The summer kids couldn’t make it to every rehearsal, because their families took them swimming, boating, and fishing. None of these kids wanted the role of the crocodile. All the girls wanted Tiger Lily or Tinker Bell, but some were made pirates, others lost boys and Indians. The littlest girl of all, Natalie, played Tinker Bell in her pink bathing suit with wire wings draped in gauze.
Peter was perched in the window of the nursery, about to make his entrance, when, suddenly, Jamie O’Shea screamed.
“What is it now?” Peter demanded.
“A bee stung me!” Jamie yelled. “Ow! It got me again!”
Then Malcolm joined in: “OW!” And grabbed his butt.
Peter jumped down from the window into the nursery and looked around. “I don’t see any bees.”
Rhonda got up from the cot she was lying on and looked around, agreeing. There were no bees. Not so much as a mosquito or a blackfly.
“None of the stinging buggers here, matey,” called Lizzy, watching from the deck of her pirate ship that was actually the hood of Clem’s old car. A couple of the younger pirates sat in the backseat, sharing a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts. There were half a dozen other kids milling around, dressed as Indians and lost boys, waiting for Peter and the Darling children to fly off to Neverland so they could do the next scene. Panic sets in quickly among the bored.
Jamie slapped frantically at his neck, screaming, “Bees!” as he ran in circles around the stage.
“There must be a nest,” Malcolm cried to the group of kids assembled. “Everyone run!”
And before Peter could stop them, there went his entire cast, with the exception of Rhonda and Lizzy, running wildly through the woods, screaming about killer bees.
Then came the laugh from the top of the trees. They looked up and there was Greta Clark, BB gun in hand, legs wrapped around the top of a white pine.
“Greta!” Peter shouted. “You could have put someone’s eye out with that thing!”
“Buzz, buzz, buzz!” she shouted back.
Greta lived in a trailer near the lake with her kooky mother, Laura Lee Clark, who claimed to have been in just about every movie made in the seventies. There was never any confirmation of what might have happened to Greta’s father, who might or might not have been Warren Beatty, according to Laura Lee.
Greta Clark was twelve and carried a homemade bow and arrows and a BB gun that she used to shoot squirrels. She wore a red felt cowboy hat meant for a kid much smaller than her, and it just perched on the very top of her head, the chin strap pulled tight to keep it in place.
Greta fought mean and dirty. She would challenge a kid to a bicycle race, and halfway through, his front wheel would come loose or his tire would go flat because of a tiny pebble jammed up inside the valve. During a fistfight (of which there had been many over the years), she would throw sand in her opponent’s face, or, if he was a boy, grab his privates and squeeze as hard as she could until he lay moaning and puking in the dirt, kicking like a bug stuck on its back.
There was also a rumor at school that she was a lesbo.
“Your play sucks shit!” Greta called down.
“I think we should kick her ass,” said Lizzy. She was perched on the roof of the car, waving her coat hanger hook through the air, wooden sword drawn. She had on black satin pants tucked into an old pair of her father’s motorcycle boots. They were way too big for her feet, so she wore them with lots of pairs of socks. She had a ruffled white shirt with a wide lapel and an old red velvet jacket that she’d sewn some gold trim to. On her head was the big splurge, an actual black pirate hat from the costume shop up in Burlington.
Peter shook his head. “We’ve gotta get to Clem’s birthday party anyway. We’ll round up everyone tomorrow and have a real rehearsal.” He jumped off the stage and started to walk down the path to Rhonda’s house.
“You’re not gonna do anything?” Lizzy asked when the girls caught up with him.
“What, you mean to Greta?” Peter asked.
“Well, yeah! She just ruined our first rehearsal,” Lizzy said.
“What am I supposed to do, climb the tree and drag her down?”
“Something like that,” Lizzy said. “I’ll let her have it with my hook!” She waved her coat hanger hook through the air menacingly.
“Nah,” said Peter. “The best thing we can do is ignore her. She just wants attention.”
Lizzy leaned into Rhonda and said, “Maybe she’s harassing us ’cause she’s got a crush on you!”
