The Smart One (14 page)

Weezy was telling them all to go. “Have fun,” she said over and over. She was so happy to have all of her kids heading out together, especially happy to have Martha be a part of it, and so she took the plates out of Claire’s hands as she tried to clear the table, and said, “Leave this for me. Just go have fun.”

THE CASINO WAS FULL OF
crazy people. Crazy, dirty people. Claire noticed that an abnormally high percentage of people were missing a limb. They’d gone to the Taj Mahal casino partly because it was one they’d heard of and partly because in the car Cleo had said she’d heard it was beautiful there.

“Beautiful?” Claire had asked. “I’m not sure any casino can be called beautiful, but sure, we can go to that one.”

“I’ve never really gambled before,” Cleo said to Claire and Martha. “Have you guys?”

“Not a lot,” Claire said. “We came last year, and Max gambled,
even though he wasn’t legal.” Claire laughed and kicked the back of the seat.

“Hey, that wasn’t my idea,” Max said.

“You made Max break the law?” Cleo said. She was smiling as she looked at Claire.

“No,” Claire said. “It was my—it was Doug. He was here last year, and he wanted Max to do it.”

“He’s like the worst gambler ever, too,” Max said quickly. “He talked about statistics the whole time and made it so boring.”

“Gambling makes me nervous,” Cleo said. “The possibility that you can gain or lose so much in a second is scary.” No one answered her, and they drove the rest of the way in silence.

Once they walked into the casino, Martha headed straight to the slots and began feeding twenty-dollar bills into a machine called Wild Cherry. “I’m not going to waste my money gambling on blackjack,” she said.

“Right,” Max said. “Because slots are really the smart way to go.”

Martha pursed her lips at him and kept playing. They left her at the slot machines and went to the bar to get a drink because Cleo had wrinkled her nose at the free drinks they were passing out. Then they walked around looking at the different minimums for the tables and trying to find one they liked. When they passed Martha again, about forty-five minutes later, her eyes were glazed, and her lips were parted, with a little string of spit between them, as she pushed the button to make the slots go, and listened for the
bing, ring
, and
ding
of the cherries and sevens and big-money signs.

“I think we’ve created a monster,” Claire said.

“Martha,” Max said. She didn’t look up right away. “Martha,” they all called together, and she looked up, spacey and surprised.

“Have you won?” Cleo asked.

Martha shook her head. “Not yet, but I have a good feeling about this machine.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Claire asked.

Martha shook her head.

“No, no. I’m good here,” she said, turning back to the machine.

“Okay, well, if you need us, we’ll be over there, okay?” Claire pointed in the direction of the tables. Martha nodded distractedly.

“Good God,” Max said. “We’re gonna have to call Mom and Dad to drag her out of here.”

“The scary thing is, she kind of fits in,” Claire whispered to Max. It was true. Martha was wearing a large tented flowered dress, and her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. She looked older than thirty, and she clutched her purse on her lap while she touched the machine like she was communicating with it. On either side of her were older women, just as sloppily dressed, petting their own machines. Claire got the chills watching her.

“Well, at least if she started coming here, it would be something social she could do,” Max offered.

“Max, that’s mean,” Cleo said. She looked shocked and Max muttered an apology.

“Come on,” he said, putting his arm around her. “Let’s go gamble.”

At the blackjack table, there were only two seats open, so Claire and Max sat down in the middle and Cleo stood behind them. “I just want to watch first,” Cleo said.

The man to Max’s left looked a little off and anytime someone else at the table got a good card, he pounded both hands in front of him and said, “Sonofabitch,” all as one word. Max leaned over and squeezed Claire’s shoulder and the two of them bent their heads down, trying not to laugh.

Claire watched Cleo place her hand on Max’s back, just lightly, like she wasn’t even thinking about it. It was almost like they were the same person, and Claire felt a sharp pain. She was jealous of her younger brother and his girlfriend. Max had a life, a love life, and she didn’t. Even Heather Foley had a love life. It was like somewhere along the way, Claire had stopped being a real person.

When Cleo finally sat down, she got blackjack on her first hand. She squealed and clapped her hands again. She was very careful to place her winnings to one side, and when she was up about forty dollars, she decided to stop. “I should quit while I’m ahead, right?” she said.

“That’s very mature of you,” Claire said. She had lost eighty dollars and was trying to stop herself from going back.

“You can’t win if you don’t keep playing, though,” Max said. Cleo just smiled and shook her head.

They went to retrieve Martha from the slot machines, and she printed out her slot ticket and went to get the rest of her money. “I lost forty dollars,” she said on the way home. “But I know if I could’ve kept playing, I would have won big.”

That night, as Claire tried to fall asleep, she heard the sounds of the casino in her head—cards being flipped, people cheering or groaning, and the
bing
of the slots as they rolled around and around.

SATURDAY AT THE SHORE WAS
cloudy and cool, but Claire and Martha went down to the beach anyway, bundled up in sweatshirts and pants. They were leaving the next day, so they figured they would try to get as much out of the end of their trip as they could. They sat on beach chairs and watched the wind chop up the water. A storm was coming in, and the dark clouds were getting closer.

Both of the girls held books in their laps, but neither of them made a move to open them. Martha took in a deep breath and let out an audible sigh, which Claire knew was a sign that she wanted to say something.

“What?” Claire asked her.

Martha shook her head and sighed again. “It’s just watching the ocean like this, right before a storm, it makes me think of the tsunami in Thailand, and how all of those people were just minding their own business, living their lives, and the ocean just swallowed them.”

