The Whole Thing Together

  Her parents first met at Andover summer school. Her mother was a sophomore in high school and her father a freshman. In the earliest letters, her mother called him Bobby.

  At some point her father became Robert and he didn’t have those dreams anymore. Lila was the last person left who had known him before the transformation was complete.

  Maybe it was a relief for her dad to be with Evie, for whom he was never Bobby and never dreamed of the refugee camp in Bangladesh that was his first home.

  Dear Ray,

  I hope it’s okay that I’m emailing you. Quinn gave me your address. I’m Sasha, your stranger-roommate (sorry about the thing with the screen last week), fellow sibling of our sisters, and co-employee at the Black Horse. It seems weird to write to you after all this time, I know, but Manager Francis had a few things for me to pass on to you, and Manager Francis is “not kidding around.” So here it is: no sneakers, no shorts, keep your Black Horse shirt clean, no jeans, no gum, no visible tattoos or piercings. Oh, and “keep a smile on your face at all times.” Even in the stockroom and out back by the dumpsters, apparently. I think that’s everything.

  So anyway, it’s been an honor sharing a room and three sisters with you all these years.

  Sasha

  Dear Sasha,

  I’ve been pretty much waiting my entire life to say sorry about the vomit. Just, all of it. Every chunk. I am sorry. I would hate to share a room with me.

  I like to think that’s all in the past. So looking toward the future, sorry about the shaving scum. I’m trying to be better, but I think I forgot last week.

  I just needed to say that.

  Thanks for the heads-up from Francis.

  Ray

  Also, thank you for trying to keep the shelves nice and for watering the old kalanchoe plant (RIP) because I never did and for having a lot of good books over the years that I read without asking. And for writing a lot of smart notes in your schoolbooks, which allowed me to do better in English class. And for providing toothpaste I’ve used literally for YEARS. And for having that silky nightgown kind of thing you leave at the bottom of the bed sometimes. And for making the sheets smell so good that I can barely fall asleep at night.

  Ray looked over the last paragraph he had written and erased it all.

  —

  Francis eyed Ray as he stood by the storeroom door of the Black Horse Market. “So you are the other half of my new employee.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ray guessed Francis was studying him for possible tattoos and telltale piercing holes.

  “You are large for just half,” Francis concluded.

  Ray shrugged. “But graceful.”

  “Not as graceful as the other half. Not as pretty, either. Not half as pretty.”

  Ray wasn’t sure what to say. “I’ll work on that.”

  “You heard about no jeans, no—”

  “Yep, all of it.”

  “I am under orders to call you Sasha.”

  “From who?”

  “From Ray.”

  “I’m Ray.”

  “The other Ray.”

  “There’s another Ray?”

  “Your sister.”

  “You mean Emma?”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Quinn? Mattie?”

  “You have a lot of sisters.”

  “Yeah, but none of them are named Ray, as far as I know.”

  “The small one. Pretty. Yellow eyes. Her name’s Ray.”

  “My name’s Ray. I think you mean Sasha. That one’s not my sister.”

  Francis shook his head. “Hey, you know what, Sasha?”

  Ray winced. “What?”

  “Never fucking mind.”

  Dear Ray,

  Could you please withdraw orders to call me Sasha?

  Sasha

  —

  “God help us, Dad is mowing the lawn again.” Emma stood by the sliding-glass doors in the Wainscott kitchen, phone in hand, watching the back-and-forth. “Where’d he get the mower?”

  “I think he rented it.” Mattie banged her breakfast things into the sink. “I’m guessing Mom stopped paying the bills again.”

  It was an old story. The lawyers split up the maintenance bills for the house; Robert paid his assiduously and Lila didn’t. “I’m sorry, we don’t have the money this month,” Lila said freely to anyone who asked.

