The Loose Ends List

by Carrie Firestone

  He’s tall and lacrosse-body lean with brown hair and a strong jaw. He’s shirtless and sweaty and wearing running shorts, chugging a bottle of water and swinging a towel. He rounds the corner and disappears. I think I’ll keep Mystery Guy to myself. I don’t need Janie getting her grubby little paws on him. This one’s mine.

  I’m trying hard not to have scrunch face at the first Mix-and-Mingle dinner, otherwise known as the awkward sit-with-two-strangers-and-talk-about-random-nonsense dinner. They deliberately make us sit four to a table so we can get to know one another better. Wes and I are sitting with Obese Lady and Skinny Guy. Thank God Wes can talk to anyone.

  Skinny Guy is the patient. His name is Dave, and he’s an alcoholic. He’s only forty-seven but has end-stage liver disease, and he says he’s tired of fighting his demons.

  “This one seems to be a stretch,” I say to Wes as we watch them make their way back from the buffet. “How is alcoholism as bad as these other diseases?”

  “Honey, I’d take the cancer card over those kinds of demons any day.” Wes has a point.

  Skinny Dave stinks a little like a homeless person and sips clear liquid from a tall glass. His mom’s name is Barb. They live together and probably sit in front of the TV every night with a bottle of vodka and a vat of ice cream. Oh my God. They’re Mom and Bev.

  “So what kinds of takeout do you guys like to order?” I’m employing the Wes “find something in common” technique.

  “Chinese, sometimes Italian,” the mom says.

  Skinny Dave perks up. “Thai food is my favorite. I love pad Thai with the peanuts. I squeeze in two or three limes. Damn, that’s good.”

  “We have great Thai places in New York.” Wes nods. I almost tell them they should come visit us sometime, but I stop myself. I have a tendency to say things I regret. It’s the Astrid North O’Neill blurt gene. Except Gram doesn’t regret anything she blurts.

  The conversation shifts to freak waves.

  Skinny Dave says he hasn’t been able to sleep with the constant rocking. His mom says she has a fear of a giant freak wave engulfing the ship.

  I think a giant freak wave has already engulfed the ship.

  I’m in my bed scrolling through songs on my bee.

  Somebody knocks on the door, and I jump. I’m edgier than usual these days.

  Janie answers with a face full of zit cream.

  “Girls night in?” It’s Paige, carrying a vat of jelly beans, and our room attendant, Camilla, holding a bucket of ice and a six-pack of beer.

  “Paige!” I yell. “Give me some jelly beans.”

  “Nope. They’re for the game. We’re going to play Never Have I Ever. We’ll get you all geared up for college.”

  Janie slides open the balcony door, and a warm breeze sweeps into our little sorority den.

  “I want to start it,” Janie says. “Camilla, are you staying or dropping off our pillow chocolates?”

  “She’s staying,” Paige says. “I recruited her. She’s never played Never Have I Ever.”

  “In my college, we just drank vodka and fucked. We didn’t need the games.”

  “See, girls? I found a live one,” Paige says.

  Janie opens a beer. “How’s Maddie going to play? She doesn’t drink.”

  “That’s what the jelly beans are for. We’re playing jelly bean Never Have I Ever.”

  Janie gets up. “Wait, I have to get one more player.”

  “No boys allowed,” Paige says.

  “It’s not a boy.”

  Janie runs out of the cabin. Camilla tells me she’s a graduate student from Panama who took time off to do the Wishwell for her doctoral dissertation research, but she actually likes cleaning cabins. She says it’s therapeutic.

  “We’re back.” Janie walks in with Gram in her nightgown and slippers. This should be interesting.

  “Okay, Astrid, it’s simple,” Paige says, handing her a beer and a paper towel full of jelly beans. “Someone says a sentence beginning with ‘never have I ever.’ If you have done whatever the person says, you eat a jelly bean.”

  “Have or haven’t?” Gram pops a jelly bean into her mouth.

  “Have,” we all say.

  “Never have I ever kissed two guys in one night,” Paige says. Camilla and Janie eat jelly beans.

  “Never have I ever had sex in a car,” Janie says. Camilla, Paige, and Gram eat jelly beans.

