Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

  Julia seemed to sense the change in mood, but she didn’t want to let go. “Butter or jam? Butter and jam!”

  Even now, even amid deepest doubt, confusion and misery, Carmen didn’t want to let Julia down. Too ingrained was her idea of how friendship was. “No. Thanks,” she said. “I’m just really tired.”

  “Are you sure? They are hot. They won’t be hot in the morning.”

  Julia made it hard not to take what she offered. “No, thanks,” Carmen said again.

  Julia’s face got a pinched look. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll just leave them on your desk.”

  “Thanks,” said Carmen, dully. She picked herself out of bed, brushed her teeth, put on a sleeping shirt, and crawled back into bed. “Do you mind if I turn off the light?”

  Julia grabbed a book from the floor. “I’m going to read for a while,” she said.

  Carmen tried to sleep, but she couldn’t. Her despair was so big that she couldn’t think of a way to feel better.

  And then she remembered a way.

  Under Julia’s suspicious frown, Carmen took her script from the end of her bed and crept out into the hallway. She sat under the good light and tried to reacquaint herself with the lost girl.

  When Tibby woke up, she lay in her old bed for a while and let the waking world come back to her slowly. And she realized her breath had an echo. That was kind of funny, to be breathing in twos.

  Then she realized that the second breathing was not hers. She opened her eyes and saw Lena’s face where she lay across the end of Tibby’s bed. Lena’s small, patient face, made with more precision, more fineness than ordinary faces. Most people would tap you and wake you up, but Lena was happy to just wait while Tibby slept.

  “Hey,” said Tibby. She wondered at how she could love one Kaligaris sister so much and really hate the other one.

  Lena smiled. She seemed pretty satisfied with lying there in the sunshine.

  “When do you go back?” Tibby asked, crooking her elbow and propping her head on her hand.

  “I’m going to stay here for a few days. What about you?”

  “I think Bee and I are going to take a train tomorrow night.”

  They were quiet for a while, but companionably so.

  “I think you should get back together with Brian,” Lena said finally.

  Tibby felt as if she could see the words floating down like feathers freed from her comforter. “I can’t, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “It wouldn’t be fair,” Tibby said, earnestly hoping that Lena would not agree with her.

  “It wouldn’t be fair to whom?”

  “Well, to Effie, I guess.”

  Lena studied Tibby’s face thoughtfully. She seemed to want to project her thoughts from her eyes as much as her mouth. “I don’t think you should worry so much about Effie.”

  “How can I not? She asked my permission and I gave it.”

  Lena looked sad. “Yes. I know. And Effie’s my sister. And I don’t want to side with you over her. It’s not like I haven’t thought about all this.”

  “I know, Lenny,” Tibby said apologetically.

  “I’ve waited to say anything, because I don’t want to hurt Effie.”

  Tibby nodded. She’d worn her anger at Effie like a skin, protective and irritable. Now Tibby felt herself molting, slipping out of it not in bits, but as a piece. And like a molted skin, once disembodied, it sat dry and weightless beside her. It had captured her completely, and yet it didn’t belong to her.

  “Effie is strong, you know? She bounces.”

  I don’t bounce, Tibby acknowledged to herself.

  “She loves Brian. But she loves him in the Effie way. It’s like she’s going in circles a hundred miles an hour and he’s practically standing still. She only sees him when she laps him, but still she thinks they’re together.”

  Tibby laughed in spite of herself.

  “Brian wants to cooperate, but it’s not right for him.”

  Tibby marveled at Lena’s perfect recapitulation.

  Lena resettled her body so she was sitting cross-legged directly across from Tibby and holding her close with her eyes.

  “Here’s one thing I know,” Lena said.

  Tibby sat up too. Lena picked the important things carefully.

  “There are some people who fall in love over and over.”

  Tibby nodded, understanding the particular melancholy as it revealed itself on Lena’s face.

  “And there are others who can only seem to do it once.”

  Tibby felt tears in her eyes just like she saw in Lena’s. She knew Lena was talking about her and Brian. And she was also talking about herself.

  Bridget coaxed Perry into going on a bike ride with her. She’d gone to some lengths to borrow Carmen’s stepdad’s bicycle and helmet, but she’d tried to pass it off to Perry as the lightest of impulses.

  “What do you say? We’ll just go down to Rock Creek Park and back.”

  He looked doubtful.

  “Please?”

  She got on her old bike, not giving him too much chance to think. She was happy when he reluctantly followed. Perry had never been athletic, but he used to love riding his bike.

  It was a beautiful late-summer day, not nearly as hot as it could have been. The traffic was blessedly light, as though the cars had purposely stayed away, knowing it was a fragile situation.

  By the time they’d made it to the park, Perry was riding right up next to her, coasting along.

  She stopped inside the entrance as promised. “Do you want to turn around?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “We can keep going,” he said, making her feel happy.

  They biked for an hour more before they stopped at a cart and bought ice cream bars. Perry had money and wanted to pay. They sat on the grass by the creek and ate them.

