Claire stood beside Jin and gazed at the photo of those happy young women, and she found her thoughts drifting to her own sleepy, rural town in Oregon, eight miles away from the nearest library, the high school a mixed regional one, the only restaurant on the crossroad strip a restaurant that closed at two p.m. that was simply called The Diner.
She shook herself. It wasn’t fair to compare. And surely, she said to Jin, it must be time for them to gather at the flagpole.
The others were already there except for Nicole and Jenna. Maya and Sydney dug into their bags to show off jars of elderberry jelly, bottles of maple syrup, and hunks of local cheeses they’d bought at the farmer’s market. Claire settled in the grass and listened as they worked out the logistics for a dinner picnic at Coley’s Point, watching the ease at which her old friends arrived at a consensus.
Claire squinted, recognizing the cadence of Jenna’s walk as she and Nicole made their way across the green. Watching them, her throat closed up. Their heads were lowered, close to each other. Jenna stopped now and again to twist and point to different places on her wonky hip.
Claire didn’t have to hear what Jenna was saying to know she was describing the developmental hip dysplasia that Jenna had been born with, the Pavlik harness she’d worn as a baby, the pelvic osteotomy surgery she’d suffered in her childhood, the hip abduction braces she’d later hated. Jenna had told Claire the whole difficult story in high school, then confessed that Claire was the only friend who’d dared to ask. It was a litmus test, of sorts, Jenna admitted. She always felt great warmth for anyone who ventured a question rather than pretending her rolling little limp didn’t exist.
But Nicole and Jenna’s deepening rapport wasn’t the sole reason why Claire pushed herself up from her seat by the flagpole, her eyes prickling, waiting with a pounding heart to greet the two women who knew everything.
“Sorry we’re late.” Nicole swung an arm around Jenna’s shoulders as she joined the group. “Jenna’s hip was acting up, so we took it slow. Anything exciting happen while we were gone?”
Claire pressed her hands against her cheeks as everyone laughed and gathered around and ran their hands over Jenna’s and Nicole’s newly shorn heads as if this were some strange female bonding ritual. With her short hair sheared off, Nicole looked strong and fierce, like G.I. Jane. Jenna was a creature transformed, a young Sinead O’Connor, fey and otherworldly. Her lashes swept her cheeks like long, dark wings.
Claire hugged them both while one word rang in her head: solidarity.
Later that evening, when they gathered blankets and baskets of food to take up to Coley’s Point, she made sure she gave Nicole and Jenna one of her many hats so they wouldn’t get cold as the picnic inevitably morphed into a late-night bonfire, and then, just as she expected, into a sleepover under the star-blasted skies.
Somewhere around five in the morning, as the embers of the fire smoked and most of the women still huddled under blankets, Claire stood up to watch the first rays of the morning light peep between the distant trees. One by one, her friends joined her at the edge of the clearing. The sky brightened. For a single transcendent moment, their faces smoothed and the few extra pounds dropped off and their muted voices rose in pitch, as if they were standing barefoot in sateen during the morning after their senior prom, as they had all those many years ago.
Perhaps it was possible—for one winking moment—to go back in time.
Even the sensation she was feeling was familiar, a thrumming connection to her true community, the quivering of the strands of memory that tied her irrevocably to these friends. As a girl, she’d reveled in this tangle of human connection, but then she’d shucked it—person by person, year by year—as too painful to maintain. Now, on this hilltop overlooking the place where she’d come of age, she realized that the world she’d created for herself after Pine Lake had become a small, meager place, bereft of joy but never of suffering. This feeling was what she’d craved, this was the source of that yearning she’d experienced the day Jenna had arrived at her door and offered up a fairy-godmother wish.
For four thousand miles she’d been following her heart, but she hadn’t truly understood what it had been whispering to her until now.
She needed to stay close to the people she loved, no matter how much it hurt.
