by Nancy Star
By the time Callie broke the silence to ask, “What happened to her clothes?” Ginger’s face had turned bright red.
“No one wears clothes at the far end,” Thomas said.
Ginger looked toward the cliffs where the lady and the horse had gone. She could make out people now. Some walking, some throwing Frisbees, none of them dressed.
Charlie stood beside her and squinted. “Are those naked ladies?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Glory said, but her voice trailed off as she realized he was right.
“Ugh,” Charlie exclaimed and turned around. “I just saw a naked man.”
Mr. Diggans laughed. “Not to worry. Today, we’re going the other way where everyone will be fully clothed in the latest bathing attire.” He kicked his brindle sandals into a huge pile of shoes that lay scattered on the sand like leaves and headed away from the cliffs.
“Tomorrow,” Mimi told Ginger, “I’m not coming at all.”
They followed Mr. Diggans to a large gathering of clothed beachgoers who were assembled in a sloppy circle of blankets and chairs.
“Come with me, Morning Glory. Let me introduce you around.”
Ginger watched as he made the introductions. Here was his sister, Minty, and her husband, Bob, who had a house on the other side of the rocks. And here, for the whole summer, in the house just down from Minty’s, were his cousins—Ginger didn’t catch their names—whose husbands came up on the weekends, and here were some new washashores who’d just declared permanent residence.
She studied her mother’s progress as she moved into the crowd, smiling and shaking hands, listening carefully as people introduced themselves, taking in names and details in that way she did, that seemed relaxed though Ginger knew she was working hard to memorize everything so that later she could easily recall it.
Many of the beach people, Ginger learned, hadn’t come in through the bushes. They had walked over from houses hidden beyond the coves and cliffs, and they had left nothing behind. There were volleyball nets, fishing poles, clam rakes, even a folding table now set up with a gingham cloth on top, baskets of plates and cups competing for space with containers of food and bottles of wine.
Ginger staked out a spot at the periphery of the encampment. She was unrolling her straw mat when Mr. Diggans jogged over. “Would you like to meet Thomas’s cousins?”
There was nothing wrong with the question, but Ginger didn’t like that he’d asked. She still hadn’t made up her mind about which of her parents was right about Mr. Diggans. “No, thank you.” She glanced over to see if she was in trouble for being rude, but Glory was busy telling a story and when the group of listeners laughed, she tipped her head back and laughed too, up into the sky.
At dusk, the feasting began. The table was set with plates the color of seafoam and matching goblets, which even the Tangle children were invited to drink from, either apple cider or Orange Crush. Later, as the sun inched toward the horizon, the air became perfumed with sweet smoke, and people began drifting toward the cliffs where Ginger refused to look.
It was dark—she was half-asleep—when Glory tapped her shoulder.
“Time to go. Mr. Diggans has graciously offered to walk us to the car. Here.” She handed each of them a small flashlight. “Compliments of Casper.” She smiled and her eyes glinted in the moonlight. “Nice to have a man who thinks of everything.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Monday started as usual, a sloppy line of twitchy children snaking from Ginger’s office door to the first water fountain, waiting for her arrival. The early birds were a hodgepodge of the anxious and the downcast, children sent by teachers who didn’t have time or temperament to deal with morning tears, vague complaints, or the distress caused by a lost lovey. Before Ginger was a school nurse, she had no idea how often children lost things. What a hero she could be, just by saying, Look—turn around. What’s that poking out of your backpack? Even big things, she learned, could disappear from a child’s custody. She once sat, stunned, as a teary fourth grader confessed she’d just lost her cello for the second time.
Ginger was well aware of the difference between how she was perceived at school and how she felt at home. At school she was a reliable, efficient, clear-headed thinker. At home, she felt like a poster child for the derailed. In the past, she’d tried to apply her no-nonsense nurseness to her off-duty home life, but she never managed to make it work. This was how it would go: a boy at school would complain that he had to keep clearing his throat, and she’d confidently reassure him it was probably just a cold. If the problem persisted, she would call home and suggest the mother take him to an allergist. But if Julia complained of the same postnasal drip, instead of thinking allergist, Ginger would suddenly remember the mother she met at Field Day whose brain tumor had presented with exactly that symptom.
