East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

  “We had a lot in common.”

  An old Van Morrison song came on the radio and Maya said “Ooh!” and cranked it up and soon they were all swept up in it, singing along just like they used to. The wind was in Blue’s hair and the day was in full bloom as the miles moved them closer to the girls they once knew, the house they once loved. When they hit the Sunrise Highway, they cheered.

  Blue could’ve predicted with her eyes closed the minute they reached the Hamptons. The air changed, turned sweet and clean like it was filtered through sunshine and honey. She inhaled deeply, the golden wash of afternoon sun glinting off windshields and dappling through the trees on the side of the road. They drove past vineyards and little farm stands with weathered wooden signs for corn and jam and fruit. Past the square, white shops of Bridgehampton, Water Mill, East Hampton, Amagansett. Then, unleashed from the traffic, they whipped across the natty Napeague stretch until at last they were up and over the hill and looking down into Montauk, the Atlantic a sparkly blue bowl below them, rippling sideways like a flag in wind, a perfect circle of sun standing above it.

  They stopped quickly in the old fishing village for snacks and the town paper and soft ice cream cones with sprinkles at John’s Drive-In. Then they drove out past the Montauk library and onto a sand-dusted road toward the beach. Finally they turned onto the pebble driveway of Nana’s house.

  “Bring on the beach, bitches!” Maya screamed, leaping out of the car.

  On the porch next door an elderly couple glanced over, alarmed. Blue gave a small, embarrassed wave.

  The wooden two-story looked almost exactly as it did in Blue’s memory—smaller, perhaps, and more worn—the fence around it knocked down, probably by a tropical storm. The hammock still swung between the trees, but the netting looked ratty and precarious. Blue could see them again as they once were—bright and bursting out of the car in their short shorts and halter tops, their flesh so ripe and new, their laughter raucous and without edges, piercing the quiet. She remembered the last time they were there, how Hannah had run and jumped up on the front porch railing, walked it like a balance beam, did a little shuffle-hop-step, a cartwheel dismount. So fully present to the sunshine, to the smell of the ocean, to her friends beside her. She remembered Maya dashing out to the hammock, diving gleefully onto it, only to be flipped out, dangling by one leg as the others laughed. A little help, assholes! Her and Renee darting past Hannah up to the second floor to claim the best bedroom, doing their secret victory handshake when they got to it before Hannah and Maya did.

  Now she extracted the spare key from the seashell key hider, left there for the property management and housekeeping services that came a few times a year to check the pipes, clean the house, mow the lawn and clear the gutters. The moment she unlocked the front door, Maya rushed past her into the foyer with its high ceiling and hardwood floor, its hollow echo. “I can’t believe we’re here!” Maya said as she threw her arms out and did a twirl. She took a big dramatic inhale. “Smell that—exactly the same.” She waved the air under her nose like she was a sommelier. “A wonderful bouquet...soap...sunshine...and a touch of...mold...or is it mildew? What’s the difference anyway?”

  “Actually, they’re two different kinds of fungi,” Hannah said, “which grow on—”

  “Oh, sorry, that wasn’t a serious question,” Maya said.

  Blue took a deep breath filled with memory.

  “I am literally eighteen again!” Maya said. “If we just cover all the mirrors, boom, we’re all eighteen. Well, Blue’s actually a grouchy old lady but, whatever...”

  Blue tried to formulate a comeback, but Maya was already gone, running between the rooms on the first floor like a dog coming home. She returned breathless. “Everything looks the same. It’s like being in a time warp. Come look!”

  They moved into the kitchen, the cabinets now dated, the linoleum floor peeling at the edges. In the center, the round dinner table where they’d once played drinking games while classic rock played beneath their laughter—Skynyrd and Zeppelin and Floyd—music that felt like a secret passed down from one generation of rebellious teenagers to the next, songs that carried the tang of nostalgia for their youth even as they were experiencing it.

  “Whatever shall we do first?” Blue said. Maya’s gleefulness was catching.

  “I need the bathroom and a shower,” Hannah said.

