Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (13 page)

“I see it’s the usual horde of campers,” he said.

It was another joke between them. Three weeks into camp and almost no one came for their activities. Rafting just wasn’t as sexy as extreme mountain biking, it would appear. Well, there was a small group of boys who appeared now and then, but according to Eric, they weren’t there for the boats.

If it hadn’t been a no-flirt zone, Bridget would have batted her eyes and said, “Well, why
are
they here, do you think?” But she didn’t.

“Why are you scaring the campers away?” Bridget asked. The sun made her yawn.

“Because I don’t want to work. I want to sit on my ass.”

Bridget smiled at that. She knew how he killed himself on the soccer field. But sitting around was mostly what they did from two-thirty to five. It was shaping up to be a beautiful rhythm—drive yourself and your team relentlessly in the morning and laze about in the sunshine with the guy you loved all afternoon.

She got to her feet. She’d scrupulously worn her least sexy Speedo one-piece for the last few days, but it was dirty. Besides, today was not just any day. It was a Traveling Pants day. She had brought them back with her from her weekend at home, and their presence now lent a particular sweetness to the air even stronger than the wafting smell of honeysuckle. Today she wore them over her best green bikini. Anyway, Eric probably didn’t even notice or care. (Did he?) Why did she bother to think about it?

When she got too hot, she carefully peeled off the Pants, folded them, and put them on the dock. She shook her hair out of its braid. For her pleasure alone she did a high, arcing dive off the dock and into the lake. She plunged down deep, not stopping herself until she touched the pebbly bottom. She took her time getting back up. She had always had good lung capacity. When she surfaced, Eric was watching for her.

“What? Are you, like, a whale?”

She pretended to be offended as she bobbed there. “Thanks a lot. Eric, girls don’t mostly like to be called whales. Ask your girlfriend if you are unsure.”

“Humans aren’t supposed to stay under that long.”

“Speak for yourself.” She swam over to the row of plastic kayaks. “Hey, you want to try one of these things?”

This was a novel idea. “Sure. We might as well look like we know what we’re doing.”

She pulled a double one loose from the rocky shoreline and into the shallow water. She sat herself down in the front and put her oars into place. He followed her into the water.

As he climbed aboard he made a point of jostling the boat as much as possible, which got her laughing again. He settled in.

“I think you forgot something,” she said.

He looked around. He shrugged.

“A paddle?”

“Oh, that.” He sat back, tipping his face to the sun. “Are those really so important?” He was trying not to smile.

“I’m not sure it counts as kayaking if you just float around,” she said. But she put her paddle inside the boat and lay back herself. They floated for a while.

Even in just a week, there had been so much downtime spent together that Bridget was relaxed with him. They talked about things. It was weird to be killing time with someone about whom you felt passionate.

She’d plucked up the courage to mention Kaya, casually, at least once or twice every day. She wanted him to know she understood. She wanted him to know she respected that he had a girlfriend and she wouldn’t try to get in the way.

He lifted his head. “Bee,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Bee!”

She looked up. He sounded sort of urgent.

“What?”

“No,
bee
!”

He pointed, and she suddenly felt a buzzing around her ear. She yelped and swatted it away and it went to her other ear. She hopped up to her feet. The kayak teetered violently.

The bee went from her to him. It flew into his hair. He jumped up to his feet and caused an even greater disturbance.

She screeched, laughing. She rocked the boat, trying to stay on her feet. He shouted and rocked back. She crashed into the water first. She heard his splash soon after. When they came up they were both laughing even harder.

She sputtered and coughed the water out of her nose. “I think we really look like we know what we’re doing.”

Lena approached Annik before class. She was sweaty and sticky from the restaurant, and her feet hurt and her shirt was filthy, but she was pretty pleased with herself nonetheless. “The woman at the financial aid office at RISD said if I get my portfolio to the committee by the fifteenth of August I could still qualify for scholarship money.”

Annik smiled big. “Nicely done.”

“I warned them my dad is going to ask for his deposit money back, and I asked her to keep me enrolled anyway. She said I have to come up with a deposit by the end of this month.”

“Can you do it?”

“I just took on three more shifts at my waitressing job. I really hate it, but it pays.”

