“Mom?” Caroline says. Her tone has changed. “Are you ready for this?” Caroline holds up her phone for her mother to see. “Dru-Ann has been canceled.”
“What?” Hollis says. She peers at the screen, wishing for her reading glasses. She pinches the screen to enlarge it and squints. Dru-Ann Jones Disses Mental-Health Issues. Hollis begins to read, but the print is small. The article mentions Posey somebody, a golfer, then Hollis defaults to just clicking on the video. She watches her beloved friend shout at some rich-looking white dude, “She’s going to tell everyone it’s a ‘mental-health issue’”—Dru-Ann makes air quotes—“when she needs to suck it up and play through!”
Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, Hollis wouldn’t have understood the problem with this, but now, thanks in no small part to her interactions with people on her website, she has been educated in all things mental-health-related.
“Oh, dear,” Hollis says. “That’s not good.”
“It’s worse than ‘not good,’” Caroline says. “It’s terrible. And it’s everywhere. That article is on Refinery Twenty-Nine, but they got it from Vulture.”
Suddenly a voice calls out from the kitchen. Hollis peers through Caroline’s shutters to see a black Lincoln—How did that thing get down Squam Road? she wonders—turning around in the driveway.
Only one of her friends would hire such a car to get out here.
“It’s Dru-Ann,” Hollis says.
“Well, you’d better go, then.”
Hollis feels torn. She should greet her guest, of course, but she doesn’t want Caroline to think she’s not a priority. “Can I make you—”
“Just go, Mother,” Caroline says. She returns her attention to her phone. “Dru-Ann needs you more than I do.”
12. Blowout
The blowout at the salon costs more than Tatum expected but, oh, is it worth it. The stylist with the charming Irish accent, Lorna, eases Tatum’s head back against the lip of the sink and scrubs the hell out of Tatum’s scalp. Lorna wraps her hair in a fluffy white towel and hands her a latte and the most recent issue of People. Tatum feels the tension roll off her shoulders as Lorna blows her hair out, straight and shiny with a little volume on top and some movement at the bottom.
Tatum knows that Lorna herself battled breast cancer a couple years earlier; there was a fundraiser held for her at the Rose and Crown, and Irina Services donated weekly cleanings of Lorna’s cottage. Tatum sneaks a glance at Lorna. Her breasts are small and perky, her cheeks are rosy, and her grip on the brush is strong and sure. You would never know she’d been sick. Should Tatum ask about her “journey”? (Tatum at least knows not to call it a “battle.”) Breast cancer survivors are supposed to be part of a sisterhood, which sounds appealing as long as you crush the “survivor” part and don’t end up in a casket like Tatum’s mother.
The Zen that Tatum has managed to achieve for five minutes is gone, but even so, she smiles at Lorna in the mirror. “I wish it could always look like this.”
“You’re absolutely gorge,” Lorna says with a wink. “Now go enjoy your Five-Star Weekend.”
The evening before, Tatum told Kyle about the voice mail from the hospital. They held hands—Tatum squeezing like hell—and listened to it together.
“Good morning, this is Dr. Constable. I have the results of your biopsy, though hospital policy prevents me from leaving that information in a voice mail. I’ll be in the office until five today, then I’m out tomorrow. In the event you miss me, I’ll be back in the office first thing Monday morning. Feel free to call me after eight a.m. Thank you.”
Tatum released Kyle’s hand and replayed the message, trying to decipher Dr. Constable’s tone. She didn’t sound particularly grim, but neither did she sound upbeat. She sounded utterly neutral.
“Call her back,” Kyle said.
“She said she’s in the office until five. It’s six thirty.”
“Doctors sit in their offices after hours and write in their charts,” Kyle said.
“On TV,” Tatum said. She didn’t want to call, so she pushed the phone toward Kyle and he called.
Tatum’s mind flipped through a mental scrapbook: Ice cream sundaes on her sixth birthday, a bumpy ride on the Steamship when her queasy-ass twelve-year-old self threw up in the sink, the lavender dress she wore to junior prom (Kyle matched with a lavender bow tie and cummerbund), Dylan’s baby walker (he liked to ram right into Tatum’s heels), a man she’d waited on at the Lobster Trap who asked for extra drawn butter and then drank it. Why these things? Why couldn’t she come up with better memories?
