Sharkey hardly ever crossed paths with them, except for the night he came out of the bathroom and found Caitlin and Vix waiting their turn in the hall. Caitlin was in a short robe, loosely belted, with nothing underneath. “Cover yourself up, will you!” Sharkey growled, shoving his towel at her.
“Shark …” Caitlin said, “we used to take baths together. What’s the big deal?”
“You’re not four anymore, that’s the big deal.” And with his head down he pushed past them.
A minute after she and Caitlin stepped inside, closing the bathroom door behind them, Gus knocked. “Bathroom in use?”
Vix opened the door a crack. “What does it look like?” she asked, her toothbrush sticking out of the side of her mouth. He was in shorts but no shirt. His chest had a patch of dark curly hair. Bru’s chest was hairless and smooth. She wondered for half a second how it would feel to press her naked breasts against Gus, then looked away, totally embarrassed by such a revolting thought.
Gus
JESUS! When she opened the bathroom door and he caught a glimpse of her in that flimsy T-shirt, and under it the swell of her breasts, he was right back where he’d been two years ago, that night Abby and Lamb had almost blown it. Something happened to him that night, something he didn’t want to think about because his father always said, You don’t shit where you eat. But that night, just for a minute, he’d wanted to take her in his arms, feel her body against his.
He’d warned himself. Cool it, she’s just fifteen.
Yeah … so? he argued. He knew girls her age who put out. Hell, he knew a fourteen-year-old who gave great hand jobs.
He’s kept his distance since then, afraid to give in to his feelings. But now she’s seventeen and it’s a whole different ball game, isn’t it?
17
CAITLIN CALLED IT the Summer of Their Brilliant Careers. They were working as a team for Dynamo, a cleaning service, earning good money, and Caitlin never complained about the long days or the foul condition of some of the houses. She was proud of herself for learning to clean out a toilet bowl, for scrubbing a tub until there was no scum left, things she’d never learned from Phoebe. They awarded the most disgusting bathrooms the New and Improved Dingleberry Award.
They never met or even saw most of their clients but they were privy to the most intimate details of their lives. They knew who was constipated by the boxes of Fleet enemas hidden in bathroom drawers or the prune juice and raw bran stocked in the fridge. They knew their clients’ medications and why they were taking them. They knew what their clients were reading, what music they listened to, and who watched porno tapes on the VCR.
They knew who was having regular sex by the pubic hairs and bunched up tissues under the blankets, the lubricants on the bedside tables, the condom wrappers in the trash. Unlike some of the girls working for the service, they were discreet. They never tried on their clients’ clothes or experimented with their makeup. They had their standards.
Their favorite clients were a gay couple out on Squibnocket Pond who left them beautifully printed lists of chores and always some little goody along with it, an unusual shell or a perfect rose or a sample box of Chilmark Chocolates.
They made up for the assholes on Middle Road who smashed every dish in the house and left the pieces all over the floor. When the slimeball and his girlfriend came home in a huff that afternoon and found Caitlin and Vix still cleaning up, listening to Stevie Nicks on the tape deck, he exploded. Vix wanted to take off before it got serious, but Caitlin looked right at him and said, “I believe you’re responsible for the cost of replacing the dishes.”
He reached into his pocket and began to throw hundred-dollar bills at them while his girlfriend tugged on his arm crying, “Honey, stop … honey, please …”
Hundred-dollar bills, five of them, two of which they pocketed, as he yelled, “Replace the goddamn dishes and get the fuck out of this house!”
Abby
SHE CAN’T SLEEP. The strain of having all five of them in the house is taking its toll. She’s worried sick, especially about Caitlin and Vix. She has the feeling, from the way they get themselves up at night, there are boys in the picture this summer. But who are they? What are they doing together?
And just because Daniel has finished a year at Princeton, and Gus, at Northwestern, they think they’re grownup, beyond rules. Gus has turned into a man overnight. Last summer he’d still been a teenager, her son’s best friend. Now, when he looks at her she sometimes feels herself blush. How can she possibly tell him what to do? She supposes she’ll have to learn to let go, as Lamb says, learn how to live with grown children. But where’s the manual on that?
