“I’m still deciding,” I tell her.
“It’s ice cream. There are no wrong choices.”
Easy for you to say, I think. Perfect Rose Gardner, who has never made a wrong choice in her life, except maybe the one that led to my birth. Dating my father was, by all accounts, a mistake, but even that one feels slightly like my fault.
An older woman shuffles by, leaning on her cart as if it’s a substitute walker. She’s wearing a red shawl that looks almost like a cape. Long, mismatched turquoise necklaces hang from her neck, knotting together like roots of a tree. She winks at me as she scoots down the aisle, stopping to buy a bag of frozen cherries three doors down.
I freeze, panicked. Does this strange woman somehow know me, or is she in the habit of winking at strangers? Regardless, I look away. The last thing I need is to run into someone I know. The only people I want to see tonight are Ben & Jerry, and even them, only in passing.
I grab a mint chocolate chip container from the freezer and absentmindedly scratch lines into the frost on the lid with my thumbnail, a nervous habit.
“Okay,” I say, letting out a breath. “Ready. Let’s get out of here. Quick.”
“You’re being so dramatic,” says Mom, but she’s smiling. She puts an arm over my shoulders, and the weight is comforting. Even still, she is taller than me.
“Don’t be worried if I suddenly sprint away. It’s just because I’ve seen someone I know,” I warn her as we walk toward checkout.
“You would really sprint out of here?”
“Absolutely. I’ll set a world record.”
Mom laughs. “You ran a fifteen-minute mile in your high school gym class. Sweetie, I love you, but you’re not exactly an athlete.”
“Well, that was before I had the motivation of avoiding further public humiliation.”
Mom rolls her eyes but I know she’s amused. She’s used to my dramatics, but this time, I’m serious.
In a town as small as Nantucket, the likelihood of bumping into someone familiar is high, and I cannot afford those odds right now. If I see someone I know, they’ll ask how I am, which will lead into one of two outcomes: me either lying or crying. I can imagine the conversation now.
How are you? “Oh, fine, I just decided to abandon my lease and crash with my mom all summer because my life is an absolute and total disaster!”
I lost my job in New York City two weeks ago. When I saw the email, I fainted on the subway. It was a real dramatic faint, too—cinematic even. I almost wish there was security footage. When I first moved to the city, I thought, like all young people think, that I was going to be something—make something of myself, become the “artist” I always dreamed of—but instead, there I was, passed out on the ground of the 4 train, my unconscious lips kissing the dirty ground.
I think about that moment now as we make our way to the front of the store. I’ve already recounted the story several times, smoothed it into a polished comedic bit.
“And that’s how I discovered rock bottom tastes exactly like the floor of the subway!” I said to Rose’s friends the night I arrived on island.
We were grabbing drinks at Cru, an upscale waterfront bar right on the docks downtown. The chilled white wine created a pleasant condensation on the glass. Everyone roared with laughter and I laughed, too. A light wind was blowing off the harbor, and I couldhear the honking of yachts pulling into place. It was hard to feel the full impact of failure in a setting like that, with the breeze cooling my forehead, the wine warming my chest.
This is a skill my Great-Aunt Lottie taught me: “People can’t laugh at you if you beat them to it. The line between humor and tragedy is narrow, so for as long as you can, you might as well choose the funny story.”
However, today, it’s harder to find the humorous angle. Maybe that’s because Lottie isn’t here to remind me of it. The thought of her dislodges something heavy in my chest. We lost her a year ago, and yet sometimes it still doesn’t feel real. This is our first summer without her. She fought the cancer for six years. Still, it wasn’t enough.
Rose squeezes my shoulder, as if she can sense my train of thought. “I’m going to grab some detergent quick,” she says, starting to walk away. “I think we’re running low.”
“No!” I whisper-shout. “Mom, let’s get out of here.”
She turns to face me, already searching for the aisle. “You took ten minutes to pick out an ice cream flavor and I can’t stop to grab some basic household necessities?”
She’s right, of course. Rose is always right, but it’s hard to rationalize the panic radiating in my body. We planned to stop here briefly on my way to drop off Mom downtown to meet up with her friend. Despite her invitation to join them, I’ve decided to stay home and chauffeur her there and back instead. We only have one car and the cost of taxis is outrageous—sometimes up to fifty dollars for a fifteen-minute, seven-mile drive. My reward for my services is to buy myself a pint of ice cream with the leftover gas money. The grocery store is closing in ten minutes. Hence, this brief pit stop.
My eyes dart across the mostly empty aisles as I follow Rose. Whenever I have friends visit, they always marvel at how ordinary the grocery store is, as if something this common, this commercial,couldn’t possibly exist on an island thirty miles out to sea, amidst the sand dunes and pink flowers and manicured hedges. Chains were banned in 2006, so most of the other stores and boutiques on Nantucket are now independently owned.
Real tourism doesn’t start until July when kids get off from school and families swarm the island. The only reason there’s activity at all is that it’s Figawi weekend, a sailing race that begins in the Cape at Hyannis Yacht Club and loops its way to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Legend has it the regatta got its name in 1971 when a couple of friends had an impromptu race across the Nantucket Sound, and upon seeing the rainy, chilly, and notoriously foggy weather conditions, shouted, “Where the fuck are we?” which, with the winds and the accents, sounded a little like “Where the Figawi?”
Every other year, I would be participating in the festivities, but that was before I ruined my life.
I catch up to Rose in the cleaning aisle. She’s inspecting the shelf, looking for the fragrance-free brand she likes.
