The Moon and More

  “Not happening,” I said. “And besides, this isn’t about me. His aunt died and he’s taking his kid on a road trip.”

  “Do they need a place to rent?” Margo again. Who else?

  “I’m sure they’re staying at Miss Ruth’s,” my mom told her, chewing.

  “She’s dead,” Amber pointed out.

  “But her house isn’t,” Margo replied.

  “Maybe,” Amber said, “we should offer them our guest room.”

  “Stop it,” I told her, and she snorted. To my mom I said, “Do you have a delivery for me to do or not?”

  A pause. Then she shook her head, slowly, still chewing. I sighed, turned on my heel, and headed for the door. “I’m sorry,” she called after me, once she’d swallowed. “I just really wondered what he wanted.”

  “If he needs a good realtor,” Margo said to me as I passed her, holding out a business card, “put him in touch with me, okay?”

  “You people are ridiculous,” I said, but I took the card, stuffing it into my pocket.

  “Don’t be mad!” my mom yelled, halfheartedly, as I walked across the office. I didn’t answer her.

  As I headed out the door, I saw an older guy in cargo shorts and a COLBY BEACH T-shirt opening the complimentary ice-cream cooler in our lobby. He reached in, helping himself to a Popsicle and a Nutty Buddy cone, then held them both out to a little girl in a pink bathing suit and princess cover-up.

  “Which one?” he asked. She pointed at the cone. After he unwrapped it, handed it to her, and opened the Popsicle for himself, they both wandered over to the big map on the wall, staring up at it as they ate.

  WHERE’S HOME FOR YOU? said the letters over the map, this year in bright yellow. The previous year it had been red. You could still see tiny traces of the color, like faint shadows, especially around the curvier letters. Scrape down to the wall itself, through the fifty years of layers, and you’d surely find every other color of the rainbow as well. Not too much changed in Colby or even our office itself, but the map was new and the letters freshly painted, every single season.

  It was my grandfather, way back in the day, who had first put them there. Then he added a YOU ARE HERE over Colby’s spot, put a cupful of pushpins nearby, and let people leave their mark. Pretty soon, for many families, it was part of the vacation tradition, just like getting ice cream when they got their keys, and coffee when they dropped them off. You just had to put in a pin, marking the place you would return to when your time with us, in this place, was over.

  As the man and his daughter headed into the office—her ice cream dripping, also per tradition, across our floor—I stopped by the map, checking its progress so far this season. Like normal around this time of the summer, there were a lot of pins within our own state, several in the ones above and below, and a scattering of others beyond. Someone had been here from Los Angeles; another, from Austin, Texas. There were several, all crammed together, in western Illinois—a wedding, most likely—and two placed neatly, meeting at the tip, over Toronto, Canada. So many different places, different routes to and back from this same place.

  As for Colby itself, though it was my home and everyone else’s that worked here, there was no pin. Just a circle, a star, and the YOU ARE HERE I’d written myself when I repainted the sign back in May. I was here, always, and in many ways loved it. But every time I passed the map and this reminder, it kind of made me sad.

  Why, though, was hard to say. Just as it was difficult, back when all the college stuff started, to explain to my parents, Luke, and just about everyone else why I’d want to go to anywhere other than East U. It was barely a millimeter away on this map, so close, and yet it still felt like enough distance to them. In Colby I’d found that people either wanted to stay forever (and usually did) or couldn’t wait to get gone and never look back (ditto). For me, however, it was a mix of the two, this constant push and pull. I loved it here. But I’d been in that circle and star for my entire life, and I so wanted to know what it would feel like to claim another distant spot as my own, if only for a little while. Someday.

  Outside, Daisy was sitting on the hood of my car, waiting for me. “I thought you were getting towels,” she said, as I pulled open my door.

  “So did I. Turns out my mom just wanted to know what was going on.” She laughed. “It’s not funny. They are all such psychos. They can’t stay out of my life. Or my room.”

  “Because your life and your room are much more interesting than theirs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If that’s what you really think,” I said as I cranked the engine, “why don’t you tag along for dinner tonight?”

