by Meg Donohue
Kate turns and throws her arms around Dani. “I’m not going to let you go,” she says.
Dani is silent for a moment. “Okay,” she says then. Kate squeezes her until she releases a half-laugh, half-sigh, a sound of surrender and relief.
“I lost my job,” Dani tells them. They’re sitting under the umbrella on the upper deck. Even in the shade, it’s a scorching hot afternoon, but Dani has a beach towel wrapped around her shoulders. “Well, to be explicit, I was fired. It’s the one thing I seem to be getting better and better at.”
“What do you mean?” Vanessa asks.
“I’ve been fired twelve times since I graduated from college.”
“Oh, Dani,” Kate says. All these years she’s been worried about Dani, but she’s never said anything. Why hasn’t she said anything?
“Don’t pity me,” Dani says, not sounding at all like herself. It’s clear that she is embarrassed—Dani, whom Kate had always thought was somehow incapable of embarrassment or self-consciousness, who always seemed so secure in who she was and where she was going. Twelve jobs in seven years. The thought alone sends a panicked tremor through Kate.
“I can’t help it,” Kate admits. “I feel terrible for you. I always thought you were on some amazing adventure.”
“Well, I was, in a way. It depends on your definition of amazing. Unbelievable? Yes. It’s hard to believe I’ve been fucking up for seven years straight. I’ve been asleep.”
“I don’t believe that,” Vanessa says. “You’ve been living the way you want to live. You’ve been chasing your dream. What more is there than that?”
Kate watches as Dani and Vanessa lock eyes. For a moment, Dani looks almost wistful. Then she shakes her head. “That’s whitewashing. I’ve been hiding. I haven’t done the work it takes to claim I’ve been chasing my dream.”
“We’re only twenty-nine,” Kate says. “Everyone says your thirties are when you come into your own.” She’ll be a cheerleader for the people she loves until the day she dies.
“It’s okay,” Dani continues. “I mean, it’s not, but it is. I’ve tapped out my bank account so I was going to move home, but I’m pretty sure Mrs. Suz Lowenstein will not be psyched about me crashing in her love nest.”
“You can stay with me,” Kate says.
Dani looks at her. Something flickers across her face; it’s gone before Kate can interpret it. “I think I’m going to stay down here for a while,” she says. “It turns out cities aren’t so great for me right now.”
“But you’ll be all alone,” Kate says. She’s worried about this plan. The fact that Dani does not trust herself with those pills in her luggage—the fact that she had those pills in the first place—shows Kate that things are much worse than she had ever guessed. She decides that when she gets back to Philadelphia, she will invite Dr. Lowenstein to coffee and tell him that she is worried about his daughter. Dani might be mad at her for this, but she would rather lose Dani’s friendship than lose Dani. Dani might never know why her father will suddenly begin calling her more, checking in with her at odd hours, why he wants to spend his weekends with her in Avalon even after Labor Day has come and gone. She might just think it’s because her father loves her, and this, of course, will be a version of the truth.
“I’m okay with being alone,” Dani says, but there is the slightest tremble in her voice when she says this, so slight that most would not even notice it. Kate and Vanessa exchange a glance. The glance does not go unnoticed by Dani. “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll come to Philly,” she promises. “We can be roommates again.”
They had shared a room in the bungalow that summer before their senior year of college, Dani on the top bunk, yelling, “Dear God, please shut up!” when Kate wouldn’t stop talking and shaking the bed frame with her laughter when they heard Vanessa and Jeremy Caldwell making out so loudly their noises could be heard over the drone of the enormous box fan. Even Kate didn’t really care whose towel was whose and they sat on beach chairs on the pile of rocks in front of the house when they were too lazy to go to the beach, and they fought about whose turn it was to clean the toilet. Someone was always passed out on the scratchy plaid sofa, and sometimes that person was Colin. His hair would be matted in the morning and one side of his face would be red and raw as if he’d been in a fight, or contracted a rash. “The sofungus is spreading,” Dani would say, and Colin’s laugh would crack open the bungalow and the sun would pour in.
