“Tanya, honey,” Lorraine says. “You have to turn around now. I’ll drive if you want. But we can’t leave Sally alone with him.”
“Has he ever hurt Sally?” Tanya asks.
“Once,” Lorraine says tightly. “Take that exit coming up.” Her mother points.
Tanya signals and gets into the right lane.
Immediately they hit heavy traffic on Route 2 toward Boston. They inch forward as the sun sets and the muscles in Tanya’s face start to clench. A band of tightness is forming across her eyebrows and forehead: the start of a migraine.
“I don’t know if the bed-and-breakfast even accepts pets,” Tanya says, but nobody responds. In front of them is an endless sea of taillights, glinting cherry red. The fact is, at this rate, they’re barely going to make it to the bed-and-breakfast in time for the nine p.m. check-in.
After twenty minutes of minimal movement, Tanya hits the wheel with her palm. “Was there an accident or something? Why the fuck is it so slow?” She’s close to tears.
“Rush hour,” Nessa offers unhelpfully from the backseat.
“Thanks.”
“Can we listen to music or something?” Nessa asks.
Tanya tosses Nessa the auxiliary cord. After a minute, something depressingly bleak blasts out from over the speakers.
“Are you trying to make me slit my wrists?” Tanya yells over the dramatic crooning.
“Do you have a specific request?” Nessa asks.
“Maybe something a little less emo?”
“Hmm,” says Nessa. “What do I have here that’s devoid of emotion.”
Tanya rolls her eyes in the rearview mirror, but Nessa isn’t looking.
By the time they pull onto Winter Street, it’s almost dark out and Jesse’s car is in the driveway. All the lights on their half of the house are on. The O’Briens aren’t home.
“Fuck,” mutters Lorraine, as they sit across the street in the car.
“Well, what did you expect?” Tanya can’t help saying. “That he was conveniently going to be out?”
Lorraine unbuckles her seat belt.
“No,” Tanya says. “I should do it.”
“I don’t want you to, Tanya. We don’t even know if he’s gotten the summons yet. He could be worked up.”
“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t go inside.”
“Let me go with you, Tee,” Nessa says from the backseat.
“We need to make this as undramatic as possible,” Tanya says. “I’ll go in, okay?”
“I don’t know, Tee,” Lorraine says.
“Mom,” Tanya snaps. “Just trust me.”
Tanya gets out of the car and soundlessly closes the door. She walks up the driveway past the real estate sign and the red balloons and the idiotic flowerpots. The front door is closed but unlocked. Tanya eases it open, anticipating the squeak. She was hoping Sally would be in the front hallway where she usually is, waiting for whoever’s coming through the door next, but the hallway is empty. She can hear the television from the living room.
She’ll play this cool and casual, she decides, walking in quietly but not sneakily, with nothing to hide. Jesse’s on the couch in front of the television. She sees a swatch of fur on the floor next to the couch, Sally’s tail.
At the sound of her footsteps, Jesse whirls around and looks at her over the back of the couch. He seems surprised.
“Hey,” she says. “What’s up?” She can tell by his face that he hasn’t been served yet.
“Where have you guys been?” he asks. “I was starting to get worried.”
“We got caught up,” she says. “Hey, Sal,” she calls, raising her voice and kneeling. “Come here, girl.”
Sally gets up, tail wagging, and patters over to Tanya.
“Where’s your mom?” Jesse asks, standing.
Tanya stands, too. “I’m not sure. I was out with Nessa. We were just coming by to pick up Sally for a walk.”
“What are you talking about?” he says, glancing at the darkened windows. “It’s late. I already took her out.”
“Midnight stroll,” Tanya says. “Come on, Sally.” She pats her thigh and starts making her way to the front of the house, avoiding Jesse’s eye.
“Tanya, where is Lorraine?” Jesse’s voice is strained and when Tanya doesn’t answer, it rises in volume. “Tanya!”