  The feud was too bitter for Robert to just pay her share. The money hardly mattered to him; it was the capitulation he could not tolerate. Then he spent ten times the amount the lawn service cost on threatening letters to Lila from his expensive lawyers. Emma knew for a fact her mother swept up all the lawyer letters and threw them into the recycling bin.

  Sasha turned from the toaster, a look of amusement on her face. “It’s good for him. It gets him outside and moving. Otherwise he’d be at the computer or on the phone bothering the overworked guys at his office. Dad gets exercise, his employees get a break. It’s really a win-win.”

  “Nobody tell Lila,” Mattie said.

  Emma glanced down at her phone. She’d prided herself on not being the person who looked at her phone every second. How many times had she rolled her eyes at Mattie? Now she was that person.

  And of course Mattie was the one who busted her. “Oh, oh. Look who’s sneaking away again.”

  Emma gave Mattie an imperious look on her slow, casual way out to the hall. Then she sped up the stairs and out of earshot. “Hi,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Bridgehampton.”

  “I’m on my way. Meet me at Olive’s. Have you had breakfast?”

  “Just coffee. Isn’t Olive’s kind of public?”

  “Don’t worry. My dad’s mowing the lawn.”

  “I hate sneaking around.”

  “I know.”

  “Do I feel worse about sleeping with his daughter or skipping out of the office today?”

  —

  “Hey, Matt.”

  Wave, smile.

  “Yo, Mattie.”

  Smile, wave.

  It was embarrassing how many people she knew at the Black Horse. How many people there she was now related to.

  It was her day off from the farm stand, and she’d stopped in the big air-conditioned market to get sweet grape tomatoes. They weren’t in season locally yet and her mom wanted them for a recipe. She should have stopped at the Stop & Shop, where they cost half as much, but she couldn’t resist getting a latte, a stale but free pastry from Emma, a glimpse of newly hired Ray haplessly stacking boxes of couscous, and the benefit of one of their employee discounts.

  Ray was on break, it turned out, smoking a cigarette with Julio in back by the dumpsters.

  “What are you doing? You don’t smoke,” Mattie said.

  “I only smoke with Julio,” Ray said.

  She shook her head. “What time do you get off?”

  “Seven.”

  “Mom says dinner at seven-thirty.”

  “Okay. I’ll be home.”

  She returned through the back door. She spent some time considering tomatoes.

  She felt a shadow over her that stayed a little too long. She turned.

  “Are you Matilda Thomas?”

  It was a nicely dressed man probably in his late fifties, light hair a mix of white and gray and leftover blond. He was a little uncertain and also familiar.

  “Mattie. Yes…I’m—”

  He put his hand out. “Jonathan Dawes. I’m a friend of your family from a long time ago, before…”

  She waved her arm like a conductor both to cut him off and let him know the understanding already passed between them. So giant was the quake that ended her parents’ marriage that everybody took sides or fell into the fracture. She was too young to remember much of the event itself, but her life felt like a series of aftershocks and rebuilding efforts.

  Why did he look familiar? She tried to think. Suddenly she remembered something. A photograph. “You taught surfing, right?”

  H
e smiled. “Yes. Exactly.”

  “You taught my mom?” She searched through her files for a very foggy memory.

  “And you girls a few times.” He was watching her face carefully. Maybe he was thinking she looked like her mother back then. People from long ago often said that.

  “I’m sorry to tell you, it didn’t really take in my case. I suck at surfing.”

  He laughed, but in a slightly abstracted way.

  “My sister Quinn wouldn’t shame you, though. She’s actually good.”

  He was watching her face more than listening to what came out of it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, maybe realizing this. “You remind me of…”

  “My mother.”

  He paused a second before he nodded.

  She liked how he looked. He had a fine face, square, tanned, alert, wrinkled in good places. He seemed the kind of person who didn’t just say things to hear the sound of his voice.

  “Is she still surfing?” He looked slightly pained but also eager, the way he leaned forward.

  She liked his face; however, she also suddenly found she wanted to get away from him. “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Sometimes. Yes.” She grabbed haphazardly at tomatoes. “I’ve got to get back home. My mom needs these for a recipe.”

