The Smart One

Chapter 5





The house at the shore looked like it belonged in a fairy tale. When Claire was little, she used to call it the Gingerbread House, because it was tan and pink with sculpted posts, and rising turrets that looked like the perfect place for hiding a princess. She’d been there every year since she was a baby. Even the year she was in college, when she had her own shore house with friends in Ocean City, she still stayed at the Gingerbread House for the last two weeks of August.

She’d pretended to be annoyed that summer, pretended that her parents were making her stay with them, but really she was grateful. She’d been sharing a room with Lainie, which meant that she was also sharing a room with Brian. The room smelled like mildewy towels and had two twin beds with thin mattresses that dipped in the middle. Every night, Claire had to get upstairs before Lainie and Brian, put on her Discman, face the wall, and pray for sleep so that she could ignore whatever happened when they came in. The alternative was to sleep on the couch downstairs, which always felt wet and smelled worse than the bedroom—a mix of feet and old cheese.

There was sand all over the house, dirty dishes everywhere, and every morning Claire woke up sunburned and hungover. She was filled with relief when it was time to go to the Gingerbread House. She packed up her clothes quickly, saying, “This sucks, I can’t believe I’m missing the end of the summer here. Yeah, my parents are so annoying.”

Claire loved the Gingerbread House, loved waking up to the sound of waves and the smell of sand. It was part of the reason she’d finally agreed to go this year. Well, that and also because she didn’t have enough money in her account to pay September’s rent.

She’d taken the train to Philly on Saturday, and her parents and Martha had picked her up at the station and they’d all headed right for the shore. Everyone was in a great mood. Her dad was whistling, her mom was almost bouncing up and down in her seat, and Martha wasn’t discussing any recent tragedies. Claire started to feel calm for the first time in months. This was exactly what she needed. She had three new books to read, and the thought of lying on the beach and resting in the sun sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world. And then when the time was right, she’d tell her parents that she was broke. And moving home.

But that would all come later. She could wait until the end of the week to fill them in. Actually, it was preferable, since she could just leave right after. In the meantime, she’d enjoy her vacation, go for a walk on the beach or the boardwalk. Eat saltwater taffy. Just relax.

When they were younger, all of the cousins stayed in the same room. Cathy, Martha, Claire, Drew, and Max were all tucked away in bunk beds and sleeping bags. One summer, Martha forgot to put sunscreen on her feet and they burned, badly. She’d insisted that the fan in the room had to stay pointing right at her feet to cool them down, instead of circulating the room like it normally did. They’d all disagreed, of course. But as soon as Martha thought they were all asleep, she’d pull the lever on the fan to make it stop, and one of the other kids would realize it and yell, “Martha!” But they were all laughing, not really annoyed, just thrilled with their own little game they’d created.

Had they ever slept during those summers? They must have at some point, but Claire didn’t remember it. She remembered sandy beds and Cathy telling them stories about girls that were kidnapped. “I knew a girl,” she said, “that was taken right out of her room, pulled right through the window.”

“You did not,” Claire said. But she wasn’t sure. Cathy always sounded sure.

Usually, as they were drifting off to sleep, Drew or Max would fart loudly and all the girls would scream, and there’d be a big to-do over airing out the room and running into the hall. Weezy and Maureen tried their best to get them back to their beds, yelling threats and using their full names, “Claire Margaret, Martha Maureen, Catherine Mary.” It rarely worked.

During the days, they’d run as a pack, going to the beach and then to the boardwalk to play skeet ball and walk around. The girls would get wrapped braids in their hair, feeling very special and exotic when school started and they still had a tiny seashell attached to their hair.

They always went to the same little candy store. It was made to look like one of those old-fashioned places, with bins of colored candy balls, swizzle sticks, and fudge. They always chose Atomic FireBalls and Super Lemons—candy that was more pain than pleasure, that tested the will of all the sunburned kids that ate it. They’d stand in a circle outside the store, count to three, and pop the little sugar balls into their mouths. They’d groan and scream, wriggle back and forth and bend over laughing in a mix of agony and total pleasure, drooling colored sugar and waiting to see who could keep the candy in their mouth the longest. Martha always won. Usually the others would have to spit the candy out in their hands, take a break, and try again.

