3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows

  “Of course,” Brian said.

  Nicky leapt onto Brian's back for the walk to the table. Polly passed out more nuggets so there would be enough for everybody.

  “I came by to pick up a couple of DVDs for Tibby,” he explained, sitting on the table and taking the food Katherine offered. “I told her I'd send them.”

  Polly nodded. She poured glasses of milk all around.

  Tibby was the twenty- year- old sister of Nicky and Katherine, and more than that, she was part of the mythic Sisterhood. She was in college, living in New York City, and Polly had only met her twice. Tibby was a filmmaker, and Polly was so dazzled by her and her reputation that she hadn't managed to say a word in her presence.

  Brian -was Tibby s boyfriend, though their relationship was complicated, Polly knew, by his living here and Tibby's living in New York.

  For Polly, Brian set the gold standard for boyfriends. When Polly read books or magazine articles involving girls with boyfriends, she found she always pictured Brian.

  As much as they worshipped Brian, Nicky and Katherine groused about Tibby sometimes, but that didn't make Polly think any less of her. She understood that kids were perhaps a bit less cute when they were related to you and lived in your house and you couldn't leave them at the end of the day if you wanted to.

  When Brian -went upstairs, Nicky and Katherine followed, and Polly followed them. She took a hand of each of them and held it, knowing instinctively that Brian wouldn't want them to follow him into Tibby's bedroom.

  Brian turned the knob and swung the door open. Polly saw into the room -with its shades pulled down, a computer and piles and piles of discs on the desk.

  Polly was slightly in awe of this room. The door -was mostly kept closed, and though she'd seen into it a few times, she'd never gone in. It was like a shrine to an imagined life, mythical and ominous to Polly. It stood for growing up and leaving home and the artifacts and the people left behind.

  On the inside of Tibby's door, Polly noticed, as she had once before, the large photograph of a pale blond girl. It was a close- up picture of the girl's face. The girl-was laughing, but there was something haunting to Polly about it, she wasn't sure why.

  Polly knew Brian -wanted to be alone. “Hey, you two,” Polly said to the kids, with the kind of enthusiasm guaranteed to catch their attention. “It's time for me to wreak my revenge in Tumblin’ Monkeys. Come on.”

  Nicky and Katherine easily took her bait and scuttled down the stairs after her.

  A few minutes later, Polly had to run back upstairs to get a roll of toilet paper from the linen closet, and she quietly passed Tibby's room again.

  Through the half- open door she saw Brian sitting in the dim light on the edge of Tibby's bed. His head was bowed and his elbows rested on his long legs. He held the discs he'd come to find in one hand and his head in the other.

  He didn't look up or notice Polly as she hurried along on silent feet, and Polly understood that he sat on Tibby's bed like that because he missed her.

  Brian left soon after, and Polly spent the remainder of the afternoon in a trance. Her mind took up its perch near the ceiling and watched her body conduct games of Ants in the Pants and Go Fish.

  For some reason she thought mostly about her newly discovered grandmother who was a model and looked like Sophia Loren, and wondered if that grandmother had ever been loved the way she imagined Brian loved Tibby.

  “I don't want to go, but I have to,” Jo explained, talking to Bryn on her cell phone while sitting on a bus headed back to Bethesda. “I had to trade shifts with Brownie.”

  “Brownie's such a loser,” Bryn declared. She was never one to forget about the social hierarchy, however much or little it applied.

  “Maybe so, but he was -willing to give me his shift.” Jo's ear -was getting hot, so she switched sides. “I'll work lunch tomorrow instead.”

  “I'm sure he was happy that you even talked to him,” Bryn said confidently. She put the phone down for a moment to yell at her brother. “So why are you going back to Bethesda?”

  “I'm—I'm having dinner -with my dad.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “He … he can't come out to the beach because he's … you know, on call at the hospital. And he … just wanted to see me, I guess.”

