Beth Adelman tried to keep up a cheerful patter of conversation during the hour-and-a-half drive from Philadelphia to the Jersey Shore. Her daughter was having none of it. A month since Lauren had lost her husband, and she was only getting more withdrawn.
Lauren slumped in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Late January; the sky was gray and the trees bare. Beth turned on the defroster and glanced over at Lauren.
It was hard not to think of all the summer Saturday mornings when she and her husband and the girls had made this same drive. She would wake her daughters at the crack of dawn, and Lauren and Stephanie would climb into the backseat wearing bathing suits under their shorts and T-shirts. Still yawning, with butter-slick bagels in their hands, the girls squabbled. In those days, arguments over foot space and other backseat boundaries began before they even pulled onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. If a foot or stray beach-bag strap strayed over the line to someone else’s side while the car was still in the driveway, yelling would ensue, and Howard, cramming their suitcases into the trunk, would call out, “I’m going to stick one of you in here!” Joyful noise.
Such a contrast to the current ride.
Beth knew she was looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but even the eternal bickering between the girls was something she would gladly take in exchange for the current silence.
She turned off the Atlantic City Expressway, and Lauren lowered her window. Beth heard the call of seagulls, and she tried to convince herself that everything was going to be fine. That Lauren wasn’t making a mistake.
Beth didn’t usually think of the beach house that her parents had left her as secluded, but geographically it was out there. Absecon Island was a barrier island on the Jersey Shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Beth was afraid that it was the remoteness that attracted Lauren to the house, not just the comfort of family memories.
There was no traffic on Ventnor Avenue. In the winter, the Jersey Shore felt deserted. Beth was certain Lauren was underestimating how isolated she would feel all alone in that big house in the half-empty town under gray skies and with the chill of the wind off a cold ocean. But in the weeks since Rory had been killed in Iraq, there was just no talking to her. It was a tragedy, a god-awful tragedy. Of course it was. But her daughter had shut down, and for the life of her, Beth had no idea what to do about it.
“Lauren, look—there’s Lucy!” Beth said, pointing to the six-story elephant, a tourist attraction that had fascinated Lauren as a child. “You girls used to get so excited whenever we passed her. Remember?”
Lauren glanced to her left but said nothing.
Minutes later, Beth turned off Atlantic Avenue and onto a short cul-de-sac. The house her parents had left to her was a beachfront four-bedroom Colonial Revival, gray and white but somehow stuck with the name the Green Gable. In the old days, it wasn’t until hours after their arrival that the girls set foot inside. As soon as the car turned into the driveway, they pulled off their flip-flops and ran to the sand like they were “shot from a cannon,” as her father said every single weekend. It was still early, and the beach was empty enough for them to make an easy beeline to the ocean, Stephanie calling out, “Last one to the water is a rotten egg!”
“It’s not a race!” Lauren yelled, and yet she always dashed to keep up with her sister, her feet sinking into deep pockets of sand as she ran, stumbling but moving forward.
Beth sighed. Why couldn’t life always be that simple?
Now, the Green Gable was exactly as it had always been, except the wind- and sand-battered wood sign was more faded, the moss-green words almost indistinguishable from the gray background. Beth turned off the car and closed her eyes. How she wished her own mother were still around to tell her how to deal with this. But she was gone, leaving a beautiful house that was small consolation.
Lauren just sat there, zombielike.
“Come on, Lauren. Grab one of the bags.”
The house smelled musty and close. Beth cracked some windows despite the frigid wind. When she’d left in August, she hadn’t expected to return until spring. She couldn’t have imagined that a few months later, her handsome, vibrant son-in-law would be dead, leaving her younger daughter a widow, and that the Green Gable would beckon to Lauren with some false promise of peace.
“I’ll make a run to Casel’s for groceries,” Beth said, heading for the kitchen to take stock of what, if anything, she had left behind.
“No, Mom. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
Lauren lugged the heaviest suitcase up the stairs. Beth abandoned the kitchen and followed her, surprised to see her turn into her old childhood bedroom.
“Why not the master bedroom? It has the better view.”
“That still feels like Gran’s room.”
“Don’t be silly, Lauren. If you’re going to be here for a few weeks, you might as well—”
“Not a few weeks, Mom. I’m staying here indefinitely.”
The bedroom was white and sea-foam green with a queen-size bed framed in antique cast iron. A bone-colored French pot cupboard served as her nightstand. There was a pen on it, and a framed photo of Lauren and her older sister. Stephanie had one arm draped around Lauren’s shoulders as they stood at the edge of the ocean, both of them sunburned, sandy, with long wet hair.
Beth sighed heavily. “Lauren, I love you, hon, but I’m really thinking this isn’t the best idea. I understand you don’t want to stay in LA but at least come home to Philly so we can be there for you. You need a support system.”
Lauren turned her back to her, opened her suitcase. “I need to be alone.”
Beth walked to the window, looking out at the overcast sky. “I don’t know what you expect me to do. Just leave you here? Just turn around and get back on the highway?”
“Yeah. And Mom, remember, if anyone contacts you about me, you don’t know where I am.”
“Who’s going to contact me?”
“I don’t know, Mom. A reporter? Just don’t say anything. Promise?”
“Of course. No reporters—got it. But you’re doing the wrong thing, isolating yourself out here.”
No response. Beth was overwhelmed with one of the worst feelings a mother could experience in the face of her child’s pain: powerlessness.