On the Rocks (12 page)

“Oh, what a small world. It’s nice to meet you, Abby,” she said with a smile.

“You too, Lara. You haven’t changed at all since high school.”

“High school,” she sighed as she stared vacantly out the window overlooking the street. “How much would you give to have your biggest problem be that you didn’t finish your math homework?” she said, her smile helping to break the ice.

“Or lost a field hockey game?” I suggested.

“Or ripped your friend’s favorite sweater?”

“Who told you?” I joked.

Her eyes suddenly grew cloudy as she continued. “Unfortunately, things these days are a lot more complicated than they used to be.”

“I hear you, believe me.” We stood in awkward silence for a moment as Lara’s mind drifted off somewhere else, before she shut her eyes tightly and returned to reality. I immediately liked Lara. Why was it so easy to find women you clicked with in an instant and thirty-one years on this earth wasn’t enough time to find a guy who didn’t have a severe mental problem?

“So this is your store?” I asked, hoping to return the focus of the conversation back to the fact that I needed a job and she needed help.

“It is. I knew the previous owner, and when I heard she was selling it, I jumped at the opportunity. My husband, Mark, and I were living in Atlanta, but then he had a great job opportunity in Boston, and I really wanted to move back north. My parents live in the area, so it sort of worked out perfectly.”

“Congratulations, the place looks great. A perfect spot for all your beachy needs,” I chirped, trying a little too hard to convince her I was the girl for the job.

I found myself intrigued by her decision to move home. It seemed odd (to me at least) to give up the yearlong warmth and sunshine of Georgia to be buried under snow and wearing roll-neck sweaters until April in Rhode Island. I looked at her again and was struck by how little she had changed from how I remembered her. She had the same blue eyes, the same perfect nose, the same friendly look, and even now, a twenty-six-inch waist. Just in case I needed another reason to envy her.

“Yeah, I like to think so. It’s not much, but I love it.” She looked at a display piece that was overflowing with starfish coasters, nautically themed linen napkins, and huge chip-and-dip trays decorated with multicolored flip-flops. The store had everything you’d need to entertain, every knickknack you could ever want in a beach house.

“So what brings you to Newport? Just escaping the city for the summer?” she asked.

“Yeah. I thought it’d be a nice change of scene. I’m getting over a breakup and thought getting out of town would be a good idea.”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth I wanted to take them back. I’d gone to Newport so that people wouldn’t know what had happened to me. Not so I could tell people within five minutes of meeting them. I didn’t want to be one of those girls who couldn’t shut up about her relationship problems. The problem was that I’d been one of those girls who couldn’t shut up about her relationship problems for the last six months. I needed to add that to the list of habits that needed breaking as soon as was humanly possible.

“Ah, a breakup escape hatch,” she said as she once again stared blankly out the window and fidgeted with the wedding band on her left ring finger.

“Kind of. Anyway, I don’t want to harp on it. I’m happy I’m here, and if I can help you out with the store, I’d like to.”

She stared at her hand and started to slowly twist her wedding ring around in clockwise circles. “Well,” she said with a slight smile, “I think that sounds like a good plan. Anyway, this is great! How funny that our paths would cross again like this.”

“I think it’s a sign,” I said somewhat awkwardly. “We Milton girls need to stick together.”

“You’re not going to start singing the fight song on me, are you?”

“No,” I admitted. “Probably only because I don’t remember it.”

“You’re lucky. All those years of cheerleading has it burned into my brain. So I really need help organizing the store. It’s small, but we carry a ton of stuff, so I’m going for a shabby-chic, overcluttered type of look. How are your organizational skills?”

“Well, I teach kindergarten for a living, and since the kids in my class don’t seem to care too much about being orderly, I’ve sort of mastered it,” I laughed.

That was only partially true. I was a highly organized person, but it had as much to do with my profession as it had to do with my breakup. After everything happened, I had tried to restore some kind of order to my life by becoming obsessively neat. I color-coded my closets, folded all the clothes in my drawers, even my socks, and actually went so far as to alphabetize my spice rack. None of it really helped to ease the pain of losing Ben, but it was kind of comforting to know that I could locate the cinnamon right next to the cloves should some sort of spontaneous bake-off erupt in my apartment.

“Great! I need help unloading the inventory and marking all the prices, plus I’ll need some help working the register and with the occasional gift wrap. Things like that. Obviously the store is small, so I only need someone part-time. Ideally I need someone to work Wednesdays, when our new inventory arrives, and Saturdays to help with the weekenders. Does that work for you?”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Good! The pay isn’t great, but it’s more than you’d make babysitting.” She told me the hourly rate, which wasn’t much above minimum, but I didn’t care. I just wanted the job. “So if you’re still interested, I have a shipment coming next Wednesday that I’ll need help unpacking. Do you think you could start then?”

“No problem, I’ll be here at nine o’clock, is that okay?”

“That would be perfect.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you next week.” She waved good-bye as I slowly pushed open the screen door and let it close quietly behind me.

I put my hands in my pockets and turned to walk back to the house, feeling pretty good about myself for taking a step, even a small one, into my new life without Ben. It felt strange, having a part-time job be such a big step for me at this stage of my life. I thought about why the relationship road was so easy for some people and, for reasons unknown, so exponentially harder for others. Now that I was in my thirties, I worried that I was going to be one of those people who never really knew true love. I was pretty sure the dictionary would not call my relationship with Ben true love, or it wouldn’t have ended the way it did. I actually don’t think the English language could possibly define whatever the hell that was.

Leave it to me to stump
Webster’s.

I was deep in my “time to face the music ’cause the fat lady is singing” thought when my phone beeped, displaying a text message from Wolf.

