Girls of Summer

by Kate Christie

  Becca and Rhea had driven that point home even further. They and their twin daughters stole the show, naturally. The babies were tiny still, only 10 weeks old and small even for that age according to their proud, exhausted moms. They had worn the babies into the restaurant—apparently they were fans of “attachment parenting,” which Emma had explained meant they almost never put the babies down—but once there, Becca’s parents and the elder Maxwells had been passing the twins around on a steady rotation. They weren’t the only members of their generation to fawn over the babies, either. Each of the parents present seemed entranced by every burp and cry the tiny humans emitted.

  Mary Pat in particular seemed fascinated by the story of the twins’ conception, which Becca was more than happy to share along with certain details of the birth that made Rhea, for one, wince. Jamie had already heard the twins’ birth story a couple of times now. Otherwise, she might have lost her appetite when Becca gleefully described the actions the doctor had taken when Rhea had retained one of the placentas, which may or may not have included upping her spinal block and reaching a hand up inside Rhea’s uterus to remove the placenta manually.

  Spoiler alert: That was absolutely what had happened.

  As assorted table occupants made faces and pushed their plates away, Jamie picked up a slice of her wood-fired pizza and took a huge bite. Even if she hadn’t already heard the story, she could always eat.

  “And then,” Becca continued, “our doctor asked if we wanted to keep the placenta so we could sauté it for dinner, which, I’m serious, people, some women actually do!”

  Britt squealed in that high-pitched tone Jamie never expected to hear from her while other people around the table (the Marys Pat, once again in cultural synch) gasped and appeared to be swallowing down possible bile.

  Emma, who had also heard this story multiple times, chose that moment to lean in and murmur, “Do you remember the first time you brought me here?”

  Jamie looked at her. “You mean after that game where you told my hecklers they had tiny penises?”

  Emma bit her lip. “That’s right. I totally did that.”

  “See? Even then you loved me.”

  Emma held her gaze, eyes glowing in the flickering firelight. “Absolutely.”

  Jamie paused for a second, remembering the last time they’d sat at an outdoor restaurant near an open fire. That time, they’d been eight floors up over St. Louis in the shadow of the Gateway Arch, and while Emma’s eyes might have glowed, it certainly hadn’t been in happiness.

  Yeah. Jamie would take this night over that one anytime.

  “And you loved me back then, too,” Emma prompted expectantly.

  Jamie pretended to think it over. “Did I, though?”

  “Jerk.” Emma smacked her arm and reached for her glass of beer, a beautiful amber color that made Jamie think maybe even she would like the taste.

  Eh, probably not. At least, not without a generous amount of lemonade to sweeten it.

  “You know I did,” she said softly so that only Emma would hear her. “I’ve always loved you, and I always will.”

  Emma’s gaze softened again as it found hers. “I’ll always love you, too, Jamie.”

  Jamie believed her. Emma might struggle with somewhat flexible truth-telling when it came to the day-to-day details of life, but as for the really important things? She was solid, an unchanging rock in the river of human vicissitudes. Or, you know, maybe an anchor in the storm of life. Both clichés, Jamie thought, worked equally well.

  So yeah, dinner was good despite the potential for drama. It wasn’t until they retired to her family’s house later that shit got real.

  At first, everything seemed fine. Jamie’s parents brought out a couple of bottles of wine, and everyone hung around the living room. Meg and Todd were there, and the elder Thompsons and Emma, of course, and with such a buffer, Jamie could overlook the anger she still felt at the back of her mind knowing her mother had told even more people about the assault. On the one hand, Jamie had been a kid when everything went down. Her mother shouldn’t have had to ask her permission to talk about it. But by not informing Jamie that Pete knew, her mom had let her navigate the soccer world for years believing that what had happened was her story to tell—or not. Mostly she chose not because why talk about it if she didn’t have to? To find out that two of the most influential coaches in her soccer career had known all along—well, it was disconcerting, obviously.

