Summer Sisters

by Judy Blume

  10

  Summer 1979

  VIX ALTERNATELY dreamed of striking it rich and becoming Mother Teresa. If she were rich she’d be able to take Nathan to Disney World. She’d take him to the best doctors, hire the best physical therapists, send him to the finest schools. She’d build a hot tub in the backyard so her parents could relax when they came home from work. She might even buy Lewis the ten-speed bike he’d been begging for, and Lanie … she wasn’t sure about Lanie because Lanie was a handful that year, willful and wild and not even thirteen.

  On the other hand, if she opted for Mother Teresa she wouldn’t have to worry about having money. She’d have God. She’d spend all her time praying and ministering to the sick and needy. And she wouldn’t have to worry about her breasts growing too big because her habit would hide them. Not that she had the time to worry about the size of her breasts, though sometimes she wondered if she might have caught some rare disease from Trisha.

  With summer, the problems of the world, her world anyway, magically lifted from her shoulders. It was the hottest July on record, with humid tropical air blowing in on southerly winds. The flowers in Abby’s garden wilted, the crackers and cereals in the pantry went slack, a disgusting green mold grew on anything that wasn’t thoroughly dried. Everyone was talking about a Chilmark family who had fallen ill with a rare, infectious type of pneumonia. Was it Legionnaires’ disease? Abby lectured them about scrubbing their hands before meals, keeping their nails cut short and scrupulously clean. She bleached their bedding and towels, their clothes.

  Sweetie spent the long muggy days dozing under the trees. She had no more energy or appetite than the rest of them. How lucky they were not to be in the city where people were dropping like flies from the heat, Abby reminded them, while they could stand in water up to their chins all day if they felt like it. Even Sharkey, who never got wet, turned the garden hose on himself.

  At night the foghorn lulled them to sleep.

  It was the first time Vix had come away without feeling guilty, thanks to Nathan’s doctor, who’d arranged for him to spend two weeks at a camp for disabled kids in the Colorado Rockies. “No parents,” Nathan had told her proudly. “Nobody to tell me what to do.”

  “Promise you’ll be careful?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know … watch out for yourself.”

  “I’m not a little kid anymore. I’m nine. So you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “Good. Because I’m going to have fun. It’s going to be like school but better. No Tawny.”

  She’d laughed with him over that. “You’re going to have a great time,” she agreed, hugging him.

  “And if you’re lucky I’ll tell you about it.”

  For two months she wouldn’t have to plan her life, baby-sitting every afternoon and as many nights a week as Tawny would allow, determined to do something about her future and the future of her family. For two months she could just lie back and let Abby take care of her.

  She didn’t mind the cloying dampness or the heat and humidity. She had come to the Vineyard that summer with a delicious secret, a secret she’d been savoring for months. She’d seen an announcement on the bulletin board at the public library in Santa Fe. Reluctant Swimmers. It’s Never Too Late to Learn. She’d signed up at the town pool without a word to her parents, shoving the bottom half of the permission slip in front of Tawny one night, telling her it was for a class trip that didn’t cost anything. Tawny scribbled her signature without even reading it. Vix paid for the course out of her baby-sitting money and had enough left over to buy a neon yellow maillot, the latest in swimsuits according to Seventeen.

  And what good timing! True, her stroke was crude, clearly that of a beginner. And she wasn’t going to win any races. But the first time she marched out to the end of the dock, jumped into the water, and swam out to Lamb’s boat, the expression on Caitlin’s face made it all worthwhile. “I thought you didn’t know how to swim.”

  “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Vix told her.

  “I was hardly jumping. This is your third summer here and until now I’ve never seen you in water above your knees.”

  “I wasn’t hot enough to swim until now.”

  Caitlin laughed. “I just love the way your mind works.”

  They prepared for the arrival of the Chicago Boys by installing a hook-and-eye lock on their bedroom door. But nothing could have prepared Vix for the day Gus took her by surprise in the pond, grabbing hold of her foot while she was swimming out to Lamb’s boat. She panicked, going under, coming up gagging and choking, flailing her arms. The second her feet touched bottom she ran for shore.