Annik clapped her on the back. Wheelchairs built up a person’s muscles, Lena decided.

“That’s what I call fighting,” Annik said appreciatively.

“Qualifying and getting are different, though,” Lena told her. “There is one full scholarship left to give out, and they have over seventy portfolios already under consideration.”

Annik looked at the ceiling. “Well. You better do something good, then.”

After class, Annik waited for Lena while she did her mopping. “Do you have an hour to spare?” she asked.

Lena figured she could call home and make an excuse. “Sure.” Effie would cover for her if necessary.

“I want to see what you can do with a longer pose. I’ll sit for you. I certainly can’t stand for you.” Annik seemed to enjoy her own joke.

Lena was timid to laugh. “Are you sure you want to?” she asked.

“I’d be happy to do it. I’ll set up over here.” She rolled over to the windows. “We’ve got about an hour left of decent light.”

Lena felt a little self-conscious setting up her easel. It was weird staring straight at your teacher, but once Lena got drawing, she became immersed. She drew without pause for thirty straight minutes. Then Annik stretched her neck a little and Lena worked for thirty more. She’d never done more than a twenty-minute pose, and it was exciting.

Her self-consciousness returned when it was time for Annik to look at her work. Annik looked at the drawing carefully, wheeling a little back and forth. Lena bit her pinky nail and waited.

“Lena?”

“Yeah?” It came out a little squeaky.

“This is not a bad drawing.”

“Thanks.” Lena knew something else was coming.

“But you didn’t draw my chair.”

“What do you mean?” Lena felt instantly embarrassed.

“I mean, you took the drawing down to my shoulders. You would certainly see a good bit of the chair at that angle, but you left it out. How come?”

Lena felt her cheeks warm. “I’m not sure,” she said almost inaudibly.

“I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” Annik said. “It’s just that the chair is a big part of who I am, you know what I mean? I have all kinds of deep and complicated feelings about it, resentments, of course, too, but it is part of me. I don’t picture myself without it. I’m surprised you left it out.”

Lena felt bad. She’d thought maybe it would seem critical of Annik if she drew the chair. She hadn’t been sure what to do about it, so without really thinking, she’d avoided it.

“You could make a really fine drawing, Lena. I can tell this is the right approach for you—portraits, long poses. I can see how deeply you respond to gestures and facial expressions. You’ll excel at it if you work hard.” Annik said it like she meant it. “But Lena?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve got to draw the chair.”

Tibby had never liked Loretta until Loretta got fired.

The main reason Tibby didn’t like her was because Tibby was too old to be in Loretta’s jurisdiction, and yet Loretta acted like she was Tibby’s babysitter anyway.

And then there was the time Loretta put Tibby’s best cashmere sweater in the dryer and shrank it so small even Katherine couldn’t wear it. Tibby knew it was petty, but she nursed a long grudge.

In spite of all that, Tibby was appalled when her parents let Loretta go. Appalled and guilty.

“It wasn’t her fault.” Tibby defended Loretta to her parents when she heard the news. “If it was anybody’s fault, it was mine for leaving the upstairs window open.”

But her parents stuck by their decision, and Tibby was left feeling horrible for Loretta. In the too many hours she spent in her cluttered room (windows safely shut), Tibby thought a lot about Loretta and missed her.

Tibby had never realized before what an easy spirit Loretta had. She hardly ever took offense at anything. She managed to defuse even the tensest Rollins family episode with her lightness and good humor. She was the master of deflecting and distracting both Nicky and Katherine from whiny behavior. This was something Tibby now sorely missed, as she listened to her mother square off and feud with Nicky day after day, sending him into paroxysms of loud brattiness. Tibby wondered how her mother had learned so little during these years of Loretta’s wise example.

One night Tibby stayed up too late and got overly weepy. She wept bitter tears of sorrow for knowing Loretta didn’t have a job anymore, for knowing it was her fault that Loretta didn’t have a job anymore, and also for never having told Loretta how great she was.

The next morning Tibby found Loretta’s address in her mother’s book. She clipped her hair in the barrettes Loretta had given her two Christmases ago, pulled on her most cheerful yellow shirt, got into her car, and set off to the far reaches of Prince George’s County. She had nothing but a map of the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and a lot of guilt to guide her.