  At least Pete hadn’t been at the game today. Jamie had heard he’d moved to the East Coast a few years earlier, where he was coaching a women’s team at a Division II school.

  As the conversation went on around her, she clutched her glass of wine and tried to get control of her spiraling thoughts. This Mother’s Day was an anomaly—a beautiful, amazing, brief moment when they could all be together. She and Emma would have to be up early to catch their flight out, and she wanted to enjoy this time while they had it. With an effort, she pushed away memories of secrets and lies and tried to be fully present: to laugh at her father’s silly dad jokes; to appear interested in her mother’s latest art news; to ask pertinent questions of Becca’s parents; to listen closely to Meg and Todd’s description of their new campus and the reams of paperwork they would have to fill out to live and work in a foreign country that didn’t feel foreign at all. But it wasn’t easy to push down the simmering anger she felt every time she gazed at her mother for more than a few seconds.

  Apparently she wasn’t entirely successful because every once in a while Emma, who was curled into her side on one length of the living room sectional, squeezed her hand or poked her in the ribs or nudged her shoulder to bring her out of her head and back to the conversation.

  Turned out being in the moment with her family wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Emma whispered later that night as they lay together in Jamie’s childhood bedroom.

  “No, thanks,” she said, listening to the faint sound of familiar voices murmuring through the walls. Meg and Todd were in her old room, now the official guest bedroom, and beyond that were her parents, getting ready for bed the same as they always had. Only nothing was the same, was it?

  “Okay,” Emma said, her tone reluctant as she rested her chin on Jamie’s shoulder. “But if you change your mind…”

  “I know where to find you,” Jamie said, and kissed her, rolling her eyes inwardly at the illicit thrill that shot through her body. There was nothing illicit about their relationship, but this was the same bed where she had spent hours fantasizing about Emma as a teenager. And as a college student. And as an adult. She couldn’t imagine being with Emma in real life ever getting old.

  By midnight, Emma was asleep beside her, golden hair spilling over Jamie’s pillow in the precise way she used to picture it. She wished she could go back to her teenage self and tell her not to worry, that everything would work out. But of course she couldn’t. Instead, she got up and went downstairs to find a late-night snack, another post-game tradition from her childhood.

  Her parents usually left the light on over the stove, so she didn’t think anything of the house not being completely dark. The voice that spoke her name, though—that was unexpected. She turned to see her mother seated at the kitchen table, stirring a spoon of honey into a cup of tea.

  “Mom? What are you doing up?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Nice to see that some things never change,” her mother said, and slid the pan of homemade pound cake—one of Jamie’s favorite desserts—toward her.

  Jamie hesitated. She wasn’t really in the mood to talk, cake or no cake.

  “Please?” her mom added, her voice uncharacteristically vulnerable.

  That wasn’t fair. Jamie couldn’t exactly say no, especially not on Mother’s Day. She released a breath and moved toward the table, only to stop short at her mother’s next words: “What happened? I can tell there’s something.”

  Jamie regarded her for a moment, her
banked anger immediately flaring. But, just as she’d done all day, she tried to rein it in. “Nothing happened.”

  “Come on, Jamie. You’ve had that pinched look around your mouth every time you’ve looked at me this weekend.”

  Her mother’s knowing tone reminded Jamie of Emma when they were arguing, and not in a good way. She shook her head. “Fine. You really want to know?”

  Her mother nodded, but she looked less and less certain the longer their eyes held.

  Jamie could lie. She could obfuscate and invent, deny and avoid. That was what she’d long done with her mother on the topic of Lyon. But something had changed during her recent trip to France, and frankly, she was tired of protecting her mother’s feelings. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around, anyway?

  “What happened,” she said, “is that I found out that Jo Nichols has known for years that I was raped.” She picked her words intentionally, going for the combination that would inflict the most damage.

  Sure enough, her mother flinched as if Jamie had slapped her. She supposed, verbally, she had.

