Camptown Ladies

by Mari SanGiovanni

  Erica would have shocked me less if she had struck me across the face with the back of her hand. (Which I had seen her do to a worker after he made a suggestive comment about her flawless body. He had been holding a bucket of nails and the contact of her hand across his face sent the bucket flying across the room. She let him apologize for an hour before firing him.) Clearly, Erica had been in pain over this breakup and I felt this in her quick hug, which felt more like a quick body slap, and also in the way she yanked her sunglasses down over her eyes when she parted from me.

  Seeing Erica this fragile was not something I had ever considered. Her hug had made me catch my breath and my eyes sting at the corners, threatening unexpected tears. I was reminded of when I returned from college to find that my childhood dog, a regal female Doberman, had gone from a bounding ball of energy, to a fragile old dog, seemingly overnight. When I knelt in front of her, she tried to rear up on her shaking legs. I had cried when I finally hugged her, her third attempt finally landing her paws on my shoulders. We’d done this since she was a puppy and to see a sign of frailty in one of the strongest beasts I had ever known was one of the saddest moments I ever felt. Erica would not have appreciated me comparing her to my Doberman, but there it was.

  “You don’t hug,” I said.

  “Let’s never speak of this again,” she said, flashing a forced version of the smile that had sent my brother over the moon.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, launching into business mode, since I knew this was what she’d want. “If you’ve already eaten, I can give you a tour of all the buildings, such as they are, so you can assess the crew size you’ll need.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I could hear the relief in her voice. “The guys know what to do here.” They were already unloading gear. “Jesus,” she said, looking around. “It’s so much worse than she said.”

  “I told Lisa you required full control of the budget, and that you’ll quit if she questions you regarding spending.”

  “Aww, you remember. And she caved without a fight?”

  “I vouched for your ability to beat up vendors for the best prices,” I said, starting toward the rec hall. Erica caught me by the arm to stop me, surprising me again. Erica was not a touchy person, either.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked.

  Seeing her had brought freshness to the pain of losing Lorn, and I wondered if she could see that. Erica hadn’t exactly been the supportive gal pal, back then. Instead, she was more like the beer buddy that came over to fix your drywall with a silent agreement not to speak about your troubles. (If you had a beer buddy that was ridiculously attractive.)

  She had been just what I needed then, and now, here she was again, only this time I was wondering if we both needed each other. What had happened between her and Vince to affect her like this? I took a deep breath and said, “You don’t do sensitive chats, either.”

  “I just brought it up because you look terrible, worse than the last time Lorn left,” she said.

  “Thanks. Technically, this is the last time Lorn has left. So, you don’t look terrible. How the hell do you manage that?”

  She let go of my arm. “I didn’t look so good after everyone left.”

  “You mean after Vince moved back.”

  She nodded. “How is your brother?”

  I said, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but he’s devastated. He won’t talk about it. Will you?”

  She said nothing, so I said, “Lisa and I assumed he messed things up like he usually does with women, but we finally got it out of him that it was you that wanted out.”

  Erica looked away at the rec hall again. “I realized right after we were together—I had made a big mistake.” She started walking again, so we continued to the rec hall.

  “Are you going to tell me more?”

  She shook her head. “Just that I wish this was new to me, but it’s not. I’m great at the chase, always have been. After that, well, I can’t really say what happens, usually nothing. I bail.”

  “Funny. I’m always the one that always wants to stay.”

  “You didn’t stay,” she said.

  “I think I can finally recognize a hopeless case. It was over with Lorn before it really began. You told me that, Lisa told me too. I was just too stupid to see it.”

  “You were in love,” she said, not looking at me. “We all want to recognize a hopeless case before diving in. It doesn’t really work that way.”

  I could not believe who I was hearing. “I’m not sure if I can get used to Sensitive Erica,” I said.

