3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows

  “Are you okay?” Polly asked, stepping into her room from the hallway, looking -worried. “You -were shouting.”

  Jo nodded. “I'm fine. I -was dreaming, I guess,” she said, though her heart still pounded. She saw that Polly -was dressed and alert, a book in her hand. Jo rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Noon.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn't mean to sleep so late,” Jo said.

  “That's all right. Do you -want to go to the beach?”

  “Okay,” she said. “I'll get ready.” Polly took up her toiletry kit and disappeared into the guest bathroom, leaving Jo hers to use. Jo -wondered about the suitcase. She -wondered again how long Polly intended to stay.

  Jo put on a bathing suit and threw some stuff in a bag. Polly -was ready and waiting at the door.

  She realized, as they walked along, how pale Polly was and also how small her arms looked. She looked like a moon moth, out of place in the sunshine. Did Polly go outside ever? Did she have any life at all? Jo felt a pang at that thought, but she resisted it. Was it really Jo's job to have to worry about Polly forever?

  On the wide sand beach they laid out towels together, slathered on sunscreen—-with Jo's orange- yellow hair she was prone to sunburn and freckles—and lay there until they got hot. Then they jumped into the ocean.

  The waves were big and got bigger. They jumped and dove in unison. Polly got clobbered by a wave and stood up, laughing. She was remarkably strong and sturdy for a moon moth. When Jo leapt for a wave but lost her feet in the current, Polly reached out for her hand. Jo took it but then she dropped it, because of the guilt and all the unspoken things.

  After that they lay back on the towels and let the sun dry them.

  “Hows your dad handling it?” Polly asked after a silence.

  Jo squeezed her eyes shut against the sun. “Handling what?” she said.

  Polly rolled onto her side to look at Jo.

  “You mean him and my mom splitting up,” Jo said, only half obligingly.

  Polly nodded, staring into Jo with her big, serious eyes.

  Jo fiddled with the strap of her bathing suit and looked away.

  “It seems like it's been really hard for them since Finn, you know?” Polly asked.

  At that moment, Jo saw a group of her restaurant friends -walking in a loose cluster toward her across the glowing sand. At the back of the group she saw Zach, godlike in his blue surf trunks.

  “Hey, Goldie,” Megan shouted, waving.

  Jo sat up. “Hey.” She waved to the group. The sun sparked off the ocean into her eyes. Most of them she knew, but a couple of the girls were unfamiliar. “How's it going?”

  Megan looked at Polly questioningly.

  Jo took in Polly's childish bathing suit and her -weird hat and her buckteeth as she squinted into the sun. Jo saw Polly through Megan's eyes, and it didn't look good. Jo felt guilty, but she -wished she could make it seem that she and Polly didn't know each other, even though they -were lying side by side on towels. “This is, uh, Polly,” Jo said.

  Megan nodded.

  “Hi,” said Polly.

  “We're going to play volleyball up by Oak Street if you want to come.”

  “Okay thanks. Maybe we'll come by,” Jo said. There was no way she was bringing Polly to play volleyball with them.

  Zach lagged a little behind the rest of the group. He gave her a long look, taking in every bit of her that wasn't covered by her lavender and white striped bikini. He winked at her.

  “See you tonight, Goldie,” he called before he caught up -with the rest of them.

  As they walked away Jo found herself -wishing she was going -with them. They didn't know her parents and they hadn't known Finn, and the big relief was that they probably didn't care.

  “Who's Goldie?” Polly said after they had gone.

  Jo shrugged and started to make a hill of sand. “That's what they call me at -work.”

  When the doorbell rang through the big, airy glass beach house, Polly followed Jo to get it. She immediately recognized the girl at the door from school. She recognized her tiny features and squinty blue eyes and sullen mouth, but she couldn't remember her name.

  “You know Bryn, right?” Jo asked, ushering Bryn into the house.

  “Yeah. From school,” Polly said. She began chewing on her thumbnail. Bryn did not look pleased to see her. Polly knew she was not Bryn's kind of person. Bryn -was one of the girls Jo had started hanging out with at the end of seventh grade, and Polly could not figure out why.

