by Ann Leary
We were in awe, my mother, Sally, and I. We had judged her too severely. The yoga was no longer seen as show-offy. It revealed her strength and resilience. It gave others hope. Sometimes, in the comments, people would post things like, “I had a C3 fracture two years ago, and you are my inspiration.” Laurel would respond by asking where they were doing their rehab, or what kind of fracture it was. “Water therapy,” she would say. Or, “There’s a study at Johns Hopkins involving stem cells. PM me for more information, I know the doctor who’s heading up the study.”
We, like her many online followers, were humbled by Laurel’s heroism and fortitude. Joan still found her “a little braggy.” Sally and I told Joan that she was a snob. Sally, Joan, and I talked about her, wondered about her, praised her, criticized her, and argued about her. We were proud of her one day, and making fun of her the next. Some of her posts were a little too self-congratulatory and she used outdated acronyms like LOL and STFU all the time. And her sense of humor seemed off at times. She overshared about Spin, too—posting the weirdest stuff about how they’re soul mates and how she knows him better than she knows herself. She didn’t use his name, though; she called him “the Professor.” Perhaps that was why he didn’t object to her posting about his apparently insatiable sexual appetite.
“Teachers at prep schools are not professors,” Joan said when we showed her one of Laurel’s posts. The post had revealed, in very graphic detail, that our Spin was an oral-sex virtuoso. Sally and I were at the kitchen table, laughing uncontrollably while reading it. Joan asked what was so funny. I turned my laptop and showed it to her, just crying with laughter. Joan put on her reading glasses, read it coolly, and then removed her glasses and made the remark about how prep school teachers are not professors.
So, we were a little fascinated with Laurel, to put it mildly. We devoted so much time to the idea of her that we were bound to be disappointed when we finally did meet her in person. But she didn’t disappoint.
* * *
It was the second weekend in June. A Saturday night. Joan had gone off to a dinner party. Sally was going to the Pale Horse Tavern to meet some old friends. Everett was sitting on his porch, drinking a beer and playing with his dogs. He has one dog, a Jack Russell named Snacks, and that week he had two others staying with him—a pair of young Australian shepherds who needed some training. I was in the driveway, having just said good-bye to Sally, when Everett gave a low, long whistle. I pretended I didn’t hear him. I’m not a dog.
Then he called out to me. “Lottie? Babe?”
I turned and could see, even from my considerable distance, he had that grin going. He was all horny and high. I could smell the weed from where I stood.
“Come on, babe, come over here,” he said. I shook my head no and turned to our house.
Then he added, “Babe, pleeease?”
Two minutes later, I was in his bed.
I’m in love with Everett; I might as well get that out of the way. I’ve been in love with him for years, really. Since I was a kid. He’s always known it. He hasn’t always felt the same way about me. He had been seeing other women in recent years. He was open about this. We weren’t really in a relationship anymore, so I acted as if I didn’t mind about the others. We still hooked up now and then. Not that often. Once a week. Two or three times, tops. Basically, whenever he wanted. I know, it wasn’t an ideal situation.
Joan thought I should meet other guys. “You’re just stuck on Everett because you never leave the property. Get out a little more, sweetie. You’ll never meet anybody but Everett if you never leave the house.”
I didn’t like her to know how often I went to Everett’s at night, so I usually snuck over when she was out, or waited until after she’d gone to bed.
That night, after Sally left and Joan was at her dinner party, after Everett lured me into his lair and I had his skin against mine, his lips on my throat, I almost cried. I don’t know why; I just always got a little teary in that final moment when I felt his heart pounding against mine and we were suddenly both so still. He had no idea.
That was one of our first really warm nights of the summer, and Everett suggested we go for a swim. I sat up and looked out his window. It was almost dark, the evening sky was faintly streaked with pale pink clouds, and the lake was as still as glass. Every sound had paused, as it does at dusk, when the daytime birds and insects have clocked out and the peepers and owls haven’t started up. I believe I could have heard Everett’s heart beating in that moment if I’d listened hard enough.
