East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

  “Not yet,” Maya said. “I want to see a blue whale. Those are the biggest, right?”

  “Biggest animal to have ever lived on earth. Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant.”

  “Ooh la la,” Maya said.

  “Ew,” Hannah said.

  “Seconded,” Renee said.

  Maya scanned the horizon.

  Around them, tourists had their binoculars out as the captain came over the loudspeaker reciting all that they might see as if he’d given the same speech three times a day for thirty years and just wanted to move to Colorado and never see a whale again. The girls’ excitement grew upon hearing the possibility of seeing dolphins leaping in the boat’s wake, leatherback sea turtles dining on jellyfish, packs of seals with their doglike faces, poking their slick gray heads out of the water. And of course, the whales: minkes and humpbacks, pilots and sperm—the last making them laugh like prepubescent girls.

  They stood watch, waiting, ready. The anticipation nurtured their excitement as they scanned the waterline. The boat chugged on. Hannah went below to check on Blue, returned twenty minutes later with drinks and a grim report. They ate fruit from the farmers market and drank their colas and Hannah read Dear Miss Know-It-All questions off her phone and recruited answers from Maya and Renee.

  “Okay, here’s a good one. Should Anonymous pursue her dream job in LA or stay with dream guy in Chicago?”

  “Dream job,” Renee said.

  “Dream guy,” Maya said.

  Hannah and Renee looked at Maya in surprise.

  “Who knew you were such a romantic?” Hannah said.

  “I’m not,” Maya said. “I just hate work. Next question.”

  “Dana from Oregon wants to know when it’s the right time to have sex with a new guy.”

  “As if there’s a wrong time,” Maya said.

  “Whenever you actually want to,” Renee said.

  “After he’s been tested for STIs,” Hannah said, making a note in her cell phone.

  The sun rose higher. The salt started to sting against their sunburns. Soon the beauty of the world they were gazing upon became monotonous. Flat and blue.

  “Dear Miss Know-It-All, where the hell are the whales?” Maya said, getting restless.

  People began looking at their phones, retreating to the bar below. The kids on board were getting cranky, the energy turning bleak.

  “Come on, whale!” Maya whispered to the ocean. Just one. Even a fin. She would be satisfied with a glimpse. She felt the pain of wanting. The urge to shut it down and accept that she would not get to have it.

  Time stalled, the sun turning sharp and hard and relentless, stealing color, casting a layer of white over everything. Another hour passed. They ate more food, wandered the deck, blinked out at the unchanging landscape.

  Hannah picked at the chipping paint on the rails with her fingernail. “Don’t think we’re going to see any today,” she said.

  “Don’t say that,” Maya said.

  Renee sighed.

  Blue reappeared. “Any—” She retched. “Any whales?”

  The three of them shook their heads.

  “Of course not,” Blue said. “Story of my life.”

  “Oh, stop,” Maya said.

  “Nothing to see for miles and miles in any direction,” Blue continued.

  Maya shook her head, sighed. But as she looked at her friends, thought of their lives over the last twelve years, thought of her own meandering future, she understood what Blue was saying—the way monotony could seep into adulthood. No one had ever warned her about that.

  The captain came over the loudspeaker. “Well, folks,” he said, “I’m sorry to say the whales have eluded us today. We’ll be heading back now.”

  “Shoot,” Hannah said. “We didn’t even get to see a freaking dolphin.”

  “Let’s sit down,” Maya said. Her face burned and her eyes felt gritty with salt. She headed toward the benches. Tedium and disappointment—she couldn’t think of enemies greater than those. She thought of Andy. If only he lived closer. But even then, an internal resistance, something in the way. She closed her eyes.

  Almost as soon as she shut them, a collective gasp from the boat.

  “Maya, look,” Hannah shouted.

  Maya jumped to her feet, turned just in time.

