Full Circle (10 page)

ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT

The camp is really a beautiful spot. There are oak trees hundreds of years old – great climbing trees, with limbs growing low to the ground, but thicker than my waist – heck, thicker than Megan’s waist – and that’s thick! Haha! It’s shady there all the time, there are so many trees. Some of them pine trees, dropping their needles and cones everywhere. I’ve started a pinecone collection – only the biggest ones! I’m going to buy Mom a basket and buy some of that Christmas spray – you know the kind, smells like apples and cinnamon and other Christmassy things – and put the cones in it for her as an early Christmas present. I think it would look really good next to the fireplace. I saw that in one of Mom’s magazines.

The skies are always blue at the camp, and sometimes I let my kids lie down in the one open spot by the lake where there aren’t trees in the way, and we watch the clouds and I make them tell me what kinds of clouds they are (I’m very good at that) and then we just start saying what shape we’re seeing! It’s a lot of fun and the kids love it.

It’s not as awful there as I thought it was going to be. It’s hot, sure, but this is Texas! It’s always hot here, even in the winter sometimes. But the shade helps the heat; sometimes you almost forget about it. Besides, we’re in the water half the day anyway, and it’s hard to stay hot when you’re in the middle of a lake, ya know? I love canoeing – who knew? I’d never done it before, but Christine says I’m a natural. Graham doesn’t like her because he says she’s ugly. Like that’s a reason not to like somebody! I keep telling Graham that it’s not her fault that she’s not good looking, and he says, ‘Well, she coulda stayed home.’ Which I guess is funny, ’cause everybody else laughed when he said it, but I think it’s cruel too. I like her. Christine’s kinda bossy, but she’s helpful too. She showed me how to use a canoe in about ten minutes flat. In the week that Myra was here, she didn’t teach me squat!

Mom makes us each pack a whole tube of sunscreen, but even so I’m getting a tan! I think it looks good and makes me look older. Megan just burns, no matter how much sunscreen she wears. Ha! She’s always going on about her ‘beautiful red hair’ and how ‘unfortunate’ it is that I have just this ‘plain brown hair.’ Well, red hair goes with freckled fish-belly white skin that only burns!! Ha, ha! Guess who’ll get the summers around here, sister-mine??? Yes, I know. I’m a bitch. And I’m reveling in it!

E.J., THE PRESENT

I took the kids to the hospital one afternoon after camp to see Myra Morris and take her all the cards the children at camp had made for her. It had been a compound fracture, and her leg was still elevated by a sling extended from the ceiling. She was pale and her blond hair was a mess.

Both my daughters bounded into the room and threw themselves on Myra, causing her casted and elevated leg to sway and Myra to let out a piteous moan. I grabbed the girls. ‘Be careful!’ I said and pointed to her leg in its sling.

‘Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, Myra!’ Elizabeth said.

‘Me, too!’ Megan said. ‘We didn’t mean to hurt you!’

Myra gave a pitiful smile. ‘That’s OK, you two. I know you didn’t mean to.’

‘I’d ask how you’re feeling,’ I said, ‘but I think it’s pretty obvious.’

‘I have my good minutes and my bad minutes,’ she said, with a lopsided grin. Looking toward the door, she said, ‘Hi, Graham, hi Lotta.’

Thinking they’d been right behind me when the girls and I came in, I couldn’t help but wonder what had held them up. Yeah, like I didn’t know.

Lotta moved to Myra’s bed and leaned over to gently kiss her on the forehead. ‘I’m so sorry about your car wreck! What happened?’ she asked as my gallant son pulled a chair up for her to sit next to the bed. I noticed he didn’t pull one up for me. The fact that there was only one chair in the room was of little significance.

‘I was leaving the camp, and you know that hill right after you turn on County Road Fourteen?’

We all nodded. It was a bitch of a hill. County Road 14 hadn’t been paved since the 1950s, and the potholes along that stretch, and especially on the downhill slope, were legendary.

‘Well, I was gaining speed, so I touched my brakes to slow down and my foot went clear to the floor! And then I hit that really big pothole and the car flew into the air and next thing I knew I was wrapped around a tree with the engine on my leg and the On-Star lady saying sweet things to me. She’s very nice, that On-Star lady.’

‘Had you been having trouble with your brakes?’ I asked her. As closet champion procrastinators, Willis and I both knew a thing or two about the steps to losing your brakes entirely. There are a lot of steps, and we believe (don’t try this at home – we’re semi-professionals) that you don’t have to actually do anything about your brakes until the fourth step.

