Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

  “Oh.” She racked her brain for something that sounded medical or professional. Oozing sores? Would those help? Contagious foot fungus? Multiple personalities? She could make a case for that last one.

  “Good. Stick with your partner. Everybody always wants to change at first.” He piled up his papers and stood to leave. “You’ll do fine.”

  God is subtle. But not malicious.

  —Albert Einstein

  The ferocity was back on Valia’s face, and it was more ferocious than ever. They were due in the hospital again, this time for the double whammy of blood testing for Valia’s kidneys and physical therapy for her knee. She’d refused to get into the car with Carmen, on account of Carmen’s allegedly holding the steering wheel wrong. So Carmen was steering Valia down the sidewalk in her wheelchair, much like a mother pushing the stroller of a very grumpy baby.

  Ashes to ashes, diapers to diapers, strollers to strollers, gums to gums, Carmen mused as she pushed Valia along. Who said she hadn’t gotten a babysitting job this summer?

  There was a reason she was breezing along the two-plus miles to the hospital in the very teeth of the mid-July heat, but she did not yet know his name. And anyway, how much better it was to be outside, sharing Valia with the universe rather than having her in a small dark room, all to herself.

  With one hand on the wheelchair, Carmen opened her phone with the other hand and pushed the Lena button.

  “Hi,” Carmen said when Lena answered. “Are you done work?”

  “I have lunch and dinner shifts,” Lena said. “I’m on break.”

  “Oh. Listen—”

  Carmen broke off, because Valia had snapped her head around and was scowling, the lines around her mouth deepening. “I don’t vant to hear you talk on the phone,” Valia declared. “And how you can push with vun hand?”

  “You have to go,” Lena said knowingly, sympathetically.

  “Oh, yes.” Carmen snapped the phone shut. Ferocity was etching lines on her face too. One of the advantages of a baby over Valia, say, was that not only were babies considerably cuter but also they couldn’t talk.

  Carmen pushed the last mile with a clenched jaw. At the hospital she went first to the kidney floor, number eight. As Valia barked at other, non-Carmen people who were trying miserably to help her, Carmen got to roam around in the hallway. In forty minutes she saw many faces pass, but not the one she wanted to see.

  It wasn’t until they reached the knee floor, number three, and Carmen had been prowling that hallway for twenty minutes that she saw the guy whom she did not yet hate poke his head around the corner. When he saw her, the rest of his body came too.

  “Hey!” he said, striding toward her and smiling. God, he could wear a pair of jeans. Had he grown even better-looking in the days since she had seen him?

  “Hey!” she said back. Her stomach reacted forcefully to the sight of him.

  “I realized I forgot to ask you your name last time,” he said. “I’ve been wondering for a week.”

  “Did you come up with any ideas?” Carmen asked.

  He thought. “Um…Florence?”

  She shook her head.

  “Rapunzel?”

  “Nope.”

  “Angela?”

  She squinched up her nose in displeasure. She had a very fat second cousin named Angela.

  “Okay, what?” he asked.

  “Carmen.”

  “Oh. Hmmm. Carmen. Okay.” He tilted his head, fitting her to her name.

  “What about you?”

  “My name is Win.” He said it sort of loud, as though he were expecting an argument.

  Carmen narrowed her eyes. “Win?…As opposed to lose?”

  “Win as opposed to…” He had a slightly pained look on his face. “Winthrop.”

  “Winthrop?” She smiled. Had she known him long enough to tease him?

  “I know.” He winced. “It’s a family name. I hated it from the beginning, but I didn’t learn to talk till I was two, and by that time it had stuck.”

  She laughed. “Why do we let other people name us?”

  “Yeah,” he said indignantly. “Why? Somebody should change that.”

  “I remember that skier in the Olympics,” Carmen recalled. “Her parents let her name herself and I’m pretty sure she chose Peekaboo.”

  He nodded sagely. “Well, yeah, there is that.”