  “Okay.” He was still standing there, looking after her as she got in the cashier line. She pushed her hair behind her ears self-consciously, tried to act like she didn’t know she was being watched. It was a game she’d played before. He wasn’t watching her pervily, though. It wasn’t that. She possessed a highly sensitive flirt detector, and she was pretty certain that wasn’t what was going on. But there was something.

  “I still surf every Saturday out at Ditch Plains,” he said to her. She was half a store away, but his voice carried without him seeming to yell, kind of depositing itself in her ear. “If you ever want to come by.”

  Why would she ever want to come by? “Okay,” she said noncommittally.

  “Say hello to your mom from me.” He sounded serious the way he said it.

  She didn’t look at him once as she paid and marched to her bike, but once on her seat and steering out of the parking lot, she did look back. He was still standing there by the tomatoes.

  Business was slow at the market and the morning’s deliveries were already unloaded and stocked. Emma flagged Sasha down on her way to register four.

  “Dad said dinner at seven tonight. What time do you get off?”

  “Seven. Can you tell them I’ll be a few minutes late?”

  “Sure.”

  Francis was making large slow circles around the bakery counter, as he often did.

  “You want a day-old croissant?” Emma asked.

  “No thanks. I should keep moving. Francis is giving me the stink eye.”

  Emma rolled her eyes and waited for him to disappear behind the deli counter. “Last year he was wearing a paper hat and scooping gelato from a cart out front.”

  “Power corrupts.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Sasha affected a serious voice. “But that was before he finished his MBA, Em. That would be Masters of Business Administration from Fordham.”

  Emma laughed. She put on her Francis face. “After I got my MBA, it gave me a new perspective on merchandising….”

  Francis appeared again and Sasha got moving.

  Francis found her a few minutes later restacking cans of chickpeas.

  “Emma is assistant manager for baked goods,” he informed her. “She can’t just be holding your hand all the time.”

  “Oh, I know. Definitely. You’re right.” Sasha loved the fact that Francis thought she and Emma always and only talked about work.

  He watched her suspiciously. “You said you already finished the canned goods.”

  “I thought maybe I could do a neater job.”

  Francis nodded approvingly. “You look a bit like her, you know.”

  Sasha heard Julio fake coughing from a few shelving units over.

  “Emma, you mean?” she asked. How could she make the bean-stacking fill up the next half hour? “Yeah, that’s what people say.”

  “You don’t look like your brother, though.”

  “Right,” Sasha said. “He’s not my brother, so that could partly explain it.”

  Francis had tuned her out by this point, as she knew he would.

  Dear Other Sasha,

  The Regent of the Black Horse, Master of Markets, requests you take the early shift tomorrow.

  Original Sasha

  Other Ray:

  You are not permitted to leave your shoes or books in the cubby overnight.

  Regards,

  The Pharaoh of Fordham

  (as dictated to original Ray)

  —

  “So I saw a guy at the Black Horse a couple days ago who said to say hello to you,” Mattie mentioned, elbows on the kitchen counter, watching her mom wash the mounds of lettuce she’d brought home from the farm stand.

  This was a perfectly regular kind of thing to say, such a multigenerational place it was for them, but Mattie had stopped and started three times. She was being oddly careful about when and how to lay it down.

  Her mother was distracted. She kept squinting at her phone, unable to make it cough up some voice mail or other. “Oh yeah?” She put her hair behind her ear. “Who?”

  “Jonathan Dawes.”

  Her mother stopped and turned. Her phone slid across the counter. Two handfuls of lettuce fell into the colander. Mattie looked for a trace of alarm in her mother’s eyes and she saw it.

  “You must remember him,” Mattie added.

  “Yes. Of course.” Her voice almost came out casual, but her skin wasn’t quite the normal color. “He used to teach surfing.”

