“Don’t have much. I got a lady friend here. My brother knows where I am. He’s come to visit me once or twice.”
Imogen wrinkled her forehead. “Do you ever want to go back?”
The man shook his head. “I never think about it. You stay away long enough, there doesn’t seem like much to go back for.”
They spent the next three days sitting by the enormous curving pool, surrounded by umbrellas and turquoise lounge chairs. Jule was twined around Imogen’s neck. They read. Imogen watched YouTube videos on cooking techniques. Jule worked out in the gym. Imogen got spa treatments. They swam and walked on the beach.
Imogen drank a lot. She had waiters bringing her margaritas poolside. But she didn’t seem sad. The magic feeling of their initial escape from Martha’s Vineyard threaded itself through the days. As far as Jule could tell, they were triumphant. This was the life Imogen described herself as wanting, free of ambition and expectations, with nobody to please and nobody to disappoint. The two of them just existed, and the days were slow and tasted of coconut.
Late on the fourth night, Jule and Immie sat with their feet in the hot tub, just as they had so many nights at Immie’s house on the Vineyard. “Maybe I should go back to New York,” said Imogen thoughtfully. “I should see my parents.” They had eaten dinner a while ago. She had a margarita in a plastic cup with a lid and a straw.
“No, don’t,” said Jule. “Stay here with me.”
“That guy in the bar the other night? He said the longer you don’t go back, the less there is to go back to.” Imogen stood, then, and pulled off her shirt and shorts. She wore a gunmetal one-piece with a gold hoop at the chest and a deep plunge. She sank her body slowly into the hot tub. “I don’t want there to be nothing left. With my mom and dad. But I also hate being there. They just—they make me so sad. Last time I was home, did I tell you this? About winter break?”
“No.”
“I left school and I was so glad to get away. I had failed political science. Brooke and Vivian were squabbling all the time. Isaac had dumped me. And when I got home, my dad was way more sick than I’d expected. My mom was in tears all the time. My stupid pregnancy scare and friendship drama and boyfriend problems and bad grades—it was all too trivial to even mention. My dad was shriveled into himself, breathing from his oxygen tank. The kitchen table was covered in pill bottles. One day he clutched my arm and whispered, ‘Bring your old man a babka.’ ”
“What’s a babka?”
“You never had babka? It’s like a cinnamon roll times forty.”
“Did you bring him one?”
“I went out and bought six babkas, and gave him one every day till winter break was over. It gave me something to do for him, when there wasn’t anything, really, to do….Then the morning I left, while my mom was driving me up to Vassar, I got hit with dread. I didn’t want to see Vivian. Or Brooke. Or Isaac. College seemed pointless, like a finishing school where I was going to learn to be the kind of daughter my mother wanted me to be. Or the kind of girl Isaac wanted me to be. But not whatIwanted to be, at all. As soon as she left, I called a taxi and went to the Vineyard.”
“Why there?”
“An escape. We had been on vacation there when I was little. After the first couple days I let my phone go dead. I didn’t want to answer to anybody. I know that must sound selfish, but I had to do something radical. With my dad that sick, I hadn’t talked to anyone about my problems. The only way I could figure myself out was to try what life was likeaway.Without all those other people wanting things from me, being disappointed in me. And then I just stayed. I had been living in the hotel for a month when I realized I wasn’t going back. I emailed my parents that I was okay, and I rented the house.”
“How did they react?”
“A thousand billion emails and texts. ‘Please come home, just for a couple days. We’ll pay for the plane.’ ‘Your father wants to know why you don’t return his calls.’ That kind of thing. My dad’s dialysis prevented them from coming to the Vineyard, but they were literally harassing me.” Immie sighed. “I blocked their texts. I stopped thinking about them. It felt like magic, just switching those thoughts off. Being able not to think about them saved me, somehow. I might be a terrible person, but it was so nice, Jule, not to feel guilty anymore.”
“I don’t think you’re a terrible person,” Jule said. “You wanted to change your life. You had to do something extreme to become the person you’re becoming.”
“Exactly.” Immie touched Jule’s knee with her wet hand. “Now, what about you?” It was Imogen’s usual pattern, to talk in a long ramble until she had thoroughly sorted through an idea, then, tired, to ask a question.
“I’m not going back,” said Jule. “Not ever.”
“It’s that bad back home?” Immie asked, searching Jule’s face.
Jule thought for a bright second then that someone could love her, and that she could love herself and deserve it all. Immie would understand anything Jule said just now. Anything.
“We’re the same,” she ventured. “I don’t want to be that person I was, growing up. I want to be the me who’s here, now. With you.” It was as true a statement as she knew how to make.
Immie leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Families are effed up the world over.”
Jule’s words rushed out of her. “We’re each other’s family now. I am yours and you can be mine.”
She waited. Looked at Immie.
Imogen was supposed to say they were like sisters.
Imogen was supposed to say they were friends for life and that yes, they were family.
They had just talked so intimately, and Imogen was supposed to promise that she would never leave Jule like she’d just left Forrest, like she’d left her mother and her father.
