The Clover Girls

by Viola Shipman

  After we calmed Rach down, dried her off, got her a cup of hot coffee, and held her as she cried, we all decided to stay just a bit longer, have a little summer fun and help get Rachel over her longstanding fear and remorse.

  And thus, the 2021 Swim Test was born.

  I can’t help but feel as if Em were here, trying to tell us something, teach us something, by not only bringing us back here but also continuing to give us ghostly signs that we’re meant to be here, right now, this very moment, for big reasons.

  My mom used to call such signs God winks.

  For instance, whenever I looked at a clock at home when I was little, and its number was repeated—1:11 p.m., 5:55 a.m., 12:12—my mom told me it meant I was exactly where I was supposed to be at that very moment.

  It always made me happy, and made me feel so safe.

  “We just have to be present and aware to notice God winks,” she used to say. “But too many of us don’t, unfortunately. We’re too often lost in our heads, simply trying our darnedest to keep up with all that’s going on around us. But Liz, that’s like trying to walk on quicksand. Sometimes we need to stop, assess, lift our heads—and our hearts.”

  Why did we all come back to Camp Birchwood? Why are we all still here? Is this a game Em is playing with us? Or are she and God winking with all their might, hoping that the three of us lost, little sheep will finally pay attention?

  A talent show. Now a swim contest. This can’t all just be fun and games, can it?

  I think of my mom then, and I think of her now.

  Time passes so quickly. Aging can be so cruel. We take too little time for fun and games as adults.

  “Life is as short as one blink of God’s eye,” my mom used to say.

  Wink.

  I look in the mirror again. I am wearing cutoff jean shorts and a green Birchwood T-shirt—sleeves cut off—tied in a knot around my waist. I did not bring a swimsuit, nor would I wear a bikini, so I made one.

  I wink at myself.

  “Attagirl,” V says.

  Rach smiles.

  Are they paying attention, too?

  “You know,” I start, “I’ve spent the last decades packing for everyone else: juice boxes, backpacks, real estate signs, weekly pill organizers, baby seats and strollers, walkers and then wheelchairs. I don’t even consider myself a priority anymore. Maybe that’s why I’m single.”

  V and Rach nod. “Me, too,” Rach says.

  I pat my stomach. “What happened to me?”

  V comes over to me. She lifts her shirt and rubs her tummy. “Back at’cha, sister.” Her voice is wobbly. I turn from the mirror and stare into her pretty eyes. She looks as if she might cry.

  “You okay?”

  She shakes her head. “I haven’t considered myself to be a priority either, and look what’s happened.” V stops. “It’s not that I need or want to look the way I used to look. I don’t need or want a perfect body. But why, as women, do we put everyone else ahead of ourselves? And when we even consider doing something for ourselves we feel guilty? We feel wrong?”

  “It’s how we’re raised,” I say. “We are the foundation. Everyone stands on us. We support the world.”

  “My back hurts,” V says.

  We laugh.

  “After all,” Rach continues, “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”

  V and I stare at each other, incredulous.

  “You’re quoting Ann Richards?” V gasps.

  “A Democrat?” I gasp.

  I stare at Rach, in that way that we do. She tilts her head just so, as if to say, I’m starting to understand that women need to support women.

  I nod. She nods. And then I ask, “Are we ready for this?”

  “No,” V says. “The last time I swam this far was in Aruba. Photographer wanted me to pose on a sandbar that magically appeared in the middle of the Caribbean. It was so windy, I didn’t know if I’d make it.”

  “Was that for the famed photo shoot for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue?” I ask.

  “You remember?” she asks.

  I nod. “I used your cover as a dartboard in our game room. Your face was the bull’s-eye. I used to toss darts with one hand and hold a baby and eat pizza with the other. I was very talented.”

  “You’re not joking, are you?” V asks.

  I shake my head. “Gotta admit. It sucked seeing you both in magazines and on TV, when I had two babies on my hips and a husband who never helped. I was insanely jealous, to put it mildly.” I turn and look in the mirror. “I kept asking myself, ‘What if?’”

  “I should have helped you,” V says. “I was not as good a person as I thought I was back in the day. I was consumed with making it.” She looks at Rach. “And I should never have hurt you like I did.”

  “Thank you,” Rach says. “I appreciate you saying that.” She turns to me. “I truly thought you were happy.”

  “I tried to pretend I was happy. But jealousy and regret are like ingesting poison. There’s a constant gnawing pain that just won’t go away. It’s maddening. It literally eats you alive from inside.”

  “You are talented, Liz,” V says.

  “Stop trying to suck up,” I say.

  “You are,” she says in unison with Rach, who adds, “And you’re still a young woman.”

  “Define young?” I ask. “I need to start using your calculator.”

  “There’s still time to do anything you want,” V says.

  “What if I said the same thing to both of you?” They look at each other and then at me, but do not answer.

  “Thank you for still believing in me,” I finally say. I glance at my shorts again in the mirror. “Maybe one day,” I whisper, before thinking of my mother, clocks and time. “Okay, time’s a wastin’. Let’s do this!”

