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I saw Rain flinch, not sure whether to jump in and rescind the invitation. I decided to throw her a lifeline.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m just waking up.”
She paused, as if considering whether to say it. “Do you want to come?”
I was so surprised to hear her actually offer. I did. “Really?”
“Don’t make me ask twice.”
When my sister said they were going to the park, she meant they were going to Montauk Point Park. It was a state park on the easternmost tip of the Hamptons. There were places to fish and trails for hiking. Picnic tables and a great playground. And, of course, it was adjacent to the fabled Montauk Point Lighthouse, which was something of a tourist destination, and also Rain’s favorite place in the Hamptons. Most people liked that it was pretty—an imposing force on top of its hill—but Rain loved its history. I always wished she had volunteered at the museum there while we were growing up so she could bother other people with all the details, not just me.
Every Sunday, Rain and I bagged sandwiches for lunch and went to the lighthouse. While we were there, we agreed that there would be no fighting. Not about Dad, not about his money troubles (quickly becoming ours), not about anything. One Sunday, Rain told my father we were heading there at precisely the wrong moment. He was having trouble with a movie score he was working on, and he decided that the lighthouse had become bad luck. He went so far as to ask Rain not to go—in the way he asked for things, which was to tell her.
It was the first time I’d ever heard her refuse him. She reminded him that we had been going to the lighthouse long before the rules were in place—that he used to take us. That maybe the unlucky part didn’t come from us going, but from his not going.
He seemed wooed by that argument. When we left for the lighthouse, my father even came along. Or, rather, my father dropped us there. Because, on the way, he had an idea for his score and went immediately back home. Also, he had a rule about being off the property for too many hours on Sunday, and he probably didn’t want to risk losing track.
Rain chalked i
t up to a victory. It made it harder to convince her that validating his insanity was just the opposite—and the very way that his insanity could trap her too. When I told her she should have just told him the way it was, she put up her hands and said, It netted the same result. I kept my lighthouse safe. She wasn’t going to be forced to justify the means by which she did it—not in her favorite place, not in the one place we promised we wouldn’t fight.
So it made it a little weird to be there with her now—her daughter with us, so many years later—when we weren’t even close enough to fight, and we didn’t particularly want to make up.
We sat on the rocks, Sammy between us, and had peanut butter pie that Rain had made.
If peanut butter pie sounds elegant—if you’re thinking of a professional mix of whipped peanut butter and homemade crust—that’s not the kind I speak of. Rain’s pie was peanut butter stuffed into cupcake liners with smushed bananas and Hershey’s chocolate chunks. Old-school. And, really, not even pie. She would freeze the whole enterprise, and it would come out tasting like the sweetest, creamiest brownie you’d ever tasted.
Her peanut butter pie had been my favorite treat growing up, and it felt like a gesture when she took it out of the bag.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it tasted wrong. The chocolate chunks were bitter. The bananas were too ripe, or not ripe enough. And the peanut butter tasted sour. Could peanut butter go sour? Apparently Rain’s had.
Sammy finished her second piece. “This is great, Mom,” she said.
Rain licked her wrapper clean. “It’s pretty good, right?” she said.
I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I nodded enthusiastically. And asked for another.
“Mom, can I go down to the water?” Sammy asked.
“Go ahead,” Rain said. “Just stay close.”
Sammy ran down the hill, and it seemed like she was heading toward a group of kids who were eating pizza. Instead she turned away from them, and started picking flowers alone.
I looked at Rain.
She put her hands up to stop me. “Don’t say it.”
“I’m just sitting here, eating pie.”
“I know she doesn’t have a lot of friends,” she said. “She’s different.”
“That’s a good thing,” I said.
“I think so.” She looked over and caught me playing with the wrapper. “What are you doing?”
“Savoring it.”
She shot me a look, trying to decide whether she believed that. “Anyway, I never had a lot of friends growing up. And I’m fine.”
