The Girls of August (8 page)

“Is she dead?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

“Wouldn’t that just beat all?”

“Damn, she’s got a good body,” deep-voiced Rachel said from behind us.

Barbara stepped up to the bed and put her hand close to Baby’s mouth. “Nope. Not
dead. Just a typical teenager’s sleep.” And then she held the pot an inch from Baby’s
ear.
Wham
!

I feared that perhaps Baby had gone deaf overnight, because she simply sighed, opened
her eyes, shot us a dazzling smile, and murmured, “Oh. Hi. Hello, girls.” She looked
around, appearing profoundly bemused, and asked, “What time is it?”

“Noon, you lazy butt,” Rachel lied. “Now get out of bed and into your swimsuit. There
are rays to catch and wine to drink.”

“Y’all are the best,” Baby cooed. She stood, stretched her arms over her head, arched
her back, yawned, and seemed utterly unfazed by our two-gal kitchen pot band. Then,
in a split second, a sudden glint of glee lighting her face, she whipped off her
nightshirt—to our collective relief she wore a polka-dot bikini underneath it—and
ran past us, shouting, “Last one in the water is a rotten egg!”

We heard the front door open and slam. The three of us looked at one another, astounded
and, if I were honest, even a little bit envious. The child seemed to seize life
in ways that had long escaped us.

“What the hell,” Barbara said, taking the pot lid from me. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”

I was the rotten egg but only because as Barbara, Rachel, and I hurried out the
door I suddenly became light-headed, as if all this sun and sand and glimmering water
were exacting a strange toll on me. So I slowed down and made my way to the water’s
edge, steadying myself as the girls splashed in the waves. Baby bodysurfed and I
called out, “You best watch out for stingrays, hitting the bottom like that.”

She scudded, facedown, across the sand, the waves lapping over her. Then she jumped
to her feet and spun around, ignoring my admonition.

I waded into the ocean, making my way over to Rachel and Barbara, who were both
watching her. “What do you think?” I asked, realizing that we weren’t even twenty-four
hours in and already Baby had driven us crazy, made us love her, and then driven
us crazy again.

“I think she’s fucking nuts,” Rachel said.

“She’s exactly what Teddy deserves,” Barbara said, splashing water. “That piece of
tail is going to give him a heart attack.”

For some reason I found this wildly amusing. I started laughing and the mirth took
hold. I could not stop.

Rachel said, “No shit. Here lies Teddy Patterson, killed by his own wayward pecker.”
And then she and Rachel joined in my laughter. We were three howler monkeys being
jostled by the waves.

“Hey! Hey!” Baby shouted above the surf. She stood at the water’s edge, hands on
hips, lips in a perfect pout. “What’s so funny?”

“You would never understand,” Rachel said, evidently not caring if she hurt Baby’s
feelings.

“It’s an old joke,” I said, my laughter slowly stuttering to a halt. “It’s nothing.”

Barbara whispered, “Yeah, don’t worry your pretty little empty head over it.” Then
she kicked up her heels and floated on her back, bobbing amid the swells, her platinum-streaked
hair spreading out like a corona. “Ahhhh. Glorious!”

Baby appeared to be thinking something over. And I could tell what it was. Fight?
Or flight? But after a few moments of apparent contemplation, she chose neither.
Instead she joined us. “I just love you guys!” she sang, repeating the previous night’s
mantra as she splashed into the water.

It was as though we were trapped in an episode of
The Twilight Zone
, all damned to repeat our roles: Rachel was about to blister Baby, Barbara was
determined to ignore her, Baby was being obsequious, and I was the rescuer, playing
Baby’s protector.

“I want to thank you, Baby,” I said as she approached. “This place is beautiful. Thanks
for sharing it with us.”

She nodded, smiling, but her eyes filmed over. “My parents are dead. My big sister
lives in Paris, France. And my little brother is trying to break into the movies
in Hollywood. So Teddy and I are the only two who ever come out here anymore. That’s
kinda sad, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I do,” I said, trying to stay upright in the waves, and wondering if
she was toying with us. Arabic-speaking? Pharmacy degree? A sister in Paris and a
brother in Hollywood? “Do your brother and sister have any kids?”

“Nope! Not my brother. He’s too busy becoming a heartthrob. My sister has three kids
but they’re all Frenchies and look down their noses at me.”

“Well then,” Barbara said, still floating on her back, “it looks to me like you and
Teddy have the whole damn place to yourselves. Not bad! By the way,
parlez-vous
Français
?”

“
Leh, leh. Tatakellum Arabi
. I told you.”

At least that’s what it sounded like she said. And then she dove underwater, doing
only God knows what. I scanned the swells. No sign of her.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rachel said.

“What did she just say?” Barbara asked. “It actually did sound like freaking Arabic.”

“She’s just fucking with us,” Rachel said.

I started to count, panic rising one number at a time. I was on seventy-two when
Baby shot out of the water as if from a cannon and gleefully shouted, “Wheeeeee!”

Relief surged through me, but so did resentment. I didn’t like that I was being thrown
into the role of baby-sitter.

Rachel swam over. “I’m going to strangle her,” she said, wiping salt water out of
her eyes. “Just you wait and see.”

After our swim we were famished, so we threw together an easy brunch. Cheese omelets,
grits, toast, strawberries dusted in sugar and blessed with a hint of Cointreau.
And then, of course, there was that pitcher of Bloody Marys. Just what the doctor
ordered.

Baby—who had been toasted a gorgeous golden brown by the morning sun—was preening,
overly helpful, in her newfound role of I-know-where-everything-is-located.

Barbara cheerfully swilled booze and made sure our glasses never ran dry.

Rachel wasn’t as grumpy as she had been earlier in the morning, but she seemed preoccupied,
unable to shake off whatever mental baggage she’d dragged with her from her real
life all the way to Tiger Island. She pulled a stool over to the butcher block where
I sliced and diced, staring into space, her eyes blue with distance.

I stepped over to the stove, poured the whipped eggs into a sizzling pan, and promised
myself that no matter the temporary cost, I would get to the bottom of whatever was
eating the good Mrs. Oliver Greene.

“Remember that crazy old haunted house we rented down in Florida?” Barbara asked
as she squeezed a lime wedge into her Bloody Mary.

“Oh, yeah…what was that place called?” I asked, grating a wedge of sharp cheddar.

“What place was that?” Baby asked.

“Started with an
s
…” Barbara snapped her fingers as if that would jog her memory.

Baby doused her Bloody Mary with several jabs of Tabasco, paused, and shouted, “Sanibel!”

“No, no, the other side of the state…Summer House…Summer Hope. Summer Day…no, no,
no wait, I’ve got it! Summer Haven!” Barbara crowed.

I sprinkled the cheese on the giant omelet that I planned to cut into fourths. “That’s
right. Old haunted house. Remember, Rachel?” I asked, trying to pull her out of her
funk and into the present.

“How could I forget? I swear to God that ghost got in bed with me one night. The
horny bastard tried to spoon me.” Rachel reached across for a scrap of cheese and
I slapped away her hand.

“Blame it on the ghost!” Barbara said.

“Ooooo, paranormal sex!” Baby trilled, arms akimbo.

Rachel glanced over at her and actually chuckled. “I almost wet the bed, it scared
me so bad.”

“You woke up the whole house. Remember? We were all scurrying around and bumping
into each other. And then”—I reached for the spatula and shimmied it under the sun-yellow
omelet—“Barbara, you grabbed that croquet mallet out of the corner by the front door!”

“And Melinda grabbed the basket of balls as if she was going to pummel the ghost,
one ball at a time!”

We all started laughing except for Baby because, I knew, it was one of those you-had-to-be-there
moments. Tears streamed down Barbara’s face. As she wiped them off, she said, “Melinda
and I were going to crack that ghost’s head wide open.”

Baby, despite what she’d said about Melinda the night prior, seemed unprepared for
us to talk about her again. She stared down into her drink, her smooth brow furrowed,
as though she were searching for a way out of the conversation.

I felt a pang of regret. This was Baby’s house, yet Melinda had become the new ghost
in the room.

But, proving she could occasionally behave like a grown-up, Baby recovered. She
twirled her celery stick and licked the Bloody Mary off it as though it were a Popsicle.
“And then what happened?”

“We all ran outside,” Rachel said.

“In our jammies…and they didn’t amount to much.” I slid the omelet onto a sea-green
serving plate.

