Summer Sisters Read online

  Caitlin was impressed by how dark Vix’s skin turned in just a few weeks. “It’s my Native American gene,” Vix explained. “I’m one-sixteenth Cherokee on my mother’s side.” She wasn’t sure of the exact fraction. She just knew it was something to be proud of.

  “God, that is so interesting! I wish I had unusual genes.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Vix said, thinking of Phoebe and Lamb.

  When Caitlin swam Vix watched over her until she was just a dot, bobbing in the sea like a lobsterman’s buoy. “I can’t swim,” Vix confessed to Sweetie. “So you’ll have to save her if she needs saving. Okay?”

  Sweetie didn’t seem concerned. She cocked her head as if listening carefully, then ran off to find something to roll in, something dead or decaying. Whatever it was, it would leave her fur smelling like old fish.

  Caitlin shook herself off like a dog when she came out of the water, then wrapped a beach towel around her waist so it dragged in the sand like a long skirt. “Did I ever tell you that in my former life I was a mermaid?” “But in this life you’re a human,” Vix reminded her, just in case she forgot. “And I wish you wouldn’t go out so far.” She drizzled turrets of wet sand onto their elaborate castle.

  “I like the way you worry about me,” Caitlin said.

  “Somebody has to.”

  In their room at night they played Mermaids, using the makeup Caitlin bought on Lamb’s charge at Leslie’s Pharmacy to paint their lips dark red and outline their eyes in coal black. The mirror on the wall above the bathroom sink was as old as the house, with a crack that stretched diagonally across it, making them look as if they had scars running across their faces.

  They vamped and sang to Abba, the Eagles, Shaun Cassidy—“Da Doo Ron Ron”—socks stuffed into the tops of their bathing suits to see how they’d look with big breasts. Caitlin was still totally flat but Vix had tiny mounds, the beginning of something.

  Caitlin was fascinated by Vix’s pubic hairs. “Lay down,” she said, “and I’ll count them for you.”

  “What for?”

  “Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know how many you have?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” Vix said.

  Caitlin looked at her as if she were beyond hope. “A person without curiosity may as well be dead.”

  Vix wished somebody would explain that to her mother. To prove she was far from dead she lay on her bed with her underpants pulled down, laughing hysterically as Caitlin lifted one strand at a time, counting out loud. “Sixteen,” Caitlin said, announcing the grand total. “You’re so lucky!”

  “I don’t see what’s lucky about having sixteen pubic hairs.”

  “You would if all you had was this!” Caitlin pulled down her shorts to show Vix her tiny patch of pale fuzz. Not that Vix hadn’t seen it before.

  Sharkey barged in on them like that and they shrieked so loud he took off, a terrified look on his face. From then on they shoved a chair in front of their bedroom door because there were no locks in the house.

  When they grew bored with Mermaids they invented a better game. Vixen and Cassandra, Summer Sisters, the two sexiest girls on the Vineyard, maybe anywhere. They had The Power. The Power was inside their pants, between their legs. They’d just discovered that if they rubbed it in a certain way it was like an electrical current buzzing through them.

  Dear Folks,

  Having a great time.

  Love, Vix

  And then there was Von, the most gorgeous guy Vix had ever seen. He was maybe sixteen, with a long sun-streaked ponytail, muscles in his arms, and a pack of Marlboros tucked into the sleeve of his T-shirt. His lips were full and so soft looking Caitlin said she could suck on them all night. Until then Vix had never thought of sucking on anyone’s lips.

  Von worked at the Flying Horses, which was sup posed to be the oldest carousel in the country, one of those national treasures people on the Vineyard were always raving about. He collected tickets and fed the rings back into the machine as the carousel spun round and round. Vix thought Von should be declared the National Treasure. Every time Lamb headed for Oak Bluffs they’d beg to come along. He’d give them a couple of dollars and while he ran errands they’d ride until they were so dizzy they could hardly stand.

