“Was anybody not nice to you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. If they weren’t, I didn’t notice.” Sherri looked in the rearview mirror, perplexed. During the daytime Katie seemed to be fantastically unaffected by everything that had happened before the two of them moved to Newburyport. Was her nonchalance simply a coping mechanism, masking the deep, dark reaction that came only in sleep? Or had Sherri actually done a passable job of protecting her?
The road that led south from the surf beach, Ocean Boulevard, was lined with mansions on the right. On the left were majestic views of the Atlantic Ocean, bordered in places by a rock wall. Along the rock wall ran a sidewalk and on the sidewalk people were running, riding bikes, walking dogs: happy happy summer people in a happy happy summer place. Sherri took a deep breath and released it, just as the counselor had told her to do.
The road had gentle twists and turns like a road in a storybook, and every now and then the ocean would open up wide before them. It was enough to take your breath away. Here is where the fairy princess lives, Sherri thought, passing a giant white house that looked like a Southern mansion. One house had peeling paint and a weedy, untended lawn. Here is where the monster lives, thought Sherri. She shivered. The counselor had told her to try not to think too much about their other lives. It was not an overstatement to say that their survival depended on it.
“What are you doing, Katie?” Sherri asked. Katie had her head down now, intent on something in her lap. Her phone, which Sherri had bought her against her better judgment, with some of the money they’d been given to start over. She’d been swayed by the ability to track Katie’s whereabouts.
“Just texting with some of the girls.”
“The girls you just met?”
Sherri glanced again in the rearview mirror and saw Katie nod. Sherri’s mother would have said, “I didn’t hear your head rattle,” and demanded a verbal answer, but truth be told, Sherri’s mother and Sherri had had a very different relationship than Sherri and Katie had. Katie tended to treat Sherri less like a parent and more like an overwrought friend whose occasional discombobulation caused Katie some mild bemusement.
When she was packing up to leave the beach, Sherri had heard the women discussing cocktails by so-and-so’s pool in two days’ time, kids included. Sherri had lingered over her cheap beach bag for a moment, half wondering if they’d invite her, half horrified by the thought that they might. If they did, she would go for Katie’s sake. It would be lovely for Katie to make some friends over the summer so that she’d enter school in September with familiar faces to seek out by the lockers or at lunchtime. Sherri felt a pang at the thought of Katie with a cafeteria tray, desperately seeking a place to sit.
“Taylor wants me to come swimming at her house this week!” Katie announced.
“Really?” Sherri felt a flush of nervous excitement. Calm down, she told herself. It’s just a swimming invitation. “That sounds like fun! Which one was Taylor?”
“Blond hair,” said Katie.
“Didn’t they all have blond hair?” All the kids, all the moms. Sherri glanced in the rearview mirror, hating her own brown hair even more than usual.
Ahead of the Acura a line of cars had stopped, waiting for somebody to turn out of the parking lot of an outdoor ice cream shop. Sherri could see three separate lines of people, at least ten deep, at the shop. the beach plum, said the sign. best lobster roll in new england. Sherri had never tasted a lobster roll. Their very existence puzzled her: lobster and bread. It seemed an unnecessary combination.
Across the street was yet another parking lot for yet another beach, with more happy summer people milling about. Sherri had had no idea that the beach scene in their new lives would be so robust. She felt a surge of something wash over her, maybe the memory of a long-ago childhood summer at the Jersey Shore, and she experienced a sudden uplift in mood.
“Let’s do it,” she told Katie. She followed the car ahead of her into the Beach Plum’s parking lot. “Lobster rolls for lunch. What do you say?”
“Okay,” said Katie affably. Sometimes Sherri thought that she could suggest dissecting a garden snake and serving it with crackers and Katie would nod and say, “Okay,” to that too.
“When in Rome, right?” added Sherri.
“Right,” agreed Katie.
Now that they lived in New England, now that they were officially, legally, definitely Sherri and Katie Griffin from Columbus, Ohio, relocated after a nasty divorce, and no thank you they didn’t want to talk about it, it was all still quite raw, they should do whatever they could to fit in.
How far, wondered Sherri, as a cloud passed over the sun, momentarily darkening the June day, would she actually go to do that?
3.
Alexa
Alexa Thornhill cast an appraising eye on her next four sets of customers. Two families, one middle-aged couple, and someone else she couldn’t yet see because he or she was being blocked by the second family.
“I can help the next customer!” she said brightly from her position behind the counter, which looked out on the parking lot and the line of sandy, hungry people standing in the sun. It was just past one. Graduation was not far in the rearview mirror and already Alexa was bored out of her mind. After work—she got out at four—she would pop into the clothing store attached to the ice cream shop and see if they had the high-necked O’Neill halter dress in stock in her size (extra small). Her ex-best-friend Destiny had a friend who worked there and promised she’d let Alexa use her discount. Not that Alexa needed it (things had been going very well lately online), but she enjoyed taking advantage of a personal connection when she could. And Destiny owed her something, after what happened in March.
Two parents with identical twin boys, four or five, stepped up to the counter. The parents looked worried, and Alexa could already foresee the disaster that would soon unfold. The parents (Midwestern, maybe, but anyway, not local) would get a look at the prices and try to get the boys to share. The boys would agree on principle but would disagree on a flavor, and one of the parents would ask Alexa if the boys could split the smallest size into two different flavors.
Yes, she could split the smallest size into two different flavors, but no, she didn’t enjoy doing it, and, yes, there would be a fight over which boy got the most ice cream because it was impossible to get two half-scoops exactly even. The whole family would leave more distraught than it arrived.
This was exactly what transpired.
People were so predictable.
Alexa’s job at the Cottage Creamery, the walk-up ice cream joint on Plum Island, was more of a cover than anything else, part of her endeavor to appear like a normal almost-eighteen-year-old girl. Most of her money she made elsewhere. Also, getting out of the house was critical, and it was nice to be near the beach, during this, her last summer ever living in her hometown. Not that anyone knew that. And not that Plum Island had the best beach scene around. It would be much more fun to work up near Jenness Beach, at Summer Sessions, doling out acai bowls to the surf-camp kids and their moms, watching the hot surf instructors stroll by with their wet suits pulled down halfway. But everyone knew the Summer Sessions jobs went to the surfers and their significant others and Alexa had never bothered to learn to surf. It seemed time-consuming and unproductive. Cold too, especially in New England waters. Maybe when she moved to L.A., maybe then she’d learn.