  Gus was right behind her. “Hey, Cough Drop,” he called, tossing her a towel. “You’ve got snot coming out of your nose.”

  Daniel stood by slapping his thigh as if she were performing a comedy routine for his pleasure. To get back at them she and Caitlin raided their room. Caitlin found a jock strap dangling from a hook on the back of their door. She sniffed it and proclaimed the owner this summer’s winner of the Dingleberry Award.

  They found a Victoria’s Secret catalog under a pile of dirty clothes, which only enraged Vix more. Imagine a sexy underwear catalog with her name on it! And one or both of the Chicago Boys had annotated the pages: best tits, best ass, best all-round-lay.

  “These guys don’t think about anything else!” Vix said. Not that she and Caitlin weren’t thinking about it, too. Their Power had turned into an itch that never went away. But at least it was hidden, not dangling between their legs for all the world to see.

  Caitlin taped a photo of Georgia O’Keeffe to the Chicago Boys’ bunk bed.

  Dear Baumer and Pustule,

  Try jerking off to a real woman for a change!

  After that Vix tried to ignore them, until the night they all wound up on the ticket line at the Strand to see Alien. While they were waiting a group from Camp Jab-berwocky passed, on their way to the Flying Horses. “Retards,” Daniel said to Gus, and the two of them did a number, pretending to be spastic.

  She exploded. “You stupid assholes! Not everyone with physical disabilities is retarded. You’re retarded if that’s what you think!” Although some of the Jabber-wocky campers were retarded they had no right to make a joke of them. God, they were beyond stupid … beyond hope!

  The two boys were amazed. They couldn’t believe that she, who never showed anything, had raved and ranted in public. “What?” Gus said. “What’d we do?”

  “Her brother has muscular dystrophy,” Caitlin told them. “He’s in a wheelchair. But he’s a million times smarter than either one of you pathetic slobs will ever be.”

  That shut up the Chicago Boys. Even Gus couldn’t come up with a smart remark. Vix was fuming. Inside the theater they went in separate directions and the second the movie ended she marched up the street to Murdick’s Fudge and sent Nathan a one-pound box of assorted flavors. She knew it was stupid, that the camp wouldn’t let him have more than one small piece at a time, if that, but she figured he could share the rest with his friends and they’d all know she’d been thinking of them.

  After that, she refused to speak to Daniel or Gus. She looked the other way when and if she passed either of them in the house. Two days later they approached her as she came out of the bathroom on her way to bed. Gus did the talking. “We didn’t mean anything. We were just fooling around. We didn’t know you had a brother like that.”

  “He’s not like anything. He’s a person who just happens to have been born with something he can’t control. It could have happened to you. It could have happened to any of us. So the next time you see someone in a chair, someone spastic, just imagine if that were you! The same you who’s standing here now, but your mind’s been trapped inside a body you can’t control!” She’d surprised herself, sounding so clear and strong and angry. Her heart was beating so fast she could feel the blood pumping to her face.

/>   “I never thought of it like that,” Gus said. He elbowed Daniel, signaling that it was his turn to speak. But Daniel just turned and walked away.

  “He’s having his own problems,” Gus said.

  “Who isn’t?” She knew Daniel’s father was about to remarry, someone Gus referred to as the Babe. A real dish, not even thirty, he’d told them, making sure they got his point.

  “Are your parents divorced, too?” he asked.

  “No. Not all parents are divorced. And not all problems are about parents.”

  “You don’t have to be so hostile. I said we were sorry.”

  “Actually, you didn’t.”

  “Well, we are.”

  “Okay.” She realized then she was standing outside the bathroom in an oversize T-shirt and underpants, with a toothbrush in her hand, talking to some sixteen-year-old boy she didn’t even like.

  And then Gus did the strangest thing. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I really am sorry, Cough Drop,” he said. “We acted like shits. Good night.”

  Which left her completely speechless.

