What was wrong with her parents? Didn’t they see that they needed to stop bringing her food and make her exercise instead? Didn’t they see that she had to get out of her foul-smelling hole of a room and into the sunshine? Didn’t they see that she needed to earn money rather than have it handed to her? Didn’t they see that the make-believe world they lived in was so paralyzing that their daughter couldn’t bear to live in it sober?
I’m fat, she thought. I’m unpopular. I’m a drunk. I said something inexcusable to Penny, which ended up being worse than I ever could have imagined, because now Penny is dead.
Demeter composed her face. Her father was a bit more worldly than her mother; if anyone was going to catch on that she was inebriated, it was Al.
“I want to work, Dad. We told Kerry that I’d work for him, and I plan to stand by that. It has nothing to do with money. It has to do with proving my character.”
“It’s just so soon,” Al Castle said. “Kerry understands what you’ve been through.”
That was doubtful. Demeter suspected that what was really happening here was that Al and Lynne thought it would look bad if she started working too soon. They subconsciously wanted her to stay in her room all summer, growing fatter and stinkier and more bored and slothful and useless-because that way Lynne could continue to tell the women she bumped into at the grocery store that her daughter “wasn’t doing too well.” This would be preferable, according to the fucked-up social politics of year-round Nantucket, to admitting that just weeks after the tragic accident that had claimed her friend’s life, Demeter was productive and happy and loving her new job.
She won, as she knew she would. Her parents couldn’t keep her from doing anything. On her first day of work Demeter wore cargo shorts, a gray T-shirt, a flannel shirt, socks and sneakers, a bandanna in her hair, and a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators. She looked in the mirror. The outfit wasn’t too awful. The flannel shirt was long enough to cover her backside; the shorts came to her knees. She liked the way she looked in her sunglasses, and the bandanna was cool, she thought.
She took a backpack, empty except for two bottles of water and a banana.
“You’ll starve,” her mother said.
“I’ll be fine,” Demeter said.
She hadn’t driven since the accident, but she drove now; the thought of Al Castle’s dropping her off was mortifying. She had a two-year-old Ford Escape, one benefit of her father’s owning the car dealership. She drove to the headquarters of Frog and Toad Landscaping, which was out near the airport. She’d polished off the last two fingers of vodka that morning, then brushed her teeth. The vodka so early in the morning on an empty stomach gave her a little sparkle, a secret glow; it took the edge off things and even made her mother seem bearable.
Frog and Toad was the largest landscaping concern on the island. Kerry Trevor employed sixty-five people and ran seventeen teams a day. When Demeter pulled down the dirt driveway, she saw people gathered in the gravel yard in front of the greenhouses. Hispanic men, college kids-everyone was older than Demeter. There was no one from Nantucket High School. It was possible that no one here knew what had happened, other than Kerry himself.
One of the Hispanic men-Demeter was unfortunately reminded of the man who had mopped up her 80-proof puke at the hospital-directed her into a parking spot. She grabbed her backpack and stepped out of the car. The other workers turned and stared at her. She knew what they were thinking: Fat girl. They wouldn’t be thinking this meanly; they would be thinking it only as a matter of course. There wasn’t enough vodka in the world to take away the daily sting of Demeter’s reality.
Kerry Trevor-blond, wiry, bouncing with energy-was giving out assignments. Team 1 to 85 Main Street, Team 2 to 14 Orange Street, Team 3 to Nonantum. Demeter was pretty sure Kerry had seen her walk over, but he hadn’t made eye contact with her. The sun was hot, and she was roasting in her flannel shirt. She felt herself break out into a light vodka sweat. This wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined her first day. She knew her father had called to prep Kerry for her arrival. She had thought he would take her aside, make sure she was at ease. Team 4 was headed to Tom Nevers. Team 5…
Demeter didn’t have a team. Kerry knew this, right? The group was getting smaller. Teams were hopping into the signature green Frog and Toad pickups and pulling out. The typical makeup of the teams seemed to be one older Hispanic man with one or two college kids. Demeter had known she’d be working on a team, but she’d been imagining all girls, girls who didn’t shave their armpits and didn’t pass judgment. Girls who played Phish in the truck and ate brown-bag lunches of hummus and sprout sandwiches on whole grain bread. Girls who would let Demeter be Demeter, who wouldn’t notice her five trips to the bathroom, who wouldn’t ask her too many personal questions.
Suddenly Demeter heard her name. She snapped to attention. Kerry was looking right at her, but she hadn’t heard what he’d said. She felt as if she were in school, where this exact same thing was always happening.
She hoped her facial expression conveyed her need for clarification without making her appear to be too much of an idiot.
“You’re with Jesus, Nell, and Coop,” Kerry said. “Team Nine. Out to Two Seventy-seven Hummock Pond Road.”
Demeter stared at the googly-eyed bullfrog on the front of Kerry’s T-shirt. The vodka was making her dizzy. Or it was the heat and her absurd choice of flannel? She didn’t care what she looked like; she took the flannel shirt off and tied it around her waist. Better, cooler. Jesus, Nell, and Coop. And had Kerry said Hummock Pond Road? Really?
Tap on the shoulder. Tall boy, or perhaps Demeter should classify him as a man. He was about twenty or twenty-one, with dark, shaggy hair and a pronounced Adam’s apple. Not too attractive, thank God, but kind-looking.
“I’m Coop,” he said. “We’re over here.”
A green truck, just like all the other trucks. It had two rows of seating, but the backseat was tight, and Demeter immediately became conscious of her size.
“I’m Nell.” Nell was a girl with fiery red hair and freckles, wearing an Ithaca T-shirt; nothing threatening about her either. Okay, Demeter thought, this is okay. Do we get to keep our teams?
“I’m Demeter.”
“Cool name,” Nell said. “Goddess of something.”
“The harvest,” Demeter said. Another chance to despise her parents. They had named her brothers Mark and William, then gone all Bulfinch’s with her.
“The fertility of the earth,” Coop chimed in.
“I guess.”
“And I’m Jesus,” said the Hispanic man. He was about forty and had a musical voice. “Everyone calls me Zeus.”
“So we have Zeus and Demeter,” Nell said.
Camaraderie. Demeter smiled. This was the real world, out of high school. People were nice. They tried to make you feel included.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Demeter admitted. “I guess Kerry told my dad I might mow?”
No one answered her. Maybe they hadn’t heard. Coop tossed Zeus a set of keys, and Demeter had to worry again about how she was going to squeeze into the back of the truck.
Nell said, “Coop, you sit in the back with me?”
“I’ve been demoted,” Coop said.