Chapter 4
Aiden
She’s on the front stoop when I get back, her elbows propped on her knees, chin resting on her upturned hands, looking almost—amused? When I approach, hands stuffed in my pockets, she looks up at me. Her eyes are fall colors, the burnished gold of an early sugar maple turning for the season, so well suited to this place that it’s startling.
“This is going real well so far, am I right?” she says.
“It’ll get easier,” I say, telling her what I’ve spent the last hour telling myself, walking through the woods, burning off all the frantic, angry energy that had been building up all morning, almost bursting forth after a few minutes in that cabin. Damn if I didn’t see my brother everywhere in there, the way I’d wake up in the morning to half his arm, hanging down from the top bunk. The way the bones of his spine would show through his green camp t-shirt; he was always too thin. This little cough he’d get when he’d lie in bed at night, a bad ragweed allergy I never got. His insistence on flushing both toilets every time I took a shower, how he’d shake his skinny arms over his head in victory while I shouted my frustration. The time I got food poisoning from eating a bad hot dog and he sat up with me all night, helping me change my clothes twice, as gentle and quiet as he always was.
It’s fucking hard. It’s harder than I imagined.
“I’m going to guess that was about your brother.”
Oh, she has a lot of fucking nerve, reading my mind like that. “We don’t talk about my brother,” I say, forcefully. “You need to understand that. You and me, we don’t ever talk about my brother.”
She stands, uses her hands to brush at the backside of her jeans. “If that’s how you want it.”
“That’s how I want it.”
She shrugs, then heads back down the path, like she’s not bothered at all, and this is so annoying to me that I have to grind my teeth together. It’s been this way since she got in my car this morning, her strange blend of sarcasm and sweet that sets me right on edge. She’s got this way about her, this woman. She comes to apologize and I’m the one feeling sorry. She crosses a line and I’m the one who comes off looking like a hothead. I give her a ring and she looks like I’ve slapped her.
“Probably I am going to need help making that bed,” she says, still walking ahead of me. “I think I pulled a muscle attempting the fitted sheet.”
“Fine.”
She stops on the trail. I stop too, right behind her. A strand of her hair blows back toward me, and I breathe through my mouth.
“Listen,” she says, not turning to look at me. “I get it that you hate me—”
“I don’t,” I say, but she holds up a hand before I get it all the way out.
“But I’m nervous too. I’m doing the best I can with zero information, and I just saw a bug in that cabin big enough to lift free weights, and I’m pretty sure this lunch is going to have things that make me uncomfortable, like out-loud prayers or singing or food served from a Crock-Pot, and you are really terrible at small talk so I’m assuming I’ll be doing the heavy lifting down there. So it would be great if you could—you know. Cut me some fucking slack.”
Then she’s off again, head held high, and it’s a beat before I can get my feet moving again after her.
When we come to trailhead that leads us out to the lodge, I have to pause again, take a deep breath. What I know about the next six weeks is more than what Zoe knows, but it’s limited too. I know there’s three other potential buyers. I know we’re each going to give a presentation at some point over the next six weekends, but I don’t know when. Mostly I don’t know how I’m going to handle being here, doing things I’ve done dozens of times before but without my brother by my side. I turn to look at Zoe, who’s stopped to wait beside me, her eyes downcast toward her boots. They look new, stiff, the kind you’ve got to break in. I’ll bet her feet are feeling it.
“It won’t be food out of a Crock-Pot,” I say. “Camp’s always had better food than you’d expect. Lorraine’s a good cook, and I’m guessing she’ll have done the meal for a group as small as ours.”
“Okay.”
“Can’t say for sure about the praying or the singing. And I’ll kill that bug later, if it’s still there.”
“Thanks.” It’s almost funny how we both inhale at the same time—the same steeling, deep breath to get ready for this.
But neither of us laugh.
When we step onto the lodge’s porch a few minutes later, I can hear the clamor inside, the excited voices of reunion. Beside me, Zoe smooths her hair, straightens her shoulders, and when I open the door for her, she—I don’t know. She arranges her face, I guess, a slight cock of her head and a wide smile, her eyes bright and searching, as if she’s genuinely excited to meet a roomful of people she’ll be lying to for the next six weeks.
