By the middle of May both the house on Lake Waseka and Megan were looking much better. Even several visits from Louise couldn’t bring Megan’s spirits down as she anticipated the summer, and Louise definitely tried to put the kibosh on their plans. Louise steadfastly insisted she would not join them. If they wanted Grandma Berkey at the lake, they’d have to find someone other than Louise to deliver her.
There was very little left to do in the house and Charley went ahead of Meg to see it done. John had agreed to help Meg pack, make sure she had her medication and drive her and her luggage north to the lake. He wanted to be there on weekends whenever possible. There were just the finishing touches, things that Melissa had offered to take care of but Charley wanted to do herself. In fact, Melissa had come close to begging, but Charley insisted. Charley’s hands-on involvement in fixing up the place had been pretty limited and she looked forward to adding the accessories she’d shopped for in the city. She had fluffy towels, crisp sheets, thick rugs, soaps and creams, place mats and napkins, comforters and down pillows. She bought a set of eight wineglasses and as many tumblers and cocktail glasses.
After putting her new purchases in the house, Charley lit off for the nearest large grocery to stock up, looking forward with great longing to the summer days when the farmers would begin to put their fresh vegetables out on roadside stands.
She settled in, smoothing sheets over the mattress in the master bedroom, shaking out and putting down fluffy rugs in bathrooms, in front of the door and kitchen sink, beside the beds. The new down pillows almost hugged her back when she squeezed them. Everything was in place before the sun lowered in the sky and she took a glass of wine onto the porch, sat in one of the chaises with her feet up and began to do what Megan had been doing—remembering the summers that were filled with laughter and fun.
It wasn’t hard when she focused. When it was just them—the girls—it was carefree and filled with pleasure. It wasn’t harmonious every second, of course. Six little girls could squabble and bicker, especially when the rain forced them inside, but their conflicts were short-lived. They just enjoyed the heaven that escape to the lake provided. They loved to spy on their mothers late at night. Getting caught was almost as much fun as the spying, which never turned up much besides gossip about their marriages. They had swimming races and diving contests. Since they spent so much time in the lake they hardly ever took baths. In fact, they washed their hair in the lake. Aunt Jo would give them a bottle of shampoo to take to the lake every few days. They had an old outdoor shower at the boathouse but they used it sparingly because the water was freezing.
Her cell phone rang and she held her breath when she saw it was Michael. She prayed they wouldn’t fight. “Hi,” she said. “I was just thinking about you. I just got here this afternoon. The place is all put together and I’m by myself.”
“Where’s Meg?” he asked.
“John’s bringing her in a few days. I wanted to come ahead, make sure it was clean and comfortable and stocked with healthy food.”
“John’s okay with her spending the whole summer at the lake?” he asked.
“He’s planning to come on the weekends. But how are you?”
“Ready for the semester to end,” he said. “Listen, I hope you’ll take this as good news. Eric was able to get a slot in an exchange program at Cambridge. He’s coming with me in September.”
“Oh, Michael,” she said. “Is he happy about that?”
“He’s ecstatic. Of course, all he can talk about is the fact that he won’t be staying with me. He’s planning on staying in a student flat. But we’ll be in the same city. And I’ll be able to check on him.”
I wonder where I’ll be, Charley thought. “Both of you gone? I don’t know if I can stand it.”
“Charley, you’re gone,” he reminded her. “You can come with us, you know.”
“You know that depends on a lot of things, mostly Meg.”
“And how is our Meg?” he asked.
“She’s looking so much better. And she’s stronger. I’m filled with hope. But she’s thin and still needs two naps a day, so...”
“I’ll bring Eric in the summer,” Michael said. “In fact, I can’t wait.”
At least he didn’t say he’d send Eric. “I wish you could see it right now,” she said. “School isn’t out yet so the lake is still quiet. You can hear a fish jump now and then. Someone will whistle for a dog or maybe shout the dog’s name. No speedboats but the occasional putter of a motor on a bass boat out in the big lake. It’s so peaceful. Restful. Good for thinking.”
“I’m sorry Meg’s illness was what took you away, but after the shitty way your year started out, this might be just what you need. Has Louise reared her ugly head?”
