Alexa was lying on one of the loungers on the back patio in her black strapless bikini. There wasn’t much sun left—evening was coming—and the air was cumbrous with humidity.
“Put some clothes on,” said Rebecca. “And shoes. We’re going out for dinner. I’m buying. Bob Lobster.” She poked Alexa’s leg with her toe. “Come on.” She had exactly one item on her agenda. She’d been holding on to her knowledge of Alexa’s YouTube channel for two weeks now, waiting, as Daniel had advised, for the right time to bring it up. And now was the right time.
Alexa groaned and said, “Why do you want to go all the way out there?” Bob Lobster was on the turnpike leading to Plum Island.
“I just do,” said Rebecca. “I like their clam rolls, and I haven’t had one all summer.” She moved toward Alexa like she was going to tickle her, and that got her going. No seventeen-year-old wanted to be tickled by her mother. “Come on. Morgan is at Katie’s. It’s just the two of us.”
Alexa groaned again and pulled on ripped jeans shorts and a tiny, tiny T-shirt. “Tourists love Bob Lobster because it’s ‘quaint’ and ‘no-frills,’” she said. “But when I go on vacation? When I’m a grown-up? I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m going to go to the Royal Villa of Grand Resort Lagonissi in Athens, which costs fifty thousand dollars a night. I’m looking to embrace the thrills, not avoid them.”
Is that because you are a YouTube personality? wondered Rebecca. But what she said was, “That will be nice for you, one day. For now we’re going no frills. I’ll drive.”
The sky over the Merrimack was a delicate pink bordered here and there by orange. There was the sense of summer coming to a close, of days and nights diffusing and re-forming as nostalgia. They rolled down the windows of the Acura and took in the briny, summery smell along the turnpike. They passed the weathered wood-shingled Joppa Flats Education Center, where Alexa had once attended a summer day camp, learning all about the native birds and marine life, and then they passed the Plum Island Airport, where Rebecca had once bought Peter a piloted ride on a WWII fighter plane for his birthday. He’d emerged looking green about the gills, but he claimed to have loved it.
They ordered their food—the clam roll for Rebecca, chicken Caesar wrap for Alexa—and, once they had it, repaired to one of the outside tables, where they tried to ignore the buzzing flies and concentrate instead on the loveliness of the sky. Alexa was facing away from the road and Rebecca toward it; she could see the light playing on the Pink House. She kept her eyes trained across the street so she wouldn’t have to meet Alexa’s when she said, “I watched your YouTube channel.”
Alexa put down her wrap. Her voice shook a little. “You what?”
“You heard me.” Rebecca selected an onion ring from her basket and met Alexa’s eyes. “Silk Stockings. I watched it.”
“How’d you know about it?”
“From Morgan. Apparently all her friends watch it. And at least half the Mom Squad.”
“They do? Are you serious?” Alexa looked the way Peter had after the WWII plane ride.
“I am very serious. You’re a big local hit, apparently. Morgan told me about it that day we saw you and Cam on Pleasant Street, but I wasn’t sure then how to bring it up. So I’ve just been watching. Catching up. Waiting, I guess.”
There was a long pause during which Rebecca watched a lot of emotions cross Alexa’s face: surprise, anger, stubbornness, a little bit of pride.
“Did you like it?”
Rebecca was touched by how eager Alexa sounded; she was for an instant the eight-year-old bringing home her self-portrait from art class and presenting it to Peter and Rebecca.
Rebecca poked through the onion rings to find another winner, and she spoke carefully: she’d been preparing for this.
“You have a great presence in front of the camera, and a way of condensing the topics into a digestible, educational format.”
“Thank you,” said Alexa.
“But that isn’t the point. My liking it isn’t the point.”
Alexa kept her eyes on Rebecca. “What’s the point?”
“Honey, you’re seventeen years old, and you have a very public online personality. Sixteen thousand subscribers?”
“Almost seventeen thousand,” corrected Alexa. “I’ve picked up a bunch of new ones recently.”
“But people don’t have to subscribe to watch, right?”
“Right.”
“So anybody can find you. Anybody can watch those videos, and do—whatever they want with them. To them.”
“Ew. Mom.”
“Not just people who want to learn about the stock market, but any old pervert or freak.”
Alexa sighed, exasperated. “I know, Mom.”
