Miri
Henry found Miri, limp and exhausted, on the steps outside their house. She had no idea how long she’d been there, only that she was cried out, her chest so heavy she thought she might never get up. Some boy she didn’t know had come by on a bike and dumped her books on the front lawn but she made no move to get them. When Henry pulled up and got out of the car she fell into his arms. “I know…I know…” He held her. But he didn’t know. He couldn’t know. “Come on,” he said, “get in.” He opened the car door for her and she got inside.
“Where are we going?” she asked, as he started up the car and pulled away.
“How about down the shore? How does that sound?”
She loved the shore and he knew it.
He drove for an hour and a half, stopping once at a phone booth to call Irene to tell her where they were, and not to wait for them for supper.
When they got to Bradley Beach they took off their shoes and socks, leaving them under the boardwalk, while they walked along the shore, letting the waves drizzle out across their bare feet. Rusty called the smell of the sea, the salty air “the ultimate cure for whatever ails you,” but Miri didn’t think it could wash away her sadness today, even if she jumped in fully dressed.
“You want to talk about it?” Henry asked.
“I hate secrets,” Miri said.
“I don’t blame you.”
“Did you know?” she asked.
“About Rusty and Dr. O?”
Miri nodded.
“No one knew.”
“Until I found them, you mean.”
“I think they wanted to be found—not by you, not the way it happened, but they wanted it known. Otherwise they’d never have been at home that day.”
“Natalie called Rusty a whore.”
“Poor Natalie, if she feels that to defend her mother she has to bad-mouth Rusty. Someday she’ll grow up and figure it out for herself.”
“Figure what out?”
“There are two sides to every story.”
“Always?”
“Almost always.” Henry took her hand. “Rusty deserves to be happy,” he said, “and so does Arthur. He’s a good man, Miri.”
As if she didn’t know. As if she hadn’t dreamed of having a father just like him. “How can a good man leave his wife and children?”
“We don’t know about his marriage, Miri. We don’t even know that he is leaving his children.”
“Do you mean the children might go with him?” That would change everything, and not for the better, now that Natalie hated her. She was glad Steve would be going away to college. She didn’t want to live in the same house with him. He barely acknowledged her existence. And Fern? Fern was a noodge but Miri wouldn’t mind her that much. They could get a babysitter for her, maybe another Mrs. Barnes.
“You’re asking questions only Rusty and Arthur can answer,” Henry said. “I’m sure they’re going to sit down with you and explain everything.”
“Oh, no!”
“What?”
“Tonight. Six-thirty. Pizza from Spirito’s. I forgot.”
He checked his watch. “You’re already late. You should call.”
“Would you do it for me?”
“It would be better if you did it yourself.”
She called from a phone booth along the boardwalk, feeding coins into the box as fast as Henry handed them to her. When Rusty answered, Miri said, “It’s me. I forgot.”
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Rusty said. “No excuses.”
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
She didn’t tell Henry until after they’d stopped at the hotel where the wedding would be, until after he’d shown her the garden where the chuppah would be draped with Grandpa Max’s tallis and a white lace tablecloth brought from the old country by Leah’s grandmother. Everything else would be decorated with peonies, Leah’s favorite flower, in shades ranging from pale blush to deep pink. She didn’t tell him until he asked, “Would you like to bring Mason to the wedding? I know we didn’t send him a proper invitation but—”
“We broke up,” she managed to say, holding back tears. If only she could have a do-over she’d take a different route home from school, or she’d have gone to Pamel’s with her girlfriends, or maybe to the library. Then she wouldn’t have run into him or seen Polina and Stash.
“You broke up?” Henry said. “I’m so sorry.”
She leaned against him and nestled her head against his chest. “He has another girlfriend. All this time he’s had another girlfriend.”
Henry shook his head. “I can’t believe this. Are you sure?”
“She cooks at Janet. She has a little boy. He says he tried to end it with her…”
“But you don’t believe him?”
She shrugged. “Do you?”
“I don’t know Mason as well as you.”
“Would you ever lie like that to Leah?”
“Never.”
“I don’t see how he could have lied to me.”
“Maybe he didn’t know how to tell you. He’s still a boy, Miri. He has a lot of stuff to figure out.”
“I told him I never want to see him again.”