As I got closer I noticed something about the colors on the water; most of the red shapes were dancing, but one was still. And I realized why Casey hadn’t come outside when I pulled up.
Of course. She was already outside.
I walked past the right side of the house, where the ground became a thick blanket of pine needles. I’d forgotten that spongy feeling, the way it made you bend your knees a little more than you did in the city, the tiny satisfying bounce of each step. There were places where the needles were so deep I had to brush my hand along the rough wood shingles for balance. I hoped the neighbors wouldn’t see me and decide I was a prowler. I was even wearing all black. Tailored black pants and my black cowl-neck cashmere coat, but still. I could be a fashion-conscious burglar. It would be something to talk about, at least, showing up in handcuffs.
Casey sat cross-legged on the dock, her crown of sunlit red hair just visible above the red blanket on her shoulders.
It was the same scratchy wool plaid throw we’d used for picnics. The same one we’d sprawled on in our first bikinis as teenagers. In high school I’d hidden mine in my winter boots, one forbidden scrap of nylon stuffed down each toe.
A duck plunged into the water nearby, its flapping energy abruptly turning to calm, and she said something to it that I couldn’t make out. Maybe we could do this all night. She’d watch ducks, I’d watch her, and once an hour I’d take a few steps closer.
I walked down the sloping, sandy path in the grass and stepped onto the wooden dock. It was still long and narrow, the boards as old and misaligned as ever. Cattywampus, Alex used to call them. Casey’s mom was young—sometimes she seemed even younger than us. But her speech was full of old-fashioned expressions like that. “Cattywampus” and “bless my soul” and “dang it all.”
The feeling of the uneven boards beneath my feet was so familiar I froze again.
The last time I’d been here I’d been running. Pounding the boards, racing away from the feet pounding behind me.
It was not too late to slip away. Take big, quiet steps backward. I could retreat along the side of the house the way I’d come. Return to the city and let the Shepherds sink back into memory, along with everything else in this town.
But a subtle vibration had already traveled down the wooden planks, and Casey turned her head to the side, revealing a profile that was still strong, a chin that still jutted out in her defiant way. “Is it you?”
“Yes, Case.”
I walked slowly to the end of the dock until I stood over her left shoulder, so close I could see the messy part in her hair. It was a darker red now.
The greetings I’d rehearsed, the lines and alternate lines and backup-alternate lines, had abandoned me. They’d sailed away, carried off by the breeze when I wasn’t paying attention.
But Casey spoke first, her eyes on the water. “You’ve been standing back there forever. I thought you were going to leave.”
“I almost did.”
She tilted her head up to look at me. Scanning, evaluating, and, finally, delivering her report—“You’re still you.”
Her face was a little thinner, her skin less freckled. There was something behind her eyes, a weariness or skepticism, that hadn’t been there when we were girls.
I forced a smile. “And you’re still you.”
I got, in return, no smile. And silence.
Casey made no move to get up, so I fumbled on. “And the house is still...”
“Weird,” she finished.
“I was going to say something like charming.”
“Charming? Laura doesn’t say charming. Tell me Laura has not grown up into someone who says charming.”
She wasn’t going to make this easy. I’d thought, from the cheerful humility of her invitation, that she’d at least try. When I didn’t answer, Casey swiveled her body to look back at the house, as if to evaluate it through fresh eyes the way she’d examined me.
“We haven’t done much. That tiny addition on the east side. And I managed to put in a full bath upstairs finally. It’s yours this weekend, along with my old bedroom.”
“I was going to say. I had to bring my dog. I thought it’d be crowded with all of us, Alex and your little girl and my dog. She’s kind of big, and she’s sweet with kids, but she could knock a little one down... I don’t know how old your girl is but...”
Casey looked up at me but let me stumble on.
“Anyway there wasn’t anybody renting our old place this weekend, so I’ll sleep there...”
The truth was my place had been booked solid all summer, so I’d bumped out this weekend’s renters. Some sweet family that had reserved months ago. Other property owners kicked people out all the time when they wanted to use their houses instead, and my property manager grumbled about it, but I’d never done it before. I’d felt so guilty I’d spent hours finding them another place and paid the $230 difference.
Bullshit, Casey’s eyes said.
She knew the truth: I couldn’t bear staying with her. Tiptoeing around politely in the familiar rooms where we’d once been careless and easy as sisters. But I went on, elaborating on my story—the sure sign of a lie. “Of course I couldn’t put you out...”
“‘Put you out,’” she said. “Grown-up Laura says ‘put you out’?”
I didn’t understand it, the utter disconnect between her warm, silly, lovable letter, the Casey I’d first met, and the person who was sitting here next to me, making everything a hundred times harder than it had to be.
Would the running commentary last all weekend? Laura eats with her fork and knife European-style, now. Grown-up Laura prefers red wine to white. Laura wears cuff bracelets now. Laura changed her perfume to L’eau D’Issey. Every little gesture picked over and mocked.
It hit with awful certainty: I shouldn’t have come.