Charley laughed. “Oh, yes. She tried saying she wouldn’t allow us to come here, but when Meg said she’d have to call the police and arrest us, she tried other tactics. She won’t be joining us. We’re not at all sad about that. But guess who says she’s coming? Hope. She says so, anyway.”
“And Beverly?”
“She says she’s not sure if she’s ready for that much reality.”
“It might be just the two of you all summer,” Michael said.
“I’m perfectly all right with that idea,” Charley said. “Being here alone I tried to remember all the good things that happened when we were children. That’s what Meg’s been doing. It turns out it’s not that hard to do. I’m remembering so much.”
“Too much?” he asked. Because of course Michael knew about that summer romance that went awry, leaving her an unwed mother.
“Actually, I’m remembering that last summer more kindly now. Do you know what never occurred to me at the time? In fact, it didn’t occur to me until very recently. My summer love who ran for his life when he found out my grandfather was a judge—he might’ve been afraid of a statutory rape charge. I was sixteen. He was nineteen. We both lied about our ages. And he said he was from the city, but I heard from one of the other waiters that he wasn’t—he was a local kid. If I’d been near here when I found out I was pregnant I could’ve tracked him down, but I wasn’t, and then they sent me away. When I made contact with Andrea seven years ago, all I could tell her about her father was that he was nineteen and he’d said he was Mack but that wasn’t his real name.”
“You could ask around now,” Michael said.
“You think he could still be around after twenty-seven years?” she said. “Maybe after I’m here a little while.” But what she didn’t want to say, what she couldn’t quite say, was how she still found it so embarrassing. She was made to feel humiliated by the way she was sent away. Thinking about facing the locals to say there was a man out there who should know he has a child who was now twenty-seven, married, with children of her own, was intimidating. Yes, the sophisticated talk show host might be able to spit out something like that in the big city, but out here in the small farm towns, facing old-fashioned Methodists who went to church every Sunday was different. Feeling like a fool had always been her weak spot.
But she vowed she would try. After she got used to the idea.
* * *
The next day Charley put her iPod in the speaker bay she’d brought along and, to the comforting strings of Vivaldi, she folded freshly laundered towels and put them in the linen closet. She hung two fluffy yellow towels in the bathroom. It had been such a relief to sleep amid smells of lemon oil and pine needles rather than the motel’s economy disinfectant that bore a ghastly resemblance to cheap talc.
She went to make a pot of coffee. Just as she turned on the machine she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. She was drawn to the kitchen window for a closer look. There was a young girl sitting across the lawn in one of the freshly painted chairs that Melissa had put out in the yard. She had a small suitcase on each side of the chair. For a second Charley almost felt like she was looking at a memory; the girl’s hair was stringy, her jeans ratty, her T-shirt ragged and grayish, her jacket a cheap, dated corduroy. With a closer look, she realized it was not a girl, but a woman. A small, familiar woman.
“Krista,” she whispered. “What the hell?”
When they were little girls, aged one through six, they looked like towheaded clones, but as they grew older they each took on more individual characteristics. Charley was tall, her face angular, her hair a dark auburn, while Megan was only five-three and when she’d had hair their mother had called it dishwater blond. She hadn’t seen Krista in a long time, a couple of years since she’d visited her in prison. In fact, Charley had only visited her a handful of times the whole twenty-three years. But from the distance of one hundred yards she looked the same as she had the last time she’d seen her, her brows thick and straight, her hair that nondescript and shapeless brown, her mouth harshly set. She was Megan’s height and probably didn’t weigh a whole hundred and fifteen pounds.
Charley wondered, not for the first time, what kind of baggage prison would leave Krista with. She could have visited her more often. But she hadn’t. The whole experience of visiting Chowchilla had been so horrid.
It was odd the way she sat out there, watching the house. What was she doing here? Meg had sent her a note telling her the lake house would be open from June through August but it wasn’t yet June. And Krista was supposed to be in prison, for God’s sake. Last Charley had heard, she wasn’t even eligible for parole.
It was sunny but chilly outside. Charley shivered and found her heaviest sweater. She turned on the oven to begin to warm up the place, then on the spur of the moment opened a can of biscuits, tucked them into a pan, covered them with butter, sugar and cinnamon and popped them in the oven. But the cold air, smell of coffee and hot cinnamon biscuits and sounds of music hadn’t drawn Krista to the porch.
