Second Summer of the Sisterhood

  She was ready to go downstairs now. She pulled the baseball cap on, even though it was too hot for a hat. She had the image of Greta setting out lunch, and it seemed deeply comforting to her.

  “Nice to see you down here a little early,” Greta said happily.

  Bridget flopped into a kitchen chair. “I’m going to start painting tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

  “You’re going to paint it? Yourself? Have you painted before?”

  Bridget shook her head. “But I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry. How hard could it be?”

  Greta smiled at her. “You’re a good girl and a very hard worker.”

  It jumped into Bridget’s head to say “Thanks, Grandma,” and she was surprised at herself.

  With a sense of peace, she watched Greta set out their lunch. It had evolved over the summer. Now there were carrots every day, and sometimes sharp cheddar cheese or turkey instead of bologna. Bridget knew Greta watched her very carefully, mentally recording her moods and her preferences. But even as the menu changed, lunch was always at the same time, on the same plates, with the same yellow paper napkins. That was how Greta had been before, too, Bridget realized. That was how it had been in this house long ago.

  “My Marly had two children, did you know that?” Greta said as she watched Bridget finishing her sandwich.

  Bridget swallowed hard. “You mentioned before that you had a granddaughter.”

  “Yes, Marly’s daughter. Marly had twins. A girl and a boy.”

  Bridget pulled a thread at the hem of her shorts rather than pretend to look surprised by this information.

  “I guess the babies came around two and a half years after they were married.”

  Bridget nodded, still looking down.

  “Pregnancy agreed with Marly. It was a happy time for her. But oh, my, when they arrived.” Greta shook her head at the memory. “Twins. Can you imagine? When one needed to eat, the other needed to sleep. When one needed inside, the other needed outside. I moved in with them for the first six months.”

  Bridget glanced up. “Did you really?”

  “Sure,” Greta said. Her face was thoughtful. “Only, looking back, I wished I’d done less and taught more. Marly struggled after I left.”

  No matter how it had gone after that, Bridget felt her first six months on earth must have been comfortable if Greta had been there.

  “I adored those children,” Greta said, shaking her head. She had tears in her eyes, and Bridget feared for her own eyes. “That little girl. She came into the world with a point of view, I’ll tell you.”

  Bridget considered the deep fraudulence of sitting there listening to her grandmother talk about her. But she suddenly wanted to know this. It felt good.

  “She had a little face you could die for,” Greta said, and then she seemed to regret her way of putting it. “She had a real feisty personality, too. She was stubborn and independent, and she could do anything she wanted the first time she tried it. My Lord, her grandfather thought the sun rose and set on that child.”

  Bridget just listened, hoping it was okay if she didn’t nod or even look up. This was what she had wanted, what she had come here for: knowledge at a distance. Only it didn’t feel distant anymore.

  “I think it was hard on the little boy sometimes. He was quieter and more cautious. He got a little lost, what with the mighty Bee marching around.”

  Bridget flinched at the mention of her name. She felt sad for Perry. She knew that was how it had been his whole life.

  Greta’s eyes wandered to the clock on the kitchen wall. “Oh my. Listen to me, talking and talking. You probably want to get back to work, don’t you.”

  Bridget didn’t want to at all. She wanted to stay there and listen to Greta. But she made herself stand up. “Yeah, gosh, it’s late, huh?”

  Bridget paused in the doorway. She didn’t want to go back up just now. “I better get some paint,” she said.

  Greta’s eyes lit up. “Yes! How ’bout I run you over to Wal-Mart in the car?”

  Bridget liked that idea. “Perfect,” she said.

  Tibby saw a yellow note in her mail slot in the dorm lobby. It told her she had received two packages, and that the RA had them. Tibby didn’t relish a visit to Vanessa, with her toys and her moles. Vanessa’s room was a favorite target of scorn for Maura. On the other hand, Tibby had a filmmaker’s curiosity prodding her to at least get a look at the place.

  “Come in,” Vanessa called when Tibby knocked.