She’s grateful they all have jobs. Not that she’s thrilled Daniel and Gus are working nights, bussing tables at the Harborview, never getting home before midnight, never getting out of bed before noon. The girls are another story. Out of the house at seven every morning, home after work to shower and snack but never sitting down to a proper meal. The only one she doesn’t fret over is Sharkey. At least she knows where he is—working at the garage all day, locked up in his room at night with the new computer. Sharkey, who went off to Reed a year ago and has never said a word about it, not to her anyway. He doesn’t give her any trouble. Maybe she should be worried about that!
ABBY INVITED VIX to try her new yellow kayak. Lamb had surprised her with it at the start of the summer. They’d christened it with a bottle of champagne. Now Abby could paddle off her anxieties in the pond.
On their way down to the dock Abby said, “You know, Vix … I’d like to think if I had a daughter she’d be a lot like you.” She took off her sunglasses and wiped the lenses with her T-shirt. “That’s a compliment. I hope you take it as one.”
Vix stammered. “I do … absolutely.” “I consider you a person of real values and ethics.” She paused, then added, “That’s a compliment, too.”
Real values and ethics? She wondered what Abby would say if she knew how Vix used to dream about changing places with Caitlin, of just walking out on her family to live with them in Cambridge. God, had she ever been so young, so naive?
Now Abby tried to talk to her about drinking, drugs, sex, about herpes. Vix listened politely, then assured Abby she didn’t like the taste of beer, let alone the hard stuff, that she’d promised her parents she’d stay away from drugs, which were more plentiful in Santa Fe than the Vineyard, and as for sex, she was still a virgin and intended to remain one. She just didn’t say for how long.
Abby handed her a stack of college catalogs left over from the Chicago Boys and urged her to study them. “You know there’s a scholarship waiting.”
She felt as if she were fourteen again, with Abby encouraging her to plan for her future. But this time the only future she was interested in was that night and the next night and the night after that, with Bru.
18
PARADISE WAS A SHACK that served as the on-site office of Bru’s family’s construction business. Three of Bru’s uncles had seen the eighties building boom coming and had bought up a group of rundown cottages on Menemsha Pond. Bru and Von were part of the crew renovating the first place, turning it into a five-bedroom house. The shack had no water or electricity, just a table made from a sheet of plywood sitting on sawhorses and a couple of beat-up chairs. But who cared?
They lit candles, slipped their tapes into the boom box—Don’t you want me, baby? Don’t you want me, oh—and danced until they’d heated up the place and themselves. Then Bru led Vix out to his truck, leaving the shack to Caitlin and Von. The truck had a cap on the back and orange shag carpet on the floor. The first time Vix lay down on it without her shirt she got carpet burns on her back. After that Bru spread out an old cotton comforter to protect her skin.
This time it was Caitlin who wanted details. “Does he nibble on your earlobes? Does he suck your nipples? Does he press it up against you as if you’re doing it but without actually doing it?”
The answer to all of the above was yes.
Yes … yes … and yes. But Vix couldn’t talk about it. She couldn’t tell Caitlin how he’d ease down her jeans and reach inside her panties, touching her gently, slipping a finger into the moist delicate tissue where only her fingers had been before. And how she loved it! Loved the fire inside her, the explosion at the end. He knew she was a virgin and he never tried to rush her, though he said it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman that way. A woman! He taught her how to make him come, dipping her fingers into the jar of Abolene he conveniently kept in the glove compartment, wrapping her hand around him, sliding it up and down until his Package throbbed and sputtered while Van Halen played on the tape deck.
Not that he didn’t want more, not that she didn’t. But it was his decision to wait. She thought he really was nervous about making it with some seventeen-year-old summer girl from a prominent family, because by then he and Von knew Lamb Somers was Caitlin’s father, that she was Caitlin’s summer sister. And neither of them was looking for trouble.
