Both Gwen and Bo shut themselves away from the world: Bo in his attic kingdom, Gwen locked in her room across the hall from mine. I found myself loitering outside her door five or six times that day, wondering if I should knock, like I had done earlier in the summer. I tried to imagine what Gwen was feeling but it was too hard to do. It was the kind of thing that just didn’t happen in real life.
I knew that eventually she would be hungry, and I guessed that she would sneak down to the kitchen in the middle of the night. Sunday, after everyone had gone to bed, I slipped back down to the kitchen and sat on the floor, my back against the refrigerator, to wait for her. I read by flashlight until my eyes were so grainy I couldn’t stand it. The first night I fell asleep and woke up as the sky was turning pink, and with just enough time to dash upstairs and sneak into bed before Elsa arrived. On the next night, I heard the stairs creak and I knew my plan had worked.
When Gwen came in, I had already closed my book and was smiling up at her, as if we had made plans to meet in the kitchen in the middle of the night. She took in the scene and scoffed, “That’s a weird place to read.”
“I was waiting for you.”
“Can you move over? I need to get into the fridge. I’m starving.”
I shimmied over and Gwen opened the refrigerator, found some leftover potato salad and plopped down on the floor beside me with a sigh.
“Go ahead. Say it,” she said between spoonfuls of cold potatoes.
“Say what?”
“Say what everyone is thinking, ‘Gee, Gwen, how can one person be such a complete and utter disaster?’”
Gwen’s voice dripped with sarcasm. The acid in her voice made me flinch.
“I don’t think you’re a disaster,” I protested.
“Really?” Gwen adopted a phony newscaster voice and continued, “Promising ballerina drops out of big-time ballet school, falls in with the wrong crowd, gets sent away to the country for safekeeping where she promptly makes plans to run away with her own long-lost brother and causes a riot!” She dropped the voice and stabbed a slimy chunk of potato with such force that mayonnaise splattered along my arm.
“I think that pretty much defines disaster,” she said.
“You didn’t know he was your brother,” I pointed out.
Gwen’s head fell forward and she started to cry. It happened so quickly, I was caught off guard. It was alarming to see her without any bravado, like a turtle without its shell. She seemed so much younger, sniffling into her hands, shoulders shaking. I wiggled a little closer, trying to fit my arm around her shoulders, but she was too close to the refrigerator door.
“I’m sorry,” she said between sobs. “I can’t stop crying. Everything is so messed up.”
“Do you want to get out of here?” I asked.
Gwen hiccupped. “What, now? Where would we go?”
“The beach. The water will clear your head.”
I stood up, offering Gwen my hand. She blinked at it, as if she couldn’t quite understand what it was doing in front of her. I wondered if I was being too bold, and whether it would have been better to sit tight and let her cry, But we needed to get out of that hot, stuffy kitchen. Gwen hadn’t been out of the lodge in three whole days.
“Okay.”
Gwen took my hand and together we left the dark kitchen, full of brooding shadows and stale air, and escaped into the cool, clear night. It was so much brighter outside, with space to move and room to breathe. I let go of Gwen’s clammy hand, stepped out of my slippers and ran through the grass, across the road and, finally, into the warm sands of the beach, stopping at the edge of the lake. My heels sunk into the wet sand and the water curled around my toes, coaxing me to go deeper. Within seconds, Gwen was beside me, breathing hard.
“It is a nice night,” she said.
“Think you can beat me to the raft?” I asked.
Gwen started to speak, but I didn’t wait around to hear her answer. I threw aside my big ratty night shirt and ran straight into the lake. I gasped as the water made contact with my most sensitive places — between my legs and into my bellybutton and finally beneath my armpits — before I dove in and swam as hard as I could. I relished the drag of the water pulling at my face and hair, and wondered, not for the first time, if this was how fish felt. It was another world under the water, as strange as a different planet or a fairyland, where colours and shapes dissolved and the noise from above the surface was muffled beyond recognition. Underwater, you were alone with your thoughts. I stayed under as long as possible, until my lungs started to burn and my chest ached, then broke the surface, gasping.
When I shook the water from my eyes I saw the raft bobbing three feet away from me. Clinging to the side, grinning at me like the Cheshire cat, was Gwen. I laughed in surprise, pushing a small wave toward her with my hand.
“You beat me!” I said.
“You Starrs are all the same, underestimating my skills just because I learned at the city pool and not in the wilds of the Great White North.”
One after the other, we pulled ourselves up on the raft, which shifted under our weight. We lay side by side, wet and sleek, like big white seals come to bathe in the pale light of the moon. It was silent, save for the sloppy sounds of the waves slapping at the raft. It felt good to be shivering slightly in the cool air, muscles tired, lungs stretched, waiting for our breathing to slow down and our heart rates to return to normal.
“It feels like we’re the last two people on Earth,” Gwen said.
“Mmm,” I murmured, not wanting to break the spell.
“I came down here with Bo a few times,” she admitted. “I let him win, though. He’s a terrible loser.”
I smiled, even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “Believe me, I know.”