  Jo had worried about how to phrase this. She didn't really understand, herself, why her dad wanted to have dinner, just the two of them, in Bethesda—why he'd almost insisted on it. She didn't want Bryn to push her on this question. Luckily it didn't sound like Bryn -was paying close attention. It sounded like she was chewing on something and also possibly typing on her computer.

  “Did he just see your report card?” Bryn asked dis tractedly.

  Jo laughed. “Yeah. Maybe that's it.” She looked out the window and watched the beach traffic piling up across the highway. She didn't really think that was it.

  “I should go,” she said. “My phone's gonna die.”

  “Okay. See ya. Have a blast on the bus.”

  “You mean luxury motor coach.”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  Jo leaned her forehead against the window, watching the deep red sun. Usually it spread its glow all around the sky, but tonight it kept all the color to itself. It looked like it was burning up, falling only a matter of miles to the west of her, on Bethesda maybe, maybe even on her house.

  She hadn't called Polly back yet. She should really call Polly. If she told Polly that she was coming home on the bus from Rehoboth to have dinner -with her dad, Polly would pay attention and she would instantly see how weird that was.

  She remembered, maybe a year ago, when Polly had been talking about her own father, -whom she'd never met. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, my father is lost too,” Jo had said. She'd felt slightly surprised to hear herself say it. She had been in a reckless mood.

  “Your dad's not lost,” Polly had been quick to say, always literal. “He lives in your house.”

  “I know,” Jo had said, not wanting to say more, but she could see from Polly's face that she did understand, at least partly, what Jo meant.

  Jo's dad was a surgeon. When Jo was little, he was still teaching and just beginning his practice. He used to have dinner -with the family and take Jo to movies and museums and sports events on the weekends. He practiced violin -with her every day. He, more than anyone, taught her how to play soccer. He coached her team until she joined the travel league in fifth grade.

  But after Finn, her dad got a lot busier at the hospital. “Your dad's a top surgeon,” people were always saying to her, like that should matter a lot. Later they said, “Your dad's a top- top surgeon.”

  By the time she was twelve, family dinners were a distant memory. With just the three of them, it didn't feel much like a family anymore. Jo ate at Amas house whenever she could. At home she ate frozen pizzas with Mona, the housekeeper, or takeout with her mom.

  Jo and her dad did almost nothing together. Her dad barely even looked at her anymore. He never -went into her room. One time when he'd had to fix the toilet in her bathroom, he'd been full of bumbling confusion, like he'd landed on a strange planet. She hoped he did a better job fixing his patients than he'd done fixing the toilet.

  “It's hard for fathers to watch their little girls grow up,” her grandmother Mary had said.

  “I don't think he's watching,” Jo had pointed out.

  It seemed to Jo that her father -was lost in a way that Polly's wasn't. Polly had never had hers, so what was there to lose? “At least he left before he knew you,” Jo had said to her. “You can't take it too personally.”

  Polly had looked stricken on Jo's behalf and obviously hadn't known -what to say. She hadn't said anything more on the subject of fathers until a week or so later. “I bet if you needed to have something, you know, removed from you, your dad would be right there.”

  Jo had tried to laugh, but the laugh hadn't come out. She had instantly changed the subject to zit cream or something. Because Po
lly had touched on more than she knew. Jo's dad was a top- top surgeon, and he hadn't been able to save Finn.

  “Do you know what you want?” Jo's dad asked her over the din of the Mexican restaurant in Bethesda, just two blocks from the station -where he'd met her bus.

  Jo continued to peruse the many laminated pages of the menu. She was reluctant to give it up, because it was the closest thing to a conversation piece they had.

  “I'm still deciding,” she said, having taken heed of all specials and also her dad's opinions about what would be good here and what wouldn't be.

  She looked around the place. She admired the technique and efficiency of the busboys. These were adults, career restaurant staff, who knew what they were doing—not like the amateurs at the Surfside. She almost wished she could hang around the kitchen and get a few pointers.