  She wouldn’t look at me as we walked, so I put my arm around her and felt her stiffen from the contact. This was the Erica I knew. She moved away to get a closer look at the building. “By the looks of this place, we should get to work. Will you tell Vince I’d like to speak with him?”

  Now she sounded like a school principal. “I will. But Erica . . .”

  She turned around to me. “Yes?”

  “Be gentle with him. This isn’t business. He’s hurting.”

  “We’re all hurting,” she said, surprising me again.

  I stayed with Erica as she surveyed the buildings, whipping out a small book out of her back pocket and jotting down some notes. From another pocket she produced a giant tape measure, pulled the end out, and stabbed my middle with it. “Take this. Go over there.”

  I took it and went over there. And with that, I became her assistant again. She moved like a cat, whipping the tape in and out of its holster, sometimes whipping it at my head and instructing me to go here or there—but the more challenging angles, Erica did herself. Just like old times. The whole time, she was making comments to herself about how we had started this all backward, that Eddy should not have touched a thing without her first shoring up the foundation, and replacing the main structures. I knew she was right.

  Erica got an accurate measurement of the large, open barn-style windows by climbing up the 4-foot-high pedestal where teenagers had carved their every desire into the splintered wood. With one hop and a pull of her arms, Erica hoisted herself up to the roof. I stood below and watched her feet disappear past the edge of the roof.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “They say he was a carpenter,” she called down, well out of my view on top of the sagging roof. “But I can’t see him yelling down at girls from the top of a roof. Hey, get me that other tool belt from the truck.”

  “You have a ladder, do you want it?” I asked.

  “No need for this, I won’t be up here for long, it’s not safe,” she said.

  I was used to the silence that followed and didn’t wait for an explanation. By the time I’d returned, I heard the thudding and knew what would happen next. She was within my view on the apex of the roof and was walking heavily in a squatted position.

  “Rain dance?” I asked. But I had seen her test for soft spots before, and it always made me cringe. “So we get confirmation if one of your legs caves through, right?”

  “Or both of them,” she said, and it seemed likely as the thudding got muffled.

  “No rain dance . . . the last thing we want is more rain,” she said. “Thankfully Lisa wants brand new, since this is completely rotted, and all has to come off.”

  She said this as casually as if she needed to change a tablecloth. She stopped walking and straightened up. I looked in the direction where she stared, and spotted Vince walking toward the Camp Store. Erica scaled down the side of the roof but didn’t jump down to the pedestal. Instead, she sat on a less rotted edge with her legs dangling over the side of the roof and waited for Vince to look up. She looked like a kid on a dock waiting for ducks to swim by—and Vince was the sitting duck.

  I pitied Vince. She was quite a sight up there, her highlighted hair shimmering in the sun. Even from the ground you could see the flawlessness of her skin, but I knew the casual position of her hands folded in her lap betrayed her self-consciousness.

  Vince stopped short as if h
e had struck himself with a badly-placed cartoon rake.

  “Erica’s here,” I said, playing Captain Obvious.

  I had warned him the night before, because if left up to Lisa, this would have been his first warning: Erica perched on the edge of a roof, looming over him.

  Vince walked to the rec hall with his eyes locked on Erica. “Hey,” he said. “Marie hid the ladder on you again?”

  “Nah,” She said. “Climbed it old school. How are you, Vince?”

  They both sounded overly formal and I wanted to walk away, but thought it would be more awkward for them if I did, so I stood there, trying to look concerned about the job Erica had ahead of her with the rec hall.

  Vince answered, “OK, I guess. Just trying my best not to read into why you took this job.”

  He was not wasting any time, and I felt my face flush with embarrassment for him. He walked closer to the rec hall as he said, “The rock stars in LA pay a lot more to build their mansions than you’re gonna get refurbishing this tired Campground.”

  Erica said, “Lisa probably has more cash than some of them do; they all snort it up their noses. You OK with me taking the job?”

  “Sure,” he answered. “So . . . should I be reading into the reasons why you’re here?”