Rebecca felt her voice take a turn toward sharp. “You might not know, Alexa. I know you think you’re all the way grown up, honey. But you’re not grown up. You’re not even eighteen yet.”
“Almost.”
Rebecca had done what Daniel had advised. She’d sat on the knowledge of Silk Stockings while she watched a lot of the videos and read through many of the comments. But now she had to speak up. Alexa was about to step into Rebecca’s shoes at Colby—she was about to go off on her own! When Rebecca had matriculated at Colby she’d hadn’t been just wet behind the ears; she’d been positively sopping. She cringed when she thought of some of the mistakes she’d made. And that was pre-social media, when kids had the luxury of anonymity while they were bungling their young lives.
“Listen, when you go to college I want you to take a break from this. I’m not saying stop it forever, but promise me for at least the first semester you’ll concentrate on school, and making friends, and all of the things you’re supposed to be doing in college.”
Alexa said nothing.
“Alexa? I need you to promise.”
In a very tiny voice, so tiny it could have been coming from a far corner of the eating area, or even from the outer reaches of the marshes, Alexa said, “I’m not going to college.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. “What?”
“You don’t owe that first tuition payment. Don’t pay it. We don’t owe it. I’m not going.”
“What do you mean? You mean you’re not going as in you want to take a gap year?” Rebecca was against gap years but she tried really hard to be open-minded, the way Peter might have been.
“I turned down my spot.”
“You what?” The background noise receded; it was as if both Rebecca and Alexa had gone into portrait mode, with everything around them slightly blurry and unimportant.
“I turned down my spot. I have a plan. I want to move to L.A.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You can’t tell me absolutely not. I’m almost an adult.”
“Yes I can. You’re not moving to L.A. No way, Alexa. No way. You shouldn’t have given up Colby without talking to me about it. We should have discussed this.” She couldn’t believe it! Alexa had taken her future, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it in the garbage. How had Rebecca not known she’d given up her place at Colby? She’d been too distracted by her own life, that was how. She’d failed.
Rebecca watched the old Alexa rear up, the defensive, contemptuous Alexa, the one that these past weeks with Cam had mellowed and calmed, and this version of Alexa spit back, “Oh yeah? Well, you should have told me that you’re seeing someone!”
Rebecca felt herself flush. “What do you mean?”
“You are, right? If you’re not, feel free to deny it.”
Rebecca stayed silent.
“I knew it! I saw a text on your phone, in June. And ever since then it’s been clear that you’re sneaking around.”
Rebecca remained silent, marveling at Alexa’s abilities to turn the tables.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Mom?”
Rebecca sighed and wiped her fingers neatly with a paper napkin, one by one. “Lots of reasons,” she said. “For one thing, I didn’t know if it was something lasting. For another, you know him.”
“I do? Who is it?”
Here we go, thought Rebecca. From here on in there’s no going back. “Mr. Bennett. He teaches at the high school.”
Alexa looked horrified. “Mr. Bennett, my Intro to the Stock Market teacher Mr. Bennett?”
“Former Intro to the Stock Market teacher.”
“Ew, Mom. Really?”
Rebecca held up her hand. “Maybe this is why I didn’t tell you. This reaction, right here.”
“I’m sorry!” said Alexa. “Sorry, I am. It’s just—I mean. First of all. Do you call him Mr. Bennett?”
“No. Of course not. Daniel. I call him Daniel, which is his name. I just called him Mr. Bennett because that’s how you know him. And I haven’t told anyone. I wasn’t sure if people would think it wasn’t long enough after Peter, or too long, or the wrong person, or what. I just didn’t feel like dealing with people’s questions, or comments. And Morgan—I didn’t think she was ready. Also, if you can believe it, Daniel’s ex-wife is Gina’s husband’s sister. It all just felt too close to home.”
Alexa winced. “Wet sleeping bag Gina?”
“Wet sleeping bag Gina. And I guess the final reason is that even in the middle of all of this, meeting someone new, laughing with someone new, I still miss Peter.”
Alexa took a sip of her drink and then met Rebecca’s eyes. “I know,” she said. “I know you do. I do too.” She paused. “You know, I talked to Peter about not going right to college. Just before he died. I was thinking of it even back then, even before I started Silk Stockings.”
Rebecca was torn between feeling intrigued about that conversation and envious that it hadn’t been with her. “What did he say?”
