One day I was out with Brandy, picking berries on the side of the gravel road. Out of nowhere against the blinding afternoon sun, a cute boy peddled right up on a bicycle and stopped just inches from me. I had never seen him before.
He was smiling and had sunburns on his cheeks and nose. His hair was sandy blonde and tousled in the way that was truly beautiful because it was so natural. I immediately thought, “This is a wood nymph or a leprechaun. This is not a real person. Or a centaur maybe … ” But he was my size, a few inches taller, and wearing a T-shirt and jeans like a regular kid. He seemed to be my age.
He said hi and I said hello and I felt my face breaking into a wide genuine smile. Whoever he was, he was wonderful. Maybe he was an angel. We smiled perfectly mirrored smiles.
“My name is Jay. I think you know my cousins. They have the cabin next to yours.”
Yes, I did know them. I’d known them all my life. But how had I never met this boy? He said he grew up in the nearby town and didn’t come out here much but this summer he was helping his dad fix up their lake place, which was right down the road, to be his parents’ new year-round home.
I introduced him to Brandy. “Ha!” he laughed, “I’ve never seen that kind of dog in real life. He looks so ferocious, but he’s gentle, isn’t he?” I noticed the lilt of his charming northern accent, much like a Canadian’s. Brandy was licking his hand.
“Yes, he always scares delivery men when they come to our house in Chicago. They think he’s a mean watchdog but he isn’t a good watchdog at all. He wags his tail at everyone.”
The boy was quiet. He was obviously thinking about something I said. “Chicago, huh? That’s a long way from here. Do you miss your friends at home?”
“I don’t know, not really. I don’t usually have a lot of friends and I am used to being here every summer.”
“Well, do you have many friends here?”
“Not really. I know a lot of kids but most of them only come up for like a week.”
“Well, the good news is now you know me! I have to go see my cousin, but I will look for you again, okay?”
“Yes of course! I’m always around. Usually down on our dock.”
“Okay, well now you have a new friend. Remember Jay, like blue jay. That’s my favorite bird.”
“Okay, I will remember. And my name is Sidney.”
“I kind of already knew that.”
“You did?”
“Well, there aren’t many interesting people up here so word gets around … interesting and pretty.”
I smiled. He did too. He said goodbye to Brandy and rode off. I thought about him the rest of the day and at night when I went to bed. I tried to remember his happy face. I hoped I’d see him again soon.
My days were magical as the summer progressed. I read to Preston. I played my instruments and wrote songs and stories and poems in my notebook. I took out the canoe and went wading and swimming. I walked Brandy and picked berries. And soon I looked forward to Jay stopping by as he often did. I found out he was two years older than me, that his dad was a carpenter, and that he had two older sisters and two older brothers. He was the baby and his whole family was crazy about him.
My mother liked him a lot too. Almost too much, I thought. And Preston did too. Everyone enjoyed his company, his lilting accent, his cheerful open personality. He kissed me on the cheek one day when we were sitting in the grass with Brandy, just talking and enjoying the warm sun. That was my first kiss from a boy and I thought it was perfect that it was so sudden and sweet and on my cheek. I loved it and took the thought of it with me everywhere.
DAD ARRIVES
The cabin was bright white by August and Preston had a tall stack of loose white paper covered with black typewriter ink in the little guesthouse. I had a journal full of my earnest efforts and had written a song or two on my guitar which I performed for my mother, who said they were too depressing, and for Preston who said I was very smart and was going to amount to something some day if I just kept going and didn’t listen to our stupid parents.
I was standing out on the back porch talking with Preston one morning while he smoked and drank coffee when I heard Jay’s loon whistle approaching. Jay would cup his hands, blow between his thumbs and flail his fingers to let the air out in a whistle that nicely imitated a loon’s call. I learned how to do it too. Jay would whistle before he came onto our property. It was like a warning to me that he was going to be coming down the path from the road. It was like a courtesy at a time when we had no phones and his arrival was always unplanned and unanticipated. I heard his call and realized he’d be undoubtedly meeting my father for the first time.
Dad arrived the night before and slept much of the morning. I thought my dad had a very difficult transition coming from the big city of Chicago, from the floor of the stock exchange all day. Everything at the cabin was a very different experience. During the day it was about self-directed activities and sun and wind and waves and the hot dusty road. At night it was still, the moon bright over the water, and sometimes the cabin didn’t cool down much, and you could hear the lapping of the waves and the calls of the loons. There was no white noise of air conditioning or traffic. There was no television to stare at from your bed late at night. When Dad did wake up, who knew what kind of mood he’d be in!
Jay appeared out of the woods on foot. He had taken the old deer path along the water along the point. Preston, Jay, and I began talking and joking.
Within minutes my mom came out onto the porch exclaiming, “Well, Jay! I didn’t know you were here! I would’ve come out sooner!”
Mom was wearing one of her favorite nightgown and robe combos, ridiculously glamorous and mod, especially at the cabin. Made by one of her favorite designers, Emile Pucci, it was a slinky and somewhat transparent swirl of psychedelic pastels with a plunging neckline. It had a matching transparent robe that had one little fastener at the waist to hold it together. Her suntanned chest was all exposed and you could see the outline of her breasts.
