Summer Sisters

  Caitlin yanked Von’s ponytail.

  He lowered his shades and looked at them through his rearview mirror. “I knew this was my lucky day,” he said, turning on the charm. “Hey, Bru … get a look at what we caught.”

  “Uh-huh,” Bru answered, about as excited as if they’d reeled in two sardines.

  They were heading out of town, past the Italian Scallion vegetable stand, past mini golf, past the Tashmoo Overlook, to Lambert’s Cove Road where Caitlin told Von to take a right. “How far up?” he asked.

  “I’ll let you know.” When she did, Von slammed on the brakes making them fall forward against the front seats, which he found funny.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Caitlin said. “See you at the Flying Horses.”

  “Not this year,” Von told her. “I’m working at the fish market this year.”

  “Which one?” Caitlin asked.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Von said.

  “Yeah … well, save me a fish head,” Caitlin said.

  “I’ll save you something better than that,” Von told her. “See me in about three years to collect.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Caitlin sang, slamming the car door.

  They could hear the boys laughing as they pulled back onto the road and floored it.

  Caitlin took this as a sign that all was not lost. She threw an arm over Vix’s shoulder as they walked the mile down the dirt road leading to their house. “Aren’t you glad we hitched?”

  “Maybe,” Vix said. She wondered if the boys knew she had her period, if they’d noticed the bulge in her shorts when she’d stepped out of the car.

  “Just maybe?” Caitlin asked.

  “Probably. Is that better?”

  “Yes, definitely better.”

  That night they sat facing each other in the old claw-footed tub which had somehow escaped renovation. Caitlin had convinced Vix no menstrual blood would come out in the tub, but if it did she wouldn’t mind. “You’re really growing,” Caitlin said, focusing on Vix’s chest.

  Vix felt her face grow hot. “I know.” They hadn’t seen each other naked since last summer. Caitlin was still flat.

  “What’s it feel like?” Caitlin asked.

  “What’s what feel like?”

  “To have tits?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like anything.”

  “Can I touch them?” “I guess.”

  Caitlin leaned over and cupped her hands around them. Vix had touched them herself but this was the first time anyone else had. It made her feel funny, as if she couldn’t breathe.

  “Do you still have The Power?” Caitlin asked.

  Vix nodded.

  “Do you use it?”

  “Sometimes. Do you?”

  “Sometimes.” Caitlin gave Vix a sly smile then slid underwater. Her hair fanned out and for a minute she looked dead.

  Vix had worried that Caitlin would find another summer sister, someone to replace her. It wasn’t until they’d boarded the plane at the end of last summer that Caitlin had broken the news. She was going to Mountain Day, a private school in Santa Fe. Vix had been completely crushed.

  “Cheer up!” Caitlin had told her. “For all we know we’ll die today. The plane might crash, anything could happen.”

  But the idea of losing Caitlin was even worse than having the plane crash. She wondered if Caitlin and her new school friends shared The Power. She never shared hers. Sometimes at home, after Lanie was asleep, she’d use The Power by herself. Mostly, it went to waste. There was too little time and too little privacy.

  She hadn’t expected Caitlin to invite her back to the Vineyard, and when she did, Vix worried that her mother wouldn’t let her go. It had been a difficult year for her family. Nathan was sick on and off all through the winter and hospitalized with pneumonia in March. A few weeks later Lewis broke his arm. The roof started leaking with the heavy wet spring snow and Tawny let them know she was worried about the stack of bills piling up on the desk in the living room. There was talk about selling the RV but Ed decided against it for the moment. Instead, he took a second job, driving for UPS, but was laid off after a few weeks.

  Tawny surprised her. She seemed relieved there’d be one less person around for the summer, one less person to worry about.

  In mid-May Tawny reported that Phoebe had been a guest at the Countess’s party the night before. “She was there with someone at least ten years younger,” Tawny sniffed.

  “So?” Vix said, trying to prove how sophisticated she’d become. “Phoebe has a lot of friends. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lovers.”