“No,” Rhonda said. “It’s you she wants. She must have heard you singing ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ and fell head over heels!”
They both cackled.
“But you know I was singing for you, Wendy,” Lizzy said.
“Oh Captain Hook,” Rhonda swooned, “you’re so romantic.” She grabbed Lizzy’s hand and coat hanger hook, dancing a few steps until the hook came off in her hands, which prompted Lizzy to sing a few lines of the old Patsy Cline song “I Fall to Pieces” in her booming pirate voice. She finished with a high kick, and one of her huge motorcycle boots went flying off, crashing through a stand of striped maple. Both girls convulsed with laughter again.
“Would you guys grow up?” said Peter, glancing back over his shoulder at the figure high up in the tree.
THE GRILL WAS crammed with burgers and hot dogs, and the picnic table was laid out with potato and pasta salads and a sheet cake that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLEM in Justine’s careful script. There were two bowls of punch, one of them for the kids, and the other one was having another cup of dark rum added by Aggie, who insisted it was still too weak.
Some of the men who worked at the mill were there with their wives, talking about pulp wood prices and the Red Sox and whatever else it was men talked about. Rhonda was only half-listening. She was watching Peter sneak three cups of rum punch.
“I don’t want any,” Lizzy said when he handed her a paper cup.
“Oh, come on! What kind of a pirate are you?”
She accepted the cup, as did Rhonda. The girls took tentative sips. Peter took a long gulp. “Ahhh!” he said. “Shiver me timbers, that’s good. It’ll put hair on your chest, me mateys!” He left the girls and went sidling up to where Daniel stood talking with a group of men from the mill. Daniel put a hand on Peter’s head and Peter laughed at some dumb joke about the president, which Rhonda only half-heard.
“Do you think Wendy’s in love with Peter Pan?” Lizzy asked.
“What?”
“I mean it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? She loves him, but he doesn’t love her back.”
Rhonda took a big sip of punch. “I think he loves her back. He just doesn’t know it.”
Lizzy shook her head. “Stupid! It’s not like they’re going to end up together. To get married and everything. It’s impossible.”
Rhonda took a long sip of punch, reached into the pocket of her white Wendy nightgown, and touched the photograph of her father and Aggie that she carried to rehearsal every day. She wanted to show Peter and ask him what it meant. Ask him if it was possible that her father and his mother were once married. But she could never bring herself to do it.
As she let the rum seep into her, she knew what she had to do. It wasn’t Peter who’d have the answers. It was her father. She’d simply show him the photo and ask for an explanation. And today, she decided, was as good a day as any. She finished her punch in two big glugs, left Lizzy, and ran off into the house. She’d seen Clem head inside just minutes before. She went straight to her room and pulled the Hunley drawing from its hiding place in the suitcase under her bed. Her mother had taken her to the art store in St. Johnsbury and paid to have it professionally matted and framed. Rhonda had wrapped it in blue paper with silver stars. She tucked the drawing under her arm and went searching for her father. He was not in the kitchen or the living room. She turned left and went down the hall to his study. The door was open a crack and she pushed it the rest of the way, holding out the present in front of her
while she yelled, “Happy birthday!”
And there was her father, kissing Aggie, their arms moving over each other like they were one giant pulsating octopus.
SHE DIDN’T KNOW where she was going. She was running through the woods in her white Wendy nightgown and bare feet. She’d dropped the drawing on the study floor and heard the glass crack like a gunshot before she turned and ran out. She raced through the party, past Peter and Lizzy and her mother, who was putting out more clam dip. She felt like she was underwater. Sounds didn’t reach her the way they should. The landscape was blurry and strange. Even her feet weren’t listening to what her head told them to do. She stumbled, ran into the trees. But on she went until the path led her to Martin Cemetery; then she slowed to a walk. Her feet were cut from sharp rocks. Her lungs wheezed. She walked beside the cast-iron fence and found the opening. She hadn’t been yet this year. She made her way to the back of the cemetery, to her favorite stone: a simple square marker that said only: HATTIE, DIED DECEMBER 12, 1896, AGED 7. Rhonda collapsed in front of the marker, over the place where she believed Hattie to be, and let herself cry. She was facedown, letting her tears soak into the grass.
