Nineteen
My parents had been begging for me and Cara to come visit them for the weekend, and Cara finally caved and said yes.
“You know we promised we would visit them,” she said when I started to sputter my objections.
“I know, I know. You’re right, you’re right.” I was being mean and ungrateful, and I did love my parents and enjoyed spending time with them. So we packed our bags and rented a car and headed out to the country for the weekend.
“I hope they’re not planning to surprise us with a ‘congrats you’ve been married for a month’ party.” I wouldn’t put it past them after that whole reception my mom had pulled off.
“If they do, we’re going to smile and thank them and have a good time. Right?” Cara said. She was driving and I was lounging in the passenger seat with my bare feet up on the dash.
“Right,” I said, and sighed. “We should go to the Cape. Rent a cottage and play on the beach and eat too many lobster rolls.” It was still new that we could afford to do things like that. I wasn’t going to splurge and do it for weeks on end, but a little three-day trip would be nice. And we definitely needed to plan our getaway trip. We still hadn’t decided on a destination, but we had narrowed it down to ten potential spots. That was huge progress, even if it didn’t sound like it.
“We should do that before I start school, because after I start, I won’t be going anywhere but to class, to the library, to the coffee shop, and home.” She made a pouty face.
“I’ll make sure we stock up on coffee and the good croissants so you don’t have to go to the coffee shop too much, and then you can study at home. Just wear a hat with a sign on it that says STUDYING in huge letters and I’ll know that I’m not supposed to talk to you.” Cara laughed.
“You are very much underestimating your ability to be distracting.” I made an offended noise.
“I am never distracting. How dare you.” She changed lanes and then gave me a withering look.
“You are constantly distracting, Loren and you know it.”
“I can try and be less distracting,” I said.
“Sure,” Cara said in a way that led me to believe that she didn’t think that would work at all.
“Meanie,” I shot at her.
“You love me,” she fired back.
“Ugh, I do. I definitely do.”
She grinned in victory.
“MY GIRLS!” MOM SAID the second we got out of the car. She’d run out of the house to hug us and help us carry our bags into the house.
“Wow, what a welcoming committee. You’d think that we’ve been away for years and not like, a few weeks,” I said, and Mom admonished me with a ‘Mom Look’ as she put her arm around Cara and led her into the house. Dad was inside cooking lunch with vegetables from his garden.
“Holy zucchini, Dad,” I said, looking at the numerous green monsters that were stacked on the dining table.
“Your father went a little overboard with the garden this year. We’re sending both of you back with bags of vegetables, so don’t even argue.”
“Why would I turn down free vegetables?” I asked, but Mom was ignoring me.
“How is the job going?” Dad said as he fiddled with things on the stove.
“Great, actually. It’s not too stressful and the pay is pretty good. If I do well, I might be able to move up, which would be nice. I’m still considering getting a volunteer position, maybe at a library or an internship or something, since Cara is going to be so busy this fall and I don’t feel like sitting around the house alone when she’s in school.” That didn’t appeal to me at all. I’d rather be busy and missing her than being alone and bored and missing her.
“Good for you, Lo. I’m proud of you for not resting on the money. You could burn through that real fast if you let yourself.” He handed me a spoon and I started stirring whatever was happening in the big pot on the right burner. Looked like my favorite vegetable soup with fresh gnocchi. Yum.
“I know. I’m trying to be responsible. My worst fear is that I’m going to wake up one day and that money is going to be gone and I’ll be totally fucked.” He glared at me for the language, but I ignored him.
“That’s really smart. I feel like your mother and I have done something right. You’re very sensible, Lo. I’m proud of you.” He hugged me into his side and gave me a kiss on the top of my head.
Mom and Cara came back, both laughing at something.
“We’re almost ready here,” Dad said, turning off the electric grill he had going with sandwiches and zucchini on it.
“We’ll set the table,” Mom said, reaching for plates and then handing them to Cara.
“Uh, where?” I said, pointing to the dining table that had been taken over by mutant zucchini.
“We’re eating outside,” Mom said. I always forgot that my hometown was much cooler and less humid than being in the city.
Dad and I carried dinner out, and Mom even broke out a bottle of wine.
“You know you’ve been married for almost a month, so I thought we should celebrate,” she said, handing me a glass full of a crisp white wine from a local vineyard.
I opened my mouth to argue with her, but it was useless.
Cara also accepted her glass without protest.
