Camptown Ladies (9 page)

Erica was a dangerous spitfire, who carried just over the safety level limits of butane; an attractive Bic lighter in a stunning fashion color, one that always seemed just shy of torching a person if they irritated her. She cranked hard on that flint when someone had the misfortune to annoy her, but there was something about Erica that stopped her just short of being a bitch. Erica was ridiculously attractive and savvy, and I often thought that had she also been charming, it would have been overkill, and I might not have approved of her being my brother’s girlfriend. Too much of a good thing.

It was her cocky and caustic edge that fascinated me from the day we met. I had called her business, looking for a contractor, by checking the Pink Pages to support the gay and lesbian community in my new neighborhood. Somehow, Erica had managed to convince me she was the woman for the job by insulting me over the phone. The balls on this woman, the irritating and unfathomable nerve.

Before I hired her as my contractor, I had one demand of my own: I wanted to work on my house with her. Erica answered with a stipulation of her own: “Will you take orders even though you’re paying me?” This would have been a warning sign from anyone else, but, looking back on it now, I realized we had built a friendship as she barked orders at me.

Vince had a crush on her the second they met, and I warned him he was barking up the wrong tree, that while she looked like a straight girl, she was one of my people, but Vince convinced himself he could turn her, as I convinced him he was an idiot. After months of letting both of us think she was gay, I busted her when she showed up one day in a cute sundress. (To her credit, Erica never curtailed her truck driver language while wearing a dress.)

Concerns about Vince aside, having her join our Camptown
Ladies project would be just what we needed, since Lisa was clueless about the larger jobs. I knew from experience that Erica could assemble a crew to whip the place into shape. More importantly, Lisa was in her frequently wrong, never in doubt mode, and this can prove dangerous, especially with nail guns lying around. With so many roofs needing to be replaced, and special roofs at that, and log walls to be replaced and electrical and plumbing to be added or completely updated, we were in dire need of someone we could trust. Truth be told, our greatest building achievement so far had been Dad’s woodpile.

Eddie, however, was cruising along just fine, except for the fact that we were doing everything backward and the structure needed to be addressed before the cosmetics. Lisa had the money to burn, so Eddie was doing what he could to prep the rec hall and ready his decorating decisions. Today I was stopping by the rec hall on my way to get the leaf blower take another crack at managing the pine needles in the worst buried sites.

Lisa was standing at the entrance of the rec hall, testing the ice cream inventory of Mom’s store by chomping on a vanilla filledwaffle cone thing and beaming at Eddie as if she had sired him. Lisa has a way of doing this; of claiming something with such convincing authority that I knew I would soon have to fight the urge to put my arm around her and offer the proud papa a cigar for the fine job she did raising her son to be a decorator.

I stood next to Lisa at the doorway, marveling at the site of Eddie on all fours. He was humming “It’s Raining Men” while he scrubbed the urine-stained corners of the hall as Cindy-Lu sat nearby, hurt and disappointed that Eddie was ruining the urine perfume they had bonded over. She whined and he leaned until he was nose to nose with her.

“I know, my darling. But the world doesn’t understand the beauty of these things as we do. Trust me, once the boys start drinking, there will be plenty more where that came from.”

Perhaps the only thing gayer than watching a man with a pink boa scrub urine stains while singing “It’s Raining Men” is . . . well . . . my sister and I decided there just isn’t anything gayer. Eddie cheerfully
worked with his nine-pound supervisor at his elbow until the bleach smell drove Cindy-Lu to the farthest corner of the hall, disgusted by his choices.

Lisa said, “I don’t like my dog hanging around this filthy floor. She sleeps with me, and a Miniature Doberman is like a heat-seeking missile in bed. I sleep naked, so sometimes I wake up with her so buried in my crotch that she’s wearing my labia like a Princess Leia wig.”

“Charming,” Eddie said.

“Keep singing, Eddie. I love that song. If only it could rain men, huh?”

“Tell me about it, honey!” he said.

Lisa said, “It would be great. The fall would kill most of them.” Pleased with herself, she took a dramatic lick from her ice cream.

“What the hell are you eating now?” I asked her.

“It’s called a Choco-Taco. Very yummy.”

She turned the ice cream taco vertically and shoved it in my face and shouted, “Look, a vagina!”

I pushed it away, but not before she had nailed my nose with vanilla.

“I had Mom order these for the dykes. I got Drumsticks and Bomb Pops for the boys—they’re shaped like penises and butt plugs. Oh, and Hoodsie Cups. Despite the boring shape, there is just about nothing gayer than a Hoodsie Cup.”

We both looked at Eddie, who was wiggling his ass in time with his scrubbing and humming. I should have known better than to point out when Lisa was wrong, but I tried, and she shoved the Choco-Taco in my face again.

“Licking something taco shaped is the only thing that will cure you,” she said.

I pushed it away again, but she shoved it into my face harder; this time, the ice cream entered my nostrils. I tried to push her away but it was pointless, she was too strong, and I was in a weakened state, choking and laughing. Years of different variations of the same struggle flashed before my eyes. The pool fight, the car fight, the beanbag fight, the shopping cart fight. They all ended the same: Lisa wins.

“I’m doing this for your own good!” Lisa said, with such certainty I almost believed her. Still, I managed to bat her hand away.

