Summer Sisters (4 page)

Caitlin shook herself off like a dog when she came out of the water, then wrapped a beach towel around her
waist so it dragged in the sand like a long skirt. “Did I ever tell you that in my former life I was a mermaid?” “But in this life you’re a human,” Vix reminded her, just in case she forgot. “And I wish you wouldn’t go out so far.” She drizzled turrets of wet sand onto their elaborate castle.

“I like the way you worry about me,” Caitlin said.

“Somebody has to.”

In their room at night they played Mermaids, using the makeup Caitlin bought on Lamb’s charge at Leslie’s Pharmacy to paint their lips dark red and outline their eyes in coal black. The mirror on the wall above the bathroom sink was as old as the house, with a crack that stretched diagonally across it, making them look as if they had scars running across their faces.

They vamped and sang to Abba, the Eagles, Shaun Cassidy—“Da Doo Ron Ron”—socks stuffed into the tops of their bathing suits to see how they’d look with big breasts. Caitlin was still totally flat but Vix had tiny mounds, the beginning of something.

Caitlin was fascinated by Vix’s pubic hairs. “Lay down,” she said, “and I’ll count them for you.”

“What for?”

“Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know how many you have?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Vix said.

Caitlin looked at her as if she were beyond hope. “A person without curiosity may as well be dead.”

Vix wished somebody would explain that to her mother. To prove she was far from dead she lay on her bed with her underpants pulled down, laughing hysterically as Caitlin lifted one strand at a time, counting out
loud. “Sixteen,” Caitlin said, announcing the grand total. “You’re so lucky!”

“I don’t see what’s lucky about having sixteen pubic hairs.”

“You would if all you had was this!” Caitlin pulled down her shorts to show Vix her tiny patch of pale fuzz. Not that Vix hadn’t seen it before.

Sharkey barged in on them like that and they shrieked so loud he took off, a terrified look on his face. From then on they shoved a chair in front of their bedroom door because there were no locks in the house.

When they grew bored with Mermaids they invented a better game. Vixen and Cassandra, Summer Sisters, the two sexiest girls on the Vineyard, maybe anywhere. They had The Power. The Power was inside their pants, between their legs. They’d just discovered that if they rubbed it in a certain way it was like an electrical current buzzing through them.

Dear Folks,
Having a great time.
Love, Vix

And then there was Von, the most gorgeous guy Vix had ever seen. He was maybe sixteen, with a long sun-streaked ponytail, muscles in his arms, and a pack of Marlboros tucked into the sleeve of his T-shirt. His lips were full and so soft looking Caitlin said she could suck on them all night. Until then Vix had never thought of sucking on anyone’s lips.

Von worked at the Flying Horses, which was sup
posed to be the oldest carousel in the country, one of those national treasures people on the Vineyard were always raving about. He collected tickets and fed the rings back into the machine as the carousel spun round and round. Vix thought Von should be declared the National Treasure. Every time Lamb headed for Oak Bluffs they’d beg to come along. He’d give them a couple of dollars and while he ran errands they’d ride until they were so dizzy they could hardly stand.

Von called them
Double Trouble
. He groaned when he saw them coming, pretending they were a real pain. Caitlin punched him in the arm when he acted that way. She loved to tease him, pulling his ponytail, jumping from horse to horse, daring him to stop her. She broke all the rules but he never kicked
her
off the carousel. Vix knew he never would have noticed her if it hadn’t been for Caitlin. But she didn’t mind. She was proud to be Caitlin’s friend.

One night the National Treasure introduced them to his cousin, Bru. Bru was taller than Von with sinewy arms. He didn’t say much. Vix could tell he considered them
children
, not worth his trouble.

Another night Lamb took them to the movies to see
Annie Hall
, and after, when Caitlin begged for just one ride on the Flying Horses, Lamb said, “Okay, but just one.” He and Sharkey headed up Circuit Avenue to get a slice at Papa John’s.

But Von wasn’t on the carousel that night. Instead, Caitlin swore she saw him with some girl in the dark alley next to the Flying Horses, with his hands inside her shirt and her hand on his—Vix couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say
dick
or
pecker
or even
penis
—not when it
came to Von. So Caitlin gave it a new name.
The Package
. She said this girl’s hand was wrapped around Von’s
Package
.

That night they came up with a new game. Vixen and Cassandra Meet Von. When they played they took turns pretending to be Von, lying on top of one another, rubbing The Power against the other’s Power until the electrical current buzzed through their bodies.

They vowed never to tell anyone about Vixen and Cassandra. Caitlin said they weren’t necessarily lesbos because they always pretended to be doing it with a boy. On the other hand, they might be.

Lamb

H
E SWEARS
, on the night she was born, when they put her in his arms, she looked directly into his eyes and smiled. He touched the tiny rosebud mouth and fell head over heels in love. His daughter. His little girl. He never imagined he’d lose her. And he hasn’t, he keeps telling himself. She’s never missed a summer, never asks to spend the holidays with anyone but him.

He and Phoebe were fools, thinking it would be easy. Sure, they’d divorced without rancor. He can’t even remember if it was Phoebe’s idea or his. All that open marriage business. Someone was bound to get hurt. But separating the kids just to be fair?
A girl for you, a boy for me …
How was he supposed to know Phoebe would take Caitlin to live halfway across the country? Regrets? Sure, he has regrets.

He watches her on the Flying Horses. He can’t believe she won’t always be this young, this innocent.

4

I
T’S HARD TO REMAIN
in awe of someone you’re as tight with as Vix was with Caitlin that summer, someone with dirty feet, feet that smelled like the muck on the bottom of the pond, someone who spread her legs and rubbed her Power against yours.

“God, I love that feeling!” Caitlin said. “You’re turning out to be a lot different than I thought.”