They’re all silent for a moment, remembering.
“Let me ask you something,” Vanessa says, turning to Dani. “Do you think you wanted us to find your manuscript?”
Dani looks surprised. “No.”
“But you want to get it published, right?” Kate asks. “So you knew we were going to read it someday.”
“Someday.”
“I don’t want to be in your book,” Vanessa says. Kate can tell she has been thinking about this for a while. “Not that you would bother to ask my permission.”
“Oh, don’t worry, V,” Dani says. “There is no book. I’m done with that. I’m going to start something new. I don’t think it was a book, anyway, it was . . . a way to punish myself, reliving that summer and what I did over and over again.”
Kate envisions her twin brother’s death as a lever pulled, sending them each hurtling down a different track. “The book is beautiful,” she says. “I didn’t read the whole thing and I hated what I did read, but it’s beautiful.”
Dani laughs. “Ankthadavaka ouyadavaka. It will be my book-in-a-drawer. Every writer needs one.”
“You’re ready for a new chapter,” Vanessa says. She is clearly relieved.
“To turn the page,” Kate says, straightening.
“To close the book.” This is Vanessa again.
“Yukity yuk yuk,” Dani says. “You two are hilarious.”
Later, Kate walks inside with Gracie on her heels. She is careful to shut the screen door behind them. The house is cool. Downstairs, she sits on the bed in the room she thinks of as her own. She hears Gracie lapping the water in the toilet down the hall.
“Gracie!” she yells. Gracie trots into the bedroom looking not in the least sheepish, not even when she knocks into the bowl of fresh water on the floor and sends the water in it sloshing over the side. “Take a load off,” Kate says. Gracie flops down, her big tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, and looks up at Kate expectantly.
“Okay,” Kate says. “Here we go.” She takes a deep breath and dials Peter’s number. She has no idea where he is right now, a fact she is surprised to find only slightly bothersome.
He picks up after one ring. “Hi, Kate,” he says.
“Hey,” she says.
“How are you?”
At the sound of his voice, Kate feels a fluttering sensation in her stomach. She does not know if it’s the baby or something else. It could be any number of things—love or regret or fear or hope.
“I’m okay,” she says. “I’m in Avalon with Vanessa and Dani.”
“Oh, Kate—” Peter begins, but Kate interrupts him.
“No, really, I’m okay,” she says again. Peter knows that Avalon is where Colin died, and that her panic attacks began soon after that summer, but he does not know the details that make the story complete—as it turns out, she’d hardly known them herself.
“Good,” Peter says. “I’m glad you’re okay.” He hesitates. “I miss you. I know I shouldn’t say that. It’s not constructive.”
As she listens to him, Kate thinks that if he had not broken up with her, she would have been happy with him for the rest of her life. But she is going to be happy without him, too, because she will insist on it, because, despite everything, she is a happy person. Kate realizes this knowledge has been buried in her this whole time, a seed awaiting sun.
“I miss you too,” she says. “That’s normal, right? You don’t just flip that off like a light switch. I don’t know. Vanessa thinks there’s some sort of half-life equation to breakups; it
takes half the length of the relationship to fully get over someone. But if you ask me, it’s pretty clear Vanessa’s own situation proves that equation doesn’t work. She still isn’t totally over someone she dated for like a month eight years ago.”
“But she’s married,” Peter says.
“Apparently, marriage doesn’t make preexisting problems go away. Shocking, I know.”
Peter laughs. “What are you guys doing tonight? For the Fourth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really?” Peter sounds startled. “No plans?”
Is this momentous? Kate wonders. Maybe it is. “Nope,” she says. She can feel something shifting between them. “So,” she says. “I-have-to-tell-you-something-I’m-pregnant-eight-weeks-pregnant-and-I’m-keeping-it.” She says this in one long rush.
