“If I started dating right away, yes. But this isn’t really right away, is it?”
Around her she heard snippets of conversation: Patriots preseason and couldn’t get a plumber in and boarding school and up to Ogunquit.
Rebecca looked troubled. “I think I thought you were going to be on my side. Tell me I was right.”
“I am on your side,” said Sherri. “I am, I promise. But I think Daniel might be right about this one. I don’t think you need to hide him.”
She watched a wide range of emotions travel their way across Rebecca’s face: confusion, defensiveness, maybe even a little fear. A small helping of hope.
“Just consider it,” said Sherri. It felt really good to step outside of her own problems and into somebody else’s for a moment, or an afternoon; it felt more than good to consider the possibility that she might be helpful. “Think about it,” she continued. “And if you need to talk more about it, you know I’m here.” She picked up her sangrita and went to town on it.
“Two more,” she told the pretty, tan waitress. “One for me, and one for my friend here.”
48.
The Squad
What we heard about the Tyler/Alexa breakup was this. We heard that immediately when Tyler got back from Silver Lake toward the end of July he stopped by the Cottage during one of Alexa’s shifts. She refused to talk to him while she was working.
One of us had gone to get a Ringer one evening after dinner and witnessed the whole thing. We won’t say who it was, and also we would never say that the person in question should not have been consuming a Ringer, claiming as she did to be lacto-intolerant and eating low-carb. That is not our place.
The person in the Cottage bought her Ringer, walked up to the beach and back again, and upon returning to her car saw Alexa and Tyler arguing near Alexa’s Jeep.
Tyler accused Alexa of ghosting him the whole time he was in Silver Lake, and Alexa shot back that one look at @silvergurl’s Instagram told her that it didn’t look like Tyler was thinking too much about Alexa.
Alexa then asked Tyler what was the point of continuing their relationship anyway, since he’d be headed to UMass in the fall and she’d be long gone herself. (Alexa was going to Colby, according to Rebecca, but some of us who had watched her video on understanding current market conditions swore that she’d mentioned something about moving to L.A.)
“So you’re just, like, giving up on us?” Tyler asked, perplexed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” said Alexa. Cucumber cool, according to our source.
We heard that Tyler was insanely angry and that he shouted, “You’re going to regret this, Alexa Thornhill! For as long as you live you’re going to regret this!”
The person in question waited in the shadows at that point, in case Alexa needed help. Because Tyler was known to have a temper.
Alexa said, “I doubt it,” and drove away in her Jeep. Tyler ran after the Jeep, but he didn’t get very far, because lacrosse season had ended some time ago, and he wasn’t in shape.
Okay, it was Gina, all right? If you must know. It was Gina who heard and reported on the whole thing. But please don’t tell anybody that we told you that. We promised we’d keep it to ourselves.
Next we heard that Tyler immediately started dating Zoe Butler-Gray, whom he’d taken to Blue Inn earlier in the summer.
We also heard that he’d never taken Zoe Butler-Gray to Blue Inn.
We heard that Zoe Butler-Gray worked at Blue Inn and Tyler had given her a ride one day—they were old family friends.
We heard that Blue Inn was closing.
And also that it was expanding.
And that Alexa, with her Silk Stockings money, was one day going to buy Blue Inn outright.
After that, when Alexa wasn’t with Cam Hartwell she was often spotted around town with her little sister, Morgan, and Katie Griffin.
Speaking of Cam Hartwell. We did seek out Cam’s checkout line when he was working at Market Basket that summer. He was incredibly efficient with the scanner, and managed to make a little conversation at the same time, which wasn’t easy. It was a real shame, what he got caught up in later in the summer.
August
49.
Rebecca
“There are way too many people using plastic straws around here,” said Morgan severely. “Don’t they know that the Pacific garbage patch is now the size of Russia?”
