The Drummond Girls

by Mardi Jo Link

  I was worried for Jill, too, yet still never above indulging in a little overthinking.

  “Was that why you first invited me along, for the money?”

  “Yeah,” Linda said, “partly.”

  Something in me knew that was going to be her answer—Linda didn’t lie, ever, not even to spare someone’s feelings—but the easy way she’d agreed still landed in my gut with a sickening thud. I couldn’t fault her for telling me the truth; it was one of the things I admired about her, yet I was glad I hadn’t asked her back then. It would have devastated me. It caused a twinge even now, after we’d become close friends.

  “Why can’t things just stay the way they are?” Linda said then, oblivious to how her answer had affected me. “Why can’t everyone in my little world just agree for five frickin’ minutes to keep their shit the same?”

  After we’d finished our cleanup, after all our customers had cashed out, after we counted our tips and took off our waitress aprons, we sat down at a table in the empty dining room with tubs of clean silverware hot from the dishwasher.

  A new government regulation said that for hygienic reasons, a restaurant’s silverware had to be wrapped in a napkin. That meant an extra hour tacked on to the end of our shifts. The rule at Peegeo’s was that waitresses would be paid regular wages for the hour if you weren’t drinking while you rolled; if you had a cocktail in front of you, you rolled for free. Linda sometimes grabbed a Scotch first, sometimes not; it depended upon how stressful her night had been. I needed the money so bad that I always rolled dry.

  With Linda sitting across from me, I opened a napkin, smoothed it flat, laid a knife down in the center, balanced a fork on top, rolled the implements up tight, and wrapped a self-sticking strip of colored paper around the bundle. The new regulation was different, but it wasn’t the kind of change Linda was talking about when she said she wished everything would stay the same. She was talking about Jill and her husband.

  Linda worked constantly at adjusting the variables in her life until everything was exactly the way she wanted it. I’d always supposed that her attachment to the familiar was just who she was and how she was raised. Besides the time her dad was posted overseas, Linda had lived in the same house with her parents from infancy through high school. Waitresses and bartenders were known to job-hop, but she’d worked at Peegeo’s, in the same position with the same schedule, for eight years. When we went to the island, we went the same weekend, stayed in the same place, did the same things. She didn’t like change and went to great pains to avoid it.

  When I was growing up, my family had moved six times before I was eleven years old. I’d hated it. Yet as an adult, I hadn’t become any more predictable or stationary. By the time Linda hired me, I’d attended three colleges, lived in five states, and had worked for wages at everything from newspaper reporter to seamstress to tree planter. Change had become something I didn’t mind all that much, and yet when it came to our annual Drummond trip, the consistency of it was comforting.

  Everything in my life that was supposed to be secure, most notably my marriage and my finances, felt unpredictable. My weekend away with the girls had started out as just a chance to party without interference from anyone, an opportunity to go somewhere to escape our responsibilities for a little while. But it gave me something to look forward to, and had begun to feel more stable and certain than any other part of my life.

  I say we just keep going had been my advice to the girls that first year when we’d become lost in Drummond’s dark woods.

  By 1995, I’d started to feel lost inside my own life, and yet had somehow kept going, kept working, kept mothering, and stayed married. I wasn’t aware of all that then, but I still knew Linda was right. We needed to do something to make sure our trip wouldn’t collapse if someone’s personal life did.

  In those few weeks between Andrea’s wedding and our departure for Drummond, something unexpected happened. Our boss, George, fell in love with his new girlfriend. His googly eyes whenever he looked at her made me feel even more cynical about my own relationship with my husband, but surprisingly it was Linda who withheld judgment and instead observed him with interest.

  George smiled when he came to work, even if the day waitress was late. He smiled when the prep cook called in sick. He smiled if an ornery customer complained about something ridiculous. Say, a pizza with too much cheese or a bar crowd that was laughing too loud and having too much fun. He let a few of the people he’d once banned from Peegeo’s for their bad behavior back in his good graces. Even, for a while, Dan the ashtray hurler.