Eddie yelled over his shoulder at me, “She’s right, honey, it’s for your own good, just lick it.”

“Girls! Stop that out there!” Mom yelled from inside the store.

Eddie giggled, “Your mom called me a girl again.”

“There’s no window. How the fuck does she do that?” Lisa said, letting me go at the sight of Mom rounding the doorway.

“Language!” Mom yelled.

I wiped the chocolate and vanilla from my mouth onto my sleeve. I whispered, “She can hear through walls.”

“Looking good, Eddie!” Lisa shouted, the thunderous echo making Cindy-Lu cower as Lisa stuffed the rest of the ice cream in her mouth, despite my nostril contact. “Work it, boy! Bottoms up, elbows down, you dog!!”

Eddie delicately put a rubber-gloved hand on his hip, “Girl, I just know you’re not talking to me like that.”

I said, “Lisa, what would you think about hanging an Italian Horn somewhere in here for luck?”

She answered, “I suppose it’s less creepy than the string of rosary beads Aunt Aggie wants.”

Eddie piped, “You Catholic types are weird.”

“Amen,” Lisa said.

Eddie said, “I don’t get it. The whole drink the wine and eat the host.”

“Only if she’s hot,” Lisa said, before she walking off. She thumped me on the back, hard, and said: “Well, I’m off to stock the pond with some fin-less brown trout.”

Eddie waved his rag, “Isn’t the pond that way?”

I laughed at him. “She says that whenever she has to go to the bathroom.”

Eddie shook his head in disgust. “Dykes,” he said as he lovingly scrubbed a petite spot of urine.

It felt good to laugh again, and as I scanned the edge of the campground the trees waved, laughing with me. I would always keep my Tree-as-Magic-8-Ball religion to myself. It was a bizarre part of
me and I needed it . . . just like I needed to hear Mom and Aggie snapping at each other over what shelf the plastic tablecloths should be stored on. I needed to see how Eddie would visually transform a smelly teen recreation hall into my sister’s dream. I needed to watch my Dad fester, dramatically guarding his wood like the insane man that comes barreling out his screen door when neighborhood kids make the unfortunate choice to cut across his lawn. I needed to hear Lisa barking orders like an insane short-order-cook-football-coach, using insults and sarcasm to motivate her weary and mostly unskilled team. I needed my brother and I to forget two women; one who was coming back too soon, and the one I realized I’d never had.

Seven

Testing For Soft Spots

I knew Vince wanted Erica to come, for all the wrong reasons. He looked like a heartbroken, but hopeful, boy, with dreams of still winning the girl. “This might be our only chance. I would have never gotten her back with Erica in California and me in here in Rhode Island.”

It was then I feared the trees had been signaling doom, and I had misread it. “Remember, Erica is coming to help us with the Campground,” I said.

“It’s a long way to come for a contracting job when she’s doing so well out there.” He was trying to stifle a grin. It was a grin I hadn’t seen in so long.

I tried again, “She’s doing it as a favor to Lisa. That’s probably all, Vince.”

Still, I supposed there was a chance, since it really didn’t make any sense for her to take the job. She’d be leaving lucrative clients out west, to come across the company to be closer to someone she just broke up with, yet she had decided she’d be the lead contractor of a campground? Maybe there was still a chance for her and Vince, but I knew better than to encourage him since, by the look on his face, he was already counting on it.

A few days later, Erica and what she called her “scouting” crew of three roared into Camptown Ladies in a rented, flatbed, diesel engine truck, outfitted with ladders and tools and some other heavy gear I
could not identify. Since Lisa and Mom had forced me to eat a meatball sandwich for lunch, I did a quick face check in the mirror before heading outside to greet her. It had been over eight months since I had seen Erica at my Uncle Tony’s wedding to Lorn’s mother. Since then, the phone calls between us had dwindled down to nothing, the last few times with me doing the calling. Erica had been all business over the phone, except for Erica always getting in one cold comment about Lorn, “Dump her before she makes a fool out of you.”

“Too late,” I would say, and she had been right.

Erica hopped out of the truck, her hair stylishly pulled back from her face by the expensive sunglasses perched on her head. Erica was dwarfed by the doublewide truck, making her look nothing like the mighty woman I knew she was. In strength, her personality was the level of my sister, though her barbed comments were a bit more tasteful than Lisa.

I could see by her hands-on-hips pose she was already accessing the structure of the Camp Store and the tired rec hall with the oddly sparkling cement floor. She dropped her hands from her hips when she spotted me.

“Hey,” I said.

Erica just stared at me, as if I were a stranger.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, scanning for meatball on my shirt.

“Italian’s aren’t supposed to be thin,” she said, disapprovingly.

“I’m still fatter than you, and I just had a meatball sandwich,” I said.

“Well, you look terrible.”

Her concern flustered me a bit.

“Well, you look great, as usual, bitch.” I said, and she did.

Erica was a gorgeous woman. It was no wonder Vince had fallen for her the first day they met, right after she’d insulted his shirt (and deservedly so). Done deal; he was hooked. I remember thinking back then: Who wouldn’t be, poor bastard. I always expected to see a trail of men following behind her like ducklings, and my brother expected this, too. Lisa had warned me back then, “Vince aimed too high this time.” When I reached Erica, she surprised me with an awkward hug.