  “I was thinking we might—”

  The sound of pebbles kicking in the driveway made them all turn.

  “Who’s that?” Blue said. “I’m not expecting anyone.” She went to the front door where a shiny red-and-black Mini Cooper was now parked behind their rental.

  Maya followed, Hannah behind them.

  “That is...” Maya said. The car door opened and a slim woman emerged, slightly teetering on sandals with a heel an inch too high, a bottle of wine in one hand, flowers in the other. “Uh...surprise! Please don’t kill me.”

  Blue was pinned where she stood.

  “Renee!” Maya called, waving.

  “Hello!” Renee waved back with the airy cheer of someone departing on a cruise ship. She made a few careful steps across the pebbles and then her eyes found Blue. Her smile wobbled and her wave turned tentative.

  Blue’s mouth hung open. A violent knock in her chest. Shock first. Then rage so hot and quick inside her, it could launch her head like a rocket. She looked at Maya, let her eyes speak for her: Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me. Right. Now?

  Maya stared back, defiant.

  Blue spun around, marched back into the kitchen. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Where to go. How to manage this.

  She heard Maya call, “Stay right there, Renee! I’ll be right back. Hannah, talk to Renee.”

  Blue dashed out the side door. Folded over. She was short of breath as if she’d been running. A sharp cramp across her chest.

  “Listen.” It was Maya coming toward her. “I know you’re pissed.”

  She was too angry to speak. Her fists were clenched so tightly she imprinted little crescents on her palms with her fingernails.

  “Okay, you’re really pissed. But come on... Twelve years ago we made a vow that we’d all come back. All four of us. A sacred vow.”

  Blue breathed through her nose. An image came to her—a game the four of them used to play over long, boring summers, tying rubber bands around a watermelon until it burst from the pressure. She could still recall that visceral squeeze, the anticipation of the explosion, not knowing when it would come, how destructive it would be. Now she imagined her own brain being wrapped in rubber bands, tighter and tighter.

  “I cannot even believe...” She was still thin on air. “This is the worst stunt you’ve ever pulled. And that’s saying a lot.”

  “That is actually saying a lot,” Maya admitted.

  Blue glared at her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I honestly didn’t know you’d react this way.”

  “Oh really? You didn’t know I’d react this way? Right. Then why didn’t you tell me up front? You knew. And you did it anyway.”

  “Look. I knew you wouldn’t be thrilled but I didn’t realize... I invited her before we left—just for the day! But then when I told you about the call and you got so mad about it...well... I should’ve uninvited her then but I just...didn’t know how.”

  “You say, ‘Hey, sorry, I screwed up. You’re not invited.’ It’s not hard. And why on earth would she think she would be invited here? It’s my nana’s house!”

  Maya grimaced. “I may have possibly mentioned you were okay with it.”

  Blue gaped at her. She rubbed her hands over her face.

  “Please just come say hi. I know you hate me right now but please.”

  “No.”

  “She’s already seen you. Don’t make it weird.”

&
nbsp; “Tell her it was a hologram. That I’m really back in New York.”

  Maya looked at her helplessly.

  “I cannot believe you did this to me.”

  “I didn’t do it to you—I did it for you. I love and adore you and I would never want to hurt you. I wanted to make things better.”

  “For you.”

  “For all of us.”

  “You can’t. And it isn’t your place to try.”

  “Okay. I get that now. It was ill conceived. I may have a habit of things like that.”

  “May?”

  “But still, I would consider it a huge, humongous, gigantic, undeserved favor if you would just come say hi...”

  “The favor was me agreeing to come on your spontaneous trip, paying for the rental car, supplying the house,” Blue said. “The other favor is me not kicking your ass.”

  “I’ve seen you throw a punch. I’m not scared.”

  “No, you haven’t. When?”

  “Mark Tarrington. Eighth grade. He snapped your bra. You tried to punch him. He ducked. You lost your balance and fell into a pond.”

  “Oh, right. He was an asshole,” Blue said. And then returning to the present moment, “And so are you.”

