East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

  Hannah turned back to Maya. She didn’t know how to impress upon her how necessary her Xanax was.

  “Wait!” Maya called to the waiter, dodging Hannah’s gaze. She surveyed the table. “Do we want to order appetizers now? Let me answer that—yes. Last time we had that amazing calamari, right?”

  “Actually, I don’t eat squid anymore,” Renee said. “Darrin read that they’re really good at problem solving, so...”

  “Is that right?” Maya said. “Well, until they figure out how to stay off my plate, I’m eating them. An order of calamari and some crab cakes, too, please.”

  “I just want a salad,” Renee said, placing her napkin in her lap. “No tomatoes. Or actually if I could trade tomatoes for grapes, that would be wonderful. Dressing on the side, please.”

  Blue lifted her gaze to the ceiling. Hannah sensed that her high might be wearing off.

  The waiter nodded and retreated again.

  “Please focus, Maya,” Hannah said. “You gave me a pill in the motel room and then...what? Where did you put the bottle? Did you throw it away? Did you put it in your bag? Think!” She could hear her voice rising against her efforts to maintain self-control. The flashbacks threatening to seize her again without warning. “It’s really important.”

  Maya opened her mouth to answer just as Hannah’s phone rang.

  Hannah looked down at it. Then up at the girls. “Oh no.”

  MAYA

  Maya watched as Hannah barreled out of her chair with wide, worried eyes and disappeared onto the patio. Christ, was it too much to ask to have one thing go right on this trip?

  “Probably Vivian,” Blue said.

  The table was quiet for a moment.

  “Henry’s mom?” Renee asked. “I hope he’s okay.”

  “He is,” Maya said. She wasn’t concerned. She was frustrated. The last thing Hannah needed right now was a call from Henry’s mother.

  “By the way,” Blue said, “did you take Hannah’s Xanax?”

  Maya was indignant. “What? No. Why on earth would I do that?”

  Blue shrugged. “Seems like something you would do.”

  Maya was about to protest but of course it was something she would do, because she did do it. And she should’ve just admitted it. She was very bad about fessing up. Always had been. She blamed her crap childhood for that. It was pure survival mechanism—hiding mistakes that could be used against her. But she was thirty now and should probably get around to fixing that little character flaw.

  Still. All she wanted was to help Hannah and, okay, now she could see it was wrong to take her Xanax, just like maybe it had been wrong to invite Renee, but her intentions had been good! That had to count for something, right? She planned to sneak it back into Hannah’s purse as soon as they got back from dinner. Even though she didn’t want to believe it was a mistake. What she wanted was for Hannah to see that she didn’t need it, that the world wasn’t as frightening as she believed. And she wanted Blue and Renee to be friends again. She wanted everything to go back to the way it was. This was her family. Didn’t they get it? She needed them. She also wanted a loan from Blue so she could save her house but that was a whole other self-inflicted headache. The sudden thought of it, of being homeless—not out on the street—but without a home, was a peek into some interior darkness, a kind of bottomless falling.

  In the past she’d always just borrowed from Blue, no problem. Each time she genuinely believed she would eventually pay it back. But this was different. This was a catastrophic screwup. She didn’t even want to say the number out loud because then she’d have to sit in it, and frankly, she didn’t like sitting in bad feelings, especially about herself. But perhaps she could mention it and hope that maybe Blue would offer to lend her the money. She knew Blue would be pissed, but then again, it could be argued she was giving Blue an opportunity to look like a big shot in front of Renee. To swoop in as the hero. Show off how successful she was. Technically, Maya decided, she was doing Blue a favor.

  “Is it terrible that sometimes I think it would be better if something did happen to Henry?” Blue said.

  “I think that often,” Maya said. “If it was me, I’d want you guys to yank the hell out of that plug. It’s not a life.”

  “For either of them,” Blue said.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” Renee said. “They could find a cure tomorrow. He’s still young. And technology is advancing.”

