“Martha!” But they were all laughing, not really annoyed, just thrilled with their own little game they’d created.
Had they ever slept during those summers? They must have at some point, but Claire didn’t remember it. She remembered sandy beds and Cathy telling them stories about girls that were kidnapped. “I knew a girl,” she said, “that was taken right out of her room, pulled right through the window.”
“You did not,” Claire said. But she wasn’t sure. Cathy always sounded sure.
Usually, as they were drifting off to sleep, Drew or Max would fart loudly and all the girls would scream, and there’d be a big to-do over airing out the room and running into the hall. Weezy and Maureen tried their best to get them back to their beds, yelling threats and using their full names, “Claire Margaret, Martha Maureen, Catherine Mary.” It rarely worked.
During the days, they’d run as a pack, going to the beach and then to the boardwalk to play skeet ball and walk around. The girls would get wrapped braids in their hair, feeling very special and exotic when school started and they still had a tiny seashell attached to their hair.
They always went to the same little candy store. It was made to look like one of those old-fashioned places, with bins of colored candy balls, swizzle sticks, and fudge. They always chose Atomic FireBalls and Super Lemons—candy that was more pain than pleasure, that tested the will of all the sunburned kids that ate it. They’d stand in a circle outside the store, count to three, and pop the little sugar balls into their mouths. They’d groan and scream, wriggle back and forth and bend over laughing in a mix of agony and total pleasure, drooling colored sugar and waiting to see who could keep the candy in their mouth the longest. Martha always won. Usually the others would have to spit the candy out in their hands, take a break, and try again.
It was funny—her cousins hadn’t come to the shore in years, but whenever she thought about it, she imagined them there. The house had been redone and the sets of bunk beds in the big room replaced with a huge king bed. But still, when Claire pictured the house, she saw all of them bunked down in the big room, scaring the bejeezus out of each other and laughing until they thought they were going to die.
THEY ARRIVED AT THE HOUSE a little after five o’clock, and when they opened the front door, they heard music playing and saw smoke coming from the back patio. They heard laughing, and even though they all knew it was Max because his car was right out front, and because he’d told them he’d arrived the night before, Weezy stepped in nervously and called, “Hello? Max?” as if an intruder had broken into the house and started grilling out back.
Max appeared at the screen door with a big smile on his face. “Hello, family,” he said. He raised a spatula in the air. “Cleo and I decided to cook you a welcome meal!”
He was pretty drunk, Claire could tell, and she wondered what time he’d started drinking. Weezy just clapped her hands together. “Oh, Max,” she said. “How sweet is that?”
It would, no doubt, be something she talked about for months, the way Max cooked for them out of the blue; went to the grocery store all by himself, with no one asking (as if he were an incompetent), and then made dinner, like he was performing a miracle of some sort. Once, when Max was in high school, he’d folded towels that were in the dryer and Weezy had gone on about it for weeks, until Martha said, “Claire and I fold laundry all the time,” to try to shut her up. It was one of the few times that they’d been on the same side, Claire and Martha, but they were just so sick of listening to Weezy talk about Max and his amazing laundry abilities.
Max turned to Claire and gave her a hug that lifted her off the ground. “Clairey!” he said. “Clairey’s here.” He set her down gently and Claire laughed. This was, of course, why he was Weezy’s favorite, after all. He was adorable and charming, even when a little bit tipsy—maybe especially when he was a little bit tipsy. He turned to Martha and bowed. “Welcome, miss,” he said.
Cleo walked in from the patio then, carrying an empty platter and