  For a second she thought Tawny was going to slap her face and she jumped back. Instead, Tawny shouted, “I’ve had enough of your impudence, Victoria!”

  The week before she’d called Vix impatient … impatient and irritating. Vix had no idea why her mother was so angry with her. She’d overheard Tawny on the phone, telling someone the Countess was drinking again and smoking two packs a day, and when the doctor issued a stern warning the Countess had told him to fuck off. “I don’t have the strength to worry about her, too, but if she goes … my job goes,” Tawny said.

  Was the Countess going to die? Was that what Tawny meant? Vix didn’t ask. She tried to stay out of her mother’s way but as the end of the school year approached Tawny was always hostile, blaming everything on Vix. One night, when the chicken she was supposed to baste got overdone on the grill, Tawny yelled, “Look at this!” She jabbed a fork into a piece and waved it around for the other kids to see. “If Victoria weren’t so self-centered we wouldn’t have to eat burned chicken tonight!” Vix ran to her room and didn’t come out.

  Later, while she was finishing her math homework, Lanie said, “You know why she hates you?” Vix looked up from her notebook. “It’s because you get to escape,” Lanie said, trying to braid Malibu Barbie’s hair. “We all hate you for that.” Lanie spoke without emotion, and suddenly Vix understood everything. She got to escape and they didn’t.

  She felt sad about leaving Nathan, especially when he shoved his raccoon puppet in her face. “I want him to go to Martha’s, too. Then he can tell me all about it.”

  “But I told you all about it last summer,” Vix said. The stories she’d told were generic island stories, about the ocean, the birds, the storms.

  “How do I know you didn’t make it all up?” Nathan asked.

  Could he see through her so easily or was this his idea of a joke? “Okay, Rupert,” she said to the puppet. “You’re going to Martha’s with me!”

  “His name isn’t Rupert anymore,” Nathan said. “It’s Orlando.”

  “Orlando?”

  “As in Disney World,” Nathan said. Vix knelt in front of Nathan’s chair. “Someday I’m going to take you to Disney World,” she told him.

  “When?”

  “As soon as I earn enough money.”

  “How many years will that take?”

  “I don’t know. Not that many.” She wrapped her arms around him. His body felt so small, so frail.

  “I missed you last summer,” he whispered. “Lewis and Lanie don’t care about me the way you do.”

  She knew this was true and she felt guilty, but not guilty enough to stay home. It wasn’t that Lanie and Lewis were cruel or unkind to Nathan, it was more that they were involved in their own lives and sometimes forgot about him. Especially Lewis. He’d always resented Nathan, for being born in the first place, and then, for being born the way he was. She could tell sometimes that Lewis was thinking, Why did they have to have him? Why didn’t they stop after the three of us? She knew they’d all asked themselves the same questions, even her parents. Tawny used to tell them Nathan was a gift from God, to teach them to be strong, to teach them to count their blessings. But what about Nathan? What kind of gift had God given him?

  7

  THE SECOND WEEK in July, when the hydrangeas turned a deep blue and ran rampant around the porch, Lamb threw a par
ty to celebrate Abby’s MBA. “She just loves showing off her new husband and her renovated summer house,” Caitlin snickered.

  “What about her lovely stepchildren?” Vix asked.

  “Oh, definitely.”

  They both looked across Abby’s newly planted flower garden to Sharkey, who had turned into a stranger, growing seven inches without gaining a pound, which left him looking like Lurch, his arms hanging like fishing poles from his shoulders, his hands dangling at his sides as if he couldn’t figure out what to do with them.

  “Almost as perfect as her own son,” Caitlin said.

  Daniel and Gus had arrived the day before, for a three-week visit, which meant she and Caitlin had to share the bathroom not just with Sharkey but with three teenage boys. Three disgusting fifteen-year-old boys who left the toilet seat up, peed on the rim, farted wherever and whenever. And one of them regularly forgot to flush or else was so proud of what he’d made, he wanted to share it with the rest of them. There was always toothpaste stuck to the sides of the sink from where they’d spit, wet towels tossed on the floor, and the tub was strewn with hair from God knows what parts of their bodies.

