Summer Sisters Read online

  Then came the dead babies, three in five years, born before they were old enough to breathe on their own. Vix and Lanie used to play The Dead Baby Game the way other kids played A, My Name is Alice, reciting the names Tawny and Ed had chosen for their babies. William Edward, Bonnie Karen, James Howard. They’d just about given up hope when Vix was born, strong and healthy, a survivor. Lanie and Lewis followed. They moved to Santa Fe where Ed landed a job selling insurance. And then they had Nathan.

  Her father used to joke about making the Millionaire’s Club, selling a million dollars’ worth of insurance in one year. Then he might win a vacation to some exotic resort, maybe even to Hawaii. If he did, he prom ised he’d take all of them. Vix dreamed about that vacation until the insurance company went under and her father was out of work for close to a year. Tawny was lucky to find a job working for the Countess. Even after Ed found a new job as the night manager at La Fonda, the old hotel on the Plaza, Tawny kept hers. “It’s hard enough to make do on both our salaries,” she’d say.

  The Countess wore suede jodhpurs, blue nail polish, and exotic jewelry. She had five dogs. Nobody knew her exact age. Tawny had to take her to AA meetings. Sometimes, when the Countess fell off the wagon, Tawny would get really mean at home.

  Vix lay in bed in the room she shared with Lanie, dreaming of the summer to come. She envisioned palm trees swaying in the breeze. She could almost feel the long, sultry nights, hear the beat of reggae music. Fantasy Island or, at the very least, Gilligan’s. She had to pinch herself to make sure it was real, that she was really going away with Caitlin Somers, that she hadn’t invented the whole thing.

  Lanie didn’t like the idea. “It’s so unfair!” she cried. “You get to do everything.”

  Lanie was probably wondering why Caitlin Somers, the biggest deal in the whole school, had invited her to spend the summer. She was wondering the same thing herself. She tried to console Lanie. “Look at it this way … you can have our room all to yourself for the whole summer. You can have friends stay overnight and everything.”

  “Can I have your Barbies?”

  “Have? No way.”

  “Use?”

  “Use … okay … if you promise you’ll keep them exactly the way they belong. And Barbie’s Dream House is off limits.”

  “No fair … that’s the best.”

  “Then no deal.”

  Lanie pouted. She and Vix shared Tawny’s dark eyes and high cheekbones, a gift from some Cherokee ancestor. But Lanie was the best looking of all of them, with Ed’s auburn hair and fair skin. “Okay … I won’t touch Barbie’s Dream House.”

  Vix was almost asleep when Lanie whispered, “If you go away you’ll miss your birthday.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll just be in a different place.”

  Phoebe never drove to Albuquerque, even when she was flying somewhere herself, so Caitlin rode down with Vix and her family in the RV, fitted for Nathan’s chair. At the airport, when Vix bent down to hug Nathan goodbye, he said, “Don’t worry … I won’t forget you,” and he gave her his lopsided smile.

  “I won’t forget you either,” she promised. As she stood up she noticed a woman staring at Nathan. She was used to the way people looked at him, with a mixture of curiosity, pity, and revulsion. They’d look away if she happened to catch their eye.

  Once they were on the plane, seated and buckled in, Vix pulled a lunch bag out of her backpack. Tawny had packed two bologna sandwiches, several juice cartons, and bags of pretzels and potato chips, as if Vix were going on a camping trip. She unfolded a note scribbled on lined paper.

  In case you don’t like the airline food. Mother

  She wasn’t sure if she was going to laugh or cry.

  “What’s that?” Caitlin asked.

  “A note from my mother.”

  “She wrote to you already?”

  Vix nodded.

  “Phoebe loves having summers off from being a mother,” Caitlin said proudly. “She’s going to the south of France. She’ll send a postcard and bring me back something great to wear.”

  Vix was thinking her mother would give anything to go to France. But the Countess never missed opera season in Santa Fe. She’d throw huge parties and Tawny would be responsible for everything.

  The plane was taxiing down the runway now, picking up speed, faster and faster until they lifted into the air. As they did Vix closed her eyes, said a prayer, and clutched the arms of her seat.

  “Wait …” Caitlin said. “Let me guess … this is your first flight.”

  “Right. And don’t ask, How is it possible in this day and age.”