  Maya saw Blue’s jaw set. She locked eyes with her, tried to discourage what she sensed was coming.

  “Just out of curiosity, Renee,” Blue said, as Maya slunk lower in her seat, “when was the last time you saw Hannah? Or Henry, for that matter?”

  Renee opened her mouth, said nothing.

  Blue folded her arms, pinned her with a steely look. “Right,” she said.

  A seagull swooped down just outside the window, snagged a bread crumb someone left on the railing, flew off.

  Renee watched it go, shook her head. Finally she turned to Maya. “I told you this was a mistake.”

  Maya sighed.

  In the distance a night fishing boat glided by, its white lights shining like little moons on the black bay. Maya imagined jumping fully clothed into the water, swimming out to it, drifting away like a lazy afternoon. Perhaps a cute captain on board. Destination unknown and irrelevant. She loved this thought—that an entirely different life was one crazy leap away.

  “Hey, remember when we went fishing at the lighthouse?” she said, scrambling for a way to keep the peace. She hadn’t thought about that in so long.

  That was their first summer out here together, before boys mattered too much and alcohol was a few years away and they were all still trying to discover what they loved to do.

  “None of us wanted to go,” she said to Blue, “except you.” The rest of them thought it would be gross and dull and way too early to wake up. “But then Renee saw how important it was to you, so she made us.” They’d laughed at Renee when she came downstairs that morning all ready to fish in platform sandals and a white summer dress like she was headed to the Bridgehampton polo classic.

  They’d tiptoed out of the house and down to the beach. The predawn sky was an electric violet—the color lightning makes in a nighttime storm. The sand was soft and cool. They’d been out there only a few moments when the sun began crowning out of the sea, igniting a fiery road of light across the water. It seemed as if they could walk right out and touch its glowing head.

  “Look,” Hannah had said. “It’s the sunrise highway!”

  “I love it,” Blue had replied. “It totally is.”

  They cast their lines and watched the swimming sun and stood shoulder to shoulder inside the stillness of that ocean light. After about ten minutes Maya decided she was bored and soon after Hannah, too, was complaining. Renee was clearly suffering in silence. Blue tried to teach them that this is what fishing was, patience and quiet and reflection.

  “It’s dumb is what it is,” Maya had said. “I’m over it.”

  “Wait!” Renee yelped. “I think I have a nibble!” The line pulled again. “Oh my God, what do I do?”

  The fish was tugging hard. Blue rushed to help, shouting orders about when to reel and when to let, adding her own hands to the pole when the fish gave a vigorous yank. Suddenly they were all excited.

  “It’s probably a tuna,” Blue said. “And a big one, the way it’s pulling. In fact, I’m certain of it, a bluefin, I bet—over fifty pounds for sure!”

  Maya was impressed with Blue’s depth of knowledge.

  “I think it’s a shark!” Renee kept saying. “It’s going to pull me in with it!”

  “You’re going to need a bigger boat,” Maya quipped.

  There was a great deal of carrying on. Hannah had her camera at the ready while Blue and Renee engaged in the tiresome struggle. Maya left after
twenty minutes and returned with doughnuts just as Renee managed to reel it the last few feet to shore. They whooped and cheered as Renee gave one last tug of her pole. Then suddenly they all went quiet.

  “Wait.” Maya said. “What is that?”

  It took a split second for it to register and then she laughed so hard she choked on her doughnut as Renee pulled from the sea a man’s rubber fishing boot. She ran out to it, held it up. “It’s kind of cute and maybe my size. Do you think you can catch the other one?”

  They’d all dissolved in giggles then, calling Renee Captain Ahab and suggesting they phone the local papers to report the impressive catch. They even brought it to the pier and weighed it on the fish-weighing scale. Somewhere there was still a picture Blue had taken of Renee proudly holding up that rubber boot and grinning ear to ear. When they returned to school in the fall, the story of that “fish” grew and grew. By the time they graduated, it was a five-foot mako.

