Six shots of tequila and a roller coaster will make your head spin. And so will waking up in your 40s, realizing that you dream about how to best make faces out of waffles, are in bed by 9:30, and remember that you used to be fun. That’s what happened to Krista and Holly. They’d been deep in the mom game for the past six years. It wasn’t that the time had magically raced by, it’s that neither had had the opportunity to come up for air.
First, it’s all cute babies and everyone fawning all over you while you bleed and leak and put the remote in the fridge due to complete exhaustion. Then it’s months that turn into years of sleepless nights, double ear infections at 2 am on vacation, school lunches, soccer, permanent stains on the only couch you ever cared about, and needing an adult diaper on hand for the endless number of gymnastics birthday parties. And for a while, neither woman minded. They’d partied hard in their 20s and a chunk of their 30s, really hard, and both felt like they were where they should be in their lives - for the most part. But a weekend drive from Albany to Cape Cod took them on another trip - one down memory lane.
The weekend wasn’t meant to be some crazy, Vegas, So-and-So is finally 40 type-of blowout. Nope, it was just two girlfriends going to look at puppies and put their feet in the cold Atlantic at the end of May. A backyard breeder had posted the cutest mutts on Facebook and Holly was dying to go pick one up. Although Krista wasn’t totally convinced that what her life needed was another being to feed or potty train or schedule doctor appointments for, she was very pleased with an easy excuse to get away from her familial responsibilities for the weekend. It had been a long winter. But not a remarkable one.
The thick, heavy, grey sky had settled over Albany over Thanksgiving weekend and had not budged until the local Target was bursting with Easter decorations. There had been the usual pieces of life that make up our days - the car not starting, the annual leaky roof, the stomach bugs, the work deadlines, the marital “I thought you were going to do that,” and the enthusiasm for it all waning with the minutes of daylight. But, as Krista’s mom always said when she didn’t feel compelled to be helpful. “This too shall pass.” And, yes, the Earth twirled ‘round the sun despite the endless episodes of Bluey, endless Goldfish crumbs in places no one wanted them, and endless searching for that one lost mitten. Eventually, Spring came and the two moms found an excuse to worry about nothing but themselves for the weekend. And possibly a couple of puppies.
Holly drove, inching into Krista’s driveway that Saturday morning, pulling a tag-along U-Haul trailer behind her white SUV.
“Are we moving to the Cape?” Krista asked, not entirely facetiously, as she threw her overnight bag over a pink car seat and shut the door.
“Huh?” Holly held three different jobs, sometimes four, made cookies for every school benefit, weekend function, and volunteered at the animal shelter. Of course, she wanted a puppy.
Krista gestured to the large attachment.
“Oh, yeah, that, so, my mom put a bunch of stuff in storage and my Aunt wants it in Concord so I thought we’d just drop it off on the way.”
Krista shook her head. After years of friendship, she should have known better than to ever be surprised by Holly but, hey, here she was.
“And, you packed this up?” It was 9 am. Sure, they had planned to “leave at 8” but they both knew what that meant.
“Yeah,” Holly nodded, looking over her shoulder since the backup cam was now blocked by the bright-orange trailer, “I got out there at 5. So happy to stop paying the rent on that place. And,” she gave her friend a knowing smile, “you know that everything in there is worthless junk.”
“Maybe there’s a treasure,” Krista suggested as she rummaged elbow-deep into Holly’s console, looking for the margarita-flavored vape pen that was her infrequent but very, very guilty pleasure, “like in that show where they bid on the storage units. There’s like some vase from the Ming dynasty or something.”
Holly couldn’t help but snort. “I doubt it. But there could be stuff from the actual Dynasty. I mean, maybe a dozen purple suits. Shoulder pads. All of it.” Holly tried not to think about the total cost of housing her mother’s memories in a climate-controlled box.
She turned out of their neighborhood, through Main Street, and pulled up to the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through without having to ask Krista if she wanted a coffee. This was their thing.
As they accelerated onto the highway, Krista slid her feet out of her shoes, plopped them up on the car’s giant dash, and exhaled a smooth breath of margarita-flavored freedom. Her iced latte rattled over the on-ramp as the trees with their newly-formed buds, whizzed by. The women felt free. This was depressing.
“I remember hitchhiking right there after college. If our girls try that, I’ll kill them.” Krista shook her head at the memory. She and Holly hadn’t known each other back then but had gone to school only an hour away from each other. They overlapped at the same bars and clubs and frat parties. Both scrappy girls and hustlers at heart, they worked nights, odd jobs, and found themselves at home in the nightlife scene. They’d even worked bottle service at the same after-hours spot, just at different times. They’d both been trying to make it as artists. Krista was a singer/songwriter who spent her days playing the guitar in dark coffee shops and many of her nights slinging drinks behind a darker bar.
Holly had been a sculpturist. Like, huge work made out of everything from Bronze to clay to tin cans that she molded into an ocean wave which was purchased by the local aquarium for $500. Holly remembers walking into the dolphin exhibit, seeing her work, and feeling a deep sense of pride. They even held a little unveiling ceremony where a couple of experts talked about water pollution. Holly was the star. She’d managed to pull together an outfit that didn’t reek of vodka or require a stick-on bra and was pleased with herself for how the evening went. After posing for photos with the city council and the aquarium’s board president, she’d excused herself, changed by wrestling herself into a black tube top and jeans in the back of her Ford Fiesta, and drove across town to Leo’s to bartend until close.
It wasn’t that every night at Leo’s was some kind of memorable disaster, it's that you throw a few hundred 20-somethings together in a club with alcohol and music, and something is always going to happen.
“It wasn’t like it was a bad place,” Krista added. She’d working bottle service there a couple of years before Holly got the job. “But it was always something. You know what? We’re so lucky to be alive.”
Holly nodded as she clocked her speed, “so lucky.”
Krista looked out the window, exhaled her margarita-flavored breath, and wondered aloud to the sun doing its best to peek out from behind the clouds,
“Isn’t it crazy to think how one of those nights was our last wild night and we didn’t even know it?”
As Holly merged onto the I90 towards Springfield, the car might have been driving East, but the two friends' minds were speeding toward the past.
Krista remembered the night when a regular customer who she’d never been particularly fond of offered her a ride. Krista accepted, against her better judgment, ended up fleeing the car when her initial opinion of the dude turned out to be 100% correct. And that was when she found herself sprinting away from him, down a side street full of McMansions, knocking on the door to one with a dozen cars out front, and then spending the next five hours at the best party of her life where she had her first sip of Crystal.
The hosts of the party turned out to be friends with the owner of the bar and happy to save one of “Leo’s girls.”
Holly snorted, “And, knowing what we know now, you kinda should be dead.”
Krista knew Holly had more stories of her own.
“Um, yeah. How about a night when I was doing shots with this band that was in town for a gig and then the bassist and the drummer got into a fist fight? I was so drunk and so enamored by their album that I thought I would be the one to break it up. I had a black eye for two weeks. They felt terrible.”
Krista tried not to spit her coffee out, “Wait- that’s what happened? Is that when you got your driver’s license photo?”
This specific truth took Holly a solid decade to get over. Her ID was expiring and she’d waited almost two months for the DMV appointment. She didn’t have a choice- she had to get it renewed. So, a week following the drunken band debacle, she’d slinked into the Department of Motor Vehicles sporting as much Maybelline concealer as could possible be layered onto a human face, and took the photo that would stay valid in the state of New York for the next ten years.
“Our fun days are over. Sure, we can go to Logan’s and have a bottle of rosé in July and, yeah, that’s awesome. But our insanity, our real dumb shit, it’s never going to happen again. I don’t know why, but,” Krista looked out the window, catching a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. All she could see were the bags under her eyes, the fine lines around her mouth, and her hair that needed to be washed yesterday, “I dunno, it kind of bums me out when I think about it.”
Krista threw her lime-green-colored nicotine holder back into the center console as if it were on fire.
“But maybe that’s good, right? I don’t need to be stupid anymore. And, there’s a reason why we aren’t. I can’t be hungover around my kids, let alone in lock-up.”
And the car fell silent, save for the U-Haul packed with memories from bygone days clattering around behind them.
Each woman sat there in silence, thinking about her “Should Be Dead” stories. Those wild nights where you would get ready, pack up your Nokia phone, maybe your digital camera, and see where the night would take you. Those were the days when they could sleep in till noon, show up at work hungover, and still make their art. They didn’t realize how free they were until it was over. But, that’s always the case. And the freedom came with a downside - if there was no one around to tell you not to do that stupid thing, there was also no one around to save you from it.
But there was an electricity to that life. The excitement of a new shirt worn to a new bar and meeting new people, the emotions of those memories remained stronger than department store cologne. And there was a part - a small and definitely previously silent part - of both of these forty-something moms who wondered if their foreseeable futures were set in predictable stone. Would every Fall mean back to school and lunch packing and I CAN’T FIND MY PURPLE SHIRT meltdowns? Would every winter mean short days and frozen noses and a last-minute work trip to the middle of nowhere Iowa? Would Spring mean yelling at small people and various-sized dogs not to track mud into the living room? Would every cocktail bring a hangover and every Tuesday a spaghetti night and every bed a snoring husband? Krista and Holly didn’t share a life, but they shared that life fear. They tried to forget about it as they drained their Dunken and watched the GPS for the right turn.
They tried to forget this nagging feeling as they unloaded the U-Haul, first bolting into Aunty Bee’s house to pee, as carrying humans in their bellies had made a lasting impact on the usefulness of their bladders.
They shared more stories when they got back into the SUV. Had Krista ever been to Shaugnassy’s or The Tavern or The Purple Onion? Remember how hot the bouncers were at the Shade Club? Oh, Holly remembered them. Especially the one with the sideburns– what was his name? Memory Lane sucked in the women, almost derailing them from their exit now that the floodgates of their pasts had been opened and the car was a lot lighter without Bee’s tchotchkes.
They parked in the back of the clapboard-covered bed and breakfast, changed into their sports bras and stretched-out shorts, and headed to the beach for a run. Both former athletes, these moms loved a good jog. Despite sore knees, cranky ankles, and lower backs that could not seem to get their shit together, the first day the weather allowed them to, these two would go for miles. Krista looked at her sneakers with disdain. She needed a new pair.
“Let’s go barefoot. And then go shopping. And then the puppies.” And go for a run, they did. They ran to the dock and back, covering at least five miles total, which wasn’t bad for the Springtime. They showered back in the room, put their sandals on for the first time that year, and wandered out to the boutique-lined streets, looking for something to do. And that’s when they decided to stop at a little clam shack and have a beer. The bubbles rushed to their stomachs and then their heads. The air was fresh and quiet, their agendas loose, and no one asked them for a snack or to tie a shoe or to wipe their butt.
That one beer turned into two which turned into four, and then who knows. The sun had found her way out of her dressing room and was now dancing center-stage in the voraciously cobalt sky.
The seagulls spied the tourists and hopped around in the sand, hoping for a couple to order too many clams and not stuff them all the way into the trash bins. The shack played 90s Lauryn Hill and Natalie Imbruglia and Tom Petty and you bet your ass that these two exhausted and very buzzed moms were having the time of their lives. Sure, it wasn’t Mexico, the sand was rough and scattered with shells. And yeah, the ocean was as cold as one of those ice plunges the parents ten years younger than them loved to post about. But, as far as Krista and Holly were concerned, they were in their own little slice of heaven. Only the mild ache from the car stories remained in their hearts.
“It’s ok that we’ll never be dumb again,” Holly said without any real conviction.
“Yeah, what was so great about being 25?” Krista added.
“How about another?” asked the dirty-blond college kid behind the counter. And they did.
Maybe it was the salt in the air or the dehydration from the run or the clarity of the memories, but something hit the mamas hard. Because that’s when, well, the moms went wild (ish). They paid their bill and left the shack, found themselves fumbling with their phones. The phones that were covered in applesauce. The phones that still had bits of playdough and slime stuck in the charging ports. The phones that were barely legible through the mess of sticky fingerprints and probably (hopefully?) mucus. But they got them out. They managed to fill out their credit card information correctly. And then they found themselves both on a single electric scooter, zipping through the little town on the Cape.
They didn’t run anyone over. But they got damn close. And they didn’t crash. But they got close to that too. And they didn’t fall and end up in the ER and they didn’t hit a pothole and break the thing and owe the Uber company thousands of dollars. Nope. Instead, they popped in and out of shops and bars and a little family-owned wine-tasting loft. They bought stuffed animals in the shapes of lobsters, clams, and a stuffed potato which Holly would later be very disappointed that her son did not like. And that is when they decided that they needed a cigarette.
Yeah, the two running-obsessed, fitness-y moms who drank oat milk in their lattes and lifted the heavy weights at the gym, were now properly drunk, running on both an electric scooter and adrenaline, and decided that a pack of Camel Lights was exactly what the evening was missing. This is what they would have done a couple of decades ago, right? It turns out that two wild bartenders in their 20s grew up to be two very funny drunk moms in their 40s.
“Can you please tell us where we’d find a bodega?” Krista asked the man at the wine-tasting check-in. But she could barely get the words out. Because Holly with a six-pack in her was very, very friendly.
After learning from the man (his name was Michael,) that his family had been making wine locally for generations and that this new venture was a concerted effort between him and his brother-in-law (whose name was Bruce,) to reinvent the family business. No, not all of the wines were local, yes, they were planning on serving food, and of course, they were closed on Sundays. Holly was probably five minutes away from being invited to Bruce’s daughter’s first communion when Krista pushed herself between the new best friends and insisted that there must be a Cumbys nearby.
“Ah,” said Michael, either a friendly twinkle or a Holly’s-Still-Got-It twinkle in his eye, “are you driving?”
“Just that,” Holly pointed to the electric scooter propped up against the side of the brick building.
“Well, the Maniac Mart is the closest. But, I wouldn’t go there if I were you. There’s a 7-11 on Church Street, about three-quarters of a mile away.”
“Thanks!” Krista said brightly in her head but in reality, probably slurred.
The two tipsy train wrecks hopped onto the scooter meant for one, sober person. Krista pushed the gas with her right hand. Holly managed to stay on. They weaved in and out of traffic and in and out of straight lines. They flew through stoplights and came very close to crashing into a giant man with a top hat who turned out to be a street lamp’s shadow.
They buckled and stopped and started, all the while following the GPS directions on Holly’s phone who was now speaking in a thick Australian accent, due to some accidental settings setup after a Sam Adams was spilled on her at the crab shack. But they made it. They made it to the Maniac Mart. And that’s when they learned why Michael didn’t want them to go.
Situated at least four blocks from any other commercial enterprise, the somehow accurately named Maniac Mart was a dilapidated structure of a convenience store that time forgot. The neon lights flickered overhead and there was, what appeared to the naked eye, to be a splatter of dried blood near the Cheetos end-cap. The place reeked of old cigars and broken dreams. But our heroines were on a mission. They chatted with the guy outside who offered to take them to a party in the back of his truck. They gave their spare change to a college kid who seemed to be sitting in his own cloud of weed and stumbled into the store like many other maniacs had done before them. They managed to purchase their Camel Lights and get most of their money back before they sprinted out to stop two teenagers from stealing their improperly parked scooter from the parking lot.
Just as they were about to light up, another woman in her twenties hit them up for cash. Which they no longer had. The girl needed a ride. Where she needed to get to was unclear. It would have been smart to walk away. She was clearly under the influence of something and the characters spending their time in and outside of the Maniac Mart were getting a little scary. And Krista and Holly may have been drunk, in the bad part of town, yearning for their youth, frustrated with their decade, but they were still smarter than they were at 25. So, they made up a lie, and they didn’t go to the party with the guy in the truck. And they didn’t bring the strange girl back to their bed and breakfast. And they didn’t even smoke the cigarettes. Nope.
They told the truck guy to leave them alone. They got the messy girl an Uber. And they threw away the Camels after one disgusting drag. Because their youth was over. And what didn’t kill them then was certainly not going to kill them now.
The next morning, after visiting the puppies and claiming the two females of the litter, Krista and Holly stopped for another Dunkin order before they began the drive home.
Sipping their lattes and eating their egg-white sandwiches, they laughed about their antics the night before.
“Well, it seems that we haven’t grown out of stupid,” Krista mused to Holly, putting the offending vape pen in the bag with the rest of their road trip trash. She was a healthy girl.
“Yeah, let’s never tell anyone about this.”
“Deal.” They looked at each other and smiled.
“Except….” Krista trailed off.
“Except what?”
“Well, I know these girls who have a podcast…”
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