Chapter 6
Aiden
At Betty’s, I’d thought Zoe and I had called some kind of truce, but damn if she doesn’t get in my car on Friday afternoon and annoy me first thing.
“Look at this t-shirt,” she says, once she’s settled her bag in the backseat. She unzips her jacket and points at her chest, and it’s a good three seconds—too many seconds—of me looking without understanding that I’m supposed to be reading. Stanton Valley Campground, it says, in a retro, nineteen-eighties-style font, a cartoon squirrel’s face underneath, goofy and smiling. The t-shirt is gray, everything on it faded. It looks soft, thin. I can see the faint ridges of the cups of her bra.
“Uh,” I say, and I’ll bet if I got out of the car right now my knuckles would drag on the road.
She doesn’t seem to notice. “I got this at Goodwill. They had a lot! I guess your campground was pretty popular, huh? Anyways, I thought Lorraine would get a kick out of it.”
She turns to put on her seat belt, and I turn to look out the windshield.
Here’s the problem: I don’t feel the right things around Zoe. She’s supposed to be an enemy I’m keeping close, a tool I need to get something I want. But I don’t feel what she’s supposed to be to me; I haven’t since that first day. And since Wednesday—hell, if I’m honest, since last weekend—it’s more than me noticing, in some semidetached way, that I find her attractive. Sure, she’s got an edge to her, one she seems to delight in sharpening on me. But she’s also whip-crack smart in a way that’s terrifying and exhilarating to be around, a way that keeps you hanging on for whatever too-true thing she’s going to say next. And seeing her at the bar—with her friends and with Ahmed and Charlie—I can see now that she wasn’t really faking it last weekend. She’s damned likable, that’s the thing. She’s got a smile that can go all the way up to her eyes, she kicks ass at darts, and when you talk to her, she listens to every single word.
“Oh, wait,” she says, undoing her seat belt and swiveling so her knees are on the seat. She reaches into the backseat, rustles around in her bag, her ass right next to my face. Not what I meant by truce.
“We need to get going,” I say, my voice gruff.
When she turns back, a Tupperware container in her hand, she levels me with a long look. It’s a look that says, I thought we were going to try this another way. But I say nothing, just wait for her to put on her seat belt, and when she does, I pull away from the curb. She’s set the Tupperware on the floor between her feet, and I’m as curious about what’s in there as I am about what’s underneath that t-shirt.
Which is a lot. A lot curious.
I clear my throat, try to start this thing over. “How’d the rest of your week go?”
“Fine,” she sniffs.
The silence stretches, and finally I decide to get out of my own way for once. “What’s in the container?”
Out of my peripheral vision I see her turn toward me briefly, and then she reaches down again, picks up the Tupperware. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Kind of a long drive.”
“Well, I guess it’s not that long. I took a cooking class. It’s actually something I did with my former assistant from the firm.” There’s a pause, like she’s waiting for me to give some signal that I’m not okay with her talking about her old job. When I don’t say anything, she continues, her index finger tracing along the lip of the container. “I kind of—I used to give Janet a pretty hard time, made her work a lot.”
“After that she wanted to take a cooking class with you?” I ask, regretting it immediately when I see her expression turn stricken, her eyes widening.
“Oh, shit. Do you think she felt obligated? Because it was her idea. I took her out for lunch, and actually we got along pretty well, but maybe—”
I rush out a correction. “I’m sure she didn’t feel obligated. You don’t work there anymore, right?”
“Right,” she says, but she’s still got her lips pulled slightly to the side in concern, or maybe worry. This is what comes of my efforts at conversation. “Anyways,” she says. “We made cookies. Want one?”
Obviously I have to eat one. I’ll look like an asshole if I don’t. “Sure.”
The cookie is disgusting, I mean really disgusting. It tastes like there’s soy sauce in it. But I say, “Good job,” and eat the whole thing. My eyes might be watering.
“You want another one?” she asks, hopeful.