  Erica looked at me before answering, looking equally heartbreaking and unintentionally cruel. At that point, I couldn’t face the look on my brother’s face, so I turned away and walked to the Camp Store.

  “You shouldn’t read into it,” I heard Erica say.

  Eight

  Hanni And My Sister

  The first time Lisa made a name for herself in elementary school was during her very first exposure to sex education. It wasn’t sex education so much as an introduction to the changes our pre-teen bodies would be going through during puberty. Since she was a year older than me, (she was eleven at the time) and since we were in different parts of the school building, I had to hear about the results after it happened. It was discussed where all important things got sorted out: at the dinner table after Dad got home from work. This is how it went down:

  MOM: Lisa, your teacher called us. Your father and I want to discuss what happened today in class.

  LISA: It was ridiculous, so unfair, and someone had to say something!

  DAD: Lisa, be quiet, and listen to your mother.

  MOM: Your teacher said you were disruptive to the class.

  LISA: She was the one being disruptive, breaking news like that!

  DAD: Still, that’s your teacher. It’s not her fault. I mean, the news she had to tell.

  LISA: Someone had to say something, Dad. Some of the girls were crying.

  DAD (to Mom): It is unfair. She does have a point.

  MOM: Stan, we discussed this. This is about Lisa being respectful in class.

  MARIE: What are we talking about?

  LISA: They showed secrets today about how our bodies are going to change.

  MARIE (I laughed and tried to act cool, like I had heard it all before): Oh, like getting boobs. So what? (Vince laughed at the word “boobs.”) You just don’t want it to ruin your field hockey game.

  LISA: You have no idea, you dummy!

  MOM: Lisa, don’t—

  LISA: You think it’s funny because you don’t know about the bleeding part! Plus, they told us both the girls and the boys stuff—

  MOM: Lisa, stop it.

  LISA: They tell the girls you’re going to bleed between your legs for five whole days, and it’s so disgusting that you have to wear a diaper or stick a piece of cotton up you know where—

  MOM: Lisa!

  I dropped my fork, Vince’s little eyes bulged out of his tiny sockets, and Dad pissed Mom off by trying to hide hold his smirk behind his napkin. We all knew Dad didn’t touch his napkin until the very end of the meal.

  LISA: Worst of all, this is the boys part: ‘Look out boys, while you are sleeping you might get an orgasm without having to do a friggin’ thing!’ We bleed from our crotches, and they get that! God is outrageous!

  The scene ended with Dad bursting out laughing, sending an explosion of peas past his napkin back onto his plate. In the end, Lisa didn’t get punished for speaking out in class that day because Dad convinced Mom that the whole bleeding for five days for the next forty or so years was outrageous, and punishment enough for his girls.

  The story about Lisa’s outburst became legend at school and solidified my sister’s position as a leader, which followed her all through her school years. Whenever she chose to run for a school position, she got it, no campaigning necessary. If she decided she wanted to be the captain of her sports team, she was voted it, unanimously. This was a comfort to me, since, until that time, I believed I was the only one who automatically fell in line to her every command, and it was good to see the rest of the world was going to do it, too.

  Years later, when Lisa was in high school, she boldly brought home a stray pet she named Hanni. The original owners called her Hannah, but Lisa wanted her newly acquired pet to have a nickname. This pet came in the form of a high school exchange student from Ireland.

  She had been lured to the States under the guise that she would experience America while finishing her senior year of high school. What she got instead was a family who desired a full-time nanny for their cantankerous children, and a maid for their filthy house. Hannah was beautiful, and Lisa, having a weakness for all female things beautiful and unattainable, brought her home one Friday for the weekend.

  Lisa planned to work on our mother over the weekend until she had sufficiently pleaded Hannah’s case of imprisonment and white slavery. I thought she looked quite healthy for a slave girl, but later we heard stories from Hannah about the way her host family treated her. However, those stories were nothing compared to the version Lisa told our parents over dinner, after Hannah had hugged Lisa goodbye and sadly returned to her host family’s house.