  Gram takes pity on me. “Never have I ever dumped a bad kisser,” she says.

  We all eat a jelly bean.

  Gram belches loudly. “God, I hate beer.”

  “Maddie, you need to get out more,” Camilla says in her annoyingly sexy Spanish accent.

  “Hey, leave her alone. She’s my little sister,” Paige says.

  Janie comes up with a series of over-the-top Never Have I Evers to mess with Gram.

  “What the hell is ass play?” Gram says. “In my day, ass play was when your husband goosed you in the elevator.” Paige is in hysterics.

  By the end of the game, they’re all sick and I’ve had two jelly beans.

  “You’ll catch up someday,” Janie says, patting me on the head.

  We stay up late, tossing jelly beans to the fish and talking about boys and men and all the deadbeats (Gram’s word) in between.

  Vito and his family are crisping their stubby bodies again and Wheelchair Mark and Burt are sitting in the shade listening to music on their bees.

  Gram and Janie and I are hanging out in the Grotto. Gram claims she’s on her unmarried honeymoon, so now I can’t escape the horrifying visual of Gram’s bony body getting slammed by old Bob Johns.

  “How are you feeling, Gram?” I ask.

  “I’m tired. I have a nagging pain all around my pelvis and lower back like I’ve started my period again. It’s so aggravating. But the doctors are fabulous. They’re giving me meds and keeping me happy.”

  Janie digs her nails into my leg so hard flesh-eating bacteria are probably invading the wound. “Ow! What are you doing?”

  “It’s him. Captain Do Me.” Janie peeks through the grove of trees rising above the Grotto. “My heart is beating out of my chest,” she says, ducking a little.

  “Who, him?” Gram says loudly. “Oh, that’s Ty. He’s one of my doctors.”

  “How is he a doctor?” I ask. “He looks more like a fugitive from one of our lake parties.”

  “He just finished Duke medical school. He’s an intern here, and very passionate about the movement. He’s seen your gram in the buff, girlies. Lucky boy.” Gram waves Do Me over.

  “Hello, Ty. Come meet my granddaughters. They’ve been calling you Captain Do Me. Isn’t that darling?”

  Janie’s face is a deep shade of mortification.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  He grins and stares right at Janie.

  “She’s nineteen, Ty, so she’s perfect for you. And these girls can beat the best of them in science.”

  “Gram, please. Not the science. Leave something to the imagination,” I joke, trying to deflect. I can feel Janie’s humiliation travel through the depths of the Grotto like an electric current.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Ty says. He gives Janie one more smile and walks away.

  “Gram, I can’t believe you,” Janie says. Gram can still trigger the tween in Janie.

  “I broke the ice, didn’t I? Now, don’t put out too quickly with this one. It would be nice to die knowing one grandchild is spoken for.”

  Janie gets up and wraps herself in a towel. “I’m in college, Gram. Stop trying to marry me off.”

  I can’t stop thinking about Mystery Guy. I dragged Aunt Rose around in the wheelchair again this morning, hoping to see him. But no luck. Aunt Rose has become like one of those puppies single guys take to Central Park when they’re trying to pick up women. We ended up sidetracked, talking to Dad, Bob Johns, and Uncle Billy, who were playing poker with Vito. Then we got tied up in the arcade with an old-school game called Whac-A-Mole, where little mole head
s pop up and we hit them over the head with a hammer.

  “Okay, honey, time to hoist my shriveled bum out of the tub. I have to go to group.”

  “Oh, please pull your suit down, Gram. Your tattoo is showing.”

  “So what? I’m not ashamed of it.”

  “What’s group?” I slap a towel around Gram’s waist.

  “It’s on the patients-only floor. We get together and talk about doomsday, and bitch and moan about what pains in the ass our families are, and so on and so forth.”

  “Nice. Have fun with that.”

  Mom and I find Aunt Rose on her balcony tossing popcorn to a flock of seabirds trailing the ship. She flings a handful, and one of the birds head-butts another, then dives into the whitecaps.

  “Ride, Aunt Rose?”

