Page 99 of The Chain

Zach begins projectile vomiting, and this effectively puts an end to the party.

47

She stares at the computer screen. A blank page, a winking cursor.

It’s a frosty December morning, an hour from high tide. The tidal basin is filled with wintering geese and eider.

She takes a deep breath and types:Lecture 2: Introduction to Existentialism. The existentialists believed that our lives are an attempt to impose meaning on an existence where there is no meaning. For them this world is an ouroboros—a serpent that eats itself. Patterns repeat.Thereis no progress. Civilization is a rope bridge dangling over an abyss.

She shakes her head. Wrong tone. She clicks Delete and watches her hard work vanish in an instant.

Kylie comes downstairs in her new red coat. She looks happy today. She, like her mother, is getting good at faking happy. A little turned-up-corner-of-the-mouth smile and a phony lilt to the voice. But the eyes tell a different story.

She’d been having a lot of stomach cramps lately. The doctors haven’t found anything. They say it’s probably stress. Stress that doubles her up in pain and gives her nightmares and causes her to wet the bed.

She puts a brave face on it, but Rachel knows.

“Can we go?” Kylie asks.

“Sure. This isn’t working anyway,” Rachel says and shuts the laptop.

“Just give me five minutes to shower and we can head out,” Pete says.

“We probably shouldn’t be late,” Kylie replies.

“If he says five minutes, he means five minutes,” Rachel says. On a planet filled with unreliable men—fathers who desert their families, husbands who run off with younger women—Pete is someone who won’t let you down. Still, she isn’t going to allow an addict to share a house with her daughter, so she makes sure that Pete is religiously following his methadone program. He is, and shoring up his responsible-provider street cred, he has taken a security-guard gig to pay off his sudden massive credit-card debt.

Exactly five minutes later they are in the Volvo traveling into town. They park at the Starbucks, and Rachel hugs a hot tea in a window seat while Kylie and Pete go off to get a few things.

It’s a busy Saturday morning, and Newburyport is full of locals and tourists. Marty is picking them up soon with his new girlfriend. Of course he has a new girlfriend. The plan B at last. But rather than rendezvousing on Plum Island, they are meeting in the safer, more neutral Starbucks in Newburyport.

As soon as Kylie is out of sight, Rachel takes her phone and checks the app for the GPS tracker in Kylie’s shoes. Yup, there she is, walking up High Street and turning left to go into the Tannery. Every child of every parent is a hostage to fortune, but not every parent has been reminded of this so vividly.

She sees Pete across the street carrying a whole bunch of shopping bags. She waves to him and he enters the Starbucks and kisses her on the cheek.

“What did you get?” she asks.

“A few things for Kyles.”

“I hope you didn’t spend too much money, you’ve already done more than—”

“Shhh,” Pete says. “One of my great frickin’ joys in this life is getting presents for my niece.”

They sit there and talk and wait for Marty. He’s late, as usual.

“Finally, here’s the man himself,” Pete says, tapping his watch and getting to his feet. “Of course this new girl is a beauty. And, oh my God, even younger than the last one, by the looks of it.”

Marty comes in all smiles. He’s wearing faded jeans, a V-necked gray T-shirt, and an Armani leather jacket. His hair is cut short and he’s acquired a tan somewhere.

The girl is a spiky-blond-haired little thing. Shorter than Marty, unlike Tammy, but still gorgeous. Adorable upturned nose, dark blue eyes, dimples. She looks as if she’s barely out of high school.

Introductions are made. Hands are shaken. Rachel deliberately doesn’t bother to catch the name because she knows that this one is probably going to be succeeded by another one just like her a few weeks from now.

Kylie comes in and hugs her dad and shakes the new girlfriend’s hand.

The new girlfriend says that Kylie looks very snuggly and hip in her red wool coat, which pleases Kylie.

They talk briefly and Rachel smiles and fades slowly into the background. How easy it is to fade when you are so light. When the only thing giving you substance is the poison in your veins.