Off Season Read Free Page B

still as flame-colored as Rita’s (L’Oréal number 4LR, because they were both worth it) and marveled that the recently widowed Hazel was in full makeup already, though there were no men around as far as Rita could tell.
    “I think I’ve hit menopause,” she announced to her mother. She did not mention that she dreaded this “passage” because she’d watched Hazel go from mere crazy to berserk between her mid-forties and fifties and was afraid she was in for the same.
    “Have you missed your friend?”
    Hazel had always referred to her period as her “friend,” as if a monthly gush of blood accompanied by double-you-over cramps was the kind of friend every girl would want. “Yes,” she replied. “Twice.”
    “You sure you’re not pregnant?”
    Rita closed the cabinet a little too firmly. “I’m forty-six years old, Mother. I’m not pregnant.” She did not feel a need to announce that the last time she’d had sex was last summer. She had been with Charlie, of course, because since Kyle’s death, Rita was just too damn depressed to go near anyone else. After that last time, though, she hadn’t even gone near him again.
    “Not because Charlie Rollins wants it that way. How many times has he proposed to you now?”
    Gritting her teeth, Rita began making a fresh pot of coffee. She regretted ever confiding in her mother. “I’m not pregnant,” Rita repeated. “And I’m not going to marry Charlie Rollins. I’m not going to marry anyone.”
    “Oh, that’s right, I forgot. Little Rita is too good for any man. Well, your friend Jill isn’t. She’s made a nice marriage for herself. You should follow her example. Take a leap of faith.”
    It amazed Rita that, over forty years later, her mother was still holding her daughter up to the standards of Rita’s childhood best friend. It also amazed Rita that such a mention could still send prickles up her spine.
    “Sorry, Mother,” she said, “but it appears that the only leap I’ll be making is into menopause: hot flashes, memory lapses, and vaginal dryness.”
    Her mother picked up the newspaper. “Then get on the phone to Doc Hastings,” Hazel said. “No sense in you becoming as nuts as I was.”
    As nuts as you are, Mother
, Rita wanted to say, but instead she asked, “You think I should take estrogen?”
    Her mother opened the paper again, perhaps to doublecheck the obituaries (a favorite pastime) to see if anyone she knew was there, life laid out on a page. “Just call Doc Hastings. Say it’s an emergency. Or you’ll end up like me and no one will have the guts to tell you.”
    Rita wondered if all mothers had the ability to read their daughters’ minds. Then she wondered how it wasthat, yes, Jill had finally made a “nice marriage,” while Rita could no longer even make a commitment to have sex, even with Charlie, the one man in her life she supposed she’d ever loved; Charlie Rollins, Kyle’s father, though he’d known that too late.
    Suddenly, the thought of coffee made her feel sick. She grabbed a bagel instead and ate it dry on her way upstairs to get dressed.
    Even though the season was over, Rita had told Charlie she’d still work at the tavern. Without that she’d be bored and probably anxious as hell with Hazel around. Besides, working helped take her mind off Kyle now that the tourists had departed and distraction was tougher to find.
    She still had her real estate business, such as it was, and still kept her magnetic S URFSIDE R EALTY sign on her aging Toyota. But Rita had long since given up trying to compete with the big guys. Nor had she succumbed to working for them. It was a matter of principle: she was a native to the island—a thoroughbred Vineyarder, the yuppies called them—and the big business maggots were not.
    Of course, there was Sea Grove now, the elegant development of big-ass houses that she and Charlie and Ben Niles were planning to build.
Imagine
, she thought as she unlocked the back door of the 1802