It took her two and a half hours (one and a half spent getting lost), but the look on Loretta’s face when she saw Tibby made it worth it. Even if Tibby spent twenty-four hours getting lost on the way home.

“¡Tibby! ¡M’ija! ¿Cómo estás? ¡Dios te bendiga! ¡Ay, mira que hermosa estás! Cuéntame, ¿cómo te va?”
Loretta exploded in Spanish.

Not only did Loretta not appear to harbor any resentment; she hugged Tibby like a long-lost daughter. Loretta’s eyes filled with tears as she planted several kisses on Tibby’s face.

Tibby was still blinking in surprise when Loretta pulled her into the small house and introduced her to various family members as though they knew all about her. Loretta gestured to the pale woman on the couch in her bathrobe. “She no get up. She have”—Loretta pounded her chest in demonstration—“infection.”

That was Loretta’s sister, Tibby realized. It made Tibby feel even worse.

Tibby sat at the dining room table with Loretta, who kept patting her hand and asking exactly how Katherine was doing.

“She’s getting better so fast. She’s great. She misses you, though,” Tibby added quickly. Tibby then presented Loretta a picture of beaming Katherine in her hockey helmet, which Loretta promptly kissed. Loretta wanted to know all about Nicky, and she even wanted to be sure that certain leftovers were not spoiling in the fridge. Loretta cried a lot, both out of sadness and joy, and said many things in Spanish, which Tibby could not understand.

The thing Tibby could understand was that Loretta truly loved Katherine. She loved Nicky. She even loved Tibby, for God knew what reason. How could Tibby’s parents fire someone who loved their kids this much? It was wrong.

Loretta insisted that Tibby stay for dinner, so Tibby accepted. Then Loretta and her niece and another sister buzzed around in the kitchen for the next hour preparing a feast, while Tibby sat on the sofa with the sick sister, watching a TV show. Tibby was handed a big glass of orange soda and banned from helping in the kitchen.

Tibby watched the actors motoring away in Spanish and let her mind go. She was moved by Loretta’s capacity to love, even when her employment had ended in such a bitter way. Loretta didn’t seem concerned that the whole thing was so unfair, that Tibby’s parents had lashed out vindictively.

Some people spent their lives wallowing in resentments, and other people, like Loretta, let ill fortune wash right over them.

When the table was revealed to Tibby with a great flourish, she saw how proud Loretta was. In honor of Tibby, Loretta and her niece and sister had made steak.

Tibby tried to keep the look of alarm off her face. She was moved by this gesture. Clearly this wasn’t the kind of household where they ate steak every night. And so Tibby chewed the meat with as much vigor as was possible for a girl who had been a vegetarian since she was nine.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.
—John Keats

“L
et’s call her…Good Carmen,” Carmen said.

It was Saturday and they had spent most of the morning at the farmers’ market. Now Lena and Tibby were both lying on the deck in back of Tibby’s house, chins on hands, nodding.

“This guy who works at the hospital, you see, keeps running into this girl, this Good Carmen.” Carmen sat up in her lounge chair and crossed her legs Indian style. She breathed in the pineapple smell of Lena’s sunscreen. “Good Carmen is taking care of Valia. She’s being stoic and selfless. She’s taking care of Katherine. She’s doing it all out of the goodness of her heart. The problem is that this guy thinks Good Carmen is me.”

“Is he cute?” Tibby asked.

Carmen narrowed her eyes. “Tibby, have you been listening to anything I’m saying?”

“All of it. I just need a little context. What’s his name? What’s he like? How much do you care what he thinks?”

Carmen considered. “Well. Hmmm.” Truthfully, even thinking about him was fun. Talking about him was jubilation. “Is he cute, you ask? I mean, he’s no Ryan Hennessey, of course—”

“No, he’s not,” Tibby shot back. “He’s real, for one.”

“Yes. He is real. He does have that going for him. And yes, he is cute.” She couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

“He’s really cute,” Lena said. “I can tell. Look at you.”

“What’s his name?” Tibby asked.