Sugar Summer

by Hannah Moskowitz

  But she says, “Of course, help yourself,” like everything is normal. I can almost see tension leaving her. She needed me to make the first move.

  I go over to her tiny travel jewelry box and sift through her jewelry. I remember when I was a little kid and I'd spend ages going through her earrings, dreaming about when she'd let me get my ears pierced. She'd always catch me and let me try on all her rings instead, and I'd sit at her vanity and watch them drip off my little fingers.

  “You look pretty,” she says, and I take a deep breath and sink right into the words.

  I smile at her .“You got me this dress.”

  “I know. Lavender is definitely your color.” She comes up behind me and pulls my hair off my neck, twists it into a bun.

  Okay. We're going to be fine. I know how she gets. She felt awkward seeing me the way she saw me, in that suit—which was not the real me, so it's okay—and instead of addressing it she just dug her heels in and fell face-forward into the awkward. She's always done that. She was just embarrassed that she reacted so badly and didn't know how to handle it. It's cute, almost.

  I want so, so badly to tell her that Mara didn't get those pills.

  But I just say, “Have you had a nice time here?”

  “Oh, you know,” she says. “Maybe next year we'll just go to the Caribbean like everyone else.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Nothing,” I say. I let her do my hair.

  “My sweet girl,” she says.

  Mara has to spend most of her evening practicing with that waiter, Travis, in the clubhouse auditorium, where luckily they're looking for volunteers to help paint the sets. I hang out just offstage and paint a palm tree and watch her walk him through the steps, and I try very very hard not to laugh loud enough for anyone to hear me.

  “Stop looking at your feet,” Mara says. I bite down on the end of my paintbrush to stay quiet. He probably won't have issues with the lifts, at least. This guy could lift her over his head with one hand.

  Oscar comes by and hands me a can of green paint. “For the leaves,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  He gives me a nod. “Y'know someone's looking for you.”

  “My mom? I told her where I was.”

  Oscar jerks his head towards the back of the auditorium. There, standing with her typical posse and her arms crossed, is Rory Richards.

  “Rory Richards is looking for me?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “Should I tell her where to find you or do you want to make your escape?”

  “Um...I guess you can tell her. How does she even know about me?”

  “I don't know, she's famous. They have ESP.”

  Rory doesn't come to me right away, and at first I thinks she's forgotten, or maybe it was a misunderstanding and she didn't want to talk to me in the first place. When she finally shows up backstage, approaching me from some weird angle, I realize making me sweat was some kind of power move.

  It's just me and her. No posse. No witnesses. If Mara looked over into the wings she'd see us, but she's busy berating Travis.

  “You're Sugar?” she says.

  I can't believe a celebrity just said my name. And she hates me. This is surreal.

  She is tiny in person. She makes me look like two humans stuck together.

  She squats down next to me. “Nice tree.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, listen. I think you know why I'm here.”

  I twirl the paintbrush around the can and watch it like it's really fascinating, because her face is pretty impossible to look at. I don't know how Mara does it. I don't know how Mara looks at her and then at me.

  “This is the last weekend of the season,” she says. “As you know. And on Monday I'm flying to Paris for a shoot. And she's going back to living with her mother, and that's pretty much the end of us until next summer.”

  I don't say anything.

  “So look, honey,” she says. “I want this weekend. I don't want anything getting in my way. You feel me?”

  “I think that that's really up to Mara,” I say.

  “Mara doesn't want to hurt your feelings,” Rory says. “She's...sweet that way.”

  That doesn't even sort of sound like Mara, but okay.

  “I'm not pushing her for anything,” I say. “She's free to let me down.”

  “See, that's not what I've been hearing,” Rory says. “I hear a lot of stuff like you stalk her from building to building, and show up at her door in the middle of the night, and go to her friends' cabins demanding to know where she is.”

  “That's not exactly true,” I say.

  “Not exactly, huh?”

  By the time this conversation is over I'll be even smaller than she is.

  “So how about this, huh?” Rory says. “You finish up your little tree, and then you get some yummy dinner, and then you go back to your room and play Crazy Eights with little sister, and I'll make sure you get a ticket to real live movie premiere. How's that sound?”

  “I don't want to go to a movie premiere,” she says.

  “Sweetie,” she says. “Look. You had a good run. But do you really want to leave this summer being the girl who kept stalking Mara Del Ormo?”

  “Olmo,” I say.

  “Whatever. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing, right? You won't give her a second alone. You're not even letting her rehearse. Do you really want her memory of you to be of this pathetic puppy dog who followed her around?”

  I roll my eyes, and she sighs and drops down to sit next to me.

  “Okay,” she says. “Look. I don't expect you to feel sorry for me or anything. But...”

  “When one tactic doesn't work you just move right on to the next one, huh?”

  “I'm not out,” Rory says. “I'm sure you can imagine, with the media...this is really the only place where it feels like I can be myself. It's like this hidden magical place. I mean, you know what I mean, right? You're finding yourself here, right?”

