It occurred to me that I was finally speaking in the past tense, the first time ever when it came to Lorn. Katherine hugged me again and over her shoulder I looked for Erica, but she had disappeared again. When our hug ended, I asked her, “How’s life as a newlywed?”
“Marrying your Uncle Tony was the smartest thing I ever did,” she said, and her bright smile and voice reminded me so much of Lorn, but, luckily, by then, my gut had gone numb and I could no longer feel the punches.
Lisa, Vince, and I returned to the camp just in time to see a trail of cars arriving, a fully decorated truck leading three other cars, with five gay boys in the back of the flatbed, shrieking like puppies, happily exaggerating the danger every time they hit a small bump, and fabulously presenting themselves as if they were in the Macy’s Day Parade instead of on a dirt road leading to a campground. I heard a high-pitched voice sing out: “The Camptown Laaaaadies are heeeeere!” They went on to chant the classic version of Camptown Ladies, minus Lisa’s original dildo refrain, which I knew Lisa would be teaching them, ASAP.
Eddie heard the approaching tribe too, and bounced out of the rec hall, where he had been installing sets of gauzy bug-proof curtains he had custom-sewn. Eddie squealed, and I worried for all the glass in the camp lanterns. Two of the boys were in full drag, and one was wearing an extra long colorful boa flitting out behind him, making it appear as if the flatbed truck was wearing a scarf. One of the young men was Eddie’s new boyfriend from P-town.
I watched the campers they passed, nobody willing to stand near the road, instead watching from the safety of their sites and inside their dark trailers. Always one to sense a party, Lisa joined me outside the office as the boys waved and squealed.
Lisa said, “The girls! They’re here at last!”
Dad poked his head out of the office. “I have this feeling Aunt Aggie is with us right now.”
I was rather touched. “Really, Dad?”
He said, “Sure. That screeching would have woken the dead.” He disappeared back inside just as Mom came out with her clipboard, looking like an army sergeant dressed by Ann Taylor’s poorest cousin.
The boys whooped and cackled when the truck came to a stop in front of the office, and shoved each other like high school boys (in prettier clothes) to be the first ones out of the truck. Mom greeted them and began giving them what seemed a well-rehearsed speech about store hours, check-out time, and quiet hours, as if they were checking into a Marriot. I saw several of the boys’ eyes glazing over, so I stepped in front of Mom.
“Welcome boys!” I said. “Since you won the award for Best Arrival, we’d like to show our gratitude by asking you to join us as our guests for best Italian dinner of your lives at the rec hall tonight, or as soon as it’s finished.” There was more whooping and cheering as Eddie made his way around to inappropriately hug each of the boys. When they were done hugging Eddie hello, I suggested, “Why don’t you all pile back into the flatbed so we can give you a tour.”
“Hey, where are you from?” Lisa yelled at the beautiful caramel-skinned young man with the pretty accent.
“I’m from Jordan,” he said, his voice revealing that he was instinctively a little afraid of her. A smart man for his young years.
“That’s in the Middle East. That’s alright,” Mom assured the young man.
“I’m sure he appreciates that, Mom,” Lisa said as she moved to take a closer look at him. “Jordan, huh? What a coincidence, that’s where Italian people get all our wedding candy from.” He looked confused, but didn’t ask.
Lisa turned to me, “Hey, Marie, remember when I found a sack of insect eggs in a spider web and I told you they were mini-Jordan almonds?” I remembered. “That was a fun day,” she said with a sigh as my stomach lurched. I’d always hoped she’d been kidding, though the historical odds were stacked against me.
As I wondered if you could throw up from something you ate twenty-five years ago, the boys insisted I give them a tour and they pig-scrambled back into the truck, spanking each other’s asses and fighting as if there were amazing and horrible seats to be won in the back of a pickup truck. Several hands reached for me at once and hoisted me into the truck, propelling me, crowd-surfing style, across the pack of them. I felt hands everywhere as they carried me into the truck. “Nice tits,” one of them said politely as I laughed, “Momma like.”
