Morris, like about thirty percent of our class, would be going to Coastal Tech, the community college twenty minutes past the bridge over to the mainland. There was a good four-year school just past North Reddemane, Weymar College, but locals rarely went there: it was pricey and private, not to mention geared towards the arts, which our high school didn’t have the funds or faculty to provide beyond the basics. Coastal Tech, however, was affordable and offered both day and night classes in subjects like office administration and dental assisting, things that could get you employed right out of the box. Unlike my slate of fall classes, which would likely include Spanish-American history, a required overview of English literature, and an introduction to psychology. I could only imagine what would have been at Columbia.
Morris wanted to get a degree in automotive systems technology, with an eye towards getting a job at one of the local dealerships or repair shops. Which was very ambitious. It was also not as much his idea as that of our lone guidance counselor, Mr. Markham, who was young and energetic, and took Morris on as a personal project senior year. “Transport is a human need. People always have to get from here to there,” he said over and over again, pushing the Coastal Tech brochure across his desk. So Morris planned to enroll. Then again, he had also planned to work for Robin at Roberts Family Catering. Not that I could really say this to Daisy.
“He says,” she continued now, as the Da Vinci’s Pizza and Subs sign—featuring the Mona Lisa chowing down on a slice—came into view up ahead, “that they let him go because the owner wanted to hire her nephew.”
I had a flash of Morris, leaning up against the fridge in Luke’s kitchen as everyone moved around him. “Her nephew already works for her.”
“He does?”
She was looking at me, but I kept my gaze on the Mona Lisa. “Yeah.”
Daisy exhaled, a low, whistle-like sound. It was the same noise I’d heard her mom make often in response to a chattering customer. Some things were the same in every language. “He’s still working with your dad, though, right?”
“I think so,” I replied, although in truth I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Morris show up at 6:30 a.m. for a ride to the job site. Just because I hadn’t witnessed it, though, did not mean it wasn’t happening. Technically.
We came up to the door of Da Vinci’s, which was steamed over slightly, and I pulled it open, instantly smelling dough and pepperoni. It was just before twelve, so the place was packed with a mix of tourists in beachwear and locals on lunch break. We got in line, right behind three girls in bikini tops and shorts looking up at the wall menu and talking loudly.
“I can’t believe I still have a headache,” one of them was saying.
“I can’t believe you hooked up with that guy last night,” one of the others replied. “Since when are you into chest hair?”
“He did not have chest hair.”
Her friends burst out laughing, clearly disputing this. “Deidre,” one finally said, “it was like fur.”
They started giggling again, while the girl with the headache sighed. “I think you guys are forgetting the vacation code we decided on during the trip down here.”
“Code?” the girl on her right asked.
“We said,” her friend continued, “that what happened here, this week, would not be part of our permanent record. Pizza at last call, chest hair, belly shots—they all apply. They’re to be filed away and forgotten.”
“Belly shots?” the girl on the left said.
The other two looked at her. “You don’t remember the belly shots?”
“Who, me? No way. I would never do that.” They kept staring. “Would I?”
“Next in line!” the guy behind the counter called out, and they moved up. I smiled at Daisy, who was shaking her head disapprovingly.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You have to admit, it would probably be fun.”
“What?” she replied. “Belly shots?”
“No, that whole down-for-a-week, anything-goes, summer-fling thing.”
“Please don’t start up about how the tourists have more fun than us again,” she warned me. “I can’t take it today.”
“I’m not saying they have more fun,” I replied. She gave me a doubtful look. “I’m saying that, you know, we never get to go to the beach and just, you know, let loose. Fall in love and be different, with no permanent record. We live in our permanent record.”
“There are other beaches besides here,” she said.
“I know. But we’ve never gone to any of them, have we?”
“Emaline, I look at the ocean all year long,” she told me. “If I travel, I want to do something different.”
“Which is exactly what I’m saying. You go on vacation, you can be different. We see people do it all the time. But we’re always just supporting players in someone else’s summer, so we stay the same.”
“I like my same, though,” she said. “And don’t forget, things are about to change, in just a month or two, with college. Right?”
I nodded, but really, that was different. College was for four years, not one week. It was permanent, whereas a vacation—like the ones I saw beginning, in progress, and ending all around me, every day—had a set duration, only a finite amount of time before it was gone for good. Just once, I would have liked to find out how it felt to come to a place like Colby, have the time of my life, and then leave, taking nothing but memories with me. Maybe someday.
“Next!” the heavyset guy behind the counter called out. We stepped forward. “Crazy Daisy, my favorite customer.”
“Eddie Spaghetti,” she replied. “How’s it going?”
“Wednesday,” he said with a shrug, like this was an answer.
She put down a twenty-dollar bill. “She wants her usual. No mayo.”
“You got it,” he said, scribbling something on his order pad. “You guys eating?”
“Slice of cheese,” I told him, and Daisy held up two fingers. I reached for my money, but she shook her head, sliding the bill towards him. “Hey. I can pay.”
“I know.”
