Death and Love at the Old Summer Camp

by Dolores Maggiore

  So, I got washed in the lake. But then, I thought I’ve gotta go back, gotta give this up. It was someone else’s dream, the dreams, the Academy, the queerness. This was no dream. It was a nightmare.

  I had to figure out what I would say to Katie. I wouldn’t know until I was in front of her. But how could I live without Katie…our dreams together, our school, our future? Like living with one lung, one eye, no heart!

  Without my dreams? One lung, one eye, no soul! I can’t grow another heart. Without my soul I couldn’t even be. I didn’t like these choices. Who would want me without a heart or worse, without a soul? I wouldn’t even want myself.

  God, I was pathetic. I sounded like I belonged in the Wizard of Oz.

  The phone call to my parents never happened. The operator hadn’t called back. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I never went back and called again.

  Another day came—and almost went—in silence. I was sick. I didn’t go to meals. I couldn’t sit down opposite her, and eat, in silence. Her father hadn’t returned yet.

  This morning, I didn’t even get a hi from her. I couldn’t take it much longer or I might have to take it forever. Whichever, I had to speak to her before bedtime.

  I had to go home to Queens where I belonged. Didn’t I? I would tell her, and phone my folks once I had done that.

  Chapter Forty

  THE CONVERSATION WITH KATIE

  I waited outside the dining hall after lunch. I hoped Katie wouldn’t make a scene in front of other guests. I approached her and quietly asked her if we could talk some place private. She agreed, despite the grimace of panic that flashed across her face. I wasn’t feeling all that courageous myself.

  We found a quiet spot under one of our favorite yellow pines. The kittens seemed to sense the seriousness of this meeting, and they tried to distract us with their antics but I plodded on.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…and crying,” I began. “I know I love you, and…”

  Katie was already in tears. God, what was she thinking?

  I continued slowly before my sobs could silence me. “I love you, and I’ve never meant to take things or people away from you. Sometimes, I didn’t tell you the whole story about a dream, because…well, I was afraid it would come to this. You would think I was too uncool, too psycho. I did think of you as my Katie, but that’s because you’re the only person, only thing, I ever had kind of all to me…except my dreams.”

  I paused.

  “I didn’t tell you the whole story of my love either…for the same reason. And you, as I expected, ended up rejecting me, because I was a queer and psycho. Just too much! So this isn’t right for me. I’ve got to go home. This isn’t right for me. I can’t be queer. I can’t make it at the Academy. I can’t betray my parents.”

  I sobbed loud and hard, but I tried to continue.

  Katie motioned for me to let her speak.

  She spoke just above a whisper. “I love you, too. But how can you love me, Pin, when you’ve got everything else…everyone else?”

  I rambled on, missing the part where she said she loved me.

  “Here in Maine, you’ve been my world and if we continued, it would be a queer world. This world also holds my family, my roots, my dreams for our future, and my dreams…the other dreams. They’re all me, just like all the things that are you, in your own special way. Things that I would never take away from you. I can’t love you without your passion for science or your teasing…even your kitten craze!

  “I can’t be anyone other than me: queerness and dreams included. I wouldn’t be me, without that stuff. I wouldn’t like me, and neither would you. There I said it. I want you, I need you, and I won’t ever again be less than all of me.”

  Jeez, I sounded like a recording. A bad one.

  Katie spoke, “Oh. I really, really do want all of you and your world: pasta and pizza and Puccini. And your dreams. Even the scary ones. All of it…my dad’s queerness and ours. Our big dream that we were going to plan together. You still want to?”

  Katie leaned into me and shook me gently by the shoulders.

  I was shocked. “Yeah, I do, really. Please, I wanna hold you. I’ve missed you so much. I thought my life was over. But…you’ll really be able to stand the crazies, the worst of the worst dreams?”

  I saw her face just soften.

  “C’mere,” she said. “I want to hold you, all of you.”

  We hugged and hugged and cried and cried. We even walked, sashayed back to her cabin hip to hip, holding hands. We fell over each other into a bed of dried needles behind her cabin. Katie pulled me against her, her blue eyes pulling me in even deeper, and found my lips.