It was funny—her cousins hadn’t come to the shore in years, but whenever she thought about it, she imagined them there. The house had been redone and the sets of bunk beds in the big room replaced with a huge king bed. But still, when Claire pictured the house, she saw all of them bunked down in the big room, scaring the bejeezus out of each other and laughing until they thought they were going to die.

THEY ARRIVED AT THE HOUSE a little after five o’clock, and when they opened the front door, they heard music playing and saw smoke coming from the back patio. They heard laughing, and even though they all knew it was Max because his car was right out front, and because he’d told them he’d arrived the night before, Weezy stepped in nervously and called, “Hello? Max?” as if an intruder had broken into the house and started grilling out back.

Max appeared at the screen door with a big smile on his face. “Hello, family,” he said. He raised a spatula in the air. “Cleo and I decided to cook you a welcome meal!”

He was pretty drunk, Claire could tell, and she wondered what time he’d started drinking. Weezy just clapped her hands together. “Oh, Max,” she said. “How sweet is that?”

It would, no doubt, be something she talked about for months, the way Max cooked for them out of the blue; went to the grocery store all by himself, with no one asking (as if he were an incompetent), and then made dinner, like he was performing a miracle of some sort. Once, when Max was in high school, he’d folded towels that were in the dryer and Weezy had gone on about it for weeks, until Martha said, “Claire and I fold laundry all the time,” to try to shut her up. It was one of the few times that they’d been on the same side, Claire and Martha, but they were just so sick of listening to Weezy talk about Max and his amazing laundry abilities.

Max turned to Claire and gave her a hug that lifted her off the ground. “Clairey!” he said. “Clairey’s here.” He set her down gently and Claire laughed. This was, of course, why he was Weezy’s favorite, after all. He was adorable and charming, even when a little bit tipsy—maybe especially when he was a little bit tipsy. He turned to Martha and bowed. “Welcome, miss,” he said.

Cleo walked in from the patio then, carrying an empty platter and wearing nothing but a bikini. “Oh, you’re here already,” she said. “We thought we’d be done cooking by the time you got here.”

“Well, this is such a treat,” Weezy said. “Personal chefs on our first night here.” Cleo smiled and looked down at the ground. Then Weezy hugged Cleo, which must have been awkward since the girl was practically naked. Claire noticed that her father stayed on the far side of the kitchen and just waved. She didn’t blame him.

“We made chicken and salad,” Cleo said. “We thought you’d be hungry when you got here.”

“That we are,” Will said. He looked around the kitchen, still averting his eyes from Cleo. “You didn’t happen to pick up any brewskies, did you, son?”

Claire closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. Her father had never used the word brewskies in his whole life. He’d never called Max “son” either. She was embarrassed for him, but figured it wasn’t fair to judge. After all, when you had a twenty-one-year-old near supermodel standing in all of her naked glory in the kitchen of your summerhouse, you were bound to be a little rattled.

She would change eventually, Claire figured, but it never happened. Cleo ate dinner in her bikini, she cleared the table in her bikini, and then she sat and had a glass of wine with the whole family in her bikini.

When Maureen arrived later that night, she walked in, looked right at Cleo, and let out an “Oh!” Then she tried to recover and said, “I guess you’re ready for the beach.” Cleo just smiled.

And that was just the first night. It seemed that Cleo intended to wear nothing but her bikini for the entire vacation. In the mornings, she was in the kitchen, sipping coffee, bikini-clad.

“I mean, she’s great, but don’t you think it’s a little weird that she never puts anything else on?” Claire asked Martha. Martha just shrugged, which bugged Claire. Normally, this was the kind of thing that Martha would jump right in on, getting upset and whispering behind Cleo’s back. But she barely seemed to notice.

“I can’t believe we have to share a room,” Claire went on. This surely would make Martha angry. “Just because Mom doesn’t want Max and Cleo in the same room, we have to share. They each get their own space.” Martha just shrugged again, and Claire grabbed a towel and left the room.

ON SUNDAY NIGHT, THE WHOLE FAMILY sat outside making s’mores after dinner and Claire drank glass after glass of white wine. Weezy kept talking about what activities everyone wanted to do, like they were at some sort of summer camp; Will read the paper and called Max “son”; Maureen kept getting up to sneak around the house and have a cigarette, like they all couldn’t smell the smoke on her when she got back; Martha was lost in her own thoughts and stared at the stars; and Max and Cleo used any excuse to touch each other, which would have been inappropriate for a family vacation anyway, but since Cleo was half-naked, it was downright pornographic.