  My sister painted a Cinderella story, though Hannah dressed not in long layered skirts with chimney sweep stains, but rather short corduroy cut-off shorts and tight t-shirts that fell, oddly, and beautifully, just short of meeting her waistline. Lisa told story after story of how Hannah was brought to this country as an indentured servant, as Mom ate her dinner with a permanent look of skepticism emblazoned on her face. Now, this was Mom’s natural state and perhaps Lisa in her effort to get her new pet had misinterpreted this as something out of the ordinary for Mom, and clumsily oversold her case.

  Mom finally said, “Well, maybe she is a girl that doesn’t like to pitch in. Maybe she thought she was getting a vacation. I’d sure like to hear that family’s side of the story.”

  I had no doubt of that.

  Lisa reminded Mom how helpful Hannah had been all weekend, and she wasn’t overselling that. Hannah had made us feel obligated to take our plates up to the sink and rinse them off, so we didn’t look like animals compared to her. I resented her for that, but my brother did not. He shadowed her every move that weekend and she could scarcely turn around without bumping into him. Mom agreed she’d been very helpful, but she still kept her lips tight together, a sign we knew meant nothing foreign was getting in, least of all, a teenager from Ireland.

  Vince broke the silence at the dinner table. “How old is Hannah?”

  I was embarrassed for him, since all his life he had never asked about anyone’s age. All eyes were now on him, a welcome relief from Lisa’s filibustering.

  “Same age as me, dumb ass,” Lisa said. Mom gave the back of her head a flick with her hand.

  “Language,” Mom said.

  I noticed Vince had lost interest in his dinner. If we hadn’t been having his favorite, Uncle Freddie’s homemade ravioli, I might not have noticed it, but now he was just rolling his fork over his plate.

  Lisa noticed it too, and sensed an opportunity. “Why aren’t you eating that? You know, Hannah would love it if her host family fed her a homemade dinner now and then.” She paused for a deep sigh. “She has to eat McDonalds an
d Burger King almost every night, if she gets to eat at all.” Well played.

  Mom stopped eating, her lips parting slightly. Mom’s fork was lowered slowly, laid down on her plate in horror. Lisa had her in her hooks, and now was happily eating the ravioli off Vince’s plate. Her work here was done. Lisa and I knew that no Italian mother, no matter how skeptical, could tolerate the idea of withholding food from another human being, especially a growing teenager. Mom had already judged that Hannah was dangerously deprived of food, her trim figure lacking the doughy coating that all American kids had these days, us included. This was an angle that Lisa should have considered earlier.

  Hannah confessed to me months later that she had never been so fat in her life. I confessed to her that she was a lunatic, and she must think she’d joined a family of right whales. Hannah, now officially named Hanni by our family, lived with us the entire year she was supposed to be with her host family, and little Vince, always assumed by Lisa and I to be too geeky to take notice of a girl, had fallen deeply in love before the age of twelve.

  When Lisa brought Hanni home, she was meant to be a toy for her own amusement. A more improved sister, one who would act more according to how Lisa wished. A sister who happily would ask her questions to learn her way from someone who had been there, done that. As it turned out, Hanni was more of a gift to our baby brother, who taught himself how to make eggs when he found out it was Hanni’s favorite, and who wouldn’t take her yellow terry cloth robe off ever since she draped it over him one morning while he sat chilled as he watched his cartoons.

  The yellow robe became his uniform, the layer of Hanni he could drape over his clothing, and even when the summer came, and it was much too warm for a bulky terry robe, Vince would wear it, still opened in the front, terry belt dragging on the floor, since Hanni was so tall. He made her a fancy card for her birthday, and bought her favorite chocolate with his allowance money. He protected the Sunday crossword puzzle from Dad to save for Hanni by ripping it out of the paper each week, having set his alarm to get up before anyone else in the house.