  “Hows the job?” her dad asked her. He put a hand through his hair, -which -was mostly gray, receding from the temples, with enough reddish blond left to suggest the source of hers. He was wearing a dark suit and looking well- groomed, like the top- top surgeon he was.

  She couldn't remember telling him she had a job. Had her mom told him? Had he spoken to her mother about her?

  What if she tried to catch him out? What kind of job do I have? she felt like asking him. Okay, then, what's the name of the restaurant? She pictured him as a contestant on a game show, attempting to answer questions about her life. She imagined the loud buzzer sound when he got the answers -wrong.

  “It's fine,” she said. She'd let him off the hook.

  “Good.”

  He looked pale, she thought. He winced periodically, as though the noise of the place was unlike anything he had ever heard before. She wondered if maybe he wasn't getting out of the hospital much.

  They stared at their menus for another minute. The waiter arrived. Her dad looked at her expectantly. He'd grown up in the South, so he would sooner poke her -with his fork than order his food before she had.

  “I'll have the enchiladas verdes,” she pronounced. She ate a chip. She gave up her menu regretfully.

  After her father ordered and the waiter -went away, they were back in silence. Her father moved his silverware around and she realized she was holding her breath. She couldn't figure out a way to swallow the chip.

  “Jo.”

  “Yes.”

  “I'd like to talk to you about something.”

  Here it came. She didn't exactly want to give him permission for the talk, but she couldn't get up and leave either.

  “It's about your mother and I.”

  She chewed her chip. Me, she felt like saying. Your mother and me. If you were a top- top surgeon you should know that Iwas a subject and not an object. She'd only done her English homework about half the time. She wasn't a top-top anything and even she knew that.

  He continued to line things up, including his place mat and water glass. “We are going to start—we're starting a trial separation this summer.”

  She ate another chip. Maybe two would be easier to swallow than one.

  “Your mom is going to stay at the beach -with you, and I'm going to be here this summer.”

  “At this restaurant?” She wished she wasn't saying it, even as she said it.

  “At home, Jo.”

  “Well, that doesn't sound like a big change,” Jo said.

  He was patient, at least. That was his main good quality these days—not reacting to her, no matter how sassy she was.

  “As I said, it is a trial,” he continued, wiping his glasses down -with his napkin. For a moment she looked at his eyes without the barrier of his glasses. They were deeper, sadder eyes than she expected, and she looked away again. “We'll revisit it in the fall. I'll probably get an apartment near the house if that's what we decide is necessary. Whatever happens, you'll be able to stay in the house.”

  Was that what mattered to her? Jo wondered. Staying in the house? And anyway, who did the “deciding” about what was “necessary”? What did necessary mean? Her dad didn't want to admit that what really mattered was what he wanted, not what he needed. He was trying to make it sound official, but it wasn't official at all. It was what they -were choosing.

  “We'll still see each other. There won't be any big changes.”

  If we see each other, that will be a big change, she thought, but did not say.

  The food came. Jo carved her enchiladas up very carefully, trying to free the nice, neat pieces from the muck on her plate.

  “I get it,” she said casually. “That's fine. No big changes. You won't come to the beach. You may or may not get divorced from Mom.” She shrugged, but she did not eat.

  Jo wondered what her dad had in store, now that he was shaking off the wife and kid. How much had he yearned for this freedom? He was probably going to date the pretty young nurses at the hospital. A top- top surgeon -was always in demand. She'd end up being one of those girls whose stepmother -was barely older than she was. He'd have parties at the house—no, more likely he'd never be home. He'd sleep on the sofa in his office. He'd go to parties with the residents and wear embarrassing clothes and try to borrow songs off her iPod in an attempt to be cool.

  “I hope you'll come home and have dinner -with me once a week this summer,” he said, in a voice different from the one he'd been using before.

  She put her napkin over her mouth and looked down at her lap. Not likely, she thought. And what would you do if I did? Would you cancel a surgery to see me? Would you really make it home from the hospital in time for dinner? The one thing this separation -would prove was that they were all separated already.

  She nodded. “Okay” she said. “No biggie. I'm sure nothing's really going to change.”

