The Girls of No Return (23 page)

“Yeah.”

“She's quite a character.”

“Yeah.”

My dad smiled hopefully at me. “Are you two buddies?”

I just stared at him. We were off to a great start.

 

The tour was short but informative. Margaret led the way, sharing her litany of interesting anecdotes about the school, her voice raspy over the bullhorn. I learned, for instance, that Alice Marshall had never married, that huckleberries grew prolifically around the north side of Bob, and that girls who had attended the school went on to become ambassadors and air force captains. One even became a famous cartoonist whose little quips I had been accustomed to reading on Saturday mornings in the Bruno paper. (It was hard to imagine that a woman who now drew cuddly puppies with big, floppy ears and captions like, “I guess that's why they call it ‘dog tired'!!!” ever sat around the Smokers' Beach, talking about the cigarette she put out on her sister's arm.) You had to hand it to her, though; Margaret did a great job of playing to the crowd.

I tried not to lose sight of my cabinmates as the tour continued. I wanted to see what they did with their parents: Were they making conversation? Fighting? Gwen and Karen were at the front of the group, so I could only see the backs of their heads. Jules was nearby, walking slowly with her mother and father and chatting happily. She caught my eye once or twice and grinned. Obviously, she was no help. I tried to stay as near as possible to my dad and Terri without being close enough to talk. It worked, for a while.

After the tour, though, we had an hour of free time before Bev's official welcome. I saw girls leading their parents toward the docks, the horseshoe pit, the area just outside of the Mess Hall that had been designated a smoking area for this weekend only. (Gwen's mom, I noticed, practically sprinted in that direction.) I stood next to my dad and Terri and shuffled my feet.

“Well,” I said.

“Yes?” asked my dad. He looked like he was ready for anything — a game of hoops, an epiphany, a cocktail. He smiled at me eagerly.

“I guess I could show you my cabin.”

“Great idea! We'd love to see where you hang your hat.” Dad nudged Terri, and she nodded slowly in agreement. I wondered if maybe she had taken a pill or two to aid her in this journey. Her edges appeared to have been softened to the point of viscosity.

I hoped that Jules would be in the cabin with her parents, and that the adults could fill the hour with whatever it is that strangers say to one another once they own homes and shop at Costco. No such luck. When I opened the door, the only person there was Boone. She was standing at her bunk, busily stuffing a shirt, a book, and a bottle of bourbon into a backpack. She zipped it shut before my dad and Terri had time to see anything, slinging it over one shoulder and walking toward us and the door. She winked at me.

“Oh, um, this is Boone. My cabinmate,” I said weakly.

My dad stuck out his hand so quickly that he almost hit Boone in the stomach. “Interesting name,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Boone took his hand and shook it once, twice, as though at a job interview. “Pleasure's mine, sir,” she said formally, glancing over at Terri and taking it all in at once: the hair, the perfect skin, the beige slacks. “I've heard so much about you,” Boone said to her. She turned to me. “Gotta jet. You know where to find me if you need anything.” She paused. “You know, like a horse tranquilizer for yourself or . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked Terri up and down. Boone winked again, and was out the door before Terri's cheeks had time to turn completely red.

My dad cleared his throat. “Another colorful character,” he said. Terri's expression was shifting, as it usually did, from shock to fury, though I saw something else there as well — a wave of sadness so brief and so acute that it almost stung. She opened her mouth to say something, and my dad shook his head lightly, a pleading look in his eyes. She closed her mouth. My dad cleared his throat. “Well then,” he said, “let's see this place.” He walked around the cabin, taking it in. “Nice.”

I have to admit, it was looking pretty good. Not inviting, per se, because a room with only bunk beds and nothing else doesn't exactly scream “creature comforts,” but it was at least cleared of any signs of misbehavior. The smokes had all been packed back into their tampon boxes and dirty socks. Our diaries were hidden in their respective secret places. And Boone had just taken the only bottle of liquor with her. We had done a good job of making our lives here look as neutral as Terri's wardrobe.

Terri and my dad sat on Jules's neatly smoothed sleeping bag, and I sat across from them, on Boone's. We stared at one another.