*
Claire stole away from the main lodge. She’d been hoping for a moment alone at the boathouse from the moment she’d set eyes upon it. The building sat over the banks of the lake within a stand of yellow birch. The coiling twig work gave the pillars the look of sun-bleached trees. It had an elfish look, a Thai-temple look. Now she slipped off her sandals and pressed her palms together. With the boards hot under her feet she walked with attention, keeping her gaze on the ground just in front of her. Mindful of each step, she wandered up the four sun-drenched bays before plunging back into the cool shade, seeking calm in Buddhist walking meditation.
Sometime later, she settled cross-legged at the end of one of the docks to listen to the gurgle of water. Beneath her, the wood vibrated with every knock of the tethered rowboats in the bays. Her head filled with the aroma of reedy lake shallows, warm wood, and the iron tang of rust.
She heard their footfalls on the grass. She recognized Jenna by the hitch in her cadence and, once they reached the boathouse, the distinctive click of Lucky’s claws. She recognized Nicole by the athletic grace of her tread and the soundless breeze as Nicole dipped down to settle cross-legged right beside her. Nicole had been spending a lot of time with Lu; a vague scent of cigarette smoke clung to her clothes.
They sat together in comfortable, effortless silence. Claire breathed in this feeling. In the weeks and months to come, she would meditate in the shade of her forest garden or in the spot in her den where the sun poured through the window. She wanted to be able to remember the pulse of their presence, every physical tic, every subtle rustle of their clothing. She wanted to be able to summon the spirits of her friends like ghosts.
A warm pressure clambered against her thigh. She opened her eyes to see Lucky climbing into her lap.
Jenna slackened the leash. “Boy, he’s going to miss you.”
The pup stretched under Claire’s fingers, closing his big, brown eyes as she gave him a good rub. “He’s got a long way to ride home, poor little pup, but at least he’ll have Zoe to scratch his ears. Have you come here to fetch me back to the lodge for dinner?”
“Not just yet.” Nicole shifted her seat, the boards creaking beneath her. “Riley promised to ring the bell when dinner is ready.”
“Sorry I bugged out of cooking.”
“Everyone did, once Sydney took over.” Nicole raised her face to the sun. “It’s sad to think we’re all leaving tomorrow.”
Claire felt a pang so sharp she winced. “The flights are all arranged then.”
Nicole said, “Jenna’s leaving at nine a.m. to fetch her mother and pick up Zoe at camp. Lu offered us a ride to the Albany airport at noon.”
Jenna piped up, “It’s not too late to change your minds, you know. I could use some help with a certain cranky teenager.”
“Sorry.” Nicole nudged off one sandal and then reached for the other. “I wouldn’t inflict upon Zoe the sight of Claire cross-legged in the back humming ‘Ommmmmmm.’ And besides, as a group, we’re a little scary.” Nicole put her sandals aside and brushed her hand over her shorn head. “No reason to give Zoe an excuse to escape the car screaming she’s been captured by a cult.”
Claire still wasn’t quite used to seeing Nicole and Jenna bald. Of all the women, Jenna might just benefit the most from the change. Already there was a brave tilt to her jaw. On the other hand, by the frequency at which Nicole ran her hand over her head, the buzz cut had apparently left Nicole feeling unnerved.
Claire hoped Nicole would look in the mirror soon and see what Claire saw: someone fresh, peeled, newborn.
Three days and four nights with these old friends—not just Jenna and Nicole, but all of the
m—and she felt as if they’d hardly cracked the surfaces of one another’s lives. Last night they’d designated the wicker love seat at the far end of the back porch as the “crying couch.” This morning they’d take a group picture in the same positions as their high school graduation photo—the one where everyone sported hot-pink hair. Even if they’d all stayed a month, Claire wasn’t sure that would be enough time to get as close to each one of them as she’d become to Jenna and Nicole after so many miles together.
Already her eyes began to prickle. She couldn’t fully absorb what her friends had done for her sake. And yet, as with any act of love, it came with the weight of hesitant and yet so very hopeful expectations. It was the weight of those expectations that had propelled her to this boathouse, to this lakeside, to the hour of walking meditation in search of clarity.
Claire said, “Do you guys remember when we gave out coffee in Chicago?”
Nicole unfolded her legs to swing her bare feet into the water. “Is this a pop quiz?”
