The Lies They Tell(28)
Across the room, their gazes met, the briefest of magnetic pulls. But Reese didn’t linger; he went back to chatting up members, pointing out items on the menu, refilling glasses, making time to get a slow smile out of Indigo whenever she passed.
Stiffly, Pearl went to her section, pushed a chair into a table harder than necessary, and tried to match his pace. Maybe she didn’t make it look as good, but she could freeze him out just as easily. The two of them moved like figurines on an ornamental skating pond: gliding, spinning, repelling whenever they grew too near.
Pearl and Dad left for North Beach after supper. It wasn’t necessary to talk much. She knew how he was feeling after the night at the Tavern. They’d survived enough lost weekends that he didn’t embarrass her with apologies. He had cut himself back to two beers a night for the last week, and she’d pretended not to notice his restlessness, his short temper as the evening wore on. It would be something of a relief when he gave in and went back for that third, fourth drink.
But tonight, they were going beachcombing, and there was peace and timelessness in the ritual. Pearl might’ve been ten years old again, riding shotgun, hoping for a stop at the ice cream takeout on the way home. And when they got to the house, Mom would be sitting on the couch, flipping through a magazine, waiting to see what they’d found. Funny; sometimes Pearl would go months without thinking about the way things had been, and then a nothing-special memory like that would pop into her head, bringing with it an unexpected sense of loss.
North Beach had a paved parking area with a hot dog stand in the far corner, its striped awning faded and tattered around the edges. Dad parked nearby, said, “Want a dog?” which earned him the usual dirty look. He knew Pearl hadn’t touched a hot dog since she ate a bad one at the Blue Hill Fair in sixth grade and threw up on the Sea Dragon.
They walked together, each of them with their hands in their pockets, speaking only when one of them spotted something of interest: a shard of beach pottery veined with cracks, a particularly big crab shell. Now and then, Pearl stooped to examine pieces of sea glass winking up from the sand, leaving most of it for somebody else to discover. She had more than enough common colors in her collection already.
Dad said, “So you talked to your mom today, huh.”
“She called you?”
“At the club, after you hung up on her, yeah. She was pretty upset.”
“It wasn’t like that. I mean, I didn’t yell at her or anything, I just . . . didn’t have anything else to say.” She glanced at him. “Did she freak out on you?”
“Well, she had some questions about what’s going on, how you were. I said you were okay.” He rubbed the sides of his mouth, watching a dog splash into the water after a stick. “Are you?”
It was no small thing, Dad asking that. He was the opposite of Mom, tending to give Pearl more space than she wanted. She thought of thundering fists on a door, the trapped-animal sounds Cassidy had made on the video, tried to push them away. “I’m fine. She’s the one who’s always having a meltdown over nothing. If she wants to know what’s happening with us, why doesn’t she ever come up here and see for herself?”
“Because her life’s down there now. She’s asked you to stay at her place for the weekend plenty of times. You never want to go.”
“So I can sleep on the inflatable mattress and make super-awkward small talk with what’s-his-name? No, thanks.” Pearl bit her lip as they walked. “That was mean.”
Dad shrugged. “You’re her kid. She worries about you.”
“You mean she worries about you. I’m just the go-between.”
“Bullshit. She loves you and you know it.” Dad picked up a stone and skipped it across the water’s surface. “You need to call her more, or email, something. Stay in touch.”
“Okay. I’ll try.” In that moment, she meant it.
A few minutes later, her phone chimed—new text. Pearl glanced, saw Bridges’s name, kept the screen angled slightly away from Dad as she texted back, not much in response to his wuz up? Not that it was Dad’s style to sneak a peek, anyway.
Bridges: missed u last night.
She hesitated, typed, did you guys go out later? On the water, maybe, in Tristan’s Rivelle?
A pause. Then, an emoticon, a smiley face with devil horns.
where?
No response for so long that she almost put her phone back in her pocket. Then: u into tennis?
Okay, random. never played.
tomorrow @ 2ish?
Pearl exhaled slowly through her nose, sent back a thumbs-up. As she tucked her phone away, she noticed a shard of cobalt-blue glass near her foot. Probably from an old medicine bottle, smashed who knew how many decades ago on another coast, tumbled smooth by time and tide. She wiped it off with the hem of her T-shirt, held it up to the dusky light.
“A keeper?” Dad said.
“Definitely.”
Eleven
THEY HADN’T CHECKED the mail in days. From the kitchen, where Pearl threw together a bag lunch to bring to work, she could see the mailbox door hanging open, letters and drugstore flyers sticking out. Neither she nor Dad wanted to be the jerk who brought the bills into the house.
Sighing, she went outside into the bright morning, yanking on the mail until it came free. The Clarence Agency: bill collector; Central Maine Power: past due; a heavy cream-colored envelope with her name and address printed in calligraphy across the front. The return address was the club. For a crazy moment, she wondered if it might be a pink slip, but not even Meriwether would be that pretentious. Brow furrowed, Pearl tore open the seal and pulled out the square of card stock inside.