Her father was still in love with Aggie. He was secretly married to her. Maybe, just maybe, her mother and father weren’t really married at all. There were no wedding photos. No proof. And if her parents weren’t really married, what were they? And where did that leave her?
Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Had her father followed her to explain, to make up some lie that was supposed to make her feel better when she’d just seen the truth with her own eyes?
“Go away,” she said, not looking up.
“What happened?” The voice was not her father’s. It was Peter’s.
Rhonda kept her face against the ground, wondering what to tell him.
“You tore out of there like someone was trying to kill you,” he said.
Rhonda sat up, still not daring to look at Peter. If she looked, he might be able to see it in her face; he’d somehow know what she’d seen.
“Ronnie, talk to me,” he said.
But what could she say? I just saw your mom making out with my dad? The very thought of it made her feel guilty, like it was her fault somehow.
Rhonda cleared her throat. “I wonder how she died.”
“What? Who?”
“Hattie,” Rhonda said, running her fingers over the name on the marker. “She was seven years old.”
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “It could have been anything, I guess. Back then, you died if you, like, stubbed your toe.”
“It’s just really sad,” Rhonda said, and she began to cry again. Peter turned her to face him and held her, stroking her hair.
“Shhh. It’s okay. You know what I think?” he asked. “I think I shouldn’t have given you that rum punch. It made things all topsy-turvy.”
“I guess,” Rhonda said.
“Come here,” he said, lifting her chin. And then he kissed her. A gentle, dry kiss on the forehead. Then another, just as gentle, on her lips.
“You know you’re my girl, right?” he asked quietly. She nodded. She hadn’t known that she knew—but she knew. She felt very still inside. She reached up and touched the crown of leaves he was still wearing. And then, over his shoulder, she saw it: Lizzy crouched behind a tombstone, watching them. Feeling suddenly guilty and caught, Rhonda pulled away from Peter and said they’d better get back to the party.
JUNE 14 & 15, 2006
THE WROUGHT-IRON FENCE that surrounded Martin Cemetery was rusted and leaning. The front gate hung open and was guarded on either side by two gnarled hydrangea bushes still covered with the crispy brown bunches of last year’s flowers. Out-of-control lilacs lined the front of the cemetery. Rhonda drove her car up into the little pull-off in front of the gate and looked at the drawing in Warren’s hand. Rabbit Island.
“This is it! I’m sure of it. Look at the neat rows of stones. The way the black fence goes all the way around. And it’s the perfect place to bring a kid. It’s isolated, but not far from the school. No one ever comes by here. And even if they did, you can’t see through the bushes.” Rhonda bounded out of the car and through the gate, Warren behind her, clutching the drawing like a treasure map.
The air was thick with the sweet, heady scent of lilacs. Crickets sang. The grass needed to be cut and was full of red clover. Bees flew drunkenly from flower to flower, filling the cemetery with the sound of their low, droning buzz.
“Damn,” he said. “You’re right. Look at these hills in the background. And that row of pines there. This is definitely the place! So what now?”
“We look around, I guess.”
“For what?”
“A clue. Evidence. I don’t know, something to go to Crowley with.”
Warren headed off across the cemetery, Ernie’s drawing in hand. Rhonda stood for a minute, scanning the landscape, squinting, trying to imagine she was a little girl who’d just landed her sub on Rabbit Island.
The stones were old, the most recent of them was from the 1930s. Carved on the headstones were weeping willows, angels, skeletal-looking faces with wings. Some of the stones had eroded to the point of being illegible. Some leaned to one side, or lay flat on their backs—tipped over by time, or maybe kicked over by bored teenagers drunk on warm beer. Rhonda hadn’t visited Martin Cemetery since she was a kid. Now, as she had back then, she began by searching for her favorite stone, the one tucked in at the northwest corner, the small marker that said HATTIE, DIED DECEMBER 12, 1896, AGED 7. She made her way across the cemetery and had the tiny monument in sight when something caught her eye: a little glimmer in the too-tall grass. Cigarette foil? Aluminum can?