  “It’s true. I am. Now come on. Ten minutes. Then I’ll ask her—gently—to leave.”

  “No.”

  Renee was calling from the driveway. “Maya?”

  Maya turned back to Blue, whispered, “Please.”

  Blue whispered back, “No.”

  “I’ll give you twenty bucks.”

  “You don’t have twenty bucks.”

  “But if I did, I would give it to you.” Maya made a pleading puppy-dog face.

  Blue sighed. It was so hard to stay mad at Maya—a fact that itself made her mad. And she knew it would make her look pathetic and petty not to go back out there. It would give Renee the impression that Blue actually cared. Which she absolutely did not. Not at all. “Go away. I need a cigarette.”

  “Okay,” Maya said. “That’s not a no, so I’ll take it.”

  Blue watched Maya walk back to the front. She could see Renee through the bushes that separated the yard from the driveway. That profile so familiar, so deeply imprinted on her. She took in the changes in her face, her hair, her clothes—a glaring display of all the lost years. Time, usually so insidious and creeping, announced itself loudly. How inexplicably grown-up they were, how they had done this growing apart. There was a sudden ache in her throat made of history. The recognition of a different version of this story where that night hadn’t happened. Where she would run out and tackle-hug Renee, both of them talking over each other in their excitement.

  She looked at her cigarette pack, decided it wouldn’t do enough, pulled out her vape pen, pressed the button and inhaled. It was all she could do, all she knew how to do, to let the pot fuzz the edges of her brain, settle like soft foam over her nervous system.

  She should just leave. Go back to Manhattan. Return the rental car. Spend the weekend catching up with work. Let them figure out their own transportation! In fact, to hell with it, why not? She had better things to do than screw around at the beach.

  But then—Jack. And besides, Hannah was innocent. It wouldn’t be fair to her.

  She leaned back against the house, followed the pot with an emergency cigarette. She was smoking too much but whatever, screw it. Everything was an emergency right now. Her life. This trip. She breathed deep, as if she could smother the slow rise of old things, that terrible susurrus of darkness rearing up. Wordless, imageless memory in her body, in her cells. The bottomless unanswered call of her eighteen-year-old self: Help me, someone help me!

  She bit down on the memory, looked out at the blotchy sunlight through the canopy of trees, a kid on a bike in his driveway riding up and down, up and down, lonely as the moon’s rise and set.

  HANNAH

  Hannah wanted to run after Blue. But there was Renee, who she hadn’t seen in twelve years, standing alone in the driveway looking wide-eyed and uncertain, her arms drooping with the weight of the spurned wine and flowers.

  She didn’t know what to do. Just when she was settling into the trip, Maya had to throw in a plot twist. She was already stressed after the night at the motel, turbulent weather brewing at the edges of her. She could sense it like the first ripples of chop on a pre-storm sea.

  Hannah made a decision. Hoped Blue would forgive her.

  “Renee!” she said, stepping onto the porch.

  Renee’s face smoothed slightly. Hannah took in her stylish haircut, her effortful clothes in the latest fashion, her flawless makeup. There was something slightly different about her face. Older, of course, but something else that unsettled Hannah because she couldn’t put her finger on it. Botox? Plastic surgery? Still it was Renee. Renee! And though her eyes needed to catch up to this new version, her heart did not. Years could pass, the mind could forget, but the heart always remembered.

  They hugged and Hannah said, “Hi, hi, hi!” trying to talk over the growing, obvious absence of Maya and Blue.

  Renee kept smiling but her eyes betrayed her, had that look she always got when any sort of conflict was present, flitting around for somewhere to flee. She stepped back. Held Hannah’s hands in hers. “You look wonderful,” she said. “I should go.”

  Hannah opened her mouth to say no. She didn’t want Renee to go. But then—Blue would be so hurt. She couldn’t betray her like that. Instead she tilted her head, met Renee’s eyes to convey her wish that it could be otherwise.

  “It’s fine,” Renee said. “I actually have a million other things I should be doing anyway. A wedding to plan, if Maya didn’t tell you.” She lit up suddenly as if talking herself back into joy. “I’m marrying the most amazing guy.”