In-fucking-credible, I think, simultaneously disgusted and impressed.
The main floor of the lodge looks exactly the same—a large, wide-open space with long tables and benches set around the thick, dark-stained wooden posts that we all used to dream of climbing to reach the high, timbered ceilings. All the walls are painted cream, except for the one facing east, which is made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, giving a full view of the lodge’s heavily treed backyard. During predawn breakfasts, you’d see the best, most kaleidoscopic sunrises of your life through those trees. Upstairs, in Lorraine and Paul’s apartment, it’s the same wall of windows, like living in a treehouse. I’d like a few minutes to take it in, to adjust to the wave of nostalgia and pain that had hit me in the cabin too, but there’s nowhere for me to run here. It’s only seconds before we’re enveloped into the group, a flurry of introductions.
I know two of the three families here, or at least I know one member of each, former campers who had been here around the same time as me. There’s Hammond Dwyer, who’s now married to a former Redskins cheerleader named Val; they have three little girls who look like they walked out of a Gap ad. Hammond’s all right, I guess, but he did hang Aaron’s stuffed monkey from his bunk one time, so I don’t have 100 percent positive feelings. Sheree Talbot—Sheree Hamilton now that she’s married—was a camper three years behind me and Aaron; she’s a school principal and her husband Tom is a minister who works with low-income kids in the city, and their little boy is wearing a bow tie. Then there’s the new-to-me competitors, Walt and Rachel Coburg; they own a farm nearby and have left their five kids home with grandparents, and the only thing I can think is whether all the kids have the same carrot-colored hair as the parents.
It’s a lot, meeting and re-meeting all these people, the kids running around, me trying to stay close to Zoe so I can keep one ear on whatever she says, making sure we don’t have any mishaps with our stories. But it’s too chaotic for much real conversation, or maybe it’s that Zoe seems to know how to direct the chaos where she wants it to go—Oh, I love your top, she says to Val. What part of the city do you do most of your work in? she asks Tom. I’m obsessed with baby goats; there’s a whole YouTube channel! she exclaims to Rachel, when conversation turns to animals on the Coburg farm. By the time we sit down for the meal Lorraine and Paul and a few camp staffers are bringing in, I realize with a start that I’ve barely said anything at all. I’m dead weight, a dark contrast to this light, open friendliness she’s put on, unlike anything I saw from her on that first day.
I clear my throat, shift slightly on the bench—but I don’t get any more comfortable because I’ve brushed my leg against Zoe’s and she jerks, instinctively, away from me.
I think Lorraine notices.
“Let’s join hands and give thanks for our meal,” Paul says, and Zoe’s eyes slide toward mine, a trace of a smile there. Out-loud prayers. It’s barely a second, but it’s a second where we’ve got something between the two of us, a shared secret no one in this room knows. Of course, Lorraine doesn’t notice that—she’s got her head bowed and has joined hands with Paul on one side, Sheree on the other. When Zoe’s hand fits into mine, her skin cool and soft, I don’t even notice who’s on my other side. I don’t notice what Paul says.
I only try to make this look natural.
* * * *
“What we don’t want is a competitive environment,” Lorraine says. We’ve finished lunch and have moved to the campground’s outdoor classroom, a set of rough-hewn benches set in a circle and an inexpertly carved tree stump serving as a podium. The weather is perfect—warm and sunny, a clear blue sky above and the scent of turning leaves in the air—but it’s not putting me in a better mood. I botched that lunch, could barely string a sentence together the whole time. Zoe floated the conversation, keeping the focus on everyone else with questions and deflections. My only contribution had been to make one of the Dwyer girls cry because of my—as she had put it—“mean face.” That had gotten a big laugh.
Up at the podium, Lorraine and Paul are giving us a rundown of the weekends ahead, the presentations they want us to do, the time they hope we’ll all spend together.
“This camp has been our life’s work,” Lorraine says, “and when we think about leaving it behind, of course what matters most to us is that it stay in our family. And you, of course—our campers—you are our family, and we hope over the next six weeks you’ll treat each other like family.”
