“You gave me that life?” I ask. “I earned that life. How do you think your entire career got off the ground? It was my money, success and notoriety that helped make you.”
I stop, nearly panting for air.
For a moment, I just want to make it all okay, like I always do. But the ghosts on my shoulders begin to whisper, the forgotten whispers from male photographers who asked me to lose more weight, the voices of boys who wanted me to act stupid even though I was smarter than they were, the echoes from men who made all the decisions.
And I always allowed it. I always allowed it.
“So I ruined your life?” David says. “Wow.”
“No,” I say, my voice shaking. “You didn’t ruin it. You just erased it. And I was dumb enough to hand you the pencil.”
The shadow of a pine slides across the bunkhouse and suddenly covers David in darkness. He, too, is erased before my eyes.
David spins on his heels, storms out of Pinewood, the screen door banging behind him. I stand paralyzed, expecting him to return.
What just happened?
“V?” Rach calls.
“Are you okay?”
They both rush in, and I burst into tears.
In the distance, I hear gravel spit, a car engine roar away, and then a bugle. It’s no longer “Reveille” being played by a skilled musician and counselor, but a rather sad incantation, a blur of hair-raising bleats—like a crazed goat being goosed. I know an annoying boy has confiscated the instrument and is now creating chaos for everyone around them.
Boys, I think. It’s always boys causing the problems.
And it always has been.
Rachel
From The Lookout, Camp Taneycomo resembles an episode of Survivor.
Boys paddle kayaks or learn to sail on Lake Michigan, run on the dunes and race on the shoreline. From a distance, they look as if they are creating complete chaos in the world.
I look at my cell, dreading the call I have to make.
To a chaos-making boy.
The Lookout is one of the highest spots around, with one of the best vantage points for miles. It’s also one of the few I know will have more than just spotty reception.
I stare at my phone. I have two bars and—as my dad used to say when he was angry—zero shits to give.
The boys yell at the top of their lungs—just like boys always do—and I shake my head. They sound the same as they did in the ’80s. Times change, boys don’t.
Have I?
I look at my cell again. There was a time not that long ago when you could go away and not be reached. Now we are accessible to one another 24/7. We expect others to be accessible 24/7. We are online, constantly connected, but oh-so-divided and alone. There is no downtime. My eyes wander back to camp.
Maybe they call it the good ol’ days for a reason, I think, sounding just like my dad again.
I think of when parents would call Birchwood. A counselor would come and get us, and we’d have to walk to The Lodge to use one of the two rotary phones available.
I smile and think of the giant red rotary phone I had growing up that hung from the wall in the hallway between my bedroom and my parents’. I called it the Bat Phone because it was so big and bright. I stretched that phone cord into my bedroom, pulling it until the coil disappeared and the cord turned as long and limp as an overcooked noodle of spaghetti, talking to my friends and whispering to boys who called. It was, literally, my lifeline back then.
One Christmas break, I got hooked on those party lines, where teens paid a buck a minute to talk to—and flirt with—other teens from around the country.
Hi, this is Tanya, I would say, lowering my voice into a husky tone. I’m seventeen, and I like bad boys.
I invented lots of personas for myself—I was head cheerleader, I was a gymnast, my parents had a home in the Hamptons, I once guest-starred on Dynasty—not realizing that everyone else was doing the exact same thing: lying to be liked. And we still are.
My dad was furious when he got the bill. $283.15. Like my childhood phone number, I can still remember the exact amount vividly. He handed the bill to me and said I had to pay it back myself. I did. I got a job at Baskin-Robbins, scooping ice cream.
Looking back, though, I think that’s when I got the acting bug. I was good at creating characters, inventing storylines, being someone else.
That’s when I got the lying bug, too.
Have I ever been myself?
I lift my face toward the sun and inhale.
Here, I think. I was here.
My friends encouraged me to sing and act. I was told I was talented. I was nurtured and loved. Even V’s deception taught me to fight. Would I have been willing to walk through walls, handle rejection and face such harsh judgment if I hadn’t had to work just a little bit harder?
There is something about the way Michigan smells in the summer—the scent of the pines, lake, flowers, heat off the sand—that makes me feel like a kid again, that transports me back in time, like when I wore Love’s Baby Soft, my mom wore Obsession, my dad sported Old Spice, or a boy wore Drakkar Noir. I miss all of those things: being young...my mom...my dad...boys.
Screams echo across the water. The massive dunes inhale the sound, as if that’s the youthful elixir that keeps them ever-strong, and then it exhales as sand into the breeze, whispering its secrets into my ears as it whistles by.
I shut my eyes, and I am a girl again. Not that much has changed, really. It’s the same world in a new format: kids create perfect images of themselves on social media; they Photoshop pictures that end up looking nothing like themselves; we outdo one another with our I’m-happier-than-you-are! Facebook posts; kids invent worlds where they are social influencers but have had no real role models or the knowledge and experience to influence anyone about anything.
If I looked closely in the mirror, really closely, I’d know I’ve contributed to this. I know I would have to take responsibility. But instead, when I look, I see a character, a role I’m playing, a life invented.