  That was the same year Blue had made a sign in her shop class and then nailed it above the door of Nana’s house the following summer. It was a big wooden arrow pointing toward the ocean, and in hand-painted letters it said “To the Sunrise Highway.”

  Maya smiled now, remembering. “That was so great, right?”

  Renee sighed.

  Blue flagged down the waiter. “Can I get a shot of tequila, please?”

  “Me too!” Maya said. “And those problem-solving calamari as soon as possible.” She looked between her feuding friends. Wished they would just get over this stupidity, remember all the good. Reminding them didn’t seem to be working, so for now it was probably best to try a new tactic, direct the heat onto herself. “So...a funny thing happened on the way to paying my property taxes.”

  Neither of them looked at her or acknowledged that she’d spoken. Both had disengaged entirely, were staring off in opposite directions, stewing in their own silences.

  “Hello!” Maya said. “Anybody home?” She threw up her hands. “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m going to the bathroom.” She grabbed her purse, marched off. Nothing was going as planned, and she felt suddenly light-headed and floaty, precarious as a balloon in a child’s hand.

  Just outside she could see Hannah on the patio, clutching the phone to her ear as she paced between the white plastic tables. Maya skipped the bathroom and made a beeline for the bar. Several men turned as she entered. She zeroed in on a young guy in the corner. He looked about her age, maybe a little older, a lonely, soulful fisherman she decided, judging by the weathered lines around his eyes. She smiled at him and his whole face lit up with happy surprise. He raised his glass.

  “Oh, hello there,” she said under her breath, enjoying the way his smile grounded her back into her body. She sat down next to him, and the lightness in her head became substance and clarity again. He was exactly who and what she was looking for, a cute boy to have a flirtatious spin with, maybe even make out a little, clear her head of all the drama.

  He watched her settle in, his face full of unguarded hopefulness, and as they grinned at each other once more, she had the urge to lean over and kiss him, to disappear into that black, thought-free universe where kissing took her. She glanced back at Renee and Blue slumped at the table, telegraphing misery like actors playing to the balcony, over to Hannah pacing outside. She thought of her house in foreclosure, her dead-end job, her fractured friend-family, everything real and closing in on her. “Save me,” she said.

  “Happy to,” he said. He scanned the crowd to locate the threat, then turned back to her. “From what exactly?”

  “Where to begin? Let’s start with sobriety.” To the bartender she said, “Light beer on tap. He’s buying.” She turned back to the guy. “Please tell me you’re having a good night.”

  “I am. Sort of. Well, actually...my dog died. I came here to raise a glass...”

  “To your dead dog.”

  “Indy. Yeah. He liked Bud.” He gave a little chuckle as if remembering.

  “Interesting,” she said. “It wasn’t a drunk driving accident, was it?”

  “Nope, he had his own chauffeur. Paws couldn’t reach the pedals. Oh, and it gets worse.” He pulled out a small metal container with a paw print on it.

  “That’s not...” She poked it with her finger, leaned in toward it, whispered, “Indy, is that you?”

  “He doesn’t talk so much anymore. Used to be quite the conversationalist.”

  “Well, I should probably leave you to your mourning.”

  “He had a good life. Let’s call it celebrating.” He grinned at her.

  “You don’t carry that everywhere, do you?”

  “Nope. Not yet anyway. Just picked it up on my way home from work. I’m planning to...spread them somewhere. But don’t know where yet. It’ll come to me.”

  “This is by far the strangest bar encounter I’ve ever had. And believe me, that’s saying a lot.”

  Her beer appeared on the bar top. She took a sip and raised her glass. “To Indy,” she said.

  He smiled and his gaze fell from her eyes to her lips and there was a lift in her stomach, like she was taking hills at speed. “To Indy,” he said, raising his glass. “And to the sudden appearance of beauty in unexpected places.”