  “Yes! I’d heard. That’s so great—I’m really happy for you.” She smiled as warmly as she could, trying to mirror Renee’s sudden mood shift, sustain connection with her darting eyes. Even when they were kids, it could feel like trying to lasso a spooked horse once Renee’s fear kicked in. She was the friend they had to navigate a little more carefully. No direct confrontation. Constructive criticisms carefully Bubble Wrapped inside layers of compliments. It was never discussed. They all intuitively understood that Renee had a certain fragility that couldn’t bear the frankness they used with one another.

  Hannah had never minded the extra work. When they were thirteen, she’d slept over at Renee’s house a few times. After Renee’s dad had left, her mother had taken a night job at a restaurant and often stayed after her shift to drink with her coworkers. Sometimes she brought a strange man home who made Hannah uneasy when she passed him in the hallway. Eventually Renee’s mom married the creep. Renee said that none of it bothered her, and yet every night she carefully lined up her stuffed animals like guards around her bed, a teddy bear fortress. “I can’t sleep otherwise,” she’d explained, embarrassed. Even at thirteen, Hannah recognized the need for a sense of safety, no matter how false. She couldn’t have articulated it, but she felt it.

  As Renee got older, the bears were retired and instead her fortress became that plastered smile, those fleeing eyes, her well-cultivated beauty. Very few people were ever allowed to penetrate the facade, and, even then, admittance seemed precarious, easily retracted. Only Blue had been trusted enough to be allowed complete access to Renee’s heart.

  Now Renee handed Hannah the wine and flowers. “Tell Maya—”

  “Tell Maya what?” Maya said, reappearing in the driveway.

  “That I’m leaving.” Renee said.

  “What? No, you can’t!”

  Renee shook her head. “You told me Blue was okay with this.”

  “She is!” Maya said. “She’s completely fine with it.”

  Hannah shot her an incredulous look. Maya discreetly nudged her.

  Renee glanced towa
rd the side porch where Blue had disappeared, crossed her arms and gave Maya a pointed stare.

  “Or she will be. Look, I’m not saying she’s doing cartwheels about it—”

  “Right,” Renee said. “So I gotta go. It was great seeing you guys, but...” She held out her arms for a goodbye hug.

  Maya grabbed Renee’s wrists, lowered them. “Just give her a minute, would you? I sort of sprung this on her.”

  “And on me,” Renee said, a momentary flash of emotion leaking out from behind her composure. She shook her hands free. “You lied to me. I never would have come.”

  “I did. But only because—well, because you wouldn’t have come.”

  “For good reason.”

  “No, it isn’t! Come on, Renee. You drove all this way. And you know you guys need to fix this shit.”

  “What do you expect me to do?” Renee eyed her car. “You saw her.” She looked at Hannah for backup.

  Hannah nodded vigorously. Blue definitely did not look thrilled.

  “Look,” Renee said, “maybe we can hang out some other time. Just the three of us.” Her eyes perked at the thought. “We could do lunch in SoHo. That’d be fun.”

  “We’re not doing lunch in SoHo,” Maya said, and Renee’s face fell. “I don’t think you quite understand how hard it is to get this one—” she nodded toward Hannah “—to go anywhere.”

  Hannah was momentarily offended and then conceded this was true with a little side shrug.

  “Listen,” Maya continued. “Don’t leave. It’s too important.”

  “Not to Blue,” Renee said.

  “You don’t know that. And if you go now, you never will.”

  Renee sighed, looked longingly toward the road.

  The air was suddenly thin and difficult, gassed with sadness.

  “This might be your last chance, ya know,” Maya said. “The house is for sale. All three of us are almost never in the same place. Right now you have me and Hannah as a buffer—and I seriously doubt you and Blue will ever work it out on your own. So it’s kind of now or never. And if you decide you can’t come inside for ten minutes, then fine. That’s your decision. But just be perfectly clear with yourself that you’re giving up without even trying. On you. And on us. And on Blue. But whatever. I’m not going to pressure you.”