The Throwback List Page 12

  Eat the giant sundae at Frosty’s

  TO BE COMPLETED

  Surf the Point

  Host a dinner party

  Have a glitter fight

  Try everything on the menu at Days

  Do a keg stand

  Play hide-and-seek in public

  Break something with a sledgehammer

  Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)

  Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade

  Eat the giant sundae at Frosty’s

  Pose like a pinup girl

  Get a pet

  Learn an entire dance routine

  Eat breakfast at midnight

  Get stoned

  Have a bonfire

  Dig up the time capsule

  “I didn’t know that Cruz moved into the apartment over Harbor Cove!” Bianca’s mother followed her daughter through the house, still caught in the explanation she had started the second the front door opened. “You move outside of town, just five minutes away, and everyone stops telling you anything! How am I supposed to know where people live if they don’t tell me?”

  Where Lita and Bee were wide, Bonnie Boria was lithe—a sleeker version of her father. A strand of henna-black hair stuck to the new-to-her diamond on her left hand. She carelessly tore it away. “What’s an alcoholic doing living over a bar?”

  “I think you just answered your own question,” Bee said, the ice cream in her stomach churning. When she had the time, she would feel awful about running away from brunch.

  For now, Lita’s screeching tantrum took precedence.

  The downstairs bedroom was illuminated by curtains ripped to one side. The bedding had already been thrown into a heap, blankets shaken within an inch of their life, sheets untucked. In the center of it all, Lita raged.

  “Who are you to say no?” Lita shouted, pushing over her laundry hamper. Dirty socks and wadded-up yoga pants rolled across the carpet.

  “Mama,” Bonnie said in a placating singsong that Bianca found annoying, so sure as shit Lita wasn’t going to like it.

  Bee stepped between her mother and grandmother, using the fullness of her hips to block her mother from entering the room and causing more damage. “Mom. I have this. It’s me she’s mad at. Go home. Tell Tony hi from us.”

  She could tell her mother wanted to argue, but Bee didn’t have time to watch her mom debate between what was right and what was easiest.

  Bianca set to work, hunching over to scoop up the mess as Lita made it.

  “You are the child!” Lita continued, tearing the pillows from her bed. “I am the grown-up!”

  “No,” Bee said, soft but firm. “I am the grown-up and you are the grown-up. It’s too many cooks in the kitchen.”

  “I don’t want to go into your stupid kitchen. Keep it. Keep your pizza and your house and your fat husband. I wanted to go see my friend.”

  Lita kicked at a chenille blanket. Seeing a fall risk, Bee dove to grab it.

  “You wanted to go someplace with stairs! Twenty stairs to get inside? No! Absolutely not! Cruz can come to you. You don’t have to walk up to his teeny-tiny apartment to see him.”

  You couldn’t, Bee didn’t say. Because that was another fight. Fights with Lita were Russian nesting dolls. Fights within complaints within advice within a longer-running tournament called Matriarch.

  There couldn’t be three cooks. How in the world could there be three moms?

  The front door slammed shut.

  Well. They were back down to two again.

  “I wanted to go anywhere.” Lita stressed the word, shaking her clawed hands in Bianca’s face. “Outside. Inside. Somewhere else. Smell someone else’s air. Someone else’s nasty perfume plugs.”

  Bee collapsed on the corner of the bed, holding the hamper in front of her stomach. “I took the air freshener out of your bathroom, Lita. I have already apologized. But I’m not unplugging them from upstairs because you don’t like them. You’re not supposed to go up there at all. No stairs.”

  “What life is this?” Lita was shouting again, her tiny steps moving her furious and snail-like in the other direction. “Locked up, penned in. Chickens live better than I do now. I watched a whole movie about how worried everyone is about the chickens. What about me? Rosa, a grown woman? A human being! Is this my thanks for giving you and your mother my house?”

  Seventeen years ago! Bianca mentally screamed.

  “I didn’t ask for your house, Lita. I was a little girl then.”

  Lita pinched at the air at ear height, a motion that would have made Bianca’s child self scream and cry in fright. “You’re still a little girl! A little brat! Leaving me here all day long!”