  “I didn’t—what would—how?” her mother finally settled on.

  “How do you think? Pete Tyrell. Courtesy of you.”

  Her mom lifted a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry—”

  “What, for sharing private information with my coach without asking me first?” Jamie shot back, taking a step closer. She had been taller than both of her parents for years, and now she loomed over her mother. “Or for not telling me you’d told him? What exactly are you sorry for, Mom?”

  “Stop it, Jamie,” her mother said, her hand dropping again. “I won’t be spoken to that way, not by you.”

  “Are you kidding me? That’s what you’re going to come back with?”

  “When you’re calmer,” her mom said, rising to her feet and folding her arms across the front of her robe, “we can talk about all of this. But I won’t deal with you when you’re like this.”

  “Like what? When I’m angry with you?” Jamie retorted, crossing her own arms across the front of her sweatshirt. “Well, tough, Mom, because I am pissed at you, and justifiably so. You betrayed my confidence ten years ago and didn’t even have the balls to, I don’t know, maybe mention it somewhere along the way?”

  Her mother held up both hands. “I only wanted to help. Can’t you see it from my perspective?”

  Jamie stared at her. “What the actual fuck? The only perspective you’ve ever wanted me to see it from is yours. I’m the one who was raped, not you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her mother looked stricken, her face pale and lined with worry, eyes glinting behind her glasses. Was she going to cry? The thought almost stopped Jamie. Almost.

  “I’m talking about the fact that you never asked me about what happened, not even once. You fobbed me off on Shoshanna and then it was like you pretended it never happened. Except that for years, I could see it in your face every time you looked at me. For years! You looked at me like I was this damaged, ruined version of the child you had once loved.”

  “Jamie!” her mother said, her voice rising. “That’s not true!”

  “Don’t tell me that how I feel isn’t true,” Jamie practically bellowed. “You don’t get to do that. They’re my feelings. They’re not right or wrong. They just are, and you can’t change them.”

  Thank god her parents had fobbed her off on Shoshanna. Without a caring stranger’s help, Jamie wouldn’t have been able to stand before her mother now and hold firmly to her own truth.

  “Please, lower your voice,” her mother hissed.

  Jamie snorted. “Oh, what, you’re afraid the rest of the family will hear us? What a shock that you’re more concerned with what other people think than with how I actually feel.”

  At that, her mother sighed and looked away, visibly deflating. “I didn’t mean to imply that your feelings aren’t true,” she said. “I only meant that I tried to talk to you about what happened. I tried so many times, but you shut me down every time.”

  Jamie blinked, her anger fizzling slightly. “I don’t remember that.”

  “You don’t?” When Jamie shook her head, her mother frowned. “I guess that’s not entirely surprising. Trauma does different things to different people. But… does that mean you don’t remember what you said to me the last time we talked about it?”

  “When?” Jamie asked warily.

  “Right before you started your sophomore year of high school,” her mom said, as if it were obvious.

  Jamie stared at her, trying to remember any conversation with her mother during the summer in question. But there was nothing, just a smooth, dark wall inside her mind that didn’t allow even a pinprick of light through.

  “I don’t,” she admitted, her heartbeat kicking up a notch. “Not at all.”

  Her mother’s face fell and she looked down at the floor, rubbing her hands along her forearms. “Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s just that—I—I’m just so sorry. I’m sorry I’ve made a mess of this whole thing. I wanted to be there for you, Jamie, I truly did, only you didn’t seem to need my help. Or, I suppose, it was more that you didn’t want it.”

  Jamie could see the pain on her mother’s face, hear it in her voice, feel it reflected in her own chest. “What are you talking about? You’re my mom. Of course I wanted your help.”

  Her mother’s smile was sad, and she reached out and touched Jamie’s hand where it was still cradled tightly against her torso. “I’m glad to hear you think that, but it simply wasn’t true at the time. At least, it wasn’t what you said,” she amended.

