At five thirty a.m., Bark jumped out of bed growling. Someone was knocking at the front door.
“It’s fine. It’s fine, Barky,” I whispered, trying to calm myself too. Bark on the defense didn’t make for a pleasant wake-up call. I told myself it was just a neighbor and that Nan would get the door, but then the knocking turned to pounding, and the urgency of it sent my thoughts racing through a roll call of everyone we knew, and every emergency they could have.
Bark followed as I stumbled to the foyer. When I looked out the window, there was Bitsie, standing on the front step, in a pink chenille bathrobe and yellow duck slippers, a full pot of coffee in hand. Smiling. Perfectly fine.
“Well, aren’t you lovely,” she said as I let her in.
Bark skittered back to my room. I could hear Nan’s shower running.
“I just woke up.”
“You don’t say.” Bitsie grinned. “Why’s the door locked?”
“That’s what this latch is for.” I turned the deadbolt. “You’re supposed to use it.” Nan never locked the door, and it drove me crazy.
“You know, for a young kid, you really are an old fuddy-duddy.” Bitsie kissed my cheek and padded to the kitchen.
“How’d you get here?” I asked, following.
“Walked,” Bitsie said. “Like always.”
“Like that?” Bunny wouldn’t have let her leave the house in a robe.
“Nothing they haven’t seen before.” Bitsie got three mugs from the cabinet and set them on the counter, pouring coffee in two.
“We have coffee,” I said, pointing to the percolator. Nan always had the pot going by five.
“Kiddo, that swill your grandmother makes is not coffee.” Bitsie handed me a mug. “Shade-grown Costa Rican.”
I took a sip. She wasn’t wrong. Her coffee was always better than Nan’s.
“Isn’t everyone supposed to be at your house?” I asked, worried the other ladies were on their way. The neighborhood migrated around food. Breakfast was usually at Bitsie’s. Marta could get a nice lunch spread going. Ruth made borscht on Sundays. Althea did Taco Night. Nan was the one everyone went to for drinks and finger food.
“Trying to get rid of me?” Bitsie said with a wry smile.
“Just wondering what I’m in for.”
Bitsie laughed. “Only me. We have mermaid class at six thirty.”
“You I don’t ever mind,” I said, nudging my shoulder against hers. “Even though it’s early.”
We sat at the counter, sipping in silence. The curtains were still drawn, so we stared at the fabric. I wondered if Bitsie was counting magnolia blossoms too.
Finally, she said, “Nan’s making me co-chair the community center fundraiser.”
“Ah.” I tapped her slipper with my foot. “She can force you to meet with her, but she can’t make you put on real shoes.”
“See. You get me.” She sighed. “I’m tired of bake sales. Bunny did that stuff, not me.”
We heard the whine of the pipes as Nan shut off the shower.
Bitsie dropped her voice to a murmur. “No one is going to want whatever kale-carrot-seaweed thing she decides to call a muffin.”
I could tell by the sadness in her eyes, her real worry was that Nan would make her fill in for what was missing. It was a reasonable fear.
She chugged her coffee, poured more. “I’m being such a bitch.”
I squeezed her arm. “You’re just blowing off steam. I know how much you love her.”
“I like you being an adult,” Bitsie said, refilling my mug like I’d earned more coffee. “You’re doing it well.”
“Twenty-seven, divorced, living with my grandmother. I think that’s failing.”
“You’re figuring it out. That’s the success. To know there’s something to figure.”
“I feel defeated.” It was easy to talk to Bitsie. Maybe because she was blunt with me. Maybe because I used to tell Bunny everything.
“I felt that way after my divorce,” Bitsie said. “You pictured your life one way. Now it’s going somewhere else. You have to recalibrate.”
“How?” It wasn’t like I had a baseline of normal to get back to. My life had always felt like it was being pulled along by bent bicycle gears turning out of sync with their chain.
“I went to nursing school,” Bitsie said.
I laughed. “I don’t think I’d be good at nursing.”
Bitsie laughed too. “I don’t think you would either. What I mean is, I found my purpose. You’ll find yours. You knew enough to get out. Celebrate that.”
I thought about the hair clip in the couch; black plastic pocked with hair-spray residue. “I’m not sure I ever would have left him. If he hadn’t—” My face flushed. I didn’t know how much Nan had told her. “He cheated.”