  Euphoric eruption! Life bursting from below into the air. Its fins outstretched like wings. Its grooved white belly arced toward the sun. I live! it seemed to shout at them with its enormity, its acrobatic grace. We live! It paused, midair, suspending time for a moment. Its skin oil-slick and gleaming. Water raining off its barnacle-covered flanks. Then with a thunderous splash, it landed back on the ocean’s top, slapped the surface playful as a child, carbonating the white water. A show just for them, a circus act at sea. The passengers cheered, electric with awe, witness to some impossible majestic beauty, some seemingly fabled creature of an underwater universe. A magical communion between life forms. Oh glorious, mysterious, nonsensical world.

  Maya’s heart buoyed in her chest.

  “Boom!” she said. “Just when you least expect it. When you think you know how it will all turn out.” She turned to Blue. “Story of everyone’s life.”

  BLUE

  Blue watched as the water stilled, the whale slipping back into the deep like a dream quickly forgotten. Around her the mood on the boat had changed. Seagulls gathered and gossiped like old ladies, frantic with excitement over the humpback’s visit. The passengers became at once celebratory and serene, as after a birth. The boat steered toward the docks, everyone chatting about what they’d seen. Some guests disappeared below, switching from colas to cocktails at the bar, before reappearing on the deck.

  “I gotta admit,” Blue said, “that was pretty spectacular. Almost worth all the puking.”

  “I knew we’d see one,” Maya said. “I never lost faith.”

  “Did anyone get any pictures?” Renee asked.

  Blue shook her head regretfully.

  “I didn’t even think to,” Hannah said.

  “That sucks,” Maya said. “If only there was some genius who remembered to... Oh wait! There is.” She held up her phone, grinning.

  “Oh, yay!” Hannah said.

  They all gathered around Maya’s phone.

  “Make sure you text me all the good ones,” Blue said.

  They looked on eagerly as Maya began to scroll and scroll, picture after picture.

  Their smiles faltered.

  “I don’t understand,” Renee said.

  Maya reached the last photo, looked up. “They’re all of Hannah’s hat. That damn thing is bigger than the whale.”

  Blue looked closer and, sure enough, every picture was of Hannah’s yellow brim plus a slice of blue ocean and a tiny splash of white water beyond it.

  “Wait,” Blue said. “Is that the tail?”

  “Yes, I think...” Maya peered closer. “Nope, that’s her ribbon.”

  Hannah made a hangdog face. “Sorry.”

  They all shook their heads, returned to the bench.

  “We still love you,” Maya said. “Just a tiny bit less.”

  Blue leaned back, stretched out her legs. Her nausea had subsided just enough that she had resumed replaying every dumb thing she’d done the night before. Each recollection was worse than the last—the drunken spill of water, the look in his eyes, all the stupid things she said. She wanted to find a small closet in herself, safe from memory and self-recrimination, step inside it, shut the door.

  In front of her a sleepy toddler eyed her warily from over his mother’s shoulder. Who are you to judge me? she thought, staring back. Things are easy now, but just you wait, it’s all downhill from here. He shoved a biscuit into his mouth with his chocolate-stained fist and glared at her. Yeah, that’s right, teethe on
that, little man. She had reached a new low. She was having silent wars with two-year-olds now.

  “I don’t want to go back,” Renee said. “Can we just stay on this boat forever?”

  “Why not?” Maya said. “Can’t get much more adrift than I already am.”

  “Try getting pregnant,” Renee said. “With a cheating fiancé.”

  “You win,” Maya said.

  “On the plus side, I haven’t thought of Darrin in like five hours.”

  “Who?” Maya said.

  “Exactly,” Renee said, and they laughed.

  Blue closed her eyes for a moment, the night before looping in her brain. She thought of that moment of elation when she’d received the message from Jack last week, of the lacey underwear she’d packed so optimistically in her suitcase. Of how hope could turn so swiftly on her. A flash flood of despair. She blinked it away, thought she might be sick again. “You guys,” she said. The ocean was wrinkled with wind now. In the glint of sunlight, it looked like crumpled tinfoil. Meringue-like peaks of white water formed and scattered. A light mist was dampening her outstretched legs. “What if Jack was like that whale?” She wasn’t asking in the hopes of an answer. She didn’t know what she was hoping for.

