The Smart One (12 page)

Had they ever slept during those summers? They must have at some point, but Claire didn’t remember it. She remembered sandy beds and Cathy telling them stories about girls that were kidnapped. “I knew a girl,” she said, “that was taken right out of her room, pulled right through the window.”

“You did not,” Claire said. But she wasn’t sure. Cathy always sounded sure.

Usually, as they were drifting off to sleep, Drew or Max would fart loudly and all the girls would scream, and there’d be a big to-do over airing out the room and running into the hall. Weezy and Maureen tried their best to get them back to their beds, yelling threats and
using their full names, “Claire Margaret, Martha Maureen, Catherine Mary.” It rarely worked.

During the days, they’d run as a pack, going to the beach and then to the boardwalk to play skeet ball and walk around. The girls would get wrapped braids in their hair, feeling very special and exotic when school started and they still had a tiny seashell attached to their hair.

They always went to the same little candy store. It was made to look like one of those old-fashioned places, with bins of colored candy balls, swizzle sticks, and fudge. They always chose Atomic FireBalls and Super Lemons—candy that was more pain than pleasure, that tested the will of all the sunburned kids that ate it. They’d stand in a circle outside the store, count to three, and pop the little sugar balls into their mouths. They’d groan and scream, wriggle back and forth and bend over laughing in a mix of agony and total pleasure, drooling colored sugar and waiting to see who could keep the candy in their mouth the longest. Martha always won. Usually the others would have to spit the candy out in their hands, take a break, and try again.

It was funny—her cousins hadn’t come to the shore in years, but whenever she thought about it, she imagined them there. The house had been redone and the sets of bunk beds in the big room replaced with a huge king bed. But still, when Claire pictured the house, she saw all of them bunked down in the big room, scaring the bejeezus out of each other and laughing until they thought they were going to die.

THEY ARRIVED AT THE HOUSE
a little after five o’clock, and when they opened the front door, they heard music playing and saw smoke coming from the back patio. They heard laughing, and even though they all knew it was Max because his car was right out front, and because he’d told them he’d arrived the night before, Weezy stepped in nervously and called, “Hello? Max?” as if an intruder had broken into the house and started grilling out back.

Max appeared at the screen door with a big smile on his face. “Hello, family,” he said. He raised a spatula in the air. “Cleo and I decided to cook you a welcome meal!”

He was pretty drunk, Claire could tell, and she wondered what time
he’d started drinking. Weezy just clapped her hands together. “Oh, Max,” she said. “How sweet is that?”

It would, no doubt, be something she talked about for months, the way Max cooked for them out of the blue; went to the grocery store all by himself, with no one asking (as if he were an incompetent), and then made dinner, like he was performing a miracle of some sort. Once, when Max was in high school, he’d folded towels that were in the dryer and Weezy had gone on about it for weeks, until Martha said, “Claire and I fold laundry all the time,” to try to shut her up. It was one of the few times that they’d been on the same side, Claire and Martha, but they were just so sick of listening to Weezy talk about Max and his amazing laundry abilities.

Max turned to Claire and gave her a hug that lifted her off the ground. “Clairey!” he said. “Clairey’s here.” He set her down gently and Claire laughed. This was, of course, why he was Weezy’s favorite, after all. He was adorable and charming, even when a little bit tipsy—maybe especially when he was a little bit tipsy. He turned to Martha and bowed. “Welcome, miss,” he said.

Cleo walked in from the patio then, carrying an empty platter and wearing nothing but a bikini. “Oh, you’re here already,” she said. “We thought we’d be done cooking by the time you got here.”

“Well, this is such a treat,” Weezy said. “Personal chefs on our first night here.” Cleo smiled and looked down at the ground. Then Weezy hugged Cleo, which must have been awkward since the girl was practically naked. Claire noticed that her father stayed on the far side of the kitchen and just waved. She didn’t blame him.

“We made chicken and salad,” Cleo said. “We thought you’d be hungry when you got here.”

“That we are,” Will said. He looked around the kitchen, still averting his eyes from Cleo. “You didn’t happen to pick up any brewskies, did you, son?”

