Mirror in the Sky (24 page)

THIRTY-NINE

T
HE
sun was pouring in through the large windows that faced the ocean, and I turned to watch the mist rising over the water, everything an indiscernible blue and gray, all blurred lines. I was curled up under an airy down comforter and white linen sheets that enveloped me like a cloud. A bouquet of fresh pink hyacinths and lavender crocuses sat on my bedside table. Halle must have placed them there early in the morning while I was still asleep.

The whole house was white—white curtains, white walls, white linens—but not an institutional white. It was a peaceful, seaside white. I wondered if there was an entire industry of stylists and interior decorators devoted to finding the perfect shade of white for a house.

I was lying in bed, listening to the sound of waves crashing
on the shore, when Alexa ran into my room, throwing herself on my bed.

“Haaaaappy birthdaaaaay, birthdaaaaaay guuurrrrl!” she yelled, and the others followed, laughing as they flung themselves over the covers.

“Tara's seventeen!!!”

“What are you going to do for your birthday, Tara?”

“Jimmy has a present for you! He told me. Spoiler: It involves him taking his pants off,” Halle yelled.

“He wants you to make a wish on his eyelash.” Veronica laughed.

We spent the morning gossiping in bed in our pajamas till Halle offered to make us breakfast. We accompanied her down the stairs to the kitchen, where a cornucopia of wrapped presents sat piled on the kitchen table.

Halle got to work making the French toast while Veronica juiced oranges and Alexa made coffee. I got up to help, but Halle wouldn't let me.

“No way, birthday girl. You're not lifting a finger today, okay? Today, it's all us.”

There were windows throughout the kitchen, and the light was different here, misty but bright. The kitchen itself looked like a dream, something out of
Architectural Digest
, the stainless steel appliances gleaming in a way I thought was only possible with the use of Photoshop. You could smell the sea from here, salty and clean.

“I think Ina Garten cooks in this kitchen when she comes up the Cape,” Alexa said.

“You watch
Barefoot Contessa
?” Veronica made a face.

“I like Ina.” Alexa shrugged. “I like her pear clafouti.”

“Do you think Jeffrey's having an affair?” Halle asked.

“Why would he be?” Alexa looked shocked.

“Because he's, like, always off in the city, and she's always at home cooking for him.”

“That doesn't mean Jeffrey's a cheat, okay? They look seriously happy together. You guys are such cynics.”

“So we are.” Veronica shrugged, raising a glass of orange juice. “Happy birthday, Tara. Thanks for bringing us cynics to the Cape. You guys were right. This was a good idea,” she mumbled.

“Wait, what was that, V? Could you, like, repeat that?”

Veronica rolled her eyes. “You were right, Halle! You are always right. Hail to the queen!” But it wasn't mean, the way she said it. There was actually a kindness in her voice. The French toast was caramelized on the edges, made with stale brioche bread and copious amounts of ghee and lemon and orange rind and cardamom and strawberry jam.

While we ate, I opened my presents: a gift certificate to the Strand, an IOU for lunch at Tarry Lodge, a Burberry scarf, a silver ring with an aquamarine stone, and finally, a box that Halle handed me. It was wrapped in silver paper, light in weight, with a black ribbon tied around it.

“Open it,” she insisted. I looked at her, wondering what she was up to. I unwrapped the ribbon and tore off the paper. The box was unremarkable, but when I lifted the cover, I gasped.

It was the same sweater I had been wearing the first day of school, the turquoise cardigan I had to throw away.

“Now I know you probably don't want to be reminded about that day—but Nick told me that your cardigan was ruined. I, like, made him describe it to me in full detail, and I remembered I had seen something like it at Shores, that little boutique in Old Greenwich. Anyway, if it brings up bad feelings you can totally return it, but . . . I don't know, I thought you could get a fresh start with this one . . .”

I held the sweater up to the light, shaking my head in disbelief. It was the exact same one. “Halle, you are . . . kind of magnificent,” I said.

“I just . . . I wanted to make it up to you. I'm really glad you were there for Mario . . . and I like that color on you.”

I looked at the sweater and then at them, at the light coming in from the windows, the waves crashing on the shore beyond, and I remembered that day I had stood outside Starbucks watching a scene that seemed to have been art directed by someone who only loved beautiful people and beautiful things and beautiful landscapes. I knew I wasn't like Halle and Alexa and Veronica. I couldn't live that way, inside a photo shoot at all times. But I had to admit, to be inside of one for a day, for my birthday, no less, was kind of wonderful.

“You guys, this is the most amazing birthday, seriously.”

“This is just the beginning, girl. You go shower, and we'll clean up. There are bikes in the garage—I have a whole day planned for us!” Halle exclaimed.

I checked my phone in my room while Alexa and Veronica and Halle cleaned. Birthday e-mails from Jimmy, Hunter, Ariel,
and Janicza. One from Nick. A voice mail from my dad. I listened to the voice mail first.

“Happy birthday, my lovely Tara! I hope you're having a beautiful morning on the Cape. Hope all your wishes come true this year. Love you!” I heard him pause for a moment before he went on, “I have no new news, but I'm hoping I will soon. Try not to worry about her, okay?”