  “What does that even mean?” Maya said.

  Blue examined her feet in their flip-flops. If she looked at Maya directly, she might cry. Grief gnawed at her, carnivorous, insatiable. It seemed both about Jack and utterly separate, a false corollary.

  “You wait and wait and wait for good things to come along. The really big things—love, the perfect job, some great victory—but what if one of those things shows up and you just...blow it?”

  “Oh, Blue,” Hannah said.

  “First person who says ‘there’s more fish in the sea’ gets thrown overboard, by the way,” Blue said to cut the seriousness.

  Renee sighed, twisted her engagement ring nervously. “You should text him.”

  “No way,” Blue said.

  “He’s not your one big thing,” Maya said. “He’s just a guy. Who you’ve attached too much meaning to.”

  “What’s the saying?” Hannah said. “Don’t confuse a lesson for a soul mate.”

  “So what’s the lesson, then?” Blue said. “And how do you know the difference?” She looked into their blank faces. “And why the hell doesn’t anyone ever have the answers to anything that matters?”

  “Technically Hannah gets paid to have the answers,” Maya said.

  Blue arched an eyebrow at Hannah. “Do I need to send you an email or do you dispense advice on the fly?”

  “Please,” Hannah said. “You’re looking at a girl who sought answers from a carnival psychic.”

  Blue sighed, regret weighing on every inhale. If only she could have a do-over.

  “If it makes you feel better, I think every guy is my whale,” Renee said. “It doesn’t even occur to me to wonder if I actually like them. It’s just, you know, here’s somebody. I bet a lot of people miss out on the right person by thinking that way. Because, God, who has that much patience to wait? That much faith?”

  “Maybe,” Blue said. But it didn’t make her feel any better.

  They all got quiet.

  In front of them, the woman with the toddler was now wiping his chocolate-covered hands with a napkin from her bag. Blue noticed Renee watching them.

  “I’m going to raise this kid without a father,” Renee said slowly, as if that reality was only now settling in. “Just like my mother. Literally a repeat. Why can’t we ever get away from our past?”

  “I don’t know,” Blue said, wondering the same.

  “I’ll end up screwing this kid up for life.”

  “No, you won’t,” Hannah said.

  “Please,” Renee said. “Look at me. I run from conflict. I panic in an emergency. I make dumb choices...”

  “All true,” Maya said calmly, then seemed to notice them gaping at her. “What? It is. Not the part about being like her mother, obviously, but I mean, of course she’s going to screw the kid up.” She uncapped her water bottle and took a long, slow sip, unfazed by the continuing looks they were all giving her. “Everyone screws their kid up. It’s a fact of life. Fortunately there will be other screwed-up kids. Like we were. Who Renee’s screwed-up kid can be screwed-up friends with. And they’ll have good times and bad times. And the cycle continues.”

  “But I don’t want to screw anyone up,” Renee said.

  “Then don’t be a mother,” Maya said.

  “Anyway, I thought we were talking about me and my mistakes,” Blue said.

  “Actually, we were talking about me first and then you interrupted,” Renee said.

  “Enough about anyone’s mistakes!” Maya said. She jumped to her feet, startling all three of them. “Seriously, look where we are.” She thrust her arms wide.

  Behind her the horizon was slowly resolving back into slender white beaches and bursts of plush, tree-lined coast, the sun on its slow dip to the west.

  “I wonder if we can see Nana’s house from here,” Hannah said.

  They all moved to the rails, squinted toward the shore.

  “Is that...Blue’s dignity floating over there?” Maya asked. “Oh, never mind, it’s just a buoy.”

  Blue whacked her on the shoulder.

  “Let’s take a picture,” Hannah said.

  “Okay,” Maya said, “everyone move closer. Hannah, take off the hat.”

