September Girls Read online

  It suddenly occurred to me to wonder why I hadn’t heard from Sebastian. It wasn’t like him; normally he would have been texting to the point of nuisance. Of course, I hadn’t been in touch with him, either. It was almost as if there was a force here holding us separate from the rest of the world. But it also probably had something to do with the impossible cell phone reception and not having Wi-Fi in the cottage.

  I considered the notion that we had been swallowed, and that the longer we stayed here, the less likely it would be that we would ever be able to return home. That if we tried to cross the causeway back to everyday life, a hurricane might come from nowhere and push us right back to where we’d started. I thought of the Lost Colony, and what DeeDee had said. This is where people come to disappear.

  Mom had tried to disappear herself, and somehow she had disappeared herself right back to our makeshift lost colony anyway.

  Many of the people you meet here have already disappeared from one elsewhere or another. Was I really one of them?

  “So why do you think she’s back?” Jeff was wanting to know. We were making our way along the coastline, walking in the damp sand left by the receding tide as beads of sweat formed at the nape of my neck and trickled down my spine to the cleft of my ass. “Is she really even back?” he said. “Or is she going to be gone again by the time we get home? How did she find us?”

  I didn’t tell him that I had some vague notion of the answer to that question. I was ashamed that I had ever called her, although I couldn’t name the reason why. “Is it even her?” I asked. It wasn’t just a distraction technique; I was truly sort of uncertain.

  “It’s her,” Jeff said. “I’d know her anywhere. Even with Sharon whatever tattooed all over her whole fucking arm. Even with everything.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I wonder if she’ll stay,” Jeff said. “Dad’s so spineless. He should have told her to leave. How could he even let her in the door?”

  “How could he not?” I said. “Really, how could he not?”

  “You wouldn’t have.”

  “Yes I would have,” I said.

  “Well that’s different,” Jeff said, and he was right about that part.

  Neither of us had discussed a destination, but as we continued our trek, it became clear exactly where we were aiming for. We passed the pier at the Fisherman’s Net and then three more piers after it, passed through the crowds to the edge of the rental developments where things were thinned out; we passed the pink hotel and continued along through the narrow and almost empty coast that abutted a gnarled, unpopulated wilderness. Without saying it, we were looking for the hidden cove, but it was eluding us. It hadn’t taken this long with DeeDee yesterday. Once I thought about it, I realized that yesterday it hadn’t taken any time at all. Or, it hadn’t felt like it had.

  But Jeff and I walked for hours, ignoring the sunburns creeping at our shoulders. We talked about a lot of things but mostly about nothing.

  After the brief initial foray into the subject of our insane mother, we were now pointedly avoiding all matters of substance, which included the topics of DeeDee, Dad, and Jeff’s recent queerification at the hands of Kristle. It was nice, though, just to be able to talk to him—I mean in a casual, unguarded way—for what was pretty much the first time in forever. It made me remember that he had once been a good older brother, when I’d been younger and he had been tall and smiling and very impressive.

  We never reached DeeDee’s beach. It was like we had never been there, like it had never existed.

  Eventually Jeff dropped to the sand in frustration. “Motherfucker,” he said. “This is weird, huh?” He pressed a finger to his shoulder, which was glowing angry red. “Shit motherfuck,” he said.

  “There’s something funny about this whole fucking place,” I said. “And not funny ha-ha either.”

  “I know,” he said. “I already knew, but this pretty much confirms it, huh?”

  “What should we do?” I asked.

  “I guess go get something to eat?” Jeff said. “I’m starving.” I was glad he suggested it. I wanted to see DeeDee again, but it seemed like going to find her on my own would be pushing my luck. If Jeff was suggesting that we go to the Fisherman’s Net there was no harm in going along with him. It wasn’t my fault that she worked there.

  “God,” I said, trying not to sound eager. “There’s really not much to do around here, is there?”

  After our endless walk out to the middle of nowhere in which we had found ourselves it only took a few minutes to walk back to the Fisherman’s Net. Kristle was out front smoking like she’d been expecting us all along and was annoyed that we were late to our appointment.

  “Hey, babe,” Jeff called.

  “Hey, babe,” Kristle said. So they had reached babe status.

  He went to her and put his hands on her hips and pushed her back against the silvery shingles of the restaurant’s exterior. She wrapped her arms around his neck, cig still in hand, and they tongued each other hungrily in the salty, late-afternoon sun.

  I stood and looked on awkwardly. Their slurping went on for much longer than I considered reasonable, especially given the fact that I was just standing there. When it got too gross to take anymore, I snuck past them into the restaurant, looking for DeeDee.

  Instead I found a girl I didn’t recognize pushing through the swinging kitchen door, overflowing plates of fried crap balanced on her forearms, a sour expression on her face.

  “She’s not here,” Kristle called from behind me. Jeff plopped himself down at the nearest empty table and was ostentatiously snapping his fingers for service.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Who, he says. All I can tell you is she better come back soon,” Kristle went on. “Olay’s a disaster. Just watch, I bet you anything she screwed up every one of those orders.”

