I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. So, with nothing to lose, I threw out a Hail Mary of scattered thoughts.
“We could wait for ten years, maybe longer. Do you want to wait for ten, twenty years? We always knew this day was coming. There’s no place close to home. We’ve been over that. There’s nothing available. Nothing. We’re on all those other waiting lists, but that could be years, years, plus this one is the best—you know that. The best one called first. We got lucky, very lucky. So we have to do this; we have to try to do something now, while we’re still relatively young and healthy. This is what we wanted, what we agreed on. You liked the place, you loved it. He’s going to love it. I know he will. He’ll have lots of attention, lots of structure. The pool, the gym. Now, I know the timing was or is terrible, I know I should have told you, I know I shouldn’t have done this around the wedding, but I didn’t know this would happen, any of this would happen. Their calling. I didn’t know. Two, three weeks ago, I didn’t know anything.”
I stopped to catch my breath. “It’s hard now, but it’s the right move—you know it’s the right move.” I stopped and took a drink of water. My heart was racing. “Hello? You there? Hello?”
She finally spoke. “I’ve only been out there once. I need to go back and see it again. I planned to. I thought I had time. Years.”
My heart leaped. I had hoped for this. “Come with! Drive out there with us. Ethan and me. Leave with us tomorrow! Tomorrow morning! Just come with us. We’ll do this together.”
She didn’t say anything, so, hopeful, I pressed on. “Karen can come too. Why not? We can spend some time with her, get her away from everything. She was going to be on her honeymoon anyway, so she has the time. If nothing else, this trip will be good for that. We never see her anymore.” Then everything caught up with me, the long trip, my Overall Plan, the past nineteen years, and I said something stupid—honest, but stupid—and when I did, I erased any progress I had made.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” I said. “It’s just too hard. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do it anymore.”
I could feel her stiffen on the other end. “So this is all about you, then. Not Ethan, not me, not the girls. You.” She hung up.
I stared at the dead phone in my hand and considered tossing it off the balcony. But I was a high-school English teacher, and I didn’t do things like that. So I slipped it back into my pocket and sat there listening to the South Carolina wind for I didn’t know how long. Eventually, I went inside and took my position on the free-throw line, made ten straight, then crept into bed and slept.
In the morning, I was awakened early by a loud knock on the door. It was Mary, wearing large round sunglasses, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, as always.
“The girls are downstairs,” she said. “We’re going.”
I had been in a deep sleep and was confused, disoriented. “Home?”
“Maine.” She turned and began to march down the hallway. “Get dressed.”
I was suddenly wide-awake. “Really? You mean, you’re coming?”
“We all are.” She was at the end of the hallway.
“Really? Karen too?” I yelled after her.
“We all are.”
“Mindy?”
“All of us!” she yelled as she turned the corner.
7
I stood outside the airport with Sal as he blew a final plume of smoke and flicked his cigarette. “They got a helluva lot of strip joints in South Carolina. Not that that matters,” he said.
“You know, it probably doesn’t.”
“Wish we were going with you.”
“We’ll be fine.”
Sal put his hands in his pockets and jingled some change. His barrel chest inflated for a moment as he took in a big breath then slowly let it recede. He had already given Ethan a number of bone-crushing good-bye hugs (as well as five hundred dollars in cash) but was reluctant to leave. “This home, this place, you want me to make some calls? Ask around? Some of those places are pretty messed up. I read about them from time to time. You sure you checked it out good? Top to bottom? Thorough search?”
“It’s a good place.”
“What’s the name again?”
“Ocean View.”
He winked, then gave a half wave to Ethan, who was in the back of the van. “Got a view of the ocean, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing closer to home? I mean, Maine, Jesus. I don’t even know where the hell it is.”
I patted myself down, looking for my phone. “It’s a good place.”
“It’s all so quick.”
“It’s not that quick.” I found my phone in my back pocket, checked to see if it was juiced. “We’ve been talking about this a long time. We were out there last fall. Remember when Ethan stayed with you that weekend?”
“What’s he going to do all day?”