by Susan Wiggs
Each summer, Pop got involved in politics. He worked as a volunteer for local candidates—Democrats, of course—campaigning passionately and tirelessly for candidates he believed in. Some people criticized Pop for this. They said with that many kids, he ought to be out mowing lawns or digging ditches in the summer to earn extra money, but Pop was unapologetic. He truly believed the best thing he could do for his family was to try to change the world for the better by supporting candidates who shared his ideals.
Nina’s oldest brother, Carmine, said Pop could accomplish the same thing if he would learn to use a condom.
When Nina’s mother wasn’t having babies—or nursing them or changing diapers—she worked during the summer as a cook up at Camp Kioga. She said she didn’t mind the work. It was something she could do in her sleep—cook for a ton of people. Getting paid to do it was a bonus. At the summer camp, she prepared three squares a day for kids who probably had no clue what it was like to wear the same pair of shoes until they pinched, or to beg your sister not to write her name on her backpack because you knew it would be yours the following year, or to pay for your school lunch with the shameful blue coupons, handing them over furtively and praying the kid behind you didn’t notice.
Nina had a summer job, too, at the Inn at Willow Lake, where she cleaned rooms and made beds. To most people, it didn’t sound like much, but Nina liked working there. Unlike home, it was quiet and serene, and after you cleaned something, it actually stayed clean for a while instead of getting immediately trashed by grubby brothers or messy sisters. And sometimes, a guest might even leave her a tip, a crisp five-dollar bill in an envelope marked Housekeeping.
Jenny nudged Nina out of her reverie. “Let’s get going,” she said.
Jenny’s grandfather went into the giant industrial kitchen of the camp where Nina’s mother worked. The girls hurried through their chores so they could go exploring. Even though Pop had nothing good to say about summer camp, Nina thought it was beautiful beyond all imagination, a wonderland of lush forests and grassy meadows, rock-strewn streams and the glittering lake. The main pavilion, where the campers were just finishing lunch, was a bare-timbered Adirondack-style lodge that housed a vast dining hall.
“There they are,” Jenny said, scanning the groups of campers from the stairway leading down to the kitchen. The different age groups were seated at long tables, raising a clatter of dishes and utensils, chatter and laughter. Jenny honed right in on the twelve-to-fourteens. “Isn’t he amazing?” she whispered in a smitten voice.
Nina couldn’t speak, although every cell in her body said yes. He was impossibly tall, with perfect posture, sandy hair and a killer smile. He wore navy blue camp shorts and a gray T-shirt stenciled Counselor.
Jenny saw where Nina was looking and gave her an elbow nudge. “Not him, ninny,” she said. “That’s Greg Bellamy. He’s old, like eighteen or something.” She pointed at the younger group. “I meant him.” Her adoring gaze settled on one of the campers, a quiet, lanky boy studying his compass.
“Oh…” Nina said, “him.” She studied the object of Jenny’s enraptured affection, a golden boy named Rourke McKnight. Jenny had first met him two summers ago, and she’d convinced herself that they shared some grand destiny. Destiny, schmestiny, thought Nina.
A smaller dark-haired boy went to sit by Rourke. “Joey Santini,” Jenny said on a fluttering sigh. “They’re best friends. I don’t know which one’s cuter.”
I do, thought Nina. Her gaze kept straying to the older boy. Greg Bellamy. The name played itself over and over in her head with full symphonic sound. Greg Bellamy. First of all, the name Bellamy was a clue that he was special. In these parts, being a Bellamy was like being a Kennedy in Boston. People knew who you were, and who your “people” were. You had this aura of prestige and privilege, whether you’d earned it or not.
“Hey, you two,” Nina’s mom called from the kitchen. “Lunch is just ending. Go on up and grab something to eat.”
Jenny hung shyly back, hovering between the kitchen and dining hall.
