by Erin Saldin
And he’s probably right. Davis is smarter than the rest of us combined. Probably smarter than all of Tri High. Georgie’s got her business. Erik’s got a full ride to the state university in a year. They’re all going places. But me? I’m just waiting for the day when they leave me behind like a forgotten animal, trapped and crying for help that never comes. Like Vera, I’m not going anywhere.
I mean, just look at where I live.
I have a theory. I believe that we set what Vera would call our “unmentionables” as far away from ourselves as possible so that we don’t have to claim them. That’s why strip malls and bail bondsmen and prisons and trailer parks and ugly apartment complexes and old folks’ homes lie on the outskirts of town, away from the nicer houses, the coffee shops—basically, civilization. I believe we secretly hope something will happen to the outskirts—tornado, tsunami—and we’ll be freed of the unmentionables without having to answer for it. I believe we don’t want to look at these places because we live in fear of someday finding ourselves living or working in one of them, and we want to imagine that, while this may happen to everyone else, it will never happen to us.
I’m lucky, I guess. In some ways, it’s already happened to me.
WHERE THE SUMMER BEGINS
When the Weekenders come back in June, they come in stages. First, the retirees arrive in sedans, Oldsmobiles, RVs pulling their camp wheels. Next, the families with babies and toddlers, no one to pull out of school early, schedules that revolve around nothing but naps. Then the college students who are spending the summer at the cabin and who want to get here early enough to snag one of the few good gigs waiting tables at the steakhouse or pouring chardonnay at the Grand Hotel’s lakefront bar. Most tend to forget why they arrived early, and by the time they remember that the whole point was employment, it’s too late and they wouldn’t want to mess up their own schedule of naps and eating, punctuated by lackadaisical swims from one end of the dock to the other. Finally, the weekend after school lets out across the state, the families roll in and we see everyone else.
They stop at Grainey’s on their way into town for that first iced latte of the summer. We’re there, of course, as we’ve been every afternoon since the last bell rang and we left our lockers hanging open to run down the halls toward the heavy double doors, papers flying everywhere. We headed to Grainey’s that first afternoon, and we’ve been there ever since, waiting but not, if we’re asked, waiting. Our eyes slide over them as they walk into Grainey’s and pause next to the wire stands holding the Gold Fork Roundup and the free real estate magazine. They pretend to look up at the chalkboard behind the counter as though they don’t know what they’re going to order and maybe something’s changed, anyway, since last summer, but nothing has. Nothing ever changes. And they order their iced latte again, this time with vanilla syrup but, they say, “Just a little bit, okay?” While they wait for Maria to make it, they look at their phone. Scroll down. Send a text. They lean into the counter with one hip and look better doing it than we ever have when we’ve tried leaning just like that at the end of summer. And we watch them without looking, our eyes trained on the horoscope section of the Roundup or maybe on the big glass windows through which we can see across the street to the Grand Hotel but on which we can also see our own reflection and, just behind and to the side, the Weekenders, leaning.
We don’t talk to them on the first day. We know that the first week of vacation is, to a Weekender’s parents, sacrosanct. That, in order to earn what will surely be a summer of late nights on someone else’s dock, the camp wheels borrowed and not returned until morning, they need to appease their parents for one interminable week. Board games and dinners out, long talks about how the year went and whether soccer is really such a good option next season, what with their grades. What with the PSATs, the SATs, the IB exams, one hundred different ways to assess their potential. The Weekenders are going places, and their parents won’t let them forget it, not until that first week is over.
But finally, they let them go. Hand over the keys to the camp wheels and say, “Have a great night.” Maybe: “Call if you’re going to be late.” And the Weekenders will call, those first few times, sneaking into the upstairs bedroom in someone else’s cabin to use the landline or, if they’re lucky, getting enough bars to call their parents from the edge of the driveway where their apologies (“. . . so tired, think I’ll stay at Mackenzie’s/Blake’s/Ryan’s tonight.”) can’t be overheard by the people on the cabin porch who are, just now, debating the relative merits of keg stands. The first of a summer of lies both white and gray. Eventually, they’ll stop calling with excuses. Eventually, their parents will stop expecting them to. And then the summer will really begin.
