Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (41 page)

“I don't have any cigarettes.”

“You have an empty pack.”

Irina turned to her mother, her bottom lip protruding in a frown. “I don't smoke, Mom. I just like the way the box smells. Like apples. Smoking is gross. It's tar.”

Thea breathed a sigh of relief.

“And anyway I tried smoking once.”

Thea stopped drumming. Her heart may have stopped as well. “And?”

“It tasted disgusting. Like . . . like ash!”

Thea held back a smile, pleased that if there was one thing that would keep her daughter from smoking, it was smoking itself. The light turned green, and she pressed the gas. “All right, here's the deal,” she said. “You agree to these terms, or I really do ground you. Ready?”

Irina nodded.

“First, no more giving espresso beans out. They
don't
make you run faster. But they can make your heart race if you don't know how you'll react to them, and that could be very dangerous. Especially for kids. Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Two, when we get home, we're throwing away the matches. They're dangerous, Irina. Not for playing with. Understand?”

“Fine.”

“Last, I keep the knife until you're old enough to have it back.”

“When's that?”

“I don't know exactly. We'll have to see how well you behave. If you're mature enough to have it.”

“Really?”

Thea nodded.

“Fine. As long as you won't ground me,” she said.

They rode in silence, heading south toward the Dancing Goat, and Thea thought to herself that there was something almost too easy about the conversation. Irina, who so often dug her heels in, had agreed to Thea's terms without any terms of her own. Thea would have to keep an eye on her daughter for a while, just to make sure she wasn't getting into any trouble. She hoped Irina's rebellion phase didn't last too long. There was only so much Thea could take.

 

 

The week dragged into the weekend, and Thea knew Garret had left—she felt his absence like a thinning of the air or the change in temperature that happens when the sun dips behind a cloud. She forced herself to know it, to reconcile with it, to embrace his disappearance. He hadn't told her he was leaving Newport, and yet somehow she knew the moment he was gone.

The baristas at the coffee shop did their best to cheer her up, and she did her best to let them. Only Dani and Lettie seemed to have guessed what was wrong, but neither of them spoke about it. They asked Thea if she was eating and insisted on going out to lunch. They offered to watch Irina if Thea needed a break, and when business was slow and Thea lingered longer than necessary, Lettie put her foot down and sent her home.

On Saturday evening, Thea had flipped the sign on the door from Open to Closed, and the baristas put on eighties music and danced as they cleaned up, Claudine making advances on a broom and Jules twirling à la Ginger Rogers as he mopped. Apparently someone had told Dani there was a party, because she'd brought her civilian clothes to change into in the bathroom after her shift. Lettie showed up with her knitting bag full of all the fixings for mojitos.

Sure,
Thea thought.
Why the hell not?

They closed the shades and dimmed the lights and tucked in for a long evening. And, sometime around one a.m., Thea realized she was drunk.

Jules refilled her glass, and she shook her head and pushed it away. “Oh come on,” he said. “Lettie's opening in the morning. You don't have to be up.”

“No.” She stood on wobbly legs and went behind the counter for a glass of water. It tasted fantastic—crisp and clear going down. When it was gone, she poured another. Jules turned around in his seat to look at her as she rejoined them.

“Why don't we get out of here?” he asked. “There's this little bar I know about around the corner; it's so adorable. The kitchen is open all night, and they make the best lobster rolls this side of the Penobscot Bay.”

“Lobster rolls?” Thea said. “I haven't had one in twenty years.”

“Then maybe it's time to try again!”

“No. No lobster rolls.” Thea put down her water, suddenly feeling an intense need to explain. To make him—all of them—understand. “Look. I don't like them. And that's all there is to it. It doesn't matter why I don't like them, I just don't.”

“Okay, okay!” Jules said, sitting back in his chair and laughing. “No lobster rolls!”

But Thea wasn't done. “Do you know why Irina likes soccer?”

Claudine grinned. “Because it's the
real
football?”

Thea rolled her eyes.

“Because she's a show-off,” Dani said. “And I think she gets a kick out of outplaying the boys.”

“It's because it suits her,” Lettie said. “That's all.”

“Right.” Thea jabbed her pointer finger in the air. “Soccer suits her. I never taught her to like it. I figured I would have been carting her to and from ballet or piano lessons by now. But nope—she likes soccer. And I have no idea why.”

“Where are you going with this?” Claudine asked.

“I have no idea,” Thea said. “I guess . . . I guess the point is that—okay—I did what you guys asked.” She looked around at her friends, Claudine with her purple fedora, Lettie with her necklace of pearls, Dani with her boy-cut hair, and Jules with all the best intentions in the world. “I tried to reinvent myself—you know, the whole new post-divorce me. But as it turns out, I
like
the coffee shop. I
like
being a mom, even though I had Irina young. And I like my house, even though I inherited it from my parents.”