“Come on, first swim of the summer,” he said. He turned my face so that he could give me those big, pleading puppy dog eyes.
“No,” I said. “Let’s stay here where it’s warm.” I was tracing this cowlick he has on the left side of his forehead, where the hair turns into a little swirl. I love touching it.
“C’mon,” Everett said, and a few minutes later, we were running across the beach, the three dogs racing alongside. I screamed from the cold when we dove into the lake.
Our spot on the lake is a little inlet. It’s a cove protected on one side by our house and yard, and on the other by some wooded land that Whit deeded over to the town’s land trust years ago. We often swim nude. Nobody can see us from the road, and in the evenings, there’s usually not anybody out on the water. And when I say “we” swim nude out there, I mean all of us. Whit and Joan used to infuriate Sally and me with their nude strolls down to the lake after dinner. “Well, don’t look at us if we’re so hideous,” Joan would say, laughing when we would scream at them to cover up. Later, when we were in high school, it was a tradition among our friends to take off our clothes and jump in the lake when we had been partying.
There’s a float that’s anchored about twenty yards off the beach. Everett and I liked to swim out to that float, and when the weather was warm, we’d sometimes carry on again there, the float rocking us, sometimes gifting us with splinters. But that night, we just lay there on the dock, stargazing. It was the first night of the new moon—you could see the bright little crescent resting in the arms of the old moon. The stars were bright against the glossy black sky, and we whispered their names.
I always look for Polaris first. That’s the North Star. Everett looks for Sirius, the Dog Star, which is the brightest star. Most people think the North Star is the brightest, but Sirius is brighter. Whit taught us that. Polaris is the most important if you’re lost, though. It’s due north; it’s a good star to know. Whit taught us how to identify all the constellations when we were kids.
“First find Polaris—it’s right there at the tip of the tail of the Little Dipper. Now look east,” he’d say, and we’d follow him across the Milky Way, shouting out the names of the stars.
Osiris! Capella! Vega!
It became a contest, when we were kids, to see who could find the most stars and constellations. So, that night of our first summer swim, Everett and I were lying on our backs, taking in the astral landscape, when we heard the dogs barking. We watched them race from the beach to the driveway, blustering friendly woofs, tails wagging.
“Is that Joan?” Everett asked. “Why’s she back so soon?”
“No,” I said. “It’s Spin’s Jeep.”
We saw the headlights go off and heard the driver’s door open. I jumped back in the water. Yes, I’m comfortable swimming nude with Sally or Everett, but not in front of my stepbrothers. Everett dove in after me and grabbed me playfully from behind, cupping my breasts and kissing my neck.
“I’ll go get you a towel,” he said.
“Hurry, it’s getting cold,” I said.
I watched him swim to the beach and I smiled at his muscular back, and, well, the rest of him from behind. You really can’t help but smile. Everett doesn’t work out. He’s never been a gym guy, but he’s always been in great shape. In addition to the dog training, he sometimes helps his uncle, who’s a stonemason, building patios and stone walls. He also took up rowing not long after Whit died. Whit had an old
wooden rowing scull left over from his Harvard days, and Everett rowed every morning, in the early dawn, when the lake was still smooth. I watched him walk across the beach, wave at Spin’s car, and call out to him. Then I noticed that Snacks was barking more angrily at the car, and I saw Everett turn away from her. He gave me a sheepish look and scooted off to his house like a little boy who’d been caught running around naked. I was laughing. What the hell had gotten into him? He and Spin were like brothers; they had seen each other nude many times. And then I saw, in the dim yellow glow from our porch lights, that it was a woman who had climbed out of the driver’s seat. She was facing Everett’s screen door, which had just slammed shut behind him. “Hey, hey, cuties, it’s okay,” she said to the dogs, and they stopped barking and just circled her, sniffing and wagging their tails.
I had started swimming in toward the land.
“Hello?” said the woman. She must have heard my little splashes. I stopped moving. I knew who she was. I could only see her silhouette, there on the lawn. The light from our porch created a golden aura all around her. I couldn’t see her face or make out what she was wearing, but I knew she was Laurel Atwood. Snacks barked again, and Laurel leaned over and scooped him up in her arms.
