Two Truths and a Lie(7)

When she stopped spinning, she ran smack into a sweatshirt.

“Sorry,” she muttered, and the guy inside the sweatshirt caught her elbow and said, “Hey, hey.” Fantastic, was her first thought. Another guy grabbing at her, just what she needed. She lifted her eyes.

“You okay?” said the guy. The sweatshirt was white, or off-white—she couldn’t be sure under the dim outdoor lights—and said “Saint” in purple and “Michael’s” in gold. It was wildly unfashionable. She had seen this guy earlier, with Shelby McIntyre, who was a year ahead of Alexa, and some sort of cross-country star at UVM. (Cross country was a sport Alexa had never understood—it seemed hard and cold and messy—although the coach at the high school was said to be legendary.)

“Yes,” she said. “Fine. Just going inside.” It was then that she remembered the reason Zoe Butler-Gray always brought out the IPA at parties—not the pilsner—was because it had an alcohol content of about a million percent. She remembered that just about the same time she remembered that she had eaten neither lunch nor dinner before the vodka. She felt herself beginning to fall.





6.





The Squad


We took the center table at Plum Island Grille, the only one long enough to accommodate us. Some of us, arriving early, had met beforehand in the bar on the other side of the restaurant, from which you could see the famous Plum Island salt marshes and the turnpike (a grand name for a short stretch of road) we had just driven over to get there. Except for Esther, who lived on the island and had walked down. It was the only time of year it was in any way convenient to be Esther.

In the distance, if we squinted, we could see, or imagined we could see, the Pink House, long empty, much speculated about, which sits in the center of the marsh, paint peeling, roof leaking, cupola choked with birds’ nests. The Pink House was built in 1925 as part of a divorce settlement by a disgruntled husband for his ex-wife. You want your own house? the husband is rumored to have said. I’ll build you a house! And, bam, he built a house, in beautiful isolation.

After a time we repaired to our table to meet those who had just arrived. One of us couldn’t make it, and we were somewhat surprised to find that Brooke Kearney had taken it upon herself (without consulting the rest of us) to invite the new woman, Katie’s mother, to fill the spot. Sherri. With an i. Sherri from the beach.

We were surprised, but we weren’t going to be rude about it. We are nothing if not welcoming. Even though the look Esther shot Brooke when she realized what had happened . . . some of us agreed after the fact that that was borderline impolite.

It was a birthday! We started out with tequila shots, twelve of them, with twelve slices of lime and four salt shakers to share. That is how we always do birthdays. It was a good tequila, a Clase Azul, which had just come on the scene for us, and was so smooth you didn’t really need the lime. Then appetizers: tempura oysters, shrimp cocktail, crab cakes.

Sherri didn’t seem to have any compunction about ordering the surf and turf, we all noted. The rest of us stuck to the grill board with swordfish and pineapple salsa. It was bathing suit season, after all.

With the tequila, and the cocktails that followed, Sherri became a little more animated. Her clothing choices were just this side of okay—when one of us tucked in the label to her dress for her (It was sticking out! We weren’t snooping!), we noticed that it said Ann Taylor Loft. That’s just an observation, not a judgment. She’d worn lipstick, which was brighter than the rest of ours, and mascara, though studying her some of us thought that eyelash extensions would do wonders. Her mascara was clumping. It was hard to put a finger specifically on the rest of what was wrong. Well, nothing was wrong. But something was off. That’s the best way to put it. Something desperate in her laugh? Yes, that’s just it, that’s what it was. Something desperate.





7.





Rebecca


Rebecca took a bite of her scallops and thought, I don’t even know these women. She thought, These people are strangers to me. We were thrown together by happenstance, that’s all. Happenstance and geography. These were thoughts she’d been having more and more often lately. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her friends anymore, that wasn’t exactly right—it was that nobody here knew what to do with her sadness after Peter. Immediately after, sure: there was the food and the offers to take over carpools and so forth. But after a time, Rebecca could tell that secretly they thought (and maybe sometimes talked among themselves) that it was about time for Rebecca to get on with it. They wanted the old Rebecca back, the one who planned trips and organized sleepovers. They didn’t understand that that Rebecca was gone forever.

Brooke had invited an outsider to Esther’s birthday dinner, which was clearly vexing Esther, though she was trying her best not to show it. Rebecca considered the new woman, who was sitting next to her. She had seen her on the beach at surf camp, but Rebecca had been on the phone with Daniel for a lot of the morning. Daniel’s brother-in-law was having problems with his daughter, who was thirteen, and Daniel was trying to help him by having her stay with him while his brother-in-law went on a business trip to Cincinnati. Now Daniel himself was having trouble with the girl.

The woman was Sherri “with an i” (that was how she introduced herself, as though the i were of particular value, a bonus). All Rebecca knew about her was that she had a daughter the same age as all of the girls and that she had moved from somewhere (Illinois?) after a divorce.