  Gus and Daniel gave Vix a belated birthday present, a jigsaw puzzle, “Seeing Red,” five hundred pieces all in one solid color. They bet Sharkey twenty bucks she wouldn’t be able to finish it in a week.

  “What’s in it for her?” Caitlin asked. “Why should she bust her ass for any of you?”

  “What are you, her agent?” Daniel said.

  “That’s right,” Caitlin told him, “I’m her agent.”

  “Okay …” Daniel said. “She gets twenty if she makes it, which means we’re laying out forty. Are you and Sharkey going to match us if she doesn’t?”

  Caitlin nodded at Sharkey, who looked at Vix for confirmation. She gave him a thumbs-up. “You’re on,” Sharkey told the Chicago Boys.

  For two nights the four of them pulled chairs up to the card table and watched Vix, as if she were Bobby Fischer. But with everyone staring she couldn’t concentrate. She made almost no progress. Daniel and Gus eyed each other smugly. Vix was determined to prove them wrong. She rose at sunrise the next day and for two days after that. The others would find her there when they came down to breakfast, studying the pieces, locking together the edges, constructing separate sections, until the end of the sixth day, when she knew she had it.

  She let them watch that night, enjoying every step toward victory, and when she placed the final pieces Sharkey pumped his fist in the air and cried, “Yes!” He lifted her out of her chair and before she could stop him, swung her around. She was totally amazed. But when she smiled down at him he released her without a word, collected his share of the winnings, and disappeared. Gus and Daniel hung around to help the girls celebrate.

  “How about a consolation prize?” Gus said.

  “What did you have in mind?” Caitlin asked.

  He smiled and looked her over. “Whatever you’re willing to give.”

  “You wish!” She threw the empty puzzle box at him. He and Daniel laughed and went off together.

  11

  VIX WONDERED if Abby ever guessed how she fantasized about being her daughter, how she dreamed of being beautiful and rich and living in the big house in Cambridge, not that she’d ever seen it, but she’d seen pictures. Just weeks earlier, on the night of Vix’s fourteenth birthday, when she and Caitlin had dressed up for dinner at The Black Dog, Abby had said, “You both look so pretty. You remind me of how much I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Caitlin had told her. “We already have mothers.”

  Vix could see the hurt in Abby’s eyes, hear it in her voice. “I only meant …” Abby started to say, but then she looked away and never finished.

  Vix asked Caitlin once if she didn’t miss Sharkey and Lamb during the school year, if she didn’t want to live in Cambridge, too.

  “I miss them,” Caitlin answered. “But Phoebe needs me, to prove she’s not a failure as a mother.”

  Vix thought of Phoebe’s postcards. Last summer there had been just one, from Tuscany.

  Dear Ones,

  Hope your having a grand summer, as always.

  I’m about to leave for a few days in Venice.

  See you soon!

  All my love,

  Phoebe

  The card was addressed to Caitlin and Sharkey Somers. One card for two kids. One card every summer. Sharkey dismissed it as fast as he’d read it, telling Caitlin she could add it to her collection. Caitlin stuck it in her bottom dresser drawer with all the others. Phoebe had misspelled you’re.

  Vix didn’t understand why Lamb and Phoebe had divvied up the kids when they’d divorced. “I was only two when they split up,” Caitlin told her. “I didn’t have a lot to say about it then.”

  What about now? Vix wondered, almost certain she knew the answer. You weren’t always born to the right parents. And parents didn’t necessarily get the kids they were meant to raise.

  When Vix found out Tawny was coming to the island she grew sick with fear, sure Tawny had somehow found out about her fantasies and was on her way to fight for her rights as a mother. She imagined a raging court battle like the one over Gloria Vanderbilt in the book she was reading, Little Gloria, Happy at Last.

  “I knew Lamb and the Countess were old friends,” Abby said to Vix as they worked side by side in the garden, “but I had no idea your mother was her amanuensis.” Whenever Caitlin went sailing, Vix spent her time with Abby. In the garden Abby wore a coolie hat, a long-sleeved white shirt, drawstring pants, gloves, and red vinyl clogs she’d ordered from some gardening catalog.