My father was my role model. My friends and my mom were role models, but we hurt one another so deeply.
I, on the other hand, am not a role model. And this proves it: I lift my phone, take another deep breath and dial.
“Where the hell have you been? And where the hell are you?”
“Good to hear your voice, Ralph,” I say, my words dripping in sarcasm.
He laughs. “Haven’t lost your edge, I see. Good, good.”
“Family emergency,” I semi-lie.
“My poll numbers are trending down, Rachel. Not good, not good.”
He doesn’t ask about my emergency. He doesn’t ask about me.
“Don’t panic,” I say. “We’re in the dead zone right now. People are on vacation. Your voters—the ones with money—are at their summer homes. They’re not picking up phones and responding to polls.”
He sighs. “Okay, okay.” That’s his MO—short phrases that he repeats over and over. It’s all his brain can handle. “Wofford is all over my ass, though, right now. All over my ass. See her signs everywhere: Women for Wofford.”
“She’s raised a lot of money, Ralph. Not as much as you have in the vault, but a lot. We have commercials set to air in September and October. The airwaves will be flooded with your face and message.”
“If I lose to a woman, Rachel, your career will be over. Over.”
I don’t respond.
“The whole equal pay, maternity leave BS is killing me.”
“Ralph, I knocked that balloon out of the air on Red, White & You.”
“My supporters don’t like all this women’s libber nonsense. You, as a woman, need to reiterate how much women love me.”
The world begins to spin, and I feel as if I might be sick. It’s like talking to a real-life Archie Bunker decades later. It takes ever
y fiber of my body not to scream, You’re a thrice-divorced man whose grandfather invented street cleaners. You’re the one who needs to be swept into the gutter where you belong.
“Women do love you,” I say instead. “I love you, Ralph.”
I can hear him exhale. “Women love me,” he says. “Women love me.”
In the near distance, boys scream.
“What’s that noise?” Ralph asks.
“My stomach,” I say. “My clients never give me enough time to eat.”
“Camera adds ten pounds,” he says, not joking.
You’re 5'7", 280 pounds, Ralph. Cameras have to move back to the suburbs of Detroit to fit you on screen.
“I will be in touch,” I say.
“You better, you better.”
“Bye, Ralph.”
I hang up before he has a chance to reply or I say something I’ll regret.
I lift my head and scream—something I’ve been doing way too much of lately—my anger catching in the wind before being consumed by the dunes. I shut my eyes, and the sand whispers something to me.
A secret message.
Make amends.
“I know, I know,” I say to the sand. “You’re right.”
I hear a boy scream. I swear his voice says, “Apologize.”
“I know, I know,” I say to the echo. “You’re right.”
I think of V and her husband, and my mind turns to Liz.
I can still see myself step in front of her, extend my leg and take Billy from her.
My mind turns to my mom. Why didn’t I confide in her? She could have helped.
The wind whistles a sad song. Was she as lonely as I was?
Is she as lonely as I still am?
I take a deep breath, inhaling summer, the smell of my youth enveloping me, past memories wrapping me in their warm arms.
I know there is one call I must still make in order to honor the dunes’ secret advice, but it’s not to any boy. I lift my cell, begin to hit Call, but stop.
I cannot make the call.
“Make me stronger,” I whisper to the dunes. “Make me stronger.”
Liz
The camp is eerily quiet. V is in her bunk, and Rach stomped off toward the lake, cursing under her breath about “boys.” I am sitting in The Lodge, which is also silent, save for the squirrels or raccoons—or who knows what—skittering around in the rafters.
There were only a few times a year when Birchwood was this silent: when it rained or was nearly time for the annual Coed Social.
I say it aloud, in a whisper, like I used to do, and then I giggle, before shaking my head at my immaturity. I wrestle my poufy hair out of my face, pushing the yellow-and-lime bandana back farther on my head. My plastic triangle earrings, also lime, slap my face. I stop shaking my head.
I have changed so much over the past decades, but so little.
I’m still the same ol’ Liz, and I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.
I think of all the men in my life, and Billy Collins pops into my head. I shut my eyes.
Why do boys from our pasts—old flames, bad exes, but particularly our secret crushes, the ones we never had—still crowd our minds, like ghosts crashing a party?
I open my eyes again, and see cobwebs draped from the lights, dust coating the tables, leaves strewn across the floor.
Because they’re not real, I think. They never were. We just want to dream of a life that might have been better than the one we’ve lived.
I think of my family and my marriage.
All ghosts.
How does our past affect our present? Does it make us want to see things that aren’t there? Are we scared of what we might discover? In others? In ourselves?
I think of my husband. What was it like in the past? We did love each other, but then it faded and finally disappeared. Getting married just seemed like what I was expected to do. I didn’t even question it. And then I believed that parenthood would complete a perfect picture, but obligation, work, bills and exhaustion erased the border, then the background, finally our images entirely.