  “Like I said, it's up to—”

  “After this is over, you get to go off to college—you're in college, right? You look really smart—and you can be free and explore and everything. But I don't really...I don't get that chance, except for here. Everywhere else they can find me, y'know? So I really need this weekend.”

  I guess she takes the fact that I don't answer right away to mean something. Maybe it does.

  She pats my head. “Good girl. I'll send you that ticket. I know you didn't mean that.”

  There's a knock on my cabin door before ten o'clock.

  “Hey, Bekah,” Mara says.

  “Hey,” Bekah says. Like they do this every day.

  “Sugar, you coming?” Mara says.

  Like we do this every day.

  “What about Rory?” I say as we walk back to the staff quarters.

  “Who?”

  I kiss her under a lamp post.

  In her bed later Mara holds me and rests her forehead on mine and whispers, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “What's your full name?”

  I laugh a little. “Esther Miriam Applebaum.”

  “Esther,” she whispers. “That's not a very sweet name.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Not a sweet name at all.”

  Chapter 13

  The next morning, I'm slicing a grapefruit in the middle of a not-unpleasant if not-lively breakfast with my family when Sol comes over to our table and crouches down conspiratorially next to my mother.

  “Tell me,” he says. “Do you know much about psychology?”

  She butters a popover. “Not particularly. Haven't done any since my psych rotation in college.”

  “Do you know anything about how people can seem perfectly normal but underneath..i tturns out they're, well...” He lowers his voice. “Perverts?”

  I put down my knife.

  “What exactly do you mean?” m
y mother says.

  “I got a tip that one of my employees...” He shakes his head solemnly. “Someone saw one of my employees making advances on someone underage.”

  “Who?” Bekah says. I take a deep breath. This is not me. God bless West Virginia and our legal age difference. I looked it up, on one of those hideously slow computers in the media room.

  But he whispers, “Mara Del Olmo,” and not in a way that's intended to be quiet.

  I can feel my heartbeat in my ears. “This has got to be a misunderstanding,” I say.

  “Never mind that it's against contract for the entertainment staff to carry on with a guest of any age,” Sol says. “We turned a blind eye for Rory because...you know, that was a special circumstance, of course, but I just found out this morning that last night, someone saw Mara trying to coax some girls back to her quarters after their swim lesson. Young girls.”

  My mother shakes her head. “Awful.”

  “When was this?” I say.

  Sol flags down Josh. Even he looks kind of shaken up.

  “Look,” he says to me quietly. “I like Mara. You know I do. Or I thought I did...”

  “When was the swim lesson?” I say.

  Josh says, “Grandad, it ended when, around two?”

  Sol nods. “Two-fifteen. Then someone saw her over by the pool.”

  “But that's impossible,” I say.

  “I talked to Mara this morning,” Sol said. “Asked her if she could come up with anything for where she was. Turns out she was supposed to have a private lesson then that she cancelled. Guest confirms, no lesson. Mara says she was in her room by herself. No alibi at all. Come on, Josh. Time to learn how to fire someone.”

  “She was in her room,” I say.

  Bekah's watching me.

  I say, “Mom, please, you have to believe me. I know that she was in her room.”

  Sol says, “How could you possibly know that, Sugar?”

  “Because I was with her!” I say. “She couldn't have been at the pool hitting on some kids, and she would never do that, but she couldn't have been because she cancelled that lesson because we got in a fight and then she was in Tristan's room, and then I found her there and we went back to her room.”

  I swear the whole dining room goes silent, just for a second, and then all the other tables go back to their lives.

  Ours stays quiet. My mother is frozen completely still.

  “Huh,” Josh says.

  Sol stands up. “Excuse me.” Josh follows him.

  Bekah puts her hand on my wrist.

  “I had to,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “I can't have people thinking she's—Mom, you have to—”

  “What were you doing with that girl, Sugar?” my mom says.

  She's looking at me like I'm a stranger. She shakes her head.

  I look down at my plate and I am so ashamed of her, and of me.

  I get the hell out of there.

  And who is standing at the path to the staff quarters, blocking my way, but Rory fucking Richards, and any doubt of how this went down leaves me entirely.

  I go right up to her. “You did this."

  “Uh, yeah, you think?”

  “What the fuck is the matter with you? Just accusing someone of hitting on a child?”

  She looks me up and down.

  “I am seventeen and she didn't hit on me!” I say. “Do you know how fucking damaging this is to say about a queer woman? You get rejected so you make her out to be a sexual predator? Do you have any goddamn clue what you're doing to us? To you?”

  She laughs. “I'm not one of you.”

  “You just said last night—”

  “I just like Mara,” she says. “Or I did. I'm not part of any community.”

  I get up in her face. “Get your self-hating ass out of my way—”

  “Or what, Sugar?” She looks at her nails. “You'll leak to the press that I'm a queer? You got pictures?”

  “I...no.”

  “You don't have shit on me. You want to see what a famous girl can do? I can make it happen. Mara got off easy.”

  “You don't even know my last name,” I say.

  “Oh, honey. I could find out.”