“Lida, you really do look great,” said my dad. “Really . . .” He paused, considering his options. “Sporty. It looks good on you.”

Sporty?

“You cut your hair.” Leave it to Terri to point out the obvious.

“Yeah,” I said.
Quick, Lida. Think.
“It was for a play I was in.”

My dad beamed. “An actor in the family! I always wondered if you might have some stage talent in you.”

“What play?” Terri sounded interested, but I couldn't be sure. She might have been testing me.

“I forget,” I said, my mind flipping through vague memories of various junior high and high school English classes as quickly as possible. “It was right after I got here. Shakespeare, I think. I played a boy.”

“Of course!” My dad was almost bouncing in place, he was so excited to hear that I had finally picked up an extracurricular activity. “Just like they did in Shakespeare's time!”

Terri put a hand on his arm, probably to keep him from floating away on his cloud of happiness. “Honey, women didn't act in Shakespeare's time. The men had to dress up like the female characters.” She looked at me.

Was she challenging me? Did she think I was lying? I mean, I
was
lying, sure, but did she have to say something? It had been so long since I had seen the two of them that I had forgotten how to read Terri's behavior. She was either really trying to piss me off, maybe even blow my cover, or she was just making conversation.

“Right,” I said. “We're like an all-female troupe of Shakespearian actors.” I met her gaze, expecting disbelief, but she smiled at me instead.

“That's neat,” she said. “And anyway, it's growing out quite nicely.”

It was just like her to smooth everything over with sweetness. As though I couldn't hear what she was
really
trying to say.
You're a liar, Lida. And your hair looks like hell.
Still a bitch.

My dad started telling me about life in Bruno. Apparently, nothing had changed since I left. That was no surprise. Nothing ever changes in Bruno. Life in that town is as predictable as Tupperware: This goes here, and this goes there, and it's all sealed up nicely so that nothing ever festers or combusts.

“I guess you got our postcard,” he was saying.

“Hmmm?” I hadn't been paying much attention.

“From New York. You got that, right?”

“Nope,” I said, “I didn't.”

“Oh.” My dad rubbed his hand over his knee. “I guess it got lost. We did send you one.”

“You went to New York?” I was all innocence.

“Just for a few days, earlier this month. You'd have loved it. What a great town.”

Terri chimed in. “You wouldn't believe the food there. Anything you could ever dream of. What was it we tried that one night? Afghani kebabs?”

“No, I think the restaurant was Moroccan. Or maybe Malaysian.”

My dad and Terri started giggling, sharing a moment. I wondered if Boone had been kidding about the horse tranquilizers, and if not, where she might keep them.

“Oh, you two,” I said, sounding like a syrupy grandmother. I almost went on:
It must be so hard, when all foreign foods look and taste the same to you
. But I didn't; I swallowed my sarcasm. After all, I had been given a free pass with the hair. Why not give them a free pass with their trip? What can I say — I was feeling magnanimous.

The bell rang then, signaling the all-school introduction in the Rec Lodge, and we stood up to go. On our way out of the cabin, my dad put his arm around my shoulders.

“I've missed you, Bun,” he said. And I didn't say it, but for the briefest moment I thought,
I've missed you too
.

 

After Bev's introduction, which was as boring and predictable as you'd imagine, the afternoon activities began in earnest. Jules was right: There was no shortage of family-friendly, noncombative, juvenile things to do. Some parents painted rocks and made wish boats in the Rec Lodge. Others played badminton with a net that had been set up on the beach. Dad and Terri and I canoed around the dock a few times until Terri's arms started hurting. Then we joined a small group that was taking a short hike up Red Dot Trail with Margaret. She took us on the portion of the trail with the least amount of elevation gain, and listed the names of trees and flowers as we hiked. Sometimes she would ask one of us girls to tell her what a particular tree or flower was called, so our parents could see what we were learning. She had already taught us to identify all the flowers in the Frank, even the ones that were no longer in bloom, and the words tripped off our tongues like the names of folk music trios: Jacob's ladder, whortleberry, Indian paintbrush, Trapper's tea.