“Better not.” I’m close to saying a prayer of thanks when she relents and puts the lid back on. But it’s helped—she’s not so stiff over there anymore. Still, two polite questions and I’ve reached my limit, I guess. I don’t know what to say to her now. So I reach my hand down to the panel along my door and pull out my ace in the hole, my guarantee that she’ll see I was serious about letting her in.
“Brought this for you.” I pass the binder over to her.
She takes it, looking over at me, but I keep my eyes ahead, focus on the heavy Friday traffic. I’m nervous to have her see it—I’ve got no problem admitting that to myself. Zoe went to the best schools, did a tough job with a lot of smart people, and I had to work my ass off for a C average in both high school and college. The effort contained in that binder is more than I want her to know about, no matter what we’d talked about on Wednesday. The spreadsheets especially, fuck. I’d almost crushed the computer with my bare hands doing those, I swear to Christ. My hands tense around the steering wheel at the memory, and at the fact that she’s opening it up.
“This is your—is this a proposal for the camp?”
I manage a grunt of assent, look over to see her rolling those eyes. Amber in this light, with that dark ring around the edges. They’re gorgeous, frankly—with her blond hair and tan skin she reminds me of a bar of gold.
I try to concentrate on the aftertaste of the cookies.
“You must be terrible on road trips. Like it’s just all heavy silence and hands at ten and two. No license plate games for you, I’ll bet.”
“Just look at the damned binder,” I say, but this time, there’s something else to the way we talk. Something lighter.
She resettles herself, folds her long legs up underneath her, crisscross-style, and puts the binder in her lap. One of her knees is resting against my thigh. Ten and two, I think.
“Turn on the radio,” she says.
I sigh. “I like the quiet.”
“Well, I want to read this and not focus on your breathing and your loud thoughts about how unpleasant I am.”
“You’re not unpleasant,” I say, but I wait until I’ve turned on the radio, so maybe she doesn’t hear.
She’s quiet for a long time, almost a full hour, studying each page carefully. This is my copy, but I’ve got a plan to have two more made for Paul and Lorraine once we get to the presentation. It still needs some work—it’s not just the spreadsheets that look dull as hell in there. I’ve incorporated stuff from a lot of the other Wilderness/Wellness camps, brochures and photographs, but a lot of it is numbers, budgets for necessary renovations, stables, that kind of thing. But I’ve also got a long—maybe too-long—section on the opioid addiction stats in this part of the country, which is about as sad as it gets. And there’s not much of me in there, not much that’d make Paul and Lorraine feel like it’s a trusted friend who’d be buying up their property.
“This is good,” she says, finally, and I don’t think I’d realized the way I’d tensed up my shoulders. “I mean I hate the spreadsheets, obviously.” She shifts and turns down the radio. Her knee is no longer touching my thigh.
“Obviously?”
“Spreadsheets are awful, God. Those equations up top when you’re trying to do them? Who even understands those? No one, that’s who. Okay, well. Other people, I guess. You seemed to do all right.”
“I almost Hulk-smashed my laptop over those spreadsheets,” I say, and she laughs, this quick, loud, Ha!, like a checkmark next to my joke. This one passes. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
“Not that I’m saying you should take them out. They’re good for your budget stuff.” There’s a catch on the end of that, almost like she’s getting ready for a but, but she says nothing.
“Tell me.” Two words, Ahmed would say.
Zoe doesn’t miss a beat—she knows what I want. “Do you have a plan for distributing this? Because if you just hand them each a binder—that’s going to be a lot to take in. This is a lot to take in,” she says, smoothing her hand down the cover.
I think about lying, saying, Yeah, I have a plan. But there’s not much good that would do, except maybe saving what little pride I have left with this; Zoe already knows how shit I am with people. “I guess I thought I’d walk them through it.” She’s already shaking her head no.
“Boring. That’s the worst, when you’re in a presentation and someone’s reading you handouts that you’ve got right in front of your face. You can’t do that.”
