When I walk through the front door I drop my suitcase on the foyer bench and run upstairs like I am being chased. Jolene’s door is closed and I’m glad. I round the corner and head up the second set of stairs. I can see my grandmother sitting at her desk, a pen in her hand and her calendar open. I stand at the door but she doesn’t look up. I say, “My interviewer said I’m an incredible candidate and deserve all the success in the world.”
She finally glances up from her planner. She’s wearing her reading glasses, which I’ve never liked. They make her look like a stranger. “That reminds me,” she says, “I’ve spoken to the head of the bariatric surgery department at Stanford. They just need your blood work. They’re confident they can get you on the schedule within a few weeks. Though I thought perhaps we should arrange for the holiday break so that you don’t miss quite so much school.” She makes a note on a scrap of paper at her elbow, and she’s smiling. “Good news all around, don’t you think?”
I open my mouth, but I don’t have any air to talk with. It feels like the real world has come crashing back into place. I can’t remember why I was so happy.
She pulls off her glasses and puts her arm out. “Come here, darling. I’m pleased to see you. I’m so glad it went well.”
She stands, putting her arms around me and patting my back, once, twice. She’s warm and she smells like my grandmother. I sag against her, in the circle of her arms and her smile and the cadence of her hands. She squeezes me, and then detaches herself and seats herself again, looking me over. “You don’t look worse for the wear,” she says to me.
“I talked to the interviewer about weight-loss surgery,” I say.
She looks pleased. “Ah, good! I’m sure they were interested to hear that.” She turns back to her desk.
“I decided I’m not going to get it,” I say.
“I’m sorry, darling?” she says, not looking up. She’s gone back to her calendar.
I can’t say it again. Not yet. I have time. I just have to figure out what to say. “I’m going to go unpack,” I say. “And take a shower.”
“We’ll order something tonight,” she says. “Whatever you’d like.”
“I’ll make empanadas,” I say, and she glances back at me sharply.
“If you’d like,” she says, and when she flicks the page sharply I know I’m dismissed.
Instead I say, “Laura stayed,” and she looks up, annoyed.
“Stayed where?” my grandmother says.
“On the East Coast,” I say. “She didn’t fly back with me.”
“Why on earth would she do that?” she says, turning around in her chair.
“She wasn’t ready to come home,” I say.
My grandmother shakes her head. “That girl is going to come to a bad end. She is smart, savvy, and has a great deal of potential. But she just runs wild. She’s lucky she’s attractive.”
“She’s good at being herself,” I say.
She smiles at me. “I’m glad she’s having her adventures rather farther away than will get you in trouble.” She sighs. “She’s a bad example.”
“She’s not—” I start to stay, but Grandmother interrupts.
“Go find Jolene and tell her everything. She could use good news.”
I find Jolene in the backyard, lying in the grass spread-eagle with her hair fanned out around her. She’s floating in a sea of green.
“You look like a mermaid,” I call from the deck, and she cranes her head around.
“I feel like one,” she says. She sits up as I shuffle through the too-long grass and sit next to her. I bump my arm into hers.
“So how was Harvard?” she says.
“I didn’t even go look at it,” I say, plucking a blade of grass and tearing it down the center. “I sat in a Starbucks.”
“That doesn’t seem very logical,” she says.
I shrug. “I didn’t want to look at it. I was afraid I’d—if all this doesn’t work I don’t want to have anything to miss.” I pause and correct myself. “Anything more to miss.” I add, “Also it was really cold.”
Jolene laughs at that. I’ve torn the blades into tiny pieces. I drop them in my lap.
“Laura is going to go stay with her mom,” I say. “And Brandon kissed me.”
“Oh,” she says, startled. She examines my face.
“Why would he do that?” I say.
“Maybe he wishes he were more like you. Or Laura.”
“Laura doesn’t want to kiss me,” I say.
“I mean that he wishes he could do what he wants. Without worrying what other people think. So are you going to—”
“No,” I say. I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I’m glad,” she says.
A sandpiper hoots. “What about you?”
“My parents are coming to get me,” she says. She puts her chin on her knee.
“Do you want them to?”
She shakes her head. “They were screaming on the phone at Clara for ten minutes and finally she hung up on them. And they called me to tell me they were coming to get me before I could make an irretrievable mistake.”
“What mistake?”
She gives me a sidelong glance. “They think that your grandmother is scheduling surgery for everyone in the house.”
“Where did they get that idea?” I say, and I can hear the cords of tension twanging in my voice.
Jolene sighs. “I have no idea.”
“This small fucking town,” I say, and I find myself standing and pacing.
She looks up at me with a small smile on her face, her chin on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs.
“I’m safe here,” she says. “In a small town where we know how people will react. Where we can handle what anyone says. We’re safe.”
“Except from our parents,” I say.
“Except from them,” she says. She pauses. “I think they could understand. If I could figure out a way to explain it to them.”
“That’s not your job,” I say.