  We kissed, and our lips parted. We clung to each other, lost in our world for hours.

  After a while, we picked ourselves up from the pine needles and freshened up in time for lunch. After we had an unbelievably silly lunch with Katie’s mom, Catherine, Mrs. McGuilvry went off to her scheduled overnight mineral spa treatment at nearby Poland Springs. Claudia was charged with looking in on us. We assured everyone we would be fine, just fine.

  I skipped down the dining hall steps singing Buddy Holly’s Everyday. I was throwing Sylvester-grins at Katie.

  “Love like yours will surely come my way…”

  Back in the stuffy cabin, we shed extra layers of clothing as the day heated up in all ways. We stretched out on the cushy porch furniture and dialed Katie’s powerful transistor to WVNJ to listen to a mixture of R&B and folk. In the Still of the Night was playing, and I darn near swooned.

  Katie was speaking openly and tearfully about her dad. She explained that the night I had said he was a queer like us, she started to put things together. She began to see that her dad and Joe fit together in a way her mom and dad didn’t. She said she had no idea what was going to happen, but…she couldn’t hide what she was beginning to understand for her dad as well as for herself and me.

  Katie leaned over to take my hand. She said, “I feel blessed. Like the time during communion, I felt like Jesus talked to me. Not talked, but totally there, like how it is between us. I think it’s that way for them too.”

  I joked, “You love God that way?”

  “Not love, not like girlfriend, boyfriend, but like there’s no beginning, no end; you don’t start here, and I start there. It’s almost like you and I are one.”

  “So you and God are one?” I asked.

  “Not God, but something…you know my mother is always talking about God and saying her Rosary, and going to the Legion of Mary like she’s some saint, but I think she just gets lost. It’s like when she smokes her cigarettes at the little, round lace-covered table, I don’t know what she’s thinking. I call her, and she doesn’t answer. I shake her, and she’s not there. She has this funny look in her eye, and sometimes, the cigarette is actually burning her fingers. I cry because she is…like dead. My father comes in and tells me to go cry upstairs, and that my mom needs to go see the doctor. It’s so scary, and I feel all alone.”

  “I never knew that. Come here,” I said, pulling Katie’s chair closer.

  “No, listen first. I never talk about you and me. It’s…it’s why it’s so special. It’s like today. It’s as if I belong. I’m together, joined, attached, like you and I are one.”

  “I think I love you, like love,” I said whole-heartedly, without blushing this time.

  “Just hold me and hold me and hold me.” Katie stood up and pulled me with her into her bedroom. She held me close, stroked my head, and kissed my eyes. “I’m so sorry for those three days. I was so scared.”

  We inched towards her soft bed where she brushed my lips with hers and kissed me, pulling my lips gently apart. I kissed her lips and her whole face. She leaned her whole body into mine, setting off tingling sensations in every inch of me. My hand found its way under her shirt, to her breast.

  Her eyes said, “Yes.”

  After making out for an hour, we planned our dream, which was rather freewheeling, given ou
r smitten state.

  “Ready?” I said.

  “Yeah. Just let me get the really soft blanket. Did you douse the fire? I can smell it,” Katie said.

  “First,” I said. “Set the alarm. It’s ten now. Say, three.”

  “The bewitching hour.” Katie bared her teeth in a vampire-like grin.

  We decided on a travel dream. Maybe we would meet in Europe or maybe in Northampton, Massachusetts at Smith. We’d be in college together.

  ****

  “Wake up, Katie! The alarm went off,” I said amidst a gigantic yawn.

  We recounted our dreams to each other. Katie said that she had been in Boston in Harvard Yard eating ice cream at Brigham’s with her dad who was on call at the local hospital, and someone was sick.

  I said that they were operating on my brain, looking inside my head. I scratched my head at the mere thought. Katie insisted that her dad was probably called to assist in the procedure. I laughed that she probably just went on eating her ice cream; I would have laughed at just about anything. Our make-up relieved me so. It had given me my life back.