“Bashfulness is a waste of time,” Nina murmured. In her family, people got lost if they didn’t speak up and make their preferences known. She grabbed Jenny by the arm and drew her into the dining room. At the buffet, they helped themselves to sandwiches and drinks. Taking care not to slosh the lemonade from the glass on her tray, Nina made a beeline for Greg Bellamy. He was perusing the desserts table, laden with a rich assortment from the Majeskys’ bakery—lemon bars and peach shortcake, walnut brownies and slices of pie. There was one piece of cherry pie left. If there was anything that could make Nina forget a cute boy, it was cherry pie from the Sky River Bakery.
She reached for the plate. At the same moment, so did someone on the other side of the serving table—Greg Bellamy. She looked up and met his eyes. His Bon-Jovi-blue eyes.
He winked at her. “Looks like we’re both after the same thing.”
Usually when a guy winked at a girl it was totally cheesy. Not with Greg Bellamy. When he winked, it nearly made her knees buckle.
“Sorry,” she said, tossing back her thick dark hair. “It’s mine. I saw it first.” Wink or no wink, she wasn’t backing down.
He laughed, his voice like melted chocolate. “I like a girl who knows what she wants.”
She beamed at him. He liked her. He’d said so aloud. “I’m Nina,” she said.
“Greg. So are you a visitor?” He studied her as though she was the only person in the crowded dining hall.
“That’s right.” It wasn’t a lie. She simply omitted the information that she was the underage daughter of the camp cook. Fleetingly she wondered if that would change his opinion of her. Of course it would, she admitted to herself. It was the whole reason such things as “social class” existed right here in the good old US of A. At Camp Kioga, the lines were sharply drawn: the nobs versus the slobs.
But if she stayed anonymous, the lines went away.
She could feel a keen interest in the touch of Greg’s gaze, and it made her stand up straighter. Nina had always looked older than her age, a combination of dark, vivid features and early development. Though she flaunted this fact with pride, her confidence was merely a cover for the fact that she had always felt slightly different. Not radically so, but just a little, because she was a year older than the rest of the kids in her grade.
The reason for her being behind in school was humiliating. It wasn’t because she was a slow learner or had flunked an early grade. It was because her mother had forgotten to enroll her in kindergarten at the proper age. Forgotten. People smiled and nodded their heads when they heard the story of how Vicki Romano had neglected to send her middle child to school. It was completely understandable. The woman had nine kids, and had given birth to the final two—undersized, sickly twin boys—just a few weeks before Nina was to start kindergarten. The entire family was focused on the fact that the tiny twin boys were fighting for their lives while Vicki battled a postpartum infection. The last thing on anyone’s mind was quiet, well-behaved, five-year-old Nina. No one remembered that she was supposed to be in school until it was too late to catch up. She had to wait until the following year.
The anecdote was a family favorite, with an all’s-well-that-ends-well conclusion. The tiny twins—Donny and Vincent—were rowdy Little League players now and Nina was in the same class as her best friend. It had all worked out for the best.
Except the experience had a more profound effect on Nina than anyone could know. She always felt slightly out of step, off-kilter. She also transformed herself from the quiet, undemanding middle child into someone who figured out what she wanted and then went for it, every time.
Mr. Blue-Eyes Bellamy was still holding on to the edge of the plate. Her plate of cherry pie.
“So you gonna let go?” she challenged.
“Let’s split it.” Without waiting for permission, he tugged it from her grasp. He neatly divided the piece of pie into two portions, put one on a clean plate
and offered it to her.
“Gee, thanks,” she said, but didn’t take the plate.
“You’re welcome.” He either missed or ignored her irony. He was a Bellamy, she reminded herself. He had a stunning sense of droit du seigneur, a term she knew from the historical romance novels she was addicted to.
“You’re used to getting your way,” she commented, taking the divided pie from him. She felt a little thrill as she talked to him. Flirting had always come naturally to her—unlike school.
Because she was older than everyone else in her grade, Nina had the dubious honor of being the first at a lot of things. She’d been the first to grow boobs and get her period. The first to turn boy-crazy. It had hit her like a speeding train last year. Before her very eyes, boys—other than her brothers—had turned from loud, smelly, supremely annoying creatures into objects of strange and compelling urges. The boys in her grade still acted like children, but those a few years older seemed to share the same urges that bothered and distracted Nina. At the end of the school year, she sneaked into a high school dance and made out with Shane Gilmore, a junior, until one of her uncles—a biology teacher and chaperone—had noticed her and sent her home to be grounded for weeks.