  If Lamb and the Countess were old friends how come no one had ever told her? And what was an amanuensis? It sounded sexual.

  Abby pulled up a lady’s-mantle, mistaking it for a weed. “I can’t believe I did that,” she said, holding it tenderly, as if it were a pet. In her garden, unlike in real life, Abby’s enemies could be identified and destroyed. Japanese beetles were collected in bags hanging from trees, slugs were lured into saucers of beer, and mites were sprayed with a solution of soapy water. A picket fence, lined with chicken wire, helped to keep out rabbits. “I know they’re adorable,” Abby would tell her guests, “but just one little bunny can destroy your garden overnight.”

  The deer were another story. To keep them away, Abby tied bars of Irish Spring soap to the fence posts. When that didn’t work she scattered dried blood. Last summer Vix had seen a deer tear through the woods, leap into the pond, and swim all the way across. When he got there, he looked around as if he’d made a mistake, then turned and swam back, disappearing into the woods. Vix wondered if he had a family, if he was running away but changed his mind at the last minute.

  “When your mother gets here maybe we can sit down together and talk about school,” Abby said. She’d given up on the lady’s-mantle and was deadheading the fairy roses.

  What did she mean, school?

  “Lamb and I have been wondering if you’d like to go to Mountain Day with Caitlin?”

  “Mountain Day is a private school.”

  “Suppose you had a scholarship?”

  “A scholarship?”

  “Of course high school is just the beginning,” Abby told her. “Have you thought about college yet?”

  No one in her family had ever gone to college. She was hoping for UNM, though Tawny wanted her to become a medical technician. Healthcare, Victoria. That’s where the jobs are going to be. Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about.

  “I know it seems far off,” Abby continued, “but actually it’s right around the corner. You’ve got to start planning now. Maybe we can talk about the big picture when your mother gets here.”

  Vix kept weeding the same patch even after all the weeds were pulled. Was Abby having fantasies, too? She began to feel sweat trickle down inside her bra, a new kind of wetness that could spring from her pores in an instant, without warning, releasing a pungent odor, even if she’d just showered. She hated the unpredictabil
ity of her body. She hated being fourteen. It felt like a punishment. She just didn’t know for what.

  “I’m not making you uncomfortable, am I?” Abby asked.

  “No,” Vix said, too quickly, swiping her face with her arm, trying to get a whiff of her underarms. “It’s just that …”

  “I understand completely,” Abby said.

  “You do?”

  “Of course.”

  As much as she dreaded the idea of Tawny invading her space, Vix was relieved to find that the visit had nothing to do with Abby. She’d come because the Countess could no longer travel on her own and the Countess had too many friends in too many places to sit at home brooding over her emphysema and failing eyesight.

  Fortunately, the Countess kept Tawny busy. Everyone on the island wanted a piece of her. How did all these rich people know one another? Was there some sort of club? Vix decided the Countess’s popularity had to do with the fantastic stories she told—stories about running away to join the circus at sixteen, winding up in Paris at eighteen, finding herself stranded with the Count in a stalled elevator at some hotel called George Sank, marrying him a week later. Even though the marriage didn’t last more than six months she came out with gobs of money, or maybe she had money all the time.

  Vix, trying to picture the Countess atop an elephant under the big top, once asked her mother if the Countess’s stories were true. “All I know is what I’m told,” Tawny had replied, which was no answer at all. When Vix had balked she’d added, “I don’t ask questions, Victoria. That’s why I’m still employed.”

  With her pixie haircut, outlandish outfits, and infectious laugh, the Countess was still in center ring. She was never boring. She was definitely not ordinary. On the last full day of her whirlwind visit, the Countess gave Tawny the afternoon off to spend with Vix, who couldn’t remember an hour, let alone an afternoon, she’d been alone with her mother, and the idea frightened her.

  They drove up island in the red convertible rental car, all the way to the scenic overlook at Gay Head, and when Tawny peered through the telescope—a dime for each minute—and saw the colors in the cliffs below, she said, “But this is just like New Mexico!”