Summer Sisters (36 page)

“I don’t have to,” Vix says softly.

Caitlin’s face crumples and she begins to cry. “I’m useless, worse than Phoebe ever was.”

Vix holds her, strokes her hair, tries to comfort her.

“How can you care about me after all I’ve done to you?”

“To me? I don’t think that’s the issue …”

“But it is. I used you. I took everything I could from you.”

“I never saw it that way. I was grateful just to be your friend.”

“Then you’re a fool,” Caitlin says. She fishes a tissue from the pocket of her linen dress and blows her nose. “I’m thinking of marrying again.”

Vix is caught off guard.

“His family is from Tuscany. They own vineyards.” She laughs. “Isn’t that fitting? But they have business in Milan, too. Actually, that’s where I met Antonio. He’s handsome, thirty-seven, never married. He’s perfect except he’s a mama’s boy. But then, all Italian men are. He wants bambini, of course. He doesn’t know about Maizie. But how long can I keep her a secret?”

Vix can’t imagine keeping Maizie a secret. Someday Maizie is going to want to know Caitlin. She’s going to come looking for her.

“I’m going to decide this afternoon,” Caitlin says, “after I put you on the train to Milan. I’m going out in my sailboat to think it through. I’ve always been able to think more clearly on the water. And by the time you get back to New York, I’ll have made my decision.
I’ll call you and say yes or no … just that much.”

Vix waits for the message on her answering machine. She waits for Caitlin to say
yes
or no. But there are no messages.

Epilogue

Summer 1996

A
YEAR LATER
they gather on the Vineyard to dedicate a wildflower meadow overlooking the sea to Caitlin. It’s magic hour, just before sunset, when the light is so extraordinary it makes Vix believe in the possibility of heaven. They’re a small group—Abby and Lamb with Maizie; Sharkey with Wren, who’s pregnant, and her little girl, Natasha; Bru and Star and their babies; Von and Patti and their trio; Trisha and Arthur.

Daniel, who has flown in from Chicago, is staying with Gus and Vix in the little house they’ve rented for the week in West Tisbury. She and Gus have been talking about moving to the island full time if only they can figure out a way to support themselves doing what they want.

Daniel is still single, still waiting for the perfect woman to show up. Abby has asked him to please turn off his cellular phone during the dedication.

Phoebe sent regrets. She’d be out of the country. Dorset can’t make it either, but promises to think of them from her home in Mendocino, where she moved following Grandmother’s death, just shy of her ninety-ninth birthday.

Abby starts off by reading from Shelley. Wren, who is so shy she makes Sharkey seem gregarious, surprises all of them by singing the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” in a clear, beautiful soprano. Sharkey loses it halfway through the song. Lamb embraces him, his own face streaked with tears, the two men comforting one another.

Didn’t she know how much she was loved? Didn’t she care?
Vix wonders if somewhere in Tuscany a handsome man who also loved her is grieving. Or was he another of Caitlin’s fantasies?

Vix planned on reading the essay she’d written for her college application—
Caitlin Somers, the Most Influential Person in My Life
—but realizes at the last minute she can’t, so Gus reads it for her while Vix holds their baby, Nate, who tries to shove the turquoise beads Vix wears around her neck into his mouth.

Maizie, who is five, skips up and down in a floral pinafore, scattering rose petals into the wind. She says she remembers Caitlin but Vix doesn’t think that’s possible. What she remembers are the stories Vix has told her, the stories Maizie calls
Caitlin Summers
, and the albums of photos she and Vix pore over whenever she visits. Caitlin is just a fantasy figure to Maizie, someone to dream about, someone from another time and place. She doesn’t really understand what they’re doing here, except that it’s some kind of party, a party for Caitlin, her birth mother. Vix doesn’t understand either. She’s tried to make sense of it but she can’t. No one can explain what happened that day. There was no storm in the area. Winds were moderate. They found her boat two days later, drifting, but there was no sign of trouble. There isn’t any evidence she was lost at sea, except for
the little boat and her plan to go sailing. There’s no way Vix or anyone else will ever know the truth. The truth is with Caitlin, wherever she is.

Sometimes Vix hears Caitlin reminding her,
No matter how many guys come and go we’ll always be together
. She hears her infectious laugh or that seductive voice, whispering,
I’ll always love you. Promise you’ll always love me?

Two days later Vix rides her bike out to the wildflower meadow by herself. She kneels at the stone, which they have all been careful to call
commemorative
rather than
memorial
. She runs her fingers over the engraved letters.

