Girls of July

by Alex Flinn

  Britta tried not to look surprised at that. “Great. Be sure to stir it when you put it in so it doesn’t stick together.”

  “Duh.” Spider rolled her eyes.

  “And use a wooden spoon.”

  “Okay.”

  “And set the timer for ten minutes.” Britta wondered if this was how her mother felt when she said it was easier to do something herself.

  “I know that!”

  “It’s just that it’s whole-wheat pasta, so it takes longer than regular.”

  “So it’ll be al dente. That’s a thing, right?” Spider made a big deal of peering into the pot.

  Britta left then and started to set the table for five. She didn’t bother to check back. She knew Spider would do it right, to spite her. Or maybe she’d burn the house down.

  31

  Spider

  INT. CABIN, DINING ROOM — EVENING

  Spider, Meredith, Ruthie, Kate, and Britta, sitting in that order, are eating dinner. Spider and Britta are studiously avoiding one another.

  THEY ATE HER pasta, and nobody died. Something to be proud of on a day when she’d failed at mountain climbing, driven her car into a ditch, and argued with Britta. Again. Over nothing.

  Truth was, she didn’t know you had to stir the pasta when you added it. The box didn’t say anything about it, and she’d wondered why the macaroni always stuck together when she made mac and cheese. Not that she was going to tell Britta that.

  But now they were finishing up, and Ruthie looked around the table. “Does anyone want to play Rummikub?” She said it to the table at large but looked only at Britta. Spider found her lip curling up again. She clapped her hand over her mouth, but not before Britta noticed.

  “Oh, I’m really tired,” Kate said. “Big day. But thanks.”

  “I’m going out.” Meredith looked around, Spider would almost say guiltily, but she had no reason to think that. “For a walk. I want to go up the hill and call my mom.” They’d promised to let the others know if they went out.

  “What about you two?” Again, Ruthie mostly looked at Britta.

  Britta yawned. If it was a fake one, it was convincing enough to make Spider yawn herself. “I am just so, so tired. I bet Spider would play with you.” She fixed Spider with a look. Great. So now she was being instructed on how to interact with her own grandmother.

  Still, Spider said, “That would be nice. We haven’t played in a while.”

  “I’ll clear the table, so you can play sooner,” Kate said. Spider started to object, but Kate was already picking up plates. Spider and Ruthie adjourned to Ruthie’s bedroom.

  Spider hadn’t been in Ruthie’s room in a long time. She scanned the family photos, her eyes landing on Ruthie’s wedding photo, in which Ruthie wore some kind of hippie 1960s knit gown and carried a bouquet of daisies. Her grandfather wore a regular suit.

  Ruthie noticed Spider looking at it. “My dress looked like a bathrobe, I know. I knit it myself. It was my Barefoot in the Park look.”

  Spider knew Barefoot in the Park. She’d seen the movie, starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. “But you didn’t dress Grandpa like Austin Powers.”

  “He was Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park,” Ruthie said. “Very straitlaced. He said I gave him life.”

  “He was handsome.”

  “He was.” Ruthie started to unfold a card table near the bed. “I have such fond memories of you coming into my room to play when you were little.”

  “You mean of all of us coming here?”

  Ruthie hesitated. “Well, yes. That too. But you especially. You were a sweet girl.”

  Spider remembered herself as a prickly little girl who never liked being touched. “I don’t think I was ever sweet.”

  “You were to me. One night, when you were six or seven, there was a terrible storm. All the others slept through it, but the noise kept me awake. Every time I started to drift off, another flash started me. After a particularly large clap, there was a knock on my door.”

  “Me?”

  “Do you remember what you said?” Ruthie opened the box.

  Spider noticed a 1960s-style poster for the Peace Corps, an American flag where the stars were doves. It had been there that night too. The monsoon-like rains here had frightened her as a kid. Even now, she wouldn’t drive in them.

  “I think . . . was it something about swimming?”