  She smiled. Win. Huh. Win, Win, Win, Win. She didn’t mind at all.

  “How’s your…” He pointed to her arm.

  Not coincidentally, she was wearing her most flattering sleeveless shirt, which offered a long view of her tanned, curvy upper arm. Both of her arms, actually.

  “It’s fine. Practically all better.”

  “Good.”

  “How’s Valia doing? Ligament, right? Anterior cruciate?”

  She nodded happily. Carmen’s main problem with guys was that she had nothing to say to them. She loved the fact that she and Win (Win, Win, Win) had all these things to talk about even though they didn’t know each other.

  “Carmen? Caaaaarmen?”

  It was the sound that chilled her blood, that dried her bones and made her lunch crawl back up her throat. Carmen tried to keep her face bright. “That would be Valia. She needs me. I better go.”

  “She doesn’t sound happy,” Win observed.

  “Well…” Carmen bit her lip. She didn’t want to vent her suffering to Win. It just seemed wrong here. “Valia’s had a rough time.” She dropped her voice to a low volume. “She lost her husband less than a year ago, and she had to move here from the beautiful island in Greece where she was born and spent her entire life and…” Carmen felt genuinely sad for Valia as she described it. “She’s just really…sad.”

  Win looked solemn. “That does sound rough.”

  “Yeah. I better go,” Carmen said. She wasn’t sure she could endure the Valia wail another time.

  “She’s lucky about one thing, though,” Win called after her.

  Carmen turned her head as she walked away, feeling her long hair swing over her shoulder like a girl in a movie.

  “What’s that?”

  “She has you.”

  Lena felt too fragile to go back to drawing class for a few days. She knew her father would be watching her closely now. She waited until she felt strong enough for a confrontation before she dared to go back.

  She asked Annik if they could talk during the long break, and Annik agreed. This time Lena led the way to the courtyard. Annik had been so pleased when Lena had first told her about RISD. Annik rattled on about all the teachers she knew there. Now, with the change in plans, Lena felt like she had to tell her that, too.

  “So he says I can’t go. They won’t pay for it,” Lena explained numbly.

  Annik’s mouth narrowed. Her dark eyes widened within their frames of reddish eyelashes. She seemed to hold back. She probably knew it didn’t help to trash a person’s parent, no matter what he’d done. “He says you can’t go or he won’t pay for it?” she asked finally, flatly.

  “I guess both. I can’t go if they don’t pay.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Lena shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “You should. People go to art school who don’t have any money. There are two ways. I’m guessing that you wouldn’t qualify for financial aid?”

  Lena shook her head. They lived in a big, nice house with a pool. Her father was a successful lawyer. Her mother had a good income.

  “Then you’ll have to win a merit scholarship,” Annik said.

  “How do you do that?” Lena was afraid to be hopeful.

  “I could call my friend—” Annik stopped herself. She put her hands together.

  Lena counted Annik’s rings, nine altogether.

  “If I were you,” Annik went on, changing course, “I’d go on the Web site or call them up and find out. And if they tell you no, then ask some more questions until you get somebody to tell you yes.”

>   Lena looked doubtful. “I’m not really good at that kind of thing.”

  Annik looked impatient. Not mad or dismissive, but definitely impatient. “Do you want to go to art school or stay home?”

  “I want to go to art school. I can’t stay home.”

  “Then figure out how to do it.” Annik put her hand, briefly, on Lena’s elbow. “Lena, I think you could do something good. I think you have talent, possibly a lot of it, and I don’t say that lightly. I want you try. I can see it’s what you love. But I can’t fight for you. You have to fight for yourself.”

  “I do?”

  Annik gave Lena an encouraging half smile. “You do. You’ve got to take up some space, girl.”

  So the first strategy wasn’t going to work. Not only was Bridget not going to avoid Eric, she was going to see him constantly. Somebody up there was having a sick laugh at her expense.

  Bridget took a long run on her break after lunch and tried to formulate plan B.