“Awww,” says Val, sticky sweet, while one of her kids—the one who didn’t like my face—pokes the other two with a twig. Hammond isn’t paying attention, and I’m pretty sure that’s because he’s ogling Zoe, same as he did through most of lunch, so now I’m at 0 percent positive feelings toward him.
Paul passes around thick packets for each of us, our six-weekend detailed itinerary. Paul and Lorraine run a tight ship—the first day of camp always involved each of us getting special booklets for the summer, brightly colored and tabbed with sections for our chores, our daily schedules, our meal plans. I turn immediately to the second page, feel a strange comfort that they still use the same cartoon map of the campground—trees that look like green clouds, our cabins tiny and sharp cornered.
“We go last,” Zoe whispers to me, already pages ahead.
“What?”
“Our presentation. We’re week five, just before the farewell weekend. That’s good, right?”
I shrug. What does she mean, we go? I go last. It’s my presentation. She’s flipping through the pages with a new purpose, and I can picture her, all those years of fancy-ass education. Probably a front-row sitter, this one.
“We can see what everyone else does first,” she whispers.
Definitely a front-row sitter.
“Now, Lorraine, we’re going to have to skip the night hike,” Tom says, pointing to tonight’s scheduled activity. “Little Tommy here doesn’t like the dark.”
“Bet he doesn’t like being called ‘Little Tommy,’ either,” says Hammond under his breath.
“Oh, Tom,” says Sheree, patting her husband’s knee affectionately. “Let’s not blame our son for your fear of the dark. We’ll do the night hike! I’ll put Tommy in the hiking carrier we brought.” Sheree is like I remember her: cheerful, unflappable, always the first volunteer for anything—kitchen duty, babysitting for the youngest campers, spot checks of the cabins for cleanliness. I’ll bet Sheree is my top competition, no matter what Lorraine’s said.
“This brings up a good point, though,” says Paul, returning to Lorraine’s side. “What you see in this packet isn’t mandatory. We’ve designed these events so that we’re spending time together, and so that all of you—even those of you who aren’t familiar with the camp—really get to know it well. But you’re not campers here now, of course, and while we hope you’ll take advantage of this time to be a part of this family, you can certainly make your own choices here.”
“Damn,” Zoe whispers, “Paul does a good guilt trip. I should record this for my mother.” I can see what she’s doing with this shit, this running commentary she’s offering me, this sense that we’re somehow a team. What I can’t figure out is how I almost want to lean into it.
“Lorraine,” Hammond says, raising a hand, “How’d Val and I get put on the schedule first for presentations? Because it seems like—”
“Quiet, Hammond,” Val snaps, finally rescuing her two younger kids from the sullen one with the weaponized twig. “We don’t mind going first.”
“I think that the people with kids—”
I can almost hear Zoe’s eye roll at Hammond’s obvious slight on us, the only two here without kids in tow or kids left at home.
“We’ll go first, if you want,” Walt says, but Lorraine shakes her head. Hammond must’ve forgotten. When Lorraine makes a schedule, everyone sticks to it.
“Now one thing we do want to draw your attention to, Walt and Rachel,” Paul says. “We’ll have you do your presentation on Sunday morning of the fourth week, instead of Saturday. We’ve closed down the camp’s usual activities for this time we’re here together, but that particular Friday we do have a former counselor’s wedding scheduled here, and so you all can come Saturday morning.”
“I love weddings,” says Val. “Hammond and I married at the Crestwood Hotel, in the city? Do you know it?” Val’s obviously the type to ask questions but not care about the answers, because she goes right on. “I wore this Venetian lace—”
“Baby, I don’t think they want to hear,” says Hammond, and Zoe snorts. “Of course he calls her baby,” she whispers to me. She’s got to stop that, the whispering. Her breath on my neck makes me feel ten thousand kinds of confused. I lean forward on the bench, rest my elbows on my knees, so I’m farther away from her.
“Oh, maybe Zoe wants to hear!” says Sheree, gesturing toward us, and I pretty much want to dig a hole and hide in it. “Have y’all started planning yet?”
“Oh my God, if you haven’t, I have so many ideas,” says Val.
I feel my neck prickle, the onset of nervous sweat. So far I have not even managed to sit next to Zoe comfortably; with everyone looking at us now, this has to be apparent, and all I want is for the spotlight to go elsewhere.