“Hey, hey! Careful, he bites,” Everett said. He had come out of his house wearing jeans and no shirt. He was carrying a towel.
Laurel giggled as Snacks licked at her chin. “Is that right?” she said.
“I’ve never seen him act like this with a stranger,” Everett said. “Never.”
“Well, he doesn’t think I’m a stranger. I’m Laurel, by the way.”
“Oh, of course, yeah,” he said cheerfully, reaching out to shake her hand. “I’m Everett.” He said it like she hadn’t just seen every inch of him.
She lowered Snacks to the ground, flipped her long hair back, and took Everett’s hand. “Oh, hi, yeah, Spin told me all about you.”
The water was cold. My teeth were chattering.
“We thought you were coming later in the week. Where’s Spin?”
I squatted there in the shallows, wearing nothing but the icy lake. The bats had come out of their winter hibernation and now one was swooping down over the cove. Soon summer would really be here, and the lake would be warmer than the air at night. Now the air was warm, but the lake was freezing.
“He had some final—I don’t know, I guess he called them evaluations or something. I was bored, so he told me to take his car out for a drive. Oooh, your hands are freezing.”
Everett just stood there grinning like an idiot. I coughed a little to get his attention. He didn’t hear me.
“Great to finally meet you,” said Everett.
“I decided to take a little drive around the lake, when I recognized the house from some of Spin’s photos. I pulled in to say hello, see if anybody was home. Guess I should have called first.”
“Nah,” Everett said jovially. He had now wrapped the towel, my towel, around his shoulders. I guess he was chilly. I was sure that I was hypothermic, but he seemed to have forgotten all about me. “Everybody just stops by around here,” he continued. “We’re pretty casual.”
“Everett,” I said, through clattering teeth from the icy shallows. I didn’t say it loud enough. Again, nobody heard me.
“Yes, I saw that. Very casual!” Laurel laughed.
Everett laughed and looked down at the ground and then back up at her, the way he always does when he’s flirting. “Yup, we don’t get all dressed up around here. Sometimes we don’t even get dressed at all.”
“Is it a proper nudist colony? Are clothes frowned upon, or what?” Laurel asked. “I don’t want to shock or offend by being the only one wearing clothing. I’m not a clothes-ist or anything.”
“Ha, ha, ha, clothes-ist,” Everett repeated, laughing and glancing down at the ground again and then back at her.
Oh, hahaha, Everett. My brain still seemed to be able to formulate rage, so I knew I wasn’t thoroughly hypothermic. I had read that when you freeze to death, a sense of euphoria sets in. I was still noneuphoric; that had to be a good sign. I was pre-euphoric.
Laurel laughed again and Everett laughed again. Laurel commented on the weather and Everett commented on the weather. Everett asked her about her flight, and finally I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Everett!”
They both jumped, and Everett dashed across the beach and into the water.
“Jesus, babe, sorry,” he said. “I forgot.”
I snatched the towel from him and wrapped it around myself. He forgot. Forgot all about me, freezing in the lake. He smoked way too much weed. He did shit like this all the time.
Laurel said, “Oh. My. God.” And here’s something I’ve forgotten to mention. She does that annoying thing with the single word as sentence on her blog and her Facebook posts. That thing people were doing five years ago because it was funny then. She often places a period After. Every. Word. I had no idea that the people who do this online actually do it in real life when they speak.
“I. Am. So. Sorry!” Laurel said. “I thought I heard somebody out there. You must be freezing.”
“No. I’m. Fine,” I said, deciding to speak her weird language. I was shivering under the towel. Everett was rubbing my arms up and down to warm me, but I shrugged myself away from him. Spin and Sally knew about Everett and me; that’s probably why he was being so casual. But I didn’t like others to know. We had just met this Laurel person, and here he was practically humping me on the lawn. I tried to pull my thick, wet hair away from my face, but my fingers were getting caught in the tangles.