  “Do you guys want some lemonade?” Polly asked. It was obvious Bryn -was very eager to talk to Jo about something and she didn't want to do it with Polly around.

  Polly took her time with the lemonade. She wondered if Jo's mom -was out in the back. She felt like Jo's mom -was acting more like her friend than Jo was.

  Polly heard their voices coming from Jo's room, so she carefully carried the three glasses down the hallway. Her steps slowed as she heard what Bryn -was saying. She didn't mean to, but Bryn's voice was grainy and insistent, and Polly's ears were unusually sensitive.

  “You didn't go?” Bryn's voice demanded. “You must be joking.”

  Jo said something, but Polly didn't hear it clearly.

  “Because of her? You can't be serious. I know you guys used to hang out, but I didn't realize she was still, like, your BFF.” Bryn sounded like she was laughing.

  Polly didn't hear any response from Jo.

  “Seriously, Jo, she's gotta be, like, the weirdest kid at school.”

  Polly didn't want to take another step forward, but she couldn't make herself back away. It seemed pretty clear that Bryn -was talking about her.

  “Anyway, what is she doing here?” Bryn demanded to Jo's inaudible response.

  The lemonade sloshed a little in the glasses as Polly's hands shook. She didn't want to be heard. She didn't even want to be there. She couldn't go forward or back.

  She waited for Jo to stand up for her. Maybe Polly and Jo weren't as close anymore, and maybe Jo chose to spend more time with kids like Bryn. But Jo and Polly were real friends. You couldn't take that away.

  “I didn't invite her. She just came. I wish she'd leave.” Jo's words stabbed like individual blades into Polly's ears.

  “She's here and you're saying you aren't even friends -with her?”

  Polly heard nothing, and then Jo's response: “We used to be friends.”

  Jo heard the thump and crash and rush of footsteps down the hallway. She ran out of her room, past two broken glasses and a spreading puddle of liquid, and into the kitchen.

  Polly stood in the kitchen -with a wad of paper towels in her hand and tears on her cheeks. She hurried past Jo to the mess in the hallway. She knelt down, clumsily picking the glass pieces out of the lemonade and laying down the paper towels.

  Jo watched her, paralyzed. “Polly what happened?” she asked, even though she knew. She knew what had happened.

  “I broke the glasses,” Polly said to the floor. Jo heard the sob in Polly's voice and she knelt down too and began to pick up bits of glass.

  “Polly—”

  Polly gathered the soaked paper towels and carried them to the kitchen garbage. She dumped them, along -with the pieces of glass. She went into Jo's room, past Bryn, -who sat on the bed flipping through a magazine, and got her suitcase. Jo watched, holding bits of glass in her hands.

  Jo stood up and felt dizzy. She felt like there was a strange pressure from above and around her, and it would crumple her legs and send her sprawling.

  She followed Polly to the front door. Polly -walked out of it, carrying her suitcase, her damp beach towel flapping over her shoulder. Her dark clothes and tall socks looked strange against the dunes. Jo followed a few steps down the path, her feet bare, still holding the pieces of broken glass. Then she stopped and watched Polly walk down the beach, getting smaller as she went.

  Jo wanted so badly to feel relieve
d at seeing Polly go. She wanted to forget about what had happened. Jo wanted to tell herself that Polly hadn't really heard much of anything, and she wanted herself to believe it. She wanted to go back into the house and laugh about it with Bryn, but she couldn't move.

  For two years, Jo had instinctively kept her old friends separate from her new ones. She had dreaded having Polly and Bryn in the same place, and not just because Polly would embarrass her. The deeper dread was that she, Jo, would be cruel.

  Jo looked down at her hands and saw that they were bleeding.

  “Polly, what's the matter? How come you're not eating anything?”

  Polly drew her eyes up from her take- out Thai noodles and focused them on Dia. “I'm just … not that hungry.”

  “Did you eat a late lunch?”

  Polly thought back to lunch. Had she eaten lunch? She shrugged.