  “Exactly right!” Ruthie spread the tiles around. “You said, ‘The rain’s trying to get inside the house, and I’m not a good swimmer!’”

  Spider laughed, though it reminded her a bit of Britta’s story about almost drowning. “And do you remember what you did?” she asked, remembering it well.

  “I asked if you wanted to sing about your favorite things, like in The Sound of Music.”

  “Because of course you did,” Spider said.

  “Why write your own script when you have Richard Rodgers?” Ruthie said.

  “At least you didn’t make lederhosen out of the curtains.” But Spider felt an incredible urge to hug Ruthie right then. She didn’t. She wasn’t a hugger, so it would be weird. Confiding in the girls at the train station was quite enough sharing for one day.

  “You were a girl. It would have been a dirndl,” Ruthie corrected. “From then on, you came to my room every time it rained, and we always sang, until one day, you didn’t anymore.”

  Spider remembered that. She didn’t know why she’d stopped coming to Ruthie’s room. She guessed it had something to do with wanting to be seen as a big girl instead of running to her grandmother any time it rained. It wasn’t like her older siblings had seen her as one of them. She’d just been alone, reading or, lately, watching a movie when the rain woke her. She looked at her tiles. Three sevens. “I’m sorry I stopped coming.”

  “You’re here now.”

  Ruthie drew a tile, then Spider. She looked at the old photographs clustered on a little cherrywood shelf in the corner by the bed. “Tell me about the people in those photographs.”

  “You always used to ask me that when you were little too.”

  “I don’t remember. I mean, I know those are your parents.” She gestured to a pink-framed photo. “But who’s that one there, in the silver frame?”

  It was a photo of a young woman in a dropped-waist dress, obviously very fashionable.

  “That was my aunt, Lieselotte, my mother’s sister. She was a great beauty in her day. She never married.”

  “What happened to her?” Though she knew. It was starting to come back.

  “She died in the camps. My mother had come here by then, and they wanted to bring her over, but . . .” She butterflied her hands. “Too late.”

  “That’s sad.”

  Ruthie selected a tile. “Yes. Next to that is my brother, Stanley, and me when we were little.” The girl wore a huge hair bow and carried a beagle puppy.

  Spider took a tile. She wasn’t really concentrating on the game. “And who’s the next one?” In this one, a young Ruthie was wearing an old-fashioned dress. She met eyes with a similarly costumed taller young woman.

  “That was me in summer stock.”

  “And the other girl?”

  Ruthie smiled, the smile reaching her eyes. “That was Janet. We were . . .” She hesitated, looking down at her tiles. “Best friends. We were together both summers I was here, and we planned to go to New York City and have exciting careers.”

  “And did you? I mean, I know you did, but did Janet?”

  Ruthie put down three fours. “Do you still not have enough points to begin?” she demanded. “Do you need help like when you were little?”

  “No.” Spider examined her tiles. In addition to the three sevens, she had a run—eight, nine, ten—and three threes, more than enough to start. She put down just the run and the sevens so Ruthie wouldn’t suspect she hadn’t been paying attention. “Here.”

  “About time.” Ruthie looked at her own tiles and added an eleven to the run.

  Spide
r took a tile. Another three. “So what happened to Janet?”

  Ruthie shook her head. “Her parents sent her away to college—in Florida, of all places. I never saw her again.” She gazed pointedly at Spider’s tile rack until Spider put down the threes.

  “Really? Never?” Spider was sure there must be something else to this story.

  “Yes. It wasn’t like now, with Facebook and the internet. Back then, even your dearest friends . . .” Her throat caught, and she cleared it. “Sorry. Once someone left, they were gone forever.” She gestured to Spider as to whether she was done. Spider nodded. Ruthie fixed her attention on the tiles.

  “Was Janet your dearest friend?” Spider had lived in the same neighborhood all her life, with the same people. Sure, someone occasionally moved, but for the most part, you couldn’t lose someone, even if you wanted to. Everyone was so connected. “That’s so sad.”