“Aren’t you cold?” Claire asked.

Cleo laughed. “No, I never get cold at the beach. It’s like the sun warms me all day and stays with me into the night. I could live at the beach.”

Claire snorted into her glass. Then she let herself admit that if she looked like Cleo did in a bikini, she would consider wearing one as much as possible too.

The night ended with everyone playing Scrabble, which Claire thought would make her feel better since she would surely win. She ignored it when Weezy said to Cleo, “Watch out for Martha! She’s a killer at this game.” Claire wanted to point out that Martha almost never won Scrabble. It was Claire’s game.

It turned out that in addition to having a body that was meant to live in a bikini, Cleo also had an incredible vocabulary. After she got a triple word score by turning dish into dishabille, Claire made a comment about memorizing the dictionary and Cleo actually blushed.

“My first nanny was French, and she always had trouble with English. She was always asking me, ‘What’s the word for this?’ and I wanted to make sure that I could tell her, so I kept a dictionary with me. Then it just became a habit. I read dictionaries all the time. And thesauruses. I just love words, I guess,” Cleo said. She shrugged and smiled a little bit and Claire made herself smile back. Of course Cleo read the dictionary for fun. If life was going to be unfair, it was going to go all the way.

The end of the Scrabble game was a bit blurry to Claire, but she did remember dropping her glass of wine on the floor, the glass smashing and spraying everywhere. She tried to clean it up, until Maureen came in to help and sent her out of the kitchen because she was barefoot.

CLAIRE WOKE UP ON MONDAY, groaned, and rolled over to bury her face in her pillow. She could feel a burn on the edge of her scalp where her sunscreen had, of course, worn off the day before. She could hear everyone downstairs in the kitchen, dishes clinking, her dad telling some story about peaches, or something that sounded like that. Claire pulled the covers over her head. If she waited long enough, maybe they would all go to the beach without her.

At first, Claire thought she’d tell Weezy about her situation. Then she changed her mind and thought she’d tell Will, because he’d be calmer and would keep Weezy calm too. But then she thought no, that wouldn’t work. Will would just sit there and listen, not sure how he was supposed to respond. Will was never the one they would go to when they asked permission for anything. And if it ever happened that they did come across him first, and asked to go to a friend’s house or anything of the sort, Will always looked surprised to see them, like he couldn’t quite place who they were, and then he’d say, “Ask your mom.”

So it would have to be Weezy that she told. It would be fine. She’d just wait until the end of vacation, go up to her mom, and say, “I’m out of money. I’m moving home.” Simple. She was going back to New York on Sunday, which meant that she had seven more days to do it.

Claire took a shower and then threw her wet towel on Martha’s bed. If Martha came up and saw it, she would lose it. She was such a neat freak. Growing up, whenever they got new sneakers, Martha made a point to keep hers as white as possible for as long as she could. She’d step over puddles, avoid any dirt, and stare at her unblemished shoes with pride. Claire’s Keds were usually dirty by the end of the week, and it used to drive Claire crazy, to watch Martha step around messes, so pleased with herself and her white shoes.

“That’s probably the only reason why you wanted to be a nurse,” Claire told her one time. “Because you knew you’d get to wear really white shoes.”

Once, when they were playing kickball outside with the neighborhood kids, Martha refused to take her turn for fear that her shoes would get filthy. Claire walked right up to her and stepped all over Martha’s feet with her own dirty sneakers. Martha looked down at her shoes and let out a howl, then pushed Claire on the ground.

“Why did you do that?” her mother asked Claire. “Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?”

Claire had no reason to give and was sent to bed right after dinner that night—no TV, no Jell-O Pudding Pop. She couldn’t explain to her mom why she wanted to get Martha’s shoes dirty. She wasn’t even sure she knew herself. All she knew was that she couldn’t watch Martha protect their whiteness anymore, couldn’t stand to hear the other kids laugh at her while she stood to the side and refused to participate. And so she’d put a stop to it.

MARTHA WAS STILL BEING UNUSUALLY quiet. On Tuesday, she and Claire sat on lounge chairs at the beach, and Martha wrote in her journal, sighing and turning her face to the sun with her eyes closed. Cleo and Max were frolicking in the ocean—that was the only word for it, frolicking—splashing each other and embracing as the waves crashed over them.