“Why, thanks,” I said, meaning it.
We took a tour and there was much squealing, although the boys quieted and turned up their noses at the pond, but when we cruised by the built-in pool, the squealing reached a crescendo that threatened the ears of several dogs at camp. One of the older boys made a proclamation as if he had just moved his gay army across a battlefield, “Ladies, our Home Base . . . WE shall break camp here!”
There was cheering as I tried to advise them over the commotion, “Someone is setting up right over there, so you won’t have much privacy.” He told me not to worry, that those people would not be staying there long, and he was right. Even as we circled the pool area to satisfy their demand of a full 3D view, I could see the family of four had already slowed in the unpacking of their Volvo, and were pretending to be checking the number posted on the tree, as if they had landed at the wrong site.
One of the older men pointed at a patch of grass near the pool entrance, “We can set up a gas grill over here to cook our steaks!”
“Is there a pool or cabana boy?” one of them asked.
“Of course,” I said, “his name is Vince, and he gives the best massages.” They squealed again. “He’s shy, so you’ll have to insist.”
When we cruised by one of the shower houses, the boys gave some ooo’s and aaaah’s and even a few moans when I described many of the toilets had been outfitted with a discreet way to pass emergency rolls of toilet paper, or what-have-you.
“We love you,” one of them said with great emotion, forcing his bottom lip to tremble with emotion, and then he hugged me, twice.
One of them said, “Can we touch your boobs again to show our appreciation? We just love boobs, don’t we, girls?” I laughed along with the truckload of them, correcting my tone to be a bit more high-pitched, so as not to be the least ladylike of the pack. It didn’t really work.
Oddly enough, our first group of lesbians arrived soon after, on the very same day. They entered camp in a precise row of dangerously silent Honda and Toyota hybrids, weaving their way through the camp, actually observing the 5-miles-an-hour posted speed limit that made you feel as if you were driving backward.
We got business-like hellos from a few of the women, who had already figured out what each one owed for the campsites, to the penny, before they had even reached the office. (By contrast, the gay boys had emptied their pockets and decided whoever had the most cash leftover from the drunken debauchery of the night before, would pay for the sites. Anything left over, would buy more booze.)
When the lesbians saw Dad’s pile of firewood, one of the stockier ladies asked if there was a hatchet around to further split any wood they might buy. In a panic, I looked around, but, thankfully, Dad was out of earshot, and he missed the dyke threat to his pile. I assured the woman we could work something out, and arranged for her to come back when Dad usually took his hammock siesta.
I gave the women the same tour I gave the boys, which commenced in a bitter silence I knew not to analyze. While they turned up their noses at the convenience of a camp store and the absurdness of a sparkling swimming pool when there was a perfectly fine pond, they applied a sensible strategy to spend their days fishing by the murky, weed-fringed pond, and firmed up plans for which night each person was responsible for cooking their vegetarian dinners over an open fire.
When I got back to the office, another car was parked near the entrance, but since it was devoid of camp gear, it seemed the occupant was not waiting to be checked in. As I walked over to the car, Lorn got out, and I stupidly considered running for it.
“I hope you don’t mind that I came,” s
he said, her auburn hair pissing me off as it caught the sunlight, gently moving in the breeze.
“Of course not,” I said.
She shut the car door and walked toward me.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said. It sure was, I thought.
Lorn feigned interest in seeing more of the camp and, without me agreeing to, we started walking. “I thought it was best not to come back to the condo after the funeral,” she said.
“Probably was,” I agreed. In fact, she’d stayed away a few days, and I had assumed she’d gone back to California with Uncle Tony and her mother Katherine. We fell silent, and Lorn walked closer to me, a few times our arms brushing against mine until I moved farther from her.
Lorn said, “I didn’t just come to pay my respects to you and your family about your aunt. I also came to say I’m sorry.”
“Long way to travel for that,” I said.
“And to tell you I know I made a big mistake.”