I took advantage of Gwen’s good mood to apologize. “I’m sorry about Johnny. I just wanted to surprise you. I thought you’d be glad about it.”
“I know, Reenie. It was actually a really sweet thing to do, and six weeks ago, I would have been overjoyed.” Gwen snorted, then added, “I can’t believe you pulled it off, actually. Johnny doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to.”
“He really wanted to see you,” I pointed out.
Gwen squirmed, edging toward the edge of the raft. She let her arm dangle over the side, her fingers just touching the surface of the lake, which was still and dark, like black glass.
“You must think I’m so stupid, dating a boy like that. But he was so charming and famous … I mean, I was dating a rock ’n’ roll star!”
I did think it was a bad idea, but I couldn’t say that out loud, not when she was so fragile. Instead, I said nothing at all, but my silence spoke for me.
“The thing is, my whole life I’ve always felt like I was two people: Gwendolyn, the good girl, prima ballerina and my mother’s prize poodle, and Dolly, the wild girl, the life of the party. I could never seem to mesh the two; people only wanted me to be one or the other. But with Bo, and with you, I was Gwen. I was just me. That probably sounds stupid to you, but it’s true.”
Gwen put a wet hand over mine. I looked up and found her staring dolefully into my eyes.
“It’s not what you think, Reenie. Johnny got it wrong. Your mom has it all wrong. We’re not together.”
My heart quickened and my stomach clenched. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this confession.
“I don’t understand,” I said carefully.
“I mean we weren’t dating, were not a couple. I can understand why everyone thought that, given my reputation and all. But I swear to you, nothing happened.”
Relief spread through my body, calming my jitters like calamine on bug bites. I felt like I could breathe normally again. “Then why were you running away?” I asked.
Gwen sighed. “I was going down a bad road, Reenie. I went out with all kinds of boys like Johnny. Boys who aren’t much better than rats when push comes to shove. None of them really cared about me, and I started to think that was normal. But th
en I get here and Bo starts talking to me like I’m a human being …” Gwen trailed off, rubbing her hands in her damp hair as if she could shake the words out of her head.
“We weren’t in love, at least I don’t think we were. We never even kissed. It was weird at first, I mean most boys will try to jam their tongues down your throat any chance they get. But Bo never tried anything with me. We just talked.”
“About what?”
“Music, mostly. He played me songs and asked me questions, and he really listened to what I said. My opinion mattered to him. I don’t know, Reenie. Nothing happened, but it could have. We were headed that way. I feel like I’ve lost the love of my life without ever really having him, you know?”
I didn’t know, but I pretended to.
“What about Bo?”
Gwen frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Do you think he’s in love with you?”
Gwen shook her head, but she didn’t look up from the water. “No. At least, I don’t think so. He wanted to know all about the city, about the music scene. He listened to my lyrics and put them to music.” Gwen looked at me then and held my eyes. “He said he was going to make sure everyone knew my songs.”
Suddenly I felt sorry for my brother, who’d fallen under the spell of cool, mysterious Gwen — just like I had. “So you were using him?”
Gwen looked truly stricken. “No! Never! It wasn’t like that. If anything, it was like we were using each other. I was his ticket out of here, his connection to the city, and he made me feel like I could do all those things I kept saying I would do.”
“So what are you going to do next?”
“Go home, I guess. I keep trying to imagine myself back in the city, but I only get as far as my parents’ driveway. All I can think about is the apartment Bo and I talked about getting. We were going to paint an entire wall blue, and Bo was going to draw constellations on it with white chalk.”
She smiled faintly, as if she was picturing that wall as we spoke.
“Why?” I asked gently.
Gwen shrugged. “Because we could. We’d be in the city, making music, with no one to tell us what to do. Why shouldn’t we put stars on the walls?”
Gwen’s voice faltered again, and I waited for more tears to come.
“You can still live in the city and work on your music,” I suggested. “You can still paint that wall blue.”
“No. Everything’s different now. And, as messed up as I am right now, Bo is worse. He’s the one you should be worried about. I was always going back to the city, that was a given. He was really counting on coming with me and now …”
“He’s stuck here,” I finished.
Gwen didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. I could tell by the way she looked away across the lake that I was right.
“Maybe he’ll go anyway,” I said.
Gwen smiled sadly. “Come on, Reenie. Your folks will never let him.”
“You don’t know that,” I protested, thinking of Daddy, and how much he saw, even if he didn’t let on. I thought about all the people who had signed up to stay next season, and the others that were bound to call once people got to talking. “Mimi would love a reason to visit the city. I could help Daddy out here. We’d be fine.”
I felt chilled, and not just because my skin was still damp. This was a ghost of the conversation I’d had with Daddy out on the lake. I wondered if our words still existed, twisting around the cattails and getting stirred up by the breeze, only to float back to us in bits and pieces.
I rubbed my arms, trying to get rid of the chill.
“Maybe,” Gwen said, but I could tell she didn’t mean it. She was leaning over the edge of the raft, with her legs submerged up to the knees in the lake. She stared at them, making slow circles in the water, as if they were moving independently from her body, as if they belonged to someone else.