“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Claire asked. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she still was. Claire had been thinking about how she still had to tell Weezy everything, and how maybe it was a good idea to go back to New York first and do it over the phone, because then she could just hang up right after and be done with it. Yes, that made more sense. And so she was wondering what she was thinking before, planning to tell Weezy in person, and Martha was thinking about a natural disaster that had happened six years earlier. She wasn’t sure whether she should be annoyed at Martha or ashamed of herself for thinking only about her problems.

“I think our brains work differently,” Claire finally said.

“Yeah,” Martha said. “I think they do.”

The two of them sat there for another hour, books on their laps, watching the storm crawl closer and closer, witnessing the waves getting bigger and angrier, until they felt drops hit their faces and heads, and were forced to pick up their chairs and walk back to the house in the rain.

WHEN CLAIRE OPENED THE DOOR
to her apartment, she was hit with a wall of hot air. This was always how it was when she got back from a trip; the air seemed unbreathable, like no one would ever be able to survive living here. She saw the rent envelope slipped under her door and her stomach twisted. She moved it aside with her foot, dragged her suitcase inside, and went to sit on the couch.

All the years that she’d lived in New York, Claire always felt giddy when she returned after a trip. It was nice to get away, to get out of the crowded city, but she always had the sense that when she got back, she was where she belonged. But now, looking around at the dusty old apartment that she couldn’t afford, she didn’t feel that. She just felt dread. She didn’t belong here anymore, in this apartment. And it didn’t even matter if she did, because she was going to be kicked out soon anyway.

And so, she took out her cell phone and called Weezy, who was still at the shore. There was no time like the present, especially if you were totally out of options.

CHAPTER
6

When you live in a house your whole life, you know all of its noises. You know that two short buzzes is the end of the dryer cycle, that one short buzz is the back doorbell. You know that when the furnace kicks up, it starts with a clank, waits about thirty seconds, and then you hear the air coming out of the vents. You know every corner and twist in the house, that it takes sixteen steps to get up the stairs, three large leaps to get down the hall. You could find your way around the whole place blindfolded if you had to.

Claire loved this about going home—loved that she knew every corner, that everything was familiar, that the house would creak and groan her to sleep. But this time, the noises were not comforting. Each squeak of the floor made her want to cover her ears. She could hear her father breathing heavily as he walked down the hallway (was he that out of shape?), could hear her mom humming as she made coffee, could hear Martha in her room, thumping her feet against the headboard as she always did when she read, so that it bumped against the wall, over and over, until Claire was sure she was going to scream.

This reaction shouldn’t have surprised her, but somehow it still did. Moving home wasn’t exactly what she wanted; it was just the only possible way out of her mess. When she’d finally gotten the courage to call Weezy, she didn’t waste any time. As soon as Weezy answered, she said, “I’m having money issues.”

She had sounded like a polite older woman who didn’t want to give the specifics of her financials, who thought that talking about money was rude. But at least it was out there. It had taken almost an hour for Claire to fully explain the situation, to really make it clear that she was
in trouble. And still, when she’d said, “I think I have to move home for a while,” Weezy was surprised.

Once things got moving, they happened quickly. Claire gave her landlord notice and said she’d be using her security deposit as her last month’s rent. It was unclear if this was legal or not—everyone had a different opinion—but it didn’t matter. If they were going to come after her, let them. She just needed to get out of this city. She figured she wasn’t even staying the whole month of September, so maybe they’d look the other way.

At work, they weren’t all that surprised. Amy had nodded like she’d seen it coming. “Sometimes you just need a change of scenery,” she’d said. Claire had agreed and quickly left the office. Becca and Molly were surprised, but not sorry. They wished her luck and said they’d miss her, but didn’t sound very convincing.

On her last day, they all stood around and ate cupcakes, as was the tradition, and they all said things like, “Enjoy those cheese steaks” and “Bet you won’t miss the crowded subways in the morning!” At the end of the day, Claire wasn’t the least bit sorry to leave the office and never go back.

Her apartment was packed up easily, partly because it was still almost empty from when Doug left, and partly because she sold what little was left of the furniture on craigslist. She didn’t want to pay for storage and didn’t want a bed—or anything else—that she and Doug had shared. She was happy to open her door to strangers, let them come in and give her cash, and watch them leave carrying her possessions.

Martha had warned her to have someone else in the apartment with her and to leave the door open while the buyers entered. “You should also alert your doorman to the situation. Make sure he knows why they’re coming to see you.”

“Why?” Claire asked.

“Claire. Come on. People looking to murder innocent people use craigslist all the time.”

“Right,” Claire said. “I’ll be careful.”

There was no good-bye party, no send-off with her friends like they’d done for everyone else. “I’m not really leaving,” she kept telling
everyone. “I’m just figuring stuff out.” Her friends nodded like they didn’t quite believe her and hugged her like she was never coming back.

It shocked her, really, how quickly it had all been done, how fast she’d ended up back home and sleeping in her bed. For the first few days, she felt relief. Her debt was still with her, but at least she could stop worrying that she was about to get evicted. The worst was over, and she started to make a plan, set up an interview with a temp agency, and unpacked her bags. Then on the fourth day, she’d woken up and listened to all the noise around her. And that was when the panic had started to set in.

Her bedroom still had faded stuffed animals on the shelves, collages of old high school friends that she hadn’t seen in years, plastic glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling (why had she thought that was so cool?), and a poster of Dave Matthews on the back of the door. It was like moving right back to high school. Nothing had changed.