Tanya whirls around, heart banging. “Don’t yell, Jesse.”
“Then answer me,” he says. He strides toward her and she realizes then, by the lurch in his gait, that he’s drunk. “Where’s Lorraine?”
Tanya is trembling. She hates him, for making her feel terrified in her own house, for chasing them out this way. It seems preposterous that this is the same house where she woke up every morning of her childhood. And here she is, trying to reason with a drunk man who has taken over; looming in the living room like he owns it.
She feels a brief flash of fury toward her father, one town over, snug in his home with his wife and child—unaware, as always. She tries to dismiss it. Behind that anger is hurt and Tanya is tired of being hurt by him.
At this point she has just as many memories of Jesse in their house as she does of her own dad. Jesse sprawled on the living room couch, Jesse coming out of the bathroom, checking that his fly is up, Jesse in her parents’ bedroom—in her parents’ bed. Her father living at 12 Winter Street is more hazy than real—all those early memories meshed together into a conglomerate: when Dad was theirs. When Mom was less shaky.
Tanya takes a step toward Jesse to give him the illusion that she’s not afraid. “Stay away from us,” she says, keeping her voice low and steady, the way she does in the courtroom, even when she knows she’s losing. “I’m holding you accountable for what you’ve done.” And then she leaves, the dog at her heels.
Once Tanya’s outside, she breaks into a run and, despite Sally’s age, the dog keeps up. Just as she’s climbing into the driver’s seat, a police car coming from the other direction pulls into the driveway—quiet, no lights.
“That’s them,” Tanya says.
They all watch from the car as Jesse is served. A police officer rings the doorbell and Jesse appears in the doorway. He looks scared when he sees the officer. He steps outside on the front porch in his socks, and when the officer hands him a manila envelope he looks at it, bewildered, as though he’s been handed a mango or a music box.
He opens it right away, in front of the officer. His face twists. The officer says something and, remembering that he’s being watched, Jesse retreats back into the house and slams the door in the officer’s face. Then Lorraine’s phone starts ringing and doesn’t stop for the next two hours.
2002
Nessa and Tanya were flower girls in their father’s wedding. Simone chose matching lilac dresses for them to wear, with off-the-shoulder necklines and cool, silk skirts that swished like water against their legs.
The dress looked good on Tanya. Her sister’s shoulders were as small and pale as flower petals against the lilac color, and the style showed off her delicate collarbone. Tanya sauntered around the backyard, beaming at anyone who looked in her direction. And people were looking—at both of them.
The lilac silk clung to Nessa’s stomach, and the neckline pinched her back and shoulders, leaving red marks. The dress had looked better on her in the dressing room, where the lighting had been low and apricot colored. She regretted not getting a bigger size. The only part of the dress she liked was the bodice, which hugged and bolstered her chest. Nessa’s breasts were large now, bigger than both her mother’s and Simone’s, and she was proud of them. Tanya, who was only just starting to develop, didn’t have anything you could see in a dress.
* * *
—
THE WEDDING TOOK PLACE at Simone’s family’s summer house on Martha’s Vineyard, in a backyard the size of a football field.
Before the ceremony, Jonathan and Simone posed for photographs in front of an old stone wall surrounding the property. In the distance, three white horses grazed in a field, and beyond that, waves crashed on a private beach. The photographer called out directions in a monotone voice while the assistant arranged them in different positions as the photographer shot. Nessa and Tanya standing in front of Jonathan and Simone; all of them in a row; one with just the girls and Simone, and another one with just their father—each of them planting a kiss on either of his cheeks.
“Excellent,” the photographer said. “Now, just the smaller one with Dad”—and the assistant ushered Nessa off to the side.
Everybody cooed as Tanya put her arms around their father. Nessa blinked hard, trying not to cry. She was frantic to disappear before the photographer called out the next inevitable direction. And now the bigger one. That was what she was, she thought, red-faced and mortified. She remembered a word on her vocabulary test the week before: mammoth.