  Von called them Double Trouble. He groaned when he saw them coming, pretending they were a real pain. Caitlin punched him in the arm when he acted that way. She loved to tease him, pulling his ponytail, jumping from horse to horse, daring him to stop her. She broke all the rules but he never kicked her off the carousel. Vix knew he never would have noticed her if it hadn’t been for Caitlin. But she didn’t mind. She was proud to be Caitlin’s friend.

  One night the National Treasure introduced them to his cousin, Bru. Bru was taller than Von with sinewy arms. He didn’t say much. Vix could tell he considered them children, not worth his trouble.

  Another night Lamb took them to the movies to see Annie Hall, and after, when Caitlin begged for just one ride on the Flying Horses, Lamb said, “Okay, but just one.” He and Sharkey headed up Circuit Avenue to get a slice at Papa John’s.

  But Von wasn’t on the carousel that night. Instead, Caitlin swore she saw him with some girl in the dark alley next to the Flying Horses, with his hands inside her shirt and her hand on his—Vix couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say dick or pecker or even penis—not when it came to Von. So Caitlin gave it a new name. The Package. She said this girl’s hand was wrapped around Von’s Package.

  That night they came up with a new game. Vixen and Cassandra Meet Von. When they played they took turns pretending to be Von, lying on top of one another, rubbing The Power against the other’s Power until the electrical current buzzed through their bodies.

  They vowed never to tell anyone about Vixen and Cassandra. Caitlin said they weren’t necessarily lesbos because they always pretended to be doing it with a boy. On the other hand, they might be.

  Lamb

  HE SWEARS, on the night she was born, when they put her in his arms, she looked directly into his eyes and smiled. He touched the tiny rosebud mouth and fell head over heels in love. His daughter. His little girl. He never imagined he’d lose her. And he hasn’t, he keeps telling himself. She’s never missed a summer, never asks to spend the holidays with anyone but him.

  He and Phoebe were fools, thinking it would be easy. Sure, they’d divorced without rancor. He can’t even remember if it was Phoebe’s idea or his. All that open marriage business. Someone was bound to get hurt. But separating the kids just to be fair? A girl for you, a boy for me … How was he supposed to know Phoebe would take Caitlin to live halfway across the country? Regrets? Sure, he has regrets.

  He watches her on the Flying Horses. He can’t believe she won’t always be this young, this innocent.

  4

  IT’S HARD TO REMAIN in awe of someone you’re as tight with as Vix was with Caitlin that summer, someone with dirty feet, feet that smelled like the muck on the bottom of the pond, someone who spread her legs and rubbed her Power against yours.

  “God, I love that feeling!” Caitlin said. “You’re turning out to be a lot different than I thought.”

  “What’d you think?”

  Caitlin picked up two small, red flannel squares and began to toss them from hand to hand. Maybe she was going to ignore Vix’s question. She did that when someone asked her something she didn’t want to answer. She’d just act as if she hadn’t heard a word.

  But after a while, Caitlin said, “I knew you were smart but quiet.” She caught the squares and checked out the next exercise in Juggling for the Complete Klutz. “I knew you wouldn’t ask a million questions and get in the way.” She began again, this time with three squares. “And I liked the way you smiled … and that purple T-shirt you always wore.” She didn’t take her eyes off those red squares, not for a second.

  Those were her reasons? But what had Vix expected? After all, she hadn’t known Caitlin any better than Caitlin had known her.

 
; Caitlin tossed all three squares into the air at once, then dove onto Vix’s bed, knocking her flat. “I just wasn’t sure you’d know how to have fun!”

  Vix took that as a compliment. She knew Caitlin liked her. The kind of like that had nothing to do with their secret games. Sometimes, when they were in town, Vix would notice people staring and she’d remember Caitlin was beautiful, but for the most part it didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t get in the way.

  One night at dinner Lamb asked if she was having a good time. A good time? Vix couldn’t believe what a time she was having. It was the best time of her life! Sometimes she wished summer would never end. Sometimes she wished she’d never have to go home.

  She looked down at her plate filled with a heaping portion of bluefish, new potatoes, and green beans, and answered Lamb’s question in a small, quiet voice. “Yes, thank you, I’m having a good time.” Caitlin kicked her under the table and Vix was scared she might laugh.

  Then Lamb said, “Do you miss your family?”

