Later that afternoon, before dinner, Louisa is prepping for battle with a hostile honeydew melon. After the honeydew (Abigail’s favorite) she’s got to face off against a cantaloupe (Matty’s) and a mini watermelon (Claire’s). It would be too easy for all three children to like the same kind of melon. She finds the big cutting board and the appropriate knife and stares for a while at the honeydew, trying to bend it to her will. She raises the knife just as Annie comes in, and for a few long seconds they regard each other, their conversation from after lunch standing between them.
“Louisa, sweetheart,” says Annie finally. “Let me take over. You’ve got the knife angled all wrong. You’re going to stab yourself if it slips.”
“I’m almost forty, Mom, I think I can cut a melon.” But thesweetheartis a balm on her tortured soul, and she relinquishes the knife, because she’s actually not sure she can cut the melon. She buys precut.
Annie slices the honeydew expertly in half, then scoops out the seeds. “Hand me that smaller knife, the ten-inch over there, won’t you?”
“Mom?” Louisa says, and Annie says, “Hmm?” as she separates the fruit from the rind, not a millimeter going to waste.
“How do you not do it?”
Annie looks up, startled. “Not do what?”
“How do you not lose your temper with him, ever? How are you always so calm? Where does it come from, this endless reservoir of patience?”
Annie laughs without mirth. “It comes from your imagination, I think.” She makes a neat pile of the honeydew rinds, all of a size, and reaches for her next victim. Cantaloupe.
“No. No, it’s real. I see you with him... you’re like a saint.”
“Hardly.” Annie puts down the knife and studies Louisa. “I’m no saint, Louisa. You don’t know, my darling. You don’t know how I’ve raged, in private. There’s such shame in me, for that.” Her voice gets quieter, like she’s talking only to herself now, herself and the fruit. “Such shame I have.”
“That’s okay,” says Louisa—although she’s startled by the admission. “That’s okay. That’s understandable! You need to go easy on yourself, Mom.” She watches as the cantaloupe rinds stack up too. “We’re all imperfect people. We’re all making imperfect decisions all the time, every day.”
Annie releases a half-smile. “Well, that’s exactly it, Louisa. I can let the anger chew me to pieces, if I’m not careful.” She sighs and snaps the cover on the fruit container. “I just need to figure out how to keep moving, one foot in front of the other, despite it all.”
Despite it all,thinks Louisa. Truer words. Her mother kept their little family going through a tremendous upheaval, and again now, marching against a relentless disease, and here’s Louisa, about to be undone by the demands of a podcast company, by an argument over an Emergency Fund.
Annie dries her hand on the dish towel and then covers Louisa’s hand with her own. She squeezes once, as if to indicate that they’ll now move on to another topic. “Shall we tackle the watermelon next?”
26.
Kristie
Day off from Renys. Kristie is sitting on the front stoop, trying to use her phone’s calculator to figure out how many hours at minimum wage it will take her to save $27,000. Taking into account what’s held back for taxes, and what she has to pay for rent, and utilities... never mind what she needs to save for when the baby is born...
She peers at the number on her phone. That can’t be right.Thatmany hours? She doesn’t know how she would fit that many hours of work into a week, into a life! Is Renys evenopenthat many hours? She might have to go back to waitressing if any jobs open up.
But even if she finds a job, can she waitress all the way through her pregnancy?
She puts her phone down and lifts her face to the sun and closes her eyes. When she opens her eyes, one of the lobsterman’s daughters is staring at her. She is standing in that little-kid way with her back concave and her belly poking out. Her bangs are too long, and there’s something that looks sticky around her mouth. “Hi,” she whispers. “Are you sweeping?”
“No,” says Kristie. “Just thinking.” She scoots over to make room in case the little girl wants to sit down.
“About what?”
“Life,” says Kristie. “How funny life is, I guess. About the past.”
The little girl nods somberly, like she gets it.
The first time Kristie meets Jesse she’s three years into her time in Miami Beach. He’s bartending at Sweet Liberty; she’s waiting tables at Stubborn Seed. She goes out with a group after service, and when she orders a Cuba Libre he smiles at her in a way that makes her stomach go whump.She orders another, and later a third: she stays at Sweet Liberty until he’s off, and then they go dancing at Treehouse until closing time, which is five o’clock in the morning, which, of course, is already the next day.
She blinks, and she and Jesse are living together. Every night is a party; every day is a hangover. Rinse, repeat. Work, go out, sleep, work, go out. The time goes by. They make a lot of money, and they spend a lot of money too. Jesse likes to have fun. Jesseisfun—he’s fun personified; he’s everything Kristie wanted when she left Altoona. When Kristie is with Jesse she’s fun too.
Sometimes they smoke weed. It’s fine—Kristie can take it or leave it. It’s whatever. She’ll mostly stick with alcohol, she decides. Jesse wants her to try mushrooms with him. Will this bring them closer? She’s not sure. Maybe! Okay, she says. Here goes.
Philosopher’s stones, Jesse calls them. He did them once in high school in Michigan and has always wanted to try again. He hadsuch a good trip,he tells Kristie. He wants her to experience what he experienced, and even though no two people experience the same trip, well, he thinks they should give it a shot. He knows a guywho knows a guy. Jesse always knows a guy, and all the guys know Jesse. He’ll get them some, as a treat.
Kristie is tired and cranky when she eats the mushroom; she’s worked four shifts in a row, had too much coffee, hasn’t slept. Jesse forgets to tell her that your mental state at the beginning of a trip is important. They eat them in the early morning hours on the beach, as the sun is rising. They have the beach to themselves.