As always, Ginger dealt with the waiting children quickly, listening to their woes with practiced sympathy but not indulgence and then briskly pointing them back to their classrooms. When the first wave was dispatched, she began her morning calls. This is Nurse Tangle calling to let you know Lila left her bear on the bus. This is Nurse Tangle reminding you to drop off a new EpiPen for Colin. This is Nurse Tangle calling to discuss what happened at recess with Luke.
By nine o’clock the thermometer came out. The otoscope emerged around ten. At eleven the boy who was always constipated turned up, and right after him came the girl who pulled off a hangnail every day at lunch and made herself bleed. When the boy with the smelly feet showed up, she would talk to him about the weather—he liked to discuss types of clouds; cumulus were his favorite—while she sprinkled powder in his socks and then sent him on his way.
Throughout the day they’d come in clumps. The chronic complainers who had imperceptible sties or tender spots their gym teachers denied existed. The upset stomachs, the sore throats, the itchy heads. There were mundane tasks too: the students who came to get their eyes checked or to be weighed. But her specialty was the children with vague complaints. Not the children who lost things, but the children who themselves felt lost.
At lunchtime, Emmett came to see her. For a month, Emmett had come to school with a SunButter and dried kale sandwich, which he refused to eat. SunButter, the sunflower seed replacement insisted upon by peanut allergy sentinels, was not all that palatable paired with jelly. Who could blame Emmett for refusing to eat a sandwich of SunButter and dried kale? The previous week, Ginger had made a deal with him. If he promised to take his uneaten sandwich back home with a note for his mother, he could have a yogurt from her small fridge. Emmett seems reluctant to eat his lunch, she wrote to Mrs. Samuels. Maybe something plain for a while. Pasta or yogurt worth a try? She thought she’d struck the right tone, but here was Emmett, back again. “How are you?” she asked him.
“Good. Do you ever take that clip out of your hair?”
Reflexively, Ginger smoothed back her hair and felt to see if the wide barrette at the back of her neck was still fixed in place. She wore her hair back at work for hygienic reasons, but she usually left the clip in when she got home because otherwise her hair tended to increase in volume throughout the day until it was out of control. “Sometimes I wear it loose on the weekend. What’s up?”
“I want to turn in my sandwich but not for yogurt. My mom gave me a teaching moment about it last night.”
“About yogurt?” The boy nodded. “Okay, well, what did you learn?”
“Yogurt is a milk product, and milk products are not a healthy food.”
This was another daily challenge, keeping up with the slippery facts of the medical Internet news and the parents who consumed it. “Milk can be confusing,” Ginger admitted. “Some people can’t have any, some people can have a lot. Maybe your mom and I should make a milk plan. What do you think?”
Emmett nodded and laid his sandwich on her desk. “What can I have?”
With yogurt temporarily on the danger food list, she didn’t have much to offer, so she switched with the boy:
Emmett got her apple and turkey sandwich; Ginger got SunButter and kale. After he left, she closed her door—she tried to have ten minutes of private time for lunch—and took a bite. The taste and crunch was strange at first, but it wasn’t bad. She was halfway through the sandwich when she heard the next group gathering in the hall. She wrapped up the rest for later, cleaned her desk with a Lysol wipe, and called out. “Next customer?”
Blisters. It was like an epidemic. Did no one’s shoes fit properly? She quickly cleaned the affected area, applied a bandage and answered the inevitable question. No, I don’t pop blisters. No, you definitely shouldn’t pop it. No, not even your mom. No one should pop blisters ever.
At four, she locked up her supply cabinet and headed to Glory’s. Today, she planned on a quick visit, just a drop-by to give her mother a new puzzle and to see if she needed anything from the grocery store. But when she walked in the house, an odor hit her. “What is that?”
“Since when are you such a fussbudget? You didn’t get that from me.” Glory lifted the lid off the new puzzle—“Ooh, the solar system”—and spilled the Milky Way out on the table.