“I think we’ll do something small,” says Zoe, quickly. “Aiden’s shy.”
“George is shy too,” says Lorraine. “That’s the groom. Well, one of the grooms! His fiancé wanted something big, though, and so he’s done most of the planning—”
“Wait,” says Rachel. “It’s a gay wedding?” Oh, man. Points off for the Coburgs, if I know Paul and Lorraine.
“It’s a wedding,” says Lorraine, her voice like ice. I look over at Rachel, who’s wearing an expression of mild displeasure, and catch Zoe’s eye. She’s looking back and forth between Lorraine and Rachel, her brow furrowed, same as it was earlier today, when I’d told her about us sleeping in the same cabin. I fucked up, back when I met her, saying the Dillards were “traditional.” She’d obviously gotten an idea in her mind about what that meant, and I’m guessing her version sounded more like Walt and Rachel.
“Zoe, I could bring my wedding scrapbook next weekend, if you want to see it,” says Val.
“Oh,” she says, a single syllable of disinterest before she corrects. “Yeah, of course. I love scrapbooks. They’re so…you know. Creative! Helpful, really. I’m always looking at…things like that. Wedding ideas, that sounds great.” I press my lips together, suddenly fighting the urge to smile. I get the sense Zoe’s never looked at a scrapbook in her life.
“I think it’s pretty bold, what you two are doing,” says Hammond, something in his voice I recognize. Something I don’t like.
“What’s that?” I say, and even I can hear the edge in my response. Noncompetitive environment, my ass.
Hammond shrugs, the picture of casual nonchalance. “Looking to take on a business like this now. I’ll bet any one of us here could tell you how tough that first year of marriage is, whew! Adding a business to the mix? Don’t think Val and I could’ve done it.”
“You’re so right, baby,” Val says, and Zoe coughs. “It’s a real adjustment, even if you’ve been living together first. Do you live together?”
“No,” Zoe says, at the same time I blurt, inexplicably, “Yes.”
“Well, basically we live together,” Zoe corrects. “But I have my own place.” When I look at her, her cheeks are pink. Does she know how to fake blushing? Jesus Christ, she’s good.
“I think what matters is the foundation you’ve got,” says Tom. “A couple can get through anything with a strong foundation.”
I stand from the bench. “Lorraine, I think I’ll take Zoe back to our cabin for a while, if that’s all right.”
“Oh, sure,” Lorraine says. “But we do have a group tour scheduled…”
“She needs to rest. She faints easy,” I say.
“I do not,” she snaps. That one’s not a fake blush, I’m pretty sure. It’s a bit…splotchier. Angrier.
“Oooh, Zoe,” says Val, clasping her hands together. “Maybe I need to bring one of my other scrapbooks for you, hmmm?” She looks meaningfully toward her kids.
Shit, even I’m not dumb enough to miss that. “She has low blood sugar,” I say. “Nothing else. She doesn’t have anything else.”
“Anything else like a baby?” says Rachel. I like her least of all.
“I don’t have a baby. Or low blood sugar,” Zoe says. “Lorraine, your food was delicious.”
“Thank you, honey,” Lorraine says, but she’s watching us with a look that says she knows every single thing. It’s the same look she gave Aaron and me and our bunkmates when we thought we were being secretive about our toilet-papering plans for the lodge when we were thirteen.
“Maybe they want some alone time?” says Sheree, raising her eyebrows. “That’s how it is before you’ve got kids to distract you!”
“We can go on the tour,” says Zoe, her voice flat. “I’ve never felt less like fainting in my life.”
“It’s a long tour,” I say.
She turns to look at me, and there’s a too-long pause for this audience, something crackling in the air between us that’s definitely not the need for alone time. But still—there it is again, inconvenient—me noticing how beautiful she is. In this light her eyes look all gold, the dark brown around the edges shined right out.
“Well,” she says, one of her eyebrows arched up. “It’s a good thing I like walking.”
* * * *
By seven that night, I can’t do it anymore.