“So, he did you a favor,” Bitsie said, getting up, the heads of her duck slippers bobbing as she walked to the cabinet.
“I don’t want to pretend he did something altruistic,” I blurted out, remembering the crinkle of butcher paper beneath me as I sat on the exam table in my gynecologist’s office and had to ask for STI testing from the same doctor who’d seen me through both miscarriages. “I don’t want to give him that.”
Bitsie looked over her shoulder, light in her eyes. “Good. Don’t.” She grabbed two glasses and walked her ducks to the fridge for water.
“All that time I could have been figuring out what to do with myself.”
She handed me a glass of water and sat down. “I know you feel like you already made the big choices, but you’re just starting, kiddo. What do you want?”
I figured it was a rhetorical question, and I smiled politely, but she asked again, “What do you want?”
“I don’t know.” I searched my mind for things normal people are supposed to want, but all I could come up with was one of those blenders that can even blend a cell phone.
“Horseshit,” Bitsie said. “You know.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m old, but I’m not Obi-Wan. It’s your own damn job to figure it out.”
“Who’s Obi-Wan?” Nan called from the hallway.
“No one, Nannette,” Bitsie said. “It’s fine.”
Nan bustled into the kitchen, wearing a sleeveless denim shirtdress belted at her now-tiny waist. I was shocked all over again by her muscular legs.
She pointed to Bitsie’s pot. “I made coffee already. You didn’t have to—”
“Mine’s better.” Bitsie poured Nan a cup.
“So I was thinking bake sale,” Nan said, grabbing the carton of hemp milk.
“I know you were thinking bake sale.” Bitsie winked at me. “I was thinking calendar.”
“Calendar?” Nan shook the carton with vigor and poured some in her coffee.
“Remember we watched that movie about those British ladies?”
“Bits! I am not posing nude! Who wants a calendar of this?” Nan pushed at the teeny flap of skin under her arm.
“Firstly, we’re gorgeous! People should see what real women look like.” Bitsie shook her head like a model, but her short spiky hair didn’t move.
“What people?” Nan asked.
“People,” Bitsie said. “Everyone. Secondly, I wasn’t talking about a nudie calendar. I’m thinking mermaids. All of us from class in tails and seashells. It’ll be so much better than muffins.”
“Muffins are easier.” Nan dumped her pot of coffee into the sink.
“Oh, what else are we doing with our time?” Bitsie said. “Let’s have some fun!” She shielded her mouth with her hand, loud-whispering to Nan, “I think we know someone who could make costumes.”
I looked into my coffee cup, unsure of what to say.
“I don’t know, Bits,” Nan said. “Katie just got back. That’s a lot to ask of her.”
“We can even shoot underwater!” Bitsie shouted.
Nan stared at me. My stomach wobbled. I used my thumb to smudge away a coffee stain on the counter. Nan didn’t usually leave me space to say no. I wondered if she thought I’d let everyone down.
“Material is expensive,” Nan said, sipping her coffee. “We’re raising money, not spending it.”
“Come on. If the ladies don’t have to bake and they get a mermaid costume out of the deal, they’ll be happy to chip in . . .”
“A lot of us are on fixed incomes.”
“. . . plus, this lady gets portfolio pictures. Two birds!” Bitsie said, pitching an imaginary stone at me.
“I won’t even make you bake,” Nan said, pouring more hemp milk in her coffee. “But it’s just easier.”
They kept arguing. I lost focus. My mind spun through the ways I could fail, like a film sequence in my head, playing behind what was real. Seams splitting. Silver crepe from Nan’s unraveling tail caught in the pool filter, holding her below the surface. Chlorine and blue tiles. Sunlight hitting her too-still body. I went back to counting the magnolias on the curtains. Twenty-seven on one panel. Twenty-five on the other. It always drove me crazy. I started my count again and included the slivers of flowers cut off at the edges, to see if I could find a false sense of even.
“What do you think, kid?” Bitsie said, nudging my arm.
I shook my head, like the motion might make the bad thoughts disappear. Bitsie looked disappointed, so I switched to a nod. “Whatever you want to do,” I said, trying to smile. I chugged the rest of my coffee and stood up. “I have to take Bark out.”