  Caitlin laughed. “You’re totally different,” she said, squeezing Vix’s arm. “I like that about you.”

  Tawny

  WHAT WAS SHE THINKING, packing a lunch for Victoria? It’s not like her to fuss over her children. They have to be prepared for life and life is hard, full of disappointments. She shouldn’t have listened to Ed, shouldn’t have agreed to let Victoria go to an island, of all places, when she can’t even swim. And telling her not to worry. Worry? She’s too tired to worry. She can’t remember what it’s like not to be tired. She closes her eyes and prays to God to protect her daughter. To keep her safe. But it will never be the same. Once Victoria gets a taste of another way of life, once she spends a summer with a girl like Caitlin Somers, she’ll be lost to them, sure as a dog chews a bone. She knows it even if Ed doesn’t.

  And now the other children are pulling on her, begging for money for the gumball machine. Only Nathan is still thinking of Victoria. She can see it on his face. She’s surprised herself that Victoria just up and left him. She counts on Victoria to help out over the summer. The other two are useless, cut from a different piece of cloth. But Victoria is more like her. She does what needs to be done.

  Ed

  TAWNY EXPECTS TOO MUCH of the girl. Gives her too much responsibility. She’s still a kid, just turning twelve. The same age he was when his father died. For three years his mother’s neediness nearly suffocated him. My little man, she’d called him. Hell, he was no man. Never mind how hard he tried. And then one day, with no warning, she announces she’ll be getting married over the weekend, to a man he’s never met, a man he’s never even heard of, a widower with three children, all younger than him. Just like that.

  His stepfather hated his guts. That’s a useless kid you’ve got there, Maddy. And the kids, taking his lead, took pleasure in tormenting him.

  Is he shy?

  Nah, he’s just stupid.

  Cat got your tongue, Eddie?

  Nah, cat’s got his dick!

  For a while he quit talking at home.

  His mother said, We need him, Eddie. Try to understand. He’s got a good job. He’ll take care of us. You’ll see …

  But she was the one who took care of him and his three brats and the twins she had with him seven months after they were married. Worked herself into the grave before she hit fifty.

  Not that he’d hung around to watch. He’d enlisted at eighteen. Join Up … See the World. Sounded good to him. Anything to get away.

  All he wanted was a decent job, a family of his own, kids to love. He’d be a real father, not that he’d ever seen one in action, but he’d figure it out. Then he met Tawny, a woman who knew her mind. He liked that about her. She was no wish-wash like his mother.

  Now … hell, it’s all different. And it’s made Tawny hard. Nobody’s fault. Just the way it is.

  2

  CAITLIN DIDN’T ALWAYS tell the truth. She left things out. Sometimes, important things. She had a brother. A brother and a dog. The brother was puny for fourteen with a sad face framed by shaggy brown hair. He didn’t look anything like Caitlin, didn’t even live with her, but she swore they were from the same mother and father. She called him Sharkey.

  The father had already told Vix to call him Lamb. “As in baby sheep,” Caitlin added. “As in baaa baaa …” Maybe they had some kind of animal fixation.

  “Lamb,�
�� Vix said, trying it out. It felt weird to call a grownup, somebody’s father, Lamb. He was tall and lean, wearing Birkenstocks, jeans with an iron-on patch, and a black pocket tee. He had the same toothy smile as Caitlin, and when he held out his hand to welcome her she saw that his arms were covered in pale fuzz, lighter than the hair on his head, which was mixed with gray even though he wasn’t old-old, not that his age meant a thing to Vix. Parents were parents. They were all about the same.

  In the baggage area at Logan she identified her bag and Lamb grabbed it from the carousel. She wished she had a canvas duffel like Caitlin’s instead of her mother’s old Black Watch plaid suitcase held together by duct tape, with her name printed across it in Magic Marker.

  The dog, a black lab with a bandanna around its neck, was in the back seat of a beat-up gray Volvo wagon. The brother was in the front. “They both live with Lamb in Cambridge,” Caitlin told her, before dashing across the street, making the driver of a Toyota slam on his brakes. But Lamb didn’t say anything. He just smiled and shook his head. Tawny would have shouted, Watch where you’re going, Victoria! Do you want to get killed? Do you have any idea how much a funeral costs these days?

