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Five days since the hurricane. Five days since Chelsea had made her spontaneous decision to disappear from her New York life and do one of the more cowardly things she’d ever done in her life: seek out her mother and hide. Now, she lay in her childhood bed, all wrapped up in blankets, three pillows behind her, and wondered if she’d ever had the strength to return. Her heart hammered with the thought of it. She thought about reading the fifty-plus messages from both her father and Xavier. Anxiety had become like a dear friend. She carried it around on her shoulder like a parrot.
Outside her bedroom, her mother paced as she spoke on the phone with Amelia about the potential fundraiser. Chelsea groaned and shifted beneath the blankets. The alarm clock on her bedside table read 11:14 in big, bold red letters. It demanded something of her. It wondered why the heck she refused to get up. She wondered it of herself, too. Was this depression? She had certainly grappled with that as a teenager in the wake of her father’s departure. She imagined telling her father that, now. “What you did to me when I was a teenager messed me up for good. And now you just show up unannounced and use me like this?’
Again, her phone began to buzz. It was Xavier. She allowed it to buzz itself until it couldn’t buzz any longer. Again, Xavier left a voicemail, another in a list of eleven. They had definitely read about The Hesson House and they had probably guessed that’s where she’d gone. She felt akin to a monster, having abandoned them. Then again, it was true what they said on airplanes: you had to put on your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else with theirs. In the recent weeks, she’d had great difficulty in learning how to breathe.
Chelsea slid out of bed and padded to the bathroom, where she took full stock of herself. Her reflection looked pale, a sunken-in face that had once blossomed with life and optimism. She brushed her teeth and then flossed, something she rarely did but made a mental note to do more. Life was long and unnecessarily cruel. You had to be kind to your teeth.
In the kitchen, she poured herself a mug of coffee as Olivia finally drew her conversation closed. She placed her phone on the counter then positioned her hands on her hips.
“I don’t know. Do you think we can pull it off?”
“Sure,” Chelsea said, not really sounding sure herself. But this was the only appropriate response.
“What are you doing today?” Olivia asked.
Chelsea knew what the question meant: it demanded much more of Chelsea than she was willing to give. She couldn’t go into the details of why she had left the city, nor could she discuss the fact that she had pondered whether or not she wanted to return to the city at all. The diner had reopened in the wake of the storm. Perhaps they could just pass on a few shifts to her, here and there. She could slip back into her old life like nothing had happened.
But time didn’t move in that direction. It didn’t go backward.
“I don’t know,” Chelsea finally offered. “I feel a bit at a loss.”
Olivia nodded. “Me too.” She sipped her coffee, then scrunched her nose and added a hint of milk. “You know, you can talk to me about it if you want to.”
This couldn’t have been further from the truth. “I know,” she lied.
“Are they okay?”
“Yes.” Again, a lie. Chelsea felt herself moving emotionally further and further away from her mother.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Marty, her boss.
MARTY: Hey girl. Are you ready for your shift tomorrow evening?
Chelsea’s heart banged away in her ribcage. She scrunched her nose and ignored it. Olivia noted this and arched an eyebrow.
“You have to get back to work?”
Chelsea nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You don’t want to tell him you’re needed here a little while longer?”
Chelsea wasn’t sure why, but she resented her mother saying this. She could “need” her mother all she liked until that very mother pointed out the fact. Chelsea shook her head so that her curls wafted across her shoulders.
“I can’t lose my job, Mom.” Her voice dripped with aggression.
Olivia leaned up against the counter, mug in hand. “I know that, honey.”
Gosh, there was so much unsaid. It felt like a crater between them.
“I’m going to go for a run,” Chelsea told her. “Clear my head a bit.”
“Okay. Do you want company?”
Chelsea and Olivia used to go jogging together, back when Chelsea had experimented with the cross country team in high school. Chelsea had been impressed with her mother’s ability to stretch long miles across back roads and hills, despite being twenty years her senior.
“No. I’m good.”
Olivia looked shrunken. “Okay.”
Chelsea donned a pair of running shorts and an old high school sweatshirt. She pushed her feet into old tennis shoes and walked out the door. Once there, she drew a line northward down Captain’s Walk and headed up through Edgartown, where she passed a number of piles of rubble and debris, all collected post-hurricane. Several Edgartown residents lined the sidewalk and discussed the events. It really seemed there was no end in sight with regards to conversation topics about the storm. This was the pinnacle of gossip. It was Martha’s Vineyard’s top fuel. As she raced, several onlookers waved a hand in greeting. They all recognized her — Olivia Hesson’s daughter, of course, the one who had run off to New York. She could practically feel the gossip swirling out from their lips regarding her. “What happened to that boyfriend of hers? He was always such a surly character. Wonder if he got her pregnant yet?”
Chelsea’s nostrils flared at this imagined conversation. Wasn’t this gossip the very reason she’d wanted to escape Martha’s Vineyard, anyway? But no. It had been bigger than that. She had longed for so much more in life — the kind of life she’d read about in books. Chelsea had imagined that she could craft whatever existence she wanted, as long as she fought, tooth and nail for it. She hadn’t imagined Tyler would just appear into that life without notice. She hadn’t imagined this crash-and-burn.