“Did you ever find that felt mat?” Ginger opened the refrigerator where the smell seemed worst.
“Never been a fan of felt. Not at all flattering.” Glory’s fingers moved quickly as she turned the fragments of the cosmos star side up. Then she stopped. “I’ve done this one already.”
“No you haven’t. It’s new.” Ginger threw out a bottle of ketchup the color of sludge, a pickle jar with what looked like embryos inside, a dish of olives melting into brine.
“So snippy.” Her fingers scuttled across the pile, hunting for straight edges. “You need a hobby. You’d feel better if you had a hobby.”
“You’re my hobby.” Ginger slipped on a pair of marigold rubber gloves.
“I mean, collect something. Like I do. Like puzzles.”
“Good idea.” Ginger wiped up a puddle of liquid, origin unknown, from the top shelf. “What if I mark everything with a date? To help you know when it’s time to throw things out.”
“Sure, Madame Curie. Whatever you say.” Glory stared at the puzzle. “Was this on the sale rack? Something’s not right. Is it one of those seconds, like your father sold?”
“It’s brand-new. The man told me. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine. Stop worrying. Worrywarts get worry lines. You have a big one right between your eyebrows. Makes you look mad all the time. I don’t have that. See?” She offered up her face and Ginger saw agitation. “Your father was the same. I told him all the time, stop looking for trouble, Solly. Look hard enough, you’ll find it. And then where will we be?”
Ginger tossed a Tupperware bowl in the garbage. The thud caught her mother’s attention.
“That’s a perfectly good container. Why did you throw it out?”
“There was mold in it, it was warped, and it smelled. I’m just trying to help.”
“So help with something I want.” Glory thought for a moment. “Let’s go somewhere.”
“Like where? Want to see a play?” Ginger took out an ice tray and sniffed. Onions. She banged out the cubes into the sink. “We haven’t been to a play in years.”
Glory gave an indifferent shrug. “I was thinking more along the lines of Paris. I always wanted to go to Paris. Your father didn’t, of course. Mister stay-at-home.”
“Okay, Paris it is.” Ginger pulled out the vegetable bin. This must be the root cause of the smell. She used a wad of paper towels to gather up the limp remains of unidentifiable food.
Glory narrowed her eyes. “Or the moon. Wouldn’t that be darling? Going to the moon?”
“Sure. Why not.”
“See? I knew it. You’re not taking me seriously.”
“I’m cleaning out your refrigerator.”
“Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the dead.”
While the refrigerator shelves dried on the counter, Ginger went to the store to buy replacement food. But when she came back, grocery bags in her arms, she could smell the odor had returned. A disheartening mix of boiled beef, spoiled milk, bad breath, and musty skin, it seemed to be a part of the house now, coating the walls and the lightbulbs, activated every time Glory flicked on the switch. There was another smell too, an acrid odor, a warning sign Ginger couldn’t place. She sniffed again. “Did you burn something?”
“You mean the teakettle? What a piece of nonsense. Your sister bought it. I’m sure it cost a fortune but—no whistle. How’s a person supposed to know the water’s boiling if there’s no whistle?”
It was a fair point. “I’ll get you a new one at the hardware store on my way home. With a whistle. I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
“As you wish. Now where are the corners?” Glory examined the puzzle and then gave up. “Long as you’re going to town, can you make me an appointment to get my eyebrows done? At the nail place I like.” Ginger nodded. “With that girl. What’s her name? It’s a month. May? April? Or is it a flower? Oh, it’s syrup. It’s Maple. I want an appointment with Maple.”
“You mean, Mabel.”
“Yes, but there’s two of them. I don’t want the new one. I want the old Maple. You know what? Long as you’re going, better take the universe back. Tell them it’s not right.”
“Okay. Get kettle. Return puzzle. Eyebrow appointment.”
“So huffy,” Glory said as she put the puzzle pieces back in the box.
