In the lateafternooneveryone gathered along the beach, first to watch the rowing races and then the main event. There were hundreds of boats in the harbor, there were Jet Skis and paddleboards and kayaks, and anyone who didn’t have a professional camera had their phoneready. In recent years people even flew drones over the whole spectacle to catch the Greasy Pole from above. It was easy to spot RJ among the crowd on the pier. There were dozens of guys waiting to walk the pole, half of them shirtless, still covered in green Crisco from the morning’s practice, the other half in costumes as varied as they were bizarre. There was a guy in a cowboy hat and vest, a guy dressed as Captain Hook, there were tutus and bunny ears and grass skirts. Fran had to assume that for every guy on that platform there was a mother or a wife standing on the beach, just dying of embarrassment over the whole thing.
All the competitors knew that if you just walked, you’d fall in right away, so the key was to hurl yourself as quickly as you could toward the flag and see if the momentum could get you there before gravity kicked in. Some people tried to run straight, their toes facing the end of the pole, but the best ones knew how to run sideways so that their feet could kind of curl around the pole for purchase as they scrabbled like crabs. The first several guys only made it a few steps before sliding off into the water. A big man in a wrestling costume made it a third of the way before slipping, but on the way down he grabbed the pole with his arms and bear hugged it, hanging on like a sloth for a few extra moments before dropping into the harbor. A shirtless guy in red trunks hit his chin on the way down and an EMT on a Jet Ski darted over to haul him out of the water and bring him to shore. Blood poured down his neck and chest. He saluted the platform before climbing in the back of an ambulance to go get stitches on his chin.
Fran felt a nervous tightness pass through her. What if RJ lost a tooth or broke his wrist? What if they had to pay a thousand dollars for dental work? What if he ended up on crutches? There was a line somewhere between the kind of fun that made you feel alive and the kind of fun that inconvenienced everyone around you. Fran couldn’t decide where the Greasy Pole fell. Sure, Fran had her share of hangover dayswhere her parenting had been less than stellar, but for the most part she kept herself in check, always thinking about her kids, about dinner, about laundry, about her savings account. She felt awash in fury at her father. What was he thinking, betting away money he didn’t even have? It was stupid. It was selfish, inconceivably so.
When RJ’s name was called London and Hale screamed and started jumping up and down like popcorn. “Get the flag, Daddy! Get the flag!” Hale was so excited he looked like he was going to faint, and Fran grinned in spite of herself, muttering an entirely different kind of prayer, one to ward off broken bones and teeth. With a whoop, RJ took off down the pole, half running, half skating on the green muck. At first it looked like he might actually make it, whirling his arms and flying along the beam. The crowd started screaming, but then halfway across he began to lose control. He was sliding, he was waving his arms, but then it was like he realized what was happening and gave in to the moment. He kicked himself back off the beam and flew, falling, falling, tumbling into a joyful backflip as he crashed down into the water. The crowd roared and Fran screamed and laughed. It was classic RJ, a spectacle of unruly glee even in defeat. When his head popped back out of the water he gave a wave, maybe to the crowd, but most likely to Fran and the boys, before swimming back out to the platform to cheer for the rest of the gang.
RJ would stay out all night celebrating. He would drink and smoke and arrive home in an Uber long after midnight, covered in grease and seawater and probably somebody else’s tutu. And while he did that, Fran would run the laundry, would bathe the boys, would turn on nightlights, and would check under beds for monsters, because that was her job, and she felt it harden like a pit in her stomach—to put up with the bullshit, to clean up the mess, and to take care of everyone but herself.
Nine
Bailey
The Clam Box
Bailey was standing in line at the Clam Box ordering herself french fries at eight in the morning when her water broke, and she knew, then and there, she would have to lie about that for the rest of her life. She called her doctor from the parking lot and asked to meet her at the hospital, she called the office and said she wasn’t coming in, and then finally she called Vanny and told him the baby was coming.