  Blue and the others smooshed in beside Maya, and Maya flipped the phone camera so they could see themselves in it. Immediately Blue looked away, unable to bear her own image. It was impossible not to imagine how differently this day would have gone if she’d handled herself better the night before. Maybe Jack would even be with them on the boat. Or she’d be meeting him afterward for a walk on the beach, holding hands by the shoreline as the afternoon lowered behind the cliffs. If only she could have at least kissed him. Just once. Just to know again, just to remember that sweet, blissful aliveness. She would’ve been okay with that. One kiss.

  “Okay everyone, smile,” Maya said.

  Blue forced a smile over the ache. After all, she was with her best friends, her first responders. And if life was going to hurt, then at least there was this, there was sunshine, there was love. She looked at Maya with her disarming smile and warm eyes, at Hannah with her big sunglasses and red curls, at Renee leaning tentatively in beside her. Couldn’t it be enough that she had this? Why did the heart always want more?

  HANNAH

  It was half past five as they left the docks, the hour turned golden and baked to softness. Hannah was drowsy, her body relaxed in a way it usually was not, like she was stoned on so much sunlight.

  “Anyone up for a late-day swim?” Maya asked.

  “I might be up for that,” Hannah said.

  Their eyes caught in the rearview and she saw the surprise and delight in Maya’s face, and it made her want to do that more often, say yes.

  The parking lot was in transition, the all-day surfers strapping their boards to their cars, unhurried and happy, the postwork evening shift pulling up in their trucks and Jeeps, jumping out to check the waves.

  Hannah approached the sand, the Ditch Witch closed for the day, the old wooden bench beside it empty, the seagrass waving in the onshore breeze. The lifeguards had retired. Only a scattering of families remained, a scrappy wet terrier chasing a stick, a girl packing up the tie-dyed shirts she’d been hawking out of her beach bag. Hannah watched two kids running toward the water with their bright boogie boards. It made her wistful to think of how their lives would be filled with many things, love and heartbreak, loss and joy, laughter and regret. This, she understood now, was all that could be predicted. It could be predicted of every life. Every one.

  The sun was tiring now, creating a deeper blue to the ocean, a September-like ch
ill blowing onshore. The air smelled slightly turned, a hint of rot in the sea. A reminder that everything ended. She saw a flash of herself returning to her apartment. Saw her life close and lock. She shivered. Remembered Maya talking about choices.

  “Can’t believe we have to leave tomorrow,” Renee said.

  “Let’s just stay,” Maya said as she and Blue joined them. “What’s another day or ten? I hear the weather will be beautiful.”

  “Say the word and I’ll cancel work,” Blue said.

  Hannah would love to stay on but of course she thought of Henry. Even a few more days would feel like an indulgence. Instinctively she glanced at her phone. Saw a missed call from Vivian. Her nervous heart flinched.

  “Last one in buys dinner,” Maya shouted, throwing off her cover-up. She turned and looked at Hannah and her face changed. “What?”

  Hannah shook her head, hit Return Call and began pacing. Something was wrong. She could feel it. Dread rising, pouring in. She could sink to her knees, be swallowed by life like it was quicksand. She swore it could happen.

  Vivian’s phone went to voice mail. Hannah was panicking now, in need of her Xanax, in need of Vivian to answer the damn phone.

  She called again as the girls stood silently watching.

  “Hello?” Vivian finally answered.

  Hannah headed toward the ocean. Her instincts drove her there, to its monotonous, heaving efforts, its break and rebuild. It goes on, she remembered someone once saying about life. It goes on. She took a breath in order to brace against a moment that might rob her will to do so.

  “Hannah,” Vivian said.

  It was in the way Vivian said her name that Hannah knew for sure the news was bad, and there was a shock in this even as she’d anticipated it. She gripped a rock on the jetty, lowering herself onto it, her body heavy and arthritic with impending sorrow, with resistance to it. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out what was coming.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt your vacation again,” Vivian said.

  Shrieking erupted out of two small children chasing each other in the sand, an absentminded mother beside them gazing past the sea to something beyond it.