  There was so much she wanted to say to him. She wanted to get him to talk about their mother and about things he remembered. But she knew she had to go slow. It would be too easy to scare him away.

  Before they got back on their bikes, she put her arm around him and squeezed his shoulders. How long had it been since anyone had touched him? He was a little stiff, a little uncomfortable. It probably wasn’t what he wanted, but she felt in her heart it was something he needed.

  On the way home they stopped at the pet store on Wisconsin Avenue. Perry had always loved animals, but he’d never been allowed to have anything but newts, because their mother was allergic to animals with fur.

  They held hamsters first, and then an obese guinea pig. Perry held a baby white mouse with utmost care. Next they each picked up a rabbit. Perry’s tried to climb down the front of his shirt and it made him laugh.

  Soon after they got home from the pet store, Bridget’s cell phone started ringing. With a galloping heart she recognized Eric’s cell number. He didn’t have service in Mexico, did he?

  “Hello?”

  “Bee?”

  “Eric?”

  “It’s me,” he said sweetly. “Where are you?”

  It had been so long since she’d heard his voice she thought she might cry.

  “I’m in D.C. Where are you?”

  “I’m in New York.”

  “You are in New York?” she screamed joyfully. She couldn’t help herself. New York wasn’t right here, but it was a lot closer than Baja. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine. I really want to see you.” He said it tenderly.

  “I really want to see you.” Whatever had happened this summer, the way she felt now, she could not doubt that she loved him.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  She walked in view of the kitchen clock. “Almost noon.”

  “I’ll be there in time for dinner.”

  “Here?”

  “There. You better give me your address again.”

  “You’re coming here?” She was screaming again.

  “How else am I going to see you?”

  “
I don’t know!” she shouted giddily.

  “I can’t wait until tomorrow,” he said.

  Carmen dressed that morning under the watchful eye of Julia. She forced herself to wear lipstick, even though she didn’t feel up to it. Sometimes you could trick yourself.

  She didn’t collect any of the books she’d taken to carrying around. She didn’t even take her script. She could no longer see the words for all the markings.

  She did, however, pick up the bag of scones from her desk and take them with her as she walked out the door. Julia looked pleased with that, at least.

  Carmen carried the scones as far as the big front doors, where she dumped them in the garbage can.

  At rehearsal she kept to herself. Andrew had an eye out for her, but he left her alone. Judy left her alone. Carmen didn’t feel invisible to them. She felt they were trusting her to find her way. Either that or they had given up on her, but she didn’t really believe that.

  She sat in the back row, in the dark, and listened to Leontes rage about nothingness. She thought of the idea she’d had on the hillside the night she’d met Judy. Where there is nothing, there is the possibility of everything. When you live nowhere, you live everywhere.

  She wished she had the Pants right now, but she didn’t. She had to rely on herself. You have to be like a turtle, she thought; you have to figure out how to bring your home along with you.

  She saw Hermione, Perdita’s lost mother, bustle down the aisle in full statue costume and makeup. That was a fantasy, wasn’t it? Your mother turns into a statue. William Shakespeare knew a thing or two about wish fulfillment. The statue-mother stays exactly where you left her. You always know where to find her. She doesn’t move, doesn’t change, doesn’t even age.

  Carmen thought of her mother. She was hardly a statue. She didn’t stay still for two minutes. And yet, even with her new husband and her new baby and her new house—with her happiness—Carmen always knew where to find her.

  She thought of what it was to begrudge someone their happiness, and this brought to her a stinging set of feelings. She didn’t want to think about Julia. She was afraid she would begin to seethe, she’d be sucked into the maelstrom of her old temper and it wouldn’t help her. She didn’t have the stomach for it. She didn’t have the power. She didn’t have the wherewithal right now to stake that kind of claim.

  Instead, she thought of Ryan’s walking shoes. She touched the Pants charm dangling from a chain around her neck. For some odd reason, she thought of Tibby’s old guinea pig, Mimi.

  Julia was waiting for her outside the theater when they broke for lunch. Carmen saw her there waiting with a smile and two big sweating iced teas, sandwiches, and bags of chips. She beckoned to Carmen and Carmen felt the familiar reactions, outmoded and dislodged though they were. She felt the old pull of gratitude. She felt needy and uncertain. She still clung to the notion of a friend, even a crappy one.

  But Carmen didn’t move. “No, thanks. Not today,” she said finally, and she walked right by.

  Bridget fretted out loud in Lena’s bedroom. Once the euphoria of getting to see Eric had quieted a little, she’d realized she had problems.

  “I told Perry we’d all have dinner together again. He actually seemed like he wanted to. I can’t blow it off.”

  “So you can eat together,” Lena said.

  “Together?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  There were many reasons why not. But were any good enough to prevent her from doing it?

  “Okay, so what do I do with Eric?”

  “What do you do with Eric?” Lena smiled craftily. “Only you can answer that.”

  Bridget pretended to punch her. “Come on. I mean where do I put him?”

  “In your house.”

  “In my house?”

  Lena shrugged. “That’s my only idea.”