  “I totally would, as my life is not interesting either,” she replied. “But I’m on gyno from four to close.”

  Gyno was Daisy’s shorthand for bikini wax, her specialty at Wave Nails. There were other girls there who did it, but because she brought to this task the same dedication and meticulousness with which she did everything else, she had a rabid local following. Her clients were so numerous (and hairy, I guess) that she had to keep special post-workday hours to accommodate them all. Personally, I couldn’t understand how she stomached the, um, awkwardness of the situation, but Daisy was nothing if not professional. Seen one, she said, seen them all. All right, then.

  “Want to trade?” I asked her now.

  “Depends. Where’s he taking you for dinner?”

  “No idea. They’re just calling when they get closer.”

  “Tell him to meet you at Melisma.”

  That was the nicest restaurant in Colby. I’d been there only once, for prom, when I could barely afford to order more than a salad. It was a really good salad, though. “I don’t think that’s what he has in mind.”

  “Too bad. It’s the least he can do for blowing off your graduation.”

  “Yeah, well, we didn’t talk about that.”

  “Think you will?”

  I sighed, then tipped my head back and looked up at the ceiling. The car was hot and I needed to take Daisy to her other job, at a local boutique, so I could do a round of midweek drive-bys of our properties. We did this to make sure nobody was up to anything crazy, like moving a couch onto the balcony, neglecting to report a small fire, or packing forty people into a house that sleeps twelve. Truthfully, I would have rather dealt with all of these problems at once than have to broach the subject of my graduation with my father.

  “If he doesn’t mention it, neither will I,” I told her. “It’s over. There’s no point.”

  Daisy was quiet for a moment, long enough that I turned to look at her. Once I did, she said, “He really hurt you, though, Emaline. You should tell him so.”

  “It won’t change anything,” I replied. “And if I was any other girl, I would have gotten over it by now anyway.”

  Now, her eyes narrowed. “You know I hate when you say that.”

  “What?”

  “That any-other-girl thing.” She flipped her hand, as if literally swatting the words away. “People are not uniform, Emaline. There is no such thing as any other girl. So stop holding yourself to some ridiculous high standard, would you please? It’s okay if you’re still upset. I would be.”

  My phone beeped suddenly, announcing an incoming text. I flipped it over and looked at the screen. I’m sorry, it said. My mom. Forgive me?

  I looked up at the rental office, where I could just see her window. I didn’t know if she realized I hadn’t left, or was watching me as I typed back three letters: Yes.

  The irony of this was not lost on me as I cranked the engine, then backed out of the lot and turned towards the boardwalk. But making up with my mom was easy: It wasn’t the first time one of us had screwed up and had to apologize. Not even the first time this week, probably. Behavior and apologies could be taught, learned over time. Eventually, it became habit, second nature. But my father and I didn’t have that. It would take more than three letters to fix this. Which brought me to the real truth, the one that had sat on my chest since I
heard him pick up the phone an hour earlier: I was thinking that maybe, by this point, I liked it better broken.

  * * *

  I planned just to drop Daisy at the entrance to the boardwalk and start my drive-bys, but once I pulled in, I changed my mind, parking instead. If a couch was on the roof already, another half an hour wouldn’t make much of a difference. I needed to clear my head.

  The boardwalk was crowded, the beach below it even more so. In the winter, we often had this entire stretch to ourselves, save for some circling birds, but the difference between then and now was as vast as the ocean alongside. A band was playing at the grandstand, the outdoor tables filled with people eating and drinking. The boardwalk itself was a solid mass of strollers, folks in bathing suits and cover-ups, and more beach-related stuff for sale—shot glasses, picture frames dotted with shells, and COLBY BEACH T-shirts in every possible design and color—than anyone would ever want to buy.

  I’d barely taken two steps when a guy wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat suddenly appeared square in my path. “Ladies’ night tonight!” he barked, thrusting a piece of paper at me. “Free entrance and two-dollar cocktails! All at Tallyho, hottest club in Colby!”

