Mom looks at me, lips curling into a smile. “We can fix that!”
“How?” I frown, skeptical.
“We’ll switch clothes.”
“You’re going to wear this out in public?”
“Sure,” says Rose. “Who cares? I’m an old broad anyway.”
“That’s right, Lil,” Josie chimes in from the window. “We’re getting gray waiting for you.”
The sentiments are especially ironic considering how young they both look and how miserable I feel. I’m not capable of showing anyone a good time right now.
“It’ll be fun.” Rose smiles. “I promise.”
Part of me wants to join, only so I don’t have to go back home and be alone with my thoughts, but I also don’t want to bring the mood down.
“Mom, I can’t. I don’t feel like running into anyone else tonight.” I think about Henry again and feel something sharp poke my chest like a loose wire. “Besides, you’re a therapist in this town. What are you going to say if you run into any clients and you’re wearing slippers?”
“I’ll tell them exactly what I’m telling you right now.”
“What’s that?”
She shakes my shoulders playfully. “To loosen up!”
Chapter FourLily
Eight minutes later, we’re standing in the public bathrooms on Old South Wharf, typically reserved for boaters. There are clean white public showers and three toilets. Like everything else on Nantucket, even the public bathrooms are aesthetically pleasing.
“Can you throw me your bra?” I shout over the stall divider.
“You didn’t wear a bra?”
“I thought I was just going to the store for ice cream and dropping you off!”
“Still,” my mom chides. “You never know if you’ll get pulled over or something. Every time I leave the house, I think to myself, ‘Is this the outfit I want to get into a car crash wearing?’ If I’d be embarrassed to be seen in the emergency room in it, then I shouldn’t be wearing it out of the house.”
“That’s a little morbid,” I say. “Also, I sincerely hope your first thought in a car crash wouldn’t be vanity.”
Rose laughs and the bathroom stall creaks open. I finish pulling the sweater over my head and open my own door. She’s standing by the sink,arms crossed, wearing my same outfit from earlier, but on her it looks fun, whimsical even. It’s wacky, sure, but Rose can pull off anything.
In the warped mirror on the wall, I catch sight of my own appearance. What made my mom look like an advertisement for coastal living doesn’t have the same effect on me.
When I was a little girl, I used to go to sleep at night and wish I could wake up looking like Rose. These days, I’m not terribly preoccupied with my looks. I know that I’m attractive enough that sometimes baristas flirt with me, and yet not so good-looking that they would ever give me the coffee for free.
Rose’s beauty is different—it’s a magnet.
“How are you feeling, Lily-pad?” asks Mom now.
My face is hot the way it always is when I’m about to cry. My ears feel stuffed and there’s a faint buzzing sound from the pressure. It’s the look in her kind brown eyes. Around my mom, it’s impossible to pretend that anything is okay.
“I’m okay,” I say, but the sentiment is lost to tears.
“Oh, honey. It’s going to be okay.” Mom wraps her arms around me. “Let’s go home. Josie will understand.”
Growing up without any siblings or cousins, I relied on Mom to play the familial roles of an entire clan: protector, nurturer, friend, sister. Rose knows me better than anyone, and I know that when she says we can go home right now, she means it—she would drop everything at a moment’s notice, turn around, go back to the cottage, and let me wallow.
But I refuse to ruin her night.