  The sharp plastic cutouts of the hamper sank into the pale undersides of Bee’s arms. I’m doing my best. I’m doing my best. I’m doing my best.

  “Cruz was wrong to promise you a visit to his place,” she said in between long, even breaths. “I made it very clear when I scheduled it with him that he was going to visit you here.”

  “Because you are not listening! I do not want to be here!” Lita said, clapping between the words, a move she had learned from TV. Bee was not a fan of anything that made Lita louder. “You don’t want me to have friends. You forbid the artists from talking to me—”

  “I forbade them from listening to you—”

  “That’s what I’m saying!”

  Bee had to shout now, just to finish her point. Hamper falling aside, she stood for higher ground. “I forbade them from taking direction from you. You can’t manage the store out from under me. But you can talk to them about anything else.”

  “As long as it is where you want, when you want. When you want to go play with your friends, then you send me your mother. Otherwise I’m alone.”

  “What more can I do, Lita? Put you in a geriatric play group?”

  “Put that cruel tongue back in your mouth.” This she didn’t shout. This was a note played so gently that it slipped through the bars of Bianca’s rib cage and found the tender meat of her heart.

  This hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked. Bianca’s stomach turned to lead—ice cream and all—pulling her down toward the floor. “It’s just. I don’t. I can’t.”

  Lita wouldn’t look at her. “Go, go. You want to steal my turn to be sad? Go cry somewhere else. I’m crying in this room. My room. The only room I have left.”

  Bee swallowed her screams until she got upstairs and let them loose into the memory foam of Birdy’s pillow. She found it trapped sound better than the couch cushions.

  Across the hall, in the not-quite guest room that Bee still thought of as Mom’s Room, she found Birdy hiding among his bachelor flotsam. Gaming consoles going back decades. Acoustic guitars he bought when he left Ohio to play on the beach at sunset. A Warcraft tapestry that was truly too ugly to live in any other room of the house.

  Sitting on the futon he insisted was a daybed, Birdy watched his heavy black laptop boot up. The keyboard flashed menacingly red, then faintly blue.

  Any greeting was stolen by a stream of curses coming up through the floor. Lita, swearing at the ceiling again. Bee couldn’t hear the words, so she wasn’t sure if they were aimed at her or just making a pit stop on their way up to Tito in heaven.

  She leaned her head against the wall next to the framed photo of Birdy Bash ’98—the one with the Harlem Globetrotters; Birdy family reunions were named like Friends episodes.

  “And you want a baby,” she said, monotone. She flipped the light switch. The curtains in here were Bonnie-purchased, royal purple and thick enough to block out the ocean.

  Birdy refused to acknowledge the change of brightness. He barely raised his eyes from the screen. “And you want to wait until your grandmother can’t know your baby?”

  “That’s cruel.” She heard Lita’s vocabulary in her mouth and wanted to rinse it out with corrosive soap. Her anger was beginning to crumble into a more tolerable weariness. The corners of her eyes tw
itched again. She closed them with a sigh. “She can’t even walk up here to keep yelling at me. How was she going to go up to a third-story studio in the flats?”

  Birdy’s voice softened. “She’ll calm down by dinner. Seeing Autumn makes her happy.”

  Bee’s eyes popped open. “Family dinner. Five thirty.” She flipped through her schedule on her smartwatch, until she found the slow-cooker app. Tonight’s turkey chili had another four hours before it needed her attention again. Thank God. “I doubt Mom will be back. I was sharp with her.”

  “You were being efficient. She’ll understand.”

  “That doesn’t mean she won’t sulk while she understands. If she doesn’t come, there’s no dessert.”

  “Blergh,” Birdy huffed, puffing out his cheeks. “Please. The Sunday Sundae Surprise was meant for no fewer than twelve people.”

  Bee tugged on the ends of her hair. “Lita will be expecting dessert. I’ll pick something up. Just in case.”

  She stepped out of her shoes, the black-and-white prison stripes of her socks cutting around stacks of board games they’d never played. She sat down on the other side of the futon, kicking her heels against the frame. “It wasn’t this hard before, Birdy. When Tito was alive, she wasn’t like this.”