“What’s going on with you?” Claire asked. It really wasn’t normal for Martha not to be talking all the time.

“If you must know,” she said, “I’m considering a career change.”

“Going to the Gap?” Claire asked. Martha shut her journal loudly and started gathering her things. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” She put her hand on Martha’s arm. “I’m sorry, come on, I was just kidding. Tell me.”

Martha sniffed, acting like she wasn’t going to say any more, but Claire could tell she wanted to talk about it. Finally she said, “I’m thinking about going back to nursing.”

“Really?” Claire asked. “Wow.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Martha asked.

“Nothing, just—wow. I haven’t heard you talk about nursing in a long time.”

“Well, I’ve just been thinking about it lately. I think it’s time. But not in a hospital. Maybe at a doctor’s office or something.”

“I think that’s great,” Claire said. “Really, I do. You always wanted to be a nurse and you were good at it.”

Martha looked over at Claire. “Thank you,” she said, and then she started writing again.

Claire considered telling Martha everything. Confessing about the apartment and the credit cards and all of it. But she knew that if she did, Martha would let her mouth fall wide open, stare at her, and then go tell Weezy. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself. Martha told Weezy everything, which was weird. It should have been the other way around, her loyalty to Claire, but it never had been and it wasn’t going to start now. So Claire kept her mouth shut.

She wished that she could tell Doug about everything. It didn’t make sense, of course, because if she and Doug were still together and he was there to talk to, she wouldn’t be in this situation. It had helped a little to tell Lainie, but it wasn’t the same. She missed having one person to give her undivided attention and advice, to be almost as responsible for her actions as she was.

Probably it was just loneliness that made her wish for Doug. That was normal, right? It was a shitty situation and she just wanted help, that’s all. She sighed and rolled over on her stomach so she wouldn’t have to watch Max and Cleo anymore. It was dumb, but it made her feel worse to watch them being happy. And she found she couldn’t stop watching them, even though it made her feel horrible. It was like when you had a cut on your lip that you kept biting at—it hurt, but you couldn’t leave it alone.

Now Doug and her money problems were all in a mix in her head. She shouldn’t have started thinking about it. Lately, she tried to remember only the really annoying things about him. The way he read only nonfiction books on truly boring subjects. How when he slept he let his limbs fly everywhere, and how she was never really comfortable when she was in bed with him; how she remained still and rigid, right on the edge of sleep, tucked in the corner of the bed.

But then she remembered other things, like how he always unpacked her laundry when it was delivered, and stacked her mail on the desk. Or she remembered the time they were at a bar, drinking beer in the afternoon, watching a baseball game. The bar was pretty empty, just a few people watching the game, and one single guy on a stool at the end of the bar, wearing a knit hat and frowning at his beer and then at the TV. And Doug had leaned over and said, “Hipsters are so joyless,” and Claire had been so surprised that she’d spit her beer on the bar.

The thing was that it didn’t really matter what she thought about when she remembered Doug. Because the truth was that she would have married him if he hadn’t ended it. And that was the scariest thing of all. Because it meant either that she was stupid enough to commit to someone who wasn’t really right for her or that she did love him and he left her and broke her heart. And honestly, sometimes she wasn’t sure which one it was.

ON THURSDAY, CLEO ASKED CLAIRE if she wanted to go shopping on the boardwalk with her. The shops down there were full of animals made out of seashells and T-shirts that said things like AA IS WHERE I GO TO MEET DRUNK SLUTS, and REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS. But Cleo looked eager and so Claire agreed. Who knew? Maybe Cleo would find a beach cover-up that she liked.

They walked in and out of the little shops, quietly browsing through the ashtrays and postcards. Every once in a while, Cleo would hold up a T-shirt for Claire to read, and they’d both laugh.

Claire turned to examine a shelf of glass pipes, as though she were really looking to buy one. She picked up a red and brown swirled pipe, looked at it closely, and then put it back down. Cleo was watching her, probably wondering if she was a secret pothead, and Claire was just about to make a joke about it, when she heard someone calling her name.

She turned to see a girl in a jeans skirt and bikini top running toward her. “Claire!” the girl called out. “Claire, hi!” It took her a second to realize that it was Heather Foley, a girl she used to babysit for, and before she had a chance to say hello, Heather had thrown her arms around Claire’s neck and was squeezing tightly.