GEORGIE
I get invited to almost all the parties that the Weekenders throw.
Sure, some of them have their own connections in the city and bring what they need with them, but most don’t. Maybe their parents have learned to check their bags before loading them into the back of the Suburban. Maybe it’s laziness. I mean, they know I’m here. They might not have met me yet, but they’ve heard of me. And a business like mine relies quite heavily on word of mouth.
That’s why, once everyone starts arriving for the summer, I’m the most popular Dead Ender in town. During the year, it’s different. I don’t go to as many parties. During the year, it’s more of a job. During the summer, though, I can almost start to think of it as a hobby. Or, as my dad says when he sees me leaving for work tonight in my standard uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, “Ah. So every day is ‘Casual Friday.’ ”
“Dad. It is Friday.” I fold my jacket so that only the back is showing and lay it on the chair by the door before kneeling down to tie the laces of my combat boots.
He stops unloading the dishwasher and stands up straight. “Georgia, the way you present yourself equates to the way you wish to be respected.” He looks me up and down. I watch him decide not to say the obvious thing. Instead, he says, “Remember to keep your eyes open. Anyone look suspicious, anyone acting strange . . .” It’s a line from the police blotter, once news broke that the fire chief declared the Nelson cabin was definitely an act of arson. As though whoever burned it down is going to, I don’t know, walk around in public, flipping lit matches onto the ground.
Light a fire in this town, and suddenly you’re Charles Manson.
“I will,” I say.
“Use your instincts,” he says.
“Got it.”
He looks up at the ceiling, thinking. “Your friend Davis—the one who works at the newspaper. He going to write about both fires?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”
“Good. He’s a good writer.” Dad glances at me. “You can invite your friends over, you know.”
I shrug. “I know.”
“I’d like to hear more about what he finds out.”
And that is why I don’t bring my friends over. I really don’t need my dad, a born researcher if there ever was one, grilling Davis on the fire that was, until two weeks ago, the biggest news to hit Gold Fork in a decade. That chapel had been the first building erected in Gold Fork, back when it was settled. There were names etched into the pews from Dead Enders’ great-great-grandparents. It was the wedding site in town; Weekenders reserved it two years in advance so that they could walk down the aisle in three-thousand-dollar dresses and have their reception out on the cliffs, everyone feeling rustic and content, feeling like they finally belonged here.
Oh yeah—and it was Davis’s mom’s church.
Dad turns to my mom, who’s just walked in from the backyard. Her hands are dirty from pulling weeds in the garden. I see his frown of annoyance when he sees the dirt, but he tries to cover it. “Georgia’s off to work again.”
She smiles at me. “Have a good time with the kiddos.” She doesn’t look at my dad.
“You should charge overtime,” my dad says, “for all the weekend nights they’re asking you to work.”
&nbs
p; “Dennis,” says my mom. “Stop. She wants to work, she can work.”
He gives her a sharp look.
“I do charge overtime,” I say, standing, my hand already on the doorknob as I grab my coat and fold it over my arm, careful not to crinkle the contents. Can’t get out soon enough. “They’re paying me well.” And then, before we get into specifics, I’m out.
Gus and Dehlia, I remind myself as I shut the door behind me. What is it tonight? Right: parents going out for a romantic boat ride and then dinner in town. My nanny job’s not the most inspired lie I’ve ever told, but it serves a couple of purposes. For one thing, it gets me out of the house from noon to six every day, not to mention the weekend nights when hey, the Robinsons call, I haul. For the past couple of years, my brother’s stayed on to take summer classes at the state university, so I don’t even have him to complain about our parents with. My job keeps me busy, and it keeps me away. But more importantly, it’s setting the stage for the day in the not-too-distant future when I tell my parents that I’m dropping out of school and moving to the city and not to worry, I’ve got some savings.
