“By the way,” Louise said as they took a steep exit, “I saved last week’s Atlantic for you. There’s an article I thought you should read.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s all about how your generation is feeling very lost. Something to do with the brain chemicals released when you look at television screens. Also, the economy. But by the end, the guy they profiled was feeling much better. He had realized he needed to go to law school. It helps a lot when you discover the right thing, you know?”
Kate’s eyes slid over to her aunt. “Yep,” she said.
She knew the article Louise meant. It had been everywhere. For a couple days, the internet had been full of memes and think pieces about the trite quotes and obviously staged photos. Her college friends had pilloried it by group text. Or at least the people in the group with good jobs had pilloried it. The others, the ones like Kate, stayed silent.
“Your job just wasn’t the right fit,” Louise continued. “It wasn’t your passion. Otherwise you wouldn’t have … well. My point is, your feelings are perfectly normal.”
“Thanks,” Kate said.
“And law school is always an option.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, you would have to take the LSAT. I think Faye’s son took it, if you want to borrow his books while you’re here.”
She means well, Kate told herself. That was her family’s private saying about Louise. She means well. They had used it that time when Louise lectured a recovering alcoholic cousin about the importance of “letting loose once in a while,” and that time when Louise was babysitting seven-year-old Kate and took her to the emergency room for what she thought was a fatal rash and turned out to be a sunburn. They used it every year when Louise sent offensively large checks for birthdays and Christmas, not realizing that her proud New Englander siblings saw the money as an insult. Louise was brash, oblivious, and eager to intervene, but she did have good intentions.
Desperate to change the conversation, Kate said, “Have you met Theo Brand yet? He said he was coming in last week to open up the house.”
“Roberta saw him at the general store. Apparently, he was—” Louise broke off.
“He was what?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.” Now Kate sat up straight. “I’m going to meet him tomorrow anyway.”
“Well, Roberta just said he wasn’t very … nice.” Louise twisted the steering wheel; they had come onto a series of browned switchbacks. The ocean lay ahead of them like a blue tarp pulled snug across the furry line of the earth. “He wouldn’t talk to her.”
“Maybe he was tired. He has two little kids.” Their voices had been in the background at the end of their phone interview, high and plaintive.
Louise sniffed. “Lots of people have kids and still manage to say hello.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, it was more than that. She said it was like he looked right through her.” The car pitched to one side as Louise shivered. “I don’t know about you being all alone in that big house with him. You’ll tell me if anything kooky goes on in there, right?”
“No,” Kate said. “I can’t. I signed a nondisclosure agreement.”
“You what?” The car lurched sideways again. Kate grabbed the handle above her door.
“It’s not that unusual.”
“It sounds very unusual.”
“Well, it’s not.” Kate was almost laughing. So much for misremembering what Louise was like. “I thought you thought this job was a good idea. You’re the one who got it for me.”
“I am not. All I did was pass your résumé to his cleaning girl.”
“You know what I mean.”
Louise’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
“I didn’t vouch for him,” she muttered.
Kate sighed. This was just like her family. Urge you to do something, and then when you did it, imply you were stupid for doing it.
They were right along the ocean now. Beyond the flimsy guardrail, the water silvered and coruscated beneath a white evening sky. Gulls stretched their wings and dove toward dark Jurassic cliffs. Pulled up at the last moment, then dove again. Looking for the thrill of wind in their feathers—or for the kill.
* * *
Twenty hours earlier, Kate had been in New York, or more specifically in Bushwick, at the birthday party of someone she didn’t know. Her best friend, Natasha, had dragged her along. Kate had once loved parties. She had been charming, adept at shunting her excess energy into clever conversation. It was harder these days. She got nervous and shaky. She missed cues for witty lines. She didn’t want people recognizing her, staring at her, wondering if she was still crazy, what meds she was on, if she had gotten a settlement from the newspaper. Worse, she didn’t want them thinking she was boring.
But Natasha had leverage: Kate was crashing in their old apartment the night before her early flight out of JFK, and even though her name was technically on the lease through the end of the month, the rules of hospitality were in effect. A good guest was game for anything.
Now it was past midnight—long after she should have left, given how early she would have to get up for her flight. It was getting to that moment in the party: the playlist had shifted from indie electronic to nostalgia pop, the alcohol from microbrews to PBR, and an array of medical-grade joints were being discreetly passed around. Kate was standing by an open window, studying the skyline. She had drunk just enough to take the edge off. Not enough to dull her anxiety entirely: if she pushed against it, she would still bleed.
Wet metal tapped her shoulder. Natasha, with a new beer. Thank God. Kate took it and used the windowsill to pop off the cap.
“How you doing?” Natasha asked. Her voice too kind.
“Fine.”
“No one you know, right? I promised.”
“Right. Yeah, it’s cool. I’m glad I came.”
If Natasha knew Kate was lying, she didn’t comment. “I wish you weren’t leaving,” she said instead, dragging her braids forward over her shoulder. “What am I going to do? Who am I going to hang out with?”
“You’ll be fine,” Kate said. “What am I going to do, out in California, with my crazy aunt and uncle and a bunch of weird old shit?”
“You love weird old shit. You’re going to get super tan. And you can find all kinds of secrets about Miranda Brand and write a book. You can get a million dollars and buy one of those pink Victorian mansions. Go on all the TV shows. You’ll never come back to New York.”
That didn’t sound so bad. New York was contaminated now. Whenever Kate stood on her usual subway platform or passed a familiar bar, she remembered what it had been like to see those places before her life had tipped upside down. And she couldn’t get a job here, anyway, not at the Times or the Post or any place where Leonard Webb had friends, which was everywhere on the East Coast. California was an empty sheet on a clothesline, a place bleached clean of knowledge.
“I’ll mention you in my Pulitzer speech,” Kate said.
“Hell no, bitch. You’re aiming for the Nobel fucking Prize.”