  Tibby swung the door open slowly. Vanessa got up from her desk chair and came to the door.

  “Hi. Um … Tibby, right? Did you come for your packages?”

  “Yeah,” Tibby said, trying to get a look around Vanessa.

  Vanessa seemed to sense this. “Would you like to come in?” she asked politely.

  Vanessa was wearing a Williamston T-shirt and a pair of high-waisted old-lady jeans. She seemed nervous as Tibby followed her into the room. Tibby couldn’t help wondering why such a socially awkward person had put herself up for the job of RA.

  Vanessa looked for the packages, while Tibby looked at the room. The light wasn’t very bright, so objects presented themselves slowly. There were indeed a lot of stuffed animals. All over the shelves and the bed. But as Tibby studied them more closely, she realized they weren’t the usual sappy Gund bears and Beanie Babies. They weren’t like any stuffed animals she had seen before. In spite of herself, Tibby moved closer to an armadillo hunched in the bookcase.

  “Could I look at this?” Tibby asked.

  “Sure,” Vanessa said.

  “God. It’s … got so many parts,” Tibby said, amazed, as she pulled back the layers of thick, pebbly fabric that made the shell.

  “I know. It took me forever.”

  Tibby turned to stare at her in disbelief. “You made this?”

  Vanessa nodded. Her face turned pink. She held out Tibby’s packages.

  Absently Tibby took her packages and put them on the bed. “You sewed this?”

  Vanessa nodded.

  Tibby felt her eyes opening as she looked at all the other creatures around the room—brilliantly colored toucans, koala bears, a two-toed sloth hanging from the closet door. “You didn’t make all these,” she breathed.

  Vanessa nodded.

  “Really?”

  Vanessa shrugged. She was trying to figure out if Tibby was impressed or if Tibby thought she was psychotic.

  “They are … unbelievable,” Tibby said sincerely. “I mean, they’re great. They’re so beautiful.”

  Vanessa smiled, although her arms remained protectively around her middle.

  Tibby picked up a vibrant yellow frog with black spots. She wasn’t thinking when she heard herself say, “God, my little brother would love this. He would go nuts.”

  Vanessa loosened her arms. She laughed a little. “Really? How old is he?”

  “He’s almost three and a half,” Tibby said, beginning to remember where she was and why she was there. She returned the armadillo and the frog to their places and picked up her packages.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said, moving toward the door. Her stomach was churning in an uncomfortable way.

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” Vanessa said. Tibby’s praise had changed Vanessa’s posture.

  “Uh, Tibby,” Vanessa said to her back.

  Tibby turned her head. “Yeah?”

  “Sorry I haven’t been by your room or anything. I’m … not exactly the greatest RA.”

  Tibby turned her body too. Looking at Vanessa’s earnest face and her loyal T-shirt, Tibby suddenly felt like crying. She couldn’t stand Vanessa thinking she was a bad RA, even though she was. “No, you’re not. Seriously. You’re great,” Tibby lied. “If I have any questions, I know where to come,” she added lamely.

  From her face, Vanessa knew Tibby didn’t mean it, although she appreciated the effort. “It covers part of tuition,” Vanessa explained.

  “I love your animals, I really do,” Tibby said
as she went out the door.

  On her way down the hall, Tibby felt a hollowness under her ribs as she rewound all the snide comments and jokes Maura had made about Vanessa’s toys. Maura, the creative artist, who couldn’t even finish her script, while Vanessa, the dud, had created a world out of bits of fabric. And Maura was the one Tibby had striven to have as a friend?

  Back in her room, Tibby remembered her packages. One contained the Traveling Pants. Tibby felt too much shame to look at them right then. The other was from home. She opened it to find a batch of foil-covered brownies and three pictures on construction paper. One was a scribble signed with Katherine’s name. The second was a scribble signed with Nicky’s. The third was a childish self-portrait her mother had drawn with crayons. It showed a frown and a blue tear on her cheek. We miss you! it said.

  Me too, Tibby thought. Her mouth trembled as she produced a tear to match the one in the picture.