  We head to Friendship Rock, and I suddenly feel like I did when I first started camp. There are as many butterflies in my stomach as there are monarchs swooping through the nearby field of Indian paintbrush in bloom.

  “Remember how scary this was?” V asks.

  “Was?” I respond.

  We had a few chances to pass the annual swim test each summer, and many of us needed every single chance we could get. It sounded so innocent: jump in the water and swim to Friendship Rock. The only rule was that we weren’t allowed to dog-paddle; we had to swim, no matter how uncoordinated we were. When we reached the rock, we had to show that we could tread water and float on our backs. Once those goals were accomplished, the counselor waiting on Friendship Rock would hand us a waterproof marker, and we’d write our names on the rock. When we returned to shore, the whole camp cheered and then rushed in to congratulate the swimmer. The bigger part of the swim contest was that it also determined the areas of the water in which we could swim. Believe me, it was humiliating for older girls to be swimming with younger ones.

  Em was always the best swimmer. She’d taken swim lessons, and the isolation of swimming seemed to suit her personality perfectly.

  “Em was like a duck, wasn’t she?” I ask.

  The girls nod.

  I was a very good swimmer, too, having been raised along Lake Michigan and spending a childhood on the beach. The test was always a challenge for Rach and V, though, who preferred lying on the beach slathered in a mixture of baby oil and iodine, tinfoil-wrapped cardboard in front of their faces.

  “You wanna know something sad?” I ask. “I sell Lake Michigan homes, and do you know how many times I’ve actually stepped foot into the lake the last few years?” I form my hands into a big goose egg. I look down at myself. “I don’t even go to the gym.”

  “Me either,” V says.

  V is wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt with her husband’s company logo over her swimsuit.

  “Take it off,” I say. �
�I’m showing my tummy. You show yours. It’s time we, quite literally, have guts.”

  V grabs her shirt, hesitates and stops. “No,” she says. “I can’t.”

  “You used to model,” I say. “You were used to being nearly nude.”

  “That was when I had a good body.”

  “Stop it,” Rach says. “You still do. You have curves. That used to be considered sexy. And never forget that’s a body that has had two children, moved around the world nonstop and helped build a business with your husband. That body’s a beautiful blessing.”

  V looks at Rach, who is wearing a bikini, not an ounce of fat on her body. “You haven’t had children, though. You’re still in great shape.”

  “Women supporting women, remember?” Rach says in her inimitable way.

  “I’m sorry,” V says, before ripping off her T. “You’re right.”

  “You look amazing,” Rach says. “We all look amazing.”

  “Ready, Em?” I ask, nodding toward the rock. “Ready, girls?”

  I glance at Rach. Are you ready? I ask with my eyes. She nods.

  I toss my towel onto the sand and then my phone on top of it.

  We grab hands, form a human chain, and slowly walk into the water. When we’re waist-deep, we begin to swim, very slowly, toward Friendship Rock.

  A few minutes in, I am laboring, my body not used to exercise. I pop my head up and search the water.

  Don’t look until you get there, Liz, I tell myself. Focus.

  My shoulders ache, my breathing is ragged. I want to stop, but I look over at my friends. V and Rach are going just as slowly as I am. I lower my head, the cool water splashing my face, the sun on my back, and I am a girl again, swimming with my best friends on a beautiful summer day.

  If I pass this test, we can swim together all summer, no questions, just like we used to do.

  My hand brushes something, and I lift my head, my heart racing.

  I made it!

  I look around.

  No, we made it!

  I clear the water from my eyes, lift a hand out of the water and scream. Rachel clambers up on the rock, stands and yells even louder, her voice echoing across the water. V is laughing. She splashes me with water, and I splash back, and we play like kids.

  “Hey!” Rach says. At first I think she is admonishing us for being silly, but she says it again with even more urgency. “Hey! Look!”

  Rach helps V onto the massive rock, and then the two of them yank me out of the water, my knee scraping the rock as I go northward.

  “Ow!” I say. “What is it?”

  Rach is pointing at the top of the rock.

  What we first believed were only names still written on the rock is actually something more.

  CLOVERS 4-EVER! The writing is fresh, new, written in green, the words encircling a four-leaf clover, each of our initials written in a leaf.

  Below that is written:

  You did it! Made it this far! TOGETHER!

  “How did she...?” I start, my voice trailing off, water dripping off my body. “She was so sick.”

  I look at Rach and V, my mouth wide open.

  “I don’t know,” Rach starts, but V cuts her off. “Love,” she says. “Emily wanted to show us how much she loved us and this place.”

  For a moment, we are silent, staring at the clover, the water softly lapping at the rock.

  “Hold on!” Rach says out of the blue. “Look!”

  She crouches, and I finally notice a long arrow—the kind I used to draw as a kid, the kind we just drew on V with lipstick—trailing around to the back side of the rock. We turn and kneel atop the stone.

  You saved my life, too, Rach!

  You all did!

  xoxo!

  Rach collapses atop the rock, and we sit, holding her, until her sobs subside.