Claire smiled. “Do you remember that one guy by the street sign, right in midtown? He was scruffy and thin, hungry looking, alone. Wild blue eyes.”
Jenna nodded. “He was jittery and not in a good way.”
“He wouldn’t take the coffee.” Claire combed her fingernails down Lucky’s back. “I stood there holding it out, waiting. I just wanted to give him something warm. A simple gift. So I left it on the ground in front of him. When I looked back a few minutes later, I noticed he’d shoved his hands in his pockets and crossed the street. He’d left the coffee just sitting there, abandoned.”
Nicole said, “You give out three dozen coffees and the guy you remember is the one who refused you.”
“All my life, I’ve been the one giving charity. I’ve been the one delivering the winter coats, handing over the tip jar, offering my time after hours for tutoring. I’ve seen stone faces like his before.” She thought of Theresa, glaring at her from a Cannery Row stoop as Claire unloaded charity coats from the trunk of her car. “But only now, today, do I really understand.”
Nicole asked, “Understand what?”
“Accepting help is a very hard thing to do.”
She became aware that Nicole had gone very still. Her friend leaned over to peer deep into the water.
“But it wasn’t difficult for my sister Melana.” Claire summoned her ghost to this place, Melana as she wanted to remember her—full-cheeked and rosy, joking about her generous hips and laughing at her own bad puns. “Every time my sisters and I talked with her about her treatment, Melana always chose the route we wanted, the route that offered hope. She always said, ‘We’re going to fight this,’ or ‘We’re going to beat this.’ She chose those words because they always made us feel better.” Claire pressed her face against Lucky’s warm back. “Later, when I remembered those conversations, I got so furious at myself and my sisters. I felt that we’d pushed Melana into treatments that stole what little life she had left in her. For a long time, all I could remember was her suffering.”
Jenna and Nicole sat so still beside her that Claire couldn’t even hear them breathing. A fish leaped out of the water and splashed back down. A birch leaf descended, twirling and sweeping, skidding to rest with its edges curled up.
“Now I realize that when Melana said, ‘We’re going to fight this,’ or ‘We’re going to beat this,’ she wasn’t just talking about surviving her own disease.” Claire remembered Melana covered in a hand-sewn quilt sitting in that big chair, her eyes too large for her face. “She knew she was second in line—but there might easily be a third. Melana meant ‘we’ as in all her sisters. We all had to find a way to survive this disease. She just happened to be the one suffering from it at the time.”
Claire sensed their silent understanding as she watched three loons descend from the sky. They cut close to the water and then skidded across the surface of the lake. Tucking in their feathers, they glided in perfect collusion to the far bank.
“Anyway, I thought you two might want to know that you didn’t shave your heads in vain.” Claire handed Lucky over to Jenna as the first tones of the dinner bell rang. “I’m not giving up this time. What the Petrenko sisters need is a survivor.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Leaving Pine Lake was harder than Jenna expected.
Just yesterday, she’d glanced in the rearview mirror as she pulled out of Camp Kwenback and watched her friends waving good-bye on the porch. Her trunk had rattled as her single suitcase jostled against the plastic crate of mementos. The car had felt silent, hollow, as she tried to focus on the road ahead. Lucky had felt the loss, too, lifting his head from his puppy bed in the passenger seat, rattling his license tags as he pleaded with her with bulging brown eyes.
Now, a day later, she took the highway west through New York State. Claire’s and Nicole’s absence in the car was like a pulled tooth, an ache in a space she kept probing. Her daughter had made no effort to fill the void. Zoe sat slumped in the passenger seat, tapping her feet against the glove compartment to the tinny beat buzzing from the buds buried in her ears.
Jenna had been getting this silent treatment since she’d showed up at Camp Paskagamak as bald as any of the fathers. Zoe had convulsed with embarrassment and hurried them both away as if her mother’s shorn head was a personal affront. During the afternoon and evening at her mother’s house, no amount of calm explanation could shift Zoe’s sense that Jenna’s choice had been a selfish bid for attention. And Jenna’s mother, aghast, didn’t help matters by suggesing that Jenna start therapy again. Their combined reactions had irritated Jenna to the point of dismissal.