Claire closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. Her father had never used the word
brewskies
in his whole life. He’d never called Max “son” either. She was embarrassed for him, but figured it wasn’t fair to judge. After all, when you had a twenty-one-year-old
near supermodel standing in all of her naked glory in the kitchen of your summerhouse, you were bound to be a little rattled.

She would change eventually, Claire figured, but it never happened. Cleo ate dinner in her bikini, she cleared the table in her bikini, and then she sat and had a glass of wine with the whole family in her bikini.

When Maureen arrived later that night, she walked in, looked right at Cleo, and let out an “Oh!” Then she tried to recover and said, “I guess you’re ready for the beach.” Cleo just smiled.

And that was just the first night. It seemed that Cleo intended to wear nothing but her bikini for the entire vacation. In the mornings, she was in the kitchen, sipping coffee, bikini-clad.

“I mean, she’s great, but don’t you think it’s a little weird that she never puts anything else on?” Claire asked Martha. Martha just shrugged, which bugged Claire. Normally, this was the kind of thing that Martha would jump right in on, getting upset and whispering behind Cleo’s back. But she barely seemed to notice.

“I can’t believe we have to share a room,” Claire went on. This surely would make Martha angry. “Just because Mom doesn’t want Max and Cleo in the same room, we have to share. They each get their own space.” Martha just shrugged again, and Claire grabbed a towel and left the room.

ON SUNDAY NIGHT, THE WHOLE FAMILY
sat outside making s’mores after dinner and Claire drank glass after glass of white wine. Weezy kept talking about what activities everyone wanted to do, like they were at some sort of summer camp; Will read the paper and called Max “son”; Maureen kept getting up to sneak around the house and have a cigarette, like they all couldn’t smell the smoke on her when she got back; Martha was lost in her own thoughts and stared at the stars; and Max and Cleo used any excuse to touch each other, which would have been inappropriate for a family vacation anyway, but since Cleo was half-naked, it was downright pornographic.

“Aren’t you cold?” Claire asked.

Cleo laughed. “No, I never get cold at the beach. It’s like the sun
warms me all day and stays with me into the night. I could live at the beach.”

Claire snorted into her glass. Then she let herself admit that if she looked like Cleo did in a bikini, she would consider wearing one as much as possible too.

The night ended with everyone playing Scrabble, which Claire thought would make her feel better since she would surely win. She ignored it when Weezy said to Cleo, “Watch out for Martha! She’s a killer at this game.” Claire wanted to point out that Martha almost never won Scrabble. It was Claire’s game.

It turned out that in addition to having a body that was meant to live in a bikini, Cleo also had an incredible vocabulary. After she got a triple word score by turning
dish
into
dishabille
, Claire made a comment about memorizing the dictionary and Cleo actually blushed.

“My first nanny was French, and she always had trouble with English. She was always asking me, ‘What’s the word for this?’ and I wanted to make sure that I could tell her, so I kept a dictionary with me. Then it just became a habit. I read dictionaries all the time. And thesauruses. I just love words, I guess,” Cleo said. She shrugged and smiled a little bit and Claire made herself smile back. Of course Cleo read the dictionary for fun. If life was going to be unfair, it was going to go all the way.

The end of the Scrabble game was a bit blurry to Claire, but she did remember dropping her glass of wine on the floor, the glass smashing and spraying everywhere. She tried to clean it up, until Maureen came in to help and sent her out of the kitchen because she was barefoot.

CLAIRE WOKE UP ON MONDAY,
groaned, and rolled over to bury her face in her pillow. She could feel a burn on the edge of her scalp where her sunscreen had, of course, worn off the day before. She could hear everyone downstairs in the kitchen, dishes clinking, her dad telling some story about peaches, or something that sounded like that. Claire pulled the covers over her head. If she waited long enough, maybe they would all go to the beach without her.

At first, Claire thought she’d tell Weezy about her situation. Then
she changed her mind and thought she’d tell Will, because he’d be calmer and would keep Weezy calm too. But then she thought no, that wouldn’t work. Will would just sit there and listen, not sure how he was supposed to respond. Will was never the one they would go to when they asked permission for anything. And if it ever happened that they did come across him first, and asked to go to a friend’s house or anything of the sort, Will always looked surprised to see them, like he couldn’t quite place who they were, and then he’d say, “Ask your mom.”