“Did you talk to your mother?” I asked.
“We had a big heart-to-heart,” Gwen said. “There was a lot of crying. Her tears, not mine. She feels responsible. A lot of things make sense now, looking back …”
Gwen lapsed into silence. I wondered what she meant by that, if there had been clues that she was not Grace’s child, but when she didn’t offer any explanation I decided to let it go. Maybe it was too painful. When I tried to imagine what it would feel like to have my mother come in and tell me I was adopted after all these years, my brain went completely blank. It was so unbelievable I couldn’t even imagine it.
“Are you mad at her?”
Gwen thought for a moment before shaking her head, no. “Mostly I feel numb. I feel like I’ve been through every possible emotion in three days and my body has shut down. Sometimes I’ll get so angry, I feel like I could hit someone. But mostly, I’m just here. Not thinking, not doing anything, just numb. I’m sure there’s a word for it.”
“Shock?” I suggested.
“That sounds about right,” Gwen said. “How’d you get so smart?” Then she dipped her hand in the water and pushed a playful wave in my direction. I couldn’t help but laugh as it crested and splashed over my thighs.
“So is this what sisters do?” she teased. “Have heart-to-hearts in the middle of the night?”
I smiled. “Sometimes.”
“This is nice. I like this. By the way, I never got a chance to tell you how great you were Friday night. You’re a natural.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That feels like a million years ago.”
“I know. Back then you were my assistant. Now you’re my sister.”
“Weird.”
“No, not weird. That’s the strangest thing about it. In this whole mess, you being my sister feels like the most normal thing in the world.”
A New Day
For the first time in days, Gwen showed up for breakfast that morning. I would like to think that it was because of our talk, but, whatever the reason, I was happy to see her participating in the world again. No one made a fuss over her appearance, even Grace, who passed her the milk as if she had been doing it all along. Even so, breakfast was quiet, full of chewing and the sound of cutlery scraping against plates. Mimi was draped over Grace’s shoulder, staring at her eggs as if she expected them to grow horns and feet. I didn’t think it was possible for the silence to be any deeper, until Bo shuffled in and took a seat next to Daddy.
Gwen looked up and immediately stopped chewing. She swallowed with great effort and pushed her plate away. Her shoulders drooped and her posture was so like Mimi’s that it almost took my breath away. Again, I wondered how I could have missed such a resemblance all summer long.
Scarlett kept glancing back and forth between Gwen and Bo, waiting for something to happen. The atmosphere was so tense all it would take is one wrong word and everything would explode. As I watched the members of my family retreat into themselves and stew in their own thoughts, I remembered what Daddy had said about strengths and decided to act on mine.
“Morning, Bo,” I said brightly.
He glared at me and dumped two tablespoons of brown sugar onto his toast, spreading it around with the back of his spoon.
“Want a little toast with your sugar?” I joked.
Bo gave me a thunderous look, but I had lived through more than my fair share of Bo’s stormy faces. I would not be put off that easily.
“Maybe you should add another spoonful,” I suggested. “You could use a little sweetening this morning.”
Bo opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, Gwen piped up.
“I know I could,” she said. “So save some for me, will you Bo? I know you’re a big rock star and everything, but the little people deserve some sugar, too.”
I held my breath as Bo looked at her for the first time. A slow smile crept across his face.
“Well I wouldn’t want to keep the prima ballerina from her heart’s desire,” he said. “She’ll throw a tantrum.”
I could almost hear the ice breaking and floating away. Scarlett sigh
ed and settled back into her cereal, and Daddy winked at me. Breakfast was still quiet, but it was the kind of calm that follows a storm: peaceful, and without danger. The worst was over.
* * *
Grace and Gwen left just after lunch. Mimi went out to say goodbye and the two women stood under the Lookout wrapped in each other’s arms for a long time. I watched them from above, in my usual nook in the tree. Grace knew all the shades of Mimi’s sadness and the secrets she kept. She probably knew things about Mimi that even Daddy didn’t know. They spent months and sometimes years without seeing each other, connected only by a phone wire or the odd letter, and yet when they were together, it was as if all that time disappeared.
I watched until Grace’s car turned into a silver streak, flashing in the sun. I wasn’t sad; I knew I would see Gwen again. We were sisters, which was exciting, now that I was getting used to it. I’d thought I wanted her to see me as a friend, but a sister was better. We were connected by our shared experiences, but bonded by blood. Our world may have tilted, but some things would never change. Summer would come and go, the leaves would fall, and the geese would return each spring, bearing the sun on their backs.
Bo still had a few years of school left. After that, his sights and his heart were set on the city. That gave Mimi and Daddy some time to warm up to the idea. As for me, I wasn’t going anywhere. The city didn’t call to me like the loons did.
“Reenie, come down from that tree. There’s someone on the phone for you.”
I looked down through the solid old branches of the Lookout at Daddy, who was staring up at me with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun.
Summer Days, Starry Nights Page 17