  They overheard a guest at the party telling Abby how attractive the children were, then asking if she’d found a job yet. Abby answered, “No, I really haven’t starting looking. I’m giving myself some time off to just enjoy.”

  “Now that she has her meal ticket she’ll probably never get a job,” Caitlin whispered to Vix.

  Meal ticket?

  The day after the party the weather turned rainy and windy, and for a week it stayed that way. Vix and Caitlin bought a stack of paperbacks at Bunch of Grapes and, except for meals, spent the entire week in bed, reading. Abby tried luring them out with boxes of old jigsaw puzzles. Sharkey hovered over Vix after dinner, his breath on her neck, as she put them together.

  “What’s your secret?” he asked after she’d completed a particularly complicated sailing scene.

  “Secret?” she said. “I don’t have a secret.” All she knew was she was good at putting the pieces together, at making the picture whole.

  Gus referred to her as the Cough Drop. Maybe Tawny knew what she was talking about when she’d said, If I’d wanted to name my daughter after a cold remedy I would have. “Hey, Cough Drop!” Gus would call. “What’s happening?” He was the most irritating person she’d ever known. Caitlin wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stand the Chicago Boys. They definitely didn’t get it!

  The girls escaped by closing themselves in their room at night where they became Disco Queens, dancing to the Bee Gees. They’d seen Saturday Night Fever six times. They were in love with John Travolta. Caitlin swore if you looked close at those tight white pants, you could see the outline of his Package.

  On the night that Gus came to dinner wearing a mop on his head and tennis balls inside his shirt, singing Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive … as if he were capable, as if he were worthy of imitating either them or John Travolta, Caitlin dubbed him The Pustule.

  “That’s good,” Gus told her, not the least bit offended. “I like my women on the clever side.”

  “Your women?” Caitlin snorted. “Dream on!”

  Even Caitlin didn’t mind that the old cracked mirror above the bathroom sink had been replaced. No more scar faces. She began to brush her tongue with toothpaste, sticking her toothbrush halfway down her throat in the process, so when the time came she’d be ready for the fellatio thing. She encouraged Vix to do the same but every time Vix tried, she gagged. “You’re going to be hopeless at oral sex,” Caitlin told her, shaking her head.

  “Maybe you don’t have to stick it down so far,” Vix suggested. “You do.”

  “How do you know?” Caitlin shrugged.

  “You’ve seen pictures?” Vix asked.

  “I’ve seen Phoebe.”

  Vix opened her mouth but no words came out.

  Caitlin grabbed her by the shoulders. “Swear you’ll never tell a soul!”

  “I swear.”

  “Have you ever … you know … seen your parents?”

  Vix shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “But one time,” she began, partly to make Caitlin feel better, “I saw my father flirting. It was a real shock.”

  “How old were you?”

  “It was … recent. They were sitting in the window of the sandwich shop at La Fonda. I was outside, walking by.”

  Caitlin was quiet for a minute. “That’s not exactly like having sex.”

  “I know.” Vix couldn’t find the words to explain how she’d felt that day, like an intruder in her father’s life. Until tonight she’d put it out of her mind. “She had big hair …” Vix said. “Frosted. They were laughing. I saw her reach across the table to pat his arm.”

  Caitlin patted her arm. “It’s probably nothing. Don’t worry. Flirting doesn’t count.”

  Caitlin was straightforward in her flirting. If she found someone attractive she’d let him know. She didn’t waste time playing games. On Vix’s thirteenth birthday Lamb dropped them at mini golf. When she and Caitlin stepped into the clubhouse and found Bru behind the register they were beside themselves. Bru, all business, asking them, How many games? She and Caitlin elbowed each other and tried not to laugh. Who said thirteen isn’t a lucky number?

  Even though he wasn’t totally gorgeous like Von, and his lips weren’t the kind you’d suck on all night if you were inclined to suck on lips at all, there was something about Bru that appealed to Vix even more. His eyes were a warm golden brown and his hair, the same color, fell below his ears. She wished she could touch it. He didn’t smile all the time like Von, but when he did it was a slow smile, the kind that sneaked up and took you by surprise. She had no trouble imagining those sinewy arms wrapped around her.

