Summer Sisters (31 page)

“I can’t afford therapy.”

“I’m sure Abby would help.”

“Is that a jab?”

“Does it feel like one?”

“Yes.” After a long pause Vix said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Friends.”

“Both of them?”

“I’d rather not discuss it. My shrink is helping me understand that my involvement was inappropriate. In my quest for family I mistook them for … Oh, what’s the difference? Remember when John Lennon was killed? Remember how Lamb fell apart?”

“Not really.”

“Well, he did. Flying me in from New Mexico so I could keep the midnight vigil with him. Also inappropriate, in case you’re wondering.”

“Are you sure your shrink is … qualified?”

“Can anyone ever be sure? It depends on the results, doesn’t it?”

“I guess …” Another long pause then Vix said, “I thought you were in Mexico, at a monastery. Why didn’t you let me know you were on the Vineyard?”

“You sound angry. Are you angry?”

“Why would I be angry?”

“You tell me. I mean, last I heard you had no interest in living on the Vineyard.”

“Neither did you … you haven’t set foot on it since you were …”

“Seventeen,” Caitlin said.

Vix couldn’t ask any of the questions running through her head.
Have you seen him? Is he going with anyone? Does he ask about me? “
So … have you seen Von?”

Caitlin laughed. She knew damn well what Vix was really asking. “Of course. Von and his ridiculous wife. And Bru and Trisha and everyone else. I haven’t turned into a hermit. I’m just taking a break … a reality check kind of thing.” She paused, then said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

“He should be okay.”

“I’m glad.”

“He’s got a … friend,” Vix told her. “Frankie. She calls him
Chick Pea.”

“Oh God …” They both laughed. “I miss you, Vix.”

“I miss you, too. Come to New York for a weekend.”

“You come up here.”

“I don’t think so. Not now.”

“Maybe over the summer?”

“Maybe.”

41

T
HE NEXT TIME
they talked it was late June. Caitlin called Vix at the office. “You have to come up.” She was using her breathy princess voice, the one she’d picked up in Europe, halfway between Jackie O’s and Princess Di’s. “I’m getting married at Lamb’s house.”

“Married?”

“Yes. And you have to be my Maid of Honor. It’s only appropriate, don’t you think?”

“I guess that depends on who you’re marrying.”

“Bru,” Caitlin answered, and suddenly she sounded like herself again. “I’m marrying Bru. I thought you knew.”

Vix forced herself to swallow, to breathe, but she felt clammy and weak anyway. She grabbed the cold can of diet Coke from the corner of her desk and held it against her forehead, then moved it to her neck, as she jotted down the date and time of the wedding. She doodled all around it while Caitlin chatted, until the whole page was filled with arrows, crescent moons, and triangles, as if she were back in sixth grade.

“Vix?” Caitlin said. “Are you still there? Do we have a bad connection or what?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“So you’ll come?”

“Yes.” The second she hung up she made a mad dash for the women’s room where she puked her guts out in the stall. She had to call Caitlin back, tell her there was no way she could do this. What could Caitlin be thinking? What was
she
thinking when she agreed?

When she came out her boss, Angela, was leaning over the sink taking out her contacts. Vix splashed her face with cold water and rinsed out her mouth. “Victoria …” Angela began, squinting at her. “You look terrible. You’re not coming down with that bug, are you?”

“I don’t know … maybe.”

“Go home,” Angela said, “before you infect the whole office.”

She staggered home in the record heat. Her Bag Lady was singing,
I am woman, hear me roar …
She stuck her paper cup in Vix’s face but Vix brushed it away and the coins scattered on the sidewalk. “Bitch …” she called after Vix.

“I give you money every day,” Vix shouted, “so watch who you’re calling a bitch!” The Bag Lady gave her the finger as someone else stopped to help retrieve her coins.

Hours later, Maia and Paisley found Vix sitting on the floor of the apartment. She was surrounded by photo albums and piles of loose pictures, wearing only a tank top and Calvin briefs. The fan was turned to high but it pointed away from her to keep the photos from blowing. Pat Benatar was singing on the CD.
Heartbreaker … love taker …

“What?” Maia asked.

“She’s marrying Bru,” Vix said.

“Who’s marrying Bru?”

“Caitlin.”

“Jesus!”

“She wants me to be her Maid of Honor.”

Paisley and Maia looked at one another. “She can’t be serious,” Maia said.

“She’s serious,” Vix told them.

Paisley said, “I think I’ll send out for Thai.” She searched for the phone, finding it in the basket where they ripened their bananas.

When the food arrived they sat around the coffee table, all three of them stripped down to their underwear with their hair pinned up. “Can I speak frankly?” Maia asked, munching on a spring roll.

“Please …” Paisley said.

But Maia was waiting to hear from Vix. “Go ahead,” Vix told her, knowing what was coming.

“It’s time for you to get over him, Victoria. Once and for all.”

“I thought I was supposed to get over
her.”

“Him, her … get over the whole mess.”

Vix dug her chopsticks into the pad Thai.

Maia took this as permission to continue. “And for God’s sake, call her up and tell her you’re not coming to the wedding. You have other plans. You’re … I don’t know … going to Hawaii with some gorgeous guy. And the next time she decides to get married and wants you for her Maid of Honor she should give you more notice.”