“What price freedom?” The question is something of a joke between the four of us. We’ll ask one another under our breath while we watch a Weekender haggling over the price of a pontoon rental at the marina, or when someone rolls down Main in a blacked-out Land Rover. “What price freedom?” we’ll say, and then we’ll laugh.
But I know the answer to that question: $8,920.30. That’s exactly how much I figure I’ll need to cover a month at a recording studio in the city, plus my third of whatever shithole the band and I can find to live in for three months. Three months is what I figure it’ll take for me to find a job and start making enough to pay my bills. A new guitar would be nice, too, so I’ve factored in a Fender Jaguar and Big Muff effects pedal. Plus, you know, food and stuff.
That’s the price of freedom. And, until the fire at the Nelsons’ cabin, I had almost all of it.
It’ll be a disappointment to my parents, I’m sure. I’ll be a disappointment. But then, moving to the city with the band is a hell of a lot more impressive than what I’m doing now. And since all but one of the other members of the band just graduated, the only real option is for me to drop out of school. It’ll only be disappointing until they read about me in Rolling Stone.
Look. It’s not like my parents ever imagined they’d be living in Gold Fork, working in jobs for which they’re underpaid and overeducated. They didn’t think they’d ever have to worry about being able to afford their kids’ educations. But that’s life for you. Dad doesn’t get tenure and finds himself taking any high school teaching job in the state, any one at all, even when it turns out to be at—gasp—a junior high. Mom gets her nursing degree at night and starts looking for jobs at rural hospitals. And voila: Here we are in Gold Fork. As my dad has said, it’s not what they wanted, but it’s what they got. (Sometimes I think that’s how they feel about their marriage, too.) Even with his swimming scholarship at State, my brother’s still bled them dry. Which leaves me with nothing but the lot of the second-born: Think creatively.
I hop in Trusty Rusty—my beat-up old pickup that I bought with, you know, some nanny savings—and start the drive toward Fellman’s Point, on the far side of the lake. And, just like clockwork, my chin starts to quiver.
It’s been doing that more and more lately, usually right after I’ve met with Dodge. I don’t feel like I’m going to cry or anything, but my chin starts quivering like an old lady’s. For instance. It started shaking the second after he almost ran Ana down the other day.
And it started shaking when he slapped me.
Fucking Dodge.
I take one hand off the wheel and press it against my chin, willing it still.
I drive slowly through town, passing the hotel, the bars, the coffee shop, the mechanic on the corner who sometimes buys a teener because you gotta keep in the game, right? I begin to weave my way through the nicer neighborhoods on the other side of the lake, taking note of cabins I’ve visited, log homes whose doors are always open to me when the parents are gone. Cabins on streets with names that should embarrass you if you say them out loud: Meadow Larch Road, Sunrise Circle. Even—Christ—Turkey Lane.
Dodge likes to say that I’m a veritable yellow pages for the whole town of Gold Fork. Only, he doesn’t say “veritable.” His word of choice is more user-friendly.
It’s been raining off and on for the past week. Not quite summer, even if the Weekenders are back. I drive out of town, following the lake road as the houses become larger and farther apart, hard to see in their nests of trees. (Davis was right when he said once that wealth is a kind of camouflage.) Eventually, even the cabins fall away as the road becomes dirt and I pass a couple of camps (the Boy Scouts, the Seventh Day Adventists) whose ramshackle buildings and threadbare flags stand out like broken thumbs. I pass a couple more big homes. The gated swath of land surrounding the Den. And then I’m on Forest Service land, the edge of the lake on my left lapping up against a wall of rock that separates the road from the water, dark woods on my right. If I turned in my seat now, I wouldn’t even be able to see town. Farther ahead is the campground on the north side of the lake. But I turn off before that at Fellman’s Point, taking a muddy fire road already cut deep with wheel tracks. I’m not the first one here.
