“Oh, surely they’ll have some nice places. This is a tourist area! Rich people come here!”
Lily had been right to wonder, though. Main Street turned out to be the road they were already traveling on, except with sidewalks. There was a hardware store and a drugstore, a dingy-looking café, and then a shop called Hi-Fashion with a single mannequin in the window wearing a marcelled plaster hairdo from the 1940s and a green gingham housewife dress. They went in anyhow. A bell clanked over the door. “Do you-all carry swimsuits?” Mercy asked the woman behind the counter, and the woman—kind-faced and pigeon-bosomed—perked up and cried, “Oh! Yes! We do have swimsuits! Over there on that rack!” But all the suits were one-piece, many with skirts. “This one’s kind of cute,” Mercy told Lily hopefully, fingering a pink-striped seersucker with boy-cut legs.
“Oh, please,” was all Lily said. Mercy didn’t push it.
They thanked the woman and walked out. They went to the drugstore, where the lipsticks were kept in a locked glass case and it felt like too much work to ask the young man at the register to open it. “But aren’t these headbands pretty?” Mercy asked. They were crescent-shaped, covered with fabric in different colors. Nothing special, but for a moment Alice’s eye was caught by a wide black grosgrain one. It would be good for when she dressed up, she thought. She stopped to lift it from the rack. “Alice flung her long hair carelessly over her shoulder,” her narrator said. But she already owned a headband in black velvet, and really, that was dressier. She replaced it and continued toward the door, with Mercy and Lily following.
Out on the sidewalk, they paused to look across the street. A lawyer’s office, a chiropractor, a shoe store displaying men’s work boots. A small, dark grocery store called Robinson’s with nothing but a brass scale centered in the window. “Oh, my,” Mercy said wearily. Then she said, “Sometimes I think, is this it?”
Her daughters turned to stare at her. She thought it sometimes? Not just on this one occasion?
But then she gave her shoulders a shake and “Well,” she said, “maybe we can find us a treat in that fancy grocery store.”
So they crossed and went into the grocery, which was indeed fancy, with imported jellies and spices and corked bottles of flavored vinegars. Mercy said, “How about we choose some chocolates for dessert tonight?” and while she and Lily were deliberating, Alice strolled around the rest of the store. The fruits in the produce section were cradled in individual nests of green tissue and they were very expensive, and anyhow the family had all the fruit they needed from the farm stand; but she did select an avocado pear because you didn’t often see those in Baltimore. When she set it on the counter where Mercy and Lily had set their chocolates, Lily said, “Seriously?” which gave Alice second thoughts, but then the customer ahead of them—an older woman buying a tiny can wrapped in gold paper—reached over and picked it up to examine it more closely, and Alice felt a stab of possessiveness. So she said, “Yes, seriously. All the more for us if you don’t want to try it.” And Lily said no more.
When Mercy had paid the cashier—a severe-looking woman who exchanged not a single word with them—they stepped out into the sunshine. Mercy was carrying their purchases in a tiny forest-green Robinson’s bag. “So,” she said. “Shall we get on home?” The girls didn’t bother answering, just followed her down the sidewalk.
In the car, Mercy twisted around to tell Lily, “Here’s an idea. Once we’re back in Baltimore, we’ll buy you a swimsuit at Hutzler’s, how’s that.”
“A bikini?” Lily asked.
“Well…yes, okay, why not?”
Mercy turned and faced forward again. Alice checked the rearview mirror and found Lily looking smug and secretive.
When they reached the cabin, Trent’s red Chevy was parked in their usual space. “Darn,” Lily said, and she started tugging on her door handle even before their car had stopped behind his. “He’s been waiting for me.”
“All the better!” Mercy said. “Let him see you’re worth it!” But she might as well not have spoken; Lily was already out of the car and halfway up the porch steps.
Alice and Mercy, following, had nearly reached the steps themselves when Robin appeared in the doorway. There was something strange about him. He didn’t have his shoes and socks on, Alice realized. He was in his swim trunks and T-shirt—both noticeably wet, and plastered to his skin—but his archless, knobby white feet were naked, and he wore an odd sheepish expression as if he were embarrassed. “Hey there, hon!” he told Mercy brightly.