a sarcastic smile. “If you’re hungry, get something to eat. If you’re thirsty, grab a beer. There’s more in the car, among other select beverages. If you want to get wet, jump in the hot tub or lake, and if you wanna get high, come see me.” Sorel smiles mischievously.

  After she tosses her cigarette off the deck, she pulls a joint out of her pocket. When it comes to me, I hesitate, but then it’s only pot; I tell myself that it’s no big deal. Our laughter echoes off the mountainside as we joke about life at Laurel Hill and tear apart nearly every student on campus.

  “There’s the girl with the really long nose, what’s her name?” Sorel asks.

  “Morgan?” Pepper answers.

  “I swear if she lifted her lip like a millimeter, she could touch the tip of that thing.”

  We all try to touch our lips to our noses to hilarious effect.

  “I can touch my tongue to my nose,” Sorel adds, demonstrating.

  “You can do a lot of things with your tongue, babe,” Pepper says. She swats him. “Then there’s the girl who was homeschooled up until Laurel Hill,” he adds.

  “She was in my chemistry class. She’s so painfully awkward, but she doesn’t have a clue,” Sorel says. “She once explained that argon was the element used in some fantasy book she’s crazy about. She said it made the characters in the story magical. I don’t even know. What a geek.” She shakes her head. “Oh, and there was this other kid in chemistry who had such bad acne I’d get distracted and want to squeeze his zits. I was totally like, dude, let’s go to town and pop those suckers.”

  “Or maybe brew up some kind of potion made with argon to make them go away,” Pepper interjects.

  They make fun of everyone, from the jocks and popular girls, especially Terran—Pepper does an ace imitation of her orating at an assembly—to the nerds who fully embraced their status and probably would have laughed right along with us.

  “We’re such douches,” Grant declares, high and hysterical with laughter.

  “Need. Food. Now,” Sorel says. She disappears inside and then bangs on the sliding glass door. We all turn, and she’s bare chested, pressing her boobs against the glass. “Come on,” she shouts.

  We go inside to get something to eat, littering the kitchen table with an assortment of bags and boxes of junk food that her parents left. She makes a soda cocktail, opening five different bottles, and then spikes it with Jack Daniel’s. We all refuse to try it, so she guzzles it.

  Grant gathers vegetables from the drawers in the fridge and proceeds to boil water for pasta. Proper cooking is a relatively foreign sight to me. With my mouth full of chips, I ask, “What’s he doing?”

  “Chef Grant!” Pepper cheers, taking notice.

  Grant smirks.

  “Chef Grant appears when he’s had just enough weed to be hungry, but not so much he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I trade him weed for dinner. It’s quite romantic. But you should know that it’s a fine balance between him being self-conscious because he likes to cook, but not giving a shit because he’s high.” Pepper chants, “Chef Grant, Chef Grant, Chef Grant.”

  He commentates on Grant’s every movement. “Now our culinary master slices an onion wafer thin. What will he do with it? No one knows—”

  Sorel sulks, the attention off her. “He can’t actually cook. I bet it’ll be gross.” She finishes the soda.

  Before I know it, a plate of pasta primavera, sprinkled with parmesan cheese, appears in front of me.

  “What, none for us?” Sorel asks.

  “PJ was the only one who didn’t pick on me,” Grant says.

  Sorel grabs another beer from the fridge. “Yeah and maybe because she’s gotten so skinny,” she says under her breath.

  I lower my gaze, hiding beneath my bangs and my thick brows. Just as I have for the last months, once more I want to disappear. Apparently, I’m nearly there. Instead, I dig into the plate of pasta.

  The song on the stereo ends, leaving the room too quiet for a minute. Sorel staggers to her feet, presumably to put on more music, but flips on the TV instead.


  Grant sits down with me, and we eat while the other two stay in the living room. He tells me all his favorite dishes and how his next endeavor is mastering baklava. “Or really anything involving phyllo dough. Doesn’t the word sound like it tastes good? Phyllo,” he says. “Phyllo, phyllo,” he repeats. I could listen to him say it all day, but then he laughs and says, “Actually, maybe it sounds like dirty feet.”

  I bring my empty plate to the sink. Sorel slouches on the couch to the clash of a battle scene on Buffy. Grant and I clean up the kitchen, then go back outside and sit on the deck railing.