  Jamie still couldn’t remember any conversation that came remotely close to what her mother was describing. Had her mother imagined it? Was she using a fake conversation as an excuse for her decade-old parental shortcomings? Or was it more likely that Jamie’s memories from the period directly after the assault were suspect?

  The latter, she had to admit, her anger deflating even more. She was known among her friends for her terrible memory. People’s faces? Sure. But their names? Not so much. The question of whether or not it was possible she couldn’t remember multiple conversations in the aftermath of France—it wasn’t really a question, was it? That time had been especially fraught, for obvious reasons. It had taken months of work with Shoshanna to construct a plausible facsimile of the events in Lyon, and even now the memories seemed shimmery and unstable, as if they could make and remake themselves at will. Their own will, not hers.

  She frowned slightly and rubbed her temple. She’d managed to earn a mild concussion during her lone week of training with the Thorns. Not enough to sit out more than one practice, but the spot where Greta’s fist had collided with her head still sometimes smarted, especially if she was feeling tense. Now definitely qualified on that front.

  “Look,” she said, her voice quieter. “My memories of that time are a little hazy. I’m not saying we didn’t talk, only that I honestly don’t remember if we did.”

  Her mother stared up at her for a long moment before nodding. “I understand that’s not unusual for people in your situation.”

  “It’s okay to say it out loud,” Jamie said, her irritation immediately rising again.

  “Is it? Because that’s not what you said at the time.”

  She closed her eyes for a long moment. “And what exactly did I say?”

  Her mother pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. “I told you, it’s not important. You were hurting. I didn’t take any of it personally.”

  The way she couldn’t hold Jamie’s gaze as she said this argued otherwise.

  “Can we sit down?” Jamie asked, waving at her mother’s vacated seat at the table.

  Her mother hesitated before nodding. “I’ll put the kettle back on.”

  It took patient probing and a significant amount of herbal tea as well as half the remaining pan of pound cake, but eventually Jamie convinced her mom that “letting the past stay in the past”
only worked if it wasn’t actively impacting the present.

  “You were angry with me,” her mother finally admitted, sweeping cake crumbs from the table and depositing them on a cloth napkin that was new since the last time Jamie had lived here. “You were angry with everyone, actually.”

  That much she remembered. It was why soccer had become such an important outlet—because it allowed her to focus her rage and pain onto a small leather sphere that she could strike with all her might without fear of repercussion. In fact, the harder she played, the more praise she received. That was why her parents so easily forced her into therapy. By threatening to take away soccer, they, albeit unknowingly, had threatened the one thing she knew for certain could help.

  “I was angry,” she admitted.

  Her mother watched her for a long moment before nodding. “I understood why, of course. You were right when you said that what happened was partially my responsibility.”

  “Wait,” Jamie said, and leaned forward across the dining table. “I said what?”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  “I told you, I don’t. I said that what happened to me was your fault?”

  Her mother looked down at the table, pushing the crumbs around on top of the napkin. “It was so long ago. Do we really need to rehash it all now?”

  “Yes,” Jamie said. “I think we do. Please?”

  Her mom glanced up. “I suppose I deserve that. Fine. Here’s what happened: I tried to talk to you a few times, but you shut me out. Until, finally, you didn’t.” Her eyes narrowed and her face tightened. “And then I almost wished I hadn’t pushed you so hard. No, I did wish that. No almost about it.”

  A glimmer of memory flickered in Jamie’s mind. She remembered being angry with her mother, but not for trying to talk to her. No, she’d been angry about—“I was mad at you in Lyon, wasn’t I?”

  Her mother nodded. “You were upset with me for missing one of your games in order to go on a tour of the city’s murals.”

  That was it! That was why Jamie hadn’t seen the murals the first time around. For one thing, she’d been busy playing soccer. For another, she’d resented her mother for prioritizing Lyon’s frescoes over her. “I said you were only there for the art, didn’t I?”