Kyle sighed. “Voice mail.”
“Don’t leave a message,” Tatum said. “I’ll just call her Monday morning.”
Kyle said, “The good thing is you can enjoy your weekend without this hanging over your head.”
Tatum nearly snapped out, It’s still hanging over my head, dumbnuts, but she knew he was every bit as nervous as she was and he was trying to comfort her, so she kissed him instead.
Now Tatum texts Kyle: On my way home, we need to leave at 4! She has reminded him of this so often, he’s getting cranky about it, but she has a feeling that when he sees her hair, he’s going to want to whisk her into the bedroom, and really, they don’t have time.
She finds Kyle drinking beer at the teak outdoor table that Tatum and Dylan gave him for Father’s Day. He’s sitting with some tall, bald guy with a silver goatee wearing jeans, a white polo shirt, and flip-flops.
The man grins at Tatum and says, “Surprise, surprise!”
Tatum blinks. It’s Jack Finigan, apparently still alive and breathing.
“Well, well, isn’t this Big Chill of you,” Tatum says as it all clicks into place. “Appearing out of the blue after ghosting us for a million years this weekend of all weekends.”
Jack crushes Tatum in a bear hug so tight that she feels her sore breast. He’s put on some heft and his face has aged, but he still looks good. Men get better-looking as they get older; it pisses Tatum off.
“Your hair looks hot, babe,” Kyle says.
“Thanks.” Tatum gives Kyle a raised eyebrow: Did you know he was coming? Kyle and Jack and Tatum have been friends since middle school when Jack’s father accepted a foreman’s job at Toscana Construction. She’s happy to see him, but a little warning would have been nice. She lights a cigarette.
“Can I get you some wine, Tay?” Jack asks. “I brought you a bottle as a little hostess gift.”
Hostess gift! Tatum thinks. Shoot. She should bring something, but what can she get Hollis that Hollis can’t buy herself? The answer is nothing, but Tatum knows that’s not the point. The point is not to show up empty-handed. Tatum thinks about bringing a can of soup, a roll of paper towels, a neon-yellow T-shirt advertising McKenzie Heating and Cooling. She should have rummaged through her photo albums for a picture of her and Hollis—she has approximately three thousand of them—and bought a silver frame for it at Flowers on Chestnut. That would have been cute, but the frame would have cost her seventy-five bucks, money that she doesn’t have to spare, especially not after the blowout. Maybe she should just grab a picture? There’s the one of them taken in the back of the bus after they won the state softball championship junior year (both of them grinning, Tatum holding up two fingers to signal victory, Hollis with a dorky sweatband at her hairline). Or she could take the one of the four of them—Tatum and Kyle, Hollis and Jack—up at Altar Rock on New Year’s Day of senior year. But how meager, presenting just a snapshot. Besides, she doesn’t have time to look through the albums; she’s late already.
“I need to be in Squam ten minutes ago,” she says.
“Squam?” Jack says. “What’s out there?”
They all know what’s out in Squam, Tatum thinks. Surely Jack remembers that Hollis moved the cottage and built a big-ass house—but does he know that Matthew died, and did Kyle tell him about what he’s affectionately calling the “ten-tit weekend”? Did Kyle invite him because of the weekend? Jack lives in the western reaches of the state where he owns a bar and grill and also serves as the county game warden. He’d traded ocean for lake, striped bass for… whatever kind of fish live in lakes. Perch? Trout? Tatum has no idea. They haven’t seen Jack since Dylan graduated from high school, which was… five years ago? Jack didn’t like the way the island had changed, he said. Too many Chads on their phones in their father’s Range Rovers, and the good places were all gone—Thirty Acres, the Mad Hatter, the Atlantic Café. But Tatum was pretty sure Hollis figured into the equation somehow. She was the reason he didn’t come back to the island.
But now Hollis is a widow, and Tatum will be spending the weekend with her. There’s no way Jack’s visit is a coincidence. He and Kyle must have dreamed this up like a couple of teenage girls.
Tatum pokes her head into the fridge and sees a bottle of Santa Margherita pinot grigio, her favorite. This, she decides, will be her hostess present.