So it was a miracle that Alyssa Michaud was even driving, but anyway. Here she was, in the Jordan’s parking lot, catching Mary’s glance and heading her way.
Alyssa was wearing a baseball cap with—of course—BATES written across it in maroon. Alyssa was the top in their (tiny) graduating class and was going to college in Lewiston, where she was going to walk from one brick building to another and (according to the catalog in Alyssa’s bedroom that Mary had seen, before everything went down) spend a lot of time lying on beds of colorful leaves with stacks of books by her side. Alyssa’s father owned a Jeep dealership in Ellsworth, and when she was a junior her parents had paid for a college counselor to walk her through the application process, and now, here she was, in a Bates cap, wearing white short-shorts and platform flip-flops. It was hard not to resent her for all of those things.
Mary had lived in Maine her whole life and she couldn’t remember a single time she’d lain on a bed of colorful leaves. By the time the leaves fell, the ground was always damp and cold and you wouldn’t want to lie around on it. But, to be fair, maybe the weather was different in Lewiston.
“Hey!” said Alyssa. “Long time no see, stranger.” Her face, to Mary’s surprise, looked genuinely happy.
Mary glanced behind her to make sure her literature wasn’t visible from the car window. In a place like this, her news would be practically broadcast across the very high frequency radio—the VHF—before she even got home if Alyssa found out about it. She blocked the car with her body just in case.
“Hey,” said Mary. She worked up a smile and threw it at Alyssa, waited to see if it stuck. Alyssa’s hair looked shampoo-commercial bright and shiny, and her T-shirt was so thin and tight you could see her belly button and her toned ab muscles. Mary felt a powerful spasm of envy.
“Whatcha doing over here?”
“Nothing,” said Mary. “Just getting some stuff done, day off. Thought I’d get a root beer float.”
“I love the root beer floats here,” said Alyssa firmly. “They’re the best. I might get one too. Or maybe a clam roll.”
At the mention of clam rolls Mary’s stomach again rocked dangerously. How could she be so hungry and so nauseous at the same time?
Alyssa jerked her head toward Route One and said, “I’m actually on my way back to the nail salon. This gel color lasted, like, a minute. I’m going to scream at them.” For evidence she held up her hands.
“You should,” said Mary, although she actually thought that Alyssa should not, and also that she probably would not. She peered at Alyssa’s nails; the only thing she could see wrong was a tiny bare spot on one pinky.
“I haven’t seen you in forever,” Alyssa said, kicking at the parking lot’s asphalt with a flip-flop.
“Yeah,” said Mary. She stared hard at the giant representation of a soft-serve ice-cream cone that had stood on the roof of the restaurant since long before Mary had had her first root beer float. “I’ve been busy. Working.”
Alyssa squinted and blew a strand of hair up toward the rim of the cap. “Good for you,” she said. “I should have gotten a job this summer, I’ve just been going to the beach.” She looked with manufactured dismay at her tanned legs.
“Screw ’em,” Vivienne had said, after Tyler dumped Mary for Alyssa. Mary had taken the unusual step of crying in Vivienne’s arms, that’s how badly she’d been hurt by the betrayal. She wasn’t ready to have sex with Tyler, that was part of the problem, and apparently Alyssa was. Vivienne had never liked Alyssa; she thought she “put on airs” because her dad owned that dealership in Ellsworth and her mother had some mysterious secret store of money. “That little bitch was always too big for her britches,” Vivienne had said, stroking Mary’s hair with uncharacteristic tenderness, not even mentioning that she could use a conditioning treatment. Mary remembered wincing at the word choice, but she also remembered that it felt good to have her mother on her side.
“You’ll find someone else,” Vivienne had gone on. “You should come out with me and the girls after work. We’ll show you a good time, show you how it’s done.”
“Um,” Mary had said. “Maybe?” Vivienne was young to be the mother of somebody Mary’s age, for sure, but she wasn’t Mary’s age; she was still her mother, and Mary couldn’t envision a scenario where she’d want Vivienne or “the girls” to “show her how it’s done.”
It didn’t occur to Mary for a long time, not until after the summer had taken all of its tragic—and just very occasionally comic—twists and turns, that maybe Vivienne could have suggested to Mary a different kind of immediate future, maybe one without a boy or a man in it.
Mary started to move with little shuffling steps toward the counter. It was only eleven but already a line was forming: lots of older tourists (RV types) in L.L. Bean shirts, a few unfamiliar teenage girls in spaghetti-strap tanks. Mary was trying to work her mouth around a farewell that would show Alyssa that there were no hard feelings anymore, that she wished her well in college, but before she could make the words fit together a great wave of food odor—not just clams, but fries and shrimp and scallops and the ubiquitous lobster roll—swelled forward and hit her with a force as powerful and surprising as a punch. Then everything in front of her separated into rainbow-colored pixels and Alyssa moved to the very edges of her vision as Mary hit the ground.
12
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Eliza
Eliza had spent hours trying to get her dad to come to Barton with her, with no luck, and by the time she’d given up she hadn’t wanted to start home after all. The roads leading out of Little Harbor were so long and winding and lonely, and Eliza was a terrible night driver—she always had been.
She’d gotten up with the sun to drive home instead; she’d left so early that The Cup wasn’t open. Val’s was open. Privately Eliza was not a fan of Val’s coffee.
During the drive to Barton, Eliza thought again about the meeting with Phineas Tarbox, which had come about after their previous attorney had retired and moved to Florida. Years ago, their previous attorney had walked them through the creation of their wills, their estate planning, all the minutiae of living in an adult, responsible world. Then, when he notified them that he was leaving the business, Rob had been anxious to get their affairs settled elsewhere.
Affairs settled? thought Eliza. Are you planning on dying, Rob?
“I’ll just feel better,” Rob said. “When everything is taken care of.”
Better than what, Rob? Eliza had wanted to ask, but hadn’t.
It had begun as sort of a nice evening. Phineas had only the last slot in his day free, a five o’clock appointment, and they planned to go for tapas and sangria after.