  Paul had told Carmen once that you could distinguish a drunk from a drinker, because a drinker could choose to stop and a drunk couldn’t.

  Carmen was a drunk. She could take or leave alcohol; anger was her mode of self-destruction. She couldn’t stop when normal people could.

  Her anger the night before had been so big she’d nearly drowned in it. This morning she woke up hung-over, in a sweat of remorse. From her bed she listened to her mother making coffee as she always did on Sunday mornings. She heard her mother let herself out of the apartment quietly. Christina would go around the corner to get The New York Times. She always did.

  Moments after the door clicked shut, the phone rang. Carmen staggered toward the kitchen in a T-shirt and underwear. The machine picked up after the second ring. Carmen’s fingers were poised to grab the receiver when she heard the voice recording onto the tape.

  “Tina … pick up if you’re there….”

  Carmen shrank back from the phone.

  “Tina …? Okay, you’re not there. Listen, I was hoping I could pick you up at one and take you over to Mike and Kim’s. Then maybe we could go to Great Falls after, if you’re in the mood for a hike. Call me if you’re free today, okay? Call me as soon as you get home.”

  David paused. He made a funny humming noise and dropped his voice.

  “I love you. I loved you last night. I think about you every minute, Tina.” He sort of laughed at himself. “Hadn’t mentioned that in a few hours.” He cleared his throat. “Call me. Bye.”

  Carmen felt a strange vacuuming sensation under her ribs, sucking away all that was left of her goodwill, pulling in hostility and fear behind it. There were so many alarming, threatening parts to the message her demons hardly knew where to turn.

  Mike and Kim? Couple friends. Couple friends for the happy couple. Her mother had never had couple friends before. She’d had her sister and her cousin and her mother and one or two single-mother friends. Mostly she’d had Carmen.

  Carmen had never seen her mother’s old life as a consolation prize before. But suddenly, that was how it looked. Now that she had a boyfriend and couple friends. Now that she had the brass ring.

  All this time, Carmen had thought her mother had chosen her life. That she’d wanted it. Had she been wishing for something else all along? Had she never had what she wanted? Was Carmen a next-best thing?

  I thought we were happy together.

  Maybe if she had brothers or sisters and a father around, it wouldn’t matter as much. But she and her mother depended on one another in a deep and unspoken way. It was motivated by love and loyalty, but underneath there was fear and loneliness, too, wasn’t there? Carmen always came home for dinner. She acted as if it were a natural convenience, but she didn’t like her mother to eat alone. What did Christina really feel for Carmen? Was it love? Was it obligation? Was it not having anything better?

  Carmen had her friends, and she counted on them, but she never forgot that they had real sisters and brothers. A deeply insecure part of Carmen reminded herself that if there were a fire, they’d have to save their brothers and sisters first. The person who would save Carmen in a fire was Christina, and vice versa. Carmen and her mother could pretend the world was large and varied, but they both knew it came down to the two of them.

  Carmen thought back to the night in late June, just about a month ago, when all this trouble had started. The night of her first date with Porter. Carmen was a bluffer, caught in her bluff. She’d made a feint toward breaking an agreement she hadn’t realized existed and had never meant to break.

  Carmen didn’t like change, and she certainly didn’t like endings. She kept flowers till they were wilted and sticky and algae grew in the vase water.

  I don’t want boyfriends, she felt like saying. I want it back how it was.

  Standing over the machine, which was now blinking crazily, Carmen pressed her thumb on the Play button. She felt herself loathing David as the spontaneity of his emotion dried up in the replay. Had he forgotten that Christina lived with her daughter? That it was embarrassing and inappropriate to leave intimate, practically X-rated messages blaring through the apartment? Did Carmen matter so little that David had forgotten about her completely? Had Christina forgotten her too?

  She stumbled to her room and threw herself facedown onto the messy bed. She heard the phone ring again. She didn’t move. Click went the machine. “Uh … Christina? Bruce Brattle here. I’m in the office today and had a brief question. Give me a call, if you could.” Long pause followed by a beep.