  “Yeah, I can sort of picture that.”

  Her mother cleared her throat. “Did he recognize you?”

  “Yeah, I guess he did. Or maybe he overheard someone say my name. I don’t know.”

  Her mother retrieved the lettuce. She kept her face down.

  He was an old boyfriend, maybe. Somebody who was important once.

  “Did you grow up with him out here?” Mattie asked. Maybe he was a summer fling, a high school crush. She lifted herself up and sat on the counter. She wanted a better angle on her mother’s face.

  Her mother apparently wanted a worse angle. She abandoned the lettuce and went to the refrigerator. “Uh, no. I guess I met him later. He lived in LA. That’s where he grew up.” She gazed aimlessly at the dairy shelf. “He came to New York for a job. He worked in advertising, I think, and surfed out here on weekends.”

  “Is he married?”

  Her mother didn’t turn. “He was married when he was still in LA, but they split a long time ago, when he came here. I don’t know anything about him now.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?” her mother shot back, her body still turned away.

  Mattie hopped down off the counter. She felt her heart fast and heavy. She didn’t even know why. “I just mean, why don’t you know anything about him anymore? Why didn’t you stay friends?”

  Her mother did turn now. She looked impatient. She grabbed her phone and started out of the kitchen, lettuce wet and wilting, refrigerator door hanging open.

  “Mattie, why the interrogation? What does it matter?”

  Mattie wanted to follow her, but she didn’t.

  “Plenty of people don’t stay friends.” Her mother’s voice carried behind her. “You don’t need a reason.”

  Down the hall Mattie heard one door open and another one close.

  —

  Ray looked up from the sandwich he was making and glared at his dad’s cell phone erupting into “Ice, Ice Baby” on the kitchen counter in Wainscott. His dad must have left his phone when he’d gone for a run. Mattie had idly changed Adam’s ringtone two years ago, correctly guessing he wouldn’t figure out how to change it back.
r />   It was yet another old-person kind of thing his dad did, Ray mused with some chagrin. When Ray went on a run he had music to play, of course, and a map app and a running app feeding into a fitness app. A run could barely be said to have happened without his phone.

  Then the landline started ringing, so Ray picked it up like it was a prop on the stage set of a cooking show. “Hello?”

  “Hey, this is George Riggs, is…?”

  “Oh, uh. George.” Ray started to pace, regretted picking up the phone. “Hey. This is, uh…Ray…Riggs.” Why did he add “Riggs”? What a weird thing to do.

  “Great. Wow,” George said, as sincerely as could be hoped. “How’s it going, Ray?”

  “It’s good. So…How’s everything…out there?” He felt the back of his T-shirt dampening with sweat. He realized he’d dropped his voice to sound older, and he was embarrassed for himself. Was it too late to change back?

  “Great.”

  God. Awkward. For the life of him, Ray suddenly could not remember the name of the company where George worked or the name of his pretty red-haired girlfriend. He knew he would remember both as soon as he got off the phone.

  If they just could have been strangers it would have been easy. “Okay, so you probably want to speak to…” Thousands of pointless calculations: your dad, Adam, Dad…“Dad?” He heard his voice rising with guilt and insecurity.

  “Uh, yeah. Is he around? I tried his cell, but…”

  “No, he went for a run. I’ll tell him you called.”

  “Great. Thanks, Ray.

  “Great.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll see you soon, I hope.”

  “Okay, so…nice talking to you.” Did he really say that?

  He put the phone down and felt like crying. That was his brother.

  —

  “I’ll be back on the four o’clock jitney.”

  “Okay. I miss you. Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes. Just stop by the Brooklyn house tonight and we’ll get the first meeting out of the way. Just super casual.” Emma paced in front of the dumpster at the rear of the market, pretending she didn’t see Francis checking on her from the back window. Her break was over, but he usually turned a blind eye for a few extra minutes. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I feel like if we make a presentation of it, she’ll start asking a lot of questions.”