  “Actually . . .” Ruthie added a seven to Spider’s group, then sat up as if making a decision. “We were in love.” It came out a sigh.

  Spider sucked in her breath. Could that really be true? If it was, it meant Ruthie was not quite who she had thought, not who anyone in her family had thought. Did her father know? Or Aunt Laura? What would they think if they did? Spider remembered to breathe. Ruthie was still speaking, still telling her this secret she’d told no one.

  “We spent summers together and wrote to one another all winter. We made plans. We planned to get an apartment together in New York, attend college, and become actresses. But her parents must have found my letters and forbade her to see me. I never knew what happened. I sent so many letters, and I ran home from school each day, hoping for a reply. Nothing. Finally, I got a letter from her mother, telling me not to contact her again.”

  Spider had given up any pretense of playing the game. She could picture Ruthie as if it were an old-time silent movie, the Ruthie in the photograph, pretty and blond, arriving home to check the mailbox, only to find this. She must have been devastated. The Ruthie in her vision clutched her heart and sobbed.

  “You never heard from her again?”

  Ruthie shook her head. “She sent me one letter the following fall from someplace called Gainesville. She said she was studying nursing and that her parents had made her realize our relationship was wrong. She sounded different, like she’d been brainwashed. Your generation would say reprogrammed. She concluded the letter, ‘May you find the same happiness I have.’ I still have it.”

  Ruthie became interested in her tiles again. She flipped the egg timer, as one did when one was going to make an elaborate move, then began to move first one group of tiles, then another. She started by moving apart one of the runs and inserting a seven in the middle of it.

  “And then what?” Spider felt a chill that went from her upper arms across her torso.

  “And then nothing.” Ruthie put another of the sevens with her own eight and nine. “You know the rest. I did move to New York, became an actress—of sorts—met your grandfather—”

  “But you loved . . . ?”

  “I loved your grandfather, I did. And my children. Of course I did. It was different in those times. People expected certain things.”

  “But . . .” Spider couldn’t believe it. Her grandmother was so cool and liberal. She had a Peace Corps poster. And she was going to run around naked onstage. She didn’t do things just because they were expected. “But you loved Janet first?”

  “I guess I wasn’t as brave as your generation. I realized Janet was right. If my parents found out, they’d have disowned me.” She made a few more moves, then added two more tiles to the result. “Your turn.”

  Spider stared at the board, then at her own tiles. “So was your entire life a lie?”

  Ruthie shook her head. “I’ve had a happy life, children, grandchildren. Back then, one had to choose. It wasn’t like today. I chose your grandfather.”

  It was like that old movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey chose one life over another, and it affected everything. But George Bailey had been happy. Was Ruthie? Spider divided a big run, then inserted a nine in the middle. “And you never wondered . . . ?”

  “When your grandfather passed, I looked for her. And, a few years later, when Facebook started, I looked there too. But I didn’t find her. She must have gotten married. Or died.” She said this matter-of-factly, used to the idea. Yet, she still had Janet’s photo on display, so many years later. Ruthie turned over the egg timer and started moving pieces again, beginning with the ten Spider had just put down. After about a minute of shuffling and adding, shuffling and adding, she flipped her empty tile stand. “I win!”

  Spider showed her leftover tiles. When she was little, the losers used to pay a penny for every point showing on the tiles. “I owe you seventeen cents. Another game?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Maybe tomorrow. Let’s clean up.”

  They were silent as they gathered the tiles and stands and returned them to their box. Ruthie left it on her nightstand. “For another day.”

  Spider started for the door, then turned back. “I love you, Ruthie.”

  “I love you too, bubbeleh.”

  Spider closed the door. She wanted to talk to someone, to Britta, she realized. But Britta’s door was closed, lights off. Spider wondered if she was awake. She hadn’t heard Meredith come in. Perhaps she was outside again. Spider was too tired to check.