  “Okay. Let’s plan dream, part two,” said Katie. “I bring you ice cream. My father stitches up your head. All our dreams come true.”

  “Like, ice cream for life?”

  “No, silly, us two. Together, doing good things, helping others,” Katie said, sitting up tall in the bed, shoulders back, chin up.

  “Helping others to love one another,” I said.

  “Yeah. Oh, we can put Joe in the dream.”

  “Yes. My folks and your mom and all the families. Happy again.”

  “You think we can finish this by morning?” Katie said.

  “Sure!” I answered with a big grin.

  In less than five minutes, I was aware of Katie’s snoring. Then, my eyes fell shut, and our real dream began.

  Chapter Forty-one

  THE DREAM

  “I just love when you come over for lunch,” I said. I was dressed in a white smock and had a nametag on my breast pocket. My long hair hung straight, almost board-like, parted in the middle. The room held files and projectors. The air seemed hygienically sealed in.

  “Rescue me from work! Come give me a hug. How’s the conference coming?” Katie said. She wore an ecru, jewel-necked, cashmere sweater and a long equestrian-looking tweed skirt. Her short dark hair was somewhat two-toned in points.

  “Super. But your father is a bit tight-fisted with the early Army contracts.”

  “He’ll come around. He always does,” Katie said, pulling a piece of fuzz off my shoulder.

  “Look, just look! I’ve always loved this view of Sebago. I never thought we’d see it any other way except from the golf course,” I said, pointing to the stripe of blue past the two pavilions. “Seriously, were you able to think beyond the camp, the latrine, the rec hall?”

  “Me, no,” Katie said. “But you, I think you always knew, at some level.”

  The dream ended with my talking about being paid to do research and set up the clinic, apparently a sleep or dream study clinic. Katie had studied in Zurich, probably psychology, and ran the women’s clinic.

  “It was a dream, huh!” said Katie. “And the part of ‘they lived happily ever after’…”

  “It is, and it’s all coming true. What do you think, Joe will write it all?”

  “Dammit! You can’t even trust your dreams to co-write it with Joe?” said Katie for the umpteenth time. “Our lobster is ready. Want to eat in the sleep chambers?”

  “If you promise not to fall asleep on me…”

  ****

  “But our deal, our lobster. I am asleep, or I was,” said Katie.

  “Lobster for breakfast?” I answered.

  “Where are we? Are we still at the sleep clinic?” Katie looked at me, shaking her head as she spoke my name.

  “In your cabin,” I said.

  “What year? I mean, well…how old are we?” Katie held her head.

  “Look at me,” I said, holding her head. “Look, you’re sixteen. We are in Maine, but I know we will do all the things we dreamed someday,” I said.

  “Like I’ll run the women’s clinic, and you the sleep clinic?”

  “Wow! Katie, you did dream the same dream I did,” I said.

  I tousled Katie’s undyed hair. I laughed, thinking about the streaks in her butchy haircut in the dream. I shared the image with her, and she agreed the cut was not becoming.

  “So. It’s real, some time, not the haircut, but this clinic place, here on this site? What if we mess it up?” Katie asked.

  “We won’t.” I grabbed Katie and shook her, shouting, “We did it; we seeded the dream, and we will seed our future!”

  “Watch it, you’re dumping me off the bed—in the here and now!” Katie laughed, a full-belly laugh for the first time in a long time.

  “Yeah!”

  Chapter Forty-two

  JAIL HOUSE BLUES ITALIAN-STYLE

  It was so cozy under the comforter and in the comfort of our shared dreams that we lounged about in bed for a while. The sun celebrated with us by lighting up the whole cabin, warming it earlier than usual. Eau de Balsam, as I sometimes called the aroma of Maine, bathed us in its incense. I thought I had lost this paradise.

  Katie was more interested in the nectar of the gods rather than their throne right now, since our lobster lunch had only existed in dreamland. She scooted off to breakfast with Claudia, our babysitter who hadn’t checked in on us at all. Katie promised to return with some goodies for me.