  And—this was the real giveaway—he even smiled whenever Linda or I approached him during the Friday night dinner rush, saying, “I’ve got a little dilemma.” Which was waitress code for “I really screwed up.” (Considering that Peegeo’s was such a small place, there sure were a lot of ways to err: Forget to put in a drink order. Illegible handwriting. Push the wrong button on the cash register. Bus your tables too slowly. Spill, drop, or break something. Trip.)

  Even today, Linda and I both remember those charmed weeks fondly. George would fix our mistake or solve our problem, make a point of looking us kindly in the eye, and, in all seriousness, ask if there was anything else we needed. Anything at all.

  No sarcasm, no ridicule; he’d actually seemed interested in our answer.

  George had to be in love, we told each other; that or alien possession were the only possible explanations, and as far as we knew, no one had seen a spaceship. A few years prior, George had survived an ugly divorce; it had made him understandably bitter, and the fact that kindness and patience were becoming normal behavior for him was a miracle. The miracle’s name was Susan.

  I liked Susan well enough and was happy for George, but Peegeo’s already had a set group of regulars. With Susan added to the mix, the late-night vibe of the place had shifted. It wasn’t bad, it was just different and another change for Linda to rail against. It certainly never occurred to me that Susan’s appearance in George’s life would ever have anything at all to do with the longevity of our trip to the island. The ability to put those two things together was an example of why Linda was in charge of it and not one of the rest of us.

  “We’re doubling down on Drummond,” she informed me one night.

  Another hectic Friday had come and gone; another pyramid of wrapped silverware grew on the table between us.

  “Whatever that means,” I said, my voice weary from a full day with my sons, followed by nine hours of working the all-you-can-eat fish fry.

  For those willing to wait in line for a table, their reward was a plate of deep-fried cod, steak fries, homemade coleslaw, a dinner roll, two pats of butter, and a pickle spear for only $5.99. The fish was (and still is) delicious, so an awful lot of people were willing to wait for it, and they lined up out the door and sometimes even down the front steps.

  “You know, college girl,” Linda said, lighting a cigarette and waving away the smoke. “Economies of scale.”

  She looked at me as if I should have known what those words meant, but I didn’t. Fiscal terms whizzed past my ears like deerflies someone carelessly let into the kitchen. After working the same shift I’d just endured, her eyes didn’t look tired at all; instead, they’d gleamed. The same three words that had sounded boring and unfamiliar to me—economies of scale—hummed with potential for her. When it came to budgeting what little money any of us had for the trip back then, she was not only good at it, she even seemed to find it fun. No decision was too small not to have some research and thought put into it.

  “A plan might not be shit,” she’d told me once, “but planning is everything.”

  That sounded familiar, and while I was pretty sure I’d heard it somewhere before, I didn’t know where. I’ve since looked it up. Dwight D. Eisenhower said it, without the cuss word, when asked to account for his successful invasion of Germany in WWII. When organizing four waitresses for a party weekend, Linda’s strategy mirrored that of the supreme com
mander of the Allied forces (and our thirty-fourth president).

  She explained it made sense to keep track of our expenses, since even though many of them were preset and beyond our control, they were also relatively constant. The distance from Peegeo’s parking lot to Drummond Island (188 miles), the price of gas ($1.20 a gallon), the toll for the Mackinac Bridge ($1.25 per axle), the ticket for the car ferry (fourteen dollars), and the rent on Frank’s trailer (fifty-five dollars a night). That year, the four of us had pledged $125 each to the kitty; fifty dollars more than what we’d needed in 1993, an increase Linda said would hopefully secure and even build on the amount we carried over from year to year.

  I wished all of that had made sense to me, yet the truth was whenever talk turned to money, my concentration went somewhere else. Fiji maybe or Guam.