  I didn’t really care to watch. “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Waitress!” Jeff was calling. “Could I get some service?”

  Kristle ignored him. “She called in sick. Some kind of bug I guess. Want something to eat? It’s on me.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go find her. See how she’s doing. Where do you guys live anyway?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that. She’s really not feeling good. She wouldn’t want you to see her all gross and everything.”

  “Maybe I’ll bring her some chicken soup or something.” Kristle let out a guffaw, and I felt my already-sunburned face flush.

  Jeff had tired of being overlooked and wandered out of the restaurant again, probably onto the pier. Kristle dropped a hand to my hip and smiled a smarmily sympathetic smile.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll see her around at some point.”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “But you know,” she continued. “She’s pretty busy. So you might not.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Honestly, she and I had a talk last night. Just us girls. And the thing is that—listen—I don’t want you to get your hopes up or anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, who cares about DeeDee anyway? What’s so special about her?” Kristle placed a hand on my leg but jerked it away as Jeff poked his head back through the saloon doors. “Babe. I’m not hungry anymore,” he said. “Wanna go get a drink or something? You won’t believe what fucking happened yesterday.”

  “Sure,” Kristle said. “Taffany’s working tonight. You wanna come too, Sam? She never cards.” She winked almost imperceptibly.

  Jeff looked from Kristle to me and back, arching his eyebrows and cocking his head, silently communicating that he would kill me if I took her up on her invitation. Kristle grinned bigger at me in a silent challenge.

  “Uh, no thanks,” I said. “I’m really tired.”

  “Suit yourself,” Kristle said. She tossed her hair over one shoulder, then the other, then smoothed it with the back of her hand. “Another time.”

  “Tell Dad
I’ll be back tomorrow. If I feel like it,” Jeff said, and Kristle smacked him on the ass in mock indignation.

  “I don’t know who you think you are!” she giggled.

  Jeff looked back over his shoulder at me as they left together. Olay, the new waitress, was staring at me as she went about her business, but I didn’t say anything to her and she didn’t say anything to me.

  At home, the stereo was blasting. I could hear it from the stairs to the kitchen door, and when I got inside, my mother was dancing around to Beyoncé, singing along to “Single Ladies” in an off-key warble. She was shaking her hips and sloshing a half-full tumbler of ice-and-something. There was an open bottle of Beefeater on the kitchen counter.

  “So are you a single lady now?” I asked, but before she could answer I went out onto the porch, where I sat and looked out at the setting sun.

  Out there, I made the decision not to be bothered by what Kristle had said about DeeDee—about not getting my hopes up or whatever. DeeDee didn’t even really seem to like her; there was no reason to think that Kristle would have the faintest clue what she thought about anything.

  Instead, I found myself wondering about DeeDee’s mother. I wondered if she looked like her. If you could study the gold rings around DeeDee’s pupils and catch a glimpse in the way they glittered of the mother who’d let her go. I tried to project DeeDee’s face into the future, dress it up with lines and weight, thinking maybe that would reveal someone. But all I got was a blank where an image should have been. A shimmering, slippery lacuna.

  I wondered if her mom missed her. I wondered if she even knew who she was now.

  Or maybe she’d never even had a mother in the first place. But everyone has a mother.

  I was still trying to imagine DeeDee’s mom when an image of my own mother came to me in a memory I had never stumbled on before. In the memory, I was younger—little—and Mom was younger too. She was happy and sun touched, her hair long and wavy, untroubled by gray, and she was wearing a pair of high-waisted jeans and a loose plaid shirt. It was spring and she was teaching me how to ride a bike, because my dad was too irritable and easily frustrated to teach anyone how to do anything. Mom was standing at the end of the driveway of our house in the suburbs, and she was laughing as I picked myself up off the ground after another spill and hopped back on the bike and finally nailed it. I sped past her into the street as she clapped her hands and said, “There you go, pal of mine; you’ve got it now.”

  I was older now. We all were. It wasn’t that simple anymore.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  THIRTEEN

  WHEN I WOKE up the next morning, the house was empty and reeked of cigarette smoke. The TV was on, tuned to some soap opera, and the volume was blaring. I noticed a coffee mug sitting on the end table, stuffed with barely smoked butts, the filters emblazoned with thin green rings and stained at the ends with plum-colored lipstick blots.

  This from a woman who once told me that if she ever caught me smoking a cigarette she would send me to live with my grandmother in Shreveport. The worst of it is that I had believed her. A part of me still sort of did.

  I poured myself some cereal, switched the channel, and flopped onto the couch to finally watch The Price is Right. This had been my original plan for the summer before it had been rearranged in front of me, first by my father and then by DeeDee.

  But The Price is Right was not the same as I’d remembered it. That day, the old ladies squealing as they came on down weren’t as amusing as they had once been. I no longer felt my usual swell of vicarious happiness when the army vet won the Subaru. Even Plinko had lost its luster.

  I wondered if my boredom at all this meant I had finally become a man after all.

