The Girls of No Return (25 page)

I glanced over at Terri, who seemed to have stepped back while my dad and I talked. I expected her to look uncomfortable, even annoyed that the dreaded specter of my dad's first wife was floating around the conversation. But she was just standing in her normal posture, looking out at Bob.

Dad cleared his throat. His voice was gruff. “Whatever your mother did later in life,” he said, stumbling over the words, “whatever demons she may have succumbed to, she had good intentions for you, once.” He took a breath. “She always talked about how she wanted you to grow up in the mountains.”

“What else did she want for me?” I spoke quickly, afraid I'd lose my courage. Even so, I couldn't ask the question that was always in the back of my mind:
And why couldn't she stay to give it to me?

My dad looked steadily at me. “She wanted so much for you, Bun. But she couldn't —” He stopped. Then he said, “Maybe it's time we started talking about some of these things. Maybe I've tried too hard to shield you.” He shook his head. “Maybe I've been shielding myself. In some ways, I think, I've let you down.”

I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets. I noticed for the first time that my dad and I shared the same nose, the same way of scrunching our eyes almost shut when we were feeling vulnerable. “You did a good enough job,” I said. “I'm not totally fucked-up.” I smiled at him, just for a second. “Maybe there's hope for me yet.”

The grin burst across my dad's face, and he stepped forward as though he was going to pick me up and swing me around. He settled for slapping me on the back and laughing. “Yep,” he said. “I'd say there is.”

And that was it. We didn't say anything else about my mother. I had a feeling that the conversation would continue, though, that we'd talk about her more when I left the school. It seemed like, having told me something about her, my dad had exhausted his reserves of good memories for the day. But he didn't stop smiling for about five minutes, and I wondered at the ease with which I could make my dad happy. Just saying “I'm not totally fucked-up” had sent him spinning off into giddiness and bliss; what would happen if I said something even kinder? Would he implode?

“Well,” I said finally, “you guys probably need to pack. I should clean up around the cabin too.” What a lie. The cabin was spotless. Quarantined rooms during a flu epidemic weren't as clean as it was that weekend.

“That's a good idea,” my dad said. “Why don't I go back to the dorm and get our things together. Terri, you and Lida can work on her cabin.”

“Oh —” I started, but he was already walking away, his shoes crunching on dried pine needles. I turned to Terri. “You don't have to help. Really. I've got it.”

“That's okay,” she said flatly. “It'll be fun.” She sighed, and followed me to the cabin.

No one was there. Just my luck. Also, there wasn't anything to put away, aside from a beach towel that I had hung over the end of my bunk the day before. I peeled my hoodie from my T-shirt and took it off, tossing it on my bed. I wasn't hot, but I needed something to fold.

“Here, let me.” Terri grabbed the beach towel and began folding it. She took her time.

I picked the hoodie back up and folded it. Then I unfolded it. Then I folded it again. I was waiting for her to speak. Surely there was a smug sermon coming my way.

Sure enough: “Lida, you are such a worry in your father's heart,” Terri said. I was about to tell her that I didn't need to hear it when she went on. “But sometimes you are just so funny.” She set down the towel on a dresser, her back to me, so it was hard for me to hear, at first. But Terri was laughing. “I mean, where do you come up with this stuff? ‘Ga-ga.' That was priceless!” She kept laughing. “That Bev is a piece of work. Did you see her face? I mean, did you see her
socks
?”

This would have been the time for me to join her, the two of us giggling together like sisters, but I couldn't. I was in shock. So I just stared at Terri as she doubled over with amusement and waited for her laughter to die down. Finally, she held up one hand as though to stop me from saying something.

“Okay, okay,” she said, catching her breath. “You don't see it. But I do. You're smart, Lida. Quick with words. Lord knows I've always felt one step behind you.”

I didn't know what to say. I'd imagined a lot of things about the way Terri felt toward me over the years: angry, annoyed, resentful, jealous . . . But I'd never thought she could feel intimidated.

Terri was watching me closely. “I know that I was . . . hesitant . . . around you when your dad and I first got together,” she said quietly. “I didn't have any experience with children, and you were just so . . . angry.” She shook her head. “I can see now why you would be. After all, your little world had just shattered and I stepped in and —” She took a deep breath. “But that was a long time ago. Someday you're going to have to accept that your father and I love you. That I love you.” There was a pause, and then she placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I don't know why that's so hard. But one of these days, I hope you see it.”

She was waiting for a reaction, and this time, she wasn't going to let me off the hook. So I said the most truthful thing I could. “I'm trying.” I looked at the rafters; I looked at the floorboards. I looked at Terri, and I nodded my head and said it again. “I'm trying.”

She nodded. “So am I.” We stood there, smiling self-consciously at each other until I broke the gaze and kicked at the floor with my shoe. Terri turned around and looked at the cabin.

“Well,” she said, as though nothing had transpired, “why don't we get this place cleaned up? It looked pretty good yesterday.”

I refrained from telling her that we'd just effectively cleaned it by putting away the towel, and I let her putter around the cabin, straightening the tops of the dressers, opening and then shutting the drawers more securely. She was still talking — had moved on to the scintillating topic of their new dishwasher — but I wasn't really listening. Who was this woman? Laughing at my jokes, telling me she loved me — not the old Terri, that's for sure. Had she been sent away to a school for resentful stepmothers? Had she been weaving God's Eyes and discussing her failings with the other parents? Or was this new Terri actually the one who had been there all along? No, that was impossible. If she'd been trying, I would have seen it. Right?

Oh, hello, Ann. I wonder if I might join you and Lida.