I saved the message, feeling a wave of anxiety that I chose to brush away before I scrolled quickly to Nick's e-mail.

On Sunday, March 19, 2016, at 9:05 AM, Nick Osterman wrote:

Hey, Tara,

Hope you're having a fantastic time on the Cape with the others. I just wanted to drop you a line and wish you a great day and a great year. Let's do a birthday lunch when you get back.

Nick

It was oddly disappointing, but then, I hadn't really spoken to him in more than three months. And today, I didn't want to think of Nick. It was almost shocking to me how little I cared about him today.

There was nothing from my mother. This shouldn't have surprised me, given the circumstances, but it felt eerie, not hearing from her on my birthday. I
was
worried, but I hoped my father would have told me if he knew something was wrong.

We spent the day biking around the coastline, stopping to get manis, pedis, and massages at a tiny storefront in the center of town, and then lunch at a French bakery in Hyannis, where we shared salads and pastries. Even the weather was a gift.

“It's like summer today.”

“Global warming?” Halle asked.

“Maybe it has something to do with Terra Nova,” Alexa said.

“You think everything has to do with Terra Nova.” Veronica laughed.

After lunch, we biked down to the beach and stripped down to our bathing suits.

“You guys go ahead, I'm staying in the sand,” Halle told us. Alexa and Veronica ventured to the water for a swim, but I stayed with her.

She had bought a gallon of lemonade from the bakery, throwing it into the basket of her bike, along with paperbacks for us to read, sunblock, mini-bar-sized bottles of tequila and rum, and Turkish towels.

“They're lightweight. They fold into my backpack,” she said, spreading a few into the sand before she mixed tequila and lemonade together in paper cups. I watched her, in awe.

“I give up,” I told her, sipping on a lemonade tequila cocktail. I was feeling particularly honest. “I don't know how you do it. You think of everything, and you do everything. You might just be perfect. I used to hate you for that, but now . . . I don't know. You're like Martha Stewart meets Angelina Jolie.”

She frowned. “Both highly polarizing people.” But it was
something else that upset her. “You used to hate me?” She looked genuinely hurt.

“Not hate exactly . . . but just . . . I envy you, Halle. But mostly because . . . you make it look so damn easy, all of it. All of this,” I said, waving my hand in the air.

“It's not easy.”

“It isn't?”

She turned and looked at me. “No.” She shook her head. She sighed for a moment and took off her sunglasses, squinting into the sun. She was wearing a black bikini and a straw hat with a large brim. I noticed that the sunglasses had left indentations on the sides of her nose. She took a moment, wiping off the sand that stuck to her ankles, her knees, tiny diamonds of dust on her runner's thighs, lithe and slightly tan.

“I do everything because . . . my mother . . . she's never really around. That's the way it's always been, my whole life. It's like we're supposedly a family, but I don't even know what that means. I know it's stupid, I mean, I'm sixteen now . . . I should know better, but I can't help myself . . . I keep hoping that if I do everything right, get good grades and win track trophies, dress well and always say the right thing, the smart thing . . . that she'll finally see me.”

Halle rarely spoke about her parents, and I wasn't sure what to say, so I sat quietly and listened.

“The thing is, she's never around to actually see me do any of these things. Never around to be like, ‘Oh hey, good job on that test' and ‘This bouquet is really pretty' and ‘I like the
French toast that the housekeeper taught you to make.'” She wrinkled her nose. “But mostly, she's never around to actually be like, ‘Hey, Halle . . . I like . . . actually being around you.'”

“I'm sure she likes being around you.”

Halle shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually likes being around me.”

I think we were both stunned to hear those words said. All this time, I had seen her as impenetrable, a mystery, incapable of sadness, of anything less than perfection, and yet, she wasn't.

“I think . . . they think I'm a terrible burden. I don't know if they actually even wanted kids. I wonder about that all the time. It's fucked up, I know, but you can't really get outside yourself, you know?”

Never in a million years would I have predicted this moment. Halle was insecure, just like the rest of us. She was uncertain of herself. She felt unloved. She just hid it so much better than anyone could have ever known.

“I want to be around you,” I insisted, because it broke my heart, what she had said. “I totally want to be around you,” I said, giving her a hug, and when she cried, I wiped her tears with my hand, leaving a trail of sand on her cheeks.

“I believe you, you freak,” she said.

“My mom . . . she's not even . . . here,” I told her, surprising myself as the words came out of my mouth. And then I found myself telling her everything, about my mother leaving home, about how close we were, about the Church of the New Earth, about how much I missed her, how hard it had been. How I was scared that she might not come back.

“She'll come back, Tara,” Halle said fiercely.

“How do you know?” I asked her. I looked out at the shoreline. Alexa and Veronica were tiny dots bobbing on the surface of the ocean. “I haven't even heard from her today.”

“She'll come back because she loves you. I promise you, she'll come back,” she said, squeezing my hand.

It was the first time I really knew she was my friend.