Rebecca, who had been planning on indulging in a cold brew at Commune, respectfully reconsidered. After shopping they were planning to go for poke bowls at Lolo Poke. Rebecca understood the folly of this endeavor—Morgan would get a build-your-own bowl but would build it with only rice and cucumber—but she herself wanted the signature Kai bowl. She’d noticed that since she’d begun dating Daniel her appetite had begun to return, tiptoeing in quietly like a teenager home past curfew.
They were on Pleasant Street, coming out of Pretty Poppy, where Morgan wanted to look at earrings and scrunchies. She was clutching her wallet but in the end had decided against parting with any of her allowance—she was actually rather tightfisted. They had parked Bernice outside, her leash looped around a pole.
“Can we get Bernice one of those dog cones from Harbor Creamery?” asked Morgan. “Just as a little treat?”
“Honey, no,” said Rebecca. “You know we have to be careful with her caloric intake. It’s not good for her heart or her joints to be overweight.”
“Also it’s bathing suit season,” agreed Morgan. To Bernice she said, “I’m sorry,” and rubbed the top of her head. “I know, the struggle is real.”
Rebecca was only half listening, because she had caught sight of a calendar item on her phone: first tuition payment for Colby due on the fifteenth of August. She hadn’t gotten a bill, though. It must have been sent through the student portal—she’d heard another parent complaining recently about how colleges communicated with students more than parents even though parents were obviously the ones paying. It was ironic, since the complaint about this generation of parents was that they did too much for their children.
When she looked up she saw a figure with a familiar stride moving toward them on the other side of the street. Daniel. She tried to catch his eye and shake her head warningly, but he was smiling broadly and had his hand lifted in a wave. No, she thought. No, no, no. Then she realized he wasn’t looking at her at all. “Hello, Ms. Thornhill!” she heard him say in his teacher voice, and he moved on down the street without so much as a glance their way. (Even as she was relieved, Rebecca was also just the teeniest bit insulted.)
“It’s Alexa,” said Morgan. “Look, Alexa’s over there. Let’s go over.”
“Let’s stay here.” Rebecca didn’t want to risk Bernice recognizing Daniel; Bernice could be capricious and occasionally standoffish, but she and Daniel walked together in Maudslay often enough that she thought Bernice might greet Daniel with a telltale tail thump. A telltail thump.
“She’s with a boy,” reported Morgan. “She’s holding hands with a boy who isn’t Tyler. She’s holding hands with the boy we went to Canobie Lake with.”
“She broke up with Tyler,” said Rebecca. Alexa had told Rebecca the story—@silvergurl, the argument in the parking lot of the Cottage—but apparently she hadn’t told Morgan. She turned. It was all true. Alexa was holding hands with a boy who wasn’t Tyler.
“Over here!” Morgan called. “Alexa, come over here!”
Alexa crossed the street, dropping hands with the boy, who followed one step behind. The boy had blond hair. He wore khaki shorts and a golf shirt. In Rebecca’s day he would have been called preppy, but she didn’t know if that was a term anyone used any longer. Probably not. Most of the terms and phrases she had once used had sailed away on a stiff breeze. Cheesy. Dweeb. Nobody puts baby in a corner.
“Hey, Mom,” said Alexa. “Hi, Morgs.” She knelt down and greeted Bernice. “This is Cam,” she said, gesturing to the boy. She shot Rebecca a look that said, Not now, no quest
ions, so Rebecca just smiled and shook the hand Cam held out. Cam looked directly at Rebecca when he greeted her, which she appreciated. Tyler had always looked down.
“Morgan and I are acquainted,” Cam says. “Nice to see you again, Morgan.”
“We’re going to get poke bowls,” said Morgan. “If you want to come.”
“We just had smoothies,” said Cam. “But I love the Kai bowl.”
“Did you get straws with your smoothies?” asked Morgan.
“Compostable,” said Alexa, and Morgan looked relieved.
“I’m trying to get this one to go to the driving range with me,” Cam said, pointing to Alexa. “But so far she’s resisting.”
