On the Rocks(100)
“I know you did. You always meant well.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that.”
“Listen, I’m going to be home soon. Maybe we can get dinner one night after work. Just the two of us.”
“I’d like that,” she said, though I could sense her hesitation.
“We can go somewhere vegan if you want,” I added, offering one final olive branch.
“Great!” she said. “You’ll love it, Abby. It’s really not bad at all. Just try to keep an open mind.”
“I’ve been trying to do that all summer.”
“Keep it up, it’s working. And don’t worry about Grace. Just say you’re sorry. Sometimes those two little words go a very long way.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you next week, okay?”
“Good night, Abby. Get some rest. At your age, they say that a woman needs. . . .” She stopped herself, and I waited for her to finish her sentence and tell me that mature skin requires eight to ten hours of sleep a night to keep from looking like a baseball mitt. She took a deep breath and continued. “. . . Absolutely nothing. A woman your age is just perfect the way she is.”
I smiled as I hung up, knowing that my mother didn’t actually believe a word she had just said, but happy that she finally realized that sometimes a girl just wants her mother to lie to her.
MY ALARM WENT OFF AT 9:00 A.M., and I rolled over to turn it off, realizing that something was sitting on my feet. Odd, since last I checked I didn’t have a dog.
“Hey,” a very tired-looking Grace said from the edge of my bed.
“Hey. How long have you been there?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“About half an hour. I brought breakfast. Are you hungry?”
“A little. I’m really sorry, Grace,” I said.
“Me too,” she answered.
I hugged Grace as I struggled to get out from under the covers. It felt like the two of us had been through everything together, and my one night not speaking to her was enough to know that I never wanted to have another one. I had thought the same thing about Ben once upon a time, but I was wrong. When you really love someone, you don’t let more than a day go by before you say you’re sorry, and if you’re really smart, you bring food with you when you do.
“Did you call him?” I asked. Please, God, please spare at least one of us from ourselves.
“No,” she replied.
“What made you change your mind?” Thank you, thank you, thank you.
“You.”
“Since when have I been able to convince you to do anything? That’s a first.”
“You were able to get rid of Ben, and you guys were engaged, for God’s sake. If you can do that, then I can get rid of a married guy who I know, deep down, will never be mine.”
I didn’t say anything because there was simply nothing left to say. She continued. “Well, it looks like we’re both single. That hasn’t happened in a very long time, huh?”
“How do you feel about it?” I asked.
“Like eating.” She looked pensive, sad. “How’d we get so f*cked up, Abby?” she asked.
“I can blame my mother. I don’t know who you can blame. I’m not sure what went wrong with you.”
“We’re still pretty great, though.” Grace had apparently been doing her daily affirmations in the mirror again.
“I like to think so.”
“Someday some poor schmucks will be lucky to have us.”
“Do you want to go out with the pyromaniac? You can have him,” I offered, figuring it was the least I could do.
“I don’t think so. Thanks, though.”
“Did you really bring breakfast?” I asked, realizing that I hadn’t eaten anything the day before and I was starving.
“Sort of.” She pulled a pint of ice cream and two spoons out of her purse. “You’re right,” she said with a smile. “Empty calories really do make you feel better.”
“Yes, they do.” She crawled into bed next to me as I ripped the cover off the ice cream and grabbed a spoon from her hand. And for the next two hours that was how we stayed, just two best friends, having breakfast in bed at the beach.
Chapter 24
Renaissance Man
LABOR DAY STILL means to me what it always has: the return to school. When I was a student, I was one of the few kids who actually welcomed the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year. I loved back-to-school shopping. I loved making textbook covers with brown paper grocery bags. I loved buying new supplies that had that familiar smell that somehow signaled the beginning of a new year rife with possibilities, and I loved getting away from my mother for eight hours at a clip. Even now that I returned to school as the teacher and not the student, I still loved the promise that the beginning of a new year held. For those kids, I’d be part of something they’d always remember, and that feeling, the one that had drawn me to teaching to begin with, was one of the greatest feelings in the world.
We packed up the house, scrubbed the place down, and prepared to return to our real lives back in Boston. Grace, Lara, and I went out to lunch on our last Saturday at the beach to toast the end of summer and each other, not necessarily in that order.