Only One

Carrie

Dad glares at me from across the table, and I wince when he digs the toe of his dress shoe into my shin. He nods toward my mother like he wants me to pay attention to her. She’s sitting beside him across from me in the booth and I don’t know what to say to her. My feelings toward her haven’t changed. She left us. I want nothing to do with her.

“So, Carrie,” she says, “I arranged for someone to set up the beach house.”

I nod, and chew my Eggplant Parmesan slowly. “That’s good,” I mumble after I swallow.

She laughs. “The poor guy got stuck with all the hard work.” She looks at my dad. “John, do you remember how hard it was that first day at the beach? Taking the shutters down and getting it ready for the season?”

Dad gets a faraway look in his eye, but he nods.

I fill my mouth up so I won’t have to talk.

“No one has been there since the last time we went as a family.”

I was fifteen the last time we used the beach house. “Why?” I blurt out.

“Why what?” she asks, looking confused.

“Why haven’t you used it?” She loved the beach house.

“It just wasn’t the same…” She lets her voice trail off.

“You never took him there?” I ask. I refuse to say his name. The man she left us for doesn’t deserve a name or a face.

Her face reddens and she looks down at her food. “No.” That’s all she says. Just that.

That surprises me. She really loved the beach. I would have thought she’d want to share it with him.

“So, how’d you find someone to open it?” Dad asks. He’s trying. I don’t know why he wants to, but apparently he does.

“I used one of the local boys,” she says. She smiles at him. “I wish you were going with us.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t.” He doesn’t look at her. He just looks down at his plate.

Mom lays her fork down and says, “Well, I guess we should get going. We have a long drive.”

I let my fork drop to the plate with a loud clatter. “Fine,” I say. I throw my napkin in my plate and get up.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom or anything?” Mom asks.

“Patty, I’m eighteen years old. I think I know when I need to go to the bathroom.” She holds up her hands like she’s surrendering.

Dad transfers my suitcase to the back of Mom’s jeep. Then he walks over to me. I fall against him and rub my cheek against his chest. “I’m going to miss you,” I whisper.

“I’ll miss you too.” He rubs my back in gentle, soft sweeps. “Be kind to your mother,” he urges.

“Why?” I mumble.

He sets me back and tips my face up. “This is her last summer. Make some memories.”

“Okay,” I breathe. But I know I won’t.

We get into the jeep and I realize that the roof is missing and the windows are down. She’s not planning to drive from Charlotte to the Carolina coast like this, is she? “Can we put the top up?” I ask.

She puts her sunglasses on, grins at me, and shakes her head. “Nope.”

Then she jerks out of the parking lot so fast that I have to reach for the oh-crap handles. As she pulls out onto the road, my long blond hair starts to fly around my face. She looks at me, grins again, and opens the glove box. She roots around until she finds an elastic hair band. She holds it out to me between her thumb and forefinger. I take it and pull my hair back.

She runs a hand through her short cropped hair. “That’s the beauty of chemo,” she says with a shrug.

I just turn and stare out the open window.

“Are you going to talk to me at all on the ride?” she asks. But she doesn’t look upset. Just curious.

“Probably not.” I lean back heavily against the seat and slide my feet out of my sandals. I lift them to rest on the dash.

“Okay then,” she says. And then she turns the radio up as loud as it will go, until my feet are thumping and my ears vibrate.

I can’t help but wonder who will be at the beach when we get there. All the people I once knew? Amber? Rose? Nick? Oh, God. Nick. I wonder what he looks like now. I wonder if he’s even still there. I want to ask Patty all these questions, because she might know the answers, but I’d have to talk to her to do that.

Mom rests her left wrist on the steering wheel and shifts with her right hand. Once we hit the highway, we’re all breezy air and noise. And I’m fine with that because I don’t have to talk to her. I don’t even have to pretend that I like her.

###

I wake up with a jerk and a squeal of the brakes, and my eyes open. My skin is gritty, and I have never felt less like myself than I do at this moment. Where are we?

We’re in the driveway of the beach house. That much looks familiar. But I have to blink my eyes a few times before I remember how I came to be here.

“We’re here!” my mother sings. She shoves my shoulder. “Help me unload.”

It’s late. Almost midnight. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“Nope.” She doesn’t say any more than that. She just shoves my shoulder again and I get out. I start unloading suitcases and boxes of food and supplies.

The house looks different. I remember it as larger than life. But it’s not. It’s small and quaint. It’s all beachy, with fishing signs hanging in the carport and fishing nets decorating the space. None of us fish. I never did understand those being there.