Vix kept on eating, sampling the curried vegetables, then the pineapple shrimp.

“You’re not thirteen anymore,” Maia said, growing frustrated. “She has no power over you. And I just don’t see the point in all … this.” She pointed to the albums, the loose photos. “In surrounding yourself with these … memories.”

Paisley touched Maia’s arm. “Look …” she said, “being a member of the wedding party could be therapeutic for Victoria. It could offer closure … you know?”

“What closure?” Maia asked. “It’ll just mean more photo ops, more heartache.” She shook her head at Vix.

Maia

S
HE’S ALWAYS KNOWN
Victoria’s fascination with the NBO girl would come to no good. From the day Victoria moved into their room at Weld South and set out those photos she knew.
Go ahead and laugh
, she tells Paisley when they discuss it.
I knew!

She disagrees with Paisley completely. Victoria should not go to this wedding. And really, what kind of guy marries his longtime girlfriend’s best friend? She’ll do everything in her power to keep Victoria from going to the Vineyard, short of tying her up and sitting on her, which, come to think of it, might not be a bad idea.

Paisley

S
HE ADMITS
, it’s a shocker. But it’s not the first time in the history of the world something like this has happened. It probably happens more often than they know. Only not to their friends. She disagrees with Maia one hundred percent. Victoria
needs
to be at this wedding.
Needs
to experience it. That’s the only way she’ll ever be free of them. Not that Victoria is listening to a word either she or Maia have to say on the subject. Her mind is already made up, was probably made up at the moment Caitlin asked her to come.

F
OUR WEEKS LATER
Caitlin, her hair flying in the wind, met Vix at the tiny Vineyard airport. Vix spotted Caitlin from her window as soon as they landed but felt glued to her seat.

“Going on to Nantucket with us?” the flight attendant asked and suddenly Vix realized she was the only passenger still on the plane. Embarrassed, she grabbed her bag and hustled down the steps onto the tarmac. Caitlin found her in the crowd and waved frantically. Vix headed toward her, shaking her head because Caitlin was wearing a T-shirt that said
simplify, simplify, simplify
. She was barefoot, as usual, and Vix was betting her feet would be as dirty as they were that first summer.

Caitlin held her at arm’s length for a minute. “God, Vix …” she said, “you look so … grownup!” They both laughed, then Caitlin hugged her. She smelled of seawater, suntan lotion, and something else. Vix closed her eyes, breathing in the familiar scent, and for a moment it was as if they’d never been apart. They were still Vixen and Cassandra, summer sisters forever. The rest was a mistake, a crazy joke.

PART FIVE
Steal the Night
1990–1995

42

T
HEY SAY WHEN
you’re about to die your whole life passes before your eyes like a movie run in slow motion. That night, at Caitlin’s prenuptial dinner at The Black Dog, Vix feels her whole life passing before her and wonders if maybe this is it. If this is how it’s all going to end, standing in Caitlin’s shadow, celebrating her marriage to Bru.

Maia and Paisley are wrong. Caitlin isn’t someone to get over. She’s someone to come to terms with, the way you have to come to terms with your parents, your siblings. You can’t deny they ever happened. You can’t deny you ever loved them, love them still, even if loving them causes you pain.

A commemorative T-shirt is handed out to every guest entering the party, featuring a screened picture of the bride and groom looking over their shoulders, each of them smiling broadly, a shared towel covering their naked backsides. The caption reads:

Caitlin and Bru—July 31, 1990

Nice of them to choose Vix’s twenty-fifth birthday for their wedding date. “That way you’ll never forget our anniversary,” Caitlin told her. As if …

Earlier that day, Abby stopped by her room at the B&B where she and Lamb have put up some of their guests. “Can I come in?” she asked, knocking on Vix’s door. Vix threw on her robe. When she opened the door Abby hugged her. “Oh, Vix … I hope this isn’t too hard for you.”

“I’ve been through worse,” Vix said.

Abby walked around the room straightening the sea-shell picture on the wall, touching the lamp, picking up the flashlight from the bedside table. “Do you think she knows what she’s doing?”

“I don’t know,” Vix said.

Abby clicked the flashlight on and off a couple of times. “Will he be enough for her? Will the island be enough? Or is she just playing some game?”

“I don’t know that either.”

Abby dropped the flashlight on the bed and took Vix’s hand. “How about you … will you be all right tonight?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“And tomorrow … at the wedding?”

Vix nodded. “Don’t worry.”

Abby kissed her. “That’s my girl.”

Abby

W
HAT CAN SHE DO
? You have to be happy for your children even when you don’t understand their decisions. Lamb is as surprised as she is, but pleased. Of all the choices Caitlin might have made over the years, this one doesn’t seem so bad to him. And it’s close to home. After the tragedy of losing her friends, after the monastery, this feels like a positive step. Besides, he reminds her, Vix and Bru broke up years ago. He’s sure Vix has given them her blessing.

P
HOEBE SPOTS
V
IX
across the room and waves her over. She introduces Vix to her current boyfriend, Philippe, who’s French, older, dignified. “Tacky,
n’est-ce pas?”
she asks, pulling the T-shirt over her head. She bends over, letting her hair hang to the floor, before quickly straightening up and flipping it back. Then she belts the T-shirt over her long denim skirt. With her Santa Fe silver Phoebe still looks stylish.