So it would have to be Weezy that she told. It would be fine. She’d just wait until the end of vacation, go up to her mom, and say, “I’m out of money. I’m moving home.” Simple. She was going back to New York on Sunday, which meant that she had seven more days to do it.

Claire took a shower and then threw her wet towel on Martha’s bed. If Martha came up and saw it, she would lose it. She was such a neat freak. Growing up, whenever they got new sneakers, Martha made a point to keep hers as white as possible for as long as she could. She’d step over puddles, avoid any dirt, and stare at her unblemished shoes with pride. Claire’s Keds were usually dirty by the end of the week, and it used to drive Claire crazy, to watch Martha step around messes, so pleased with herself and her white shoes.

“That’s probably the only reason why you wanted to be a nurse,” Claire told her one time. “Because you knew you’d get to wear really white shoes.”

Once, when they were playing kickball outside with the neighborhood kids, Martha refused to take her turn for fear that her shoes would get filthy. Claire walked right up to her and stepped all over Martha’s feet with her own dirty sneakers. Martha looked down at her shoes and let out a howl, then pushed Claire on the ground.

“Why did you do that?” her mother asked Claire. “Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?”

Claire had no reason to give and was sent to bed right after dinner that night—no TV, no Jell-O Pudding Pop. She couldn’t explain to her mom why she wanted to get Martha’s shoes dirty. She wasn’t even sure she knew herself. All she knew was that she couldn’t watch Martha
protect their whiteness anymore, couldn’t stand to hear the other kids laugh at her while she stood to the side and refused to participate. And so she’d put a stop to it.

MARTHA WAS STILL BEING UNUSUALLY
quiet. On Tuesday, she and Claire sat on lounge chairs at the beach, and Martha wrote in her journal, sighing and turning her face to the sun with her eyes closed. Cleo and Max were frolicking in the ocean—that was the only word for it,
frolicking
—splashing each other and embracing as the waves crashed over them.

“What’s going on with you?” Claire asked. It really wasn’t normal for Martha not to be talking all the time.

“If you must know,” she said, “I’m considering a career change.”

“Going to the Gap?” Claire asked. Martha shut her journal loudly and started gathering her things. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” She put her hand on Martha’s arm. “I’m sorry, come on, I was just kidding. Tell me.”

Martha sniffed, acting like she wasn’t going to say any more, but Claire could tell she wanted to talk about it. Finally she said, “I’m thinking about going back to nursing.”

“Really?” Claire asked. “Wow.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Martha asked.

“Nothing, just—wow. I haven’t heard you talk about nursing in a long time.”

“Well, I’ve just been thinking about it lately. I think it’s time. But not in a hospital. Maybe at a doctor’s office or something.”

“I think that’s great,” Claire said. “Really, I do. You always wanted to be a nurse and you were good at it.”

Martha looked over at Claire. “Thank you,” she said, and then she started writing again.

Claire considered telling Martha everything. Confessing about the apartment and the credit cards and all of it. But she knew that if she did, Martha would let her mouth fall wide open, stare at her, and then go tell Weezy. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself. Martha told Weezy everything, which was weird. It should have been the other way
around, her loyalty to Claire, but it never had been and it wasn’t going to start now. So Claire kept her mouth shut.

She wished that she could tell Doug about everything. It didn’t make sense, of course, because if she and Doug were still together and he was there to talk to, she wouldn’t be in this situation. It had helped a little to tell Lainie, but it wasn’t the same. She missed having one person to give her undivided attention and advice, to be almost as responsible for her actions as she was.

Probably it was just loneliness that made her wish for Doug. That was normal, right? It was a shitty situation and she just wanted help, that’s all. She sighed and rolled over on her stomach so she wouldn’t have to watch Max and Cleo anymore. It was dumb, but it made her feel worse to watch them being happy. And she found she couldn’t stop watching them, even though it made her feel horrible. It was like when you had a cut on your lip that you kept biting at—it hurt, but you couldn’t leave it alone.