  “How many games?” he asked again.

  “Two,” Caitlin told him, digging her money out of the pocket of her dress.

  He handed them two scorecards and a pencil, acting as if he’d never seen them before. “What color balls?”

  That sent them into gales of laughter.

  “Okay … okay …” he said. “Let’s get this over with. Pink, orange, yellow, green, blue …”

  That made it worse yet. Finally Caitlin pointed to pink and Vix pointed to yellow. They were still convulsed as they started walking away. Then Caitlin pulled herself together, turned back and said, “I can’t believe you don’t remember us.”

  That caught his interest. But after a long look all he came up with was “Can’t say I do.”

  “Double Trouble …” Caitlin told him. “Does that ring a bell?”

  When he still looked blank she added, “You and Von gave us a ride …”

  He was waiting on someone else now, a young couple with a little boy. But he stopped and gave them the once-over again. “Double Trouble … yeah, maybe … but you look different …”

  Of course they looked different! They were wearing matching sundresses with strapless bras underneath, sandals that tied around their ankles, strawberry-flavored lip gloss, and dangling skunk earrings—the official scent of Martha’s Vineyard, as the bumper stickers claimed—all purchased with Lamb’s credit card, which Caitlin had borrowed to take Vix on a shopping spree for her birthday. And they smelled different, too, of Charlie, which they’d splashed all over themselves.

  Caitlin tilted her head and threw him a smile. “See you around,” she called.

  “Not if I see you first,” he answered.

  The father with the little kid was drumming his fingers on the counter. “Could we get going here?”

  “Sure,” Bru told him. “What color balls?”

  They exploded again, laughing even harder than the first time. While they were waiting to tee off Caitlin said, “Someday they’re going to fall in love with me.”

  “Who?” Vix asked.

  “Bru and Von.”

  “Why both?” Vix said. “Why not just one?”

>   “Because it’s more interesting if it’s both,” Caitlin answered.

  But that didn’t strike Vix as fair so she pushed Caitlin to choose. “Let’s say you could only have one. Which one would it be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s say your life depended on it. You have to choose or you’ll die.”

  “Which one would you choose?” Caitlin said.

  “I asked you first.”

  “Okay,” Caitlin said. “I guess I’d take Von.”

  Good, Vix thought. Because she had already chosen Bru for herself.

  A week later they buried Cassandra and Vixen. They built sand sculptures of themselves on the beach, complete with breasts. Vix made hers round, Caitlin made hers pointy, and they both gave themselves purple stone nipples. They used black stones for their eyes, chunks of seaweed for their hair, tiny white shells for their fingernails and toenails, and wispy strands of beach grass for pubic hair. They smoothed out the sand all around their bodies and wrote, Here lie Vixen and Cassandra. They had a good life while it lasted. Then they chanted and danced around their former selves.

  Two women with a springer spaniel stopped for a minute, admiring their work. Caitlin and Vix continued to dance, ignoring them.

  It wasn’t that they didn’t have The Power anymore, it was that they couldn’t use it together. They didn’t know why. Something about it just didn’t feel right. They agreed that for now they could use The Power by themselves, but Vixen and Cassandra were dead. Dead and buried.

  8

  VIX WOULDN’T have thought twice about Lamb’s boyhood if Caitlin hadn’t said, “Lamb was raised by his grandmother. She’s coming soon. I forget when. She’s a real bitch. But you’ll see that for yourself.”

  Her interest was piqued even more when Caitlin fished an old eight by ten photo out of her bottom dresser drawer. “Lamb’s parents,” Caitlin said, tapping the photo. “Amanda and Lambert. Killed in a car crash on the island when Lamb and his sister were just babies. You know how old they were when they died? Twenty-five. Is that pathetic or what?” She didn’t wait for Vix to respond. “They were both drunk on the night of the accident. That’s why Lamb never touches the stuff. She was driving. I look like her, don’t you think?”