All through the camp tour, Zoe smiled, laughed, asked questions, chatted with everyone. When we’d stopped to rest by the swimming hole, she’d braided one of the Dwyer girls’ hair. Later she’d taken out her phone and shown Rachel and Walt the baby goat YouTube channel. She’d asked Tom all about his work out in Shaftesbury Park, had found out all about Sheree’s night-school master’s program, the one she finished before she became a principal. When Paul and Lorraine stopped to point out parts of the camp—the line of blackberry bushes planted alongside the camp’s storage warehouse, the small zip line that’s suspended amid a thick canopy of trees, the various clusters of bunkhouses—Zoe listened, or at least I think she did. She’s got this thing she does, when she’s listening: she sets one arm across her stomach, palm facing up, then rests her other elbow there, setting the tips of her fingers on her full lower lip. Sometimes she taps, a little, on that lip.
It is fucking irritating.
At dinner, it’d been the same, except for one notable exception: when Lorraine had turned to Zoe and asked whether I’d yet told her much about Aaron.
For a few seconds, all of Zoe’s easy charm had flickered, like a brownout—the corners of her mouth turning down, her cheeks paling, her gaze falling immediately to her plate.
“Let’s not get into that here,” I’d said, my only attempt, this whole miserable day, at rescuing her from something unpleasant. And my reward had been a sharp look from Lorraine, sad eyes from Paul, and a projectile pizza crust sent over by Little Tommy. I’m a hit with the kids, I guess.
We’re supposed to be making a quick change for the night hike, more layers for the chillier evening weather, but the minute we cross the threshold into the cabin, I tell her.
“I think you ought to stay here tonight.”
From where she stands at the sink, washing her hands, she turns her head toward me. “I feel fine. I don’t know how many times you want to hear it. The fainting was a one-off.”
“It’s not that,” I say, staying near the door. “I need a break.”
“Twelve hours engaged and you’re already looking for the escape hatch?”
“Not looking for an escape hatch. It’s like I said. I need a break. I’m not used to putting on a performance like that.”
“And it shows,” she snaps, shaking her wet hands over the sink, one, two, three flicks of her fingers, sharp and precise. Here, she’s the Zoe I met that first day. She’s not the friend-to-everyone charmer she’s been since lunch.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’ve spent the day engaged to Groot.”
What the fuck is Groot, I’m thinking, but before I have a chance to ask, she says, “Surprise, you never go to the movies, either. Jeez, I expected to do most of the talking, but this…”
I’ve tried to keep my temper all day, but right here, right now, I’ve had it. Had it with being around her, had it with how much better she’s doing at this than I am, this thing that’s on me, that’s so important to me and my family. “Hard to get a word in edgewise,” I say, and she straightens, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Don’t do that.” In her voice is something like a warning, something I heard once before, back in my driveway. “That wasn’t easy for me.”
“I told you to be yourself, not Miss America, for fuck’s sake.”
“Keep up, Aiden. Val is Miss America. I’m the suck-up trying to cover for her asshole fiancé.”
“I’m not trying to be an asshole.”
I’m not trying, but I’m succeeding. I can feel it coming off me like a bad smell. I’ve tried to sound placating, apologetic, but I know it hasn’t come out that way. This is why I need to get out of here. This is why I need a break. If Ahmed and Charlie could see me now, they’d know all their suspicions about this idea have been confirmed. It was a mistake. I’m not up to it.
“If I’m doing something wrong, you need to—”
“I need to go,” I say. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. All right?” I ask it like a question, like I want her permission, but in the end I turn and leave without waiting, closing the door behind me, the second time today. In the fading light I walk to the trailhead on the western side of the camp, for the first time realizing I’ve forgotten to put on any extra layers, have forgotten my flashlight. I could go back—there’s still plenty of time—but I don’t want to risk another confrontation with Zoe. I’m an asshole, a chickenshit, a liar, every terrible thing, and if it feels this bad now, I won’t make it another five weekends. I’m going to tell her when I get back: this is off. I’ll tell the others we had a fight. It won’t be a stretch for anyone to buy it, the way she and I have been acting.
“You’re early,” says Lorraine, startling me. She’s leaning against the wooden post that marks the trailhead, her lantern resting at her feet. “You’re not dressed right, either. You know better.”
Damn. I’m here to make a bid on her business, but Lorraine obviously still thinks of me as the eight-year-old she first met me as. “Where’s Paul?”