How this blunt, forceful statement can be so much less annoying than the squirrel t-shirt is beyond me. But I’m getting used to her, I guess, getting used to the way she cuts through the bullshit, says what she means.
She makes this little humming noise, taps her fingernail on the front of the binder. “I’m going to think,” she says, but instead she undoes her seat belt again, swivels to the her-ass-in-my-face position, and rummages around back there. When she comes back, she’s got a small notebook and a pen. She reopens the binder and opens her notebook, and then she’s off, making notes. She writes like she speaks—firm, quick, and I can hear the pen scratch along the paper. At one point she gets out a cookie from her Tupperware, takes a single bite, and says, “This is gross. Why didn’t you say something?” But she’s not really interested in my answer. She goes back to writing even before I formulate a response about not wanting to hurt her feelings. She stops to look up once we get to Coleville, and I think I catch something wistful, wanting in her expression.
“Need to stop?” She looks over at me, almost like she’s forgotten I’m there.
“I’m okay,” she says, getting back to her notes. I keep trying to sneak glances over there, but I can’t see much of what she’s doing without taking my eyes off the road for too long. I’m curious, and—well, this is fucking weird, but I’m kind of lonely, too. I wish she’d start talking to me again, even if we’re just insulting each other.
“We need to make this more accessible,” she says, as though she can hear what I’m thinking. “We need to tell a story. That’s what all good arguments are, really. Stories.”
“Sure,” I say, but the problem is, I can’t think of a story right now, not with her sitting so close. The problem is that t-shirt. And her ass in those jeans. Her knee on my thigh. Everything about her that is annoying.
“I mean, it may not be your usual style,” she says, right as I turn into the drive to the campground. “But I think you just have to decide how bad you want it.”
My only response? Another knuckle-dragging grunt.
* * * *
By the time we get to Saturday evening, I’ve got a new word to describe Zoe.
Game.
Last weekend, Zoe’s exposure was at a minimum—easier because it was a shorter weekend, but also because I kept acting like a dick and leaving her behind, obviously. But whether it’s because of our dinner on Wednesday or her look at the binder, or maybe the comfort that comes with being here a second time, Zoe’s got a new determination about her. Learning how to run the Hobart in the lodge’s kitchen? Game. Early Saturday morning hike with the Coburgs and the five kids they brought this time? Game. Spray-painting a set of tires for the obstacle course on the western edge of the camp? Game.
Having me in the cabin while she showers, though?
Not game.
I shift on the decking of the stoop, hard and crooked beneath me, and wait for her to knock. It’d made me nervous, most of today, being apart from her, but Paul had rounded up me and Hammond to help do some tree clearing over by Good News 4, a sweaty and satisfying job that had taken nearly all day. What if we get our stories crossed, I’d thought, what if Lorraine’s asking her about all the shit I haven’t wanted to make up, what if Zoe tells her we met on a website? But when I’d met up with her back here, I’d asked her about it, an agitated edge to my voice that I’d hated. “People who know how to have conversations know how to steer them,” she’d said. “Anyways, the kids were a good distraction. Who can talk when you’ve got someone screaming or crying or holding their privates all the time? Now get out, so I can shower.”
See? Game.
So even though my shoulders feel heavy with tension, thinking about what’s coming in Hammond and Val’s presentation tonight, I’m looking forward to it too, only because I’ll be watching it with her.
A knock comes from behind me, and I stand, brushing off my jeans and taking the deep breath I need to stop thinking about her in the shower.
Inside the cabin it’s humid, steam fogging up the two mirrors, the scent of her shampoo thick in the air. She’s dressed, but she’s dragging a comb through her wet hair, the color of dried wheat when it’s like this, leaving little droplets on the red-and-black flannel she’s got on.
“God,” she says, not even looking at me. “Showers aren’t even relaxing when you’re mostly checking for ticks all the time, I swear. I thought I found one in my hair but it was just a peanut from the Coburgs’ trail mix. I’m telling you, I think my heart stopped for a minute, thinking I’d found a peanut-sized tick.”