  Suddenly Vix was filled with guilt because she didn’t miss her family. She hardly ever thought about them. Well, maybe Nathan, but that was it. She wrote to him every week, sending a small Tupperware container of sand, a plastic jar filled with water from Tashmoo, a piece of blue beach glass Caitlin had found and given to her for him. “It looks like cobalt, doesn’t it?” she’d asked Vix.

  “Yeah, really …” Vix had answered, whatever cobalt was.

  They’d laid it on a bed of cotton in a jewelry box, then wrapped the box in bubble wrap, after Caitlin finished popping the bubbles with her bare feet.

  “You can call whenever you want,” Lamb continued. “Don’t worry about the charges.”

  “Lamb …” Caitlin said, “let it go.”

  “It’s just that Vix is so quiet,” Lamb told her, as if she weren’t sitting at the same table, as if Sharkey weren’t, too. Sharkey, who never said a word at dinner but who made a strange, humming sound as he ate his cereal, as if he had a motor somewhere inside his body.

  Vix was curious about why Sharkey didn’t bring a friend for the summer, too. When she asked, using up her question of the week, Caitlin said, “I don’t think he has any friends.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  “Pathetic,” Caitlin agreed.

  “I guess Vix is the shy, quiet type,” Lamb said, still on her case. “Like Sharkey.”

  “She’s not anything like Sharkey,” Caitlin told him.

  Suddenly, Sharkey spoke. “How would you know?” he asked Caitlin. “How would any of you know?”

  Sharkey

  IT’S ALL SO EASY for them, yakety-yakking all day and half the night! Do they think he doesn’t hear them, doesn’t know they think he’s weird? Jesus! His life is none of their goddamn business. He doesn’t need friends. There’s a difference between lonely and alone. Not that they would know. Alien creatures, if you want his opinion. Beam me up, Scottie …

  ANYTHING SHE WANTED to see or do on the island was hers for the asking. Your wish is my command, Lamb told her, like in some fairy tale. So she said, I’d like to see the real ocean. And abracadabra, the next day they were off to the ocean, making a quick stop in Menemsha, an old fishing village, with almost as many boats in the harbor as tourists snapping pictures. Sharkey had opted to skip their outing and stay at home, probably to drive Lamb’s old truck up and down the dirt driveway, or bury himself under the hood of the Volvo, or slide around on his back on the body-size skateboard he’d constructed to get underneath the cars.

  She and Caitlin followed Lamb way out onto the dock until they came to a rundown wooden sailboat, Island Girl, where Lamb called, “Trisha … hey, Trish …”

  A deeply tanned woman with a tangle of brown curls, wearing cutoffs and a work shirt, came out from inside the boat, shading her eyes from the sun. She jumped up onto the dock and threw her arms around Lamb, then Caitlin.

  “Meet my friend Vix,” Caitlin said.

  Trisha gave her a high five.

  “We’re on our way out to Gay Head,” Lamb said. “Want to join us?”

  Vix had just found out that gay and head had meanings she hadn’t known about before, and hearing Lamb say those words aloud made her feel funny.

  “Be with you in two seconds,” Trisha said. “Just let me grab my stuff.” She jumped down onto her boat and ducked inside the cabin. Lamb followed.

  “They’re just friends,” Caitlin said, while she and Vix waited. “From the old days … when Lamb lived up here. They might still have sex though. I’m almost sure they do. I wouldn’t mind if they got married. She’s a flake but she loves us.”

  They picked up lunch along the way—clam dogs and lobster rolls. Vix had never heard of either and ordered french fries with ketchup. By the time they got going again Vix was more interested in Trisha than the ocean, and wondered if she and Lamb had been doing those things to one another, those things she and Caitlin had read about, while they were inside the cabin of the boat. She didn’t think so because they weren’t gone that long, not that she had any idea how long it would take.

  The ocean was exactly as she’d imagined it, exactly the way she’d seen it in a million movies. The only surprise was the smell, salty and fresh, and the roar as the waves crashed against the shore. They followed Lamb and Trisha to a place sheltered by a high clay cliff, but even so the wind whipped their hair, and when they tried to talk, sand blew into their mouths.