Rebecca expected Alexa to roll her eyes at that but when she looked at her daughter, she saw that her face was—well, for lack of a better word, alight. Glittering with something familiar. It was only after Cam and Alexa had continued down the road that Rebecca realized that Alexa’s face was a mirror image of how her own often felt since she’d started seeing Daniel: it was the rudimentary, timorous, budding image of genuine happiness.
Morgan, Rebecca, and Bernice crossed the street and paused in front of the dress shop.
“That would look pretty on Alexa,” said Morgan, pointing at a dress.
“You think so? It’s not really her style, though. Don’t you think it’s sort of conservative?” The dress had capped sleeves and diagonal stripes in alternating colors, purple, dark green, and black. It was pretty, but it looked a little lawyerly. Alexa generally favored ripped denim shorts and spaghetti-strap tank tops, or, when she dressed up, dresses and tops that only a teenager could pull off. And not just any teenager.
Morgan pursed her lips and studied the dress. “Not for every day,” she said finally. “But it would be perfect for Silk Stockings.”
“For what?”
“For Silk Stockings. Alexa’s YouTube channel.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. “For what?”
Morgan looked like a teacher who had to explain a very basic concept to a particularly slow student. “Her YouTube channel,” she said. “Where she explains about the stock market and stuff. We all watch it. Me and my friends. Don’t you watch it too?”
This was how Rebecca knew she was thrown entirely off guard: she didn’t make Morgan repeat her sentence with my friends and I.
50.
Sherri
On a Wednesday in the beginning of August Sherri went to meet her transition counselor, Louise, at the mall. It was really nice, that they gave you a follow-up visit with your counselor to see how you were getting along in your new life. She was trying to find the silver lining in every situation. My witness protection program comes with free follow-up at no additional cost! I would definitely recommend this program to a friend!
They met at the food court, at one of the dingy center tables that had been recently vacated by a mother and two little kids and so was strewn with crumbs and streaks of who-knows-what. Louise got to work efficiently with a thin food-court napkin.
Sherri hadn’t seen Louise since the grim motel where they’d spent their “transition time,” and seeing her now, with the noise of the shopping mall swirling around them, she felt like hugging her. But she knew she couldn’t.
“You’re looking wonderful!” said Louise, beaming at Sherri. Sherri knew this was a lie. Every time she looked in the mirror she felt like she was living and reliving a bad, bad dream: her hair so plain, her clothing so loose and unflattering. Bags under her eyes big enough to fit shopping into. As soon as she’d saved enough credit, she might avail herself of some of Derma-You’s services. “You look like you got a little bit of sun?” Louise said.
“Well, yes,” said Sherri. “I—we, we’ve been to the beach a couple of times.” She put a hand to her cheek and thought about Jan’s eagle eye on her sunspots.
“Ah!” said Louise. “Yes. The beaches up this way are supposed to be marvelous.” She beamed some more. “How are you finding everything . . . socially? And with the house? And the job? I’m so happy to hear about the job. I was really glad we were able to make that happen for you.”
Did Louise really want to hear about the intricacies of the social world, about Katie having been left out of the Boda Borg birthday party, about Sherri’s gaffes? Did she want to hear about the leaky faucet in the bathroom, and the way Miss Josephine banged on the wall when Katie had one of her nightmares? Was Louise somebody Sherri would be able to call upon, like an old friend, when she had a down moment and needed somebody to lend an ear?
No. Louise was a paid employee of the U.S. Marshals Service, a woman doing her job, a woman who possibly had to miss a son’s baseball game or a good friend’s birthday so she could travel up here and sit with Sherri in the food court of a mall and make sure she wasn’t going to blow her cover.
“All good,” said Sherri. “All very, very good. We’re really just so grateful for everything, for the fresh start.”
“And do you feel as if your new identity has been compromised in any way, Sherri? As though you or Katie have let anything slip?”