  “Cost per unit?” Linda said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  When I didn’t respond with intelligent discourse or even an imbecilic nod, she made an effort to explain what economies of scale, cost per unit, and doubling down had to do with Drummond Island. If we invited additional women to go with us, she said, it would create a more robust kitty in relation to our fixed expenses. When I still didn’t get it, she translated again.

  “Eight girls can party harder on eight hundred dollars than four can on four hundred dollars.”

  That I understood. Even if Jill and Marty worked things out, that didn’t mean our trip was safe from cancellation. Jill and Andrea were still in their twenties and someday soon, they probably were going to want to start a family. That might not take them out of the trip entirely, but they’d probably miss a year. “Pregnant or dead” had been a joke, but Drummond Island—at least, the way we did Drummond Island—was no place for a pregnant woman. Plus, something unforeseen or unavoidable might someday waylay one of us, too. With four more women, our trip would be better situated to withstand an unplanned absence.

  Linda’s obsession with money had often been the source of amusement. She used glass jars for budgeting big-ticket items—one for her car payment, another for firewood, a third for our trip, etc. Yet I had to admit, this time I was impressed by it.

  When I looked around the restaurant and considered the other waitresses I worked with, I realized that all of them, me included, had financial problems. When you’re paid in cash, often in one-dollar bills and handfuls of change, it spends pretty easily, often disappearing before you’ve realized where it went.

  Linda made her money the same way I did, yet she had just bought a used Ford Explorer, only a couple years old and with no rust; financed a new bedroom set and paid it off early; and probably had more in her savings account than Andrea, Jill, and me combined.

  She didn’t have a college degree in economics—she didn’t have a college degree in anything—and yet she knew more about money management than all those white-haired men who came on my TV and droned on and on about the deficit.

  I imagined the dialogue if CNN interviewed her instead of them: “The dumbasses in government just need to get themselves some really big jars. Problem solved.”

  I grinned just thinking about it. My shyness was slowly disappearing, partly because it was a handicap for a waitress and partly because of my friendship with Linda, Andrea, and Jill. That and my growing closeness with Bev had given me some much-needed confidence and I actually liked the idea of doubling the number of women on our trip. It meant we’d have more money and I’d make new friends, but it meant something else, too. I wouldn’t be the new girl anymore, a status unimaginable to me only two years before.

  I watched as Linda set the last silverware roll on the pile and then took a sip of her Scotch. I tried to picture eight women up on the island together instead of just four and started to imagine who we’d invite. There would probably be a discussion, we’d each make suggestions (I’d suggest Bev for sure!), and then we’d take a vote. I wondered if any of the other women I knew, like the mothers of the children in my son’s kindergarten class or a neighbor I’d recently become friendly with, would want to go along with us.

  “Susan, Mary Lynn, Pam, and Bev,” Linda said, putting her head back and exhaling a tidy line of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling.

  “What?” I’d asked, confused yet again.

  “That’s who I’m inviting.”

  Since she’d included Bev, it was hard for me to be too irritated, but I still thought all four of us should have been in on the decision. I knew or knew of the three other women: Susan was George’s girlfriend, Mary Lynn was a regular customer, and Pam was a bartender at a nice restaurant downtown.

  Susan and Pam seemed like good choices—young, outgoing, and fun—but I couldn’t figure out why Linda had chosen Mary Lynn. She and her husband had three grown children between them and they came into Peegeo’s almost every weeknight for dinner; I’d waited on the two of them a lot and even grown to appreciate Mary Lynn’s cranky sense of humor. But with her teddy bear sweatshirts and hunched posture, she’d seemed old. It wasn’t just her age—Bev was a lot older than me but I didn’t think of her as old—it was her mind-set. I just couldn’t imagine Mary Lynn keeping up with the rest of us.

  Neither Andrea nor Jill had any problem with Linda’s decision, but the realization I wasn’t going to have a say in choosing any of the new girls continued to grate on me. I couldn’t argue with her planning or budgeting ability, but I had noticed a tendency in her to decide things for other people and then neglect to tell them about it until the last minute.

