says. I like to feel the sun on me. It’s a nice day.
Okay, Kid.
He takes his hands off her legs and she feels the world has just ended. He walks to his truck and she doesn’t look but she hears the engine start. He pulls up alongside the Suburban and winks from his open window. Take it easy, Kid.
She jumps off the hood of her car and moves to mash the five and the single into his window. She hasn’t yet considered how difficult it will be to clean the crème off the ridges of the car floor where it will have melted. She doesn’t think about the pieces of it in her hair. She tries to mash the bills through the window but he drives off while she’s doing it and the bills remain in her hand.
Anyhow, she will say later to the women at the conference table in the doctor’s office, I stayed out there another thirty minutes or so, just watching the trees until it got dark and I was late getting home.
She left the six dollars on the ground. A five and a one, curled and green, like leaves that died at the height of their color.
I should have put a rock on the money or something so he’d know, if he came back, that I didn’t take it, she says. But I didn’t. I just left it there and it blew away.
Sloane
On the island there is a very good farmers’ market that sells the butter lettuces and the mustard greens and the baby kale from the individual farms. Creamy lobster salad made with lobes of claw meat, larger than fists.
It was in the large, chilly produce department of this market that Sloane suddenly saw the woman who made her feel like absolute garbage. She had not seen this woman in a long time, had not had any contact since the text the woman had sent a year ago, which Sloane received shortly before she arrived in this very same market, so that the aisles of food themselves felt haunted.
Jenny wore jeans and a yoga wrap under her winter jacket. She was a woman who carried babies in slings effortlessly, who could tie one child to her back and breast-feed a second one while making oatmeal cookies. She had the beauty that was particular to the island, calling to mind yoga in the sunshine and nut milks.
Both women were pushing carts of food. Sloane felt ridiculous, with her bags of frozen kale and her almond butter.
Can we talk? Jenny said loudly, as though this were the second time she was asking. Perhaps Sloane, momentarily lost in her own thoughts, hadn’t heard her the first time. The balloon inside Sloane’s chest deflated a bit.
Yes, she said. Do you want to come to my house?
Jenny nodded. Both women resumed their shopping. Sloane picked out several small things she didn’t need. Chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. Gluten-free fig bars. Afterward, Jenny followed Sloane home. They parked and Sloane headed for her front door. Jenny got out of her car.
Wait, she said. I don’t want to go into your house.
Sloane stood on her front stoop, shivering. She realized that her house was haunted for Jenny the way the market was haunted for her. Though not in the same way.
Do you want to get into my car? Sloane asked.
Jenny agreed and they got into the SUV. Sloane turned the engine on and adjusted the heat so that it would blow onto their legs and not their faces.
For a little while they were both quiet. Sloane listened to the sound of the heat blowing and the sound of her own breathing, and Jenny’s. For a few weeks she’d been worried about her daughter’s eyesight. Her youngest had been born with Group B streptococcus, an infection passed from the mother in the womb. The child developed late-onset sepsis, which in turn led to meningitis a week after her birth. The doctor explained to Sloane that such babies are at risk of losing their hearing or their eyesight, of developing learning disabilities and severe neurological problems later in life. Luckily, they treated the child with intravenous antibiotics and she had been otherwise healthy enough to beat the odds. But these past few weeks the child had been complaining of the world blurring before her eyes.
Why? Jenny said, breaking the quiet.
Sloane immediately shook her head, as though she knew that would be the first question. Jenny had turned to look at her, to glare.