‘No, actually, I’d just had new brake-shoes put on two weeks ago. And they checked out the entire system and said everything was fine! I had them tow the car to my dad’s mechanic and not the brake place. Because if they missed something, I’m going to sue the socks off ’em!’ she said, and the look on her face was, well, for a seminary student, very un-Christian.

Being a suspicious person who watches entirely too much TV, my mind immediately went to ‘Somebody cut her brake lines!’ I wondered how easy that would be. For me, fairly hard as I actually have no idea where the brake line is or what one would need to cut it. The aforementioned ‘steps’ are for me an intellectual conjecture. But when I see that brake-cutting stunt pulled on TV, I always wonder why someone would use it. It seems awfully chancy. How do you know that person is going to crash? What if they run off into a field and are able to stop just from being in too tall grass, or get stuck in the mud or something? No guarantee that they’ll get killed or maimed. I figured chances were much better that Myra’s brake mechanic screwed up than someone tried to kill her or incapacitate her for a length of time. I mean, the girl is annoying, but not bad enough to kill.

Megan and Bessie gave Myra the cards the kids had made. Some were pretty cute, with stick figures on crutches, or one – a little creepy but unique – with only one leg and a stump and opulent use of a red crayon.

‘When are they letting you out of the hospital?’ I asked.

‘Next week,’ she said. ‘My friend Christine, who took my place at the camp, is staying at my apartment, and she’ll be helping me out.’

Everyone except Graham and me gave Myra a hug goodbye and headed for the two cars in the parking lot. Graham and Lotta got in the Valiant and the girls and I got in the Volvo and headed for home. I was just grateful that Graham and Lotta never had alone time in the dark of night.

ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT

I wish I was blond. Not strawberry blond like Megan is in the summer, but blond-blond like Myra. Sometimes blonds, like Myra, have skin that tans really well. Maybe I should bleach my hair! My skin is a lot like Myra’s, and I bet I’d look great with blond hair and a tan. Of course, I’d have to bleach my eyebrows, too, ’cause they’re like black. And my eyelashes are really black. Does one bleach one’s eyelashes? No, then what would be the use of mascara? Jeez, Lizbutt, get a grip. I’d look good as a blond. But the first time I probably shouldn’t do it myself. I should probably go to a professional. I wonder how much that costs? Probably more than five dollars, and that’s all I get for allowance. I’ll call some place tomorrow and see how much it costs and figure out how long I’d have to save up. I’ve still got my birthday money Grandma Vera gave me. That’s twenty. It can’t cost that much!

GRAHAM, THE PRESENT

Lotta only gets one night a week off, and of course, it’s a weeknight – Wednesday. But that doesn’t really matter. No school, so who cares? I can do this counseling thing with my head up my butt. Some would say I
do
do this counseling thing with my head up my butt! Haha! Seriously, I love Wednesday. What’s not to love? I get Lotta in the morning at camp, some in the afternoon, when she doesn’t have to babysit for her younger brothers, and then most of the evening. It must really suck being a girl. She’s the only one who ever has to babysit, because she’s the only girl. And her parents have a curfew for her on her one night off – ten o’clock, can you believe it? They let her work till midnight or later, but going out with her boyfriend she has to be in by ten. That seriously sucks. Her brothers don’t have any curfew and never have had one. I think some of that is cultural; I don’t think the parents of most girls do that, but still. Girls have it rough. That whole period thing, for instance. And having babies. That’s gotta suck.

Anyway, I’m getting what my parents consider a hefty allowance these days (twenty bucks a week – gee, I’ll go get me that Porsche I’ve had my eye on) and an extra five for doing the camp thing. I think it should be an extra fifty ’cause I could have gotten me a real job that pays money, but they don’t see it my way. So anyway, I’ve got twenty-five bucks a week to take my lady out, buy gas, dinner and maybe a movie. Can’t be done. Even if we get to a movie before six o’clock, which is the witching hour that magically changes the cost of a movie from six bucks to like seven-fifty or sometimes more, that’s twelve bucks for the movie, leaving me thirteen. So we have to eat at McDonald’s if I’m going to drive us there, ’cause that old Valiant guzzles the gas. So thirteen minus . . . let’s round McDonald’s off at eight bucks. That leaves me five bucks. Dad went with me the first time I filled up the Valiant. It cost thirty-two dollars to fill up what is considered a small gas tank. Then we drove to the church and back, and multiplied that mileage by five and Dad added to my allowance exactly, and I mean
exactly
, what it would cost to drive to the church and back five days a week. So I’ve got the extra five dollars a week to pay for the gas for any running around. Let me tell you, some weeks, by Friday I’m bringing the girls home on fumes. I’m telling you, life is not easy for even a good, God-fearing American teenager like myself.