In Celebration of Caitlin Somers
August 1996

Alone on the bluff, with the sound of waves crashing below, Vix unleashes her anger. “Damn you for leaving! For not caring enough about us!” She shouts and screams at Caitlin, going on and on about friendship and love, refusing to believe either that Caitlin is gone forever or that she, who was so terrified of disappearing, has orchestrated her own disappearance. Could she possibly be so cruel?

Vix blames herself, too. How could she have missed Caitlin’s desperation? She was the last one to see her. Surely she could have done something. She dissolves into tears. She cries the way she did when she left Caitlin the morning after her seventeenth birthday. She cries the way she did driving back from Santa Fe with Bru,
great gut-wrenching sobs, until there’s nothing left. Finally, she lies beside the stone and sleeps.

When she awakens she’s thirsty. Her breasts are full, her nipples are beginning to leak. She has to get back for Nate’s feeding. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a pure white beach stone. She places it atop Caitlin’s stone. “The next time I see you
I
get to ask the questions,” she tells her. Then she laughs. She laughs thinking of Caitlin listening to her, blathering about friendship and love.

Sometimes Vix thinks when the Big Four-O comes along she’ll get an envelope from some exotic place and inside will be an airline ticket and a note
—Come celebrate with me
. Gus will say, “Go … don’t worry about the kids.” So she’ll go. Caitlin will meet her at the airport, her hair flying in the wind. After they hug Vix will hold Caitlin at arm’s length for a minute.
God, Caitlin
, she’ll say,
You look so … grownup
.

And Caitlin will laugh and answer,
It’s about time, don’t you think?

Best Friends
by Judy Blume

Mary
.
Summer Sisters
is dedicated to Mary Weaver. Though we never spent our summers together, she was and still is my “summer sister,” my soul mate. We met in seventh-grade homeroom and connected right from the start—Sullivan and Sussman—like a vaudeville act. And we became a team, best friends through junior high and high school and into college. We pretended to be twins separated at birth—identical in size—one with a beautiful Irish face, the other a Jewish girl with a ponytail. Inseparable.

My mother, who wanted me to be perfect, recognized Mary’s beauty and winning personality but didn’t feel threatened, because Mary wasn’t Jewish. Therefore, she and I weren’t competing for the same boys. When I look back now and think of the times I lied to my mother to please her, to assure her that yes, indeed, I was the most popular, the best all-round girl, I cringe. I kept my anxieties to myself. Only my eczema gave me away.

Yet my friendship with Mary survived and blossomed. I had what she wanted: A father who thought I was wonderful. A secure home where no one had to worry about paying the rent. Piles of cashmere sweaters (even if they were bought wholesale). An older brother away at college.

And her life seemed romantic to me. The struggle. The bond with her mother. The irreverent sense of humor. Beauty, popularity. She didn’t have to worry about being such a good girl, such a perfect girl—or so I thought at the time. She kept her demons to herself. Didn’t we all in the fifties?

There was a chemistry between us. Being together was so much fun! We felt so smug with our quick repartee and our private jokes. And the drama! We were both interested in theater, both dreamed of being onstage, like Susan Strasberg in
The Diary of Anne Frank
—or in movies, like Natalie Wood in
Rebel Without a Cause—
both of whom were just our age.

Loss
. Mary was at my side when my father died suddenly, just weeks before my wedding to John Blume, following my junior year of college. She was in pain, too, but we didn’t talk about how his death affected her until recently.

Ultimately, it was my marriage—and, just a year or so later, hers—that separated us. Even though we had baby daughters born two months apart, our lives were already very different. She lived in New York and I lived in the suburbs of New Jersey. Her husband, a WASP who came from old money, was an academic; mine was a hustling young lawyer. The men had nothing in common.

I felt the loss of that friendship. I was lonely in my marriage and missed the camaraderie of my old friends. I was constantly hoping to find someone with whom I could connect. Each time a moving van brought a new family to our cul-de-sac, I’d be out there, a welcome committee of one, hoping this would be it. It never was.

Years Later
. Mary and I never stopped being friends, and we never really lost touch. We just didn’t get to spend much time together, and when we tried it as a foursome it never really worked.

She became the kindergarten teacher I was trained to be. I started to write, out of loneliness, maybe even desperation. I was the ambitious one, driven and determined, though I didn’t know it at the time.

If Mary were writing this it would be entirely different, I’m sure, and even now I know more about us than I’m telling. Our history runs deep. Our genuine feelings for each other, deeper. We are friends for life. We went through puberty together. College. We married, had babies, went to work, lost parents, and are grandmothers. But when we’re together the years fall away. Isn’t that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you’ve come?