  We sit like that, in silence, for the longest time, our only companions the hawks that circle overhead, the curious fish swimming beneath the surface and the loons floating in the reeds. Without warning, Rach leaps up and dives into the water. She rubs the rock and then leans in and gives it a kiss, whispering something into its surface. V and I follow suit—friends jumping off Friendship Rock hand in hand, and then we swim, in perfect rhythm like synchronized swimmers, back to the shore.

  “We passed!” I yell when we return.

  We collapse onto our backs and soak up the sun.

  I lie for the longest time, not moving, and then sit up on my elbows, staring at Friendship Rock. I think of Em—so sick when she was here—somehow finding the strength and courage to swim out to that rock and leave a message of hope, strength and love for all of us.

  She was alone. But she was not alone.

  I turn and look at my friends, their eyes closed, half-asleep.

  Em left all of us a sign. But we had to find it. We had to be aware enough to see it.

  “Lunch, anyone?” Rach says, startling me. “I’m starving. I think I can whip up some PBJs just like in the old days. Liz, you still like a few potato chips on yours?”

  I laugh and nod. “You remember?” I ask.

  “You can’t forget something that gross,” V says.

  We stand and look at Friendship Rock. Then V and Rach head toward the camp.

  I reach down to grab my shoes, and pick up my phone, blowing off sand. That’s when I see the time, the numbers sparkling in the sun.

  1:11.

  PART FIVE

  Coed Social

  Summer 1987

  There were only a few times a year when Birchwood was this silent: when the rain fell in torrents and quieted not only the girls but also the world around them. Campers read, slept, played games, but everyone and everything was hushed, like when it snows in Michigan, and Mother Nature turns down the volume on the earth’s remote.

  The only other time it got this quiet was...

  “Coed Social.”

  Liz says it aloud, in a whisper, to make it real.

  And then she whispers, “Billy Collins,” to make him real, too.

  Liz giggles and shakes her head at herself, her poufy hair falling around her face. She pushes the yellow-and-lime bandana back farther on her head to keep her locks in place and again shakes her head at her immaturity, sending her plastic triangle earrings jangling.

  In the days before Camp Birchwood’s annual Coed Social, which included Birchwood and the three nearby boys’ camps—Taneycomo, Caribou and Golden Arrow—the girls were uncomfortably quiet. With only a select few boys for a lot of girls, the competition was fierce.

  Who will ask V? (Everyone!)

  Will Em ask anyone to dance?

  Will Rach sneak in an older boy who didn’t go to one of the camps?

  Will Billy Collins sway with Liz to “Crazy for You” under the construction paper stars and then kiss her under the real ones? (No. He always has a different girlfriend.)

  At such a young age, the girls placed so much pressure on themselves to be wanted, liked and loved.

  This year, V is desperately in love with a boy from Golden Arrow, who broke his arm horseback riding and had to have surgery. Rach’s crush, who is working on a salmon fishing charter to earn money before his freshman year of college starts, just told her he had to work and can’t make it.

  “We’re going alone!” V announces out of the blue one afternoon in Pinewood, as if it is an edict.

  “Alone but together!” Rachel says.

  “Easy for you two to say,” Liz tells them.

  Rachel stares at her in that way they do, a look that says, “The queen has spoken.”

  Bye, Billy, Liz thinks.

  Em sighs, secretly relieved to have the pressure removed.

  “The Clovers are over boys!” V says.

  Word gets out, and The Clover Girls become the talk o
f the camps. That’s what happens when you’re the popular clique: you set the trends, no matter how silly. All of the other campers decide to go alone, too, which results at first in a cultural uproar but ends with the boys inspired and hopeful they can swoop in and make V or Rachel theirs on a single magical night, just like Sam and Jake in Sixteen Candles.

  The anticipation makes the days leading up to the Coed Social feel even more like a balloon being overfilled with helium.

  In an attempt to make this date-free Coed Social more exciting, Liz spends every waking hour she has making dresses for The Clover Girls. She is fascinated with the Gunne Sax collection of prom dresses that recently took teenage girls by storm, a sort of romantic Little Bo-Peep style. Liz makes Em a long white dress with a frilly overlay at the top and a matching choker from the fabric. For Rach, she creates an emerald-green gown with ruching in the midriff, three tiers of ruffles that end above the knee and asymmetrical sleeves. For V, Liz designs a sophisticated-looking strapless gold lamé dress with gold sequins on the bodice and belt. But Liz saves the best design for herself: a version of Gunne Sax’s famed full-length pink taffeta confection featuring puffed sleeves and a draped overskirt fastened with little pink bows. She makes it in hopes that Billy will be her Jake.

  Are the Clover Girls overdressed for a camp Coed Social? Yes.

  Does V weep when she sees her dress? Yes.

  Does it establish the Coed Social for future generations as a summer prom? Yes.

  The night of the Coed Social, The Clover Girls march inside as if they are entering the Met Gala.

  But for the first hour, as the music plays in the barn near the lake that serves as the make-believe wonderland, the boys are too scared to approach them.

  And then...

  Liz sees Billy Collins striding over, his blond hair slicked back. The entire social comes to a stop.

  He is the first boy to approach the clique.