She figured that was a step better than feeling guilty.
Now she ran her fingers over the peach fuzz on her head, still flashing hot and cold with the boldness of what she’d done. It was unfortunate that this act had put yet another wall between her and her daughter. With Zoe silent and Nicole and Claire ever farther away, Jenna felt very much alone.
The next day as they pulled out of Chicago, Jenna remembered something Nicole had suggested to her during long discussions on the Kwenback porch. Figuring she had nothing to lose, Jenna rifled in the papers between them and then tossed a ragged, coffee-stained map of the United States into her daughter’s lap. Zoe startled and caught it. Seeing what it was, she gave her mother one of those world-weary looks.
Reluctantly, Zoe tugged the buds out of her ears. “You know I failed map-reading, right?”
“I’m driving. It’s your job to navigate.”
“I managed to get six Fox Cubs lost in a wood full of marked paths, and now you’re putting this on me?”
“It’s not rocket science. Besides, we’ve got two hundred miles before we have to make a decision.”
Zoe huffed out all the annoyances of the world, but at least she opened the map. For a brief, glorious few months in third grade, Zoe had been obsessed with a project that involved collecting postcards from as many states as possible. She and Nate had elicited the help of family all over the country. They’d bought a map so Zoe could see where the postcards came from. The little girl who gleefully put pins in the map hadn’t completely suffocated under the thickness of eyeliner, apparently. As the miles flew by, her daughter became increasingly absorbed.
“Both northern routes bring us close to Yellowstone and Little Bighorn,” Zoe finally announced, furiously thumb-typing on Jenna’s smartphone. “What route did you take to get here? I remember a postcard from Sioux Falls.”
“We were on Interstate 90 through just about the whole of South Dakota, but then we went south to Kansas.”
“Kansas?” Zoe traced a finger over the map. “Are you kidding me?”
“We were searching for an old friend. All we found was her burned-out house.” Jenna dropped that little breadcrumb then moved right on. “In any case, I flew back to Seattle out of Des Moines. I didn’t meet up with Nic and Claire again until I flew into Chicago for a Cubs game.”
“I thought you hated
baseball.”
“I just say that to piss off your grandmother.”
Jenna didn’t know what caught Zoe’s attention more, the mild profanity or the statement itself. In any case, Jenna made a point of ignoring Zoe’s surprise. “So just pick whatever route you prefer, Zoe. It’ll be new to me, too.”
Zoe returned her attention to the map, but Jenna noticed that now and again she glanced out the passenger-side window to watch the traffic passing by on the interstate before returning to her task.
Later, sucking on a straw as they sat at a laminate table at yet another fast-food rest stop, Zoe said, “I think we should take Interstate 94. It’s the northernmost route, and it takes us past Teddy Roosevelt National Park. There’s also Powwow in North Dakota in a couple of days, and that would rock.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I suppose it’s not every day you get a chance to see Bismarck, North Dakota.” Zoe took the burger in her hands and examined it, her voice casual. “So, what ever happened to that woman you and your friends were looking for in Kansas?”
Jenna took her time unwrapping her grilled chicken sandwich. She felt an unfurling in her chest like the damp wings of a newly hatched bird.
“You mean Theresa.” Jenna took a healthy bite and waited until she’d chewed it down good. “Now there’s a girl who had a lot of reasons to piss off her mother…”
*
The long stretch of the northern prairie, with its unrelenting fields of alfalfa, prodded Zoe to ask the first hard question. Just as Nicole had predicted, there was no more warning than the sight of Zoe pulling a bud out of her ear.
“I suppose,” Zoe said, “that there’s no chance that you and Dad will get back together?”
The question yanked Jenna out of the zone she’d been drifting in. She turned the volume down on the radio, set on a country station that reminded her of Nicole. Her heart heard the ribbon of hope in Zoe’s voice despite the effort her daughter made to sound nonchalant. Zoe wasn’t going to like her answer, but somehow it was a small comfort to know that Zoe could still dream of miracles.
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