There was a world in which Vanny would have been her first call—it was his baby, after all—but for lots of very good reasons, this was not that world. She could picture him now, trying to get himself out the door and over to Beverly Hospital. Running back and forth between the bedroom and the bathroom, packing his floss but forgetting his toothbrush, remembering it but deciding it looked too old and searching the drawer under the sink for a new one in a plastic case, worrying the go-bag didn’t have enough granola bars, so foraging in the kitchen, knocking over boxes like a bear, leaving a trail of snack foods in hiswake. His heart was in the right place, but the rest of his body was always at least thirty minutes behind.
By the time Vanny made it to the maternity wing, Bailey was six centimeters dilated and no longer cared that her cotton gown had a big tear in the armpit and revealed half her left breast. Everything hurt more than she had possibly imagined, and she alternated contractions with dry heaving, because apparently nausea was a totally normal part of birth that nobody had thought to mention in those stupid birthing classes she had attended, where they showed a graphic video with so much 1970s body hair that she drove home in total silence, too stunned to even listen to music.
The nurses came and went, adjusting monitors, making notes, and delivering a tray of clear things: Jell-O, ice cubes, and a can of ginger ale that Bailey tried to drink before vomiting in a turquoise plastic bowl. Vanny put a wet cloth on her forehead, making her hair go all flat and weird, and while Bailey appreciated the gesture, she still sort of wanted him to fuck off.
Time moved strangelyin the delivery room, and at some point Bailey was shocked to realize she’d been there for seven hours. It was like a night of blackout drinking or a red-eye flight, time travel but instead of waking up in London, she hadn’t moved an inch. For the first few hours the nurse kept asking Bailey if she felt like she had to push, and Bailey was confused. She knew pushing was part of it, so yes, she felt she should, but 99 percent of her brain was focused on not vomiting, and she was pretty sure that no matter how violently she retched she couldn’t push the baby up and out. After twelve hours the doctor announced Bailey was ten centimeters dilated and the nurse stopped asking if she wanted to push and started telling her to “bear down.”Bailey truly had no idea what that meant, the nurse might as well have been telling her to tighten her ear muscles or breathe through her armpits. She felt like she’d wandered into an advanced yoga class where nothing made sense, and everyone was talking about third eyes and specific nostrils. Bailey just carried on doing what she had been doing, hoping it was right. At some point in the fifteenth hour Vanny left and came back with breath smelling like a peanut butter sandwich, which was disgusting and made Bailey wonder how she had ever found him attractive. In the sixteenth, all the monitors fell off and a small team had to come in and reattach them, and Bailey felt bad about it even though she was also possibly dying. She was hot and cold, she vomited and shivered, and the nurse changed her into a fresh gown that covered more of her breast but far less below her waist and Bailey couldn’t have cared less.
It was stunning to Bailey that this was how babies really came into the world. And through history most of them had done it without drugs, biting on a stick or something. It was too horrible, too outrageous, that in a society that had invented Wi-Fi and eyelash tinting and nanotechnology women still pushed babies out of their vaginas. For months Bailey had been studying the mothers she saw at the beach or at the grocery store, picturing them heaving with contractions and sweating while someone yelled at them to push. She leafed through magazines at the doctor’s office, looking at mother after mother, Michelle Obama, Martha Stewart, Princess Diana. They had all done it. She became strangely obsessed with Britney Spears, mother of two. Of course, everyone worried about Britney, walking barefoot through a gas station bathroom, hair extensions down her back, the conservatorship, the knife-juggling. And yet Britney had given birth, and this gave Bailey comfort. She thought about little Sean and Jayden as she chewed ice and balled her fists and somehow it actually helped.
Something must have finally been working because the room began to fill with people—nurses and doctors for her, nurses and doctors for the baby, somebody’s boss with a clipboard, and a team of anesthesiologists, all strangely attractive men with blue caps. There was a part of Bailey’s brain that registered that she was lying with her legs wide open in a room full of strangers and she was briefly shocked by herself. She was usually the kind of person who turned slightly to the side when her picture was being taken to show off a flattering angle, but she also recognized that everything that happened in this place was outside of real life, and she could probably do anything or say anything she wanted and it was fine.
