Camptown Ladies (25 page)

We took a tour and there was much squealing, although the boys quieted and turned up their noses at the pond, but when we cruised by the built-in pool, the squealing reached a crescendo that threatened the ears of several dogs at camp. One of the older boys made a proclamation as if he had just moved his gay army across a battlefield, “Ladies, our Home Base . . . WE shall break camp here!”

There was cheering as I tried to advise them over the commotion, “Someone is setting up right over there, so you won’t have much privacy.” He told me not to worry, that those people would not be staying there long, and he was right. Even as we circled the pool area to satisfy their demand of a full 3D view, I could see the family of four had already slowed in the unpacking of their Volvo, and were pretending to be checking the number posted on the tree, as if they had landed at the wrong site.

One of the older men pointed at a patch of grass near the pool entrance, “We can set up a gas grill over here to cook our steaks!”

“Is there a pool or cabana boy?” one of them asked.

“Of course,” I said, “his name is Vince, and he gives the best massages.” They squealed again. “He’s shy, so you’ll have to insist.”

When we cruised by one of the shower houses, the boys gave some ooo’s and aaaah’s and even a few moans when I described many of the toilets had been outfitted with a discreet way to pass emergency rolls of toilet paper, or what-have-you.

“We love you,” one of them said with great emotion, forcing his bottom lip to tremble with emotion, and then he hugged me, twice.

One of them said, “Can we touch your boobs again to show our appreciation? We just love boobs, don’t we, girls?” I laughed along with the truckload of them, correcting my tone to be a bit more high-pitched, so as not to be the least ladylike of the pack. It didn’t really work.

Oddly enough, our first group of lesbians arrived soon after, on the very same day. They entered camp in a precise row of dangerously silent Honda and Toyota hybrids, weaving their way through the camp, actually observing the 5-miles-an-hour posted speed limit that made you feel as if you were driving backward.

We got business-like hellos from a few of the women, who had already figured out what each one owed for the campsites, to the penny, before they had even reached the office. (By contrast, the gay boys had emptied their pockets and decided whoever had the most cash leftover from the drunken debauchery of the night before, would pay for the sites. Anything left over, would buy more booze.)

When the lesbians saw Dad’s pile of firewood, one of the stockier ladies asked if there was a hatchet around to further split any wood they might buy. In a panic, I looked around, but, thankfully, Dad was out of earshot, and he missed the dyke threat to his pile. I assured the woman we could work something out, and arranged for her to come back when Dad usually took his hammock siesta.

I gave the women the same tour I gave the boys, which commenced in a bitter silence I knew not to analyze. While they turned up their noses at the convenience of a camp store and the absurdness of a
sparkling swimming pool when there was a perfectly fine pond, they applied a sensible strategy to spend their days fishing by the murky, weed-fringed pond, and firmed up plans for which night each person was responsible for cooking their vegetarian dinners over an open fire.

When I got back to the office, another car was parked near the entrance, but since it was devoid of camp gear, it seemed the occupant was not waiting to be checked in. As I walked over to the car, Lorn got out, and I stupidly considered running for it.

“I hope you don’t mind that I came,” she said, her auburn hair pissing me off as it caught the sunlight, gently moving in the breeze.

“Of course not,” I said.

She shut the car door and walked toward me.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said. It sure was, I thought.

Lorn feigned interest in seeing more of the camp and, without me agreeing to, we started walking. “I thought it was best not to come back to the condo after the funeral,” she said.

“Probably was,” I agreed. In fact, she’d stayed away a few days, and I had assumed she’d gone back to California with Uncle Tony and her mother Katherine. We fell silent, and Lorn walked closer to me, a few times our arms brushing against mine until I moved farther from her.

Lorn said, “I didn’t just come to pay my respects to you and your family about your aunt. I also came to say I’m sorry.”

“Long way to travel for that,” I said.

“And to tell you I know I made a big mistake.”

I stopped walking. “No,” I said. “I made the mistake. It took a long time, but I did eventually realize you won’t ever let yourself live the way you want to.”

“Marie—”

I held my hand up to stop her. “No. Did you hear me? I finally accepted that it was me who made the mistake. The same mistake, many times.”

Lorn moved closer to me, and I thought, Why were mistakes often so tempting? I took a step back from her and she reached for my arm.

“I love you. I made the mistake,” she said.

“It’s too late,” I said. She let go of my arm and studied my face for a different answer, but when I didn’t give her one, she said, “There’s someone else.”

“What?” I said, a bit louder than I should have, “No.”

“I know I kept you waiting for so long, but I thought, you couldn’t have—”

“Waiting? Is that what you think I was doing? It wasn’t waiting. It was . . . suffering.”