  “Do they know they’re going?” I’d asked her.

  “Nope,” she said happily. “But they will.”

  Only now do I understand how much thought and care Linda put in to her selections. It’s not every woman who can hike, two-track, happily sleep in a trailer, and be willing and even proud to be known as a “girl” years after the literal definition applied. The eight of us, so different, would turn out to be amazingly well suited for not just our weekends up north, but for the lifelong friendship that resulted. Linda was the one who’d had a sense of that, even all those years ago.

  The first year the four of us went to Drummond Island together had probably seemed like a novelty to the men in our lives. The second year had been tolerated. By the third year, not one of them was looking forward to October with the same gusto we girls were.

  I’m not entirely sure how Marty or Steve felt, but neither Linda’s boyfriend nor my husband were in favor of us leaving town and doing who knows what, who knows where. As for George, he’d never objected in theory, but Linda and I were both strong waitresses, reliable and competent, and he didn’t like having us both gone from work at the same time. Our men were one thing, George was another, and adding people to the trip wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem. Unless they were the right people.

  George was a hands-on boss, and I’d never met anyone who worked harder than he did. He arrived early and stayed late. He was smart, often generous, and sarcastically funny—most nights he’d have a running commentary on politics, NASCAR drivers, snowmobile trail grooming, and the foibles of customers’ lives in a kind of one-man painfully observant floor show. He was also a stick of emotional dynamite and my condolences to the waitress or customer incompetent or unlucky enough to be in close range when he blew.

  Linda understood George’s mercurial nature. She knew it was difficult for him when both of us took the same weekend off. Peegeo’s was a family. A dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. Even people in dysfunctional families want approval, and there was no more visible way to give ours to George’s girlfriend than by inviting her to Drummond. Plus, how could he get irritated at us for leaving if Susan and some of his own customers were along with us?

  Linda’s mastery of organization, finance, and even human resources obscured the thing that should have surprised me. The woman who abhorred change, who worked the exact same schedule every week, who parked her car in the exact same spot, drank the same drink, smoked the same b
rand of cigarettes, wore the same hairstyle, and even sat at the same table to roll silverware after work, had voluntarily made the biggest change our trip would ever encounter.

  “Say your good-byes, sisters, ’cause we’re off like a bride’s panties!”

  I was pumped full of coffee but still sleepy and dawn was at least an hour away. As far as Andrea was concerned, that was no reason not to crank up the Metallica.

  Up ahead, Susan, Mary Lynn, and Pam were riding with Linda in her new Ford. Inside the Chuck Truck, Andrea’s name for her little Bronco II, were Bev, Jill, and me. For weeks I’d been so focused on the eight of us, how we’d get along with each other, whether the new girls would instantly love the island the way I had, I’d totally forgotten our possible ninth traveler.

  Then when Andrea pulled into my driveway that morning, and I’d opened the hatch to toss in my duffel bag, there he was, inside a Ziploc freezer bag, flattened and folded with his feet near his ears. Earl had not only survived the final hours of Andrea’s bachelorette party, he was resting comfortably for his ride.

  Andrea always remembered things like that, enjoyed being the author of the grand gesture, whether that gesture was a fist bump or a blow-up doll. There was also a cooler of beer, two bags of Wild Berry Jell-O shots, a fifth of Popov, a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips, a deck of cards, a boom box, and a CD case bulging with hair metal packed in the back with him. Drummond was going to be epic.

  I closed the back hatch and looked up the hill at my little white house. In order to squeeze every moment out of our three days off, Linda always had us leaving at what she referred to as “the ass crack of dawn.” It was hours before my sons were due at the bus stop but they knew I was leaving and were already up. I’d given them breakfast and turned on cartoons but when I tried to wake my husband, he’d just mumbled something about there being no need for him to get out of bed that early. So there wasn’t anyone seeing me off that year but our two dogs, and I remember their windshield wiper tails waving in unison behind the sliding glass door.