Birth didn’t feel like a pop and a release, it honestly didn’t feel so very different from all the mysterious bearing down, but suddenly the doctor was lifting something up and Vanny was crying. Everyone moved quickly, sweeping away paper and changing out linens, and then Bailey saw the baby, red and white and wrinkled with a blue cord. The pediatric doctor took the baby into a corner of the room, weighed him, and cleaned him, then brought him over and put him on Bailey’s chest.
They had decided months ago to name the baby Dylan; Vanny thought it was for the first concert he and Bailey had ever been to. They were in high school, and they had driven up to see Bob Dylan in Exeter, New Hampshire. That night his voice was terrible and creaky, and Bailey had spent the whole time wishing they’d gone to see Beyoncé at the Garden. Really, the baby was named Dylan for every crush Bailey had ever had, from Dylan in90210to Matt Dillon inDrugstore Cowboy. It was a glamorous name that Bailey knew meant her child would have shiny dark hair and soulful eyes. And he sort of did! Except he had no hair and looked a little like a scrawny chicken, but he was the most beautiful thing Bailey had ever seen.
The labor nursetook Bailey into the small bathroom to clean and dress her. Bailey had jelly legs, so the nurse held her up while she washed her thighs, helping her into a pair of stretchy, white hospital underwear that she layered with three horrifying sanitary pads, each thicker than an ice-cream sandwich. They left the delivery room in a bleary caravan, Dylan in a Lucite bassinet on wheels, Vanny carrying his backpack and the go-bag, the nurse pushing Bailey in a wheelchair. Next to the bed in the recovery room was a big binder of menus, sandwich shops and pizza parlors, and Bailey realized she was starving. It was the middle of the night but she and Vanny ordered like they had hangovers, turkey subs and potato chips and brownies and bright yellow sports drinks. Dylan was sleeping, wrapped up like a burrito in a white flannel blanket, wearing a tiny striped hat. When the food arrived, they picnicked on the bed, stuffing chips into their sandwiches and peering into the bassinet, laughing every time he twitched or fluttered his eyes.
“Who does he look like?” Vanny asked.
“I think all babies are supposed to look like the father at first. It’s like nature’s paternity test to make sure the dad protects his young.”
“He definitely looks like a Dylan.” Vanny gazed at the baby, his eyes soft. Was he picturing Bob Dylan? Bailey tried to imagine the baby as a wizened old rock star with frazzled hair. It was like her brain could see two things at once, she could see how crazy the baby looked, his eyes swollen, his skin red, his tiny hands peeling, but she could also see he was the most beautiful child in the world, each fingernail a perfect shiny disc, each eyelash an impossible thing.
They slept for a few hours, Bailey in her narrow hospital bed, Vannyupright in a wooden chair, Dylan between them in his bassinet. In the morning their mothers arrived, Bailey’s mother in a cloud of Dior perfume carrying an elaborate ribboned basket, and Van’s mother with a bouquet of thick-stalked sunflowers in a vase.
“You know, all babies look sort of gross at first,” Clara said, as though she were admitting something they had all been thinking, and Bailey looked at Van and widened her eyes. “And you.” She gently pressed a finger on the broken blood vessels scattered across her daughter’s face. “You’re going to miss all those hormones that made your hair thicker.”
“Strong work,” Juliette murmured. Vanny’s mother was wearing a long, ivory-colored dress with wooden clogs, reading glasses pushed up in her hair. She looked so capable and comfortable in the hospital that she might have picked up Dylan’s chart and started commenting on his APGAR score.
“They told us visiting hours were over at eight tonight.” Clara pouted. Bailey glanced at the clock and saw that it was barely past breakfast time. She tried to shoot Vanny another look, but he was quietly stuffing the sandwich wrappers and empty chip bags into the trash.
“Have you picked a name?” Clara asked, perching on the edge of Bailey’s bed.
“We named him Dylan.” Vanny grinned. “Bailey and I went to see Dylan together in Exeter in high school.”
“I love it!” Juliette clapped her hands. “You know he and I dated for a bit when I lived in New York.”
“What?” Vanny looked stricken. “You dated Bob Dylan?”
“Oh, not really dating. Things were much more relaxed back then,” Juliette said airily, waving a hand. “We were having fun.” She was so cool Bailey wanted to die.