I stopped walking. “No,” I said. “I made the mistake. It took a long time, but I did eventually realize you won’t ever let yourself live the way you want to.”
“Marie—”
I held my hand up to stop her. “No. Did you hear me? I finally accepted that it was me who made the mistake. The same mistake, many times.”
Lorn moved closer to me, and I thought, Why were mistakes often so tempting? I took a step back from her and she reached for my arm.
“I love you. I made the mistake,” she said.
“It’s too late,” I said. She let go of my arm and studied my face for a different answer, but when I didn’t give her one, she said, “There’s someone else.”
“What?” I said, a bit louder than I should have, “No.”
“I know I kept you waiting for so long, but I thought, you couldn’t have—”
“Waiting? Is that what you think I was doing? It wasn’t waiting. It was . . . suffering.”
She moved closer again. “Marie, please. I know I don’t deserve to ask, but give me another chance. I promise you, I don’t care if the press finds out. In fact, I’ll do what my manager has said I should have done all along. I’ll have him manage it. I’ll make a statement and come out. It will be my story that way.”
“Your story.”
She said, “Our story. But I wouldn’t use your name if you didn’t want. Or, better yet, my manager says it would be even better to say I was bi-sexual, if you didn’t mind—”
“Why would I mind what you say,” I said. “I won’t be taking another risk.”
We stood not saying anything for a long few minutes, before I finally said, “You know, Lorn, you’d have made a stronger case if you had already come out to the press, before asking me to take you back.”
“But why would I take a chance if I wasn’t sure you’d be mine?”
“Exactly. And why should I?” I said to her. This time, it was Lorn that looked punched in the gut.
I was neither sad nor angry as I left her standing there to walk back to the office, where Uncle Freddie was talking with Erica. They had been leaning over building plans on the ground, and I warmed at the idea that Erica had been trying to keep Uncle Freddie busy after losing Aunt Aggie. It appeared to be working, as he was animatedly talking to her, but as Erica was listening to him, she was looking over his shoulder, disapprovingly watching Lorn’s car making a U-turn as she pulled out of camp.
Twenty-One
The Soundproof Insulation Of Large Boobs
When we were kids, Lisa started speaking in an English accent after becoming obsessed with a couple of Louisa May Alcott novels. She had been convinced (maybe tricked) into reading them by my mother (who didn’t bother to tell her Alcott was American, not English), and she kept one by her bed for almost a year. I kept asking her when she planned to read it, since it had become dusty and the pages were starting to turn yellow. The book was Little Women, and she insisted she was saving the best one for last.
One Saturday, I came home from a friend’s house and headed to my room, passing by my mother, whose odd and hopeful expression did not make sense until I opened the bedroom door to find Lisa lounging on her bed, dressed in her First Communion dress, which was now much too small for her. Little Women was carefully laid out on her lap, and a cup brimming with Nestlé iced tea was perched elegantly on her nightstand in a Boston Bruins hockey mug. I was shocked to observe there was even a doily under the mug and I thought it would have been less embarrassing if had I caught my sister masturbating.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, in a gentle voice, on the chance my older sister had just suffered a stroke.
“Today I shall be reading my literature book,” she said in her full-blown Hallmark movie English accent.
“Your literature book.”
“And . . . I love it already. I know this book shall change my life.”
“Is it making you say the word ‘shall’?’
To truly understand the sight I was witnessing, you have to remember that Lisa was born with a street hockey stick in her thick baby fists. My childhood memories of Lisa had been filled with episodes like: her insistence at age seven that she wanted a crew cut to match the neighborhood boys; how she loved the Patriots football jersey she wore almost daily from age eleven to thirteen (the last year, she had to operate on the thing with wide scissor cuts in order to still fit it over her growing body); and how occasionally she slept with her softball trophies dangerously tucked in her bed, until the day she rolled over wrong, proved Mom right, and got four stitches on her ass cheek. I laughed, telling her the trophy was for being Number One Dumb Ass, just seconds before receiving a nasty punch to my arm, which left a bruise the size and shape of two conjoined plums.