“I’m so happy to see you,” she said. “I didn’t even know you were here.”

The Foley family owned the house next to the Coffeys’ and had been going to the shore for as long as Claire could remember, before they even had any kids. For a couple of summers, Claire had been a mother’s helper for the family. It was a job she liked, holding the children’s hands as she walked them toward the ocean, making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch, putting them down for naps in their stuffy summer rooms, promising that they could go back down to the beach as soon as they woke up.

Once when she was trying to get Bobby Foley ready for bed, begging him to put his pajamas on, he’d declared, “No pajamas. I want to sleep naked like my dad does.” As soon as Bobby finished saying this, Claire looked up to see Mr. Foley standing in the doorway. He’d walked away as though he hadn’t heard anything, and Claire almost died of embarrassment. To this day, when she saw him at the shore, she always thought, I know that you sleep naked. It seemed too much information for her to handle, too personal for her to process.

Heather finally released her grip and Claire stepped back to look at her. “Oh my God, Heather. Look at you!” She sounded like an old person, but she couldn’t help it. Heather looked so grown-up. She’d just finished her freshman year at GW, she told Claire. She’d gained a little bit of weight in her hips and breasts and had that happy, pudgy look that freshman girls get. She was deeply tan, almost unnaturally so, like she’d been working on it all summer long.

“This is Cleo,” Claire said. “Max’s girlfriend.”

“Hi,” Heather said. Claire could tell she was trying not to stare.

“So what are you up to this summer?” Claire asked.

“I’m waitressing at the fishery. It’s so fun. There’s tons of kids working there that I know from high school and stuff.”

“That’s great,” Claire said. She was about to ask how her first year of college was, just to make sure that she sounded completely like an old lady. But she noticed that Heather was looking at something, her face getting red. Claire turned around to see a college-age guy in a bathing suit, taking huge bites out of a cheeseburger, as though it were just a little snack.

“Oh my God,” Heather said.

“Who’s that?” Claire asked.

“Bradley.” Heather was barely whispering and Claire had to lean in to hear her. “He works at the restaurant with me. We’re sort of—I don’t know.”

“Ohhh,” Claire said. She smiled. She remembered summers at the shore, running around with her friends and chasing boys. Every day exciting, not knowing who you were going to see or what was going to happen. Claire hadn’t felt like that in a long time. She hadn’t even wanted to feel like that, which was maybe more disturbing. The thought of dating again, of getting back into that whole mess, was so tiring. But watching Heather skitter around, trying to pretend like she wasn’t watching Bradley, almost reminded Claire of why it was so fun. Almost.

When Heather was about three, she always wanted to brush Claire’s hair, which really always ended up getting it in knots. But one time, she’d sat there patiently, letting Heather run the brush back and forth so that her hair covered her face. All of a sudden, Heather had started laughing, really laughing, like she’d seen something so funny she couldn’t believe it.

“What?” Claire had asked her. She peeked out from behind her hair and saw Heather lying on her side, still laughing.

“You look like a donkey,” Heather said, and she rolled back and forth on the floor.

That was how Claire always remembered her. And now, here she was all giddy and excited about a guy, a Bradley. How had that happened?

ON FRIDAY NIGHT, THEY HAD a Mexican feast. That’s what Weezy kept calling it, when it was really just fajitas and refried beans. She moved around the kitchen with a great sense of purpose, repeating the phrase “Mexican feast,” while Maureen sat at the counter and chopped jalapeños and Martha used the blender to make margaritas from a thick syrup, ice, and tequila.

Max and Claire set the table, and each time that Weezy said, “Mexican feast,” Max held up another finger to count. They were up to eight.

“Martha, did you tell Maureen about your job?” Weezy asked. Martha shook her head.

“What’s going on?” Maureen asked.

“It’s nothing, really. I’ve just been thinking about maybe leaving J.Crew. Maybe going back to nursing.”

“That’s great.”

“Well, it’s just an idea. I actually have to look into getting recertified and all of that. I’m not exactly sure what I need to do.” Martha looked overwhelmed just getting the words out.

“You’ll do it. We’ll figure it out. We can look it up online after dinner. I’m sure it will be no trouble.” Weezy’s peppy comments came out all in a row, and Max and Claire smiled at each other.