  I shook my head, dodging him, but Daisy wasn’t so quick and ended up with one. She flipped it over as we picked our way through the crowd. “Tallyho is the hottest club in Colby? Since when?”

  “It probably just means the air conditioner’s busted,” I told her. Clearly we were not the only ones lacking interest, as discarded fliers littered the boardwalk ahead of us. A step later, I got a strong, sudden whiff of cotton candy, sugar incarnate filling my lungs. If I had to bottle the boardwalk, it would be a mix of this and sunscreen, with a tinge of sweat mixed in. Lovely.

  “On your right!” I heard a voice say, and a second later a bike was moving past me, ridden by a shirtless guy in swim trunks. Behind him was a girl in a bikini, a woven bag over one shoulder with a rolled up towel sticking out of it. They went a little farther before stopping in front of Abe’s Bikes, where a girl with curly brown hair in a bright pink T-shirt was standing with a clipboard. Behind her a sign said QUICK, EASY BIKE RENTALS! PAY AND RIDE AWAY! She waved at us, and as we passed, Daisy tried to hand off the flier to her. She shook her head.

  “Come on, Maggie,” Daisy said. “It’s the hottest club in Colby.”

  “Since when?” Maggie replied. “No, no, no to Tallyho. Nice try, though.”

  “I hate that somehow I’m responsible for killing this tree.” Daisy sighed, crumpling up the paper and tossing it into a nearby trash can.

  “You going to do the window?” Maggie asked her.

  “Yep,” Daisy said. “Florals are so last month.”

  “You would know,” Maggie said, taking the bikes as the riders dismounted. She was just asking them if they were sure they didn’t want another hour—at half price!—as we came up on Clementine’s. Sure enough, the mannequins in the window were all in flowered dresses, with petals scattered around their feet.

  “Looks pretty cute for something already passé,” I said to Daisy as I pulled the door open.

  “It is,” she agreed. “But it’s time for a change. I’m thinking robots.”

  “What?” I said, but she was already walking past me inside, the chime sounding over our heads announcing our arrival.

  “There she is,” I heard a voice call out from behind the register. I looked over to see Heidi, the owner, sorting bills into the drawer, while her stepdaughter Auden pegged stretchy bead bracelets with a pricing gun. “Our fashionista has arrived.”

  “You know I hate that word,” Daisy replied. “It makes me sound like I’m starting a revolution.”

  “Aren’t you?” Auden asked. The gun stuck suddenly. She banged it on the counter, once, twice.

  “One robot at a time,” I said.

  “Robots?” Heidi raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

  Daisy nodded. “Silver, futuristic. Metallics. Contrasted with deep skin tones, plus maybe some bead or sequin trim for texture.”

  Heidi nodded. “I like it.”

  “I,” Auden said, picking a stray sticker off her shirt, “have no idea what you guys are talking about.”

  “Which is why you’re not doing the window,” Heidi told her. To me she said, “You here to help? You know I’m hiring, if your mom would ever let you jump ship on the family business.”

  “Unlikely,” I told her. My mom and Heidi knew each other from the chamber of commerce, where they always seemed to end up on one committee or another together. They were the younger members, often joining forces against long-timers like my grandmother and her friends. Everything was small in Colby except the personalities. “I’m just procrastinating.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you,” Heidi observed.

  “I’m starting a revolution,” I told her, and she smiled.

  Just then, the door chimed from behind us, announcing the arrival of two girls in bikini tops and sarongs. As Auden put down the gun to go greet them, I followed Daisy as she made her way back to the storeroom, stopping along the way to pluck pieces that caught her eye.

  Before she’d taken the job, Clementine’s window, like that of any other beach clothing store, featured a few mannequins and lots of bathing suits. Now, it was a local institution. She did zombies (in bikinis) for Halloween, a tableau based entirely on coal for Christmas, a slasher theme in deep reds for Valentine’s Day. It had been pointed out to Heidi more than once that Daisy’s windows might be a bit too “visionary” for the Colby boardwalk, but she maintained that whatever else, they made people stop in front of the store. And once they stopped, they were that much more likely to come in.