She turns her head and looks at me, her brows furrowing. “Don’t have that look on your face. Ticks are not a joke.”
Whatever look I had on my face, I suspect it’s not gotten any more serious, because she sets down her comb a little aggressively and rolls her eyes, then crosses into the bunk room where she starts pulling on a pair of socks.
“Ticks are not a joke,” I repeat back to her. “I had one once, right behind my knee. It got in there good.”
“What?” she says, freezing with her left sock halfway on. “Did you get a disease?” She has this look on her face like I am the actual tick. This is a woman who I’ve basically blackmailed into being my fiancée and right now she looks like this is the most offensive thing I’ve ever said to her.
“No.” I’m wearing out that spot on my cheek that I keep biting to stop me smiling. “I just got—”
“Oh my God, don’t. Don’t tell me anything! Was it bigger than a peanut? No, wait, don’t even tell me. God!” She pulls on the rest of her sock, stands, and does this...I don’t know what. A clumsy, ridiculous, full-body shake, like no other way I’ve ever seen her move. “Let’s stop talking about it,” she says, crossing the room to pull on her boots. “Did you find out anything from Hammond today?”
“Find out anything about what?”
She looks up at me from where she’s lacing her boots, does the eye roll that’s becoming increasingly familiar to me. “About tonight. About their presentation.”
“Oh. No?”
“You were with him all day. It would’ve been good to gather some intel.”
“We were using chain saws. It’s not good for conversation.”
“You had the whole ride over there and back. And I’m guessing you didn’t turn on the chain saws at minute zero and then run them for four hours straight. You never took a water break?”
Jesus, this woman. She was probably a really good lawyer. I do the equivalent of pleading the fifth, which in this situation involves me shrugging, a movement she answers with a gusty sigh. “Val skipped the hike this morning to stay in their cabin. I’ll bet she was prepping for the presentation. I’m telling you, she’s the brains of that operation.”
I snort. “No surprise there.” I may not have had a lot conversation with Hammond, but it doesn’t take much to realize his bulb runs about as dim as it did when we were kids. On the ride back he’d asked me if I’d ever had to treat one of those “four-hour erections” he was always hearing about on commercials.
“But that’s brains enough.” She stands and grabs her jacket from the hook by the door. “She runs that household. I’m pretty sure Hammond’s real estate career is a daily gift from his father, and you know Val came from this little coal-mining town in West Virginia and got a full ride to Georgetown? She knows her shit. That wedding scrapbook she brought me looks like a professional did it.”
“It’s a wedding scrapbook, not a business plan.”
“Don’t be dumb,” she says, bluntly. “These days wedding plans are business plans. I’m telling you, she’s smart. We need to watch out for her tonight.”
When we get out onto the stoop, she pulls her still-damp hair back from her shoulders, gathers it into a messy twist that she clips with something she’s pulled from her jacket pocket. “We’re not supposed to be competitive,” I say, even though it’s the exact opposite of what I believe. I’m just being contrary, and I realize it’s because there’s something oddly familiar about being contrary with her.
“Whatever you say, Boy Scout,” she says, and sets off down the path.
“You think ticks like the smell of that shampoo you use?” I call after her. She stops still where she’s standing—maybe she’s trying to suppress another one of those shudders. But when she turns back to look over her shoulder, she’s smiling.
“Don’t know,” she says, “but I’m pretty sure you do.”
* * * *
You wouldn’t think a presentation about a campground business plan would be considered a romantic event, but you also wouldn’t know otherwise by being in this goddamn room right now.
