Page 14

UNCLE RICK’S MARGARITA Barge, the “Marge,” bobbed over the waves as it headed toward the pier.

I watched from the breakfast nook in the kitchen while Mom flipped pancakes over the stove, humming “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire.

The pancakes smelled burnt, but she didn’t seem to notice.

She had burned them before, but not often. Not in years.

Mom talked as she cooked. “And apparently the wild horses are on the move again. I was just at the sanctuary last week. One of the speckled ones had a—oh, it’s not a calf. It’s a—whatever. She’s so adorable—I know we aren’t supposed to name them, but Cher is just like her mom.”

Vienna Shores was little known in the world, except among certain circles: the music buffs because of the Revelry, and horse girls because of the wild horses that wandered the beaches and dunes.

At the end of every summer, the horses made their yearly pilgrimage through the town and down Main Street to the beach, where they would turn at the waves and gallop back to the wildlife sanctuary where they normally roamed.

No one really knew why they did it, but ever since Mom came to Vienna Shores, she’d religiously volunteered at the sanctuary.

Sometimes the Venn diagram between music girls and horse girls was a circle.

“So,” she asked as she cooked, “what do you have planned today, heart?”

I thought about it. “I dunno. Maybe … I could hang out with you today?”

Mom whirled to me, surprised. “Me?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, the other mother. What do you think? Can I tag along with you?”

She gave it a thought, flipping a pancake. It was almost as black as a hockey puck. “I do have to deliver a new mixtape to Ricky today …”

I perked. “Yeah, let’s do that!”

She brought over the plate to the breakfast nook, along with a bottle of syrup, and sat down on the bench beside me. “That settles it, then. It’s going to be a good day.”

A good day. I smiled at her, but I hated how we’d all redefined the term.

A good day no longer meant a happy day, a delightful day—extraordinary. Now a good day was just … normal. The old normal. The sort of normal that would grow rarer and rarer as time went on.

I picked out a very burnt pancake and flopped it onto my plate. If I had to eat one, I liked them crunchy. It was the consistency of blackened toast that’d sat out too long, but with enough syrup it cut easier than butter. I took a bite, and decided to stop thinking about last good days.

THE MARGE HAD dropped anchor on the other side of the pier, where all the tourists hung out under colorful umbrellas.

We abandoned our cheap flip-flops on the sand and swam out to it.

There were a few other people floating around the boat, some sitting on the benches nailed to the outer edges.

Inside the boat was a small space with a cooler for ice, mixers, tequila, fresh fruit, and biodegradable cups.

Easily the biggest thing was the blender attached to a lawn mower engine, and above it was a chalkboard with today’s margaritas.

Uncle Rick loved frozen concoctions and cheeseburgers and paradise on his little boat.

It wasn’t really a boat or bar, but some amalgamation of the two he made out of spare pontoon parts and a dream.

I honestly couldn’t tell you how he steered the damn thing, or how it was still afloat, but it had been a staple in Vienna Shores for as long as I’d been alive, and for as long as I’d been alive, Mom had contributed a weekly mixtape to the buoy with a rudder.

It was a literal mixtape, because the tech on the boat was so outdated, it couldn’t support anything else.

Mom was up to 1,899. She’d never missed a week in a little over thirty-six years. Four years before Mitch was born, five before me. I used to think she knew every song there ever was.

Some days I still thought that.

As we swam up, Uncle Rick had to do a double take before his face broke open into a smile.

He threw his arms wide and cried, “NINI, YOU’RE HOME!

” He was the only one who didn’t shorten my name to Jo, and I always loved it.

With a laugh, he helped us up onto the bench.

“Wyn, you didn’t tell me she came home already. ”

Mom mocked a gasp and slammed her hands on the bar. “Rick! You wouldn’t believe this! Jo’s home!”

Uncle Rick rolled his eyes. “Okay, yeah, I deserved that.”

She winked and pulled the mixtape out of her bathing suit top, handing it to him. “Is this apology enough? I made it special this week.”

“You always make it special,” he replied, popping open the cassette case and inserting it into the antique stereo. He turned up the volume.

Static hissed through the speakers.

Then the downbeat of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.”

“Aww, hell yeah,” he said, bobbing his head to the beat.

Uncle Rick wasn’t really my uncle, but uncle rolled off the tongue a lot easier than godfather.

And he played the part flawlessly. Always there.

Always ready to dispense cryptic advice.

Always ready with a margarita. His mustache was mostly gray now, as was his thick head of once-black hair.

He was tall and wiry, with a few faded tattoos up his arms. He looked like a Jimmy Buffett album cover come to life, in an open Hawaiian button-down that exposed identical top surgery scars on his chest, bright pink swim trunks, aviators, and a panama hat kicked back on his head.

And the more years he spent as my parents’ best friend, photobombing candids and popping up in Polaroids, the more like a wizard he became.

“Now, of all times?”

I jumped at the sudden voice.

Sasha went on, oblivious. “Dad couldn’t have retired years ago? Why wait until now ?”

Uncle Rick came back with an ice water with lemon and orange slices—my usual—as Mom asked, “Something bite you?”

“Maybe. I’m fine, though,” I added so Mom didn’t worry, and she didn’t as she ordered her virgin margarita. Sasha, I can hear you.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “Erm, hello.”

