“You know, smell is the most nostalgic of all the senses.”
“Right.” Jordan inhales one last time, so deeply that she hopes to save the scent forever, and then she says, “Thanks for this, really. It helped me so much. Seeing you, talking it out—it all helped.”
“I’m glad,” says Simone, all smiles.
Jordan looks at Simone, at her blond hair and her freckled skin and her sea-glass eyes. She feels like she’s seeing her more clearly than she’s ever seen her before—and that Simone is seeing Jordan clearly too.
“I’m sorry I kissed the guy in the Obama shirt,” says Simone. “He was cute, though. Do you remember how cute he was?”
Jordan shakes her head.
“Well, he was really cute.”
Jordan laughs. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get past it.” She wonders how things might have been different, if they would have stayed together longer or if they would have broken up over something different but equally silly and dramatic.
“My problem,” says Simone, “is that I like everybody.”
“That’s funny,” says Jordan, her heart full of nostalgia and longing. “I have the exact opposite problem.”
When Mae comes down the stairs before dinner Kara is looking at a photo of Calvin and Theresa’s wedding. “Look how puffy these dresses are!” she says, holding out the photo to Mae.
“Is it strange that my dad put this one back out with the rest of them?” Mae wonders aloud.
“I think it would have been stranger if he hadn’t,” Kara says. “It’s your family history.”
“You’re not insisting all of these photos be removed and then burned?” she asks Kara.
“I’m not really an evil stepmother,” says Kara. “I only play one on TV.” Mae smiles.
She takes the frame from Kara. She’s seen this photo a thousand times, but she’ll never get enough of it. It’s 1984, early May, and her mother and father are standing with their wedding party in front of the showy star magnolia in the Boston Public Garden. The bridesmaids—Theresa’s two sisters and her two best college friends—are in peach. Lots of peach. Here’s Theresa in capped sleeves, full skirt, a train that went on for days. It might be the hair and the puffy dresses, but every woman looks a little like Princess Diana, and the men, with their side-parted, slightly feathered hair, could all be John Travolta.
They’d been married at Trinity Church, and somewhere in their house in Lenox, Mae knows, are photos of the ceremony inside the rough-textured stone walls of the church, surrounded by the famous stained-glass windows.
Her parents are so young and so beautiful that it takes Mae’s breath away. In this picture Theresa is three years younger than Mae is now. Mae looks, trying to read something in her eyes, in her wide, imperfect smile. Her mother had lived almost four decades after her wedding day, and yet died too young.
Friday
Interstitial
The photo Jordan finds on Friday morning is in the top dresser drawer in her room, maybe put there in a hurry to clean up for renters, maybe forgotten about altogether. It’s a shallow drawer, made for lingerie or socks, and Jordan hasn’t unpacked anything into it. She recognizes the Beach Club immediately, the white railings between the deck and the rocks, then the sand and ocean beyond, the place where the tide pools formed and the kids used to go crabbing, finding regular crabs, hermit crabs, sometimes even an eel or two.
If she could pan out and show the rest of the scene, she knows she’d see the bright blue of the club pool, with the colored flags around the perimeter. Three lifeguard chairs on three sides of the pool. She can almost taste the chlorinated water, feel the sensation of it in her nostrils as she somersaulted. She can almost hear the laughter of the adults, which would grow more raucous as long summer days turned to long summer evenings.
And here, leaning against the white railing, shielding her eyes from the sun, is her mother. Jordan slides the photo out of the frame and turns it over. Before digital cameras—and later, of course, smartphones—pushed analog photography out of the way, Theresa used to note on the back the month and year a photo was taken after she had them printed.
August 1995. Theresa must be pregnant with Mae, and perched next to her (dangerously, Jordan thinks, but apparently they all survived)on the railing is Natalie. Just visible behind Natalie is a sign readingplease stay off the railings.Standing next to Natalie in a navy one-piece, a signature ruffle at the neckline, is Jordan herself. (She hated that ruffle.) Pointy elbows, pointy chin, looking out at the water. Thinking about what? She wishes she knew.
On Friday they wake to rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain. Mae, sleeping in the Green Room, wakes thinking that Jordan is there beside her. Jordan sleeps the way she lives (self-contained, efficient, productive), and while Mae also sleeps the way she lives (chaotically, a little bit behind), when Jordan was in the bed with her she was so careful to move as little as possible, and enjoy the feeling of the warm body beside her. She didn’t want to jeopardize losing her bedmate.
Now she sits up and peers into Leo’s crate. He’s slumbering on his back, with his ears splayed out and his front legs bent at the knee, one floating in the air as if tied to a string hanging from the ceiling. Soon enough he senses that Mae is awake and he flips over, immediately alert, looking at her with his beautiful eyes. His body language says,Do you need me for something? I’m here and I’m ready!
“Hey, buddy. Top of the morning to you.” A warm feeling spreads through Mae. Is she falling in love with Leo?
Ugh, but the rain. It’s really hammering the roof.
“There’s only one solution to this,” says Jordan in the kitchen, once Mae has taken each dog out in turn, when Natalie is holding a wriggling Caspian and staring somberly out the window.
“Down!” shouts Caspian. She obliges. Natalie notes that Jordan looks unaccountably cheerful and has since dinnertime last night.That’s classic Jordan: to cheer up just when the rest of the world becomes despondent.