  Now, Daisy assembled an armful of shiny bathing suits, then fetched the oversize tackle box where she kept all her pins and props. As she got to work, I sat in the doorway that led into the window, alternately watching her and the crowds passing by. En masse like this, the tourists all blended together into types: younger folks moving in packs; parents with strollers, toting huge beach bags full of gear; older couples, walking slowly. The only constants were sunglasses and the feel of spare time. Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren’t real, or if I was.

  “I think I’m going to need a few metal rulers,” Daisy said, holding up a gold bikini top and squinting at it. “And maybe some saw blades.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” I told her, as a group of girls walked by, outright gawking in at us. It was like they didn’t realize we could see them as well. “I thought this was about robots.”

  “Dangerous robots,” she murmured. She was getting into the zone, that quiet place where her ideas came together. No need for me to stick around. Pretty soon she’d forget I was there anyway.

  “I gotta go,” I told her, getting to my feet. “I’ll call you later?”

  She nodded, and I slipped out of the store, waving at Auden and Heidi. As I headed back to the parking lot, it was nearing two p.m., which gave me about two hours before my father and Benji crossed the bridge over here to my side.

  I got in the car, rolled down all the windows, then turned around to the backseat floor to dig for my drive-by list. Just beneath it, I saw a piece of card stock poking out and grabbed it as well. It was one of my graduation announcements, left over and forgotten. I ran a finger over it, reading the letters of my name and my high school. It had been such a big deal at the time, like the finish line of a race I’d been running for as long as I could remember. My mom and dad were there, my sisters, my grandmother, all of my friends. But as was so often the case, it was the one person missing who you thought about more than the ones who were right in front of you.

  Stupid, I thought now, tossing it back behind me and turning my attention to the drive-by list again. House after house, their names like fairy tales: Gull’s Cry, Carolina Dream, Driftwood Escape, Tide Traveler. I’d hit them all, slowing d
own to peer again from the outside at someone else’s vacation, looking for anything amiss or suspect. But if they happened to glance out, they wouldn’t even realize this. To them, I was just another girl passing by.

  5

  I ONLY CHEWED gum when I was nervous, and could always gauge the stress level of anything by how many sticks it took to calm me down. Sitting outside the Reef Room that evening waiting for my father and Benji, I was up to four and counting.

  This was not where I wanted to be. It had been a long day, and Morris and I had planned to go to the movies, then meet Daisy when her shift ended to hit whatever parties were going on down at the Tip. Instead, I was in my car with a sore jaw, wondering how dirty a person could actually get from cleaning pools all day.

  I hadn’t planned to bring reinforcements, figuring this would be weird enough without throwing anyone else into the mix. But then, as I was leaving my house, I panicked.

  “Are you chewing gum?” was the first thing Luke said to me when I finally got hold of him. I’d already left two what I’d hoped were casual-sounding voice mails, but clearly he could hear the Big Red in my voice.

  “What’s weird about that?” I shot back, entirely defensive. “You chew gum sometimes, you know.”

  He was quiet for a moment, so I could fully absorb how crazy I sounded. Then he said, “What’s going on?”

  I told him. And opened another piece. By the time I’d stuffed it into my mouth, he’d assured me he would get back to his house, take the fastest shower possible, and meet me as soon as he could. Now, though, as a Subaru wagon with Connecticut plates pulled into the lot, I knew it wasn’t soon enough.

  I hadn’t seen my father since the previous September, when he, Benji, and Leah were down over Labor Day weekend. They’d stayed at Miss Ruth’s, although she’d already moved to an assisted living facility by then, and we’d had dinner together at this same restaurant. I was in the thick of my pre-application madness then, so my father and I spent much of the meal strategizing. So much so that I’d actually felt kind of bad for Leah and Benji, who, clearly not as enthused about the subject of power essays and early admissions as we were, left to take a walk on the pier when they’d had enough. I had to admit, though, I’d liked having his full attention, as well as this project in common. I was happy to share anything, actually, other than our weird, somewhat shameful origin story.