  “She’s angrier than she was then. So are you. The world is different. You’re in a different place in it. Emotionally if not literally.”

  Bianca didn’t let herself think about other houses. She didn’t count how many bedrooms other people had or look at dream houses on HGTV.

  But when she saw the nubby beige carpet now, she didn’t see the familiar ground of her childhood. She saw the disappointment in Birdy’s face as he’d realized it was in every room.

  Who puts wall-to-wall carpet in a beach house?

  Bee had never considered it odd before. Now she saw it as a sand trap that wasn’t very pretty, especially the bald patches from where dried nail polish had been cut away over the years.

  Bee had never even thought of her house as a beach house until Birdy moved in. She didn’t think about the ocean much at all. It was part of the endless sky.

  “Jo seems nice. I get why the Kelly kids like her so much.”

  Bee gave a grudging agreement.

  “Can we talk about the baby thing now?” Birdy asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she snapped. “I’m already in a screaming fight with someone right now. Can you take a number?”

  He inched away from her, looking hurt. “Not picking a fight with you, Bee. Just seemed pretty final for something we’ve literally never talked about.”

  “That’s not true,” she dissented. “We talked about talking about it.”

  It.

  They weren’t ready for a baby. They weren’t even ready to say baby.

  It had always been something to be dealt with in the future.

  The first thing we’ll do when we get back from our honeymoon is write out our five-year plan, Bee had promised once. We’ll take an extra day off and everything. I’ll buy a fancy planner with stickers.

  Well, the honeymoon was canceled, and her decision was made.

  At brunch, she hadn’t even meant to say that she didn’t want a baby right now. It was supposed to be a joke. Not a funny joke, sure, but a joke that would release some of the steam inside her. Instead, she found the truth of it as she was talking.

  No babies. No pets. No more roommates. No more patients. She was not taking on any more dependents, thanks. Apply again later.

  “It’s not a priority right now, Bobby,” she muttered, using the intimacy of his first name as a dead bolt on the conversation. In Oregon, Bobby only existed behind closed doors. And if his pants were on, it was generally bad news.

  “I hear you,” he said.

  A month of couple’s counseling had been required before she agreed to set a wedding date. She had never been in love before. She had to make sure she wasn’t buying a lemon. To date, it was the best money Bee had ever spent—including her Drybar Teasing Brush.

  The futon groaned as he shifted away from her. “I told Benji and Blakely that I’d join them for a game. Okay?”

  Bianca Boria-Birdy Grown Woman thought, It will be good for him to work through his feelings with his brothers, however indirectly.

  Bianca Boria-Birdy Recently-Yelled-at Only Child thought, You’re going to play video games NOW?

  Both statements were allowed to be true at the same time.

  Everyone to their separate corners: Birdy throwing his feelings into an MMORPG hole, Lita working herself up for a hate-nap, Bonnie driving back to Tony.

  Bianca, alone.

  It was time to scream into another pillow.

  The fact was that the last two years had aged Lita more than the ten before. Losing her husband had hardened her. Losing her independence had shriveled her steps and stolen her patience. Last year, at Bianca’s wedding in a rented mansion in Portland, Lita had become so frustrated by not being able to dance that she quit the reception entirely, demanding that Bonnie drive her the two hours back to Sandy Point. Bee and Birdy had cut their cake without any of Bee’s family present.

  Not that cake cutting was as important as her grandmother’s well-being. Bee was grateful that she had anybody present in the sea of Birdy relatives.

  Maybe she had sheltered Lita too much. If Cruz and the other artists had seen her more since she moved out of the shop, they would understand why Bee was always running home, checking her watch, writing down reminders.

  Maybe if they knew how hard it was, they could help instead of making more problems.

  She couldn’t decide whether to call Cruz or wait until they were at work together to go over the specifics of why today had failed. Was she supposed to approach him as his boss, disappointed that he couldn’t follow a very simple instruction OR was she supposed to approach him as the granddaughter of an infirm old lady who wasn’t as strong as he remembered?