Eddie comped us two fountain drinks, which we got before claiming a booth to wait for our food. “So,” Daisy said, unwrapping her straw, “why’d you really just take a shower?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Does there have to be a reason?”
“For you, yes.” She flicked her eyes to the TV over my head, then back at me. “I know for a fact you’ve been up since six thirty, at work at eight sharp. Last I checked you didn’t take bathing breaks.”
I poked at my ice. “Luke and I, um, met up for lunch at my house.”
She exhaled, shaking her head. “I thought you said never again.”
“I did. Apparently this is never.”
“Apparently you want to get caught.”
“I really don’t,” I told her. She made a face, clearly doubting this. “But it’s not like we have a lot of options.”
“Other people manage.”
I held up my hand. “Stop right there. Remember what I told you. I don’t want to hear about you and Morris.”
“I’m not talking about me,” she replied, offended. “I don’t sneak around like that.”
“You do it in the car or dunes instead?”
“I don’t do it, period. You know that.” This was true. Daisy was a virgin, and planned to remain one until marriage. While the reasons for this tended to vary from person to person, among the people we know it was usually religion based. Daisy, however, was not a churchgoer. But her family was her faith. Mr. and Mrs. Ye, first-generation immigrants, were upstanding, hardworking, morally centered people who expected their children, especially their oldest daughter, to follow suit. In their family, there was no rebellion, no back talk, no sneaking a boy home at lunch. These things just Did Not Exist. My mom, battling with my sisters and me throughout middle and high school, once asked Mrs. Ye how she managed to keep her kids so in line. She just looked at her. “They are children,” she said. “You
are adult.” It was just that simple. At least at their house.
“Order up!” Eddie yelled, hitting the little bell by the register. Daisy started to move but I shook my head, going over to pick up our slices and her mom’s sandwich. I was just sliding into my seat when the front door beeped again. Looking over, I saw my dad, Morris, and a couple of other guys from Dad’s crew coming in. Morris headed right over, but my dad just waved en route to the counter. I waved back, wondering if my hair looked damp from a distance.
“Hey, girl,” Morris said as he plopped down beside Daisy, sliding an arm around her waist. She presented her cheek for a kiss. Two months together and they were like an old married couple.
“Morris!” my dad called out. He and the other guys were up at the counter ordering. “You eating or what?”
“Yeah,” Morris replied. “Get me—”
I kicked him squarely in the shin, as hard as I could. He squeaked, then looked at me. “What?”
“Are you seriously asking him to order for you?”
He glanced at my dad, who I could tell, even from this distance, was annoyed bordering on irritated. Next step was pissed, and nobody wanted that.
“Go over there,” I said, my eyes level on him. “Now.”
Morris slid away from Daisy, shooting me a look, then loped back to the rest of the crew. My dad watched him approach and order, his expression flat. When Eddie was done ringing everyone up, my dad slid some bills across the counter. He’d told me a million times there was no such thing as a free lunch, but somehow Morris managed to get one. If it wasn’t too much trouble to order it himself.
I looked at Daisy, who was chewing a bite of pizza, her eyes on the parking lot. “Don’t say I’m too hard on him,” I told her. “He needs to learn this stuff.”
“I’m not saying anything,” she said. I was never that fond of any of Daisy’s other boyfriends—a volleyball player, a guy who may or may not have been gay, a creative-writing student at Weymar who wrote about nothing but aliens—mostly because I never thought any of them were good enough for her. Times like this, though, I would gladly have welcomed any or all back.
“Emaline.”
I turned to see my dad a few tables away, standing while the rest of his crew, Morris included, got settled with their slices and drinks. “Yes?”
“Got a minute?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
As I got up to follow him outside, I was braced for any number of conversational possibilities. There was my damp hair, and the fact that I might be busted, again. Also, there was Morris, who had provided yet another reason he should never have been hired. Both were uncomfortable topics, but at least Morris was secondary shame, so I knew which one I had my money on. Once we were face to face by the newspaper boxes, though, he broached neither, instead handing me a slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it.
“What’s this?” I asked him, as that same moped whined past, going the other way.
“Your father’s number. He called again when I was just at the house.”
There was always a weird moment when he referred to anyone else as my father. Like we’d entered an alternate universe, or something. “I have his number.”
“That’s his cell. I was going to drop it by the office with your mom to give you on my way back to the job.” When I just looked at him, confused, he added, “He said it was important.”
Important. I had a flash of my graduation invitation, never responded to. It was like I hadn’t even sent it.
“Just call him, get it over with,” my dad said. “Okay?”
“Sure,” I said, as he pulled the door open. “I’ll do it right now.”
“Good girl. See you tonight.” I watched him go back inside and cross the restaurant, his walk slow, but not for the same reasons as Morris. Twenty-plus years of carpentry and roofing had taken a toll, although his body wasn’t as broken as some. At my age, he’d worked days framing, then played guitar in a bar band at night, one good enough to get close to a record deal. But close is just close, especially in Colby.