“What? Kate. What? You’re pregnant?” He does this repeating thing when he’s thrown off guard. “You’re pregnant?” he asks again, this time louder. Listening to him ask all these questions, even the same ones over and over, Kate can’t help it, she’s smiling.
“I’m pregnant.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Okay. I—I’m speechless, honestly. I’m. Well. Wow. How are you feeling?”
Kate knows he is searching for the right thing to say, that saying the right thing is important to him. “Oh, I’m fine. A little tired. A little, you know, pregnant. But I want you to understand that I don’t think this changes anything. I mean, it changes some things, of course, but it doesn’t need to change everything. You can be as involved as you want to be. I’m sure you want some time to think about that.” She means everything she says and yet, at the same time, it feels as if she is reading dialog intended for a live studio audience.
“Right. But, well,” Peter says, “I’d like to see you when you get back so we can talk about this in person.”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry I delivered the news over the phone. I finally worked up the nerve to tell you and I wanted to do it before I lost it again.”
“I understand,” Peter says. “Wow. A baby.” And then, after a pause, he says, “I really meant it when I said I missed you.”
Kate hesitates, gauging her reaction to his words. It feels as if so much has changed since she sat on the couch and listened to him break up with her. She thinks of that kiss with Gabe on the beach, the deep swimming-pool blue of his eyes. The secrets her friends have revealed to her, the confession she made about the fire. Things would be different between the three of them now. Better. They can’t change what happened; they can only move forward. Peter is the one who prompted these changes, he is the one who encouraged her to talk about what happened to Colin, to take that risk. She wants to tell Peter that she took his advice, that she faced the truth about the past and that he was right, it did help her. She wants to tell him about the fire. But there’s time. It suddenly doesn’t seem important to say everything right now. There is time. They’d be in each other’s lives forever now, one way or another.
“We’ll talk about everything when I get back to the city,” she says. “Face-to-face.”
After Kate hangs up, she slides down to the floor and sits close to Gracie. Her forever person is out there somewhere, and he might be Peter. But who knows, really? There is so much you cannot plan. Still, she can’t help it: she has a sudden vision of herself lying on the couch, a newborn baby asleep on her chest and Gracie stretched out nearby. She thinks of weekends spent pushing a stroller, sand castles, a growing hand in hers, a striped shirt for the first day of kindergarten at PFS. He might, she thinks, be a boy; a grandson for her parents. Then again, maybe she’s a girl. Kate lays her hand on her belly and feels the potential of roots forming, of blossoms wild and bright.
20
Vanessa
The sun is finally slipping behind the house, losing its hold above and throwing the deck into shadow. The drudging, tender-skinned shuffling sound of beach exodus rises up to where Vanessa and Dani sit on the deck overlooking it all. Vanessa remembers that they slept on these same chaises one summer night in high school; they’d fallen asleep a little spooked by the enormous, scarred sky, and awakened, covered in bug bites and still exhausted, peeling blankets away from their sweating bodies when the sun cracked the surface of the ocean at six in the morning.
“I think she’s actually going to forgive me,” Dani says.
“I think you’re right.”
“She’ll forgive you too,” Dani adds. “I didn’t want to say ‘she’s going to forgive us’ because I don’t want you to think I’m lumping what you did in with what I did. They’re not the same. I know that.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Vanessa says. “We all made some hugely dumb mistakes. And I’m sure we’ll regret them forever, forgiveness or not. One of mine was picking that fight with you after Colin died.”
“But you were right. I gave him the drugs.”
Vanessa had said more than this during their argument. She’d accused Dani of enabling Colin, and this wasn’t true. More often that not, the drugs were flowing in the opposite direction; in the last few years of Colin’s life it seemed to Vanessa that every time she saw Colin with Dani, he was slipping something into her hand or pulling her away from them. Colin, who had a family that loved him—even liked him, which was surely more than he deserved at times—was the one who influenced Dani, with her poisoned understanding of love, her mother who barely acknowledged her existence, her father who treated her like a friend instead of a daughter, her nose always in a book, her hair around her face obscuring that strange look of transportation—of relief—on her face as she read. Dani had looked out for Colin for years; she’d taken away his keys and called him cabs; in high school she had frequently disappeared just before class only to arrive a few minutes late with Colin in tow—she’d run out to the park down the street, pulled Colin back into school by the sleeve of his coat.