  “That went from high to low,” I comment.

  “That’s Sorel,” Grant says, lighting a cigarette. “But it’ll be weird next year without her.”

  “Just me and the boys.” I laugh. Or maybe just one boy and me. In the near darkness, the end of Grant’s cigarette glows each time he inhales. His eyes sparkle. The stars shining above seem endless. I wonder if Janet is up there somewhere, riding a meteor or glittering like a diamond.

  “Thanks for the pasta. It was really good,” I say, meaning to distill any lingering tension caused by Sorel’s mood swing and quell the sadness inviting its way in at the thought of my mother.

  “So you and me and NYC?” Grant asks.

  “Yeah, that’s something, huh?” I say, knowing Sorel reentered the conversation.

  “That was really thoughtful of her. I mean, a lot of the time she’s like this, but other times she can be sweet,” Grant says.

  “A sweet potato,” I add.

  At that, we both laugh and move in for a kiss. I can’t get enough. We shuffle back inside, the TV dark, and Grant and I fall together onto the bed.

  Chapter 33

  A symphony of birdsong wakes me early in the morning. When I open my eyes, Grant looks up from the tattoo of the swallows on my shoulder.

  “Good morning,” he says. His voice is gruff and sleepy.

  Waking up next to Grant is better than pills, drugs, or alcohol. He runs the fingers of his inked arm over mine. I study the mermaid.

  “I’ve been thinking about getting another one,” he says. “Maybe we can go when we’re in New York.”

  I caress his upper arm, and then put my hand on his chest, then my lips on his, and we remain in the bed long after the birds have finished their breakfast.

  After we eat, the house still quiet, Grant suggests we take a hike. We follow the driveway down until there’s a marked trail. The humid air hums with bugs, but gaps in the stands of birch, oak, and pines climbing toward the blue sky offer beautiful vistas. Instead of returning to the hard, man-made elements of Manhattan, I think about planting myself here. The fresh air smells virgin. The clouds are transient. A lake appears in the distance. We continue toward it, all the while picking up and leaving off conversation as we wander through the woods.

  “Favorite candy?” I ask.

  “Smarties,” he says, explaining they’re different from the chalky ones we have here in the States. “You?”

  “Twizzlers.”

  “Favorite color?” he says.

  “Blue,” we say at the same time. I knew that.

  We toss coffee shops, novels, and photographers back and forth as we walk.

  At the water’s edge, Grant searches for flat rocks and skips stones.

  “That’s one thing I miss,” he says. “The water. In Scotland, you’re never far from it. This might sound weird, but when I’m near water—the ocean, a river, or lake, I feel sure everything is going to be OK. Y’know?”

  I envision a young Sorel visiting this very place during the summer. It contrasts with how I often spent my summers, escaping my mother to the library, trolling the streets, looking for something to eat, or finding trouble. But this summer has gotten off to a perfect start.

  When we get back to the house after lunch, Sorel irritably thuds through the kitchen. “Where did you guys go?”

  “Took a hike. It’s so beautiful here. Thanks for inviting us,” I say, hoping to clear the air from last night. She gobbles a croissant and a muffin from clear plastic containers before disappearing upstairs.

  Grant flips through some books on a shelf in the living room. We lounge around for the afternoon, the mood dampened by Sorel’s pouting. Later, she calls us outside. She holds a joint in one hand and a beer in the other.

  “Party time.”

  We repeat the scene from the night before. Beer, pot, loud music, but this time we splash in the hot tub and watch the sun set. Grant hops out to get us each a beer refill, but Sorel shouts, “Bring me a Jack and Coke.” After she downs it she announces, “Let’s play truth or dare. I go first.” Her impish smile looks familiar on her lips, but her glassy eyes betray more than mischief.

  “Grant, PJ wasn’t your first, was she?”

  Already rosy from the hot water, I can’t tell if his cheeks have grown redder. “No,” he says, looking at me. Again, his sad smile spreads on his lips. I notice he doesn’t look at Sorel or Pepper.

  “Interesting. Tell us about her, Grant,” Sorel says sharply.

  “I answered your question. My turn,” Grant says.

  “Pepper, was it you who clogged the first-floor boys’ toilet last spring?” he asks.

