When I’m just about ready to go, Margie follows me to the door to lock up. She holds me by the shoulders, peering seriously into my eyes. “If you need me—doesn’t matter what time—you call me, and I’ll come to your place. Okay?”
I smile and hug her impulsively. “Love you. Won’t come to that. And I wouldn’t dream of tearing you away from La tonight.”
Margie’s blush is the first I’ve ever seen on her. “Take the day off of work tomorrow and rest, fool.”
A little while later, I climb the stairs to my place, moving slowly with my crutch. Jack’s muffled voice drifts into the hall.
You should knock, I think. And say…what, exactly?Sorry I made out with you—twice—and then bailed, but you gave me a hickey bigger than the one I got from Johnny Song at Melissa Ortega’s quinceañera in ninth grade, so we’re even?
I try to let myself into my apartment quietly, tiptoeing through the dark as best I can with a crutch to my room. My phone vibrates. My stomach clenches at the sound, though Jack’s TV is loud enough to drown out the vibration. I hear a second voice in there with Jack. It sounds like Moth is over. I look at my phone. Mom.
Honey, I haven’t heard from you. Are you okay?
A thought takes hold. I switch apps, confirming that I don’t have much time, and then rush to dress by the light of my cell phone. It isn’t even five minutes later that I’m back out the door, on my way to the Port Authority.
The sea is inescapable in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, surrounded as it is by the Atlantic’s brackish waters. But it’s also in the air, clinging to your skin and leaving you looking exceptionally dewy if you’re in town longer than a heartbeat. The salt clings to your hair, making for some killer body, but the wind renders it impossible to run a brush through. The town has a special smell, especially at night when the sunbaked buildings cool.
I breathe it in—all that briny evening air—and am flooded with memories as I walk from the bus depot to Mom’s place. Walks to school. Prom. Waitressing at Gretchen’s Diner and making fun of the shoobies—our nickname for tourists—with the other locals. Walking with Mom on the beach after Dad left us. Holding her as she cried.
I was eternally grateful for our home’s proximity to the bus depot when I discovered the wonders of…anyplace other than here. Mom’s house is up ahead, faintly lit by a streetlight and the single bulb at the top of her steps that she always leaves on at night. The house is a small, nondescript beige box set atop pilings to elevate it against flooding. The white lattice skirting the entire perimeter obscures those pilings. It’s a handful of blocks from the beachfront McMansions owned by summer vacationers, but, except for that shared sea air, it might as well be on a different planet.
I pause in front of the house with a sigh and look around me. A cricket sings in the distance. Mom’s door opens. She was watching for me.
“Hi.” I climb the stairs with my crutch. I notice with a spasm of sadness that my mom’s face is more lined than the last time I saw her, her cheeks drooping into jowls I don’t remember being there before. Her hair has a bunch more white. Or maybe I’m just imagining it since I’m long overdue for a visit. “It’s three thirty in the morning. I told you to just leave the key under the mat.”
Mom accepts my hug and presses her cheek to mine. “I couldn’t sleep knowing you were on the road. No good comes of being out this late. You should’ve waited until morning to come. You could have just taken the early bus out and—”
“Lemme hop in my DeLorean real quick and right that wrong. See you in the a.m.”
“Smart mouth. Come in.” She chuckles and bustles me toward my childhood living room, forever festooned in the Christmas colors and holiday decor she loves. A crystal vase of plum calla lilies, the exact size of the hole in my bank account this month, rests on an end table. I take a seat. The room feels smaller to me, like walking the halls of your old elementary school. I shift on the sofa. It shouldn’t feel that way. Sure, I’ve seen Mom sporadically, but mainly in neutral territory—restaurants, a cousin’s house. It’s been a good year since I’ve been back in this house.
“Itisnice to have you here. I just wish you’d waited until morning is all. Here’s some tea. No caffeine, so you can sleep. I just made a pot.” Mom hands me a cup and sits across from me with her own cup.
“Thanks.” I play with the sugar cube on the pink-and-white saucer.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just tired.”
“You took the day off of work. And you came all the way out here in the middle of the night for nothing? Are you here to stay? It’s about time, honestly.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Tomorrow we can go look at that house—”
“Mom, I really don’t want to move back.”
“But why?” She sets her cup down, the browbeating to come evidently requiring all her faculties.
“Because…” I don’t want to have this conversation, and especially not in the middle of the night, but I know her. She won’t leave it be.
“This place has always felt like one of those flowers that blooms once a year for a few hours before its petals clamp up tight until the next time. And I always felt trapped inside.”
There’s a melancholy to seasonal towns like this, full of life and activity during the summer and then a shuttered ghost town of eight hundred residents the rest of the year.
“I don’t want to feel that way ever again. Maybe that’s why I love New York so much. All that activity, all the time.”
“Oh my God, you got a therapist, didn’t you? Why? You want to pay someone to listen to you talk about how I’ve ruined your life? Someone to tell you how awful your mother was, even though I’m the one who stayed? Who struggled to provide a life for you after your father left us?”