  A few minutes later she heard her mother let herself in. Christina went right for the message machine and hit the Play button. Bruce Brattle’s message played. Only that one. Carmen felt her heart pounding a little. She could have corrected the mistake by telling her mom. Instead, she fell asleep.

  A little while later, in a dismally unmysterious nap dream, their apartment sizzled and flamed. David valiantly saved Christina as Carmen burned to a crisp.

  The centaurs were invited too, for though wild and lawless they were nonetheless distant relatives.

  —D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths

  Sunday afternoon, Tibby changed into the Traveling Pants before walking to the auditorium in the arts center. Brian wasn’t there, and she was relieved. She planned to go out and celebrate after the festival with Maura and Alex. She’d wavered between inviting Brian along and making some excuse to get out of having to bring him.

  She put on the Pants without letting herself look too hard or think too much. These were the Pants, after all, and she was lucky, very lucky, to have them for the first-ever public showing of one of her films. If things in her life worked out, it would be the first of many. She stood in front of the long mirror, admiring the fit and ignoring the inscriptions. It was hard to figure out how, but her hair actually looked better when she wore the Pants. Even her breasts looked a little bigger—or at least like they existed.

  Her heartbeat sped up when she saw the crowd in the auditorium. Most kids were sitting with their parents. Tibby took a seat by herself in the back with two empty seats next to it. When she saw Alex and Maura in the aisle, she waved them over, feeling slightly guilty about not leaving a seat for Brian. After that she kept her head down. Maybe he wouldn’t see her.

  First, Professor Graves, the head of the film program, welcomed everybody; then they got rolling. Among the first six movies were a couple of short family dramas, a long interview of a filmmaker’s grandmother, an adventure story clearly shot on campus but attempting to look like wilderness, and an embarrassing romantic film.

  Alex was fidgeting and making wry comments throughout. Tibby was laughing at them at first, but then she realized Maura was also laughing on the other side, so she stopped. It struck her that Maura was a yeah-girl. Pink glasses or no, she was a follower, an inconsequential person, and Tibby felt herself acting just like her.

  The lights went up. Tibby knew her movie was coming in the second of three batches.

  “Tibby!” She heard a hissing whisper.

  She looked around
almost frantically.

  “Tibby!”

  The voice was coming from a middle row on the left side of the auditorium, and it belonged unmistakably to her mother.

  Tibby felt a jolt inside her chest. She forgot about breathing.

  Her mom was waving madly. She had a huge smile on her face. She was obviously excited to be there, and so pleased that she had pulled off this surprise.

  And what a surprise. Tibby made herself smile too. She waved. “That’s my …,” she began numbly. She let her voice peter out. She stood, with the thought that she would somehow go and sit with her mom, but there were no free seats, and the lights were dimming for the next set of movies.

  At that moment, Tibby’s eyes also fell upon Brian, sitting on the right side, almost equidistant from her mother. He was looking at her like he’d known exactly where she was the whole time. Did he also know her mother was there?

  She’d told Brian it was fine if her mother saw her movie, that she didn’t care. But from the lurch and sprawl of her stomach, it was seeming like maybe she did care.

  Her mother had come all this way for a happy surprise. With a sense of doom in her heart, Tibby waited for the next surprise to come.

  Two films came before Tibby’s, but she didn’t register one thing about either of them.

  Hers began slowly, with a close-up of an innocent cherry red lollipop. Then the music kicked up and the lollipop turned evil. The shot widened to reveal it adhered to the back of a well-coiffed brown head. The audience burst into laughter, just as Tibby had hoped they would. But the laughter fell like shards of glass pelting down upon her.

  One after another, each of the segments connected with the audience, just the way any filmmaker would dream they would. The laughter rose to near hysteria when the camera followed the back of the elegant pump-shod heel trailing the diaper wipe through the house.

  Tibby couldn’t make herself turn her head in the direction of her mother’s seat until the end, after it was over and a new movie started and, Tibby prayed, began to change the mood. Tibby felt like a pure coward as she stared at the screen ahead.