Once he was done with Tanya, the photographer nodded toward his assistant and called out: “Now the older one with Dad.”
The older one. Nessa almost laughed with relief. She took Tanya’s place and her father wrapped his arm around her. Jonathan smelled like shampoo and deodorant and a breath mint, but underneath it all, he smelled like her dad, and Nessa remembered what it used to be like waking up on weekends and finding him downstairs, still in his pajamas, and how good he’d smelled like that, warm and soft like his old sleep T-shirts. She squirmed closer to him and closed her eyes, resting her cheek against his arm.
“Lovely,” the photographer said, but Nessa’s eyes were still closed and the photographer’s voice sounded far away. There was the fast succession of clicks, like shuffling a brand-new deck of cards, and then the voice again: “Now look at each other and smile.”
Nessa opened her eyes and looked up.
“Love you, Ness,” Jonathan whispered, giving her shoulder a squeeze, and Nessa wished then that she was still a little girl, that she could stuff her face into her father’s chest and tell him that she wanted to go, she was ready to leave—and together they might walk away from the crowded tent, forget about the ceremony and the party afterward, forget about all these people, and simply go home.
“Wonderful. Now I want the groom and the mother of the bride.”
* * *
—
BY THE TIME the reception started, the sun had set and the ceiling of the tent was sparkling with hundreds of soft white twinkle lights. When Nessa looked up, it was like floating in a sky full of stars. On each table, tea lights drifted in small baths of water, and white candles, all lengths and widths, glistened everywhere, their creamy wax melting into intricate, elegant shapes. Beyond the tent the backyard gleamed a velvet green-black. The evening was the kind of beautiful Simone was—so pretty it hurt.
Nessa was sitting at her table alone, the tablecloth littered with plates of half-eaten cake and used silverware, glasses of water, the ice cubes melted down to slivers. Everybody else at their table—Tanya and six of Simone’s nieces and nephews—was on the dance floor. Nessa glanced behind her to the center of the tent where a vibrating mass of people were dancing to “Hot in Herre.” It was a song that embarrassed her, even from a safe distance.
Earlier, Nessa had allowed Tanya to pull her out of her seat and onto the dance floor. She’d swayed her hips and moved her feet a little, but that was all she’d been able to manage. Next to her, Tanya was dancing the way kids at school did, grinding her hips, as though moving against an invisible person behind her. Nessa had closed her eyes and tried to trick herself into moving the way she was able to do in the privacy of her bedroom, but it had been impossible surrounded by so many people. She felt stuck and ugly, like a parent chaperone clumsily bobbing her head to a song meant for younger ears.
Near the front of the dance floor, her father was dancing with Simone and their new friends. Nessa had observed them from afar for several minutes. Watching her father dance was like watching a stranger dance. She couldn’t imagine going up to him, inserting herself in the unfamiliar circle of people. When he’d caught her watching, he’d waved at her, motioning her to come over, and it had been embarrassing for both of them. Nessa in her tight lilac dress—she could feel how ugly she looked—her father pretending to want her to join. She shook her head and walked away and he hadn’t followed her.
Now she was back at the table. She nudged Tanya’s plate closer to her and ate a glob of frosting. Then she finished one of the nieces’ plates.
Restless, Nessa stood up and made her way through the maze of tables toward the drink station. Most people were up out of their seats dancing, and the rest of the tables looked similar to hers: plates of cake crumbs, jackets slung over chairs, high heels peeking out from beneath tablecloths. When she caught sight of a pack of cigarettes peeking out of a silver handbag at table 13—Marlboro Gold, the same kind her mother smoked—she grabbed it without thinking. She thrust her hand into the bag and snatched the box, then pressed it close against her leg. She skipped the minibar and walked straight through the tent to the back, then out into the dark stillness of the backyard.