Hey little Abs, me and some European friends are heading out to watch the German team play in the Euro Cup football games. European football, not American football. I don’t understand that game. Come meet us at the Red Parrott. We’ll be there in fifteen. P.S. It’s an important game. I repeat, the Germans are playing. Auf Wiedersehen.

I checked the time: 2:00. I debated ignoring Wolf’s invitation, if for no other reason than to avoid Bobby, who no doubt would be there, hitting on European women who probably didn’t speak English all that well. I knew that these were the types of things I should be going to if I wanted to meet people on this side of cyberspace: friends of friends, smaller groups, specific sporting events. The problem was, I really wanted to go home to my book, a hot shower, and maybe, if I was being honest with myself, a dish of ice cream. This was the typical tug-of-war that I had been fighting with myself since Ben and I broke up. I wasn’t twenty-two anymore. Most nights I didn’t want to be out in the bars mingling and flirting in the hopes of finding a guy. I wanted to be home in comfy pajamas drinking wine on the couch. The real big problem with this was that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to meet anyone sitting on my couch with a glass of wine, unless of course someone broke into the house and decided to stop and have a glass of Cabernet. Although stranger things have probably happened. This was Rhode Island after all—the criminals were probably more refined.

I thought about what to do as I walked home when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and sighed. I loved my mother, I really did, but she didn’t make it easy. No matter how good her intentions were, she always managed to make things harder than they needed to be. If the road to hell is really paved with good intentions, my mother will be going on the express bus.
You should answer it,
I said to myself.
You can’t hide forever. Answer the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, all of my energy sucked out of my body before she even said a word. That was a skill. The woman could make plants wilt just by entering a room.

“Hi, Abby. How’s the beach? You’re staying out of the sun, aren’t you? You’re not a young girl anymore,
and
you’re single. You need to wear sunscreen—you have
mature
skin now—really
slather
it on. You can’t be too careful, your days of not having to worry about wrinkles are over, I’m sorry to say.”

My mother the wordsmith.

My mother had been straddling the line between crazy and clueless her whole life and had no idea how to deliver advice without making you feel like you were smacked with a blunt object. She believed that it was her job to tell you the truth even when you didn’t ask for it. It made for difficult teenage years, to say the least.

“Thanks for the tip. Is there a reason you called? Other than to remind me that I’m single and alone?” I should
not
have picked up this phone call.

“We need to talk about the limos for your sister’s wedding.”

“Why exactly?” I asked. I could think of no reason we needed to discuss that.

“We’re going to use the same cars that you were going to use because they’re lovely and people should be able to see me getting out of a limo at one of my daughters’ weddings, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know how many times I have to remind you, Mom, that my broken engagement was not my fault and this is not about you!”

“Tell that to all the ladies in my bridge club. Do you know how hard it’s been for me to show my face there?”

“Why, did you overdo your lip injections again?”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that.”

“Don’t talk to your daughter like that.”

“Can you at least pretend to be happy to hear from me?” she asked, pretending her feelings were hurt, which was impossible since I was pretty sure she didn’t have any.

“Sorry. Seriously, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Do you think I’d look better in a black or a white car?”

I felt like telling her she’d look best lying under one with only her legs sticking out, like the Wicked Witch of the East when the house fell on her, but that probably wasn’t a nice thing to say to your mother. Even if she was a witch.

“You called to ask me that?”
Why
,
why
,
why did I answer this call?

“There will be photographers, dear. People will be looking at these pictures for years to come, and you of all people should know that details matter.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh nothing.” Silence. And then she clearly couldn’t help herself. “Only, if you had paid more attention to the details in your own life, like the ones that should have alerted you to your fiancé skipping town without you, maybe you could’ve prevented
that
mess from happening.”

“Are you sure I wasn’t switched at birth?”

“I’m not answering that. By the way, have you slimmed down at all?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“I’ll take that as a no. Have you thought about doing one of those juice cleanses before the wedding? Julie Brink’s daughter did one and lost about four pounds in just one week. I know that losing the weight has been frustrating for you. Maybe that will be a good jump-start to get you moving in the right direction.”

“You want me to pay money to not chew so that I can look presentable in that disgusting pink dress? Are you kidding?”

“Just because the dress is ugly doesn’t mean you have to be. It’s not an excuse to not look your best. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Get the black car, Mom.” The color of evil.

I hung up and fought back the urge to stand in the middle of the street and scream in frustration. I had been trying for thirty-one years not to let my mother get to me, but had yet to figure out how to make that possible. I stared at my phone for a minute before sending an emergency text to the only other person on earth who really understood how screwed-up my mother was and, like me, was stuck with her until death did them part. Her older—and somehow normal—sister, my aunt Patrice.

Mayday. She’s going to drive me crazy Aunt Patrice, she really is.

Sadly she can have that effect on people. Shall I come down to Newport next week? Let’s have lunch.

You wouldn’t mind? How’s next Tuesday?

Great. I’ll make a reservation at Castle Hill. Cheer up, whatever she said, she didn’t mean it.

Feeling somewhat better that my fairy god-aunt was coming to my rescue, as she always did when my mother pushed me to the brink of hysteria, I decided that I’d join the guys at the bar. I needed a drink, which was completely normal following a conversation with my mother.

I headed over to meet the boys and pretend that I was interested in, or even knew anything, about European football when my phone beeped again. I figured it was Wolf telling me that I was missing the greatest feat of German athleticism ever seen. But no. It was Ben.

Thinking of you

I knew I shouldn’t reply. I mentally went over the pros and cons of responding. The con list was seventeen pages long. The pro list was blank. Oh well. I replied:

Thinking of you too.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t just let him go. The problem was that every time he wrote me I kept hoping that he would have changed his mind, admit that he had made a mistake, and come back. It had been months, and I knew deep down the window for that happening had already closed, but girls behave irrationally when they want something they can’t have. Anyone can tell you that.