  Bee never brought anyone to her house. Not since middle school. Not even her friends. She hardly brought herself there. Certainly not a boyfriend. It was almost too strange to imagine. Did she need to ask her father? What would he make of it?

  And more terrible, what would Eric think of them? How would he feel about her if he saw her house? If he met her father and brother? She had wanted to protect him from the truth.

  “Lenny, you know how my house is.”

  “I think Eric can handle it.”

  “Do you honestly think that?”

  “If he’s good enough for you, Bee, I honestly do.”

  On the walk from Lena’s, Bee’s adrenaline started pumping. At home, she couldn’t be still if she tried. She started with vacuuming, then dusting. She sprayed Fantastik on the walls, trying to make them look a little less gray. She opened all the windows. She brought a fan down from the attic. She mopped. She found boxes in the garage and started putting the ugliest stuff in them—plates, pictures, papers, odd bits of furniture. She stuffed them all out of sight in the basement. She shook out the rugs. She tried to rearrange them to cover the vomitously ugly wall-to-wall carpets. She cleaned the bathroom tile on her hands and knees. She stole more flowers from the neighbors’ yard.

  When her father arrived home, he looked as though he’d found himself in the wrong place.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said. “My friend…actually my boyfriend is coming to stay for a night. Is that all right?”

  Her father’s confusion was almost impenetrable. She had to explain it four times before he showed any light of understanding.

  “Where will he stay?” he finally asked, with his faraway look.

  “In the den. On the couch.”

  “In my den?”

  “Yes. Unless you want him in your room.” She meant that as a joke, but it didn’t go over like one.

  “I don’t think so,” her father said solemnly.

  “In the den, then? Is that okay?”

  He nodded and she went back to her cleaning, getting crazier as the hours passed. At five o’clock she corralled the two of them in the kitchen.

  “No headphones outside of your rooms,” she commanded.

  They both nodded fearfully.

  “Try to circulate a little. If Eric talks to you, it’s a plus if you answer.”

  They both nodded again. They didn’t even look offended.

  “We’ll have dinner at seven-thirty, okay? Dad, we’ll have the leftover pesto and I’ll make a salad.”

  More nodding.

  “That’s it. Just…be yourselves,” she finished, which was the least helpful thing she could possibly have said.

  By seven o’clock she ran out of steam. She floated along the hallway feeling sorry and hopeless and sad. She wished Eric weren’t coming to this house. She wished she hadn’t bullied her father and brother into hostile resistance. She wished she lived any life other than this one. Sometimes the past and the future could not be forced together.

  But when she walked past Perry’s room she saw him cleaning up his desk. When she went downstairs she saw her father carefully folding sheets and a blanket onto the couch in his den.

  She’d thought they had nothing to offer her, but they did. She’d thought her efforts were lost on them, but maybe they weren’t. She’d thought they had no power to hurt her or make her happy, but at this moment she knew that wasn’t true.

  They had meager offerings, all three of them. But if they could align what little they had, maybe they could start to make it better.

  Tibby called Brian late on Sunday afternoon. “Will you meet me at the picnic table?” she asked him. It was their significant place, site of their first kiss. It stood under a giant copper beech tree in a tiny triangular park equidistant from their houses.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Now?”

  She got there first. She pointed her face in the direction of his house and watched for him. At last he came, the sun drooping faintly behind him. She felt joy spilling over in her chest. Something about his face made her stand up and greet him with her arms. She put them around him courageously. He
let her.

  She took a step to the side so he could sit at the end of the picnic table. She was grateful that he obliged.

  The perfect thing about this table was that when he sat on the end of it and she stood between his legs, they were at the exact right height for seeing each other eye to eye and also for kissing. They had done it many times in the past. She didn’t try kissing him this time. But she put her face against his so her mouth was near his ear. “I am so sorry,” she said.

  He pulled away and looked at her carefully.

  “I got scared. I panicked. I forgot everything that was important.”

  Sometimes it seemed to her that he could extract everything from her mind with his eyes. Sometimes it seemed like her words just got in the way of it.

  “I knew that, Tibby. I understood. Why wouldn’t you talk to me?”

  A blink of her eyes released unexpected tears. “Because I can’t lie to you as well as I lie to myself.”

  He nodded, seeming to understand even that.

  “I promise I won’t do that again,” she said. His eyes tested her words, but she wasn’t scared. She knew they were true.

  Softly she held his two hands in her two hands. Brutally she shoved aside her chronic instincts of pride and fear. She had no business with them now. “I missed you,” she said. “I wish we could go back.”

  He shrugged. “We can’t.”

  “We can’t?” Her agony stretched her words out over the abyss. Had she been wrong in believing that he would forgive her?

  “We can go forward, though.”

  “Together?” She did nothing to temper the abject hope in her face.

  “I hope so.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “I won’t be going to NYU, though.”

  She winced. “Because of me. Because I ruined everything.” She was prepared to eat the blame like ice cream if he’d take her back.

  “It’s all right. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing.”

  “I’ll make it up. I really will. I’ll take the bus back every weekend.”