“No. Not in any way.” Sherri sat up a little straighter when she said this, as if she were back in school, looking for the teacher’s praise. What a good little government witness you are, Sherri! (She had not actually been a wonderful student. She’d been solidly average; she had never cared that much about school, truth be told. It turned out she was much better at witnessing.)
Louise stood. Sherri stood also. Louise said, “I’d shake your hand, Sherri, but you know how it is. We’re just supposed to be two old friends, meeting up on our lunch hour.”
“Of course,” said Sherri. “And in fact I do need to get back to work!” They were fairly strict about the lunch hours at Derma-You. What she wanted to say instead to Louise was, “Don’t go! Please please don’t go!” It felt to Sherri like when Louise left she’d be taking the very last vestige of Sherri’s old life with her, leaving only this shell, this brown-haired stranger.
Louise must have seen something in Sherri’s face because she did reach across the table and touch her fingers briefly to the top of Sherri’s hand.
“It will get easier, in time,” Louise said. “Believe me. It will get easier.”
51.
The Squad
July had just melted into August when Melanie went to the North Shore mall. She had to return a bathing suit for Molly.
She was heading out of the exit near the food court when she noticed Sherri. Melanie did a double take, not quite sure if it was Sherri or not. It was. Sherri was sitting at one of the food-court tables, across from a woman Melanie had never seen before. The other woman was small, with brown hair, wearing a blue dress with a collar. Neither woman had any food in front of her, according to Melanie. Not that you’d voluntarily eat at the mall food court, right? Not with the Cheesecake Factory right there, not with Burton’s Grill! But still. It was odd, to be sitting at that table, without any food.
Melanie told us she got a funny feeling in her stomach. Not like anything bad was going on, exactly. We’re not implying anything untoward, or even anything toward. We’re just telling a story. We’re simply saying that it was an interesting place to see Sherri Griffin. She certainly wasn’t hitting Nordstrom, if you know what we mean. The circumstances of her meeting seemed to be somewhat mysterious.
That’s all we’re saying.
Mysterious.
There might be more to her than meets the eye, texted Melanie to all of us later.
(It could be noted here that Rebecca was left off of this group text, Melanie having wisely understood that Rebecca and Sherri had formed a friendship outside the group. Please see previous entries about the trip to Salisbury Beach, and the girls going off to Canobie Lake, la-di-da, as if nobody else would want to be in on an annual tradition. But we digress.)
Melanie followed her “meets the eye” text with a series of emojis: a few different smileys, the little guy with his teeth showing, the LOL and
the single tear emoji.
But then, that was Melanie. She never understood how to choose just one emoji to make her point.
52.
Alexa
Alexa dreamed that she was inside the Pink House. She had passed this house on the way to Plum Island a million times, as a passenger, as a driver, on a bike, once on foot, but she had given very little thought to it. All she knew was that it was widely rumored to be a spite house, built in the 1920s by a man for his ex-wife who demanded a replica of their home as part of their divorce settlement. He put it in the middle of a salt marsh—that was the spite part.
Wasn’t it just like a guy, to do something like that for no freaking reason other than that he could?
As far as Alexa was aware, nobody she knew had ever been inside the Pink House, though people had speculated far and wide about what the interior looked like.
The dream was shot like a movie, so that first she saw the outside of the Pink House, with the narrow stone path leading up to it. The camera zoomed in on a close-up of the chipped pink paint, the sign that said government property—no trespassing! Birds nested in the cupola.
Then the dream Google-earthed her into the center of the house, and up a rickety staircase to a bedroom. The bedroom was decorated with an ornate armoire, a dusty oval full-length mirror and a four-poster bed. There was a woman lying in bed, or a girl. She was dressed in a cobwebby wedding dress. Miss Havisham?
The camera cut again, and now Alexa was looking down at the wedding dress. She was Miss Havisham. Left at the altar? She fingered the heavy silk. She looked at her arms, which were covered by lace. This couldn’t really be happening. Alexa would never, ever choose a long-sleeved wedding dress.
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