No. She reached it and looked down, unable to quite believe what she was seeing. It was a key ring with a bottle opener and a white rabbit’s foot, which was missing fur in places—worn down, Rhonda imagined, by Peter trying to increase his luck.
She scooped the keys up, stuck them in her bag, heart thudding.
“Hey, there’s a path back there,” Warren called. He was jogging toward her, weaving in and out of the old gravestones. She closed up her bag, pulled it against her side protectively. She knew she wouldn’t tell Warren. If she did, he’d insist they go to Crowley. And wasn’t that the right thing to do? Wasn’t this evidence? How far was she willing to go to protect Peter?
She remembered the long-ago kiss in the cemetery, in that same exact spot.
You know you’re my girl.
“Yeah,” she told Warren. “I used to follow that path to get here.”
“Where does it go?” He was right in front of her now, his forehead beaded with sweat, his eyes lit up, like an excited little boy.
“Through the woods a ways. It goes by Peter’s mom’s house, our old stage, my parents. If you turn off, it takes you down to the lake. That’s how we used to get down to our swimming spot at Loon’s Cove.”
“People must still use it,” Warren said. “It’s been kept clear.”
“Kids, probably.” She was kneeling in front of the little marker now, still clutching the bag to her side. Or rabbits.
“That’s sad,” Warren said, pointing down. “Seven years old. What do you suppose happened to her?”
“Could have been anything,” Rhonda heard herself say. “People died of any little thing in those days—children especially.”
“Cemeteries are so intriguing,” he said. “Each stone its own little mystery, right?”
“I used to come here all the time when I was a kid,” Rhonda confessed. “I’d sit right here, over Hattie, and try to make sense of the world.” But that was in another time, when I was Wendy and Peter was a boy dressed in a suit of leaves, who promised never to grow old, not a suspect in the kidnapping of a child.
“I can picture it now,” Warren said. “The young philosopher.” There was that grin. He stepped forward and Rhonda didn’t retreat. Instead, she reached out her hand and he took it.
�
�I wish I could have met you as a little girl,” Warren said, giving her hand a barely perceptible squeeze.
Rhonda laughed. It may well have been the nicest thing any guy had ever said to her.
“No. I was such a weird kid. And I had this god-awful retainer that made me sound like a drunk gopher.”
Warren laughed. “Just my kind of girl,” he told her.
They walked out of the cemetery hand in hand. And for those few brief and wonderfully luscious moments, she forgot all about Peter. All about the key ring in her purse that spoke of terrible possibilities. There was only the comfort of Warren beside her, and for the first time in months, years maybe even, Rhonda felt light and floaty, like if she took a step forward, she might just leave the ground.
THAT NIGHT, RHONDA dreamed of submarines. She was in a small spherical submarine, operated by hand cranks. She was propelling herself through the water, toward another submarine she saw in the distance. When she got close enough, she could make out Ernestine Florucci and the rabbit in the other long, narrow sub—the Hunley. She worked the cranks madly. At last, she pulled up alongside. A third face peered out at her through a porthole—it was Lizzy, her long-lost twin. Lizzy at eleven, the year she lost her voice. She was dressed in her Captain Hook costume, and through the porthole, Rhonda could see the coat hanger sticking out of the end of her sleeve.
Rhonda chased them through the sea, but couldn’t keep up. Her arms turned to rubber. The candle in her tiny submarine flickered, showing her oxygen was running out. But she couldn’t remember what she needed to do to surface. She yanked levers, struck buttons, but just kept sinking. The candle went out and through the portholes was nothing but black.
“WHAT DO YOU think it means?” Rhonda whispered into the phone. It was seven in the morning, and she had rolled over in bed and called Warren on his cell phone.
Island of Lost Girls Page 9