“He was really supportive. I mean, he wasn’t like, yeah, gap year! Definitely! But he was willing to keep the conversation going. He was definitely willing to think about it. And then all of a sudden he was gone.” She gave a little shuddering breath that again called to Rebecca’s mind the eight-year-old with the self-portrait. “I miss him a lot too, Mom.”
“What do you miss about him?”
Alexa looked like she was thinking about this. “He was so patient when he taught me to parallel park—remember? In that parking lot across from the Towle building? I ran over those cones the first thirty times I tried it and we got chased out of there by the cops because officially the parking lot is private. He was always so—so nice.” She swiped at a tear. “That sounds lame, but it’s the right word for what I’m trying to say. He was so kind. I wish he was my real father.”
“Alexa! He was your real father.”
“Well. But he wasn’t. Morgan was his actual daughter, the one he had from the beginning of her life. I was just this . . . this interloper who was always hanging around. This barnacle attached to you. He couldn’t pry me off, but he wanted you, so he took us both.”
“Stop it. Alexa! That’s ridiculous.” Rebecca considered her daughter. For such a long time after Peter’s death she’d been consumed by her own grief—its inability to be contained, its bewildering peaks and valleys. Her sadness was so unwieldy, sometimes unpredictable, irascible. And Morgan was so young and needed so much. Sometimes Rebecca forgot to acknowledge that Alexa had her own grief that was complicated in its own way. She saw now that this had been a failure of hers. “You know, when your dad and I first split up, I figured there was no hope for me. A single mom with a three-year-old! Even though you were the cutest three-year-old around, I just wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah,” said Alexa, smiling weakly. “I can see how I might have cramped your dating style.”
“I was prepared to be alone,” Rebecca said. “Forever. I thought it would be just you and me, and we’d have this tidy little life, and then you’d grow up and leave me eventually, and I’d just, I don’t know, shrivel up and die or something. Or get a cat.”
“Not a cat,” said Alexa. “Never a cat.”
“The first time I went out with Peter, years later, I waited to mention you until the very end of the evening. Not because I was ashamed of you. No, don’t look at me that way! But just because I wanted to know what kind of person he was before I trusted him with the idea of you. Does that make sense?”
Alexa nodded.
“And then when I told him, do you know what he said?”
“‘No can do’?” said Alexa.
“Stop. No, of course not. His eyes lit up—I mean, they lit up, that’s an overused expression but honestly they did—and he said, ‘When do I get to meet her?’”
Alexa’s eyes were wet. “He did? He said that?”
“He did. The second time we went out, we took you to the Big Apple Circus. You might not remember that.”
“I don’t.”
“You were terrified of the elephant, and we had to leave early.”
“Oh no!” said Alexa. “I’m sorry! Were you and Peter bummed out?”
Rebecca laughed. “Not at all. I think you did us a favor. Barnum and Bailey it was not.”
“I’m so jealous of Morgan sometimes,” Alexa said. “Because she got him from the beginning of her life. She got a good one. And my father—well, he’s just gone.”
Rebecca hesitated. Now would be—could be—the time to tell Alexa that her father had initiated contact. But then she thought about all the times he’d promised to change and hadn’t been able to. She knew he had a disease from which a lot of people never recover. She knew he might not be better.
“I know we haven’t talked about this in a while—” she said. “But when you turn eighteen, the official custody agreement allows you to get in touch with your father if you wish. And if that’s important to you, I’ll help you find him. But there’s no hurry. You have your whole life to do that. Please believe me when I say that Peter was your real father for all of those years you had him. He was as real as it gets.”
Rebecca put her greasy, clam-roll hand over her daughter’s chickeny hand and they sat like that for several seconds while the sounds of the evening settled around them: the cars going by on their way to and from the island, the kid at the next table having a temper tantrum, raucous laughter from a group of teenagers. In this moment Rebecca felt a shift, as quick as the heartbeat of a bird. It was, maybe, a shift toward possibility. Toward a new kind of happiness.
Although there was still the Colby thing. Which wasn’t happy at all. “We’ll talk about the Colby thing later,” she told Alexa. “We are not finished with this discussion.”
Eventually Alexa took her hand back (clearly, enough was enough) and she said, “Are you done with this?” And she gathered up the paper containers and the balled-up napkins and she shuttled them into the garbage.