Caitlin and Vix
. Is the relationship between Caitlin and Vix in
Summer Sisters
based on my friendship with Mary? Before I sat down to write these notes I’d have told you absolutely not. Their story is much darker, more seductive, more competitive, and Caitlin and Vix are totally different personalities. Yet it is about two young women from different backgrounds whose friendship begins at twelve and endures.

Vix finds Caitlin irresistable—the danger, the daring, the thrill of becoming a part of her eccentric family. From Vix, Caitlin receives unconditional love. But they are also rivals. After all, one marries the other’s first love. Aside from a ninth-grade crush, Mary and I were never in love with the same man. Not that I know of, anyway.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. In
   Summer Sisters
   , we get to experience the points of view of almost all of the characters, with the notable exception of Caitlin. Why do you think the author made this choice? What impact does it have for you as a reader?
   
2. Caitlin and Vix seem to be utter opposites—while Caitlin is wild and uninhibited, Vix is cautious and quiet, and though both are beautiful, Caitlin is a blonde and Vix a brunette. One grew up in privilege and was given everything she wanted, and the other grew up in a lower-middle-class family with little money to spare. How do you interpret their friendship? What is at its heart? Do they complement each other, or do their differences prevent them from forming a secure bond?
   
3. Vix is so close to Caitlin that the two dub themselves “summer sisters,” and yet she is not close at all to her biological sister, Lanie. What do you make of the distance between the sisters? Does Vix’s closeness with Caitlin’s family damage her relationship with her own? Why?
   
4. While the Countess is Victoria’s mother’s boss, she is a family friend to the Somers clan, and she visits their house socially. What does this reveal to you about the class differences between the girls? Do you think this effects the dynamics of Caitlin and Vix’s friendship?
   
5. Both Caitlin and Vix have strained relationships with their biological mothers. When Lamb marries Abbie, an extremely nurturing person, she tries to take both of the girls under her wing. They react very differently to her maternal attention—while Vix flourishes under it, Caitlin immediately rejects Abbie. Why do you think this happens, and what impact do the girls’ different reactions have on their lives?
   
6. After the family dog dies, young Caitlin becomes obsessed with death, telling Vix that she’d like to go out before she’s “old and ugly” and no one wants her. She asks Vix to make a pact to die with her, and it’s the first time that Vix does not play along. What’s the significance of this as the narrative unfolds?
   
7. Why do you think it’s easier for Vix to forgive Bru than it is for her to forgive Caitlin after the incident on her eighteenth birthday? Is it that she has higher expectations for her friend or that she is blinded by her feelings for Bru?
   
8. Caitlin practically breathes sexuality—when she and Vix are young, she is the one to introduce Vix to the pleasures of the “power” between their legs, and as a teenager, she flirts madly with every man she meets, and spins elaborate stories about her sexual conquests. Later, we find out the truth behind the stories. Why do you think Caitlin makes a point of being the “sexual” one? And what does it do to her friendship with Vix?
   
9. In what ways does Nathan’s fate change Vix’s life?
   
10. Caitlin is often a selfish friend who takes more than she gives, and yet there are many points in this novel at which Caitlin seeks support and love from Vix and is rebuffed. Do you think Vix is also a selfish friend? Why or why not?
    
11. Vix has a completely different relationship with her college friends than she has with Caitlin. How are the friendships we form in childhood different from the ones we form later in life? Are they intrinsically stronger or weaker?
    
12. With her vibrant looks and sunny personality, Caitlin seems more the star of the family than Sharkey when the siblings are young. As they grow older, though, it becomes clear that Sharkey is much more grounded than his sister, and that he will make more of himself. What is the author trying to say here?
    
13. Caitlin’s and Vix’s interactions with the opposite sex inevitably intersect dramatically with their friendship, with betrayals on both sides—as teenagers, and as adults—with first Caitlin as the culprit, then Vix. What do you make of the fact that they are
    both
    guilty of this kind of betrayal? And what does Vix’s transgression reveal about how the power dynamics between the friends have changed over the course of the novel?
    
14. When Caitlin returns to the Vineyard as an adult, in some ways the lives of the two friends have been reversed, with Caitlin taking a path that might have been expected to be Vix’s. Did their respective choices surprise you, or, given what we know of the two, were they in some ways to be expected? What do you feel is truly behind the choices Caitlin makes on the Vineyard? Why isn’t she able to see them through?
    
15. Each year that Caitlin spends away from Vix, she seems to become more and more separated from reality. Does Caitlin need her more sturdy, stable friend in order to function? Why is Vix able to live separately from Caitlin and not vice versa?
    
16. Would the end of the novel feel any different for you if there were more closure to Caitlin’s story line? If so, why?