Val and Hammond have turned the lights down low for their presentation; they’re at the front, setting up a laptop and murmuring quietly to each other, baby this and baby that. So far as I know, all the kids are up in Paul and Lorraine’s apartment with two of the camp staff members, though I can’t imagine that’s going well since the Coburgs said no TV or movies. It seems the relative dark and the lack of children is putting everyone in an affectionate mood, because Tom’s got an arm draped over Sheree’s shoulder, his fingertips stroking up and down her skin, and Rachel’s standing behind Walt, giving him a shoulder massage, which frankly seems unnecessary since Walt didn’t spend four hours clearing trees today, and also I’ve never seen him carry any one of those five kids. Paul and Lorraine sit closest to the front, side by side, their hands joined. Both of them seem nervous, and I’m guessing that the first presentation is bringing the reality of the sale home.
Either way, Zoe and I look like we’re on the most awkward first date ever, a slice of space always between us, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, my hands clasped loosely between my knees. When Paul looks over his shoulder at us and waves, Zoe waves back, and I do something completely insane.
I put my arm around her.
All right, it’s not around her, it’s basically my arm across the back of her chair, but a line of my forearm is grazing her back, and Zoe—because Zoe is fucking game—scoots her chair closer to mine, and sets a hand on my knee.
I feel that hand like it’s a thousand pounds, a new weight I’m going to carry while I’m here: the addition of physical affection with her. When Val claps her hands together and Hammond moves off to the side, the presentation beginning, I can barely think for the first minute, so attuned am I to the heat of her palm, the way her index finger taps a little as she listens, as if my leg is the natural replacement for her bottom lip. She wears her ring—my ring, the one I bought for her the day before I picked her up the first time—on the same hand that’s touching me.
Up at the front, Val flashes a picture on the screen, a group shot from the early days of the camp, most of the campers in short white shorts, tube socks pulled up, green t-shirts. Before I’ve got the chance to process much, she flashes another, from the next year, and the next, again and again until she reaches a group shot that looks recent, Paul and Lorraine a little grayer, the campers all wearing green t-shirts again, but the more relaxed uniform requirements in clear evidence. I’m in some of those pictures, I’m sure I am, and so is Aaron, but mercifully Val’s cycled through them so quickly I don’t have much time to look for our faces, and when she finally pulls up a slide with the first and last photos side by side, I’m glad that they either predate or postdate me.
“If we take a look at these photos,” Val says, “we can see how much Stanton Valley Campground has changed over time, and I’m not just talking about the tube socks. When I look at the history of this campground, I notice something different.”
“More girls,” Zoe whispers, and I look over at her, then back up the screen—and, yeah, in the first picture, there’s maybe a dozen girls, all in the front row. In the second, it’s closer to even but not quite.
“Historically, sleepaway camps catered primarily to boys and young men, stemming from the nineteenth-century focus on male self-reliance. Sleepaway camps were an opportunity to foster independence, strong bonds between men, a separation from the domestic influence…”
Zoe taps my kneecap harder, looks up at me, and raises her eyebrows. Told you so, she’s telling me silently, and fuck, she is right as all hell, because this presentation is really, really good.
Val starts with statistics about how many girls across the country attend sleepaway camps, about how coed camps consistently see lower enrollments from girls, while single-sex camps for girls thrive. Then she’s got quotes from psychologists on why single-sex campground environments can be more empowering for girls and young women, particularly camps that allow them to explore fields that are historically targeted at young men in schools—science, math, physical activity. She’s got examples of single-sex campgrounds all across the country, graphs that show their profitability and their success rates in aiding the mental and physical health of campers. She’s got a design plan that looks professionally done, a link to a website that she tells us has gone live today so we can learn more, and maybe the most effective thing of all: Hammond doesn’t say one goddamn word.
“Hammond and I are raising three girls,” she says, and here I recognize the way her voice changes—a higher pitch, maybe a slight drawl added in, closer to that voice she used when she aww-ed at me and Zoe last weekend. She’s got one hand over her heart, and uses the other one to gesture to Hammond, a small wave of her hand that he answers by moving to the back of the room. “And my”—she begins again, clearing her throat—“our goal is to make sure they can be whatever they want.”
“A ballerina!” comes a small voice from the back, and all of us turn in our seats to see the oldest in a black leotard, pink tights, her blond hair in a tight bun.