“I don’t even think I was wearing
that
. I remember grabbing a towel,” Barbara said, topping off her drink.

“That’s right!” The memory flooded back. “You held that mallet in one hand and kept
the towel around you with the other. And Melinda…” I shook my head. “She said in
that sweet, soft south Georgia drawl of hers, ‘I swear to Jesus, I’ll beam the fucker.’”

“Oh my God, that was a funny night!” Rachel said, and I thought her eyes teared up
with mirth, or was it because life is so bittersweet? She looked at Baby and spoke
directly to her, as if she were trying to teach her something. “We stayed out on
the beach all night. We made Maddy go in for wine and chips.”

“And she took the mallet with her.”

“Yes, she did,” Rachel said, still speaking to Baby. “And we fell asleep under the
stars, that wonderful breeze blowing over us. And you know what?”

Baby’s deep eyes were cat-wide. She bit down on the celery stick and chewed. “Nuh-uh.
What?”

“None of us were afraid. We were the girls of August. Melinda. Maddy. Barbara. And
me. We were like our own fabulous, light-up-the-sky constellation. And we knew that
out there under the stars, with that big ocean singing to us, no one was going to
break us up. Not man or beast or ghost. Nobody.”

Baby didn’t say a word. She just nodded. Like the rest of us, she probably didn’t
know if the words were a condemnation of God for having taken Melinda from us, or
just something Rachel felt like getting off her chest.

“Well,” I said, wiping my hands on a dish towel and lifting my glass, “here’s to
Melinda. Gone but not forgotten. Always a part of us. Forever loved.”

“Hear! Hear!” Barbara said. “God, I miss her.”

And we clinked our glasses and we drank. Baby too. And that’s how it was supposed
to be. Because if she truly wanted to be one of us, from the very get-go, she was
going to have to deal with Melinda’s ghost. It was one thing to say she felt as though
they were sisters. It was entirely something else to live that sisterhood.

After brunch, Rachel and Barbara stacked the plates in the dishwasher and Baby wiped
down the counters. As the cook, I put up my feet and watched them work.

“You know, I think that house on Dauphin Island was one of the best we ever stayed
in,” I said.

“You mean that old hippie joint?” Rachel looked over her shoulder at me.

“Yep.”

“And why is that?” asked Barbara.

“Because nothing in it made sense. It was as if somebody would get stoned and say,
‘Hey, there’s a great place for a window,’ and then they’d cut a hole in the wall
with a hacksaw.”

“How does that make it a nice place?” asked Baby, who then proceeded to suck something
off her thumb.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It was original. The place was relaxing, no pretense.”

“Don’t forget the weed,” Rachel said.

“Ooooo, the weed!” Barbara spun around, her eyes merry. “Mel found a bag of it under
the deck. Remember? Somebody must have dropped it.”

“Mel got stoned and went up on the widow’s walk, ripped off her shirt, and shouted,
‘I am queen of the world!’ I thought that old man next door was going to have a coronary,”
I said.

“Actually, I think it extended his life.” Rachel wiped her hands on a dish towel
that was the same sea green as all the plates. “That girl had a body that could
stop a train.”

“She sure enough did,” Barbara said.

Baby’s face clouded over. She opened her mouth to say something but then seemed to
reconsider.

“And that’s the house where you, Rachel, pulled on your underpants and suddenly
screamed bloody murder and we all ran in there and you were pulling them off, hollering,
‘It’s biting me! It’s biting me!’” I could barely get out the words because I was
laughing so hard.

“What was biting you?” Baby asked.

“A tiny scorpion, but you would have thought it was a ten-foot-tall rabid tarantula,”
said Barbara.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said, “but you let a scorpion sting your labia and see how loud
you scream.”

“I will never forget as long as I live you lying in that hammock with an ice pack
on your coochie!” I got up from the table and hugged Rachel. Barbara joined in.

“You all are crazy, but I love you,” Rachel said.

Baby the Outsider—in her own house, no less—stood there watching, and I felt certain
she was waiting for one of us to wave her over, but the invitation never came. As
Rachel planted a kiss first on my head and then on Barbara’s, Baby said, “I’m going
for a walk. Anybody want to join me?”

“Not me. I’m pooped,” Rachel said, holding on to us.