I tried. I really did. I juggled children, a career I hated, laundry, cleaning, cooking, errands, carpool, practices and still crawled into bed—stifling bone-tired exhaustion—reaching for my husband, feeling for his hand, tucking my body into the curve of his, only to have him yawn and roll away. I made dinner reservations and hired babysitters. He would not even turn off the football game and set down his beer to consider it. I begged him to go to counseling. I begged him to talk to me. I begged him to kiss me.
And then, one day, you just stop. You go numb. Routine becomes comfort. Love turns into complacency. Spouses become roommates.
The hardest part? He left me. Remarried a year later. Now he goes out on date nights to dinner and on beachy vacations. I know because I’m that girl. Yes, I’ve stalked them on social media. I even saw the bastard holding her hand in our grocery store. It wasn’t even the fact that he was holding her hand that was the most galling part to me. It was the fact that he actually went to the grocery store.
In the days I’ve been away, I have not heard from my kids. They have not checked on me. They will not check on their grandma. Why is it me always holding things together?
How did you do it, Em?
I stand, pushing my too-little chair back too quickly, and it clatters behind me. I am bigger and stronger than I was as a girl, I realize a bit too late. I head to the kitchen, as if by instinct. It is the same as it was: ’80s appliances. A trash compactor. A microwave—big as a UFO—that says LOW RADIATION across it.
“I’m amazed we’re still alive,” I say to it. “I’m amazed anyone could make a meal in here.”
But we did. And we still are.
This kitchen used to be buzzing with people, adults and kids alike, all chopping, washing, cooking as a team. When we became counselors, The Clover Girls had full run of the kitchen. If any of us were feeling down, Em—the mom—would make us slice-and-bake chocolate chip cookies.
I study the kitchen. Though Em got some things working—electricity and water in here—most of the light bulbs are burned out, there is no water in the bathrooms, and we have to use the old outhouses scattered about the property that the Nighs kept for “emergencies.”
This place has a lot of potential, I think, a phrase all real estate agents love to use for decrepit, problematic properties that should probably be torn down but have a unique history. I’ve sold countless creaky cottages on the lakeshore that were built a century ago and loaded with charm.
And mold. And dry rot. And bats. And sewer issues. And knob-and-tube wiring.
I do the math in my head and wonder how much it would cost to get this camp up and fully running again.
A lot.
Would Em’s endowment cover the repairs? I’m sure there are updated building codes, and Birchwood likely meets none of them.
I know something about home repair. I’ve duct-taped washers, I’ve unplugged disposals, I’ve cleared drains with wire hangers, pulling out clumps of hair as big as Garfield. I’ve installed pull bars, grab bars and shower seats in my mother’s home, and then taken them all down, all while overseeing the city as it trenched up her collapsed clay pipes and installed new ones before I could sell her home. As an agent, I’ve fixed sticky windows, cleaned bathrooms, chased snakes out of garages, doing it all in high heels.
I don’t—and will never—need a man’s help again.
But this?
I look around again, and the critters having their own Coed Social in the attic answer my question for me. I may not need a man, but I do need help. And this...this is beyond my pay grade, skill level and allotted time frame—I mean, who knows how many more days or hours we will all be here considering the current emotional terrain? How fun would it be to surprise the girls
with running water in the shower before we left, even if it’s on the last day we’re together? What a sendoff that would be!
I open cabinets and rifle through drawers. In the catch-all drawer—the one every house and kitchen has—is a warped, yellowed, water-stained manila folder.
“Bingo!” I whisper.
The folder is filled with business cards, pads of paper jotted with contacts.
I yank one out that says, fittingly, Ed Yankton, Plumbing, and dial the number.
“The number you’ve dialed is no longer in service.”
I try another and another, but my phone drops service and I realize that none of these numbers will work since they’re nearly forty years old. I look at the card again. Fax numbers are listed at the bottom. These cards are from the age of dial-up, when you could take a shower, do your hair and make dinner in the time it took to secure a computer connection.
These men probably aren’t even alive anymore, I think. But I know where some are.
I march out the kitchen door of The Lodge and beeline toward the lake, following the sound of boys yelling.
I circle around the lake and take the well-worn path that the Taneycomo campers used to walk to Birchwood Lake. That connects to another path—half dirt, half sand—that sits along a ridge, the dividing point between the towering dune that heads to Lake Michigan and the thick woods that have always separated the girls’ camp from the boys’ camp.
The noise level grows as I near.
It’s so much louder than Birchwood ever was, I think.
And then I see the Camp Store.
Still there, I think.
The Camp Store is a log cabin commissary that dispenses toiletries, batteries and snacks. Birchwood didn’t have a Camp Store, per se; girls were too embarrassed to have to go to a Camp Store to buy “necessities,” so we just asked our counselors or went to see Cy Nigh. We also had nightly “sweet treats”: cookies and milk, or s’mores by the campfire, or—my favorite—Doughboys, which Rach called a Stick Biscuit, that consisted of cooking dough on a stick over a campfire.
“Hello,” I call, walking up to the Camp Store.
The Clover Girls Page 15