“Lida,” Margaret said at one point, her hand gesturing toward a large, splintered log that was decomposing on the ground, “what do you call this?”

I met her eye, which was a steely challenge. There was no way I could get away with not answering. “Nurse log,” I said dutifully.

“Good. Why?”

“Because it acts as a sort of . . . incubator for plants and fungus as it decays.”

“Excellent.” Margaret grinned proudly.

Even Terri smiled when I answered correctly. And I had to hand it to myself. I had a knack for this wilderness stuff. Long division stuck in my head for about the life span of a bee in a jar, but the intricacies of nature made themselves at home in my brain. I reveled in the odd habits of forest life. And yes, I'll admit I felt a small burst of pride that my dad and Terri could see this too.

The whole day was like that: quiet, respectable. Dinner was a slightly formal affair, with a meal so good I thought Bev must have made it herself. We sat in our cabin groups at tables that had been pushed together, and the parents talked to one another, trading information about mortgages, school systems, weather patterns. It couldn't have been more mundane, though it did give me a chance to examine each family. Gwen's mother had a husky voice and an intense way of maintaining eye contact while she talked. Jules's parents seemed to connect with my dad and Terri, and smiled broadly at all times. Karen's parents looked like they might have felt a bit left out; her mother said something about a farmer's market at one point, but they were otherwise quite silent. All in all, a disappointingly innocent meal. Boone had still not returned from Buckhorn, where I knew she'd gone, but no one seemed to notice. I wondered if Margaret had given her a Get Out of Jail Free card for the weekend.

The only odd thing that I noticed was Gia's empty seat at her table. I hadn't seen her all day. No helicopters had landed in the parking lot, and there hadn't been any planes skimming the lake. Not that I really expected this kind of dramatic entrance, but you never know. I wondered where she was. I wouldn't have admitted this to anyone, but I wanted my dad and Terri to see the kind of friend I had. Yes, it was juvenile, but I hoped that they'd get a chance to see that the coolest girl at school wanted to be around me.

I looked for her during the all-school campfire, but she wasn't there either. I sat sandwiched between my dad and Terri, singing songs that included words like “ha'penny” and “bushel.” Even the music was meant to elicit a spirit of benevolence and wholesomeness. Our voices, rising in a crescendo and then falling again in harmony, insisted that we were good.

By breakfast on Sunday, however, the spell had been broken. We were bad girls; no one could have expected us to keep up the charade for much longer. In retrospect, I'm proud of all of us for having been so damn pleasant on Saturday. It couldn't have been easy for anyone.

When Jules and I walked to the Mess Hall to meet up with our parents, some Seventeen was standing in front of the building, screaming at a nervous-looking woman in an outdated pantsuit.

“Never going to happen, Joyce! NEVER!” The Seventeen flipped her mother off and stormed away. Her mother stood there, twisting her hands together.

I looked over at Jules. “Here we go,” I said.

“I hope my parents didn't see that,” she muttered as we entered the dining room. The scene that greeted us, however, washed away any hope that we could maintain our facade of normalcy. The air had shifted; it had a density that was unsettling, and I took a deep breath, preparing myself. One table was populated solely by parents. They spoke to one another in tight, worried whispers, shaking their heads and looking at the next table over, where their daughters sat together, discussing their mothers and fathers in something distinctly louder than a whisper. A Fourteen stood next to the wall, jabbing her finger at her father and crying. Other tables appeared to be fine — the girls and their parents sat in their proper places — but on second glance, it was clear that no one was talking, and that the tables were merely backdrops for the angry, measured, accusatory glares that were being passed around like bowls of fruit. It was as though everyone had dreamed about each painful conversation, each thrown glass, each slammed door, and had woken up with those memories sharp and jagged in their minds.

“This happened last Parents' Weekend,” Jules said to me under her breath as we made our way to our cabin's table, where our parents sat looking like shipwrecked tourists. “The first day was fine, but the second day — no one could hold it in any longer. Explosions everywhere.” She smiled at me. “At least you're not angry.”