Inside, Daisy was looking at me, so I pulled out my phone and held it up so she’d know what I was doing. She pointed at my mostly empty plate. When I shook my head, she gathered it up, along with her own, and tossed both in the trash. I was just starting to dial the number when she came outside.
“Everything okay?” she asked, putting on her sunglasses.
“I’ll let you know in a minute.”
She nodded, then started walking back up to the salon, the bag with her mom’s lunch hanging from her hand. In my ear, the phone was now ringing. Once. Twice. Three times. I was expecting a voice-mail greeting, but then, suddenly, he was on the line.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” I said. “Um, it’s Emaline. My dad said you called?”
“Yes,” he replied. A pause. “You’re a hard girl to catch up with.”
“Sorry,” I said, then immediately regretted this easy, knee-jerk apology. “Is everything … okay?”
“Benji and I are headed your way,” he told me. “We just crossed into Virginia, should be there in … four hours? Five?”
“You’re coming here?”
“My aunt passed away a couple of months back. We’re cleaning out her place to get it ready to go on the market.”
“I’m sorry.” This time I meant it. I’d met her a few times. She was always nice to me.
“She’d been sick awhile. It was for the best.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I figured it would be a great opportunity for a road trip. A pilgrimage of sorts, just us guys.”
“Leah isn’t with you?”
A beat. Then, “I figure we’ll be crossing over the bridge right around dinnertime, give or take whatever traffic holds us up. I know it’s short notice, but I was hoping you could meet us for a quick bite.”
I wanted to tell him no, make an excuse, then get off the phone. But it was one thing to be cold over distance, another entirely when they were in your same zip code. “Um … sure. Just call me when you get close.”
“Will do. See you soon, Emaline.”
And with that, he was gone, again. The great disappearing act, that was my father. No mention of school, plus he didn’t answer any of the questions I asked him. It made me think of Mrs. Ye and all the things she said that I couldn’t figure out. She and I at least spoke different languages, though. With my father, the words themselves were clear. I got every one. But somehow, I still didn’t understand.
* * *
News travels fast in a small town like Colby. Between my parents, though, it was more like warp speed.
“You need me to do a towel delivery?”
My mom glanced at me, then put down the pencil she was holding. “Oh, right … yes. Towels. I do.”
I just looked at her. It was not exactly a bad trait, but my mother was the worst liar ever. “Where?”
She swallowed, then pushed a few papers around on her desk, searching for a Post-it or piece of paper I was almost positive did not exist. “Let me see … I think it was over in Sandbar Cove. …”
Behind me, I heard Margo, who was in the next office, snort. One look at her face—biting back a smile as she studied her computer screen—and I knew my hunch was correct. I turned back to my mom. “He told you about the phone message, didn’t he?”
“What?”
“Mom. Come on.”
Finally, she stopped pretending to look, instead sitting back in her chair. By now Margo had moved to the doorway as well, all the better to hear every word. “He might have mentioned that your father had something important to tell you.”
If hearing this made me nervous, I can only imagine what it did to my mom. In fact, if I’d opened up her top desk drawer right then, I knew I’d find all the saltier, crunchier offerings of the office vending machine, partially consumed. She was a stress eater from way back. Lucky for her, worry also boosted her metabolism, so it usually balanced out.
“He’s on his way here,”
I told her. “With Benji.”
She just looked at me. Margo said, “That’s the kid, right?”
“What about Leah?” my mom asked.
I shook my head. “Didn’t mention her. All he said was that his aunt died and they’re putting her house on the market.”
“Miss Ruth passed away?” my mom said, looking genuinely sad.
“Do they have a realtor?” That was Margo. Because of course this was the most pressing question.
“She’d been sick awhile,” I told my mom. “Apparently.”
“Who’s Miss Ruth?”
I turned, and there was Amber, holding a paper sack from Amigos, the Mexican place up the road. “What are you doing here?”
“I got an SOS call,” she replied, pushing past me to walk over to my mom’s desk, where she deposited the bag, which already had grease staining the bottom. “Someone needed a taco, stat.”
“You deliver now?” I asked.
“If someone else is paying. I’m broke and hungry,” she replied, plopping down in the chair opposite my mom. “Who’s Miss Ruth?”
“Emaline’s father’s aunt,” Margo informed her.
You could literally see Amber figuring out this relationship, her brain wheels spinning. Then she said, “The one he used to stay with, in North Reddemane?”
My mom, unwrapping a taco, nodded. “Such a nice lady. She made the best chicken salad. It was to die for.”
“How long’s he staying?” Margo asked me.
“He didn’t say.”
Silence. Which was rare when we were all together, if not unheard of. “Maybe,” Amber said, “he’s planning to apologize for being such a jerk about the college thing, win you over, and be your favorite parent again.”
My sister did not have that many talents. One she had cultivated, however, was the ability to zero in on the single thing someone absolutely does not want to hear and then say it aloud. I looked at my mom, who, sure enough, was already stuffing the back end of her taco into her mouth.