Hannah pulled back and scurried a few feet to Georgia and kissed her cheek. “It’s been years since I’ve seen both of you. Or the three of you together!”
“It’s been years since the three of us have been in South Haven,” Boop said.
Georgia removed her sunglasses with a flourish, even though the sun was shining down. “That’s why we’re here.”
Boop pulled open the door, and Hannah grabbed the suitcases and followed everyone inside.
They all walked to the kitchen and sat at the Formica table, the refurbished one that had belonged to Boop’s grandparents. Years back, Hannah had told her that old was new. She’d called it retro.
Sitting there, Boop could almost taste Nannie’s blueberry doughnuts and hear Doris and Georgia shouting, “Go fish!” She’d played checkers with Stuart at this table, and one summer served grilled cheese with the crusts cut off every evening for dinner. Tea parties with Hannah and Emma were some of her fondest memories. Having two granddaughters around had felt like hitting the family jackpot, and their dress-up clothes and dolls had sparked Boop’s girlie-girlishness.
“You must be starving.” Boop rose from her chair and collected the blueberry muffins and chocolate bridge mix and set it all in the center of the table instead of on elaborate serving platters no one cared about. Georgia opened the box of chocolates and plucked out the chocolate-covered peanuts. She had a lifetime of practice and a sixth sense about this, and always ate the peanuts first. Boop didn’t know whether that meant the peanuts were Georgia’s most or least favorite.
Doris placed a muffin onto a napkin. “Do you have any—”
Boop raised her index finger, and Doris said nothing more until Boop retrieved the butter and a knife and arranged them in front of her. “Thank you.”
Hannah tittered and shook her head. “You knew what Doris wanted and she didn’t say anything. That’s amazing.”
“Not really,” Boop said. But she knew it was.
“We know everything about one another,” Doris said. “From butter to big things.”
“Big things like Boop moving to San Diego?” Hannah asked.
“You finally told her,” Georgia said.
“I was just waiting for the right time.”
“You didn’t know I was coming. If I hadn’t shown up, would you have left without telling me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Boop said.
Georgia raised and lowered her eyebrows. She knew Boop didn’t want to talk about leaving South Haven.
“Try to understand,” Doris said. “Your grandmother wants a fresh start. We’ve done it.” She motioned to Georgia and then back to herself.
“I’m not leaving until after Labor Day,” Boop said. “Hannah, visit as much as you can this summer. We’ll talk about this another time—can we change the subject?”
Without missing a beat, the conversation turned to Georgia’s tennis game, Doris’s most recent Vegas wedding, Hannah’s favorite students, and Boop’s square-dancing class, each of them filling in details omitted on the phone or too lengthy for email. Even repetition was welcome in person.
Hannah’s demeanor softened. No more urgency, no more tears. Instead, laughing and lively conversation. How quickly Boop, the girls, and Hannah had eased into joyful repartee, but sorrow didn’t dissolve that quickly. This was a temporary remedy for Hannah, which would do for now. It reminded Boop that what mattered was how much she and the girls cared about one another and how that could be a tonic for any ailment.
Even Dr. Georgia Lemon agreed.
Georgia had always been a little different from Boop and Doris—science- and math-minded, she’d earned her MD in 1959 from Chicago Medical School, the same year Boop had been voted president of the PTA and Doris had followed her first husband, the doctor, to Indianapolis. In addition, Georgia had been the only one of their group who’d never married, and also the only gentile.
Georgia and Boop had become friends because of Nannie, at a time in Boop’s life when her grandmother could do no wrong. “A new family bought the big store on Phoenix Street,” Nannie had said. “So be nice to the new little shiksa in your class, Betty.”
Nannie had always used slurs for non-Jews, so as a girl, Betty thought nothing of this descriptor. Now, Boop cringed at the thought of Nannie’s easy insult.
Of course, Bitty Betty Stern had done as she was told. Georgia had also been told to be nice to Betty, since her grandparents would order their resort staff’s embroidered shirts through the store.
The little girls hadn’t cared about that, only that they both liked hopscotch and collecting beach glass.
Boop and Doris had met in kindergarten, as evidenced in a packed-away sepia class photograph. Neither of them remembered a time when they didn’t know one another. And then, by extension, Doris and Georgia became friends.
Why had she waited so long to insist the girls come back? Better late than never, she supposed. Still, the passage of time and the subsequent limits on possible future gatherings struck Boop like a cold shower. She swallowed a bite of a blueberry muffin that pushed down regret and kept it inside like a cork. Like Hannah.
Boop’s heart and head wouldn’t settle until she knew what made Hannah cry. Her own disquiet, her craving for time alone with the girls, would have to wait.
The animated banter around her trickled into Boop’s head and heart, scattering her troublesome thoughts like cake crumbs. Unaware of Boop’s subconscious wandering, Hannah, Georgia, and Doris chitchatted about the dry heat of Scottsdale and how Georgia’s doubles partners were twenty years younger.
Boop nodded at no one in particular and at all of them, mentally catching up on the conversation and silently swearing to stay alert and involved and to remain rooted in the wonder around her.
At sunset, Boop watched as Hannah sat sideways on the low concrete divider that separated the porch from Lakeshore Drive, the narrow one-way street separating her house from the beach. She faced south. They all faced south.
A crowd gathered at the pier and stood witness as a resplendent wash of marigold and honey crept over the blue-gray dusk. Neither the girls nor Hannah spoke, their collective breathing as deep as a sleeping baby’s. Boop flicked on the porch lights, then stepped inside the house, as her well of sunsets was filled for the moment.
Besides clicking on the lamp in the screened porch, she clapped on the light in the TV room. Both would illuminate the porch. She grabbed four cotton throws from the living room and hurried back outside. The sun was gone, and it had taken the May warmth with it.
Boop handed Doris and Georgia their coverlets, and they draped them over their legs. She wrapped a rose-colored throw around Hannah’s back and shoulders like a shawl.
Hannah slid off the divider and into a blue Adirondack chair. Boop sat in her old wicker rocker, the caning ripe for repair, worn from many seasons of sunset gazing. She laid her blanket over her. How lucky she was to have a full house and a full heart.
“Can I tell you all something?” Hannah asked.
“Of course you can,” Boop said. Hannah had been waiting hours to say whatever was next.
“You have to swear not to tell anyone.”
“Who are we going to tell?” Doris asked.