Lotta tried to give me some money, and at first I said, ‘No way, Jose,’ which pissed her off ’cause that’s offensive to her Mexican heritage. But she’s saving for college with the money she makes at the fried chicken place, and I don’t want her dipping into that. But she said if I didn’t take money for coming to pick her up every morning, then she’d stop riding with me and take the bus, then have to walk halfway ’cause no bus goes all the way to the camp. Well, she knew I wouldn’t let her do that, so she pays me ten dollars a week for coming to pick her up. Which is cool. That way I can buy Cokes when we’re tooling around town or, on those days when I hang out with my buds, I can make a dollar bet on a B-ball game, get me a Slim-Jim on occasion. So, what I’m saying is, that ten bucks a week is cool. And I’m man enough to let my woman help me out. Just don’t tell my boys, ya know?

So anyway, me and Lotta are hanging out on a Wednesday. We been to McDonald’s and snuck some French fries into the movie. We’re sitting there watching a Bruce Willis movie (one of the greatest Americans to ever live, even if my parents don’t like his politics!), when in walks my sister and her skater-dude. Now I’ve gotta wonder if my mom knows about this. Surely she wouldn’t allow Megan to hang out with this dude? And was this like a real date? Megan’s like fourteen, isn’t that kind of young to be dating? Is Mom setting her up for all sorts of trauma and misguidance? Is that a word? So I excuse myself and go out to the lobby and use my cell phone to call home.

Mom answers on the second ring. ‘Hey, Mom,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Graham.’

‘Oh, I thought it was one of my other sons,’ she said. She thinks that kind of thing is cute. Someone, other than me, needs to tell her it’s not.

‘I’m here at the movies with Lotta—’

‘Oh? What are you seeing?’

‘That new Bruce Willis. That’s not—’

‘You know I don’t like Bruce Willis. Well, his politics. I thought he was great in
Die Hard with a Vengeance
—’

‘Mom, that’s not the point! Megan’s here! With that skater-dude!’ I finally managed to get out.

‘Is Margi Compton there with her?’ Mom asked.

‘I didn’t see her,’ I said.

‘Go in and make sure Margi’s not there,’ she said.

‘Hold on,’ I said with a sigh. I’m not sure what Margi Compton had to do with it.

I went back in the theater and had a look. There was a family sitting on the other side of Megan, and it wasn’t Margi Compton’s family, and skater-dude was sitting on the aisle. I went back into the hall. ‘No, Mom. I don’t see Margi.’

‘Well, then it was an out-and-out lie,’ Mom said.

‘Hell, Mom, even if Margi was there, what difference would it make?’ I asked.

‘She said she was going to the movies with Margi—’

‘Mom, even if Margi was here, she still made plans to meet up with this asshole—’

‘Graham, stop cussing. Just stop. I don’t need it.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.

‘Don’t call me ma’am,’ she said.

‘So what do you want me to do? About Megan and skater-dude?’ I asked.

‘You? Nothing!’

‘I can go get her and make her go home—’

‘Graham, you’re not the parent. I am. I’ll deal with her when she gets home.’

‘You mean you just want me to sit here and watch her lip-suckin’ that a-hole?’

‘Watch your movie. Unless you can find a Tommy Lee Jones movie to watch,’ she added. Tommy Lee Jones used to be Al Gore’s roommate, so that made him politically correct in my mother’s eyes.

‘Nothing. You want me to do nothing.’

‘Graham. Do not warn her.’

‘Oh,’ I said, realizing my mother had plans to catch my sister.

I went back into the theater and sat next to Lotta. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I whispered in her ear. I had plans for a little one-on-one, and besides, I didn’t want to take the chance that Megan would see me and blow my mother’s torture to come.

ELIZABETH, APRIL, 2009

It was Friday afternoon and the girls were home alone again, Dad still at work, Mom still at her convention. Elizabeth had gone straight to her room. She’d been in there less than five minutes when there came a knock on the door.