  “Sweetie, you old thing!” Caitlin cooed, kissing the dog on the mouth. “Hey, Vix, this is Sweetie … she’s older than Lamb in dog years. Give Vix a sniff,” she told the dog, who did exactly that, starting with her crotch. Vix felt her face redden. She shooed the dog away and crossed her legs.

  When Caitlin introduced Vix to Sharkey she said, “You better treat her right!”

  “I treat all your friends right unless they don’t get it,” Sharkey said.

  Vix vowed then and there not to be a person who didn’t get it. Whatever it was.

  The drive seemed to take forever. Lamb tapped the steering wheel, keeping time to the music on the tape deck. “Hey, Jude.” They came to a bridge with a sign that read, Feeling desperate? Call the Samaritans. It gave a phone number. Did that mean desperate enough to jump? Suddenly, a wave of homesickness washed over her. What was she doing here? Who was Caitlin, really?

  It was almost sunset as they pulled onto the ferry, another first for Vix. She’d never seen so much water in one place but Caitlin assured her this was not the ocean. Seabirds circled the boat as the ferry glided along and Caitlin warned Vix to stay alert because when they let out their stuff it went flying.

  Forty-five minutes later, when they docked, Vix sensed that this would not be the tropical island she’d conjured up in her fantasies. The night air was far from sultry, there was no reggae music, and the trees were pines and oaks, not palms.

  The phone was ringing as Lamb unlocked the door to the house. He ran for it, then handed it to Vix. “For you, kiddo.”

  “You were supposed to call,” her mother said.

  “I know, but—”

  She didn’t give Vix a chance to explain that they’d just arrived. “I expect you to do what you’re told, Victoria.”

  “I will, it’s just that …” Lamb turned on a light and Vix saw they were in the kitchen. There was an old stove, shelves but no cabinets, red linoleum on the floor, a table whose yellow paint had cracked and peeled.

  “How was the plane trip?” her mother asked.

  Caitlin was motioning for her to hurry. She pointed across the room to eerie-looking shadows dancing across the windows.

  “The plane?” Vix asked.

  “Yes, the plane,” her mother repeated.

  Caitlin threw a towel over her head and walked toward Vix, arms outstretched like a zombie. Sweetie started barking, excited by Caitlin’s antics. “The plane was okay,” she told her mother. Already, it felt like ages ago. Her first trip on a plane. She wondered if all the firsts in her life would go by so quickly, and be forgotten just as quickly.

  Phoebe

  SHE SINGS ALONG with Paul Simon as she packs her bags. Just slip out the back, Jack, Make a new plan, Stan … She twirls over to the dresser, grabs an armload of lingerie—lace bras with matching bikinis, long satin nightgowns, teddies. She dumps everything onto her Habitat, a sleek, white, four-sided bed topped by a Mylar mirror.

  She’s always had wanderlust. Not like Caity, who never wants to go anywhere unless it’s to be with Lamb. She’s beginning to think it was a mistake to take her away from him all those years ago. Of course, if Caity wanted, she could live with Lamb. All she’d have to do is ask. She won’t be hurt. Really. She knows she’s not a bad mother, just not a very good one. But she and Caity get along.

  Sharkey, on the other hand, is a complete mystery. Grown men she can understand, she knows what they want, what they expect, but this is something else. Maybe they’re all odd at fourteen. She’s sure he’ll appreciate her when he’s older. He’ll be glad then to have a live wire for a mother. They both will be.

  Funny about this girl Caity took away for the summer. Another of her impulsive decisions? Last year’s friend lasted just ten days. Ten days and she’d flown home, and as far as she knew Caity hadn’t given her a second thought. After the summer, when she’d asked What happened? Caity told her, She just didn’t get it.

  Get what, Caity?

  Come on, Phoeb … you know.

  But she didn’t. Ah well, it wasn’t her problem, was it? Let Lamb work it out. Ten months a year is enough to be a parent. Everyone needs time off to rejuvenate.

  Tonight she’ll be in New York, tomorrow night, Paris.