  “You don't even know Mara's,” I say. “She doesn't mean a thing to you. None of us do.”

  “You're damn right.”

  “It's Del Olmo,” I say. “It means elm tree. Mine means apple tree.”

  “How cute.”

  “We belong together,” I say. “You belong in the fucking garbage."

  There's a hand on my shoulder. Tristan.

  “She's not back there,” Tristan says. “Sol has her all sequestered in his office.”

  I point at Mara. “She did this. Mara blew her off for me and she couldn't handle it and she did this.” My voice doesn't sound like mine. “She stabbed Mara in the back and stabbed queer women in the back and she doesn't even care.”

  Tristan looks straight at her and I feel like I should warn him again about his stitches.

  But he just says, “I feel very, very sorry for you, little girl.”

  She narrows her eyes.

  Trista slips his arm around my waist. “Come on, Sugar. I'll walk you back to your room.”

  ✽✽✽

  I don't stay in my room.

  I know exactly where Mara is and I still wander the grounds like I'm looking for something. Everyone's going along like nothing strange is happening. They're doing yoga on the lawn or setting off on hikes or playing shuffleboard or chasing each other around the playground. It feels like my whole life has fallen over and nobody else has even moved.

  I walk up to the lake front and there's my mother, sitting by herself, staring out at the water.

  Maybe she's who I was looking for.

  “I know that you're upset,” I say.

  She turns her head when she hears my voice and then turns it back right away like she didn't.

  “I know you feel blindsided, or whatever,” I say. “But really...all this time, you didn't suspect? You didn't have some idea?”

  She doesn't answer.

  “And then you sit there and you ask me what I'm doing with that girl?” I say. “You saw me dressed in a suit and reacted the way that you did and made me come to you all contrite instead of you coming to me, and now you're going to sit there at breakfast and make me spell it out to you?”

  Nothing.

  “I just...your nurse is a lesbian,” I say. “Our neighbors. You vote for Democrats, you marched with me...why is it different when it's me? You're supposed to accept more from me than anyone else. That's how it's supposed to work.”

  She won't look at me.

  “You set me up for this, you know,” I say.

  And now she looks at me. “I set you up to be...gay?”

  “No, not that,” I say. “You set me up to think you would be fine with this,” I say. “You set this up like a trap. And God, God, I see it now, like you gave me this big huge box to draw in so that you could be sure I wouldn't color outside the lines, so I wouldn't even realize that there was a box, but there was. This whole time you had this...this leash on me, and I all I wanted to do was be like you and not disappoint you...and you knew that.”

  “Sugar,” she says.

  “And you tried to grow me into this just...this safe little conventional rebel, like the kind who grows up to write op eds for the newspaper and throw benefits for children in Africa. You say how different and creative I am and that's what you mean. You told me you wanted me to be artistic and transgressive, but you meant by minoring in playwriting and making waves when I'm onstage pretending to be someone else, not by actually doing anything that might get me in trouble or make me stand out or get my hands dirty or make me feel anything. My whole life you just set this up piece by piece to make you think that you were going to love all the parts of me, that I could tell you anything and I was safe, a-and now?”

  Her chin shakes.

  “This is n
othing!” I say. “I could be telling you....do you know how many more shocking things there are in the world? Do you realize you could have found out something that's actually bad, and not just what you didn't expect? You had a daughter,” I say. “Not a...I don't know, a houseplant. I'm a person. I am going to do things that are not the things you did, and if you're going to love me you have to love that too. If you're going to accept it when it's your neighbor or your nurse you have to accept it when it's standing here looking like you! Don't you want to be better than this? You raised me to be better than this. You set me up to think that I could be honest with you and now you're punishing me for it!”

  I'm sobbing so hard I can't talk. But I do anyway.

  “I'm sorry I made you think I was straight,” I say. “I'm sorry it's getting sprung on you so suddenly and you're not getting time to process it. I am. But you should be sorry too. You are not the person that you should be and you should be sorry.”

  I leave her crying on the beachfront.

  “Sugar. Wake up.”

  I open my eyes. I'm in Mara's bed, and it takes me a minute to piece together how I got here. I was crying and dizzy after talking to Mom, and Mara's cabin was closer...and when she still wasn't back, I just stayed.

  I sit up in bed and wrap my arms around her neck. She presses her hands against my back. “Hey,” she whispers.

  “What happened? Are you okay?”

  She pulls away a little and tucks my hair behind my ear. “I have been looking for you all over this damn place.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I don't know what you said to Sol or what you said to Rory, but he confronted her and said someone reliable could confirm where I was and she immediately starts going off about how she couldn't really see what was going on and maybe it wasn't me and blah blah blah.”

  I smile.

  “I can't believe you stood up for me like that,” she says.

  “Of course.” I sign and roll around on the bed. “I knew it would work out. I knew it would be okay. It had to be okay.”

  She doesn't say anything, and I feel the silence sink into my stomach.

  “You still got fired, didn't you?” I say.

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Because of me.”

  She nods a little.