She noticed that her friends had grown quiet, listening.

“I mean, maybe I could learn to like Indian food. Or lobster rolls. Or kissing strangers at two a.m.—”

“Whoa, I need to hear this story,” Jules said.

“But,” Thea continued, “my life, the life I've been living so far, suits me for the most part. I don't want to talk myself into being a person that I'm not. I like what I like. And I love who I love. And it doesn't matter
why
I love. I just do. And that's all there is.”

Lettie stood up and walked around the table to Thea. “Come on, darling.” Thea glanced up at her. “Come on and let Lettie take you home.”

Thea looked up, confused. The look on Lettie's face was filled with gentle concern, and it wasn't until that moment that Thea realized she'd been crying. When she touched her cheeks, they were wet. “Lettie . . .” She started to say she was sorry, but the words wouldn't come out.

“Shhh.” Lettie took her hand and helped her out of her chair. “Come on, love. You've had a long week. A very long week.”

The room spun. Time had slipped at some point, and apparently Jules had gone for her things. He helped her into her coat and handed Dani her bag.

“I'm sorry, guys,” she said. She took a deep breath and pulled herself together. “Thank you for this. For the party. And the therapy.”

“I'll expect an extra eighty-five bucks in my paycheck this week,” Jules said. Claudine smacked him on the back of the head.

In the doorway, Dani hugged her and said good night while the others began to clean up. “Call me if you need anything.”

Thea nodded. “I can't help what I like,” she said. “I'm not a bad person.”

“You're the best person I know,” Dani said.

Lettie put her arm around her. “Time to get you home.”

Weeks passed. Irina had dressed up as Hulk Hogan for Halloween, with cotton-stuffed muscles, a bandanna, and a blond wig. She'd won a best costume award in the town parade. The leaves dropped from the branches until there were no more to fall, and the street sweepers roared down the streets and brushed the stragglers away. The grocery stores began advertising free turkeys, the food pantries took out ads in the paper calling for donations, and in some stores, the first Christmas decorations were popping up among lawn rakes and fertilizer like vanguards hinting at the winter freeze. The first snow flurry of the year came while Thea was taking Irina to school one morning, flakes sweeping up and over the hood of the car. She nearly had to squint to see them, and yet they foretold so much.

At some point, Thea had made the decision to stop wishing for what wasn't: for Jonathan to help make important decisions about her child, for Sue and Ken, for Garret. She felt the loss of them at odd moments—she missed Sue when Irina was hawking cheap chocolate for a school fund-raiser, and her grandmother always bought so much and with such joy. She missed Ken when it was time to clean out the gutters of her house, since he'd always insisted on giving her a hand and she always insisted on making a pie for him afterward. She missed Jonathan when she came home at night, because she'd spent so much of her life exchanging stories with him, and she liked his easy companionship. And she missed Garret—so much—all the time; her longing was a low hum that followed her everywhere, a sound that she could get used to and live with and maybe even one day learn to ignore, but she would never stop hearing it completely.

She studied with Irina to help keep her focused and on track. She kept the house clean, and she tried to settle into a new kind of rhythm. She wasn't alone—she had friends—but aside from her daughter, she no longer was close with any of her family. Still, she knew she was strong—that she could stand it. Maybe, she thought, she would even come to like her new life—maybe being alone, too, could become an acquired taste.

 

 

Jonathan loved to watch Lori Caisse eat—the way she gave such perfect attention to her food, cutting meat and vegetables into neat little bites, and chewing each with a thoughtful, pleased expression on her face. At the Greek restaurant where he'd taken her for their second date, his own food sat nearly untouched on his plate. It was delicious enough—a rich moussaka of eggplant, meat, tomato, and Parmesan—but part of the reason he couldn't bring himself to enjoy it was because of how much he wanted to.

His parents were upset with him—they had been for a while. His mother hadn't questioned his ultimatum for Garret and neither had his father, and yet he knew deep down that they held him responsible for their son's sudden departure. And of course, they were right. It had been weeks since he'd seen his brother, weeks since he could bring himself to even think of his ex-wife. And yet, here he was, happier than he'd ever expected he might be, enjoying the twists and turns of taking a beautiful, interesting woman on a real date.

Some part of him felt that he didn't deserve to be happy because his family was not. And yet he
was
happy. Not just content, but really, truly happy for the first time in years—except for knowing that it was Garret and Thea who bore the cost of his own newfound delight.