She rushed all the way to the Edgartown Lighthouse, where she nearly collapsed, gripping her knees as she blinked bleary eyes across the now-calm waters. When the hurricane had rolled toward Martha’s Vineyard, her heart had burned with fear that she wouldn’t reach her mother in time. She had wanted to tell her something — something enormous, something she couldn’t name now. Perhaps it was something along the lines of, “I’m sorry.” But that now seemed too simplistic. Plus, they’d gotten through the storm, and they had returned to either side of their war lines. There was just so much Chelsea and Olivia couldn’t say to one another. Too much had happened in the past.
Chelsea’s phone buzzed with a call from Andrea. Andrea was Camilla’s daughter, a full three years older than Chelsea — yet eternally one of Chelsea’s dearest friends. Since Chelsea had moved to Brooklyn, she and Andrea had struggled to catch one another, between Andrea’s difficult fashion school schedule and Chelsea’s late-night restaurant shifts. Still, they met for the occasional coffee, where normally, Andrea listened as Chelsea gushed about how much she loved the city. Chelsea kept any of her “homesickness” woes to herself, as she didn’t want Andrea to think she was weak.
“Hey,” Chelsea answered as brightly as she could.
“Chels, hi.” Andrea’s voice was pinched. “You’re not in the city.”
“No. I’m not.” Chelsea drew upright and walked slowly along the boardwalk. Much of the railing had been obliterated; little twigs and stones lined the walkway. Probably, the bigger debris had already been moved away.
“I just ran into Xavier,” Andrea said.
Chelsea’s heart sank into her stomach. She allowed the silence to sink between them.
“He looked bad, Chels. Like, worse than I’ve ever seen him.”
Chelsea wanted to point out that Andrea didn’t know Xavier that well. She was three years older than Chelsea in school and thusly four years older than Xavier. They’d interacted over the summer at bonfires and parties and stuff, but that was about it.
“Why did you leave, Chelsea? I couldn’t get it out of him. Last time I saw you, you were all, ‘New York is my home forever.’”
Chelsea buzzed her lips. “I didn’t realize I was in for a huge interrogation today.”
“So you’re on the Vineyard?”
“Yes, detective. I’m on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?” Chelsea placed her hand on her hips as she felt her sarcasm sizzle across her tongue.
“You know like what. Chelsea, I’m not your enemy here. But you should have told me. I said that I’d watch out for you in the city.”
“You’re so busy with school. And I don’t need to be ‘watched out for.’ I’m not a kid.”
“Chelsea. Are you going to come back? Are you going to tell Xavier what’s up?”
Chelsea swallowed the lump in her throat. Every cell in her body screamed with the desire to see Xavier again, to feel his strong arms around her as they slept through the night as the city’s wheels spun around them, a non-stop, whirling ecosystem of madness.
“My dad came to the city.”
“What? Tyler?”
Chelsea sniffed. “Xavier got so mad at me for letting him stay with us. And to be honest, I’m angry with him, too. I love my dad so much. You know I do. But he crossed every line. And I couldn’t stop him. So I ran here and I wound up center-stage in line for the storm of a lifetime.”
“You and Tyler both have excellent timing,” Andrea returned.
“Gee. Thanks.”
Andrea sighed. “I want to talk more, but I have a class in a few minutes. Will you call me later?”
Chelsea pressed her eye hard with two fingers; light yellow spots formed behind her eyelid.
“I don’t know, Andrea. I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“You’ll get through this, Chelsea. You will. You’re strong.”
“I don’t feel very strong.”
“Come on. You’re a queen. Don’t make me tell you again.”
They hung up the phone. Chelsea pressed her phone against her chest and pondered what to do next. In some respects, her bed back at home screamed louder than ever. She yearned to crawl beneath those covers, pop on a Netflix show, and continue hiding from the world for the rest of her days. Olivia would allow it for a while. Heck, she’d sit with her in bed without prying and cook them delicious snacks.
But Chelsea knew in her heart this sort of hiding-out was similar to a prison. It was a prison of perception. She would be allowed only the safety of this previous world while dismissing the one she truly belonged in.
Still, saying that to herself felt very different than living it.
When Chelsea announced her plans to return to the city the following morning, Olivia pressed her lips into a thin, pale line. Her eyes brewed with questions. Before her was a fifteen-point to-do list, presumably for the upcoming fundraiser; her hand shook over the paper as she collected her thoughts.
“Are you sure you want to go back?”
Chelsea bristled. “Yes. I’m sure.”
Olivia dropped her pen. She looked to toss Chelsea question after question, like darts thrown at a board in a dive bar.
But instead, Olivia just nodded. “I know you know what you’re doing. I know you know how to handle yourself.”
Chelsea balked. Had Olivia Hesson been taken? Was this an alien life force, speaking through the body of her mother?
Chelsea hadn’t fully realized how much she’d wanted her mother to protest her decision until she didn’t. This was a funny thing about human nature. We always want the opposite of what we have. Why is that? Chelsea wondered now.
“Cool. Well. I’ll just be in my room, then.”
“Great. I’ll order a pizza for your last night,” Olivia told her with a smile. “And I’ll crack a bottle of wine. Cabernet good for you?”