Not that Josh had asked, specifically, in so many words.
As it turned out, she was grateful for the company. All through the winter, through the end of stupid senior year, Mary had somewhere to go after school, on weekends, she had someone who was expecting her, someone who cared where she was and when she was coming back. What was the occasional black mood, the occasional unpredictable silence, compared to that? What did it matter that the dates happened only in the beginning and now he just wanted her to come over and watch TV after work? She had someone, and someone had her.
Now Mary took a deep breath and let it out super slowly and said, “I brought you something, from the café. Cookies!” And she put the lobster cookies on the secondhand coffee table.
Josh glanced at them briefly and said, “Great,” with zero enthusiasm. Mary should have given them to Vivienne—she had a sweet tooth. Apparently that was Mary’s fault too; Vivienne barely ate a dessert in her life until she got pregnant with Mary. “Girls ruin your figure,” she said gloomily, chomping on Twizzlers, though Vivienne wore a size two and was by all accounts still considered a knockout.
“It’s true,” said Daphne and Andi, who claimed to have very different types. “Your mother is indisputably gorgeous.” As a footnote they added, a stitch too quickly, “And you are too. You look just like her.” But Vivienne was the brighter version, an outdoor floodlight to Mary’s low-wattage indoor bulb.
“They’re still pretty fresh,” she said to Josh, about the cookies. A sticker on the bag said Standard Baking Co., Portland. Just yesterday Eliza Sargent, Charlie Sargent’s daughter, had bought a package of them to bring home to her kids and one for her dad. Mary had taken extra care with Eliza’s coffee; she was just learning to make designs with the cappuccino foam. Summer people loved that stuff, and even though Eliza was not technically a summer person she didn’t seem like a townie either.
“Oh, look!” Eliza had said, squinting at the cup. “It’s a…what’s that, a lobster claw? Fantastic.”
It was supposed to be a flower but Mary didn’t want to embarrass either of them by saying so.
“Okay.” Josh’s eyes were back on the flat-screen.
Well, this pissed Mary off a little bit. She smoothed the skirt of her yellow dress and said, “Josh. I brought you something. I brought you a present. You could at least acknowledge it.”
His eyes flicked back at her. “I did,” he said. “I said thanks.”
He hadn’t said thanks. Mary tried to let it go, but at the same time a bunch of warning bells were all going off one after another in her brain, and the red flags were waving like crazy. If this was how Josh reacted to a little gift, well…what about something way bigger?
She opened the package of lobster cookies and stole a glance at Josh to see if he noticed or cared. Neither. Mary’s stomach was so funny lately, sometimes she ate nothing at all and sometimes she just wanted to stuff her face with grease and salt. Was this normal?
Mary gave herself a quick little internal lecture about acting like an adult. In August she’d be eighteen; by next year at this time she’d be a mother. Or not. Who cared if he hadn’t thanked her for the cookies? She hadn’t paid for them, why was she making such a big deal out of it? She had to watch those juvenile reactions, those silly hurt feelings. Those were high school feelings, or even younger, and she wasn’t young anymore.
She dislodged herself from under Josh’s legs, walked around behind the couch, and squeezed his shoulders.
“Something wrong?” she asked, leaning close.
“Shit haul today, that’s all,” he muttered.
“Again, baby? I’m sorry.”
It had been a shit haul the day before, too. Come to think of it, a shit haul for a couple of weeks now. Not for everyone in the harbor, but for Josh. “Things will pick up by the end of July,” she said. “They always do.” She made a little sympathetic noise.
“That’s an old-school Stingray,” said Josh, to the flat-screen.
This meant nothing to Mary, but she nodded along as though it did. She felt nervous; she was running out of time to get Josh in a better mood. She came back around and sat next to him on the couch. She lifted his hand and traced the veins and muscles with her forefinger. Strong hands, like any fisherman. “Old-school for sure,” she affirmed.
This was not how the night was supposed to go.
“Corvette,” he said. “Been sitting in that garage for more than thirty years.”
To Mary every car on Josh’s show looked just like every other car on Josh’s show. This one was a dull and ugly brown with an unexceptional shape to it. An older woman who looked kind and had her hair pulled back into a headband was standing next to her grown son. They wanted to restore the car in honor of their dead husband/father. Well, that was sweet, but even so. Mary was not going to let her heartstrings get tugged on just then. She had other things on her mind.
“Hey, babe?”
Josh grunted and leaned closer to the TV.
“You want to do something, tonight, something besides this? I came over here after work, I put on this dress, I thought maybe we could—”
Josh whistled.
Not at her, though, at the show. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Mary smoothed the skirt of her yellow dress again. Come to think of it, yellow was not a good color on her, washed her right out. On the screen somebody was going on about fuel injections. “A hundred grand, fully restored,” Josh said. “Holy shit. What I wouldn’t do with a hundred grand.”
Josh hadn’t even heard her—she might as well not be in the room with him at all. He whistled again and said, “A hundred grand. Just sitting in their garage like that.”
“Josh!” she said, and she knew right away that that wasn’t the tone of voice she should have used. “I’m trying to talk to you!” Her voice going up on the you.
Josh said, “Jesus goddamn Christ, Mary, I’m trying to watch this goddamn show!”
Warning bells, all over her body.
On the television the guy in the leather jacket with the slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair was saying, “Fuel lines, brake lines, water lines, anything that’s rubber is going to have to be replaced.”
A little flame rose up from Mary’s gut, and she said, slowly and carefully, like she was reading out loud a paper in English class, “I’m leaving, Josh.” She got up.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
“Mary, don’t, I’m sorry, okay? Jesus, but I was just trying to watch the show.” He pointed the remote at the television and the screen went dark. “Okay? See? Happy now? I shut it off.”
She didn’t like the look in his eyes. But she sat, and at first when he put his arm around her she thought, Okay, good, it’s going to be okay and soon I can tell him, and the warning bells momentarily stopped.
He would turn into the person she wanted him to be. She just had to wait a little longer.
7
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob