“Well, whoever it is, I’m sure he’ll get over it, especially if the venue changes.”
“Maybe it’s ashe,Timothy. Why do male actors always think that women can’t direct Shakespeare?”
“Because they can’t.” He waits for her intake of breath before he says, “I’m kidding,Gertie, obviously. Of course I’m kidding. Is it a she?”
“No,” says Gertie bleakly, and Timothy, sensing that if he waits long enough his wish will appear, says not a word; tries, in fact, to move not a muscle, though he can feel one of his famously expressive eyebrows rise in anticipation. “Argh,” says Gertie. “Okay, fine. Okay, you win. You secure the venue, you can direct.”
May
Sam
Don’t cry, Sam tells herself. Do not cry. You are nineteen years of age, technically an adult, and you are fine. You were in a bad situation, and you weren’t really harmed, although you feel like you were. Well, yes, you were harmed. You need to acknowledge that, because acknowledgment is the first step toward healing. But now you’re out of the situation. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
She bites the inside of her cheek, which is already raw, because she’s been biting it all week.
Don’t cry.
It’s the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, unseasonably warm, and Scarborough North beach in Narragansett, Rhode Island, is mid-July packed. Sam Trevino eases her rental car into one of the last two remaining parking spaces. The car is due at 4p.m.at the Enterprise in North Kingston, and it is two o’clock now. She’s not dressed for the beach, but whatever. She’s missed the ocean this past nine months. She’s going to see it, even if it means a late charge, the wrong clothes. The car isn’t in her name anyway.
She locks the car door—all of her possessions are in the back, right where she threw them when she left the city—and removes her shoes. Between the pavilion and the water’s edge she has to wind herself around children building sandcastles and older people reading paperbacks and sunbathing girls and a group of teensplaying volleyball with a beach ball and no net, but eventually she gets there. She squats down and rolls the legs of her jeans up as far as they will go, which is not very far, because the jeans are straight-legged. She wades in.
“You’re going to get wet,” says a potbellied little girl with a bucket hat and a stripe of zinc across her nose. Shovel and pail in her hand. She squats down and digs industriously in the sand, looking up at Sam as she does.
“Probably,” Sam acknowledges.
“What’s that?” The girl points at Sam’s ankle.
“It’s a turtle tattoo.”
“Why?”
“I went through a phase where I really liked turtles.”
She nods, accepting this. “Where’s your bathing suit?”
“Forgot it.” The girl purses her lips skeptically and begins to fill the bucket with sand. The shovel is slightly too small for the task. “I mean, I didn’tforgetit.” Why does Sam feel the need to set the record straight with this girl who’s, what? Four or five? She just can’t shake the habit of caring what everybody thinks about her all the time. (But she must! She must shake it!) “I didn’t know I was coming to the beach. It’s sort of a surprise.”
“Why didn’t you know? I knewIwas coming to the beach. My mommy told me.”
Sam squints toward the horizon. “Well,” she says after a time. “I thought I was going to stay where I was for a long time. But as it turned out I was wrong. So now I’m here, unexpectedly. And my mommy didn’t tell me.”
“Where were you?”
“Xanadu,” says Sam. Because that’s the name Tink, their manager, gave to the place where they all lived, on the Upper West Side: that beautiful, beautiful apartment with the ugly, ugly soul.
“That sounds pretty,” says the girl.
“Sure, itsoundsnice,” says Sam. “But it really wasn’t.”
“Okay,” says the girl. She hauls herself up from the sand and lifts her pail. She emits a small noise of effort or dismay.
“You got that?” asks Sam. “You all good?”
“Got it,” says the girl. She looks back toward the crowded beach. A thin woman in a black one-piece is half standing from her chair, waving at the girl. The girl points herself toward the woman. “Bye,” she says over her shoulder to Sam.
“Bye,” says Sam. “I hope you have a good beach day.” I hope you have a good life, little girl. I hope you stay off social media.
The tide is low. The beach is long and flat. A lifeguard blows a whistle; a gull squawks; someone’s radio plays an ancient song that Sam’s dad likes: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