Jay was polite and nice as always, “Hello Mrs. Duncan. It’s a beautiful day! You should be outside enjoying it!”
“Oh yes it really is Jay, and you know what I said about calling me Ingrid.”
I didn’t like that my mother insisted he call her by her first name.
“Yep, Ingrid, got it. Well, you’re missing the sunshine.”
“Oh well, I am slow today, but I’m going to get dressed now and get going!”
Mom pranced through the living room to the bathroom and shut the door.
Good old Preston chimed in, “Yeah and quit walking around in your half naked nightgown Mom … too much information for our friend Jay here … too much information for anybody … ”
Suddenly Dad was in the doorway, “Preston, don’t talk to your mother that way. Why what is she wearing anyway?”
Preston smiled, “Dad, she came out to say hi in her slinky nightgown. She was being a not-ready-for-prime-time player.”
Dad was silent for a moment, then asked Preston, “Where the hell’s the coffee?”
Jay and I looked at each other and I felt that he could read the expression on my face. He and I had already had a few conversations about my family. I was surprised that each time we talked he was so clear and honest in his observations. I often thought about what he said to me about my mom, “Sidney, your mom is very competitive with you. It’s not right. A mother should be proud of her beautiful, intelligent daughter but instead she tries to make you look bad to me and herself look good. It’s wrong and it makes me feel so sorry for you to have a mother like that.” I wondered what he’d have to say about my father.
Dad was back on the porch now with a steaming cup of coffee and he turned to Jay, “Who’s this?”
He was staring at Jay, expecting him to answer.
Dad was already dressed for the day in a short-sleeved oxford dress shirt and Madras plaid Bermuda shorts, peering accusatorially at Jay over brown hornrimmed glasses. He had a very clos
e-cropped dark beard and was nearly bald. He was six foot two to Preston’s five foot ten and Jay’s five foot nine, and weighed over two hundred pounds when each of the boys were probably around a hundred and sixty. I looked at my father through Jay’s eyes and guessed that my father looked pretty arrogant and vain. Everything he wore looked brand new and as my dad would say “classy.”
Jay, in his faded blue T-shirt and his dirty jeans, smiled his impish but knowing grin as he addressed my father for the first time, “Hello, Mr. Duncan. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I heard you were coming up last night. My name is Jay and I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”
“A friend of my daughter’s? You don’t get to decide that. You don’t announce that to me. I’ll decide whether you’re a friend of anybody’s around here. Things are going to straighten up around here now that I’m back.”
“Yes, I can see that sir.”
Preston looked at me and I tried not to smile.
My mom was dressed and out of the bathroom. She was wearing one of her very short daytime dresses, yellow and white with white plastic buttons down the front and matching yellow shorts underneath. She had a few buttons unbuttoned so the shorts could show more. The outfit was very cute on her with her suntan. She had white Keds that she bleached if they ever got too dirty. She never wore much makeup, and especially at the cabin, it was just a little bit of mascara and some peachy lipstick. Her hair was shoulder-length and shiny brown. She had it pulled back in a low ponytail and her high forehead made her seem very elegant.
Mom hurried into the kitchen and came back out onto the porch offering Jay some of her homemade blueberry cake, setting a slice on a little china plate with a fork. Jay loved my mom’s cooking. He loved anybody’s home-cooking. He was that kind of kid. He immediately started eating.
I hadn’t had breakfast yet so I went to the kitchen to get myself a piece too. I saw my mother looking me up and down in my cutoffs and tight T-shirt, “What are you doing? Oh, no, you’re not eating cake for breakfast. You ought to be having something less fattening and more nutritious. I can make you some scrambled eggs.”
My mom knew I loved her blueberry cake with fresh whole blueberries and cinnamon sugar crumble topping. She knew I loved it. She also knew I despised scrambled eggs. When I was little she used to make me sit at the table until I ate all the scrambled eggs she put on my plate. I hated them then too. She would make me sit into the afternoon. The eggs would be hard and cold. I would be crying. I hated the eggs and I hated her. I had no way of knowing that melting a piece of cheese over it would have made all the difference. If I had known, I could have suggested it. But she probably did know. She knew I loved cheese. Why didn’t she ever offer to make them differently? No, just the same miserable, hard, salty, horrible, rubbery eggs every day and the same punitive struggle. Then when there were pancakes or waffles or blueberry cake she would make me feel bad for feeling happy about it.
“Here Sidney, bring Jay this glass of orange juice.”
I was mad, “Mom, who said he wanted orange juice?”
“He loves this, and his parents don’t buy nice fresh-squeezed juices like this … he told me that … you really don’t know him very well do you? Come on now, bring this out to him and put a smile on your sour little face so he can see your good side and not just your grouchy old Sidney side.”
“Bring it to him yourself if you think he wants it so badly.”