  As soon as they dropped their bags on the beach Trisha started taking off her clothes. First she unbuttoned and slipped off her shirt, revealing humongous breasts, with nipples the size of vanilla wafers. Vix had never seen anything like them. She tried to look away but she couldn’t. Despite the wind, she felt her face grow hot.

  Trisha could tell from the expression on her face something wasn’t right. “Oh, honey …” she said, “is this going to be embarrassing for you … because I don’t have to undress.” She had to shout to make herself heard. She looked over at Lamb for guidance.

  “I think it would be better …” Lamb began.

  “Gotcha,” Trisha said, pulling on her shirt.

  “It’s a nude beach,” Caitlin told Vix, “but you don’t have to take off your clothes. I never do.”

  Only then did Vix shade her eyes and look around. It was true! Most of the people on the beach were totally naked. Lamb stepped out of his jeans and for a second Vix held her breath because no way did she want to see his Package, but it was okay, he was wearing a tiny Speedo, the kind Mark Spitz wore at the Olympics when he won all those medals, when she was just in second grade. She could not believe the way they were all acting, as if a beach full of nudists was no big deal.

  “So, Vix …” Lamb said, “what do you think?”

  “Think?”

  “Of the ocean.”

  “Oh, the ocean.” She tried to think of something interesting to say but the ocean wasn’t number one on her mind. When she didn’t respond, Lamb laughed. “Pretty overwhelming, huh, kiddo?” Then he and Trisha grabbed hands and headed for the waves.

  She imagined telling her mother that Lamb had taken her to a nude beach. Indecent, her mother would say. Lewd and indecent and I want you on the next boat out of there! Her parents did not walk around without their clothes. Her mother was, after all, a Lapsed Catholic.

  Trisha

  SHE’D FUCKED UP TODAY, big time, taking her clothes off that way in front of the kid. No common sense. On the other hand, it was a nude beach. Why’d he take them to a nude beach if she wasn’t supposed to take off her clothes? What kind of sense did that make?

  No matter how hard she tries, she never gets it right with him. Fifteen years ago he’d chosen Phoebe instead of her. The money thing, she’s always thought. The family thing. She could have told him back then it would never work. Phoebe was used to getting whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it. Oh sure, she’d played at their way of life, but she hadn’t really believed it would create a better world. Not that she believed it an
ymore either. But back then … She’d arrived on island at eighteen, fresh out of Bridgeport, and she’d never left. Not like Phoebe, who’d dropped in for a summer, hooked Lamb, and took him away.

  After he’d split with Phoebe he’d come back and she’d cared for his little boy as if he were her own. Lambsey-Divey, she’d called him. Now they called him Sharkey and she was lucky if she saw him a couple of times every summer.

  She’s waited all these years for Lamb to get it through his head that they belong together, that she loves his kids as much as she loves him. But he has a new woman in his life, a woman he’s serious about. As if what they’ve had for all these years isn’t serious. She cried when he told her, cried and threatened to slit her wrists, but he’d held her, promised he’d always be her friend … always be there for her.

  And he’d set her up in business, hadn’t he? Encouraged her to go out on her own with Trisha’s Melt-in-Your-Mouth Muffins, fresh-baked daily. Light. Fluffy. Not like those lead balls they sell at the Dog. All the best restaurants and shops in town are after her muffins now.

  She’s in her prime he told her. She’ll find someone else, someone to make her happy, someone to share her island life. So she hasn’t slit her wrists. She’s too busy baking. But, oh, she misses their lovemaking. How long since they’ve been together? Four months, two weeks, three days. Ever since he met the new woman.

  Fifteen years ago she’d thought they’d be together forever. Fifteen years ago she’d woven ribbons through her hair.

  5

  VIX HAD NEVER KNOWN anyone like Lamb. All he asked of her was that she learn the lyrics to the Beatles songs, which wasn’t exactly a hardship. So during the second week in August, when he told them he had to go to Boston for the day, she didn’t mind. He promised to be back in time for dinner. “You okay with that, kiddo?” he asked her.