Freshwater Pearls

“Your cocktail, Miss,” said the young waiter, smiling as he held out one of the club’s signature mojitos in a tall, perfectly chilled glass.

Bianca McLane’s green eyes fluttered open behind her sunglasses as she reached out languidly for the glass. The trio of delicate silver bangles dangling from her wrist made a soft jingling sound as she did so.

“Thank you so much,” Bianca said, peering over the tops of her sunglasses at the waiter as she smiled thoughtfully.

The boy’s cheeks flushed red, as tended to happen when men young enough to still be full of hope were around Bianca. Like every female member of the exclusive Snow Glass Club, she was about a million levels out of the waiter’s league in the wrong direction, but something about those green eyes had a way of making you forget that and believe all things were possible.

Bianca’s eyes were beautiful but just the tiniest little bit sad, as well. To look into them was to wonder what that was all about and to want to fix whatever that sadness was for this woman.

Meanwhile, Bianca was more or less oblivious to what the waiter or anyone else might be thinking of her. She was having one of those days again – the kind of summer day that found her placidly, glamorously bored. On days like that, she liked to come to the Snow Glass Club, lie out by the pool, and watch the sky while her thoughts wandered freely.

Today had brought with it one of Bianca’s favorite kinds of skies – crystalline blue with a sparse scattering of airy, white clouds. On days like this, she liked to stare into the limitless blue and listen to the planes fly by, their feathery, white chemtrails flowing out behind them.

Chemtrails always reminded her of the times her parents would bring her and her sisters here. They’d go off and do whatever it was that they did while Bianca, Leah, and Taylor would play by the pool.

But as the years went by, the endless parade of games of Marco Polo and the afternoons spent making believe they were mermaids gradually subsided in the face of tween self-consciousness.

It was as teenagers that they developed this habit of lying out by the pool in white vintage bathing suits and literal strings of real freshwater pearls while watching all the boys pretend not to be watching them as they passed by. They’d carefully pose themselves like painted white swans and pretend they had no interest in going into the water to get out of the heat.

Instead, they’d talk in hushed tones about all those colorful, candy-flavored things that seemed so important to teenage girls. And they’d watch the chemtrails unfurl from the tails of the planes above and dream of the future.

There had been a chemtrail in the sky over Snow Glass the day Leah met Mark. Earlier that same day, she and Bianca had been at the farmer’s market shopping for produce. But really, the farmer’s market was more like a beautiful excuse to wander around talking and laughing with nowhere in particular to go.

Plus, Leah had always loved the colors and smells there. She’d pick up a watermelon, smell it, run her hands over its smooth surface, and consider it before putting it down. She’d talk about how she was failing gym and then laugh it off while absently picking through plump, red radishes or exquisitely round purple turnips.

Mark was the one detail that day that didn’t fit in with the rest of the scene. He was dressed head to toe in black while everyone else had dressed in whites and pastels because of the summer heat. He was still and silent while everyone else was vibrant, full of conversation, and in constant motion.

And he honed in immediately on Leah as if she were his exact reason for being there in the first place, and for all Bianca knew, she was.

Bianca excused herself for five minutes so she could duck into one of the restrooms, and by the time she came out, there was this strange, tall shadow of a man leaning casually against the side of the carrot stall. Leah was gazing up at him through her long, black lashes, giggling, her face flushed with that glow she always got when she was talking to (or about) someone she was attracted to.

God knows Bianca had nothing against a good fling with a sketchy man who was probably no good for you. But she didn’t like the way this tall man was almost crouching over Leah or the way he was familiarly fingering the lace around the neckline of the white cotton summer shirt she wore.

And she wasn’t surprised when Leah begged off the rest of their day together after Bianca returned from the restroom.

Mark had asked her to dinner after showering her with all kinds of compliments. And Leah was still youthful and innocent enough to believe pretty much everything people said to her if they said it with a big enough smile. When you’re pretty as a picture and so young with your entire life ahead of you, you’re just so certain that the world and everyone in it is at your feet.

So of course she didn’t listen to Bianca when she sternly reminded her of a fictitious dinner party where their mother was allegedly waiting for them to arrive, complete with fresh vegetables in tow.

And Bianca didn’t care to go home just then, so she went to Snow Glass for the rest of the afternoon instead. She sat out by the pool reading the latest novel that had sucked her into its colorful fictional world. And she watched the chemtrails blending into one another while absently fiddling with the string of freshwater pearls she’d always loved so well.

Bianca did the same the day Leah told her she was pregnant and that she was running away with Mark to some other state. And she thought about God and wondered whether God ever thought about her.

The following year, Bianca and Taylor had spent Taylor’s 21st birthday at Snow Glass watching the chemtrails, too. They ate their Cobb salads and sipped their mimosas while trying to look graceful and nonchalant, two red-lipped, porcelain-skinned visions in white dresses and freshwater pearls.

Their parents had gifted Taylor a little red convertible for her birthday, and the girls had spent their morning and a good bit of their afternoon tearing around town in it with the top down, feeling glamorous. Their matching ponytails – Bianca’s chestnut one and Taylor’s strawberry blonde – rippled in the breeze, catching the sun as the two girls laughed and joked.

Snow Glass was having a slower day, so there were no large crowds gathered around the pool and no children punctuating the balmy afternoon silence with their laughter and screams of joy. So the sisters were able to talk in low, conspiratorial voices while still able to hear each other.

And every so often, one of the ever-present jets would split the silence as it roared across the sky. Taylor would point and talk about all the shapes she thought she saw, because Taylor saw artful, whimsical things absolutely everywhere.

Bianca would wonder aloud where the planes were going and think about the people onboard. She’d always been fascinated by the idea that everyone she passed on the street – every stranger in the background as she passed them on her way somewhere – had a complete backstory, just like she did.

They had brothers and sisters. They had things they liked to eat, and wear, and watch on television. They had fears and hopes and secret desires they didn’t share with anyone. And Bianca sometimes wondered whether other people ever did that same thing – whether they looked at her and wondered what her story was.

Did anyone at Snow Glass remember that Bianca used to come here with two other girls – three beautiful girls in hopeful white dresses and freshwater pearls?

Did they guess that one of those three girls never had come home again after running away pregnant with a strange, dark man? Did they know that one of the others had died before she was even 22, killed on impact when her red convertible hydroplaned across a highway divider and into the path of a Mack truck?

Did they know why she loved to watch the chemtrails criss-crossing through the sky over the country club with her sad green eyes?

If they’d thought about it, they might have realized that sometimes it’s the simplest things that keep us grounded through all of life’s trials by following all the familiar patterns they used to, back when we were young, and tragedy had yet to exist.