“Sidney, don’t you dare start talking to me like that or I will get your father in here and you can tell him how you’ve been talking to me.”
I grabbed the glass of juice. When some of it spilled, she took it right back from me and pinched my upper arm with her other hand.
She hissed through her teeth, “You brat. If you don’t watch it your little boyfriend is going to get sent home. You better get an attitude adjustment and put a smile on that long face.”
I stayed inside and let my mom go out on the porch. I heard her being extra cheerful and energetic and flirtatious with her male audience. Two things she really got revved up over: putting down her female adversary, and enjoying her all male conquests. I stayed inside because I was so full of rage. I was a happy person. I didn’t have a “long face.” I was not grouchy or mean. I only acted like that around her and then she thought that’s how I always was. When she went to my conferences at school, on the rare occasion she ever did, she would come home saying, “Well Sidney, they all think you’re just the most wonderful girl in the world. I told them, ‘I don’t think we’re talking about the same person!’ I just laughed when they said how helpful and cheerful and talkative you are. You sure have them fooled.”
I went into the bathroom and shut the door. I looked at my face in Grandpa’s old shaving mirror. “What good does it do to hate your own mom like this?” I said out loud to myself. What good did it do to sit around and miss out on the fun? Nobody else cared that I was in here suffering under her stupid injustices, least of all her. I went back out. Everyone was laughing and talking. I was happy that everyone liked Jay and I was glad he was willing to stand around and talk with my family.
A couple more days passed with all four of us living in peace and then my parents said we’d be shutting off the water and getting ready to close up the cabin that night. We’d be leaving the next morning to take Preston to his new school which was about five or six hours away.
I felt much worse than I thought was possible about leaving Jay. Although we had only known each other for a few weeks this summer, I felt he had shown me in a new light. His compassion for my circumstances within my family was something I had never experienced. I knew my relationship with him was special. My mom knew it too. I kept thinking of a conversation I had with her about Jay.
One night a few weeks earlier, my mother was making me vacuum the living room rug before I could go out for a walk to the lodge with Jay. It was early evening, very warm, with the late summer sun streaming into the cabin front windows and the lake was sparkling and blue. Jay had arrived and I had just put the vacuum away.
My mother was standing in the living room with her hands on her hips saying, “What do you think you’re doing Sidney? It still has leaves stuck in it. Look at this. You can’t just wave the vacuum over it. It’s not a magic wand.”
She was catching Jay’s eye and trying to be mocking and cute at the same time. “Come on Sidney. Get that vacuum out and do it right or I guess Jay will be going down to the lodge without you tonight.”
“Mom, those leaves are just stuck in there. They don’t come out. It’s too thick of a carpet for a cabin. Who has a cream-colored shag carpet in a cabin? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“This is a fabulous piece and since when do you know anything about decorating. You’re just going to have to get down there and pull the bits that aren’t getting picked up with the vacuum by hand. You’re going to have to do some real work for once.”
I turned on the very loud and very large old metal vacuum so I couldn’t hear her any more. She and Jay were in the kitchen talking and I was on my knees trying to get little bits of dried leaves untangled from the cream wool of my mother’s large expensive designer rug. I kept at it until it looked pretty close to perfect. I turned off the vacuum and put it away in the front closet.
Jay and I headed out the door. On our walk Jay said to me, “I really hate to see your mother treat you like that. It isn’t right.”
I didn’t like to think anyone would feel sorry for me so I brusquely answered, “It’s no big deal. She’s just like that sometimes. She’s a neat freak.”
When we got back to the cabin that night Jay only stayed a minute and then walked back to his cabin. My mother was reading in a chair in the living room. She stopped me before I went in to get ready for bed.
“Sidney, that Jay really thinks a lot of you. I think he’s in love with you. I’ve caught him just staring at you a few times.”
“I don’t know about that but he is nice. I really think he’s a
good person.”
“Well, you’ve got him wrapped around your finger.”
“It’s not like that Mom.”
“He’s a very special young man. I’m not sure what he sees in you or why he thinks so highly of you. It’s really something! I just hope you appreciate how much he cares about you.”
“He’s nice. Yeah, I know. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Really, not that big of a deal? Well, when you were finishing the vacuuming tonight he turned to me in the kitchen and said he didn’t like to see you have to be on your knees doing that kind of work. I said ‘Oh please, a little vacuuming isn’t going to hurt her’ and he said ‘Yes, well what she is having to do is beyond that.’ I mean, I never knew a boy to be so tenderhearted, so concerned.”
“He is really nice I know. But also, it’s not a very practical carpet. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight? You aren’t in charge of the decorating. My parents left this place for me so I would have something. I have tried to keep it nice and make improvements. Do you think I ever complained when I was asked to help? My mother was dead by the time I was eighteen. I would have given anything to have her here with me. I was just trying to tell you that I think Jay is a wonderful young man, really darling and special.”
I thought of my mother’s words over and over when I went to bed that night. I thought of them as I tried to get prepared to say goodbye to the cabin, the lake, and Jay.
A Girl Called Sidney Page 8