  No, I decided. I just had my mind on other things. The whole time I was watching the show I was wishing DeeDee were there with me. She’d been a maid last summer; she would surely probably know exactly how much Windex cost. And I had this feeling she would have an appreciation for a good Showcase Showdown.

  A woman was jumping up and down and weeping after winning a dinette set, a Ski-Doo, and a trip to Reykjavik, and, feeling nothing but antsiness, I gave up. This waiting around was hell.

  I was going to go find her. She would be working, probably, but I could at least say hi. So I made the walk to the restaurant hoping that she would be there and wondering how I would find her if she wasn’t. I can’t say that Kristle’s warning the previous day wasn’t bothering me at all. As much as I tried to put it out of my mind, every time the Price is Right buzzer had sounded, I had imagined DeeDee looking me in the face and opening her mouth to speak and only that loud, awful buzz coming out. Too high, buddy, try again next time.

  But then I’d remember the way she had looked at me when I’d walked in on her at Kristle’s birthday party, and the way she had laughed when we’d been drunk on the mermaid statue at the golf course. The two of us in the sand with the sun setting on a beach that belonged only to us. There was no way all of that hadn’t been real. Kristle was just full of shit as usual.

  She was back at the restaurant. I saw her beyond the saloon door as I approached, beyond the always-abandoned hostess station, distractedly taking an order from a sullen family and looking sullen to match them. Something about how she was fidgeting with the pen at her ear—the pensive way she was biting her lip—made me almost rethink my plan. I just had a bad feeling.

  But in my hesitation, DeeDee looked up and saw me and gave a weak smile. It seemed in that moment of uncertainty that she was gathering herself. There was no turning back now. She glanced to her customers apologetically and then up at me again and raised an index finger in my direction—wait.

  I waited. She disappeared into the kitchen and reemerged a few seconds later and came toward me. Her smile had a hint of a wince to it.

  “Come outside for a second,” she said. “I told Olay to cover. We’ll see how that goes.” And I followed her outside the restaurant onto the end of the fishing pier, the same spot where we’d first met.

  She lit a cigarette and leaned back on her elbows on the railing but then changed her mind and stood, lifting her chin and straightening her back.

  I shuffled my feet. I had been expecting something different. Maybe things were not what I had thought after all.

  “Are you feeling better?” I asked awkwardly. “Kristle said you were feeling sick.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was just one of those things.”

  “My mom came back,” I said. “We got back to the cottage and her car was there and . . .” I trailed off. DeeDee’s eyes were unfamiliar.

  “The thing is,” she said, “I have to work today. It’s really busy in there. Kristle’s playing hooky with your brother and Olay’s a disaster.”

  “It’s cool,” I said. “Tomorrow or something?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe? Let’s play it by ear, okay?”

  “Cool,” I said. “Definitely. For sure.”

  DeeDee gave me a kiss on the cheek and walked back down the pier toward the restaurant. I climbed over the rail and dropped into the sand, where I lay for a while before getting up and moving on.

  When I came upon Dad a mile down the beach, his metal detector was lying in the sand. He was kneeling, digging a hole. He didn’t see me coming and soon I was just a few feet away, standing over him in his labors. He was concentrating hard, flinging handfuls of sand into a pile next to him, his mouth clenched, brow furrowed. His forehead was dripping with sweat. I was waiting for him to look up and see me. He didn’t.

  “So what are you actually looking for?” I asked after a while, when it was clear that he might keep going forever without ever realizing I was there.

  Dad startled at the sound of my voice. He was thrown off-balance and fell back onto his haunches, where he looked up at me sheepishly like someone who’d been caught at something.<
br />
  “Hey there, Tiger,” he said, trying to play it off. “How’s your day going?”

  “Terrible actually,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked again. It wasn’t rhetorical, even though it seemed that way. I was starting to get the feeling that the treasure-hunting thing was more than just another one of his stupid hobbies. It was different from the yoga and the knitting circle and the book club, all of which he’d given up in a matter of weeks.

  This time he had committed himself, falling deeper and deeper into it every day. He was truly searching. And not just the general kind of searching either. Seeing the way he was digging, it dawned on me that he was trying to find something specific—something more than the piles of gold he’d mentioned when he’d first started his quest.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked him when he didn’t answer me. “What’s the treasure?”

  “Blackbeard’s treasure,” he said, sounding both pleased that I was interested and mildly frustrated that I had to ask. “People have been looking for it for centuries. It’s got to be around here somewhere.”

  This was getting ridiculous. “All that stuff you’ve been bringing home doesn’t look like Blackbeard’s treasure,” I said. “Or anyone’s treasure. Don’t you think you’ll know it when you find it? It’s got to be sort of impressive.”

  Dad was still digging. He would humor me, but he had more important tasks at hand than answering my dumb, obvious questions.

  “You know, Tiger,” he said, looking up at me for just a second as he tossed a handful of sand. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been here.”

  I was surprised. I’d figured that my father had picked this beach as our destination spot through one of his usual decision-making methods: a Groupon or a flyer posted on a telephone pole or a travel segment on the local news channel. It hadn’t occurred to me that he had wanted to come back to a place that had once been good to him.