She clutched the Louisa May Alcott book to her breast, and sighed, “I was just introduced to Jo,” she said. My sister had been talking about Jo for months. Mom had said there was a girl named Jo in the book and Lisa would relate to her, so Lisa had convinced herself that Jo must be the carbon copy of Jo on the TV show The Facts of Life. I stayed planted in the doorway, not daring to get the Social Studies book on my bed, and deciding it would be much safer to risk not finishing my homework on the bus. I took a step backward out of the room, and she went back to her reading.
Later that afternoon I saw, much to my mother’s heartbreak, Lisa had returned to her scrappy football jersey, and wrapped the book in her communion dress, then tossed it into the trash. It seems that Little Women was not the tale of awakening lesbianism for which she had hoped.
I had never seen Lisa fret before, so it was a little disconcerting. She darted about the rec hall, Eddie occasionally swatting and shooing her as if she were a fly whizzing by him as he arranged his beautiful centerpieces on all of the tables. The rec hall was completely transformed, and as dusk approached, the tiny twinkle lights threaded in the rafters made the rec hall appear roofless with a billion stars out. If only the rec hall, now a restaurant, could remain roofless. Despite all the progress, there was still much to be done to have the exterior ready by tomorrow when Lisa planned to debut her restaurant.
I could hear Erica barking at her crew, but I knew that her annoyance had transferred from Eddie (and what she called his decorator-playing-contractor-clay-tile-fuck-up) to my sister, who instead of letting Erica replace the group of damaged rafters, had asked that Erica keep some of the older rafters for a more authentic look. After much work had been done, it became clear that many of the exposed rafters had been eaten by termites in ways that were not immediately visible, and her crew had roofed over several rafters that would now need to be replaced, and this could not be done after the new roof was on, or they would risk cracking the clay tiles. This meant the crew was stripping parts of the roof, instead of replacing it—and going backward was something that did not make Erica a happy camper.
“You can knock off for the night if you want, but don’t bother coming back,” she yelled across the rooftop. Along with the constant hammering, I could hear the he
avy feet of the men, followed by her lighter, quicker steps as she led them about. “There are soft gaps over here!” She pounded her foot on the roof. “And who did this area?” There was silence. “Do not step where the clay tiles are. Only the Italian crew goes there, got it?”
I came out of the camp store to see two of her crew unwrapping a sign and leaning it against the outer wall. I remembered Lisa’s first choice for a name, and how we had to talk her out of it. She was pushing for “Does a Bear Eat In The Woods?” Although Bear Week would surely bring in a crowd of hairy men to appreciate her joke, we convinced her that most campers wouldn’t. She ended up opting for a sign colored with the green and red of the Italian flag and with a beautiful white dove sculpted in the wood. “Dove Gaio Mangia,” or, as we called it, the Dove.
It pleased Lisa to think of all the hillbilly campers that would be eating under this sign before returning to their trailers adorned with confederate flag stickers. Lisa told the campers the sign said: “Where happy people eat,” but only Uncle Freddie had been able to translate the name on the sign, which actually read, “Where Gays Eat.”
Erica was on top of the roof with her arms folded in front of her as she chastised a worker who was on his knees on the roof. “I feel bad for your wife. You call that hammering?” Then she whirled around to bust on an older guy I hadn’t seen before. He had been chuckling at her comments as he hammered and she said, “What the fuck are you laughing at? Not enough work to do here?”
There was something about this man, but he was not part of her regular crew; too old, I thought. He quickened his hammering to double time, and something about the way he hammered, his “bang-bang-tap,” sounded like he had been trained well by Erica.
Erica shouted out, “At least the old man knows how to hammer, not like the rest of you pussies.” The old man turned his head toward me to hide his smirking, and I realized the man looking down from the roof was Uncle Freddie. Our eyes met and he stopped hammering for just a second, before happily winking at me and turning back to his work. Erica followed his gaze down to me.
Camptown Ladies Page 17