“What’d you think?”

Caitlin picked up two small, red flannel squares and began to toss them from hand to hand. Maybe she was going to ignore Vix’s question. She did that when someone asked her something she didn’t want to answer. She’d just act as if she hadn’t heard a word.

But after a while, Caitlin said, “I knew you were smart but quiet.” She caught the squares and checked out the next exercise in
Juggling for the Complete Klutz
. “I knew you wouldn’t ask a million questions and get in the way.” She began again, this time with three squares. “And I liked the way you smiled … and that purple T-shirt you always wore.” She didn’t take her eyes off those red squares, not for a second.

Those were her reasons? But what had Vix expected?
After all, she hadn’t known Caitlin any better than Caitlin had known her.

Caitlin tossed all three squares into the air at once, then dove onto Vix’s bed, knocking her flat. “I just wasn’t sure you’d know how to have fun!”

Vix took that as a compliment. She knew Caitlin liked her. The kind of
like
that had nothing to do with their secret games. Sometimes, when they were in town, Vix would notice people staring and she’d remember Caitlin was beautiful, but for the most part it didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t get in the way.

One night at dinner Lamb asked if she was having
a good time
. A good time? Vix couldn’t believe what a time she was having. It was the best time of her life! Sometimes she wished summer would never end. Sometimes she wished she’d never have to go home.

She looked down at her plate filled with a heaping portion of bluefish, new potatoes, and green beans, and answered Lamb’s question in a small, quiet voice. “Yes, thank you, I’m having a good time.” Caitlin kicked her under the table and Vix was scared she might laugh.

Then Lamb said, “Do you miss your family?”

Suddenly Vix was filled with guilt because she didn’t miss her family. She hardly ever thought about them. Well, maybe Nathan, but that was it. She wrote to him every week, sending a small Tupperware container of sand, a plastic jar filled with water from Tashmoo, a piece of blue beach glass Caitlin had found and given to her for him. “It looks like cobalt, doesn’t it?” she’d asked Vix.

“Yeah, really …” Vix had answered, whatever cobalt was.

They’d laid it on a bed of cotton in a jewelry box, then wrapped the box in bubble wrap, after Caitlin finished popping the bubbles with her bare feet.

“You can call whenever you want,” Lamb continued. “Don’t worry about the charges.”

“Lamb …” Caitlin said, “let it go.”

“It’s just that Vix is so quiet,” Lamb told her, as if she weren’t sitting at the same table, as if Sharkey weren’t, too. Sharkey, who never said a word at dinner but who made a strange, humming sound as he ate his cereal, as if he had a motor somewhere inside his body.

Vix was curious about why Sharkey didn’t bring a friend for the summer, too. When she asked, using up her question of the week, Caitlin said, “I don’t think he has any friends.”

“That’s so sad.”

“Pathetic,” Caitlin agreed.

“I guess Vix is the shy, quiet type,” Lamb said, still on her case. “Like Sharkey.”

“She’s not anything like Sharkey,” Caitlin told him.

Suddenly, Sharkey spoke. “How would you know?” he asked Caitlin. “How would any of you know?”

Sharkey

I
T’S ALL SO EASY
for them, yakety-yakking all day and half the night! Do they think he doesn’t hear them, doesn’t know they think he’s weird?
Jesus!
His life is none of their goddamn business. He doesn’t need friends. There’s a difference between lonely and alone. Not that they would know. Alien creatures, if you want his opinion.
Beam me up, Scottie …

A
NYTHING SHE WANTED
to see or do on the island was hers for the asking.
Your wish is my command
, Lamb told her, like in some fairy tale. So she said,
I’d like to see the real ocean
. And
abracadabra
, the next day they were off to the ocean, making a quick stop in Menemsha, an old fishing village, with almost as many boats in the harbor as tourists snapping pictures. Sharkey had opted to skip their outing and stay at home, probably to drive Lamb’s old truck up and down the dirt driveway, or bury himself under the hood of the Volvo, or slide around on his back on the body-size skateboard he’d constructed to get underneath the cars.

She and Caitlin followed Lamb way out onto the dock until they came to a rundown wooden sailboat,
Island Girl
, where Lamb called, “Trisha … hey, Trish …”

A deeply tanned woman with a tangle of brown curls, wearing cutoffs and a work shirt, came out from inside the boat, shading her eyes from the sun. She jumped up onto the dock and threw her arms around Lamb, then Caitlin.

“Meet my friend Vix,” Caitlin said.

Trisha gave her a high five.

“We’re on our way out to Gay Head,” Lamb said. “Want to join us?”

Vix had just found out that
gay
and
head
had meanings she hadn’t known about before, and hearing Lamb say those words aloud made her feel funny.

“Be with you in two seconds,” Trisha said. “Just let
me grab my stuff.” She jumped down onto her boat and ducked inside the cabin. Lamb followed.

“They’re just friends,” Caitlin said, while she and Vix waited. “From the old days … when Lamb lived up here. They might still have sex though. I’m almost sure they do. I wouldn’t mind if they got married. She’s a flake but she loves us.”

They picked up lunch along the way—clam dogs and lobster rolls. Vix had never heard of either and ordered french fries with ketchup. By the time they got going again Vix was more interested in Trisha than the ocean, and wondered if she and Lamb had been doing those things to one another, those things she and Caitlin had read about, while they were inside the cabin of the boat. She didn’t think so because they weren’t gone that long, not that she had any idea how long it would take.

The ocean was exactly as she’d imagined it, exactly the way she’d seen it in a million movies. The only surprise was the smell, salty and fresh, and the roar as the waves crashed against the shore. They followed Lamb and Trisha to a place sheltered by a high clay cliff, but even so the wind whipped their hair, and when they tried to talk, sand blew into their mouths.