by Claire Cook
“Thank you,” B.J. said. “I was waiting for your permission.”
We pulled into the Marshbury Marine Park, which was tucked into a corner of the inner harbor on a narrow causeway that connected two oceanside cliffs. Across the harbor the main downtown area bustled with tourists. The last time I’d been here, it had looked like a boat junkyard, not that there was anything wrong with that.
Now it was upscale and amazing, with fancy new docks bobbing up and down on the water, sea-glass-studded walking trails spiraling through the whole property, and picnic tables everywhere. There was a great big building in the center with silvery white cedar shingles and whitewashed trim. And a huge deck with horizontal steel cable railings framed harbor views that went on forever.
“Wow,” I said. “This is where we’re having the reunion?”
The Mustang’s tires crunched over clamshells bleached snow white by the sun. B.J. pulled up right in front of the main entrance. “Only the best for you, Romy. They just finished it about a year ago. Wait till you see the sunset from that deck—the committee had our first meeting here just to check it out. And the price was right—the marine center is a nonprofit and part of their mission is to make the building available to community groups at a nominal price.”
I clicked my door open. “I can’t wait to see it. I’ll just run in with you for a second and then run right back out before anyone catches my ear. It’s not like you can carry all three of them in by yourself anyway.”
B.J. put the Mustang into park and jumped out. “Okay, fine. You can run one of them to the door for me and peek in the window. But that’s it. I’m not kidding you, once those committee vultures smell fresh meat they’ll be all over you and we’ll never get out of here.”
Resisting B.J. was a lot like trying to swim against a tsunami, so I carried the first box spring lady I’d made, the one with the big floppy hat of chicken wire mesh, to the front door. Her hat looked a little bit plain without anything growing in it, so I pinched off some hot pink petunias from the two overflowing boat-shaped planter boxes that flanked the front steps and tucked them into the hat’s sphagnum moss.
I looked around for a hose to wet down the hat.
“What are you doing?” B.J. said. “We don’t have time for that. Do you have any idea how much work we have ahead of us if we’re going to look dazzling by tonight?”
I picked up a half-full watering can tucked behind one of the planters. “I just have to water this sphagnum moss. I don’t want the petunias to wilt before the reunion.”
“Fine,” B.J. said. “But I have to tell you that your priorities are way off.”
I held the door open for B.J. and the other two box spring ladies. I kept it open long enough to see a huge room with dark wood floors, high white beadboard ceilings, and a gorgeous beach stone fireplace.
As soon as I finished watering the first box spring lady, B.J. was back to grab her. “Just give me half a second to find a good place for them.”
Mustang Sally was still running so I kept one eye on her as I peeked around the building. The water sparkled a placid blue in the late-afternoon sun. A family was pulling up to one of the docks in their cabin cruiser, two little boys in bright orange life jackets sitting on the bow. The older boy was holding a rope, getting ready to jump to the dock and tie up the boat when they got close enough.
For the gazillionth time, I wondered what it would have been like if my family and I had never left Marshbury. Would Trevor and Troy have been happier? Would my sister hate me less? Would Kurt and I still be together?
It took me a minute to realize that B.J. was standing behind me.
I turned around. “Did you find a good place for them?”
She gave me a funny look. “Who?”
“My box spring ladies. Tell me you didn’t just put them down anywhere.”
“Of course I didn’t. I found this big niche next to the fireplace. There was all this marine stuff in it so I just stuck that in the kitchen. Anyway, your box spring ladies will be the stars of the reunion.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You don’t look right.”
B.J. slid her sunglasses down from the top of her head and over her eyes. “Of course I am. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 29
We were taking a quick walk on the beach before we started getting ready for the reunion.
“Even without that high school reunion diet, we’ll look ten years younger than the rest of those tramps in our class,” B.J. said. “It’s all about the endorphins, Thelma.”
I decided there wasn’t really a point in mentioning that we possibly should have started walking before today. I just kept swinging my arms and tried to keep up with her. We navigated our way around a couple coming in our direction, and then dodged a gang of preschoolers and their sand-castles-in-progress.
“This is ridiculous,” B.J. said. “They have bike lanes on the streets—why can’t they have right-of-way lanes on the beach?”
“Wouldn’t the tide just wash them away?” I asked.
B.J. hurdled over a small cooler. “So what. The first person who walks the next day just draws the lines back in the sand again.”
After we finished walking, we stretched and bought french fries. We took turns reaching into the take-out bag as we strolled our way back to the hotel.
“Wouldn’t it be amazing,” B.J. said, “if we could walk and eat fries together every day for the rest of our lives?”
Half an hour or so later we were both freshly showered and sitting out on the balcony of our hotel room in matching white terry-cloth bathrobes.
I slid my white plastic chair back as far as it would go so I could put my bare feet up on the black wrought-iron balcony railing. B.J. did the same thing.
“Well,” I said. “I think the robes almost make up for the size of the balcony.”
“No way. It’s not like they let you keep them.” B.J. blew out a puff of air. “Do you believe they told me this room had an ocean view?”
I leaned way over to the left. “It sort of does, if you look between those two buildings. And at least you can smell the salt air.”