Hello , I replied. Then: Sorry. I didn’t mean to overhear.

“It’s fine. Just … family stuff.”

Stuff , I echoed.

“Stuff,” he confirmed tiredly.

I took a sip of ice water, wanting to pry, but I had to remind myself that I would rather him stay as anonymous as possible.

Mom pulled me out of my thoughts as she turned to me and said in her most gossipy whisper, “So, I probably shouldn’t tell you, but I can not keep it in any longer—I think Mitch proposed to Gigi!”

That made me choke on my water. “ What? ”

“I think anyway. He asked for Grandma Lark’s ring, so he’s either going to or he already did. And don’t you tell anyone!” she added, jabbing her finger at me. “ I’m not even supposed to know.”

I crossed my heart. Gigi hadn’t said anything about getting engaged, and she would have certainly told me.

Uncle Rick came back with Mom’s strawiwi margarita—a blend of strawberries and kiwis, sans tequila. She tasted it and gave a thumbs-up. He slapped his hand on the counter. “Perf, Ricky.”

“Always is.” Uncle Rick shot her a finger gun, and asked if I wanted anything besides water with crunchy ice. I skimmed the menu. “Or I could whip you up something real special. All I request is a hint at your next greatest hit.”

I froze at that. My mouth went dry. “Oh. That .”

Mom sipped her drink through a straw. “Ricky, you know she’s hard at work.”

“I know, I know, I’m just impressed,” he said. “I’d think it’d be hard trying to come up with something new after your last song hit it big.”

I kept staring up at the menu. “Yeah, I guess.”

Mom said, “Reminds me of the whole chapple marg fiasco.”

“The what?” I asked, confused.

“Right! You were already in LA,” she remembered. “It was about six years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t remind me,” Uncle Rick moaned. “I made those chapple margs and everyone loved them, and so everyone was all crazy about the chapple margs, they only wanted the chapple margs, why aren’t you making the chapple margs.

” He gave a heavy sigh. I gathered that chapple margs were cherry-apple margaritas.

I did remember something about that a few years ago …

“But the cherry syrup was staining everything I owned and we had a bad year for apples the next year, so I made something new.”

“The piniwi margs.” Mom recalled, and then told me, “Those are pineapple-kiwi-flavored margaritas. They were amazing .”

“Hell yeah they were, but everyone just kept comparing them to the chapples even though the piniwis stood all on their own! And you can’t compare chapples to piniwis, it’s like comparing—”

“Apples to oranges?” I guessed.

“Pineapples to cherries, but yeah. If you spend your entire life comparing everything to the best thing you ever made, then you aren’t gonna find joy in any of it. You’ll just be unhappy that they aren’t like the original thing, you know?”

The Marge rose and dipped with the waves. The couple on the other side of the boat threw their hands into the air as the boat rode the crest, water splashing up the sides. Uncle Rick put a hand on his stack of plastic cups so they didn’t topple.

I asked, “How did you end up making the piniwis, knowing everyone would just want the chapples?”

“Pineapples were cheap that summer,” he replied, tossing some strawberries and kiwi into a blender with a healthy pour of tequila, “and I decided to do whatever the hell I wanted to, because in the end, if I’m not creating something that makes me feel, then what’s the fucking point?”

Then he grabbed the cord for the margarita engine and revved it once, twice, before it started with a sputter, and the comically small blender on top made a loud whizzing noise as it mixed that frozen concoction of ice and fruit and tequila to mush.

He poured the drink, topped it with an umbrella, and slid it over to me. “You get it, right?”

“Follow your joy,” Mom surmised happily.

Uncle Rick winked at her, and turned to greet another group of beachgoers who had swum up to the Marge.

Follow your joy, huh?

It sounded like such a simple solution.

“See, things can change,” Mom added with another sip of her drink, “and other things will come in and fill their place. Something will fill the Revelry. I’m sure of it—oh! That reminds me! Ricky, when we start taking down the lobby photos, do you want any?”

He slid back over, a hungry look in his eyes. “Can I take the one of Jimmy? Put it up there by my shrine?” he added, pointing his thumb up into the roof of his boat, where a picture of Jimmy Buffett was nailed to a post, a shaker of salt on one side, a toy prop plane on the other.

“Absolutely,” Mom replied. “Would you want any, heart?”

I didn’t even want to think about that right now, but both she and Uncle Rick were looking at me expectantly. I racked my brain. “Um—probably the Roman Fell one? If Roman Fell doesn’t want it.”

“I doubt he would,” Mom mused.

Uncle Rick said, “You know he’s retiring?

Just heard it on the radio this morning.

One last world tour and then he’s hanging up his guitar.

Can you believe it? Feels sorta cosmic, if you ask me.

First you and Hank decide to close the Revelry, and now the guy who got famous there retires, too. The end of an era.”

Mom twirled the umbrella in her margarita thoughtfully. “Or maybe the beginning of a new one.” Then the radio shifted to the next song on the mixtape. “Oh, I love this one!” she cried, pointing up at the speakers. “Turn it up! Turn it up !”

So Uncle Rick did, and the bright acoustic of Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers” played through the stereo, and Mom bobbed her head and sang along with it.