“You know …,” Maureen started. She held the knife in her hand and looked off in the distance, like she was trying to remember something. “I have a friend that runs a high-end caretaker business. Well, more of a friend of a friend, really. She places really smart, bright people in the homes of the elderly—the really rich elderly.”

“Really?” Martha asked.

“Yeah, and I was just thinking. That might be a nice way to ease your way back into it, you know? You could look into getting recertified, sort of reacquaint yourself with some parts of the job. And it pays pretty well.”

“That sounds interesting,” Weezy said. She looked so hopeful that Claire wanted to smack her. Weezy couldn’t hide how badly she wanted things to go well for Martha, all the time. “Don’t you think that sounds interesting?”

“Maybe,” Martha said. “Of course, the work I did as a nurse is totally different than a caretaker.”

“Oh, of course. We know that. But just like Maureen said, it would be a good way to ease your way back in.” Weezy was holding her hands together and staring at Martha.

“Okay, well, I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll get you in touch with the woman when we get back,” Maureen said. Martha nodded.

Weezy practically danced the fajitas to the table. She made a big deal of sipping her margarita and proclaiming it delicious. They all sat down and began assembling their fajitas. Max took three right away and piled on every topping there was, while Weezy repeated the conversation about Martha’s possible new job to Will, who had been upstairs while it happened.

“It’s very exciting,” Weezy said. “It just sounds great.”

They’d be talking about this all week. Whenever Martha did anything—got a raise, had a fight with a coworker, folded a shirt at her job—they all talked about it like it was the most interesting thing in the world, like she had done something so fantastic they couldn’t believe it.

“Max, when do classes start?” Claire asked. She wanted to change the subject.

Max looked up from the huge fajita he was about to put in his mouth. “Um, next week. I have only four classes, though, so I don’t have anything until Wednesday.”

“How can you have only four classes?” Martha asked.

“Got ’em all done,” Max said. He smiled and shoved the fajita in his mouth.

“I had full semesters all through college,” Martha said. She was looking at Cleo, who was the only one polite enough to listen. “Nursing is tough, I’ll tell you that much.”

Max put his hand on Cleo’s thigh, which was bare, since she was of course still in her bikini. Claire wondered if her dad still felt uncomfortable eating with a half-naked stranger, or if he was getting used to it.

“What’s your major, Cleo?” Martha asked.

“Economics and French,” she said.

“That’s an interesting combination,” Weezy said. “I wouldn’t have thought those two go together.”

“They don’t, really.” Cleo laughed a little. “I wanted to study French, but my mother told me it was a waste of time and that I had to pick something in the business school. But I figured out I could do both if I took some summer classes and a couple extra here and there. I just love my French classes.”

“That’s great,” Weezy said.

“See?” Max said. “Cleo balances me out with her classes.”

“That’s just how Martha was with her nursing classes,” Weezy said. “She always had a mind for medicine, always got A’s in her science classes.”

“So did I,” Claire said. “I always got A’s in science too.”

Weezy turned to look at her and gave her a small nod and a little smile. Claire knew she shouldn’t let it bother her, the way her parents talked about Martha’s success in school, but it did. It was like they thought if they focused enough on how smart Martha was, no one—maybe not even Martha herself—would notice that she didn’t have any social skills; like if they talked about it enough, they could make up for everything else. It was just that in the process, they made it sound like Claire and Max were dumber than dirt.

“Martha, do you like the fajitas?” Weezy asked. Max and Claire laughed. “What?” she asked.

“Of course she likes the fajitas,” Claire said. “It’s her favorite meal. Isn’t that why we had them in the first place?”

“Everyone likes fajitas,” Weezy said. “You all like them.” She sounded defensive.

“I wish Cathy and Ruth and Drew were here,” Martha said. She looked at Maureen and smiled.

“Me too,” Maureen said.

“We all do,” Weezy said. “Hopefully they’ll be able to make it next year.”

Claire wasn’t all that upset about Cathy’s not being there. They got along fine now that they were adults, but when they were kids, Cathy used to love teasing Claire, finding any reason to leave her out of a game or trick her into eating sand.

One summer Cathy had repeatedly called Claire a virgin, and Claire—assuming it had something to do with being Jesus’s mother and sure that it didn’t apply to her—had yelled back, “I am not! I am not a virgin!” They were all on the crowded beach, and Claire had yelled this over and over, until finally Weezy came over and told her to stop, then leaned down to explain in a quiet voice what that word meant. Claire only partly understood what Weezy was saying to her, but she knew enough to be mortified. She thought she was going to die right there on the beach.