  Hungry for distraction, she opened Instagram.

  Bianca was more curious about the Throwback List than she wanted to be. Probably because her name was at the top of it, the very first thing Jo had thought of. After a week of avoiding it, she finally gave in and searched for Jo’s account.

  She opened the picture of the TP tree. It wasn’t that Bee didn’t know what it would look like—true to her word, Jo messaged her the photo days ago—but she couldn’t help but be curious about seeing her house through someone else’s eyes.

  Item one: TP Bianca’s House.

  I’ve been missing my GymClass app since moving home. Does anyone else think TP-ing people you were jealous of in high school could be the next exercise fad? #TheThrowbackList.

  Jo Freeman had been jealous of her? The idea made Bee want to guffaw. Jo had grown up with everything Bee hadn’t: two parents, a sibling, friends, relationships. Their high school yearbooks were full of Jo—in clubs, at events, with Autumn or Wren Vos. The only after-school events Bianca got to go to were honor society meetings. When she decided that she wanted to go to prom, she spent months justifying it to the council of elders that was Lita, Tito, and Bonnie. Even then, a new dress was vetoed because the shop’s heater was on the fritz and it had been a particularly brisk May.

  Jo’s parents threw her and Autumn a sober afterparty at their then art gallery on the boardwalk. Bee hadn’t even garnered an invite to it.

  Item two: Get belly button pierced.

  Thanks so much to Bianca, my next-door neighbor and manager at the Salty Dog. First she put up with my hella petty first task (she was way more understanding than she had to be when I went to take the toilet paper out of her tree!) and now she’s helping me conquer item number two: getting my belly button pierced!

  Fun fact: Bee and I have known each other since second grade! I had no idea she had such steady hands. #TheThrowbackList.

  Breaking the first rule of internet, Bee read the comments.

  CUTE

  You’re so brave, I could never!

  Now I wa
nt to see MY high school friends!

  But we weren’t friends in high school, Bee thought. We’re barely friends now.

  Not that it stopped Autumn from sending out a follow-up text to get everyone on board with the next list item.

  AUTUMN: Introductory group text! Woo-hoo! What should our title be? The Sunday Sundae Surprised? I’m open to suggestions.

  Also, all hands on deck for Jo’s dinner party at Surf & Saucer next Friday! Who’s in?

  BIRDY: Frosty’s Fallen Heroes Assemble! Sounds fun! Let us know if we can bring anything!

  Bianca glared at the door. Birdy hadn’t quite mastered the art of asking her if she wanted to socialize as much as he did. Possibly because he knew the answer was no.

  BIANCA: If I can find a new Lita sitter, yes.

  Bee wasn’t wholly convinced that Jo wanted to be friends with her personally—rather than just as an Autumn tagalong. However, she was willing to participate out of curiosity or spite. Whichever ended up more applicable.

  Besides, it had been a long time since she had multiple nonwork, nonfamily plans in one week. It was a little like having a real social life.

  “You’re sure we shouldn’t be worried about Bianca running off like that?” Jo asked.

  “Oh no,” Autumn said, zipping her puffy jacket to her neck. Her insides were frozen solid with ice cream. “Bee’s always rushing to handle something. In college, she used to disappear every time someone called in sick to the pizza place she managed. Even in the middle of a party, if work called, she left. She’s too responsible for her own good. I’m more worried about them moving their honeymoon again. Bee was really looking forward to Hawaii.”

  “Because she can’t get enough of the same ocean in her front yard?” Jo asked.

  Autumn shoved her shoulder. “Not everyone hates the beach, Jo. Have you learned to like seafood yet?”

  Her friend snorted. “Nope. The only thing I like fishy is boys.”

  As they crossed the street, leaving the boardwalk behind them, Autumn’s heart sang a brass-band version of “Fortuosity.”

  Florencio refusing to join them and the Birdys running off couldn’t dampen the feeling of walking up Main Street, the ocean splashing behind her. This was the view she had imagined when she was homesick a thousand miles away in unknowably large Los Angeles. This was her favorite street in the world.