Well, Charley decided, she’s having trouble with this. So I’ll have to bring her in and get her story, find out what she expects of me. I’ve done that for a living for years.
Charley tucked a woven lap blanket under her arm, poured two steaming cups of coffee and went out into the yard. Krista watched her cautiously as she approached but she didn’t move. She neither rose to greet her cousin, nor did she bolt.
Charley knelt before her, placing both coffees on the ground. She unfurled the blanket and wrapped it like a shawl around Krista’s shoulders. Then she placed a warm mug in Krista’s hands. “Krista, why are you sitting out here? Did you escape?” she asked.
Krista shrugged.
“Really?” Charley said with a sarcastic laugh.
Krista’s lips moved into a smirk. “Once I got here, I realized you might not be happy to see me. I was giving you a chance to send me away.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m a convicted murderer, maybe?” Krista replied with sarcasm of her own.
Charley put on her impatient interviewer face. “I know you didn’t murder anyone, Krista. How’d you get out?”
“A miracle. Some big-shot lady lawyer got me out. I stopped believing something like that was possible a long time ago.”
“That’s a relief. I’m glad I don’t have to harbor a fugitive.” Krista made a face and Charley smiled. “Wanna come in? Or you wanna sit out here by yourself?”
“So you’re okay with this, then? Me being here?”
“I’m not afraid of you, Krista. I think in all fairness I should be asking you if you’re okay with me being here. We haven’t even talked in a couple of years. And I wasn’t able to do anything to help you. Aside from some letters, I was hardly any support to you while you were in prison...and I knew you didn’t deserve to be there.”
“Oh, I don’t even think about that, Charley,” Krista said slowly, getting to her feet. “I mean, first of all, I did deserve to be there—just maybe not for the reasons they said. And second, I wasn’t much help to you, either, as I recall. I don’t think you had it that much easier than me.”
Charley’s head slowly tilted to one side as she listened to Krista. This woman had just come out of twenty-three years of hard time while Charley had been considered a minor celebrity making lots of money. Yet she had sympathetic words for Charley. It was almost unheard of that anyone would express such a kindness to her, especially a member of her family. That her success had come at great labor and sacrifice was irrelevant to most people. She was unaccustomed to genuine concern for her feelings.
She bent to pick up one of the two small suitcases. “How’d you like a nice hot soak in our new bathtub?”
“That would be so cool,” Krista answered. “You just have no idea how cool.”
* * *
Charley gave two taps on the bathroom door before entering. The bubbles were high, nearly covering Krista’s head. Charley picked up the empty coffee cup and replaced it with a new one. “This is Amaretto Crème,” she said. “With a little dollop of whipping cream on top for good measure.”
“I don’t drink.”
“It’s just the flavor—no booze. Krista, I have to say something quick before I lose my nerve. And I don’t think there’s any way to preserve your dignity when I say it.”
“Go ahead, babe. I don’t have hardly any dignity.”
“I peeked in your suitcase. The stuff you brought with you...your clothes. The underwear and jeans? It’s no good. You have to let me replace it all for you. With new stuff.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. Orphans in third-world countries have better underwear than you. I’ve spent more on lunch...many times...than it would cost to buy a few new outfits for you to wear this summer. And you’ll need a bathing suit.”
“Gee, we were all girls at the last place I lived, so when we went to the beach, we just skinny-dipped,” Krista said, laughing harshly.
“Maybe some nightclothes. You obviously don’t need nightclothes or robes or slippers in prison.”
“Shower thongs, Charley. Not slippers.”
“Well, you need slippers and beach thongs. Flip-flops.”
“Charley,” Krista said.
“And we’ll get you a decent haircut in Brainerd, if you like.”
“This is so much how I pictured you, Charley. A perfectionist. Throwing money at everything.”
“Please, I don’t mean to hurt your pride, Krista. I just want to help. I want you to be comfortable and feel safe. Don’t deny me the pleasure of—”
“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t deny you your pleasures. I don’t do things to hurt myself anymore,” Krista said, raising her arm high above her head and watching the soap suds run slowly down. “Spend as much on me as you want, Charley.” She laughed. “I didn’t have time to stop at Victoria’s Secret on my way out of Chowchilla. And my beautician was all tied up.”
“Who cut your hair in prison?” