Gretchen

by Shannon Kirk

  “Real weird. Laura never misses summers,” Carly said.

  “That’s it? She’s not coming back?” Mag asked, suddenly feeling the first pang of grief in her life. She hadn’t lost anyone she could remember before. She didn’t realize how much she loved having Laura around. Loved her as part of her oddball, patched-together family. Loved keeping a serious secret with her, and also a secret, perhaps dangerous, game involving the treetop adventure course, a game even Carly didn’t know about. To Mag, her connection with Laura was a ragged orphan love, wholly bohemian and perfect in its strangeness.

  “She ain’t coming back,” Marianne said.

  “So she what, goes? No goodbye?”

  “Guess not, honey. And now your load’s going to be even heavier.”

  Just then, drastic thing number two pulled in in a white BMW, parking directly in front of the porch to the log-cabin dining hall. Paul. This first sighting of Paul.

  And the presence of Paul in Mag’s life was truly as quick as this. Drastic. He opened his driver’s door, stood the long length of himself, and flipped up his sunglasses, stunning the women with his sparking eyes, rich olive skin, and lean, muscled body.

  “Hi there,” he said toward the trio: Marianne, Mag, and Carly.

  “Can I help you?” Marianne stuttered, having lost her footing in looking at him.

  “I’m with the private equity—”

  Marianne interrupted him. “Ah yes, come with me,” she said, jogging and hurrying him off toward her office.

  Mag turned to Carly. “What’s that all about?”

  “Private equity, Mag, think about it. What do you think?”

  “A loan for the camp?”

  Carly shrugged, indicating she wasn’t so sure. The sisters watched Paul pausing Marianne along the way, pointing to and assessing structures and asking questions.

  Mag registered that he was handsome, knew she would, could, might for sure, be attracted to him, but was still smarting from the sting that her sister-friend Laura had up and vanished from her life. Gone. Snap. She imagined the sinking she felt must be a fraction of what it must have felt like for Carly to one second know she had parents and, the very next drastic second later, not have parents. How a life changes so fast sometimes in a slap by the universe, or rather, a twist and torque. You’re driving down the road one second, and the next you’re in a head-on collision with a bread truck. Twist, torque, snap.

  And now, here, a man drives in and cranks the wheel in yet another direction.

  Turns out, Paul was ten years older than Mag, and being chiseled and dark and rich, and working for a fancy-pants private equity firm on some uber-confidential something or other with Marianne (and neither of them would divulge what), he was a definite rarity at the Triple C, a girls’ camp. Camp director Marianne fanned herself when Paul walked to her camp office, and she let him, in violation of camp security, roam unattended around the grounds to assess the land and structures. Paul could have told Marianne he worshipped the work of Jeffrey Dahmer and watched American Psycho for tips on face creams, and she wouldn’t have heard a word.

  “Girls, he makes me wish I was young again,” Marianne said when a group of women later sat at a staff picnic table, ogling Paul untying a rowboat to “assess the lake.”

  “Marianne, you could be his mother,” Carly said.

  “Well, whatever, if I was young again, I wouldn’t be sitting here like you useless lumps when I could be snuggling up next to him in a rowboat.”

  “Oh damn, Marianne, you want to ass-ess the lake with Paul,” Carly said, laughing.

  “You can kiss my big fat ass. You’re all chickens,” Marianne said.

  The women were giggling, Mag mimicking Marianne’s raspy voice. “I’m Marianne, camp director of the Triple C, grandma to three, and I’m gonna ass-ess Paul.”

  One of the women was another of Mag and Carly’s sisters, a middle one whom they called the Squawk. She’d come in to visit for the day.

  “You’ll get in trouble with that sarcasm someday,” sister Squawk warned, wagging a finger at Mag.

  Carly and Mag rolled their eyes at Sister Serious and continued snort-laughing, adding a chorus of “Squawk, squawk, squawk,” to which the aptly nicknamed Squawk shook her head and double-handed flipped them off.

  Sisters.

  As the group of women howled and traded lewd jokes about the camp’s boy toy, Paul, off in his lonely rowboat, “ass-essing things,” Mag once again felt the pang of sadness that Laura wasn’t sitting here laughing too. Surely Laura would offer off-center, biting comic commentary about Paul. Mag didn’t like this new feeling, this loss of Laura’s wit. It angered her, actually.

  But more drastic events were to happen in just this one week. Things that erased any whiplash over missing Laura. Looking back on it now, at age thirty-five, still driving around the country and acknowledging all the years between, and her baby girl being fifteen, Mag gets more than whiplash. Something more like debilitating bends.

  On the night before Carly was set to finish her week visit, the staff congregated at a Carmel restaurant for Carly’s birthday party. They invited boy toy Paul, and Squawk and the two other sisters came in too. Mag remembers the dinner, the cake, dancing when the band started, slow dancing with Paul, whose long body was a perfect puzzle piece to her long body, and then nothing more. Like she’d fallen off a cliff into a black void. Mag had only been drinking margaritas, using her fake ID, right? Right?

  Next thing she knew, sunny light was bathing her face, and she felt cushiony, and all around her cottony. Maybe someone was whispering in her ear. A woman’s voice? She’s not sure. A dream? A door slamming? She cracked open an eye to see a large glass window looking upon the ocean. White sheets covered her, and a white comforter was crumbled on the wood floor—along with all her clothes, underwear, and black bra. Next came true and identifiable sounds, these ones verifiable and not dreams: the roar of the ocean, snoring behind her, and a soft and then louder and louder banging down below.

  Mag flipped around to find Paul, naked and snoring. She jumped out of bed, pulled on her underwear and clothes, and ran out of whatever fucking room she was in. At a landing, she realized she was in a colossal open-floor house and now at the top of designer floating stairs suspended on hanging cables. This was like one of those ornamental homes in Architectural Digest. For millionaires. Or billionaires. Sleek and artistic impressions of furniture dotted the open spaces below, along with statues made of dripping metal in corners. Enormous artwork dominated the white walls.

  Mag padded fast down the stairs, following the noise to the pounding front door. Her shoes from the night before were right there in the entryway, jumbled atop a neat row of male shoes and one pair of red heels—not hers. She slipped on her flats and opened the door.

  It was Carly. And on sight of each other, Carly exhaled loud and bent over. “Oh, thank God. Thank God. Motherfucker, thank God. You’re alive. I’ve called you a billion times. It’s two in the afternoon, Mag.”

  “What?”

  “What is right! What the hell were you thinking? I’ve looked everywhere for you. I had to practically bribe Marianne to get Paul’s address. You had me so damn worried.”

  “Carl, get me out of here. I don’t remember anything. I’m scared.”

  As Mag stepped onto the front porch and after the blinding sun faded, she paused, looking around the neighboring homes.

  “Mag, come on. Let’s go,” Carly prodded.

  But Mag stalled, staring at a colossal mansion next door: an oceanside estate seen through a line of cypress.

  “What is it?” Carly asked.

  “Wow. Um,” Mag said, trailing her thought, as she walked on behind Carly, somewhat in a trance. Pointing to the neighbor’s mansion, she said, “That’s Laura’s house.”

  “That?”

  “Yes, that. Yes. I only ever went one time. Slept over once. Remember? I was fourteen.”

  “I don’t remember. Really? Should we knock? Se
e why she left without a word?”

  “No. No way,” Mag said, shaking her head hard and fast and keeping to herself what she could never forget happening in that house six years before. She’d never told Carly about that secret, and she wasn’t about to tell her now. “No. Her parents are assholes.”

  “Well, duh. We know that. Who sends their only daughter to boarding school across the country to New Hampshire and then summer camp all year every year?”

  Mag didn’t mention how, based on what she’d witnessed, Laura was better off living elsewhere. This was their secret and was what sparked their dangerous, adolescent competitions—like they were daring each other to be the first to snitch, the first to break the bond.

  “Let’s just go. I want out of here.”

  The sisters headed to downtown Carmel. The café- and boutique-lined sidewalks were packed with the typical parades of nameless Carmel visitors. Mag considered how so many different faces always came and went in this tourist town, and nobody seemed to care to remember any one person from the next. The sisters found a two-top in the back of the darkest café, behind a tower of boxes of Colombian beans.

  “Give us the stiffest espressos you got,” Carly said to the barista.

  Carly didn’t have much more by way of details of the night before. She, too, remembered up to Mag slow dancing with Paul, and then, after going to the bathroom with Squawk, Carly came back to find Mag and Paul had disappeared. Carly assumed her younger sister was hooking up with Paul, but knowing her, assumed she’d be back at the camp within an hour. Mag wasn’t one to miss a morning shift. Back at camp, Carly passed out only to awake late the next day to find no Mag. She tried calling her for a while and then ratcheted up the panic.

  When Mag didn’t show and didn’t answer her phone, although she didn’t want to start relentless camp gossip, Carly convinced Marianne to give up Paul’s home address. Marianne admitted then she’d met Paul and others from the private equity firm there during the past week.

  “Shit,” Mag said, sipping her espresso. “What happened to me?”

  “I don’t trust that guy. Stay away from him,” Carly said.

  Mag nodded.

  “I don’t think he hurt you. You look fine. You feel fine?”

  “Yeah, nothing hurts. He seemed real peaceful in the bed. Maybe I drank too much?”

  “You had, by my count, two, maybe three, margaritas. Nothing you haven’t done before.”

  “Yeah.”

  Carly scrunched her brow. “Should we call the cops? Do you think he roofied you?”

  Mag didn’t answer right away. “I really don’t think so?” Said more as a question. “Yeah, he can’t have. Honestly, Carl, I was into him last night. I must have not eaten enough before the drinks. And I know this is super lame of me, but we go to that joint all the time and use fakes. I don’t want to get the staff in trouble.”

  Carly stared at Mag with a stern and loving patience. “Maggot, I do not give one solitary fuck about some shitty restaurant. I think we need to go to the hospital and make a report. We’ll get your blood checked. Come on, after your espresso.”

  “Carl, no. No,” Mag said in a soft but firm voice. The kind of tone that means the answer is final and assured. No more pushing.

  Carly reached across to rub Mag’s wrist.

  “Carl. Don’t go. Stay longer. Don’t leave today,” Mag said, her voice cracking.

  “Oh, Magpie, I wish I could stay. I do.” Carly paused, looked away, inhaled, exhaled, looked back, and straightened her lips. “Look. I have to give you my news. The news I’ve been sitting on all week. You want the good news or bad news first?”

  “Just tell me. Tell it all at once.”

  “First off, I’m getting married. Jim asked last week. Need you to be my maid of honor, ’kay? The other sisters will be jealous, but they’re always jealous. Who cares.”

  Both sisters giggled.

  Mag was weeping, happy for her sister. “I’m so happy for you, Carl. Jim is great. I love Jim. Always have. Sisters are gonna be snit-snittertons that I get to be maid of honor, especially Squawk, but you’ll let them wear nice bridesmaids’ dresses, right?”

  Squawk, the middle sister, was dubbed Squawk by Carly and Mag because, to them, she was always bitching and moaning and squawking and planning something. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Plan, plan, plan. Hover and worry and mother and lob questions and advice. They loved her—all the sisters loved each other—but Squawk could be a handful. Typical sister shit, Carly called it.

  “We’ll see about the bridesmaids’ dresses. Squawk despises pink and kitten heels, so we should probably start off with pink and sling-back kitten heels, yeah? Just to screw with her, don’t you think?” Carly said with a big smile. She lowered her eyes and returned to serious. “Second off, ugh. Second. Here we go. I’ve agreed to move to Costa Rica with Jim. It’s for his career, Mag. Third off, I’m moving there soon, like next month. Wedding will be in San José, and, Mag, hear me out, I want you to consider when you come for the wedding to look for your own place. Don’t answer now. But it could be an amazing life in a tropical world.”

  And thus was the next drastic change. Carly and Mag had always lived together with their aunt and uncle or only a block apart in separate apartments. Always together in a little town south of the Triple C. Mag’s hands shook so hard, her espresso cup clattered to the table and plummeted to the floor.

  But Carly wasn’t finished delivering drastic changes in Mag’s life.

  After she picked up Mag’s cup, which miraculously didn’t crack, Carly plowed on with more drastic news. “And, the other thing. Marianne wanted me to tell you. Okay, now brace yourself. Paul’s assessment of the Triple C apparently was glowing. This wasn’t about a loan at all, but things are very confidential. We’re not supposed to know. Anyway, his private equity firm is buying the Triple C. This is the last year of the camp. Did he tell you last night?”

  Mag wasn’t sure which part broke her most. Laura leaving so suddenly without a goodbye. Paul’s appearance and her waking up a finger snap later in his bed. Carly moving to Costa Rica. The Triple C closing. But in that moment, everything boiled together and suffocated her in the dry air of the café. Mag bawled her eyes out right at their table. “No, no, he didn’t tell me. Or I don’t remember if he told me,” she said through tears.

  In the weeks that unfolded after that night, Paul had apologized, sworn he hadn’t drugged her, and insisted the bartender had a heavy pour. They got close, but not for long. It was a month later when the most drastic-fast life changer came. Whatever happened the night of Carly’s birthday party in Carmel, the one Mag can’t remember, well, it certainly involved sex of some sort, because Paul got Mag pregnant, which ended the relationship’s short tenure and started Mag’s dance with the devil.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LUCY

  The morning Gretchen left for camp, Mom woke me at 8:00 a.m., told me to dress “nice” and “get in the car.” We passed through Bottle Brush Forest, driving along the windy country road, a different way than we took to get here, passed through a seriously wooded area, about thirty seconds of driving, climbed a hill, and then, at the crest, the village of Milberg appeared in the valley below.

  Mom parked on the far edge of a red-house library, where fewer people roam and, as she always does, told me to exit our brown Volvo before she did. We should not be seen together. Us getting ice cream in the park, I have been reminded several times, was a colossal mistake.

  “I’m going into Scheppard’s to buy bread and coffee. You go get groceries and a job.” She paused a beat. “Yes, a job, at Dyson’s.” She didn’t look at me. Didn’t smile.

  I startled; I’d assumed a job was off the table.

  Checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror, she continued, plowing right over the startling permission she’d just granted, which is her way of holding all the control. She must hold all the control, always. “You know the drill, Lucy. Don’t take off your contacts. Stick to the
backstory. Keep your head down, don’t engage. Don’t connect. And if anyone recognizes you, tell me. That is our deal. You must tell me. I’m giving you more and more freedom. So I need more and more trust.”

  I grabbed the door handle, anxious to pop in to Dyson’s before she changed her mind.

  “Oh, and Lucy,” she called as I exited.

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “If this goes sideways, this one’s on you. You don’t want to hear about red flags, don’t want to listen to me. This one’s on you.”

  “Mom, come on. Please . . .”

  “Lucy, go. Before I change my mind.”

  Pretty remarkable that the first place I asked for a summer job, I got. The short owner of Dyson’s, Sandra Dyson, seemed to measure the length of my legs with her eyes.

  “Ya tall,” Sandra said, in a heavy New England accent.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. You can reach the plantain chips. Theyah on the shelf above the kale. When can you stahht?”

  “I guess, um.” I roved my eyes over the artistic, rustic interior. Everything had gone so fast. I was still standing in the entrance. “I guess today? What would I be doing?”

  Sandra laughed and pulled me in farther. She looked around at all the other workers who were mixed between rough wood shelves of gourmet pastas, an aisle of vintage penny candy, and a whole section of oils in blown-glass bottles—the deli guys standing behind a bulbous glass case, the woman at the meats counter with literal ham hocks and beef sides hanging, a boy stocking what I now know to be artisan cheeses in a flat, refrigerated case of bries and goat cheese and cheddars, and two cashiers in the center of the store, standing on opposite sides of a circular counter. Sandra, still laughing, called out to the workers, “New gahhl asked what she’ll be doin’ when workin’ here. Guys, what will she be doin’? Tell her, on one, two, three . . .”