  3

  IT WAS THE KIND OF SUMMER you don’t write home about. Vix didn’t exactly lie, but like Caitlin, she began to practice selective truth telling. What her family didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  The house was dark and messy, a place where nobody cared how much sand was on the floor or in your bed. Caitlin called it Psycho House. Vix could see why. Their room had unpainted wooden walls, twin beds with squeaky springs, faded red bedspreads, and pillows that smelled worse than the damp sponge used to clean off the lunch tables at school. The shelves were crammed full of headless Barbies, Legos, board games with missing pieces, tennis racquets with broken strings, starfish, hermit crab shells, jars of dead insects, pyramids of rocks.

  The bathroom was down the hall. They shared it with Sharkey. When Vix sat in the claw-footed tub she could look out over Tashmoo Pond, which was a mile long. It opened into the Sound, allowing boats to come and go.

  In the pond things floated, brown things that looked like turds. Caitlin swore they weren’t but Vix wasn’t so sure. Caitlin swam every day in her purple tank suit. Vix’s suit was blue and white with red stars. She hated it. Her mother said there was no point in buying a new one if she didn’t plan on getting it wet. And she didn’t. She’d be like Sharkey. He never went anywhere near the water. He never even wore a bathing suit.

  Another thing about him and Caitlin, they hardly ever changed their clothes. But the really disgusting part was Caitlin didn’t change her underpants. Sometimes she didn’t even wear underpants. She hadn’t taken a bath or shower since they’d arrived. Her hair needed shampooing. She and Sharkey were both starting to smell of unwashed feet and something else, something Vix couldn’t identify. But it wasn’t good. If Lamb noticed, he didn’t say anything. He was so laid back he was practically horizontal.

  “He was a hippie for a while,” Caitlin told Vix. “He lived up island with all the other hippies. Some of them are famous now. Some of them are rich.”

  Vix was dying to ask the obvious but she didn’t. Nobody was going to accuse her of being a person who didn’t get it. Sometimes at the end of the day Lamb took them fishing. If they caught a blue or a bass he’d cook it on the grill, wrapped in foil, with tomatoes, green peppers, and onions. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. At first Vix wouldn’t even taste Lamb’s concoction. The closest she’d come to eating fish was tuna from a can. Lamb didn’t mind. He’d say, “No problem, kiddo … make yourself a peanut butter sandwich instead.” After all, Sharkey didn’t eat fish either. He ate only Cheerios.

  But after a while the fish start
ed to smell good and Vix discovered it didn’t taste that bad except for the bones. She marveled at the way Caitlin pulled them out of her mouth and lined them up on her plate, while she sometimes had to spit a chewed-up mouthful into her napkin.

  Caitlin taught her to play jacks. She shook baby powder on the floor so their hands would slide easily across the old pine boards of the living room. Caitlin was a whiz, running through three fancies before Vix could finish sevensies.

  There was no TV in the house. In Vix’s house in Santa Fe the TV was on all the time. Lewis and Lanie watched re-runs of sitcoms before supper and Tawny never missed Laverne and Shirley or Charlie’s Angels.

  This place was filled with old books. They smelled musty. One rainy day while she and Caitlin were browsing they came upon Ideal Marriage and Love Without Fear. That night in their room they took turns reading aloud to one another, breaking up over the language, but disappointed neither book had pictures. Caitlin said coitus interruptus sounded like something you ordered in a French restaurant.

  They used the dictionary in Lamb’s study to look up cunnilingus, fellatio, dingleberry. The last was their favorite. Dingleberry: a small clot of dung, as clinging to the hindquarters of an animal. Vix told Caitlin if she didn’t start wearing clean underpants she was going to get the Dingleberry Award. Caitlin took this seriously for a few days, then returned to her old ways.

  The first time Caitlin led Vix through the woods with Sweetie following, along the secret pine needle path that led to the north beach and Vineyard Sound, they clasped hands, closed their eyes, and vowed they would never be ordinary. Phoebe had told Caitlin that to be ordinary was a fate worse than death. Caitlin called this the NBO pact. “NBO or die!” she sang into the wind. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” At that moment Vix felt like the luckiest person on earth. She was the chosen one, chosen for reasons beyond her comprehension to be Caitlin’s friend, so if Caitlin wanted her to swear she would never be ordinary, fine, she’d do it. She made her mark in the sand, a heart with a V inside, while Caitlin drew an elaborate lightning bolt around her initials.