It was easy to give her parents the slip, and she did so at will. Sometimes she even drove her older sister’s ancient Grand Marquis. She had taken it to the drive-in movie at Coxsackie, where she’d let Byron Johnson, a senior, feel her up. Unfortunately, her brother Carmine had spotted her. He hadn’t told on her, of course, but he beat the crap out of Byron and promised to break his kneecaps if he ever came near her again.
Now, with Greg Bellamy, Nina forgot all those other flirtations. This was the guy. The prize. The one she knew she’d write about in her diary and dream about at night. The one who made her want to go further than second base. A lot further.
“So, Nina, are you busy tonight?” Greg asked her.
“Depends,” she said playfully. “What did you have in mind?”
He stared straight at her mouth when he said, “Everything.”
She felt as though she’d caught on fire from the inside out. “Sounds good to me.”
“Excuse me.” Something very tall and very shapely sidled up to Greg. It was another camp counselor, looking like a Bond girl in camp clothes. “Oh, good,” she said, helping herself to Greg’s plate of pie. “You saved me a piece.” She aimed a dazzling smile straight at him. “Thank you, Greggy. I owe you one.”
Greggy? thought Nina. Greggy? Okay, I’m going to barf.
“Binkie, this is Nina,” he said.
The towering bombshell turned, offering the kind of smile that could freeze an enemy at twenty paces. “Nina. Now, where have I heard that name before? Oh, yes. You must be Mrs. Romano’s little girl.”
Nina was watching Greg, not Binkie. It was kind of amazing to see her image being dismantled before her very eyes.
“You know, Mrs. Romano,” Binkie reminded him. “The camp cook.”
In the space of a few seconds, Greg went from flirting and making a date with Nina to staring at her as though she had sprouted horns and a tail.
“Right,” he said, turning red to the tips of his ears. “I need to get back to work.” He glared at Nina. “See you around, kid.”
Binkie offered a chilly smile. “Nice to meet you, honey.”
Nina stood unmoving, having been put in her place so decisively that she felt as though she’d been rooted to the spot forever. Everything was boiling inside her—thwarted lust, resentment, yearning, shame and injured pride.
“You coming?” Jenny asked, returning from what had probably been a more age-appropriate conversation with Rourke and Joey. She seemed oblivious to Nina’s turmoil. “Gramp’s ready to head back to town.”
“Sure,” Nina heard herself say. She thought Greg Bellamy might be watching her as she left the dining hall. She refused to look back, though. He was a mistake she was only too happy to leave behind.
As she was beating a retreat, she was horrified to feel the hot press of tears threatening to spill. Fighting back, she paused, pretending to study the bulletin board, a patchwork of announcements for the camp staff. Someone had lost a pair of sunglasses. Someone else had two tickets to the new hit musical Miss Saigon, for sale. Everything was a blur, but then a bright yellow flier resolved itself before her eyes. Welcome Cadets! Community Mixer at Avalon Meadows Country Club. Each year, the new crop of West Point cadets was treated to a pre-enlistment party, their final hurrah before stepping into the rarified world of rigors that was the United States Military Academy. 18 and Over Required.
At the bottom of the flier was a fringe of phone numbers for the RSVP. Nina already knew one appointee—Laurence Jeffries, from Kingston. She’d flirted with him at football and baseball games, and he had no clue how old she was. He’d be the one to get her into the country club. She defiantly ripped off an RSVP number and stuck it in her pocket.
She glanced over her shoulder at Greg Bellamy. If he’d been nicer to her, she’d still be in the dining hall, eating pie. So really, if she got in trouble, it would all be Greg’s fault.
Nina never had any trouble passing herself off as an eighteen-year-old. She and her sisters all looked alike. At church and catechism, people always mixed them up. On any given Sunday, Nina had been called Loretta, Giuliana, Maria and even Vicki—their mother. Nina had learned everything she knew from her pretty, popular sisters. She eavesdropped on their giggling conversations about boys and sex. She’d sat with them late at night, listening to them dissect their dates, moment by moment. Thanks to her sisters, Nina knew how to crash a party, how to flirt with a boy, how to French kiss and what safe sex was.