  We take the elevator down to the lobby and push Aunt Rose through the tropical maze of flowering plants and down the windowed corridor to the ballroom. We pause to study the conga line mural and weave through the café. We stop at the chapel where big buffoon Burt is sitting alone in a pew. He sees us and gives an awkward salute.

  “Hey there, ladies,” he says. “Just taking a minute to get my prayer on.”

  “Where’s Mark?” I push Aunt Rose into the chapel. It’s a beautiful room. A stained-glass window spans the outside wall and lets in trickles of light that streak the pews with color.

  “He went to group with Paige.”

  “Wait, I thought group was patients only.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Burt looks at me funny.

  “So she dropped him off?”

  “No. She went with him. Oh—” Burt’s face drops when he realizes he’s breaking bad news. “Paige is a patient. Brain tumor.”

  “Oh my God. That’s terrible,” Mom says. “Poor thing. I assumed her dad was the patient. Well, I’m just sick about this.”

  Somebody had stuck a wad of gum behind one of the pews. I wonder how many pieces the person had to chew to get such a wad. And what would make a person stick it here, in this beautiful room?

  “Mads? You okay, hon?”

  I’m not. I’m not okay.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d like to pray,” Aunt Rose says.

  “How about we give Burt some privacy?” Mom turns the chair toward the door.

  “No, that’s okay. Wheel her over. I’ll bring her back up in a little while.”

  We leave Burt and Aunt Rose in the chapel, and I drop Mom off in the café. I can’t listen to her crap about how fatty the fish is on the ship or how her seasickness patches aren’t working. My big sister is dying.

  Sunsets are big on the Wishwell. Today they’re playing a song on our bees, to remind us that the sunset will peak in fifteen minutes. Eddie invites us to meet at the pool for cocktails and photos.

  I’m under the covers when the song comes on. Beethoven or Bach. Who the hell knows?

  Camilla buzzes three times. She wants to get in to do turndown. I decide I’m just going to talk to Paige. I can’t avoid her.

  Everyone is on the deck, clean and shiny, dressed for dinner and poker and other stupid things. Gram and Bob are laughing over cocktails with Gloria, the bald woman with the purple lipstick, and her husband, the minister. I find Paige sitting cross-legged on the Grotto steps with Grace on her lap.

  “Little sister, come sit with us.” She pats the step next to her. “Gracie and I are guessing what colors we’ll see tonight.”

  “Paige, why didn’t you tell me about you?”

  Her smile never changes. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I feel like you should have told me.”

  “Why? So you could feel sorry for me and treat me like a fragile little paper puppet?”

  “What’s a fragile little paper puppet?”

  “Ha-ha. Maddie. What do you want to know?” She kisses Gracie’s head.

  “I don’t know, like, what? How?”

  “Who? Why?” she says. “All the newspaper reporter questions?”

  “Ba.” Grace reaches toward her bottle. Paige sticks it in her mouth and cradles Grace in her arms.

  “I had a bad seizure in the middle of the night, and they found a tumor deep inside my head. I refused treatment because I was pregnant.” She moves her lips from side to side like she’s trying to stifle a cry.

  “Could they have treated it?”

  “No, not really. I started chemo right after Gracie was born, which broke my heart because I wasn’t able to breastfeed her.” She looks at me. “You would not believe how bitchy other women can be. They judged me mercilessly for not breastfeeding.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Yeah, it is. So anyway, the tumor keeps growing, and the symptoms are getting worse. I heard about the Wishwell from a cancer friend at Cleveland Clinic. And here we are.”

  “I’m sorry, Paige.”

  “Can’t we just be sorority sisters and not get all deep and depressed?”

  “I don’t know the right thing to say right now.” I give her a weak smile. “Like a month ago, my big drama was cleaning my friend’s puke off my minivan floor.”

  “So then don’t say anything. Just be normal. I give you permission to completely ignore reality.” She pats my leg. “It’ll be good practice for college.”

  The Beethoven or Bach song fills the deck as deep purples and a narrow shock of orange spread low across the sky.

  “Fine, Paige. I’ll completely ignore reality. But only because I’m your pledge and I have to do as I’m told.”

  I force a smile, wanting so badly to completely ignore reality.