I closed my eyes. Saw the plate hit the door, the cookies strewn across the carpet.

I wonder if I might join you.

It was suddenly silent in the cabin, and I realized that Terri had finished her detailed comparison of Maytag and Kenmore. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She picked up my hoodie from where I'd placed it on top of the dresser and held it in her hands. “You're surrounded by some pretty tough lives here,” she said, glancing at the empty bunks.

“I guess.”

“That one girl — what's her name — Bullet?”

“Boone,” I said.

“Anyway, she seems to have had a rough time of it.” Terri began to fold the hoodie neatly. “Is she nice to you?” She stole a glance at me. “I mean,” she corrected, “there's no bad blood or anything, is there?”

I resisted the urge to touch my hair. “We get along fine,” I said.

“Good.” Terri let out a breath. “I'd hate to get on the wrong side of her.”

I didn't say anything. There was no way I was going to gossip about Boone. She would know about it before the words even left my mouth.

Terri prattled on, unaware that I wasn't responding. “And that poor Julie,” she said. “Talk about a tragic case.”

That
got my attention. “What do you mean?”

Terri looked up quickly. Clearly, she thought I knew. “Oh,” she said uncomfortably. She looked around the room, down at her hands, anywhere but at me.

“Tell me,” I said.

She spoke quickly. “It's really not all that dramatic, and I didn't know it was a secret. I thought you knew; it's probably not my place . . .”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, Lida.” Terri looked at me with resignation and what? Pity? “Fine.” She sighed. “Julie is a sweet girl. She really hasn't done anything terrible. What was it her mother told me? Treasurer of the student body? Something like that.” She had folded the hoodie yet again, and she looked down at it in her hands as though confused as to how it got there. “Anyway,” she went on, “it's just one of those tragic stories. Julie and her two best friends were driving up to a ski hill for the day last winter and they hit some ice. And, well, Julie was driving too fast, and her mother said something about looking for a song on the iPod — I think — and they went off the road.” Terri shrugged helplessly. “A terrible accident. Just terrible. And Julie walked away unscathed. But the other two didn't.” She paused to let this sink in. “She didn't go to jail — no one pressed charges — but school, I think, was difficult after that. Either she felt unwelcome, or it was just too much of a reminder, but she stopped going.”

“But how did she end up here?” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Jules did have a Thing, after all. But unlike the rest of us, she didn't choose hers.

“That's the funny part, if you can call it that. She picked it. Told her parents that this was the only place she'd go. Funny choice, huh.” Terri smiled weakly at me.

 

I didn't stop thinking about Jules as I walked around the school grounds one last time with my dad and Terri, or when I stood by the fleet of vans and waved them off, fighting back a sudden, childlike impulse to cry. There were only a handful of girls standing in the parking lot — it appeared as though the tensions of the morning had not been repaired — but Jules wasn't among them.

Jules. Who had welcomed me to school as though welcoming me to summer camp. Who, with her incessantly cheerful attitude, never seemed to fit the Alice Marshall mold. I had always chalked her admission up to a fluke, but what did I think? That she was blameless? No one was. But I was willing to bet that she was the only girl at school who had decided to enroll, instead of having it decided for her. And while I knew that we all wore our guilt like suffocating garments, hers was made worse by the fact that it was an
accident
. Nothing the rest of us had ever done had been accidental.

She was in the cabin when I returned from the parking lot. She was reading a magazine, but I noticed that she never turned the page.

“Well, they're off,” I said. “Good-bye, parental nightmares.” It sounded fake even as I said it.

She kept her eyes fixed on the page. “I know,” she said. “I couldn't see my parents off. I would have tried to keep Westy. Hide him in my pillowcase or something. It would have been too hard.” She looked up. It was clear that she had been crying. “Did you see them? What were they doing?”

I hadn't. I'd been so fixated on enduring the hugs and getting my dad and Terri into the van as quickly as possible, a hard knot forming in my throat, that I didn't notice anyone else's parents. Her mom and dad could have been drinking wine coolers and high-fiving for all I knew.

“Yeah,” I said, “they looked pretty pathetic. I think Westy was whimpering. He was trying to get off your mom's lap, but she held on. It was a heroic effort.”

Jules smiled. “He's a great dog,” she said. “I thought he wanted to stay with me.”

I watched her as she looked back down at the magazine and slowly turned the page. Her forehead was creased, and she wrinkled her nose in concentration as she read. She looked fragile, like a glass egg that would shatter if pressed too hard. There was no way I could ever tell her that I knew about her Thing.

 

 

Terri comes into my room. They're worried about me, I can tell. They think I don't see the raised eyebrows and tight little frowns that they give each other at the dinner table, as though I'm still nine and only four feet tall, as though they can still shoot looks over my head. They're worried, and maybe they should be.

“You've been spending a lot of time in here,” she says, jerking her chin toward the bed, the dresser. “It's almost summer. Don't you want to get outside?”

“I'm fine here,” I say. I have my arm across the paper on my desk, just in case she tries to look.

“Jen and Gretchen keep calling,” she says. “What happened? Did you fight about something? You're all still going to the graduation party next week, right?”

I can hear the concern in her voice. It's real. Not accusatory, not exasperated. Just genuine worry. I look at her arms hanging by her side, and remember how they used to look just like that before, when we were in the counselor's office or the emergency room.

“I'm just kind of caught up in a project,” I say. “I'll call them back later.” And I will. I'll call them and we'll load into Gretchen's old Volvo and head out to Powder Mountain with our bikes, take the chairlift to the top, speed down over the green slopes as the world unfolds below us. I will do this. But later.