He asked about her boyfriends in Santa Fe. She told him there weren’t any, which was true. Until then her sexual experience with guys had been limited to Mark Shulman, a tall, awkward classmate at Mountain Day, whose tongue darted in and out of her mouth when they kissed, like a frog’s catching flies. Please … please … he’d whimper, grabbing her buttocks through her jeans.
Please, what? She wanted him to spell it out, but he never did. He was kind to her the night she got drunk on margaritas and puked out the window of his Bronco. But she wasn’t seriously attracted to him and when they decided it wasn’t going to work he started sniffing around Lanie.
Vix asked about the redhead. Fini … finis … finito …
“She was older,” he said. “She wanted me to make promises I wasn’t ready to keep.”
Bru
JEEZ … SHE’S SWEET. So sweet. Hard to resist. And she doesn’t seem that young when they’re together. Not too young for him. He has to keep reminding himself to go slow, not to rush her. There’s something about being her first, about teaching her everything his way. Like training a puppy but better. That silky hair, those soft, round tits, nipples that stiffen before he even touches them. Says she’s never had a real boyfriend. Hard to believe. But why would she lie? He’s never known a girl who’s so wet, who comes so fast. Not like the redhead. He could go down on her all night and still nothing. Victoria wants to know what happened between them. What can he say? She’s five years older. Ready to tie the knot. Wants kids. No thanks. Not yet. Anyway, she’s got a new guy now. Maybe he can make her come. Maybe he doesn’t care if she doesn’t.
That expression on Victoria’s face the first time he led her hand to his cock. I can’t believe I’m touching a penis, she’d said. Then she’d giggled like a little kid. He’d tilted her chin up, kissed her.
Von’s always telling him Trouble is hot. He can believe it. He’s had a couple of dreams where both of them come on to him at once. The Double Trouble thing.
“I DID THE FELLATIO THING,” Caitlin said as she and Vix were driving home one night, the rumble of thunder in the distance. “He loved it. It made him crazy.”
“But what about … you know?”
“It wasn’t that bad, if you don’t mind warm gooey laundry detergent. But to tell the truth, by then he couldn’t have cared less. I could have spit it onto the floor and he wouldn’t have noticed. That’s how out of it he was. You should try it … that is, if you haven’t already.”
Vix knew Caitlin was fishing but she wasn’t taking her bait.
“Oh, now I’ve embarrassed you!” Caitlin said.
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“You are … I can tell.”
“Okay, fine. I’m embarrassed.”
Caitlin laughed, squeezed Vix’s thigh, and sang all the way home.
Sharkey
SOMETHING’S GOING ON and he doesn’t like it. He follows them one night way the hell out to Menemsha Pond. Sees Vix climb into the back of a truck with some guy. What’s she doing with him? She could get herself in real trouble. And who knows what Caitlin’s up to with the other one? Should he say something to Lamb? If he does and they find out they’ll accuse him of being weird, of never having sex except by himself. The Portnoy of his generation. He can’t fall asleep without jerking off, imagining how it would be if they got into the back of his truck, his sister and her best friend. He can’t even look at them anymore without being scared he’ll get a hard-on. Lamb would kill him if he knew. But he’s never going to know. No one is.
Daniel
CAITLIN. THAT BITCH! A couple of years ago he’d wanted to blow her away. Now he wouldn’t mind her blowing him. He can’t get her out of his mind. The way she taunts him when she’s in the outdoor shower, using her hands, not a washcloth. Her hands on her perfect little tits. Her hands on her soapy pussy. She closes her eyes, tilts her head way back, and sings “Eye of the Tiger.” A command performance. She knows he’s watching. Lamb would kill him if he knew. But hell, it’s not like he’s her blood relative.
It’s a damn good thing he’s got Bailey to take his mind off the bitch. Bailey, who’s working as an au pair in Edgartown, going into her sophomore year at Smith. You’ll come to Northhampton, right, Daniel? You promise? Sure he’ll come … any second now. So what if he has to tell her he loves her during the act? At that moment he does.