* * *
—
SHE DIDN’T HAVE A LIGHTER, and part of her was relieved. She was scared to smoke and she didn’t know how.
But when she turned around and saw one of the servers from the catering company a few yards away, smoking a cigarette of his own, Nessa felt she had no choice. If she did nothing—if she simply went back into the tent and watched people dance from her table—she knew she’d be miserable. She was growing dangerously tired of herself.
So Nessa opened the pack and pulled out a cigarette, held it between her pointer and middle finger. She wet her lips with her tongue—her mouth was suddenly dry—and approached the server with what she hoped was nonchalance.
“Excuse me,” she said. Her voice came out so quietly that the server didn’t hear. “Excuse me,” she said again, and this time he jumped, his free hand flying up to push his glasses up his nose. “Holy shit.” He laughed a little. “I didn’t see you there. You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Her voice sounded too high and her fingers holding the unlit cigarette quivered. “Do you have a lighter?”
The server raised an eyebrow. He was short, just a few inches taller than her, but his shoulders were broad beneath his uniform. He was older, Nessa could see that, but probably not by much. There was a shadow of facial hair on his cheeks and chin. He wore square glasses, and both of his ears were pierced, but instead of earrings he had two black rings through his earlobes, each one with a hole the size of a dime. Nessa could see straight through them, into the darkness of the woods.
She put the cigarette between her lips as she’d done dozens of times in her bed with her mother’s unlit cigarettes, and stepped closer. She lifted her chin.
The server took a lighter from his pocket and flicked it so that a dollop of flame appeared. Nessa leaned in, touching the end of her cigarette to the fire, then inhaled deeply. Scratchy heat filled her chest and she began to cough.
“You okay?” The server glanced behind her as though somebody might be watching from the trees.
Nessa nodded, but her eyes were watering and heat was rushing rapidly to her face. She turned to the side. “Sorry,” she choked out.
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
She waited until the coughing stopped and then took a second puff. When she inhaled this time, it went smoother and her heart started to beat at a normal rate again.
“You look too young to be smoking.”
“How old do you think I look?” Nessa asked. She was emboldened by the fact that she was no longer hacking, and it was easier to talk with a cigarette in her hand. For the first time Nessa understood why people got tattoos and dyed their hair blue and pierced their eyebrows. It was a way to hide and
be seen at the same time.
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing at Nessa in a way that would have made her blush if she wasn’t standing in the dark. “Fourteen?”
“I’m sixteen,” she said. It was almost true.
“Oh. Huh.” He nodded toward the tent. “How do you know them?” From their spot in the yard, the party looked far away, like a warm, glowing, pulsing planet unto itself.
“My dad’s the groom.”
He laughed, surprised. “No way.”
“Yeah. It’s weird.”
She watched him take a puff from his cigarette, then blow smoke from the side of his mouth. “What is?” he asked.
“That I have a stepmother. That all those people in there are supposed to be my family now. I barely know anyone.”
The server nodded. “I get it. My stepdad’s a real dick. You don’t have to listen to what she tells you to do. They like to think they have control, but they don’t, and they know it.”
Nessa decided not to tell him that Simone had never once told her what to do. It was better like this—both of them suffering the same way. “How old were you when your parents got divorced?” she asked.
He dropped his cigarette butt into the grass and nudged it with the toe of his shoe. “They were never married,” he said. “I was a mistake.”
“What do you mean, a mistake?”
He smiled. “Like, the condom broke. My mom had me when she was seventeen. Whoever the dude was, she never told him about me. Or maybe she did and he just didn’t want anything to do with it. Her story changes a lot.”
“Wow,” she said. “So you don’t know who your dad is?”
The server shook his head. “Nope. For all I know he could be some guy in that tent.”
They both looked at the tent, as though the server’s father might emerge.
A bubble of something quivered in Nessa’s throat—sadness? Joy? She couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, only that she felt extra alive. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she hoped it was the right thing to say.
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