She moved closer again. “Marie, please. I know I don’t deserve to ask, but give me another chance. I promise you, I don’t care if the press finds out. In fact, I’ll do what my manager has said I should have done all along. I’ll have him manage it. I’ll make a statement and come out. It will be my story that way.”

“Your story.”

She said, “Our story. But I wouldn’t use your name if you didn’t want. Or, better yet, my manager says it would be even better to say I was bi-sexual, if you didn’t mind—”

“Why would I mind what you say,” I said. “I won’t be taking another risk.”

We stood not saying anything for a long few minutes, before I finally said, “You know, Lorn, you’d have made a stronger case if you had already come out to the press, before asking me to take you back.”

“But why would I take a chance if I wasn’t sure you’d be mine?”

“Exactly. And why should I?” I said to her. This time, it was Lorn that looked punched in the gut.

I was neither sad nor angry as I left her standing there to walk back to the office, where Uncle Freddie was talking with Erica. They had been leaning over building plans on the ground, and I warmed at the idea that Erica had been trying to keep Uncle Freddie busy after losing Aunt Aggie. It appeared to be working, as he was animatedly talking to her, but as Erica was listening to him, she was looking over his shoulder, disapprovingly watching Lorn’s car making a U-turn as she pulled out of camp.

Twenty-One

The Soundproof Insulation Of Large Boobs

When we were kids, Lisa started speaking in an English accent after becoming obsessed with a couple of Louisa May Alcott novels. She had been convinced (maybe tricked) into reading them by my mother (who didn’t bother to tell her Alcott was American, not English), and she kept one by her bed for almost a year. I kept asking her when she planned to read it, since it had become dusty and the pages were starting to turn yellow. The book was
Little Women,
and she insisted she was saving the best one for last.

One Saturday, I came home from a friend’s house and headed to my room, passing by my mother, whose odd and hopeful expression did not make sense until I opened the bedroom door to find Lisa lounging on her bed, dressed in her First Communion dress, which was now much too small for her.
Little Women
was carefully laid out on her lap, and a cup brimming with Nestlé iced tea was perched elegantly on her nightstand in a Boston Bruins hockey mug. I was shocked to observe there was even a doily under the mug and I thought it would have been less embarrassing if had I caught my sister masturbating.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, in a gentle voice, on the chance my older sister had just suffered a stroke.

“Today I shall be reading my literature book,” she said in her full-blown Hallmark movie English accent.

“Your literature book.”

“And . . . I love it already. I know this book shall change my life.”

“Is it making you say the word ‘shall’?’

To truly understand the sight I was witnessing, you have to
remember that Lisa was born with a street hockey stick in her thick baby fists. My childhood memories of Lisa had been filled with episodes like: her insistence at age seven that she wanted a crew cut to match the neighborhood boys; how she loved the Patriots football jersey she wore almost daily from age eleven to thirteen (the last year, she had to operate on the thing with wide scissor cuts in order to still fit it over her growing body); and how occasionally she slept with her softball trophies dangerously tucked in her bed, until the day she rolled over wrong, proved Mom right, and got four stitches on her ass cheek. I laughed, telling her the trophy was for being Number One Dumb Ass, just seconds before receiving a nasty punch to my arm, which left a bruise the size and shape of two conjoined plums.

She clutched the Louisa May Alcott book to her breast, and sighed, “I was just introduced to Jo,” she said. My sister had been talking about Jo for months. Mom had said there was a girl named Jo in the book and Lisa would relate to her, so Lisa had convinced herself that Jo must be the carbon copy of Jo on the TV show
The Facts of Life.
I stayed planted in the doorway, not daring to get the Social Studies book on my bed, and deciding it would be much safer to risk not finishing my homework on the bus. I took a step backward out of the room, and she went back to her reading.

Later that afternoon I saw, much to my mother’s heartbreak, Lisa had returned to her scrappy football jersey, and wrapped the book in her communion dress, then tossed it into the trash. It seems that
Little Women
was not the tale of awakening lesbianism for which she had hoped.

I had never seen Lisa fret before, so it was a little disconcerting. She darted about the rec hall, Eddie occasionally swatting and shooing her as if she were a fly whizzing by him as he arranged his beautiful centerpieces on all of the tables. The rec hall was completely transformed, and as dusk approached, the tiny twinkle lights threaded in the rafters made the rec hall appear roofless with a billion stars out. If only the rec hall, now a restaurant, could remain roofless. Despite
all the progress, there was still much to be done to have the exterior ready by tomorrow when Lisa planned to debut her restaurant.