The fire road curves away from the lake, ending about a quarter mile down in a wide meadow. I park next to a new Jeep. Next to it, a new BMW. How do I know they’re new? Because each fleck of mud on their sides looks carefully painted by an artist for maximum effect. Trusty Rusty, on the other hand, doesn’t look muddy at all—there’s more of a general brownness from wheel to hood. There are about fifteen cars in all—early, still.
I get out of the truck, grab my jacket, and follow a trail down to the campground, where people are setting up tents in the trees and getting the bonfire going in a small clearing. I wave to a few Weekenders I know from last year. They’re still in their urban woods attire: buffalo plaid shirts and designer jeans, Carharts that look too new, slouchy knit caps despite the fact that it’s not that cold. Give ’em a week.
Erik’s leaning over the bonfire with a long stick in his hand, but he straightens when he sees me and comes over. “Slim pickings.” He puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Stick around,” I say. “You know the ladies. They like to make you wait.”
“You’re here.”
I rest my head on his shoulder for a second, then look up at him with a grin. “All business, no pleasure. You forget that I don’t care about making you wait.”
He shrugs. “Make me wait too long, I might not be here.”
“A tragedy for all, I’m sure.” And I take a small step back and swallow.
“You’re something,” he says, shaking his head. At least he doesn’t look like he’s modeling for an outdoor clothing catalog, though I note that he’s in a flannel shirt too. If you can’t beat ’em.
“Hey,” I say, “you seen the others?”
“What? Davis and Ana? Have they ever come to this thing?” Erik laughs. “And what would Davis do here, anyway, besides write about it in his dream journal?”
“Something like that.” It’s Davis, a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Where’d you come from?” Erik scowls, probably to hide his embarrassment at being overheard.
Davis jerks his thumb toward the trail leading to the cars. He looks at Erik strangely—almost sadly—for a minute, then blinks and smiles. “Or do you mean biologically?” He pauses. “You see, Erik, when a mommy and a daddy really love each other, they—”
“Oh my God.” Erik punches Davis in the arm. It’s playful . . . sort of. “These are not words I want to hear coming from your mouth.”
“I may not be wise in all things, but . . .” Davis tries to sound confident, but it doesn’t work. We know the truth. And, like the friends we are, we ignore it.
(Fun fact: Jane—infamous, heart-breaking Jane
—is the only other member of my band who hasn’t graduated yet. I know it, Davis knows it, and we never, ever talk about it. Because, what? He wants to hear how she’s actually a pretty good drummer, all things considered? He wants to know when I’ve just come from practice and I saw her and she didn’t ask about him? That she seems fine—good, even? Oh, hell no.)
“Kids,” I say, “if you can’t play nice, don’t play at all.”
Davis nods as Erik whines, “But, Mooooom.”
I raise an eyebrow at Erik. “No after-school brownie for you.” He tries to ruffle my hair, but I duck. “Keep it up,” I say, “and you won’t even get a carrot stick.”
• • •
The place fills up as soon as the sun’s gone down. There’s a steady stream of headlights as the Weekenders and a few other Dead Enders arrive, blocking one another’s cars in because there’s no other way to do it. The unspoken rule is that no one parks anywhere near the lake road. The cops may know that we’re out here, but we don’t have to be assholes about it.
It gets cold, and I’m glad I brought my heavy motorcycle jacket, the one with all those useful little zippered pockets. I spend an hour or so working the party, greeting some of the Weekenders with nods, others with slaps on the back, a few hugs. Once it’s dark enough, I start pulling little bags out of the jacket pockets, putting money into others, zipping them up.
God, I used to enjoy this.
Pills, teeners, caps, bumps. The pharmacist is in. Again.
And the night’s just getting started. Some guy’s brought speakers, and he hooks them up to his phone and leans them against a rock near the bonfire.
“Every year, just the same,” I tell Erik. We’re sitting back from the bonfire in the trees, having a smoke and squinting at the scene from the shadows. Pretty much everyone’s here now, maybe fifty in all, and it’s the time of the night when things start to get rowdy. I can see Davis and Ana, who got here late, sitting by some rocks closer to the fire. Someone turns the speakers up.