“You were his friend,” Vanessa says. “You made a mistake.”
Dani shrugs but Vanessa can see that she is grateful.
Kate opens the sliding door and steps onto the deck. “Well,” she says. “I told Peter that I’m pregnant.”
“What did he say?” Vanessa can perfectly imagine buttoned-up Peter, his mouth dropping at this news.
“I think he wants us to get back together.”
“Because you’re pregnant?”
“No, something was different about this conversation. Even before I mentioned the baby.” She bites her lip, trying not to smile. Vanessa grins at her and sees that Dani is doing the same. Kate sits on the end of Vanessa’s chaise and hugs her knees to her chest. “Anyway. What were you guys talking about?”
“Drew,” Dani says, looking sidelong at Vanessa.
“No, we weren’t.”
“And Jeremy.”
“We were not!”
“Well,” Dani says. “We are now.”
“I’ll start,” Kate says, raising her hand. “I think you loved Jeremy, but if you’d been in love with him, you wouldn’t have let him go. I don’t think people can walk away from true love. I don’t think that’s possible.”
As Kate says this, Vanessa remembers how she’d spent a lot of that summer eight years earlier thinking about her life in New York City, feeling eager to get back to it. She’d loved that summer with Kate and Dani, but when you know you’re on the cusp of something—the rest of your life—it’s hard to be in the moment, you’re always looking ahead. Jeremy lived in Philadelphia and Vanessa lived in New York. Their relationship was exciting, and hiding it from Colin had added to its drama, but had she ever expected to keep dating him when she returned to New York? She’d forgotten this part of the story.
“Maybe you’re right,” Vanessa says. Something had dawned on her as she’d stood in front of Jeremy, and now she is prodding her memory, feeling for it. “I think maybe I missed me more than I missed Jeremy.”
“You’ve always been a bit of a narcissist,” Dani says
.
“Shut up,” Vanessa says, but she’s smiling, shaking her head.
“What do you mean?” Kate asks her.
“When I quit my job at the gallery to stay home with Lucy, I think I lost track of myself.”
“I thought you loved being home with Lucy,” Kate says.
“I do,” Vanessa says. “I really do. I had no idea I’d feel so . . . maternal.” She thinks of brushing Lucy’s curls into pigtails, the weight of Lucy in her lap when they read together. Then she thinks of the way art connects her to the world, and to herself. “But I loved working in the gallery too. I wish I could be in both places at once.”
“Well, you can’t,” Dani says.
Vanessa laughs. “Thanks for the tip.” She’d really missed Dani.
“Lucy will be in preschool soon,” Kate says. “Maybe you could go back to the gallery then.”
“Maybe. But Drew wants to have another baby.”
“Is that what you want?” Dani asks.
“Someday, sure,” Vanessa says. “But now? I don’t know. I feel like I’m just on the verge of finding myself again.”
“Maybe he wants you to have a baby because he’s afraid of losing you,” Kate says.
She’d never thought of it this way.
“I think the key,” Dani says, “is to decide what you want to do and run with that, whatever it is.”
“Yes,” Kate says. “Make a decision and commit yourself. What else can you do?”
“Commit myself,” Vanessa repeats.
“Into an asylum,” Dani says.
“To your life,” Kate says. “Whatever you want that to be.”
Vanessa walks out to where the ocean meets the shore. The wet sand is dazzling, golden and glowing below the setting sun. The sea foam is tinged with pink. She takes a deep breath. It’s one of her favorite smells, the smell of the beach at sunset, rivaled only by the milky warmth of her daughter’s neck. Her call interrupts Drew and Lucy in the middle of their dinner.
“What are you having?” she asks, pressing the cell phone to her ear so she can hear her husband over the tumble of the ocean.