  My body was in shock. I had prepared for the worst: ready to give up Katie, the Academy, my dreams, and my queerness. Instead, I had been given so many things that I had wanted for so long. I felt soft and mushy…good mushy.

  In case my folks had gotten any calls from the operator, I would try to call them today to tell them all was fine and that I missed them. Ditto for Doc, who was supposed to get back that afternoon. We’d have to phone this morning to catch him and Joe before they flew out of Boston.

  Katie returned with muffins and sausages and a rhubarb jam kiss. I was soon ready to call Doc from the main house. Once we got there, I found a letter from Fifi in the office mail basket.

  Fifi enclosed a postcard of Palermo, which Katie and I devoured with our eyes: beautiful old mountains, some like smokestacks rising out of the Mediterranean, castles, and cathedrals. Katie oohed and aahed over the deep blue water.

  Then, we prepared to do battle with Fifi’s written English. As best we could make out, Fifi was telling us he went to jail, but not to worry, just as a visitor to Mr. Propiziano.

  Propiziano—another extended Mazzini family name. I guess there were bad guys in my family—a far distant branch of the family. Fifi had mentioned names of other people he had visited in Sicily that also sounded familiar to me.

  My focus became fuzzy for a few seconds as an overwhelming sense of familiarity and family subsumed me. I could smell the heart-warming, chocolate-chestnut scent of my Aunt Maria and all her sisters. I still felt her smile, and I knew that some of these people Fifi mentioned did really belong to me.

  Katie nudged me to keep on deciphering Fifi’s writing.

  He said he told Mr. Propiziano that Francesca Arcuri of Giuliana had sent him. That’s why Propiziano was willing to talk to him—in English so the Guardia wouldn’t understand. Propiziano confirmed that Roger Brown had victimized his son and then ratted him out to the FBI. Propiziano confessed in a roundabout way that he wanted to track down Brown and have him put out of his misery, but no one was able to find the man.

  Then I said to Katie, “Crap! He spilled the beans.”

  Katie wisecracked, “I don’t see any beans; I see meat.”

  I didn’t laugh, but explained that when Fifi asked Propiziano if he knew anybody named “meat” or “carne,” he tipped off Propiziano to Brown’s new identity. Provo’s guys might be out to get Fifi right now. They would assume he wanted to eliminate the new Brown, but according to Fifi, in Mobs
ter Ethics, that prize belonged to Propiziano and the Boys: Fifi would have to go.

  We immediately called the operator from the phone in the main house to place a call to Doc. Katie’s greeting to her dad was bubbly, but real. She even inquired about Joe, who returned her greeting from somewhere in the background. I took turns with Katie relating Fifi’s news, and then quietly explained that I believed all was resolved. Doc said he had a lot to tell both of us, but they had to finish a few errands before heading to the airport. He was almost sure they could catch a plane into Portland airport later that day.

  Chapter Forty-three

  WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

  After the call, Katie and I chatted a bit more about Fifi. We decided to ask the cook or one of the waitresses to pack us a picnic lunch so we could spend the rest of the day at the beach, before her mom’s return from the spa.

  Equipped with sandwiches and wrapped in towels, we took the path through the woods to the beach. We stopped every so often to laugh or just to make goo-goo eyes. It took us longer than usual to get down to the beach.

  Since our sunbathing days would soon come to an end, we slathered Johnson’s baby oil on each other. I tickled Katie as I slipped some under the straps of her green plaid bathing suit. She traced the front outline of my stretchy racing suit. I caught her finger and pretended to lick it.

  After a half-hour of serious attempts at tanning, which only resulted in rosy burns, Katie sat up and said, “So, what do I tell my dad?”

  Not quite ready to touch an already touchy subject, I said, “You mean what do you ask your dad?”

  “Yeah,” she said, puffing out her breath. “I do not want to know about their sex life.”

  “Yuck! I can’t picture my folks either. I mean—”

  “I meant my father and Joe.” Katie started to make circles in the sand with a dried reed. Sand stuck to the back of her greasy hand.