“What I smell is mildew. And that water pressure is ridiculous—I probably still have soap in my ears.”
“What? I can’t hear you. I have soap in my ears.”
“Funny.” B.J. uncrossed her ankles and crossed them again so that the other foot was on top. “So funny I forgot to laugh.”
I recrossed my ankles, too. “At least we’ve got music. You have to admit that iPod dock on the bedside alarm was a nice touch.”
“I can’t even hear the music over the sound of these stupid seagulls.”
I swung my feet off the railing. “Fine, I’ll turn it up.”
“Grab that bottle of wine I bought while you’re in there, okay?”
I found the right button and cranked up the volume on the iPod dock as far as it would go without getting us arrested. Then I grabbed the wine and two plastic-wrapped cups from the bathroom.
Barry White serenaded me back out to the balcony with “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.” I stopped for a moment and pretended I was dancing with Finn Miller.
I sighed. “Hey, Beej, you didn’t happen to bring a corkscrew, did you?”
A gull swooped low, maybe to see if we had any french fries left, and then glided away with a disappointed squawk. B.J. swung her feet off the railing. “Here, give it to me. I’ll open it with my teeth.”
I shrugged. “It’s your dental work.”
The bottle top made a little click-click-click sound as B.J. twisted it off.
“Classy,” I said. I held out the plastic cups.
B.J. poured. “They make good wines like this now.” She screwed the top back on and put the bottle down on the cement floor of the balcony.
She held up her cup. “To the three of us. You, me, and Barry White.”
I touched my cup to hers. “Good-bye Yellow Brick Road” came on and we sang alo
ng with Elton.
“It’s a great song,” I said. “I’m not sure I really understood what it meant back then.”
B.J. put her feet back up on the railing. “You mean that it’s about returning to who you really are?”
I put my feet up, too, and took a long sip of Chardonnay. It was dry and oaky and I didn’t miss the cork at all.
I sighed. “Yeah. I guess I keep expecting to feel that way about being back here, you know, like I’m home again.”
“And you don’t?”
“Maybe a little. But mostly it feels like I’m still missing it the way I always do, even though I’m actually here.”
B.J. pulled her lip gloss out of the pocket of her bathrobe. “I think I know what you mean. I feel like that sometimes, and I only live a couple of hours away. It’s not like I can’t drive here anytime I want to.”
I could feel my tattoo starting to ooze a little from the shower, so I adjusted my bathrobe to keep it from getting stuck to it. “Yeah, I think maybe it’s more about the fantasy of place than the actual place. And I think it’s also that the memory evokes another time, too, when everything seemed simpler.”
“Heavy.” B.J. leaned back in her white plastic chair. “Write that down so we can Tweet it to Elton. I think we might have another hit for him.”
We sipped our wine and watched two people kissing in a window across the courtyard from us.
“Get a room,” B.J. yelled.
“Ha,” I said. “I think they already did.”
The song changed and Bonnie Raitt broke into “Longing in Their Hearts.”
“Wow,” I said. I rolled back the sleeve of my bathrobe and looked at my forearm. “That just gave me goose bumps. Do you believe this song came on at this exact moment?”
“That’s our Bonnie,” B.J. said. “She’s been there. She gets it.”
B. J. ran into the hotel room to play it again. “I don’t know why they don’t just make all the electronics the same,” she said when she came out. “And could they possibly make those digital displays any smaller?”
I leaned back and closed my eyes. “It’s not that there aren’t newer songs that I like, but they just don’t get to me in such a punched-in-the-gut, visceral way as the old ones, you know?”
B.J. finished belting out the chorus before she answered. “Yeah, it’s like there’s still this sixteen-year-old girl trapped inside of me, and this is the music that lets her come out.”
I ran my finger around the lip of my plastic bathroom cup. “I know. It’s like is he ever going to look at me, and will he ask me to dance, and who will I become and how will I survive until I get there all rolled into one.”
“Sometimes I feel that longing-in-my-heart thing about my marriage,” B.J. said. “I mean, Tom and I love each other and he’s a perfectly good husband and everything.” She recrossed her ankles on the railing. “I know this, because as you might remember my first husband was a perfectly bad husband.”
“I remember.” I recrossed my ankles, too.
B.J. sighed. “But what I wouldn’t give to be back in that happy horseshit stage with someone, just one more time. You know, before you start to aggravate each other every time you turn around. Which is when, eighteen months in—if you’re lucky?”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “I don’t remember dating. I don’t remember how you’re supposed to act. I don’t remember what you’re supposed to say.”
“Anyway, there’s a part of me that’s a little bit jealous that you have all that ahead of you. Not Marion-jealous, but more like I wish I could take a sabbatical from my marriage—just a month or two. So we could double-date.”
“I don’t think I remember who I am,” I said.
B.J. shook her head. “Are you even listening to me?”
Then she let out a scream, long and loud.
“Can you believe that seagull shit all over me?” B.J. said. “Is it shit or shat?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It might even be shitted.”
“No way.” B.J. dropped her head forward and dabbed her hair with a towel. “I didn’t need Honors English to tell you it’s not shitted. I just hope that wasn’t a bad omen for the reunion. Geez Louise, my hair is never going to survive this second washing.”