The West Point reception was scheduled for a Sunday night. Nina planned to wait until Maria was in the shower. Then she would go to her sister’s wallet and help herself to the driver’s license.
That morning, as everyone was running around, getting ready for church, she told her parents the usual story—her friend Jenny was having a sleepover—though she probably didn’t need to bother. Everyone was preoccupied, and her father was organizing yet another fund-raiser for a candidate.
“Isn’t it frustrating to see Pop raise all that money for someone else?” Nina asked her mother as they all tumbled out of the van at St. Mary’s. Pop had leaped out first to join a group of local businessmen in front of the church. Carmine was left to play parking valet with the lumbering van, which had once been an airport shuttle. Their dad had bought it for a song. It was the only car that fit them all.
“I mean,” Nina continued, “he’s raising money to buy radio ads and we can’t even afford to get Anthony’s teeth straightened.”
Ma only smiled when Nina said stuff like that. “This is your dad’s passion. It’s what he believes in.”
“What about what you believe in, Ma? Don’t you believe in getting a new winter coat more than once a decade, or paying the light bill without going into debt?”
“I believe in your father,” Ma said serenely. And boy, did she ever. Giorgio Romano could do no wrong in her eyes. To be fair, Pop was just as crazy about Ma. He went to high mass with her every Sunday and sat there without blinking as she unhesitatingly placed ten percent of their weekly income in the collection basket, because Ma believed in tithing.
At a young age, Nina decided that men who followed their passion were of limited interest to her. She did, however, harbor a passion of her own, and it was for boys. Even in church, she caught herself checking out the boys. The altar boys, for Pete’s sake, who used to look so dorky in their red robes and white surplices. Now they looked impossibly sexy to her, with their Adam’s apples and big, squarish hands, dress shoes peeping out from beneath their robes. Nina had heard the term boy-crazy before; now she understood what it meant. They did make her crazy, in the sense that they totally distracted her from everything but thoughts of making out, all day and all night long.
As everyone lurched forward to kneel after the Lamb of God, sh
e glanced over her shoulder at Jenny, a few rows back with her grandparents. The three of them looked so neat and self-contained, not like the whispering, rustling, unwieldy Romano bunch. But Jenny didn’t notice Nina trying to get her attention. As she often did, Jenny looked as though she was a million miles away.
Nina turned her eyes to the front and tried to keep her mind blank through the Canon of the mass. It was always a great internal debate with her, deciding whether or not to go for communion. Catholics took their communion very seriously. No wonder you were supposed to unload all your sins beforehand. Supposedly, the sacrament was reserved for people whose souls were spotless, who had emerged from the confessional as squeaky clean as an athlete stepping out of a postgame shower.
Nina did go to confession—and often. Only yesterday, in a voice rough with shame, she’d told the ominous presence on the other side of the screen about shirking her chores, lying to Sister Immaculata about her catechism homework, having impure thoughts about altar boys. And even that was a lie, come to think of it. Her thoughts were very pure, indeed. Pure lust.
Sure, she’d done her penance, reciting Our Fathers and Hail Marys until her knees grew numb, but afterward she went right back to her sinful ways. This very moment, she was sitting before God and thinking about how she was going to the party at the country club tonight to find a boy to make out with.
“‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,’” she recited along with the congregation, “‘but only say the word, and I shall be healed.’”
This did not help her decide whether or not to partake of communion. She weighed the pros and cons in her mind: If you just sat there like a bump on a pickle, everyone would know for sure you were a sinner and a slacker for failing to do your penance after confession. If you jumped up and went for it, people would figure you were lying or insincere, because no kid was free of sin, except maybe Jenny. Nina wished there was some designation for the in-between people who weren’t perfect but tried to be. Strivers, you could call them. Shouldn’t there be some reward for people who strove to be good, even though they fell short most of the time?