  “Did you have a bad day?”

  Polly had done little eating or speaking since she'd returned from Rehoboth Beach, but Dia was just starting to notice. Polly thought back on her day. Had she had a bad day? She shrugged again.

  “What did you do this afternoon?” Dia was clearly in a fine mood. She was drinking some kind of whiskey cocktail with lemonade and maraschino cherries.

  “Regular stuff. I read.”

  Dia nodded. She was staring purposefully at Polly. “Did you have a bad time with Jo at the beach?”

  Dia didn't notice stuff often, but when she did she was smart.

  Polly shrugged again.

  “What happened?”

  Polly considered her mother's short, inky hair and the glint of the gold stud in the side of her nose.

  What would Jo's friend Bryn think of Dia? Could Bryn think of a bigger -word than weird? Probably not. To a person like Bryn the world was amazingly simple. You were either normal or -weird. Normal was a small and rigid category and weird was a much bigger but also rigid category. It didn't matter how you were weird or -why you were weird. There was no diversity in -weird. There -were no degrees of-weird. You just -were or you -weren't. Those -were the possibilities and there -weren't any others.

  Polly pictured Jo in fourth grade dressed up as Pippi Longstocking for Hallo-ween, balancing the giant horse she'd made out of papier- mâché. She pictured Jo playing the violin to her tree. Could Jo really stay inside the limits of normal? Did she really-want to?

  “She's got a lot of new friends at the beach,” Polly said. “Kids who work at the restaurant and on the boardwalk.”

  Dia nodded knowingly. “And you didn't feel like you fit in?”

  Polly knew this was a favorite and familiar tune for Dia. Dia had made a life out of not fitting in. I'll show you weird, her mother seemed to say with her clothes and her hair and her sculptures.

  Polly shook her head.

  “Well, don't lose sleep over the new friends.” Dia waved the stem of a maraschino cherry. “Girls like us are a hell of a lot more interesting. Trust me on that.”

  Polly nodded, but she wasn't sure she wanted to be a girl “like us.” She didn't want to be interesting. Maybe it was okay when you were grown up and you were in control of it, but being interesting in high school was no fun at all.

  Polly wondered what could happen if she lost a few more pounds and got started as a model. What if she had a real head shot, the kind they promised you at the end of modeling camp? What if she actually got hired for a job?

  What if Bryn saw Polly in a magazine? What if Jo saw it? What if they knew that her grandmother had been a real model, a famous one? What would they think then?

  Dia got up and fixed herself another drink. When she sat back down she looked solemn. “I have to say, Polly, I'm kind of surprised at Jo, though. And I guess Ama, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Polly asked.

  “Lots of friendships fall apart when you get to be teenagers,” Dia said, sighing philosophically. “Kids get so narrow- minded in high school. I guess that's pretty typical. But I thought you three promised more.”

  I thought we did too, Polly thought.

  “Aunt Candice wants me to zip up to Baltimore for a night or two to meet her new boyfriend,” Jo's mother told her the next afternoon.

  Jo nodded. Aunt Candice was a few years ahead of her mom in the divorce process. She was already having boyfriends. She made for a weird kind of role model, Jo thought.

  “Are you going to go?” Jo said.

  “I'd like to.” Her mom looked happier than she had in a -while. “He's a musician. He's playing a set on Friday night.”

  The way her mother said it, the single thing that her life had been missing for the last ten years was a musician playing a set in Baltimore on Friday night.

  “That's fine. I don't mind.” The gears in Jo's brain started to turn.

  “You could stay next door,” her mother said hopefully. “Jeannie said she'd be delighted to have you.”

  Jeannie next door had twin four- year- old boys. Jo knew she'd spend any free time there babysitting. But if she stayed here … well, there was Zach. There were Bryn and the group at the restaurant. There was no curfew. There were endless intriguing possibilities.

  “I can stay here,” Jo said. “It's fine. Jeannie s right next door if I need anything.”

  Her mother looked uncertain. She wanted this to -work. She didn't want to run into any obstruction from Jo, and Jo knew it.