  Baby Grace pushes her bottle away, leans over, and plants her slimy mouth on my kneecap. She sucks my stubbly knee as Paige and I send Dad to get frozen yogurts with sprinkles. He marches toward the yogurt stand, his conductor’s arms flailing to the climax of Beethoven (or Bach).

  I skip the pizza party under the stars and curl up in a ball on our balcony.

  “What’s wrong?” Janie squeezes onto my lounge chair.

  I tell her about Paige.

  “I want to be her friend and just be normal. But it’s so, so sad.” I think of Paige laughing with baby Grace, dancing with Lane, tossing jelly beans off the balcony. “She’s just like us.”

  “We have to be what she needs us to be right now, Maddie. However much it sucks for us, imagine how Paige is feeling.” I turn over, and she spoons me. We stay like that for a long time, two cousins getting way too big to share a lounge chair, listening to the surf smash against the ship. At some point I must fall asleep, because I wake with a wicked cramp in my neck. Janie’s singing in the shower, and there’s a worry doll on my pillow.

  Janie hated her parents’ divorce more than most people hate divorces. She was in middle school at the time and went ballistic. She did shots and stole Aunt Rose’s back pain pills. She slept with three guys in one weekend and texted pictures of herself smoking weed to Aunt Mary. Nobody knew what to do, so Gram took us to Aunt Rose’s Charleston house. Gram hoped Janie would sip iced tea, read Faulkner, and heal. But she didn’t. She crashed on the daybed in the den and barely got up for a month.

  When she finally agreed to take a shower, Brit and I brushed her hair, doused her with perfume, and half carried her to a Mexican restaurant. The kind Guatemalan lady who delivered our homemade tortillas gave Janie a tiny patchwork bag of worry dolls. There were seven or eight of them, each the size of a pinkie toe. The lady told Janie to put them under her pillow and tell them her worries, and everything would be just fine.

  Janie is not the type to listen to random restaurant workers, and she’s definitely not the type to talk to miniature dolls. But I guess she was desperate, because every night she would take out the dolls, carefully line them up under her pillow, and close her eyes tight. I swear those dolls saved my cousin.

  “Thank you for my worry doll. I have lots to tell her,” I say when Janie gets out of the shower.

  “You’re welcome.” She stops toweling off her hair and looks at me with
a very serious expression. “Her name is Esperanza.”

  I’m still awake at two AM, so I decide to go for a run. It’s cool on the track, and the sky is thick with stars.

  Uncle Billy comes full speed around the bend and nearly takes me down.

  “Mads, why are you still up?” he pants.

  “Couldn’t sleep. Why are you still up? Don’t you go to bed at nine?”

  “Nah, my circadian rhythms are way off.” He gulps from his water bottle. “Come on, you promised you’d train with me for the marathon one of these days.”

  “Okay, but you know I can’t run and talk at the same time.”

  Uncle Billy stays with me, even though I can’t keep his usual pace. We stretch a little, and suddenly I’m really tired.

  “We should do this every night,” I say.

  “Or on the nights Wes doesn’t get me drunk. He’s telling me he can only tolerate me after we’ve both had a few cocktails.”

  “That sounds healthy.”

  We lie on our stomachs and dunk our heads in the pool.

  “Hey,” Uncle Billy calls out.

  “What’s up?” I hear a guy’s voice as I’m pulling my face out of the water.

  It’s him. Uncle Billy just said hi to Mystery Guy, who is on the other side of the deck. He looks back and gets into the elevator.

  “Who is that?” I say.

  “I have no idea. Crew, maybe?”

  I’m hoping he didn’t notice me lying on the deck with my face in the pool.

  When I get back to the room, I scroll through the crew photos on my bee. He’s not there. If Paige is a patient, he could be, too. But he’s not on the guest list either.

  Mystery Guy is somewhere near me right now. Above me. Below me. So close, and yet so far.

  EIGHT

  THE SHIP JERKS back and forth about a million times and stops in the middle of a bay not far from Jamaica, our first official stop. Aunt Rose and I are waiting for everyone in the lobby.

  “Aunt Rose, how are you doing?” I talk to her like she’s a deaf immigrant.

  “Oh, I feel pretty good in the mornings. This is a great adventure, huh, Maddie?”