Golden Girl(120)

The person Marshall really wishes he’d been able to meet, however, is Carson’s mother, Vivian Howe.

“She was magic,” Carson told him. “But she was my mom, so I took her for granted. I didn’t understand how lucky I was to have her until she was gone.”

Marshall decides when he gets home from the luncheon following the burial, he’s going to call his parents and tell them he loves them.



Lorna O’Malley drives past the cemetery on her way from the hospital to her apartment. The biopsy has come back positive for a malignancy. Lorna has triple-negative intraductal carcinoma—a complicated way of saying breast cancer—at the age of thirty-one, and although the news could be worse (she’s still stage one, they caught it early), it could also be better. Lorna notices JP walking with Vivi’s daughters—they’re all dressed in dark colors, so they must have just buried Vivi. Lorna thinks about calling Amy to let her know that Vivi has finally been laid to rest, but she can’t bring herself to think about death and burial right now. She’ll call Amy later, with her own news.

Pigeon, she’ll say, I’m about to lose me tits!

Amy will cry about it, Lorna is certain. But she will shore up and become Lorna’s person. She will go with Lorna to her appointments, share her Netflix password during Lorna’s chemo, be in the waiting room during Lorna’s surgery; she’ll keep Lorna’s mother, back in Wexford, calm, and she’ll take Cupid for walks. After all the hours Lorna has listened to Amy chatter about JP, Dennis, and, most of all, Vivi, she’d better! Thinking this makes Lorna chuckle. At least she still has her sense of humor.





Amy




On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Amy and Dennis are enjoying the raw bar special at the Oystercatcher. Amy had been purposefully staying away from the Oystercatcher because she didn’t want to face Carson at the bar—she couldn’t imagine what Carson would think when she saw Amy and Dennis together—but then Amy heard from her client Nikki that Carson no longer worked at the Oystercatcher.

“You’re kidding!” Amy said. “What happened?” She felt a twinge of regret (quickly followed by relief) that she was no longer a part of the Quinboro family dramas.

Nikki shrugged. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Something bad, then, Amy thinks. Carson got fired—or got fired up and quit in a huff. The upside is that Amy and Dennis can return to the Oystercatcher without feeling awkward.



It’s a festive scene—everyone is out celebrating the unofficial last weekend of summer. Amy and Dennis order two rum punches and a dozen Island Creeks from a new cute young bartender with a pierced nose. Dennis lifts his rum punch and says, “I’m taking you on vacation this winter. To the Caribbean. Maybe the Virgin Islands. What do you say?”

“I say yes!” Amy takes a sip of her drink and can already see the palm trees. “If we were the subject of a Vivian Howe novel, what would the title be?” she asks. “The Leftovers?”

“I think that’s already a book,” Dennis says.

“The Cast-Asides?” Amy says.

Dennis shakes his head with that look on his face that tells her he thinks she’s crazy but in the best possible way. “How about we just call it Love Story?” he says.

“I think that’s already a book,” Amy says.





Vivi




“They should call it The Rebound,” Vivi says.

“What Amy and Dennis have is more than just a rebound,” Martha says.

“It is?” Vivi says. “Seriously?” She smiles. She finds she feels happy about this.



There’s only one more chance for Vivi to travel back.

She chooses Willa’s wedding.

It’s June 13 of the year before. The weather is spectacular. It is, as Vivi’s mother used to say, one of “God’s days.”

Vivi has abandoned her suspicions that Rip is “not enough” for Willa, and she now wholeheartedly embraces the union. Today, Willa is getting what she has wanted since she was twelve years old and attended the Valentine’s Day dance with Rip at the Boys and Girls Club. She’s marrying the only man she’s ever loved. Vivi has written about all kinds of love stories in her twelve novels, but she has never written about two people meeting in high school and making it work.

Why not? she wonders. She thinks about Brett Caspian and the roller-coaster ride of their romance. She has kept that story tucked safely inside of her for decades, but what if she brought it to the surface and used it? What if she wrote a novel about her and Brett?

She decides to think about it later. Right now, she wants to focus on her daughter.

Willa, Carson, and Vivi get ready together at Money Pit. Vivi has made a spectacular fruit salad (she went to the trouble of peeling six kiwis, even though nobody ever eats them), and right after her run, she picked up cheddar scones from Born and Bread.

Only Carson eats. Willa is too nervous, Vivi too excited.

Vivi opens a bottle of vintage Veuve Clicquot and makes mimosas with fresh-squeezed juice. Willa is in her slip, her hair damp. Carson is giving Willa a chignon with braid (they all looked through thousands of pictures online and picked this style) and there’s a gentleman named Rafe coming from Darya’s salon to do all of their makeup. Laurie Richards, the photographer, is due to show up any minute to take “getting ready” pictures. But right now, it’s just Vivi and her two daughters. They’re in Vivi’s bedroom, which resembles a college dorm—her mattress and box spring are on the floor, her running clothes spill out of a jute basket by the side of a dresser she got at the Take-It-or-Leave-It at the town dump. The top of the dresser is littered with candles that Vivi lights for atmosphere; there are also receipts, pens, safety pins, a brush, half a dozen red lipsticks, and a pack of matches from 21 Federal, where she and JP went on their first dinner date. In other words, the room is a disaster. Vivi can’t have Laurie take pictures in here—or can she? So many things in Vivi’s life are works in progress (she will renovate this room eventually; she wants a round bed, some kind of cool light fixture, a boho-chic vibe), but this moment is plucked straight from Vivi’s dreams. Shawn Mendes is singing “Treat You Better” over the wireless speaker. (Willa is an unapologetic top-forty fan and always has been.)