The Fountain of Youth

That first time being on an airplane was like nothing Melanie had ever experienced. The power as they took off was sheer and amazing and the bumps as they ascended into the sky terrifying. She held her mother’s hand. Melanie had the middle seat, between her mother and Irene, and while Irene would not trade with her, she did not complain about Melanie leaning into her lap for most of the flight so she could watch the plane’s shadow glide across the tops of the clouds.

Melanie was surprised that her mother had agreed to the trip and surprised that she allowed Melanie to skip school. They deplaned in Fort Lauderdale and took a shuttle to a beachy resort, Irene leading the charge. Melanie was overwhelmed by the shimmer of heat coming off of the concrete around her and the rows of stucco apartment buildings, layered like birthday cake along the highway. Their hotel was pretty and cool, and there was an uncorked bottle of white wine sweating on a chrome tray. Irene immediately poured herself a drink and Melanie’s mother, Kathleen, told her to change into her bathing suit. Irene went to the balcony to smoke, and Melanie undressed as wisps of tobacco blew into the room.

“See,” Melanie heard Irene call to her mother. “This is what I am talking about.”

When Melanie’s parents divorced, her mother had kept her job as a teller in the bank and moved them to an apartment that was between the branch and Melanie’s school. The building had gray siding and was flanked by a row of impenetrable juniper bushes. The apartment was mostly gray inside, and sometimes when she flushed the toilet, the water knocked through the pipes in an unconventional way.

One day when Melanie checked the answering machine, there was a message from her father about his child-support checks. He reminded her mother to cash them; he said he did not understand why she had not cashed a single one—almost a year’s worth. He said he did not think it could be that hard to just take care of it, since she went to the bank every day. He said he was not sure what to make of it, since cashing checks was what she did for a living.

It was not his business, Melanie thought, but okay, she could see his point. Then she deleted the message.

She knew where the checks were, crammed in the junk drawer in an envelope that was an extra from a solicitation, with two plastic windows that did not match up to the address or the payee on the contents inside. This was unlike her mother, who was organized and saved receipts and kept records; the junk drawer itself was not even that junky. Melanie wondered if her mother was ashamed to take her father’s money, since she was very good at making do. Her mother had come from a large family, and she was the last of four girls—her three younger brothers followed her. Sometimes when Melanie complained, her mother told her that she should be grateful that she had never had to wear hand-me-down underwear and that if she had a cavity, she got to go to the dentist instead of chewing aspirin. Melanie did not actually believe that the dentist was all that great.

“I don’t have any cavities,” she reminded her mother once.

“Because I had your teeth capped and you get your teeth cleaned,” her mother said.

That night when her mother came home, Irene was with her. Irene had high-piled hair and Melanie liked her—she smelled like cigarettes and lemon and was once widowed and once divorced. She never talked about either man, but Melanie’s mother said she would have liked Irene’s first husband, and when Melanie asked why, her mother thought about it for a little bit before she said it was because he was like them. He was a young boy and his name was Sammy and he would have loved her.

Irene lived in a...