“Do you remember the first time I taught you to drive a stick shift? We went out to McCully’s old vineyard. What ever happened to McCully? Do you think he’s still around? My God, you were so scared. Why were you so scared? You were such a natural at it. Well, once you could figure out the difference between first and third.”
And he laughs. She tries not to. She bites the inside of her lip and tries not to laugh too. This is the painful part. Love doesn’t leave you. Not all at once. It creeps back in, making you think it can be another way, that it can still be another way, and you have to remind yourself of the reasons that it probably won’t be.
“Thomas,” she says. “That was forever ago.”
“So you don’t remember?”
Third and fifth. The ones that she had trouble with were third and fifth. He had tried to talk to her about making an H—but she couldn’t seem to do it. And they had to pull over because they were laughing so loud. They couldn’t seem to communicate, but that was funny then.
“Gwyn?”
She hates him now. She actually may hate him. “I don’t want to,” she says.
Maggie
They are the very last stop.
It comes at almost three hours exactly. It comes after too many towns, too many abrupt stops and starts, too many tennis courts and Olympic-size swimming pools and horse farms named things like Happy Meadows or Spring Blossoms. It isn’t crowded, this late in September. But still, Maggie has been looking intently out the window and is able to gauge it in quick bursts, the weirdness of the Hamptons, beyond these obvious excesses: the daughter-and-mom duo in their matching yellow Juicy sweatsuits, a caravan of antique convertibles driven by teenage boys, an ice cream parlor for dogs.
But then, after the East Hampton stop, something seems to change—the universe course-correcting itself. Suddenly the roads and towns become more like beach towns that Maggie remembers from growing up: fewer fancy SUVs, more swaying trees and empty spaces.
Clapboard houses that look lived in.
By the time they pull into Montauk’s town center, into the bus station, Maggie is looking forward to checking out Nate’s hometown, wants to breathe in the sea air, breathe in the beach. But the windows won’t open. It isn’t an option. So she closes her eyes and waits.
Nate leans in and kisses her cheek, then kisses her right below the jaw. “We’re here,” he says.
“That’s something,” she says.
He smiles. “That is something.”
She takes his hand, squeezes. She is trying. She is really trying to let the day start again, right here, when she needs it the most.
And by the time they step off the bus, Murph is already out of sight. Maggie decides to take this as the first good sign. The second one is that, as soon as Maggie is on solid ground and gets a look around, she feels intrigued by the town around her.
Montauk isn’t what she expected—it feels less like she’s walked into a beach town and more like she’s walked into a ghost town: an empty police station and a closed-down restaurant, a sign for the Memory Motel out ahead of them, and in the distance, just a peek of ocean.
“You ready for this?” Nate says, as she looks around. “Because, if not, this thing turns itself around in about twenty minutes. We’ll head back to New York City. Be home in time to watch the sun go down.”
“Be home in time to watch Weeds?” she says.
“Even be home in time to buy a television to watch it on,” he says. “Just tell me when you’re ready to get out of here.”
She steps on his tiptoes, and whispers softly into his ear. “I’m ready to get out of here.”
And he reaches for her, because he thinks she is flirting a little. And part of her is—the part of her that is trying to overpower the other part, the part that wants to scream: I am ready now! Because it is all starting to feel manageable again between us, to feel something like normal, and just when that happens today,I seem to get struck down worse. I hear about you having sex in mansion/high schools with padded bathtubs.
But she takes a deep breath, and follows him across the street to the small parking lot next to John’s Pancake House, where they are supposed to meet his sister. There is a small taffy stand outside the restaurant, a group of teenagers in matching green Windbreakers with S.H.S. WEATHER CLUB written on the back, standing around sipping sodas and eating taffy. Maybe they are on a class trip. Maggie doesn’t know, but she feels a longing to be among them, to have access
to the day ahead of them: sticky candy, and conversations about water currents, and a bus ride back to wherever they’re coming from.
Only before she can think too much about it, one of the girls, who Maggie assumes is with them, steps out from behind the hood of a dirty gray Volvo wagon, revealing the pregnant bulge in her belly.
Her stomach is a dead giveaway, even if she weren’t identical to the most recent photo on their refrigerator: same pink streaks running through her blond hair, wearing an X-large NOFX tank top and faded jeans, wearing Nate’s eyes.
Georgia. In the photograph, she was cradling her stomach. Now, she is cradling a three-pound plastic sand bucket of saltwater taffy in both of her hands. And when she looks up, she is sucking on one of the pinkish-green strands, like it is a cigarette, like it is the last cigarette on earth.
“Nathaniel,” she says. “You’re here.”