“To our brave and beautiful girls. We love you both,” she said, raising her glass. We all clinked and drank and I gave Cara a look. She shrugged one shoulder as if to say “why not let them have their fun?”
I stuffed myself until I couldn’t have another bite of grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, or another spoonful of the gnocchi vegetable soup.
“There’s dessert, save room,” Mom said as I set my spoon down.
“Too late.” I put my hand on my stomach and groaned.
“Same,” Cara said. “If you wanted us to save room, you wouldn’t make such delicious food.” Dad tried to hide a pleased smile. He was always a total dork whenever someone complimented his cooking abilities.
“Well, we can finish our wine and have dessert later, if that’s what you want,” Mom said, leaning back in her chair.
“Sounds like a good idea.”
We sat and sipped and talked and I had to admit, it was nice to be here. I’d gotten used to the chaos of the city, and out here you could hear the sounds of the bullfrogs and the peepers and the birds. I’d been in the city too long. I needed to recharge.
Cara and I cleared the table and then brought out dessert, along with more wine. I figured if my parents were providing it, I was going to take advantage.
The cake was angel food with fresh strawberry compote and coconut whipped cream on top. I said I didn’t have room, but I told my stomach that it was going to make room because I wasn’t passing this up.
After dessert, we stumbled back to the house and Cara asked me if I wanted to go out to the barn.
“For old time’s sake.” I smiled and grabbed a blanket. The hayloft had never had any hay in it, but the wood was old and I didn’t fancy either of us getting splinters in our asses. We climbed up the ladder and I spread the old blanket out before we sat down. Cara had pushed the doors open so we could have light and a fresh breeze.
“Wow, it’s giving me major nostalgia being up here,” Cara said, lying on her back. I joined her and looked at the bits of sunlight that had squeezed themselves through the cracks between the beams and holes in the roof.
“I know this place is falling apart and my parents need to repair it, but I don’t know what it would be like if the roof didn’t let in any light. It wouldn’t be the same.”
“I know,” Cara murmured. “I always thought this place was so magical. Like it transported me to another place.” We used to have a tire swing in here that hung from the ceiling, and we would take turns pushing each other and spinning until we almost threw up. The swing had broken years ago, but I was wishing that it was still working. I hadn’t been on any kind of swing in years.
“Remember that night after the dance in junior high?” she said with a laugh.
“Oh, god, please let me forget.” I wanted to bury my face under the blanket. “Why do you always bring up my embarrassing moments?”
She laughed.
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t think of them as embarrassing, they’re just cute.” I glared at her.
“That’s because they didn’t happen to you.”
“Mmm, good point.”
I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. I could feel Cara doing the same next to me. I was getting into a totally zen place, when she sat up suddenly.
“What is it? Splinter in your back?”
Her face was serious.
“What is it Care?” I had been on the edge of my seat, waiting for her to confide in me. I’d never experienced so much anticipation in my life. Not even when I was waiting to see if I got into the college I wanted to go to.
“Nothing. Just... thinking.” She rubbed her arms as if she was cold.
Moments ago she’d been laughing. This wasn’t the first time she’d switched so fast and I was starting to get whiplash.
“Thinking about what?” I asked.
She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them.
“Just life. The past. Growing up.”
“That’s a lot of things to think about at once.” She glanced at me.
“Yeah, I know. Therapy has made me way too contemplative. Thinking about the past and seeing it through a different lens. It’s confusing as all hell.” Sounded like it.
“Anything I can do?” I tried not to sound too desperate.
“No, I’m good. Just being here with me and letting me blather on about nonsense is more than enough. And having patience with me while I figure my shit out.” I could do both of those things. Not easily or well, but I could do them.
“Thanks, Care. You know I’d do anything. I’ve already figured out the best way to hide a body, should the need ever arise.” Cara smiled and the tension in my chest eased a fraction.
“I don’t even want to know.”
“I’m going between burying it in an existing grave and dissolving it in drain cleaner and then grinding up the bones.”
Cara made a face of disgust.
“You are so getting arrested for looking that up online.”
“No way. There are millions of people looking up way worse shit.”
We both shuddered imagining what those searches might look like.
“You wanna take a walk down the road?” My stomach was starting to feel better and I wanted to get up and move.
“Sure.”
My parents lived down a dirt road that was off another smaller road where three cars driving down in an hour was considered “traffic.” Gotta love rural New England.
Cara and I strolled leisurely, picking wildflowers along the way. My mom would love them just as much as she did when we were six and handed dirty bouquets to her with the roots hanging down.
“I can’t believe we’ve been married for a month,” she said, plucking a daisy.
“I know. It feels like it’s been forever, but also only a day? It’s weird how things can be like that.” She nodded and shook some dirt from her flowers.
“Do you like it? Being married to me?” she asked.
“Yeah, I do.” I was trying not to be too enthusiastic. I fucking loved being married to her. It was awesome. “And you?”
“It’s pretty great.” Cara gave me a brief smile. “So you’re not thinking about annulment?”
“Not really,” I said, which was a lie. I had been waiting for her to bring this up for weeks. We’d gotten the money, so there wasn’t a logical reason for us to stay married anymore, but I still. I didn’t want to annul anything.
“Oh,” she said. “Then you think we should stay married?”
“I mean, there’s no reason for us to. So I guess we can annul it.” I could barely get the words out. They physically hurt to say out loud. Plus, they were lies.
“Yeah, we probably should.” She plucked a black-eyed Susan and added it to her bouquet.
“But we don’t have to. We can stay married. Unless that would throw a wrench in your dating life.” It pained me to bring it up, but ever since Ansel had asked, I couldn’t help thinking that she might want to start dating and not have to worry about confessing she had a fake wife waiting at home.
“Oh, no, I’m not thinking about dating anytime soon. Especially not with school starting. I wouldn’t have the time. And I just don’t feel like it.” Something told me there was more to that story than just school.
“You’re probably right. I don’t picture a whole lot of guys willing to take a backseat to studying. I mean, I know there are, but they’re a little hard to find sometimes.”
“Mmm,” she said in agreement.
“But you can date. If you want to. Obviously. You don’t need my permission.” I was babbling. I wanted her to be free to do what she wanted to do, but it would also crush me if she got into a relationship. The cognitive dissonance was real.
“I know,” she said as we reached the end of the road and turned around. We had walked this so many times when we were kids we didn’t even have to decide that we were going back. We both just knew.
“So you can. If you wanted to. Or not, if you don’t want to.” I cringed at myself. Why was I being awkward about this?
“Good to know. But I don’t want to right now. Still figuring things out. And school too.” I couldn’t help but be relieved. So relieved I thought my legs were going to give out on me. I stumbled a bit and Cara reached out to steady me.
“Stupid rocks,” I said, kicking a few away from my feet.
We got back to the house and went inside to play board games with my parents. It was one of my favorite things to do with them because they were both pretty mild-mannered most of the time, but something happened to them when the games were brought out. Things got vicious and hilarious at the same time.
We had more wine and did a lot of yelling and Cara kicked all our asses, first at Exploding Kittens, then at Life, and then at Jenga. She was on a roll.
“For the millionth time, I am NOT playing Cards Against Humanity with my parents,” I said when Dad tried to get the box of cards out.
“There are some lines I will not cross, and that is one of them.” He sighed and put the cards back.
“You can save that one for when you have parties with your friends. Not your daughter.” I shuddered at the thought.
“I don’t know, it could be fun,” Cara said, and I aimed a kick at her under the table that she dodged.
“Don’t you encourage them,” I said, pointing my finger at her. She just gave me an innocent look.
“I’m being attacked,” I said, crossing my arms. They all laughed in unison and Mom got up to put the games away.
“Well, in our old age, your father and I have started going to bed earlier. You’re welcome to stay up as long as you want because you’re grown adults, but we’re probably going to head to bed.” I raised my eyebrows at her. My parents didn’t normally go to bed early, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with being older, because they weren’t even that old.
“Okayyyyy,” I said, drawing the word out. “Well, goodnight.” I hugged and kissed both of them, as did Cara.
Then it was just the two of us.
“You want to play cards?” Cara asked.
I yawned.
“Not really, but I’d watch a movie if you want.” She agreed and we both grabbed blankets and got ourselves situated on my parent’s couch. I was still full from dinner, but I couldn’t do a movie without snacks, so I raided the pantry and brought out the fancy kettle chips and some caramel apple flavored popcorn.
“Drinks?” Cara asked, and I went back and pulled out a few sodas. We scanned for nearly an hour through all the available movies, and at last decided on one we’d seen about twenty times before.
Cara moved closer to me until our shoulders were touching and she pulled the edge of my blanket over her legs.
“You have your own blanket right there.”
“But I like yours better. It’s softer.” I couldn’t argue there; my blanket was better. My mom had found it and given it to me before I went to college, and it was one of the softest things I’d ever felt in my life. I’d gotten three more of the exact blanket that were back in the city at my apartment.