  He nodded too. He looked frankly relieved by her reaction. He'd probably been terrified there would be tears and yelling. He'd probably dreaded that. He was probably thrilled to be off the hook once again. She picked at her food in silence.

  As he signaled for the check, she wondered if his patience was such a good thing after all. Maybe she was a jerk to act like she didn't care, but he was a jerk to buy it.

  Ama didn't like to sit too close to the campfire because of the sparks. She had an image of her rowdy heap of hair attracting a spark and setting her -whole head aflame in a matter of seconds. She shivered in her fleece. It would be better if she got closer, because she was freezing. But better freezing than aflame, she figured.

  She felt embarrassed and stupid that she hadn't helped more with dinner, but she had an irrational fear of can openers. And because of that she hadn't felt entitled to eat much. And because of that she was especially cold and also hungry.

  Dan appeared a few yards in front of her, brandishing his camera. He was clearly the trip photographer. “Okay, let's get a campfire picture, group!” he called. “Crowd in a little and smile, would you?”

  Ama made a face. There was no way she was crowding in or smiling.

  “Say ‘cheese! Say ‘marshmallows’! Say ‘s'mores’!” Dan urged them.

  Ama glowered resentfully at the camera, unwilling to look happy or diverse, just as she had done the other times Dan had pointed it at them.

  She looked at Noah across the circle. He obliged Dan with a smile and went back to animatedly talking to bug-eyed Maureen. Noah looked really, really nice. Ama was sorry she'd been so puzzling and unfriendly to him for the duration of their -walk that afternoon.

  Jo always said Ama was mean to boys she didn't like, and Ama guessed that was true. But she suspected she was even meaner to boys she did like.

  “I don't like to make a big production about tent mates,” Jared was saying to the group as Ama tuned back in to the proceedings. “If the person seated to your right is the same sex as you are, that's your tent mate. If not, look to your left. Otherwise, I'll set you up. No coed tents, please.”

  Ama was far enough out of the circle that she wasn't quite sitting next to anybody. By the time she crept forward, the girls closest to her -were paired
up. It reminded her, depressingly, of the many kickball games when she stood waiting until the bitter end to get picked. She tended to do a lot better -when the picking -was for chemistry experiments or English projects.

  “Ama, who's your tent mate?” Jared barked at her over the fire.

  Suddenly everyone was looking at her again.

  She swallowed. “No one,” she said.

  “Who still needs a partner?” he asked, looking around the group.

  One very tiny boy raised his hand. Ama figured he had to be at least fourteen to have qualified to come on the trip, but he looked more like seven.

  “Well, that's not going to work,” Jared said. He counted off the group. “We're missing two.” He calculated. “We're missing Carly and …”

  “Jonathan,” one of the boys offered.

  “Right.” Jared looked at Ama. “So you're with Carly. Andrew, you're with Jonathan. Done.”

  Ama knew who Carly -was. She had the large breasts and the loud laugh, and was always getting gum from somewhere.

  As Ama wondered where Carly had gone, some singing started up, over by Maureen. If somebody pulls out a guitar and starts strumming it, I will die, Ama thought. She decided this was the moment to go pee. She headed off, tentatively, into the darkness. She wanted to get far enough to not be caught or heard peeing, but not far enough to be devoured by wild animals, her screams unanswered.

  “Oh!” She tripped over something. She staggered a few yards and came down hard.

  “Ow! God! Watch it!” a girl's voice hissed at her.

  “Sorry,” Ama muttered, trying to get her bearings, trying to make her eyes see in the dark. “I didn't realize …” Amas voice trailed off as she tried to stand up.

  As her eyes adjusted she saw that she'd plowed into not one person, but two. It was a girl and a boy, and it was pretty obvious what they were doing behind the dense bush. “Sorry,” Ama said again.

  She crept away in embarrassment. Now she knew where Carly had gone. And Jonathan, too. Ama had the feeling she wasn't getting off to the best start with her new tent mate