“Your hair will be fine,” I said. I held up my Skin Skribe permanent sterile marker. “Come on, you’ll feel much better once I get your fake tattoo drawn on.”
“Purple?” B.J. said. “I think that might be a little bit much with my turquoise blouse. I don’t want to look gaudy.”
I uncapped the marker. “I don’t think we have a choice. Unless you want me to use lipstick.”
“Nah, that’ll never hold up. I can’t even keep it on my lips for more than five minutes. Okay, fine, purple broken heart it is.”
She dropped her bathrobe down over one shoulder. I took a deep breath and tried to get into the zone. I knew the trick was not to try to be too perfect, but to loosen up and remember that whatever you started with could be tweaked until you got it just the way you wanted it.
“Whoa,” B.J. said when she saw it in the bathroom mirror. “I think that might be even better than Ariel’s heart.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Maybe if the box spring ladies don’t sell, I could look into becoming a faux tattoo artist on the side.”
“And it doesn’t even look like a fake tattoo. I have to tell you, we could have saved ourselves a lot of aggravation if we’d just gone Sharpie shopping.”
I handed B.J. the marker. “Come on, we should probably pick up the pace. I’d like to get to the reunion as early as possible.”
I dropped my robe down over my shoulder.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” B.J. said. “Especially on half a glass of wine. Maybe we should go get some more french fries first.”
“Of course you can. Just stay relaxed and copy this.” I held up the heart I’d drawn for practice on the back of a receipt. “You can always adjust it afterward if you need to.”
“Gotcha. Okay, here goes nothing.”
“Ouch,” I said. “Not so hard. It’s supposed to be a tattoo, not a piercing.”
“Don’t,” B.J. said.
“What?” I said. “I didn’t say nee—”
“Watch it. Come on, I’m trying to focus here.”
I felt the pressure of the marker on the back of my shoulder. Then I didn’t. Then I did. Then I didn’t. It might have been my imagination, but it sure felt like my fake tattoo was taking a lot longer than B.J.’s had.
“Okey-dokey,” B.J. said. “I think it’s done now.”
I twisted around to look over my shoulder at the mirror.
I gasped. “Ohmigod, I can’t believe you did that to me. It looks like a purple pumpkin.”
“It most certainly does not look like a purple pumpkin,” B.J. said. “It’s just a slightly different style of heart from the ones you and Ariel made. I would think you, of all people, would want to encourage my freedom to express myself artistically.”
“I’m all about your artistic freedom. Just not on the back of my shoulder.”
“That’s an awfully narrow way of looking at things, Romy.”
My phone rang. I ignored it. “Oh, please. You totally screwed up my fake tattoo and you know it. You’re going to sashay into the reunion with a sexy broken heart. I’m the one who has to walk in there wearing a purple pumpkin.”
“I keep telling you, without their reading glasses, nobody’s even going to be able to tell them apart. They’ll see a blur of tattoo and go immediately to being completely impressed.”
B.J.’s phone rang.
She reached for it. “Hey, what’s up? Are you sure? How long? Okay, okay. Hang tight, we’ll be right there.”
B.J. poured the rest of her glass of wine down the bathroom sink. “Come on, throw your clothes on. Fast. Veronica can’t find Fawn.”
CHAPTER 30
I took a long skip to catch up with B.J. We were both wearing flip-flops
and carrying our high strappy sandals.
B.J. unlocked Mustang Sally and climbed in. She leaned across the seats and unlocked my door for me.
I jumped in and buckled my seat belt carefully so I wouldn’t wrinkle my peasant blouse. “She’s probably just playing a game. Listen, how about if we give it a little more time. We can go to the reunion early and give Veronica a call from there to check in with her.”
B.J. gave me a look. “Do you really think she would have called us right before the reunion if she didn’t need us?”
“Has she called the police?”
B.J. put her blinker on and took a right toward the highway. “She’s afraid to. Apparently Fawn was taken away from Veronica’s daughter at one point, and Veronica’s afraid it’ll look like she wasn’t watching her, either.”
“Of course the police won’t think that,” I said.
“Can you guarantee that?”
I shook my head. “It’s a crazy world.”
“That’s for shit sure,” B.J. said.
Most of the crazy world must have been heading to the Cape. We crawled along so slowly I barely felt any anxiety. When we finally pulled up to Veronica’s house almost two hours later, it was dusk and the outside lights were already on. The burned-out light on the porch had been replaced.
B.J. turned off the car and looked at me. “I’ve been trying so hard not to think about this. But what if Fawn heard me talking about her right before we left?”
I reached for my door handle. “Let’s hope not.”
Veronica met us at the door, gripping a mug of coffee. Her hair was a mess and she looked exhausted. She looked like a grandmother.
B.J. and I both leaned in to hug her at once.
Veronica took a step back. “Don’t. I’m trying to keep it together.”
“Is Mark here yet?” I asked.
Veronica pursed her lips together and shook her head. “I haven’t called him yet. I just kept thinking she’d show up and there’s nothing he can do from there except worry and by the time he got a flight . . . So I called you.”