That’s still how she remembered Cathy, even now, all grown up. Claire thought of her as that girl who loved to make her cry, who took so much pleasure in bossing other people around.

“We should go to Atlantic City tonight,” Max said. He looked at Claire. “Come on, let’s do it. I’m finally legal to gamble.” Cleo perked up and looked at Claire for her answer. She was probably dying to get out of the house. If family time was hard when it was your own family, it had to be twice as hard when you were the girlfriend.

Claire was tired from the sun, the talk of Martha, and the whole week. She’d been planning to go sit on the porch after dinner and read. She was trying to think of a way to let them down gently, when Martha said, “I’m in, let’s go!”

Max let out a whoop and Weezy laughed. “Blackjack,” he said. “We can play blackjack. I’ve gotten really good.”

“You’re gonna go?” Claire asked Martha.

“Yeah, I’ll even drive. I barely touched my margarita.”

Claire was trapped. She couldn’t say no now that even Martha was going. “Let’s do it,” she said. She figured it couldn’t hurt. Who knew? Maybe she’d win big, hit the jackpot, and be able to pay her rent next month and put off telling her parents and moving home for another month or so.

Cleo was laughing and clapped her hands like she was a child. “Just give me a minute to change,” she said, and ran out of the room. Well, at least she wouldn’t be wearing her bikini to the casino. That was a plus.

Weezy was telling them all to go. “Have fun,” she said over and over. She was so happy to have all of her kids heading out together, especially happy to have Martha be a part of it, and so she took the plates out of Claire’s hands as she tried to clear the table, and said, “Leave this for me. Just go have fun.”

THE CASINO WAS FULL OF crazy people. Crazy, dirty people. Claire noticed that an abnormally high percentage of people were missing a limb. They’d gone to the Taj Mahal casino partly because it was one they’d heard of and partly because in the car Cleo had said she’d heard it was beautiful there.

“Beautiful?” Claire had asked. “I’m not sure any casino can be called beautiful, but sure, we can go to that one.”

“I’ve never really gambled before,” Cleo said to Claire and Martha. “Have you guys?”

“Not a lot,” Claire said. “We came last year, and Max gambled, even though he wasn’t legal.” Claire laughed and kicked the back of the seat.

“Hey, that wasn’t my idea,” Max said.

“You made Max break the law?” Cleo said. She was smiling as she looked at Claire.

“No,” Claire said. “It was my—it was Doug. He was here last year, and he wanted Max to do it.”

“He’s like the worst gambler ever, too,” Max said quickly. “He talked about statistics the whole time and made it so boring.”

“Gambling makes me nervous,” Cleo said. “The possibility that you can gain or lose so much in a second is scary.” No one answered her, and they drove the rest of the way in silence.

Once they walked into the casino, Martha headed straight to the slots and began feeding twenty-dollar bills into a machine called Wild Cherry. “I’m not going to waste my money gambling on blackjack,” she said.

“Right,” Max said. “Because slots are really the smart way to go.”

Martha pursed her lips at him and kept playing. They left her at the slot machines and went to the bar to get a drink because Cleo had wrinkled her nose at the free drinks they were passing out. Then they walked around looking at the different minimums for the tables and trying to find one they liked. When they passed Martha again, about forty-five minutes later, her eyes were glazed, and her lips were parted, with a little string of spit between them, as she pushed the button to make the slots go, and listened for the bing, ring, and ding of the cherries and sevens and big-money signs.

“I think we’ve created a monster,” Claire said.

“Martha,” Max said. She didn’t look up right away. “Martha,” they all called together, and she looked up, spacey and surprised.

“Have you won?” Cleo asked.

Martha shook her head. “Not yet, but I have a good feeling about this machine.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Claire asked.

Martha shook her head.

“No, no. I’m good here,” she said, turning back to the machine.

“Okay, well, if you need us, we’ll be over there, okay?” Claire pointed in the direction of the tables. Martha nodded distractedly.

“Good God,” Max said. “We’re gonna have to call Mom and Dad to drag her out of here.”

