Page 35 of On Fire Island

I sat down beside her and rubbed my hand up and down her back. She flinched when I did, but I was pretty sure it was just a coincidence.

She sat at the shoreline, the salt from both the ocean and her tears stinging her wounds. The fog was so thick, and her tears so heavy that if someone approached, she wouldn’t see them until they were on top of her. I hoped, for her sake, that no one would spring up.

“I miss you too much,” Nora cried. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. I wish it was me. Not you. You’re so good.” She sobbed uncontrollably.

I uselessly argued against her points, but I knew I would have felt the same if the tables were turned.

“I can’t stand not being able to talk to you,” she continued. “You should have seen Mom trying to keep her hair still when we sat up top on the ferry. It’s no fun, witnessing her crazy anymore, without you to tell.” She smiled in the middle of her tears, disproving her point. She was too upset to recognize it.

“You can talk to me,” I cried. “You just did!” I knew shecouldn’t hear me, but for the first time, I wondered if someone else could, when the tide pulled out and something red caught my eye. The Rabbi had told me there are many signs during the first month after death, and to tell my loved ones to look out for them. I hadn’t, because it was just too hard to have those conversations.

Nora saw it too and wiped her eyes clear to focus. She concentrated intently as she stood at the water’s edge and waited for the tide to descend again. When it did, her eyes darted along the shoreline until she landed on the bright red treasure. She scooped it up with the sand around it and spread her fingers like a sieve, releasing all but a piece of red sea glass, starkly reminiscent of the piece I had gifted her in Saint Bart’s.

“You can hear me!” she cried, her painful tears now mixing with joyous ones.

“Thank you, thank you, Julia, thank you!” she cried out in relief.

“Be brave,” I replied, adding, “I’m so sorry, Nora. So sorry for the bumpy ride.”

The fog lifted from both the sky and our spirits as we walked back to the house. Nora clutched the piece of red sea glass in her closed fist just as she had when we were kids. The whole exercise, as corny and dramatic as it was, felt transcendent. I knew she would get through this, and hoped she would talk to me with complete abandon forever.

And then there was my dad.

Everyone seemed to have their own agenda for the visit, and it was no surprise that my dad’s centered around Ben. I walked in to them sitting on the lanai, deep in conversation.

“The thing is, son, you are all we have of her.”

I wondered if he had said that for Ben or for himself. Ben was always one to fall for Jewish guilt, and my dad was always one toknow what was best for his children, Ben included. It was actually the perfect thing to tie them together—pieces of me.

“I expect you for Sunday brunches in the city as often as possible, please.”

“Of course,” Ben said, before hugging him, awkwardly at first because they typically went for the handshake or fist bump, and even more awkwardly after, because neither could bear to let go.

I was relieved that my dad was insisting they stay close. At least I would know Ben would eat well on Sundays.

My mom made a brief mention of the ferry schedule, and Ben jumped at the chance to steer them to an early departure. He announced the before- and after-dinner ferry times and threw in a half-assed invitation to stay for the later boat.

“We have enough food—that’s for sure,” he offered.

“If I never see a pastrami sandwich again, it will be too soon,” my dad proclaimed, not wanting to overstay his welcome, I imagined. Besides, it seemed like everyone had gotten what they needed from the visit—myself included.

Something inside me held me back from accompanying them to the boat for the big goodbye. I worried it would mess with the closure I was already feeling. When I watched them walk down the block, away from me, I felt a calmness that I hadn’t since I’d passed. I went back to the beach and sat on the stairs, searching for dolphins.

twenty-two

Bang the Drum Slowly

Matty stood in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher at a volume and with a vengeance usually reserved for passive-aggressively punishing a housework-averse spouse. He dumped the silverware into the drawer in one fell swoop, causing a cacophony of clanking. Renee raced down the stairs, alarmed by the commotion. A look of satisfaction crossed his face. He was obviously aware that the drummer was back and angry at his mother for it. I understood, but personally, I was loving the whole May–December romance. It was my favorite plot twist of the summer, and I had many different endings in mind.

Just as it wasn’t an accident that Renee chose Tuck, it wasn’t an accident that Renee became a divorce attorney. Both choices directly resulted from her childhood. Renee’s mother, like Renee, was prom queen, but unlike Renee, was not crowned most likely to succeed. In fact, when Renee won both titles her senior year of high school, her mother went on and on, bragging about the first, with little mention of the second. For Renee it summed up everything that was wrong with her mother. She vowed not to end up like her.

Renee’s mother’s definition of success was to marry well, and that had been her own number one goal in college. After a grand total of six dates with Renee’s dad, she became pregnant. She swore it wasn’t her intention, but she also swore that she was a natural redhead—so there was that. She dropped out of school, married, and had Renee.

By the time Renee was old enough to know what was going on, it became quite clear that her dad was not faithful to her mom. While it was obvious to Renee, her mom seemed oblivious. Her life revolved around her weekly activities: mah-jongg on Mondays, tennis on Tuesdays, a manicure on Wednesdays, volunteering at the Scarsdale Historical Society on Thursdays, and her weekly hair appointment on Fridays. Renee had never seen her mother with wet hair, aside from when she had accompanied her to the beauty salon—where it was washed, coiffed to perfection, and shellacked to last the week. When they visited their summer home on Fire Island, her Pucci kerchief remained in place for the entire ferry ride and most of the weekend. Much like my own mother.

Sometime during Renee’s junior year of high school, she and her mom set out on a college tour. As usual, Renee was beyond prepared. She had mapped out every liberal arts school on the eastern seaboard that matched her criteria, set up interviews at all of her top choices, and created a folder filled with directions, schedules, and which questions to ask at which schools in order to stand out. Just before they got to the parkway, she realized she had left the whole thing at home. Her mom didn’t want to go back, but Renee had insisted. When she ran upstairs to grab the prized folder, she passed by her parents’ open bedroom door and froze. Inside, her father was screwing her mother’s best friend, their neighbor, Judy Skylar, doggy style. She only knew it was doggy style from the black-and-white illustrations in the copy ofThe Joyof Sexthat she and Judy Skylar’s daughter, Jilly, used to sneak down from the top row of their bookshelf when no one was home. It wasn’t easy to retrieve and even harder to put back in the exact same spot. Renee had to stand on top of the banister and scale the shelves to reach it while Jilly Skylar held her right leg steady so she wouldn’t fall. They had both decided that the doggy position—number ninety-five in the book—didn’t look very attractive. There was no eye contact, and the woman in the illustration’s breasts hung down like two eggplants. It had looked that way in real life too.

For a brief moment, everyone involved in the unfortunate encounter froze and stared silently. Determined to continue with her plan, Renee squeezed her eyes shut, trying to erase what she had seen, and ran to her room for the folder. She visited four colleges, asked all the right questions, and didn’t mention a thing about what she had witnessed until she and her mom were on the way back home.

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