  “Seriously, Mom. It's no problem. We've got Jeannie on one side and Mrs. Gluck on the other. She never goes anywhere.”

  Her mom nodded slowly. “Do you really think you'd be all right?”

  “Of course. You'll have your phone, I'll have mine. You'll only be a couple hours away. I won't use the stove. What could happen?”

  Her mom really wanted to go. “Well. Maybe. I don't know. Do you think you should talk to your dad about it?”

  Jo breathed out in impatience. “Mom, do you really think Dad would care?”

  Gia was one of the earliest supermodels and probably the most tragic, Polly concluded after extensive research online. Cindy Crawford was one of Polly's favorites because she had been her high school's valedictorian and studied engineering at Northwestern University.

  Polly stood up from her computer and wandered into the bathroom. She climbed up onto the sink to take a look at her backside in the tall mirror. Had it gotten any smaller? According to the digital scale at Wallman's drugstore yesterday, she'd lost six and a half pounds.

  Polly thought about her research. She especially liked Iman, because Iman -was from Africa, like Ama. In fact, Iman looked like Ama, or at least the way Polly imagined Ama would look -when she got older. Christy Turlington practiced yoga, -which Polly respected, and Heidi Klum had a good head for business and had started her own TV show.

  Polly turned to look at herself from the front. She was getting pretty good at dieting, she realized. She was pretty pleased with herself for that. A lot of the models she'd been reading about took diet pills or illegal drugs or smoked cigarettes to stay thin. Polly was glad she wouldn't have to resort to those measures.

  One thing that made it easier -was that Polly ate a lot of her meals by herself, so if she skipped them, no one really noticed. She pictured Amas family around the dinner table every night. There was no way you could skip dinner if you were Ama. Not that Ama wanted to skip any dinners. Unlike Polly, Ama was naturally thin to begin -with.

  Polly had hoped to lose three and a half more pounds before she went to camp, but she'd read an article online that said that you could stunt your growth if you didn't eat enough. Was it more important to be thin or tall?

  Kate Moss was harder to warm up to, Polly found. She was the current subject of Polly's research. You couldn't do a thorough study of models without Kate Moss, and though Kate Moss was exceptionally beautiful she was also the mother of a young daughter. When Polly looked at the pictures online of Kate Moss partying -with crazy, druggy rock stars, she couldn't help thinking of the daughter.

  Polly's stomach looked flat and
her -waist was small, but her hips and butt looked no different. Her face was thinner and her cheekbones stuck out more, but her bra fit just the same.

  When she went into her room to get dressed, she still felt ungainly in her jean shorts. She still stooped selfconsciously in her tank top. She still suffered the same old frustration at Dia for not coming home when she said she would. She still replayed the words that Jo had said to Bryn in Rehoboth Beach, as hard as she tried not to.

  Polly was pretty good at dieting, all right, but she was beginning to wonder -whether you ever lost the parts of yourself you -wanted to lose.

  •••

  “I totally love those socks,” Carly gushed. “Do they have the separate toes? I had some like that once, but the dryer ate one of them.”

  Ama nodded grimly at Carly as they reassembled their tent two nights later.

  “I'm always buying new socks, aren't you?” Carly nattered on. “For a while I stopped wearing them, but my running shoes really started to stink.” Carly laughed at her own hilarity, and Ama used what weight she had to drive a corner post into the ground.

  “Then I decided to get all the same kind, so it doesn't matter if you lose one, you know?”

  Ama didn't know. Amas mother -washed clothes with such care that she almost never lost their socks. But Ama remained silent. It didn't seem to bother Carly, nor did she even seem to notice that Ama wasn't answering her and hadn't answered her in three days, since the episode with Noah.

  When Ama next looked up, the tent was done. As much as Carly talked, she was a remarkably efficient tent assembler.

  “I'm starving,” Carly declared, heading off to join the dinner-making team.

  Ama wandered around alone, examining the anthills on either side of her. She'd become well versed in ants, both red and black, and did a good job of not setting up their tent on top of any.