“I’m Charlotte,” I said, turning to face Laurel, and then I almost dropped my towel when I found myself in her arms. She had actually pulled me to her and was hugging me.
“I’m so, so, so glad to finally meet you, Charlotte,” she said, pressing her warm cheek against mine. Her arms were still around me. I was clutching my towel to keep from being in a naked embrace with this stranger. It was insane. Who does that? Who would hug an unclothed stranger? I knew that if I looked at Everett, he would crack up, so I stared off into space. Later he told Sally that I looked like I was in a “fugue state.” Of course they were both stoned and helpless with laughter when he told her about it. Sally wouldn’t have been laughing if it had happened to her.
“Let’s go inside; I need to get some clothes,” I muttered into Laurel’s bosom. Finally, she released me. I walked toward the house, pulling my towel tightly around me. Everett and Laurel followed.
“Oh, so clothes are allowed,” Laurel said. “It’s an optional thing, then.”
“Yup,” Everett said. “Totally your call.”
Laurel laughed, Everett laughed. I pushed the screen door open, and if Everett hadn’t caught it with his foot, it would have slammed in his face.
* * *
I pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and brushed the hair away from my face. When I went back downstairs, Everett was alone in the kitchen. He was poking around in our fridge.
“Hey, Lottie,” he said. “Think it’s okay if I have some of this pie?”
“Where’d she go?” I asked. “Where’s Laurel?”
“She left. She said she wanted to come back and meet everyone tomorrow with Spin. Said to tell you good-bye. What is this pie, strawberry? Strawberry rhubarb, or what?”
The kitchen windows were suddenly flooded with light. A car had just pulled into the driveway, and a moment later, Joanie was in the kitchen with us. My mom “cleans up good,” as Whit used to say. She’s so active with her tennis and running and gardening that she usually wears no makeup and pays little attention to her hair. But when she does put on a dress and some lipstick, as she had done that night, you can see why she was always popular with men. She keeps her blond hair shoulder length, she’s never colored it, and now silver streaks surround her face, somehow making her pale blue eyes even bluer. She does have some fine lines around the eyes—she’s spent so much time in the sun over the years—but sh
e doesn’t have the saggy skin or jowls that some of her friends now do. So, she looked quite pretty that night, and because she was a little tipsy, she was in a playful mood.
“Hey, Ev! Lottie! What a beautiful night, huh?” She tossed her purse onto the kitchen table and squatted to receive our Labrador, Riley, who came bounding into the kitchen. Riley is really Joan’s dog. My dog—Whit’s old dog, Scruggs—had died two winters earlier. Scruggs was a great dog. Riley’s a moron.
“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy, Riley? Who’s Mommy’s favorite boy?”
“Hi, Joan,” said Everett. “Mind if I help myself to a little of this pie? HEY, Riley, OFF!”
My mother had gotten Riley too worked up, as she often did. He had knocked her back into a sitting position and was gnawing on her wrist. The minute Everett gave the command, Riley let go and sat down, his tail wagging apologetically.
“No, not at all,” Joan said, jumping to her feet. “I was hoping somebody would eat it so it wouldn’t go to waste.”
“Ev,” I said. “Do not eat that pie.” I tried to grab the pie plate from him, but he’s tall, and he grinned mischievously as he lifted it above my reach.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“I made that pie two weeks ago, maybe longer. It needs to be thrown away. Joanie left it out on the counter overnight last week, twice.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s perfectly good,” said Joan.
“You’ll get sick. You’ll get food poisoning,” I said, but it was no use. They laughed at me, and Joan handed Everett a fork. Neither of them believes in food poisoning. Joan thinks salmonella is a “myth.” She tells us that it’s a myth every Thanksgiving when she shovels hot stuffing into the turkey the night before she cooks it, then touches all the vegetables without washing her hands. Everett will eat anything, and Joan has a terror of throwing away uneaten food. They have, actually, sort of disproven current food-storage safety protocols. They’ve always gobbled up anything that’s not attracting too many flies, and neither of them is ever sick.