At the hardware store, Ginger bought a no-frills whistling kettle and at the shop across the street she found a puzzle of the Lady of Shalott, which the owner promised had just come in that morning. Last stop, she elbowed open the door to Utopia Nails.
“Nurse Tangle!” A woman at the manicure station closest to the door waved.
Ginger had no idea who she was, but that wasn’t unusual. Grateful moms often said hello while Ginger struggled to place their faces and remember the names of their kids.
“Anne-Marie,” the woman reminded her.
Recognition, slow to register, finally came. It had been years since the woman had a child in her school, and though she couldn’t remember anything about the child, Anne-Marie was harder to forget. They came and went, these women, temporary fixtures in the hallways and the front office. Moms who organized teacher-appreciation luncheons and spring flings and acted like they were in charge of the school until their PTA terms were up, or their children moved on. Then they’d disappear, only to be replaced by others. Mostly their faces blended together and she couldn’t tell them apart. But Anne-Marie, she remembered now, was one who stuck out. A woman with a certain kind of confidence that always put Ginger on edge. The type, she suspected, who had been in the cool crowd in high school and never gave up the craving to be admired as an adult. Ginger could still make out the ghost of Anne-Marie’s cheerleader beauty—the good hair, the quick smile—but her face hadn’t kept up. It was puffy, with eyes that were beginning to recede, lips that had thinned, and skin that had begun its gentle fall into jowls.
“How unlikely is this?” Anne-Marie’s buoyant confidence remained.
Several facts came to Ginger at once. Anne-Marie had a son. A boy whose knees were permanently covered by large-sized Band-Aid tough strips because he always got in scuffles at recess. His name was Nick. She might not have put together Anne-Marie’s Nick and her Nick—ten-year-old boys didn’t always look familiar when she met them again at eighteen—if the girl sitting at the manicure station next to Anne-Marie hadn’t just then come into focus. The girl struggling to make herself invisible. Julia. As far as Ginger knew, Julia had never had a manicure in her life.
“Oh. Well. Wow. Hi.” Ginger tried not to sound too surprised, first that Julia was having a manicure; second, that she was having a manicure with Nick’s mother; third, that the nails on the one hand that was finished were a freshly painted black.
“How great is this?” Anne-Marie wanted to know. “Now I can tell you face-to-face. Your daughter is amazing. I wi
sh I had a daughter.” She let out a laugh. “Who am I kidding? If I had a daughter, no way she’d be sweet like Julia. I don’t grow ’em sweet. But swear to god, since Julia and Nicky started going out, Nicky’s a different person. I love her. I love your daughter. I do.”
“Thank you.” Ginger forced a smile on her face and then noticed it, a tiny diamond stud in Julia’s nose. “What is that?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Anne-Marie assured her. “It’s not a real diamond.” Then she seemed to realize the stone was not the problem. “It’s okay with you, right? Julia said you wouldn’t mind. I never would have taken her to get her nose pierced if it wasn’t okay with you.” Anne-Marie smiled and there it was: the mother had the same provocative smirk as the son.
Ginger did not want to sound shrewish. “Well, it is a surprise.” Julia looked away.
Anne-Marie lowered her voice. “Nicky doesn’t know yet. He’s going to be thrilled to bits. How could he not be, right? It’s so adorable. Don’t you love it?”
“Jules, can you step outside for a minute?”
“Now?” Julia pulled her hand out of the dish where it was soaking.
The manicurist giggled and guided her hand back in. “Not done.”
“Okay,” Ginger said. “We can talk later. When you get home.”
Ginger got in her car and, distracted, drove straight back to Glory’s.
“Can’t stay away, can you?” Glory asked when she answered the bell.
“Here’s your kettle.” Ginger handed it to her. “Here’s a new puzzle.” She turned to go.
“What about my appointment with Maple? What time did you make it for?”
“Didn’t make it yet.” Ginger didn’t turn around. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”
“What a crab apple,” Glory said, and shut the door.
Ginger walked into the house feeling so exhausted, she wondered if she might be coming down with the flu. To clear her head, she took a shower. When she got out, the phone was ringing.