“Why don’t you like Luke?”
“He’s a bully, to Damien. Not like Damien cares, though. He’s one hundred percent the little brother, devoted even though Luke is a total asshole.”
“Is he? A total asshole?”
“The only reason he’s loaning us money is so he can lord it over us. That’s his whole motivation, no matter what he does. Control. Making other people feel small.”
Callie doesn’t know what to make of Jane’s tone. Whether her bitterness about Luke is related to whatever mood she’s in this week, or if there’s something deeper there. But Callie senses it’s not the time to push. Jane rolls the window down. There’s saltwater on the air, bay in the distance, white triangles of sailboats. A seagull shrieks and wheels above the marsh.
“Christ. It’s so good to smell something new.” Jane picks at another piece of donut. “Thanks for letting me vent.”
“Vent away.”
They make their way to a sandy turnoff just past a marina, where Callie used to go as a teenager. There’s a bench at the end of the stretch, close to the water, solitary and weather-beaten. Callie offersJane her arm to help her out of the car and Jane takes it at first but lets go after Callie closes the passenger-side door behind her. She takes a few slow, shuffling steps on her own, Callie tight by her side, and then, because Callie understands the look on her face, she hangs back and lets Jane go ahead without her. Jane’s left foot drags, and Callie registers the effort it takes for her to lift it, to make herself take each slow step, but she doesn’t move to help, doesn’t move closer even when she wobbles and her arms rise from her sides for balance. If Jane falls, Damien is going to kill Callie. If she falls, she’s going to get scraped up. But she knows she is going to let her, knows that Jane needs this. Step by step, inch by inch, she gets to the bench.
When Callie gets close she hears how hard Jane is breathing. She also sees her smile lit up wide. The first real smile from her in months.
When they sit, Jane pulls a flask from her pocket. “To celebrate.”
Callie takes a small pull—“I’m your DD”—but the burn of bourbon down her throat, the sunshine on her face, feels good. Ahead of them, sparkling water as far as the eye can see. She feels the openness in her chest. Swells with it.
“Tell me about the guy,” Jane says.
“I don’t know. We’re having fun.”
Funis the wrong word. It is fun, but it’s more than that. Fun is Callie’s way of describing it to herself, in case she gets hurt.
Jane gives her a knowing look. “It’s okay to love someone, Callie. A good thing.”
“Yeah… I know.” She doesn’t say what she’s long thought, that she feels like she and Jane came out of their tumultuous girlhoods two sides of the same coin. Jane throwing herself into a relationship to feel safe, while Callie’s form of self-protecting meant avoiding anything deeper than casual sex.
“What do you do?”
“Kayak. Cook.” Two nights ago she had gone over and she and Adrian had sex in the kitchen before they could even sit down for dinner, then stood next to the stove, naked, forking pasta straight from the pot, her earlobes tingling where he bit them. “Fuck.”
“You kayak?” Jane elbows her. “You wouldn’t kayak with me, ever, when I invited you down here.”
“I’m sorry. I was an asshole.”
Jane stares out at the horizon. “You were. But you’re here now. How are you doing?”
Callie looks out to the water too. Easier to say the next part when she’s not looking at Jane. “I think she’s gone.”
Jane reaches for Callie’s hand. “Why do you think that? She could have gone to stay with someone, maybe she’s in treatment…”
“She missed her court date. Even she knows better than that. I feel like she wanted to disappear. She was so restless my whole life. Always wanting to be somewhere other than the room she was in. Even when the room had her kid in it.” She had been a fool to hope when she saw that chip from AA on Jenna’s table. The article on the fridge. To think Jenna might have tried, one last time, to save herself.
“Maybe you should go easy on her. I wish in the end I was easier on my parents. I don’t forgive them for everything. My dad was sick, just like your mom was sick. My mom couldn’t leave him because she was always holding out hope that he would get better. I was always just as pissed at her as I was at him. But I don’t know, after having Opal I guess I understand her a little more. She was just a person. One person against all the fucking expectations around moms? Work and be progressive; stay home, they’re only small for such a short time. Cherish it. Don’t lose your identity. Shit. It’s impossible. They each probably wanted to be better. I feel that.Iwant to be better. But I’m still just me. Day in, day out, doing this thing that tries your patience and makes you laugh and is so boring and tedious and then shot through with these moments of like, wildly transcendent joy, all before 11:00A.M.It’s enough to make anybody crazy.”
“So you’re saying I need to have a kid to heal my mommy issues?” Callie aims for lightness, but the mention of having a child feels hot to the touch, tender. A little spark of interest, of possibility, whereas before it had always felt hypothetical, far-off.
“I’m saying, you know all this. All that work you do with theNarcan and trying to help people around here. You know it’s a disease, you know she can’t help it. You’re capable of extending kindness and empathy to strangers—why not to the woman who raised you?”
Callie kicks her sneaker through the sand. “Because we’re hardest on them. Because they have to be perfect.”
“You have to be perfect,” Jane echoes, her voice a whisper. Callie throws an arm around her and they sit for an hour before getting back in the car without needing to say anything else.
When they getback Opal is coloring at the kitchen table, alone.