  She and Eric weren’t going to be strangers, so they were going to have to be friends. She could do that. She could treat him like a regular guy. Couldn’t she?

  She could try to forget that he was her first and her only. She could put aside the disastrous effect their brief fling had on her life. She could ignore—she could try really hard to ignore—the mighty attraction she felt to him. She could make herself accept that he did not feel that same attraction for her.

  Bridget was breathing hard now, running up a steep hill, curving round and round. The forest cosseted her on either side.

  The truth was, she had never felt so overwhelmingly drawn to anyone. In the two years since they’d seen each other, she had questioned this particular magnetism Eric had for her. Was it real? Or was she so caught up in a mania of her own making that summer in Baja that she had imagined it?

  Seeing him again this summer answered her question. It was real. She responded to him the same way, even though she was different.

  What was it about Eric? He was handsome and talented, yeah. But lots of guys were. She had adored Billy Klein back in Alabama the summer before, and she had even felt attracted to him, but it wasn’t like this. What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having to feel it for you right back.

  Bridget reached the top of the little mountain. Suddenly the trees fell away, and she could see furrowed hills and steamy valleys on and on. The camp, in which all of this agitation was contained, was small and circular. From this height, it was small enough to put her arms around.

  Bridget knew what to do. She couldn’t control her basic response to Eric. But she could control her behavior. She had been tough and single-minded then, and she was now, too. Just as she’d found a way to seduce him back then, she could find a way not to do it now.

  She had a weekend at home coming up. She would pull herself together. And when she got back to camp, she would contain herself: She wouldn’t flirt, she wouldn’t tempt, she wouldn’t pine, she wouldn’t grieve. She wouldn’t even yearn. Well, maybe she’d yearn a little, but she’d keep it to herself.

  She began the run downhill, fast and just a little bit out of control.

  Yes, they would be friends. They would be pals. He would never know what she really felt.

  It was going to be a very long summer.

  Can I buy you a drink, or should I just give you the money?

  —Failed pickup artist

  “Come on, Tibby! We’re going!”

  Tibby was standing in the front door of her house, watching Bee jump up and down on the lawn and shout at her. Her yellow head radiated light in the darkness.

  “Where are we going?” Tibby asked flatly.

  “It’s a surprise. It’ll be fun. Come on!”

  Tibby walked out onto the summer lawn, feeling the bits of mown grass sticking to her bare feet. “I don’t want a surprise. I don’t want to have fun.”

  “That’s exactly why you need some.”

  Carmen was at the wheel of her car, honking the horn and waving out the window. Tibby could see Lena in the front passenger seat.

  Bee came close and bent her head toward Tibby’s. “Come on, Tib. Katherine is bouncing back like a little Super Ball. You’re allowed to feel okay, you know? I have one night before I go back to Pennsylvania. I’m not spending it without you.”

  Tibby ran back to the house to tell her parents she was going. Usually her parents went out on Saturday nights, but since Katherine’s accident they stayed close to home. And besides, since they’d fired Loretta, who was going to cover for them?

  Tibby trudged to Carmen’s car without bothering to get shoes. “I don’t want to go,” she announced to the group, once inside the car.

  “You don’t even know where we’re going,” Lena pointed out.

  “I still don’t want to go.”

  Carmen released the break and drove off anyway. “The lucky thing for you, Tibadee, is that your friends don’t listen to you.”

  Tibby shook her head humorlessly. “I don’t really see how that’s lucky.”

  “Because we love you too much to let you fester in your room for the rest of the summer,” Carmen clarified. Fester was her word of the week.

  “Maybe I like to fester,” Tibby said.

  “But festering…does not like you.” Carmen nodded decisively, as though this were the last word on the subject.

  Tibby sat back and let the comfortable nattering swirl around her. Listening to her friends’ voices felt like hearing a familiar symphony, with one instrument coming in and layering atop another. The way the cadences linked and harmonized made her feel safe.