  Yet when she lay down in bed, she couldn’t sleep. Her knees ached, but that wasn’t why. She was used to that. No, it was the whirring, whirring, whirring in her brain that kept her awake, the anger at herself for not realizing and the sadness for Ruthie, having lost maybe the love of her life.

  32

  Kate

  AFTER KATE FINISHED the dishes, she went to her room to check her phone. She had successfully kept herself from checking her texts all afternoon, but they needled her like a small, unavoidable mosquito. She couldn’t stop thinking about them.

  But did she really want to read all those articles about her father?

  She did. She would walk up the hill to look. Based on yesterday, she guessed there was at least an hour of daylight. Also, maybe she could call her father.

  When she went outside, she saw Meredith, leaving at the same time.

  Meredith looked none too happy to see her. She wondered why. Still, she said, “Where are you off to?”

  “I was, um, just going to check my phone on the hill, maybe walk around a little.”

  “Oh.” Kate didn’t want company for this particular errand, though she liked Meredith. From the looks of it, Meredith didn’t want company either. “I was doing the same thing. But—”

  “I’m lying, okay?” Meredith looked around, as if sharing a confidence. She lowered her voice. “I just didn’t want Spider to know. I have a date.”

  “A date?” The word, like everything else, made her think of Colin. “With that cute guy from the lake?”

  Meredith looked down, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Yeah. Spider hates him, so I figured it was easier not to bring it up.”

  “I could see that,” Kate agreed. “Spider’s a little, um, opinionated.”

  “Right. So I’m walking to the hill to meet him. I wouldn’t listen in on your call if we walked together.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t . . .” It was obvious she was lying. “Okay, let’s go together.”

  Just as she started down the steps, the door flew open. It was Britta. “Oh, good, you’re there,” she said to Kate. “Someone’s on the phone for you.”

  Someone on the phone? Kate guessed her father had the phone number here. But his calling couldn’t be a good thing. What if there was some terrible emergency? What if she had to come home? What if the texts were more than simply sharing the bad news?

  “Oh, thank you!” Kate said to Britta. Then she hurried inside.

  She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she picked up the phone and heard not her father’s voice, nor e
ven her mother’s.

  Instead, it was a girl’s voice. “Hi, um, this is Liz. From Best.”

  “Best?” She didn’t know a Liz.

  “The supermarket, yesterday?”

  “Oh!” Kate exhaled. This may well be an emergency, but it was someone else’s emergency, an emergency she might be able to help with. “Yes. Hi. I remember.”

  “This is kind of awk. You said you could watch my brother, Racecar, while I was at work, and I know I said I didn’t need you to. I may even have been a little rude about it, but I was wondering—”

  “Yes,” Kate said, throwing any thought of home out like yesterday’s coffee grounds. “I’d be happy to.”

  33

  Meredith

  Essay topic: Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences that was particularly meaningful to you.

  SHE REALLY SHOULDN’T have to lie about meeting Harmon. She didn’t owe Spider anything. She could do what she liked here. That was the whole point of here, actually.

  If she could only figure out what it was she liked.

  When she reached the hill, he was already there in an older white Dodge pickup that looked like it had been through some stuff. The truck had a bumper sticker on the left side of the window, with a picture of a moose and a quote from Tolkien, “Not all who wander are lost.”

  He got out of the car, his grin bringing light to the dusk. He wore a blue school hoodie, and his hair was damp. He walked around the passenger side to let her in. “You made it!”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  He laughed. “Next time, I’ll pick you up on my motorcycle. Will you go?”

  A week ago, Meredith would have said no. But now, she said, “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know if you want to go on a bike with a bad boy?”

  He was already planning their second date when they’d barely started their first. This was actually Meredith’s first date ever. Oh, she’d told herself that going to homecoming with Alaric McHugh, because neither of them had a date, counted. But it so didn’t. Alaric had brought his SAT printout, so they could go over the questions he missed. And she hadn’t felt excited. That evening had had a sense of inevitability to it. This date had an element of uncertainty. She liked it.