ABBY WAS growing suspicious. “Where do you two go every night?” she asked Caitlin and Vix.
“We hang out with friends,” Caitlin told her, which wasn’t exactly a lie, except the friends Abby thought they were talking about were the other girls from the cleaning service. “Sometimes we take in a movie,” Caitlin added. “We can’t get into any of the clubs. They card everyone.”
“I wish you’d invite your friends to our house,” Abby said.
Vix felt so deceitful. If it had been up to her she’d have gladly brought Bru to the house. But Caitlin said never. Abby was never going to know about Von or Bru.
Okay, okay … Vix had to swear never to mention them although she didn’t see why. She wanted to show off Bru to everyone. She wanted to write home about him. She wanted to tell the world she was in love with Joseph Brudegher and he was in love with her.
She made the mistake of admitting that to Caitlin.
“Oh, please … they all say they love you during sex. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Bru doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean,” Vix told her.
“Vix … don’t make this into something more than it is. I mean, what do you think happens when we leave here on Labor Day? You think they sit around waiting for us to come back? It’s a summer romance. End of story.”
It was still July. Why did she have to think about Labor Day?
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Caitlin told her.
Vix remembered the redhead crying her eyes out at the pizza place. No guy will ever make me feel that bad! And she hated Caitlin for reminding her. So what if it was just a summer romance? Did that mean she shouldn’t enjoy it?
Caitlin wrapped her arms around Vix. “I’m glad you’re happy. Really. I’m glad you’re in love. Just remember, no matter how many guys come and go we’ll always be together. Friends last longer than lovers.”
19
ABBY ENCOURAGED THEM to throw a party for Vix’s seventeenth birthday. “You can invite the girls from work … and Daniel and Gus will bring their friends from the Harborview.” She said this as if it were a brilliant idea. “We could do a barbecue or even a clambake.” Poor Abby. She wanted so much for things to work out between all of them, to play mother to her brood.
But Caitlin had her own plans and they didn’t include Abby or the Chicago Boys. She chose a remote beach on Chappaquiddick as the site for Vix’s party. And the only people she invited were Bru and Von.
Vix had never been to Chappy but she’d heard plenty about the scandal involving the senator and the young political assistant, and how she’d been trapped inside his car
when it rolled off the Dike Bridge and into the dark waters.
“Talk about following your pointer!” Caitlin said. “And God knows what she was following.”
“Maybe she thought she was in love.”
“That was her first mistake,” Caitlin said.
“And her last.” Vix hadn’t intended to make a joke of it but Caitlin laughed anyway.
In Edgartown she and Vix waited for the tiny car ferry to shuttle them across to Chappy, then Caitlin drove for miles, as if she knew exactly where she was going, as if she’d been there a million times before, though Vix couldn’t imagine when. Finally the ocean came into view, as calm and blue as Vix had ever seen it, rimmed by a long white sandy beach, almost deserted. Bru and Von were already there, waiting.
Caitlin was wearing her black bikini that day, the one with the bottom cut up to her waist. She coated herself with suntan lotion, slowly, asking Von to do her back. He lifted her hair to get her neck and her shoulders, and as he did she stood with her face upturned to the sun, her eyes closed. Something about it was so sensual Vix felt uncomfortable and turned away, meeting Bru’s gaze.
The midsummer heat wave was making headlines and the temperature of the ocean made it feel like a pond. Vix always kept both feet on the ground in the ocean, fearful not just of the waves washing over her, suffocating her, but of the undertow and, even worse, a riptide. If you were caught in a riptide and weren’t able to swim parallel to shore it could carry you out so far you’d never be able to get back. Her worst nightmare was to be trapped underwater like Mary Jo, the senator’s friend. But today, with no surf and hardly any undertow, she floated on her back as the water gently lifted then released her, like a seesaw. With Bru watching there was no reason to be afraid.