  Pepper goes indisputably red. “Yes.” Then he starts laughing. He looks at Sorel. “I mean no, ew, that’s nasty. My turn. Sorel, do you love me?”

  She pauses and sighs. “Yes.” She says no more. “My turn. PJ, have you ever had a crush on Pepper?” Something about the tone of her voice makes me uncomfortable.

  “No.” I fumble for what to say next. I don’t want to be insulting, but I don’t even think of Pepper as attractive. He’s her boyfriend. That’s always been very clear. “No, just Grant,” I follow up, leaning back on his chest.

  “Good,” she says and takes off her top as she moves to straddle Pepper. Grant and I look away. He makes a gagging face. I suppress a giggle, but an uneasy feeling, reminiscent of that night in Canada, snakes its way to my stomach.

  After a minute, she turns back to us, her naked chest hidden under the foamy bubbles. “Everyone wait right here,” she says, her usual smile returning. She comes back, still topless but partially concealed behind a tray with more beers and a Jack and Coke for herself. When she gets closer, I also see a baggie filled with pills.

  “Drinks for everyone, in case you want to wash one of those down,” she says, pointing at the bag and looking at me.

  At the sight of the pills, the anxious feeling turns slippery. Part of me wants one, but a bigger part of me wants to coherently experience the night with Grant. Before, I took pills to disappear, and now, I don’t want to cloud our time together.

  Sorel ignores us and mounts Pepper again, knocking back her drink in one gulp.

  Grant motions with his head toward the house. He takes the tray with him. Does he want to get high, just not while the two of them get hot and heavy? An irksome hope threatens me toward a dark chute. I push the thought away, back to Laurel Hill, back to Mitch’s house, back to Florida. Away, away, away. I don’t need it.

  Grant sets the tray on the counter, next to a CD case, with Sorel’s old Laurel Hill ID and a rolled-up dollar bill. It looks like she crushed the pills and snorted them.

  Grant shakes his head. “That’s not good.” He takes me by the hand, and together we go to the shower to rinse off.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, I wake to Sorel shouting. I sense Grant stirring beside me.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, not sure if I’m waking from a dream and into a nightmare.

  “Sounds like whatever drug-and-alcohol cocktail she had isn’t agreeing with her.” Grant gropes around in the dark for his pack of cigarettes. “Damn.”

  “I’ll get them,” I offer, remembering he left them on the deck railing. I creep out of the room to find Sorel stalking around the
kitchen, her face red, her hair wild. She wears only her bathing suit bottom, her appearance uncannily like my mother’s. My stomach ties itself into tight knots.

  “What are you doing up?” she spits.

  “Getting Grant his cigarettes,” I say, moving toward the sliding glass door.

  “I smoked them. Did Grant ever tell you we had sex? Or the time him, Pepper, and I had a threesome.” She laughs wildly. “Did he tell you that? Or about his ex? She was a hottie, not a skinny shit like you. How about Suzy? I know they’ve been hanging out. You’re washed up, PJ. It’s over,” she says with a manic glint in her eyes. In her words, I hear my mother’s voice, along with Terran’s desire to undo me.

  Standing under the bright lights of the kitchen, once more I feel like a helpless child. What do I know? I don’t even know where I am, never mind who I am. Or who any of them are, not really.

  I go outside and find Grant’s cigarettes right where I thought they’d be. I pull one out and light it as quiet tears fall.

  Moments later, I hear thunderous yelling. “‘Eff you!” shouts a fierce Scottish accent. The door whooshes open, and Grant slams it behind him. The cabin shudders. He puts both hands on the railing, taking deep breaths. In a couple of short strides, he kneels in front of me as I sit on the Adirondack chair.

  “Don’t believe everything she says. She’s whacked right now.”

  I nod.

  He rests his hands on my knees. “I heard what she said to you. I shouldn’t have let her get me so angry, but she was lying. She shouldn’t have been talking to you that way.”

  “Yeah, I’m learning to question everything.”

  “No, not everything,” he says, looking into my eyes. “Remember when I told you I didn’t want to be friends, or talk, or whatever?”

  Of course I do.

  “I told you that because I’m scared. I had a girlfriend freshman year; we were serious. She cheated on me, dumped me. That, on top of my mom not coming back, it kind of messed me up. I didn’t want to commit to anyone. I just wanted to escape, to feel good, physically.”