Would it get better or worse when Alex joined us? I didn’t hate her anymore. Enough time had passed. She couldn’t help how she was.
With Alex to fill the silences, and Casey’s daughter around as a buffer, and me sleeping at my place, I’d just make it through the weekend. Less than sixty hours if I left Sunday morning instead of Sunday night, blaming traffic and work.
“Where’s your mom and your little girl? I’m sorry, I don’t know her name.”
“Elle. Off on a trip together. Tahoe.”
So much for the buffer.
Casey nodded at my old house across the lake. “Now. That one has changed, I hear. Modern everything.”
“Only the kitchen, really,” I said. “The rental company insisted. I’ve just seen pictures.” From across the shining water, I could make out the dark line of the dock, a flash of sunset on a window.
I’d planned to drive there first. Drop off Jett, compose myself, drink a glass of wine (or three, or four) to loosen up for the big reunion. If I had I could have kayaked over to Casey’s instead of driving.
And paddled away again the second I realized how she was going to be.
“You haven’t gone inside?” she said. “Not once?”
I shook my head. “I can do everything online. It’s crazy.”
“I thought maybe you were sneaking back at night. Hiding out in the house, staying off the lake, calling your groceries in. To avoid seeing me.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t sell it, though.”
The “why?” was there in her expression, daring me, but I didn’t have an answer. I’d always planned to sell the house. My mother didn’t care either way, and we got offers. Every year, I considered it. But I never went through with it.
I met her stare for a minute before I had to look away. My eyes landed on a spot in the lake about ten yards from the edge of the dock. I didn’t mean to look there. Maybe there was a tiny ripple from a fish, or a point in the sunset’s reflection
that was a more burnished gold than the surrounding water.
She followed my gaze. And for the first time, her voice softened. “Strange to think it’s still there. After so long.”
“It’s not. It’s crumbled into a million pieces or floated away.”
Casey shook her head. “No. It’s still there.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. I feel it in my bones.”
“That sounds like something your mom would say. Used to say.”
She tilted her head, thinking. “God. It does.”
She pulled her knees close to her body and rested her right cheek on them, then looked up at me with a funny little lopsided smile.
There was enough of the Casey I remembered in that smile that I returned it.
I sat next to her, wrapping my coat tighter, my legs dangling off the edge of the dock. It felt strange, to sit like that with shoes and pants on. I should be in my old cargo shorts, dipping my bare feet in the water.
For a minute we watched the quivering red-and-gold shapes on the lake. Then I felt the gentle weight of her hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t mind my flails, grown-up Laura,” she said. “Grown-up Casey is doing her best. She’s missed you.”
The words stuck in my throat, and when they finally came out, they were rough. My eyes on the auburn lake, I reached up to clutch her hand—one quick, fumbling squeeze.
“I’ve missed you, too, Case.”
2
Ariel and Pocahontas
June 1995
Summer before freshman year
The fourth day of summer started exactly like the first three.
A second of dread when I woke up, followed by a rush of relief when I remembered it was vacation. Then the quick, glorious tally—no school for eighty-eight days. And finally the smell of vanilla floating down the hall. Yesterday it had been crumb cake, the day before it was muffins, so today was probably French toast. My favorite.
I got dressed fast, changing from my nightgown into my summer uniform: a big T-shirt and cargo shorts.
The last part of my routine was too important to be rushed. I transferred a small, silvery-gray object from under my pillow to the Ziploc I kept on my nightstand, made sure it was sealed to the last millimeter, then slipped it into my lower-right shorts pocket, the only one with a zipper. Where it always went.
Then I had the entire day free to explore the lake. French toast, and no Pauline Knowland or Suzanne Farina asking me what my bra size was up to in honeyed tones, or calling me Sister Christian just within earshot, and the whole day free. Bliss.
It only lasted the length of the hallway.
“You’ll bring that to the new neighbors after breakfast,” my mother said when I entered the kitchen. She was scrambling eggs with a rubber spatula, and she paused to point it at a pound cake on the counter. “Good morning.”
Chore assignment first, greeting second. This about summed up my mother.
She went back to parting the sea of yellow in the pan.
So not only was the vanilla smell for some other family, I had an assignment. I examined the cake’s golden surface. It was perfect, but curiously plain. No nuts, no chocolate chips, no blueberries. Not even drizzled with glaze, and it obviously wouldn’t be. My mother always poured the cloudy liquid on when her cakes were still piping hot.
Next to the naked cake she’d set out a paper plate, Saran Wrap, a length of red ribbon, and one of her monogrammed notecards. A complete new-neighbor greeting kit, ready to go before 7:30 a.m. I read the card silently. Welcome—Christies.
A stingy sort of note, nothing like the warm introduction she’d written when the Daytons moved in down the shore last year. That had included an invitation to church. Surely my mother could have spared a few more words for the new family, a the before our last name. They were right across the narrowest part of the lake from us. If they had binoculars, they could see how much salt we put on our eggs.
It seemed she’d already taken a dislike to the new people, and I set about learning why. “You’re not coming with me to meet them?”
“They have a daughter your age, you need to offer to walk to school together the first day,” she said, like this was written in stone somewhere.
Shoot me now. The last thing I needed was more complications at school. My plan was to lie low in September.
I watched the tip of my mother’s white spatula make figure eights in the skillet. How could eggs be so nasty on their own when they played a clutch role in French toast? I’d take a tiny spoonful and distribute it artfully around my plate so it would look like more.
As if she’d heard my thoughts, my mother mounded a triple lumberjack serving of scrambled eggs onto a plate and handed it to me.
I carried it to the breakfast nook and sat next to my dad, who was hidden behind his newspaper. I could only see his tuft of white hair. It was sticking up vertically, shot through with sun from the window. “Last one awake is the welcome wagon,” he said. “New household rule.”
He snapped a corner of the paper down and winked at me. “Morning.”
I smiled. “Morning.”
I pushed egg clumps around with my fork and stared out the window at the small brown shape in the pines across the lake. The junky-looking old Collier place, the one everybody called The Shipwreck. The Collier name was legend around Coeur-de-Lune, though the actual Colliers were long gone. They’d been rich, and a lot of them had died young. The small building across the lake where the Collier kids slept in summer had been falling apart since before I was born, and my mother always said they should just burn it. The Colliers’ main summerhouse, the fancy three-story one that had once been a few hundred yards up the shore, had been torn down when the land was split up decades before.
I’d seen trucks at The Shipwreck since it sold. Pedersen’s Hardware and Ready Windows. I loved the funny little house exactly the way it was, and now the new family would fix it up and ruin it.
So because they had a daughter my age my mother was totally blowing off the visit? Something was off. In her world of social niceties, frozen somewhere around 1955, new neighbors required baked goods. Not from a mix—new neighbors called for separating yolks from whites. And they definitely called for a personal appearance.
“Saw their car the other day when they were moving in,” my dad said behind his New York Times, making it shiver. There was a photo of Bill Clinton on the front page, shaking some dignitary’s hand, and when he spoke it looked like they were dancing.
My mother was transferring patty sausages from a skillet onto a plate. At his words, her elbows really got into stabbing the sausages and violently shaking them off the fork.
When she didn’t respond he continued, “Saw what was on the back bumper.”
That did it.
She dropped the plate between us with a thud and stalked into the dining room to tend to her latest batch of care packages for soldiers. They were arranged in a perfect ten-by-ten grid on the dining room table.
I forked a sausage and took a bite, burning the roof of my mouth with spicy grease.
After I swallowed I whispered, “What was on the car?” Maybe a bumper sticker my mother considered racy. Or inappropriate, to use one of her favorite words.
The day wasn’t blissfully free anymore, but at least it was getting interesting.
A new girl my age, just across the water, with parents who’d slapped an inappropriate bumper sticker on the family wagon. Maybe one of those Playboy women with arched backs and waists as tiny as their ankles, the ones truck drivers liked to keep on their mud flaps.
My dad set his paper down and started working the crossword. He did the puzzle in the Times only after finishing the easier ones in the Reno Statesman and the Tahoe Daily Journal. I liked to watch his forehead lines jump around when he worked on the Times crossword. I c
ould tell when it was going well and when he was stumped, just by how wavy they were in the center.
He tapped on the paper with the tip of his black ballpoint the way he always did when he was struggling. He must have thrown in one or two extra taps because I glanced down. Above the “Across” clues he’d drawn a fish with legs. Ah. That would do it. According to my mother’s complicated book of social equations, one of those pro-Darwin anti-Christian fish with legs on your rear bumper meant you got a red ribbon, but only tied around a no-frills pound cake, and you got a duty visit from her daughter, but not from her.
My dad scribbled over the drawing and cleared his throat, then sent me a quick wink. I nudged my scrambled-egg plate closer to him and he took care of them for me in three bites, one eye on the dining room entryway as he chewed.
He went back to his crossword, and I got up to wrap the cake, curling the ribbon to make up for the terrible note. The unwelcome note. But as I was returning the scissors to the drawer I saw the black pen my mother had used. I’d mastered her handwriting years before. (Please excuse Laura from Physical Education, her migraines have been simply terrible lately.)
Quickly, expertly, I revised her words.
Welcome—Christies became Welcome!!—The Christies. We’re so thrilled you’re here!
Okay, maybe I went overboard. It was the kind of note Pauline Knowland’s and Suzanne Farina’s mothers would write, a message anticipating years of squealing hellos at Back-to-School night.
I tucked the note in my pocket, returned the pen to the drawer, and by the time my mother bustled in again I was at the table sipping orange juice, innocent as anything.
* * *
I dipped my paddle, breaking the glassy surface of the lake. I was the only one out on the water this early—the only human at least. The gentle ploshes and chirps and ticks of the lake felt like solitude; I knew them so well.
It was chilly on the water but warmth spread through my shoulders as I set my short course for The Shipwreck. My dad liked to speak in jaunty nautical terms like this; he always asked when I came home after a day on the lake—How was your voyage? Or—Duel with any pirates?
The Summer List Page 2