“I would like to be able to do what they want,” she says suddenly. “A part of me wishes that. It would be so easy to just give in.”
“It would be a lie,” I say to her. I ignore the flashback to my grandmother’s office. My hesitation.
“Yes,” she says. “I know.” She reclines back on the grass with her arms above her head. She is glowing pale in the light that’s fading, brighter than everything around her. “I’m not going with them,” she says. “I may be here for a long time.” Her voice is as quiet as ever, that same gentle cadence, and her face is calm. She knows such a different Clara than I do—my grandmother has taken her in, smoothed her anxieties away, held her hand, and accepted her wholly. The thought is a stone lodged in my throat.
There’s banging in the house, and voices. “I think they’ve arrived,” I say.
She pulls herself to her feet and squeezes my hand.
“Do you need me to go with you?” I say.
“I’m okay,” she says. “It’ll be fine.”
I believe her when she says that, and watch her pick her way through the grass, back to the house where lights are starting to come on in every room, which means my father is home too. The lights switch on in the kitchen just as Jolene reaches the patio door, and my father opens it for her. I can hear them talking in low voices, and Jolene shakes her head, slips by him. He looks up and spots me standing in the grass.
“Ashley!” he calls. “Ashley, what the hell is going on?” He leaps down the steps with a couple of jumps and is striding through the grass to me. He looks grim and confused all at once, like he is not sure what is happening and he really isn’t digging it.
“Jolene’s parents want her to go home,” I say.
“I got that part,” he says. “Jolene’s parents are saying something about surgery. That you’re getting surgery. What the hell do they mean that you’re getting surgery?” His voice is getting louder with every word. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this emotional.
“I’m—” I pause. I had never even considered telling my father about any of this. He would have laughed and made a joke about how he’ll be leaving me in stitches and he would go back to his romance novel, his feet propped up on the arm of the couch.
But instead he’s here glaring at me now.
“What are they talking about?” he says. “Are you sick? Are you hurt? Are you doing—Is there something you need to tell me? Why do they know about this and your father is just now finding out, Ashley?” His words make me think, for the briefest moment, of Hector. My father has my shoulders in his hands now and I don’t think he realizes he’s shaking me gently with every word.
I push him off. “They’re talking about weight-loss surgery,” I say, with my arms crossed over my chest. He looks confused. “To lose weight. Gastric bypass. Like celebrities do.”
“Weight-loss surgery,” he says. “You’re getting weight-loss surgery?”
I just look at him. I am not interested in offering him relief.
He runs his hand through his hair, looks at the house. “You weren’t going to tell me. You were just never going to mention you were going to get this surgery to lose weight.”
I shrug, look over at the house. There is no yelling yet. I wonder if they are letting Jolene talk.
He turns and walks away from me, stomping across the lawn, leaving a trail of flattened grass behind him. “Goddammit,” he says, lifting his foot and examining it. He’s stepped on one of Soto’s toys.
“You forgot to mow the lawn again,” I say, and he turns with the toy in his hand. “I always remind you and you never remember.”
“Not now, Ashley,” he says, and tosses the toy away, turns back to the house.
“They’re still talking,” I call. “Let them talk.”
“They can talk for as long as they want,” he says. “I’m going to speak to your grandmother.”
He’s off across the lawn. “My interview went well, thanks for asking,” I say, but he’s already gone.
All the lamps in the house cast rectangles of light scattered across the overgrown lawn. Jolene comes to find me, the dogs following behind her in an orderly fashion. Toby flings himself into my lap, his nails scratching at my shirt, jumping up and squirming and bouncing back onto the grass and running laps around me like he can’t believe his luck, just finding me out here. Annabelle Lee has wandered off, but Soto sits calmly, her tongue hanging out. Soto is always relaxed.
“What happened?” I say. I can’t see her face very well, but I see her shake her head.
“Everyone is gone,” she says. “They all left.”
“Together?” I say. “Are they forming a bowling team?”
She laughs. “No,” she says. She sits down next to my other side, and Toby swarms into her lap. “Shh,” she says to him, but he doesn’t like to hear that. He wiggles out of her arms and races off barking into the dark, his little yap echoing under the trees.
“Are you staying?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. She exhales. She looks just like she did when she was seven. Soft cheeks and sad eyes. Shattered heart.
“Let’s go swimming,” I say, and stand up, hold out my hand to her. Her face is a soft blur in the dark. I can tell she’s staring at me, deciding how serious I am. The air smells like salt and wind and pine and I close my eyes for a moment so I can smell it better.
“Yes,” she says. I open my eyes. She lets me pull her up.
We wind down along the narrow path through the trees, the ground changing from soft dirt littered with dead leaves to shifting sand. We stop at the edge and kick our shoes off the way we always do, the way we always will. There is no moon. It looks like the ocean is a stretch of black glass that goes on forever and we are racing toward it, our feet digging into the sand but it can’t slow us down until we’re splashing into the water, splashing and then wading and then throwing ourselves headlong, letting the water catch us and lift us up off our feet and carry us away.