I swear, I was watching the movie, but I couldn’t help glancing at Cara as she slowly popped one piece of popcorn in her mouth at a time. We should have picked a different movie that I had to pay my full attention to. This one couldn’t hold my focus.
“Stop it,” she said, not looking away from the screen.
“Stop what,” I said.
“Stop staring at me. I can feel you. It’s distracting.” I glued my eyes to the screen.
“I wasn’t staring.”
She bumped my shoulder.
“Yeah, you were. Do I have something on my face?”
I shoved a handful of popcorn in my mouth, and then ended up choking on it and needing Cara to smack me on the back and several gulps of soda to clear everything out.
“You okay?” Cara asked. I gave her a thumbs-up and gathered up all the popcorn bits I’d coughed out and rolled them up in a paper towel.
“Sorry to make you choke. But you were staring, Loren.” Yeah, I was, and I wish she would stop drawing my attention to it. Staring at Cara didn’t mean anything.
I refused to answer her, so we just went back to the movie and finished it in silence. I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed, but didn’t want to be the first one to throw in the towel.
“You want to just chill in your room for a while before we go to bed? I have a new book I really want to start,” Cara said and that was fine with me. I’d been slacking on my reading lately and I was way behind on my reading goal for this year, in spite of having more time to read. How did that happen?
We cleaned the living room, putting everything back, and then headed up the stairs to my room. There were two guest rooms, but Cara always preferred to stay with me in my old room, and that was how it had always been.
“Are you sure you’re okay with me staying in here?” she asked as I shut the door. I needed to change my clothes, but the idea of changing in front of Cara made my stomach do little flips of weirdness, so I grabbed the clothes from my bag and headed for my bathroom.
“Of course I’m okay with you staying here, what kind of question is that?” I left the door cracked a little so we could continue to talk as I was changing.
“I don’t know, I guess I thought maybe that now we were older you might want to have your own space. And we are living together all the time I don’t want you to get sick of me.” I stopped pulling my shirt over my head.
“What the hell are you talking about, Care? I couldn’t get sick of you if I tried. You’re my best friend and if I could surgically attach myself to your hip so we would never be apart, I would do that.” That made her giggle.
“It would be awfully hard to pee like that.”
“We’d have to get like, adjoining toilets,” I suggested and then finished getting dressed. She had changed too when I came back into the bedroom and I tossed my clothes back in my bag.
“That sounds really gross, no offense,” Cara said.
“You’re probably right. But the point is still made.” She took her turn in the bathroom and brushed her teeth while I sat on the edge of the bathtub.
She blushed as she spit out her toothpaste.
“Stop staring at me, it’s creepy,” she said before rinsing her mouth out and then putting her toothbrush back in her travel bag.
I looked down. I couldn’t stop making her uncomfortable tonight, I guess.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
Cara went back into the bedroom and pulled out a paperback from her bag. I followed her, not knowing what to say.
“It’s okay, I guess. Just... it’s a little intimidating sometimes.” I sat on the bed and gave her a puzzled look.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, let’s just drop it, okay?” She buried her face in her book and that was the end of that. I sighed and got out my own book. The only sound for the next hour was the swish of Cara turning pages and the racket that the frogs were making in the pond just past the backyard. When I was a kid I used to bring a net and scoop up hundreds of gelatinous eggs and wait for them to hatch and grow legs and arms. Before they became fully grown frogs and salamanders and newts, I’d release them back into the pond. If I’d had it my way, I would have put a pond in the house and had a menagerie of amphibians, but my parents had squashed that idea. Someday I wanted to have a house with a pond in the back so I could sort of live out that dream.
Cara snuggled down in the bed and I realized that her eyes were drooping closed.
“Hey,” I said, trying to take the book from her.
“Don’t take my book,” she said in a sleepy voice, blinking slowly.
“I’m not taking your book, Care, I’m saving you from dropping it on your face and getting the worst papercut ever.” She made a grumpy noise, but let me take the book, making sure that I held her place.
“Where’s your bookmark?” I asked, knowing that she had one. She handed it to me and I slid it into place and set the book on my nightstand.
“Let’s go to sleep,” I said.
She yawned so big I heard her jaw pop.
“Okay,” she mumbled and snuggled further under the covers. I set my e-reader aside and turned the lights out.
“Goodnight, Care,” I said, brushing the top of her head.
She mumbled something back that I figured was her saying goodnight as well.
I turned on my side, closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come.