  Until Carmen pulled into the parking lot of the Rockwood pool.

  “Why are we here?”

  “We’re going swimming,” Bee offered.

  “Why don’t we just go to Lenny’s?” Tibby asked.

  “Her parents are home. And Valia is asleep,” Carmen explained.

  Enough said. No sane person wanted to wake up Valia, and her bedroom window faced the back of the house.

  “Well, this pool is closed.” Tibby felt sour as she said it.

  “Just come on, okay?” Bee said.

  Tibby followed them over the bridge of the piddling creek that used to seem to her like a roaring waterway connecting parts unknown. It was probably just for sewage. She followed them up the endless steep stairs that used to seem to her like the stairway to heaven. They approached the locked gates, then fanned out to the sides.

  Tibby was starting to get an even worse feeling about this.

  “This is the place!” Bee called out, pointing up at the one part of the fence not spangled by razor wire. Bee was already climbing by the time they’d gathered at the foot of it. “Up and over,” she called gaily, making it look as simple as mounting a bike.

  “I’m not coming,” Tibby said.

  “Why not?” Carmen and Lena both turned to look at her.

  This was the kind of stunt she would normally have gone along with. But the thought of climbing the fence made Tibby feel almost physically sick. She couldn’t explain all the reasons, but she knew she wasn’t doing it.

  “I just don’t feel like it,” she said.

  Bee paused on the other side of the fence. They were all obviously disappointed that they couldn’t get Tibby excited about their plan. Bee reversed her climb. Now Tibby felt bad.

  “But you guys go ahead,” she said, trying to lighten her voice. “Seriously, go. I don’t mind. Besides, you need someone to stand guard here…you know, like, just in case.” It sounded pitiful to Tibby’s own ears.

  “I wish you’d come. It won’t be as fun without you,” Lena said.

  “Next time,” Tibby answered, feeling like a big loser.

  So there she sat, slumped against the side of the fence—the outside, the wrong side—pretending she was standing guard, while she listened to her frie
nds strip down to their underwear and splash into the water. They were more subdued than they would have been if Tibby had gone along. But still, they were willing to play.

  “Carma, I will pay you back, I swear.”

  Carmen rolled her eyes. “Shut up. Why are you saying that? We don’t pay each other back. We’re not keeping score.”

  Tibby actually paused from her insane flurry of activity to look appreciatively at Carmen. “So I won’t pay you back.”

  “Thank God.” Carmen took a tube of cherry-flavored Blistex from the mess of stuff on Tibby’s dresser and put some on. “Eleventh floor, right?”

  “Yeah, check in at reception. Ask for Dr. Barnes. There’s a little kids’ lounge in case you have to wait.”

  “No problemo. It’s my home away from home.” Carmen held up Tibby’s soft charcoal T-shirt and considered stealing it.

  “Katherine’s going to be very happy about this.”

  Carmen returned the shirt to the mess. “And it’s good practice for me, right?” Her voice had turned sober.

  Tibby sensed her mood and touched her wrist. “I think you already got it down, Carma.”

  Carmen led the way to the foot of the stairs, where Katherine was waiting eagerly, her yellow backpack strapped over both shoulders, her hockey helmet tipped at a slightly rakish angle.

  “Ya ready, baby?”

  Katherine stood up on her kitchen chair, and with no regard for her cast put her arms up in a point like a diver. She jumped to Carmen.

  Tibby helped her load Katherine into the baby seat they’d fastened into Carmen’s car, and hopped into the copilot seat. First Carmen dropped Tibby off at work, and then she drove to the hospital. As they parked, Carmen enjoyed the good spirits of Katherine, chirping away from the backseat, never complaining once about her driving, in contrast to, say, Valia.

  As they whooshed through the automatic doors into the giant lobby, Carmen lifted Katherine into her arms. Sweetly, Katherine clung to her like a koala, her hockey helmet wobbling just under Carmen’s chin.