“The scary thing is, she kind of fits in,” Claire whispered to Max. It was true. Martha was wearing a large tented flowered dress, and her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. She looked older than thirty, and she clutched her purse on her lap while she touched the machine like she was communicating with it. On either side of her were older women, just as sloppily dressed, petting their own machines. Claire got the chills watching her.

“Well, at least if she started coming here, it would be something social she could do,” Max offered.

“Max, that’s mean,” Cleo said. She looked shocked and Max muttered an apology.

“Come on,” he said, putting his arm around her. “Let’s go gamble.”

At the blackjack table, there were only two seats open, so Claire and Max sat down in the middle and Cleo stood behind them. “I just want to watch first,” Cleo said.

The man to Max’s left looked a little off and anytime someone else at the table got a good card, he pounded both hands in front of him and said, “Sonofabitch,” all as one word. Max leaned over and squeezed Claire’s shoulder and the two of them bent their heads down, trying not to laugh.

Claire watched Cleo place her hand on Max’s back, just lightly, like she wasn’t even thinking about it. It was almost like they were the same person, and Claire felt a sharp pain. She was jealous of her younger brother and his girlfriend. Max had a life, a love life, and she didn’t. Even Heather Foley had a love life. It was like somewhere along the way, Claire had stopped being a real person.

When Cleo finally sat down, she got blackjack on her first hand. She squealed and clapped her hands again. She was very careful to place her winnings to one side, and when she was up about forty dollars, she decided to stop. “I should quit while I’m ahead, right?” she said.

“That’s very mature of you,” Claire said. She had lost eighty dollars and was trying to stop herself from going back.

“You can’t win if you don’t keep playing, though,” Max said. Cleo just smiled and shook her head.

They went to retrieve Martha from the slot machines, and she printed out her slot ticket and went to get the rest of her money. “I lost forty dollars,” she said on the way home. “But I know if I could’ve kept playing, I would have won big.”

That night, as Claire tried to fall asleep, she heard the sounds of the casino in her head—cards being flipped, people cheering or groaning, and the bing of the slots as they rolled around and around.

SATURDAY AT THE SHORE WAS cloudy and cool, but Claire and Martha went down to the beach anyway, bundled up in sweatshirts and pants. They were leaving the next day, so they figured they would try to get as much out of the end of their trip as they could. They sat on beach chairs and watched the wind chop up the water. A storm was coming in, and the dark clouds were getting closer.

Both of the girls held books in their laps, but neither of them made a move to open them. Martha took in a deep breath and let out an audible sigh, which Claire knew was a sign that she wanted to say something.

“What?” Claire asked her.

Martha shook her head and sighed again. “It’s just watching the ocean like this, right before a storm, it makes me think of the tsunami in Thailand, and how all of those people were just minding their own business, living their lives, and the ocean just swallowed them.”

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Claire asked. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she still was. Claire had been thinking about how she still had to tell Weezy everything, and how maybe it was a good idea to go back to New York first and do it over the phone, because then she could just hang up right after and be done with it. Yes, that made more sense. And so she was wondering what she was thinking before, planning to tell Weezy in person, and Martha was thinking about a natural disaster that had happened six years earlier. She wasn’t sure whether she should be annoyed at Martha or ashamed of herself for thinking only about her problems.

“I think our brains work differently,” Claire finally said.

“Yeah,” Martha said. “I think they do.”

The two of them sat there for another hour, books on their laps, watching the storm crawl closer and closer, witnessing the waves getting bigger and angrier, until they felt drops hit their faces and heads, and were forced to pick up their chairs and walk back to the house in the rain.

WHEN CLAIRE OPENED THE DOOR to her apartment, she was hit with a wall of hot air. This was always how it was when she got back from a trip; the air seemed unbreathable, like no one would ever be able to survive living here. She saw the rent envelope slipped under her door and her stomach twisted. She moved it aside with her foot, dragged her suitcase inside, and went to sit on the couch.

All the years that she’d lived in New York, Claire always felt giddy when she returned after a trip. It was nice to get away, to get out of the crowded city, but she always had the sense that when she got back, she was where she belonged. But now, looking around at the dusty old apartment that she couldn’t afford, she didn’t feel that. She just felt dread. She didn’t belong here anymore, in this apartment. And it didn’t even matter if she did, because she was going to be kicked out soon anyway.

And so, she took out her cell phone and called Weezy, who was still at the shore. There was no time like the present, especially if you were totally out of options.