“A pilot!” comes another, and there’s the youngest, dressed in what looks like a miniature Amelia Earhart costume.
“The president!” says the last, wearing a business suit and a flag pin, and it seems like everyone is clapping and chuckling, Val’s final words on how a campground like hers could make this possible getting lost in the shuffle.
On my leg, Zoe’s hand is squeezing. “Damn,” she breathes, and finally I answer one of her asides.
“Yeah.” That presentation was so good that for a second I even think the all-girls campground would be the best idea, and if Lorraine’s face is any indication, she does too; she’s rushed over to hug the Dwyer girls and is praising their performances. I don’t miss the self-satisfied look on Hammond’s face, like he wants a fucking cookie for marrying so far out of his league. Maybe Zoe can give him one of those soy sauce ones.
Up at the front, Val is waving off praise from Paul, shutting the cover of her laptop, and looking pleased. Right now I’d like to get a look at that wedding scrapbook, see if I could get some of her magic by osmosis.
“We need to get up,” Zoe says, still sounding as stunned as I feel, and she’s the one who wasn’t dumb enough to underestimate Val. When she takes her hand from my knee and stands, I feel the loss of contact everywhere—my shoulders, my stomach, my legs. It’s strange, this feeling. All weekend I’ve known there was some new closeness between Zoe and me, some sense that we’d really shown up to do this thing together. But that small, innocent point of contact—my arm around her chair, her hand on my knee—while we watched this thing unfold? Somehow, it’s the first time I’ve really felt we’re on the same team.
It’s a jumble of polite congratulations and questions in the room, most everyone circling around Val and the girls, who at first cling to their mother in thrilled pride and, I’m guessing, a good deal of giddiness at being up late. Zoe handles the praise for us both, and is kneeling down to compliment the ballerina on her twirling style when the youngest of the Dwyer girls moves away from her mom and looks up at me.
“Hello,” she says, reaching out a hand for me to shake in a gesture so mature that I imagine she’s practiced it with her parents. I take her small hand and shake it once. “Did you like our presentation?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, keeping my voice serious to match her grave expression. It’s not too hard since I still feel punched in the face by Val’s star turn up there. “I like your costume.”
“It’s not a costume. It’s my uniform.” Her little-kid voice is so proudly assertive.
Beside me, Zoe rises from her crouch, laughing softly.
“Right, that’s what I meant to say,” I add. “I like your uni—”
“Miss Lorraine said you got a sister like mine,” she says, cutting me off.
I smile down at her in confusion. “Oh, no. I don’t have a sister.”
She shakes her head, strokes her small hand over the white scarf she’s wearing. “Miss Lorraine said you were in your mom’s tummy with your brother, like me and my sister.”
Nothing’s changed in here; everyone’s still talking. There’s still the sounds of chairs being dragged back into place, of the other kids running downstairs now that the evening’s over. But it feels like a full minute where I hear nothing at all, where I’m just looking down at this little girl’s face. I’d thought she was the youngest of the three, but that’s not right. She’s a twin, like me and Aaron were twins, not identical. Like her, Aaron was always smaller; my dad used to joke that I took up all the real estate so he couldn’t get any bigger, a joke that used to make me laugh but later made me sick with guilt. I was taller, broader, sturdier, healthier.
I lived; he died.
I watch the little girl’s eyes track to her twin. “That’s Olivia,” she says to me. “She’s going to be the president.”
I think it’s Zoe who says something to her, who coaxes her away to turn back to where Val and Hammond are standing with the other girls. And I think Walt asks me what I think of an all-girls camp, but I don’t bother answering. I’m halfway to the door before Zoe catches up, grabs my hand in hers, and I don’t give a fuck if it’s for show or not, I hang on to it. Just for a second, I tell myself. Until you’ve cleared the door.
Once we get outside, I drop her hand.
Zoe says one word: “Twins?”
“Yeah,” I say. And it’s all I say, for the rest of the night.