“He and Tom and Val are staying back with the kids at the lodge tonight. I’m not saying it’s about Tom’s fear of the dark, but I’m not not saying it, either. Where’s Zoe?”
“She decided to turn in early,” I lie.
“Does that have something to do with you?”
“Yes.” Because I can’t tell one more tonight, especially not to Lorraine.
She’s quiet for a minute, tipping her head back to the sky, where the moon’s just starting to shine. “I’ve been married to Paul a long time,” she says. “That’s what a fight looks like between us too, though usually it’s the other way around. I’m too quiet, and he tries to compensate.”
“You know me, Lorraine,” I say, rubbing a hand over my hair. “I’ve never been much of a talker.”
“You were never sullen or difficult, either.”
“Lorraine, I—”
“I felt sorry for that woman today, Aiden. You may think this is about the camp, but she was looking for your approval today, God knows why. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. ”
I am, I want to say. But also want to say: You don’t know who she is. What she’s done. She ought to be ashamed. But even as I think it, I know: she is ashamed. That’s the worst part.
I settle for a lame, “It’s complicated.”
“Maybe it’s not a good time for you to be here, then. You know, I was so happy to know you’d be bringing someone, someone who’d be your partner in this,” she says, sweeping an arm out, her this meant to encompass the whole camp, everything that means something to her. “We take this seriously, Paul and me. This is our place, Aiden. It’s difficult for us, considering the sale, and we want it to go to a family who’s in it together.”
I look down at her, and for the first time since I pulled up here I really feel the weight of years between us. I remember Lorraine as the surrogate mom I had for six weeks every summer, the woman who hugged me close every time it was time to say goodbye until the next year, and not as the woman who holds my future in her hands. She still looks young, her face mostly unlined, her cheeks full and her eyes bright. But her hair is more gray, her shoulders a bit more stooped. At Aaron’s funeral, Lorraine had cried silent tears and held Paul’s hand tightly as they moved through the receiving line. She’d brought a small box of photographs she’d had of him from camp. She gave that box to me, not my parents.
It reminds me what I owe her, and what I owe to this place. “I take it seriously too. I’m sorry about today, and—I’ll fix things with Zoe. It’s my fault, the way it was with us. I—” I break off, look down at where Lorraine’s lantern rests on the path. “We really want to do this. It’s something we’ve worked on a lot.” I know now, I won’t call it off with Zoe. I can’t. If I want this, it has to work with Zoe for these next few weeks. I’ve got to remember that she’s nothing to me. She’s a means to an end.
“She certainly seemed enthusiastic,” Lorraine says, softening immediately like always. Two weeks bathroom duty, I remember her saying to me, stern and disappointed, when I was nine and had been caught out after curfew. But then she’d walked me back to the cabin and bent down to give me a hug when she’d seen my quivering chin. “I liked her. She’s probably too good for you.”
“Probably,” I say, automatically, and I realize with a hitch of discomfort in my shoulders that I’m not lying. I don’t like her, don’t want her, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see that she’s way out of my league.
“How did you meet?” Of course she asks—of course it seems like the perfect moment to her for this conversation, now that we’ve got a minute alone. And of course I’m wildly unprepared.
“Oh. Just—around town.” Suddenly it is painfully apparent to me what a mistake it was to leave Zoe behind. I think of her, back in the cabin. About now she’s probably figuring out how you’ve got to steer well clear of that curtain when you’re in the shower, or else it’ll stick right to you, no matter how many times you peel it away from yourself. And I hope that bug she mentioned didn’t come back and spook her. I hope she managed with her bed.
“Was it one of those websites?” Lorraine asks. “You can tell me, you know. Don’t be embarrassed. I hear that’s what most people do these days.”
“It wasn’t a website,” I say, but I don’t have a better answer. I’m saved by the sound of Hammond’s loud voice, Sheree’s softer one, the leaves rustling underneath their feet as they approach. Walt and Rachel are no doubt on the way. Lorraine nods at me, straightens from the post, and pats my arm. “We’ll talk more soon, all right? But when you get back to your cabin, Aiden, you either apologize to that woman, or you’ll be sleeping alone for the foreseeable future.”
Either way, I think. Either way, I’m sleeping alone.