  Cheers erupted from a scatter of patrons watching a ball game on the TV above the bar.

  “I think you just scored,” she said, smiling as she clinked his glass.

  She was not usually such a drinker, but tonight the alcohol was a wonder, tasted like summer parties and old boyfriends, tasted like a past worth remembering and a future worth looking forward to. “I’m Maya by the way.”

  “Andy.”

  “Let me ask you something, Andy. How do you feel about whales?”

  “Whales? I like them.”

  “Excellent. You’ll do, then.”

  She noticed the helmet beside him.

  “Yours?” she said.

  She had never ridden a motorcycle, had never even known anyone who owned one. Once when she was driving Blue back to college after a holiday, a guy had pulled up beside them on a bike and performed tricks for them. Blue had laughed at him, called him a tool, but Maya loved the various ways men tried to impress her, the humor, the peacocking. Now she looked at the helmet and imagined the night blowing through her, the muscle and roar of the engine beneath her, her worries shrinking to the size of the rearview mirror, disappearing behind her like tailpipe smoke.

  “Take me for a ride,” she said suddenly.

  “Yeah?”

  She glanced over at the girls, her lifelong best friends, her most important people. None of them looked back.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  He laughed and motioned to the bartender to pay the tab.

  BLUE

  Blue was wondering how the hell she wound up alone at a table with Renee. She’d been so preoccupied with her anger she barely even noticed Maya leave. Now she and Renee were stuck inside this stroppy silence that Blue had neither the desire to sit in nor put an end to by way of conversation. The waiter was taking too long with her drink. And she was starving—a gnawing emptiness where her hope of Jack had lived. She eyed the bread basket. She could eat it all, including the wicker. In fact, she would’ve gone right ahead and done just that if Renee hadn’t ordered a salad. She didn’t need the judgment. Besides, now that her high was wearing off, she was pulled back to how she’d felt earlier when she looked in the mirror...saw the bumps and swells of her body in all the places society insisted only smooth lines should be. She’d always vowed never to be one of those women who worried about her weight and yet here she was, because for one fleeting instant the hope of love had beckoned, and like all women, she’d been taught that only the beautiful and skinny could receive the call. And Blue was not either of those things. Oh, she’d learned that lesson in the hardest way possible.

 
She often thought of the cruel trick society played on women, inundating them with messages that they weren’t enough and then telling them they could fix it by starving themselves, knowing that, like Harlow’s monkeys, people needed love and comfort even more than food. And all along what women carried, what they perceived as excess weight, was merely the shame they’d been force-fed before they could identify its taste.

  It made her angry. It made her hate.

  And still some part of her bought into it.

  Across from her Renee reapplied her lipstick and then glanced around at the other diners with that tranquil half smile that had been her camouflage since they were teenagers.

  Blue imagined the curse of beauty was the constant maintenance. It was like driving a Mercedes. No point in having it if you didn’t keep it clean and polished, if you weren’t advertising it. But who had the time or energy? It could flatten a person. She’d already seen it happening to Renee at the end of high school—how she’d started disappearing into her prettiness, making it the centerpiece of who she was, the thing society told her she should be and nothing more. It had become at once her defense and her deepest vulnerability.

  Renee shifted uncomfortably, the silence clearly getting to her. Blue knew it was only a matter of seconds before Renee broke it. She did a countdown in her head from three.

  “It’s so pretty here,” Renee said the instant Blue hit one. “I’d forgotten.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Blue said. She picked up the list of specials, pretended to study it.

  “I always loved the nights. They feel so...promising or something. I don’t know.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “So...can I ask how you are?”

  “Great,” Blue said flatly from behind the menu. “Never better.”

  “Good,” Renee said. “That’s good. You look good.”

  “Thanks.”

  The silence stretched. She made no effort to fill it. Renee sighed, began drumming her fingernails on the table. Anything to fill the void. Over the top of the menu, Blue could see her desperately scanning the restaurant for rescue.