48
Travis picks me up at the train. “Did you know Wyatt’s coming out for the weekend?” I ask, like I’m just making conversation.
Travis smiles at the steering wheel. “I did not know that.”
“He gets in tomorrow morning.”
“Ah,” he says.
“What?” There’s really no one in the world who can use silence to convey as much ironic disapproval as a sibling. All that unspoken history fills the space.
“Nothing. Just interesting that he’s turning up here. And you’ve somehow managed to leave Jack behind.”
“Oh come on. Jack didn’t want to come. He hates it out here.” I’ve exaggerated, of course, but somehow I feel like I need to defend myself. It’s not like I planned a weekend with Wyatt.
“He does?” Travis has dropped his edge. “What’s there to hate?”
“ ‘Hate’ is the wrong word. He just prefers Mom and Dad in the city, where they’re a little more standard. Out here, the wacky house and all the stuff is a little much for him.”
“That’s who they are, Sam. That’s like the best, happiest part of them. Jack’s going to have to embrace it. And as much as you act like a tight-ass, it’s a big part of who you are too.”
We’re on West Main Street now. Flags left over from Fourth of July are getting a second chance for Labor Day. A couple stumbles out of the Old Sloop Inn. We turn onto Saltaire Lane and pass Wyatt’s house; no lights are on. Everything feels different than it did a few weeks ago, like without Jack as a buffer it’s an actual step back in time.
We let ourselves in through the front door, and I allow myself to feel, maybe all the way down to a cellular level, how good it feels to be home. Everyone’s asleep, and I smell garlic roasted potatoes that were likely burned a few hours ago. On the table by the front door is the usual assortment of mason jars, now with one full of rubber bands in different colors. I smile to myself, wondering if they’re for a tie-dye experiment or for securing braids. With this crew, it could really be anything.
My mom’s moved the dining room table back into the dining room, but it’s still covered with driftwood and large pieces of peeled-off bark. There’s a basket with a collection of sticks perched on a wingback chair. Travis finds me standing there, staring.
“You new around here?” he asks.
I laugh. “It looked like so much crazy garbage last time I was here. Now it just looks so happy.”
Travis finds an open bottle of red wine on the counter next to a bowl of nuts and we take it all out onto the porch.
“Hugh can’t stand it either, if that makes you feel better,” he says.
“The house?”
“The stuff. He wants to kidnap them and take every last random piece of garbage and throw it out. He thinks that if Dad lived in a minimalist house, he’d be painting again. He daydreams about it.”
“Clean lines?” I ask.
“Oh my God, it’s all he talks about.” We laugh.
“I like how they know what makes them happy,” I say.
We’re quiet for a bit, listening to the waves break. I’ve never been able to decide if the waves sound different at night or if there’s just less noise to compete with them.
Travis says, “I feel like I should apologize for not telling you about Wyatt, but I’m not really sorry. It was hard for me, the thing with Mom and Dad and then seeing you totally fall apart. It was such a nightmare, and I was away at school, totally useless to you. By the time that song came out and Wyatt’s life had changed course, you were finally okay.”
“So you thought I’d fall apart again if I knew.”
“I was afraid. And I waited two extra years to come out, waiting for you to feel normal again. That was a really hard time for me, and I figured telling you would start all the drama again. Maybe selfish in retrospect.”
“I’m sorry.” I never really thought much about how my falling apart affected Travis. I always pictured him having a big time in college, having escaped at the exact right moment. But I do remember all the calls to Mom to check in, the texts to me about absolutely nothing. He was taking our family’s temperature and biding his time.
“But it’s okay seeing him now, right? Like, it’s good that you know all that before you marry Jack and move on with your mostly functional life.”
“Mostly functional.” I raise my glass to that. “Do you think Missy McGee knows she’s singing about Wyatt’s old girlfriend all the time?”
“I’m guessing no.”
I come downstairs in the morning feeling like it’s Christmas. I don’t know what it is, the fact that I have a free day at the beach, or the fact that I’m going to see Wyatt. The fact that my childhood home feels like home again. I want to grab a frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich and run through the dunes. My mom’s at the kitchen table watercoloring and smiles when she sees me.
“Is Gracie up?” I ask.
“She’s started sleeping until ten. You remember how that was.”
I smile at the memory of being twelve, almost thirteen. I wanted to sleep late too, but not as much as I wanted to get up and see Wyatt. “Oh, I remember.”
“Something’s loosened up in you. Nice to see.”
“Maybe it’s the sea air.” I pour myself a coffee.
She gives me a long look. “That, yes. And also maybe spending more time out here this summer. Making peace. Finally getting over Wyatt.”
I take a sip. “I think we’re going to be friends. It’s fine between us. Did you know he’s coming here this weekend? Like today?”
“I didn’t. Is that okay for you? Seeing him again so soon.”
“I think?”
She gives me a look.
“I mean yes, it will be good to see him again. And maybe we can have a friendship of some sort.” I think of a waiter warning me that the plate is hot. He’s told me flat-out that if I touch it I’ll get burned. And I touch it every single time.
My mom keeps painting, making wide ribbons of color across a stack of cards.
“What are those?”
“These came in the box with your wedding invitations, just extra card stock. I can’t believe you ordered invitations on watercolor paper, it’s so romantic.”
“My invitations are here?” I get up and she indicates the three boxes under the dining room table. I grab a box and open it at the table. “I can’t believe it.”
They’re beautiful. White cards with silver lettering. “Mr. and Mrs. Billings Holloway request the pleasure.” Jack and I picked these out at the stationer on Madison and Eighty-Sixth Street. I gravitated toward an invitation with an engraved beach motif at the bottom. “Babe, it’s a wedding, not a picnic,” he said. So, we went with these, clean lines all the way. And he was right, they are gorgeous, and the little bit of texture in the paper saves them from being plain. We had them shipped to my mom, because, of course, she knows calligraphy.
“We have more than we need. Can I just show you something?” My mom takes one, dips her brush in the pink paint, and gives it a swoosh across the middle, accenting our names. It’s breathtaking. “What if we did this to each one? All different colors.”
“It is so pretty.” I hold it in my hand and it feels like a summer breeze has moved through my wedding. “But Jack would think it was messy.”
“Oh, okay. Let’s skip it then. Maybe I’ll just keep this one for myself. They’re also very pretty without any color.” My mom has no ego about her ideas or her art. She creates for herself, for the delight she feels in seeing something in a certain way or hearing the rhythm of the right words strung together.
As the pink is drying across our names, I think, This is how I want my wedding to feel. I want there to be a breeze sweeping across it, for it to feel fresh and like it’s going somewhere. I realize, as I am thinking this, that I am imagining my wedding on the beach. But even at the Old Sloop Inn, we can be indoors and outdoors. It doesn’t have to feel so stuffy. I stare at that watercolor swoosh and suddenly it represents everything I want my wedding to be.
“Do one more. I’ll see what Jack says.”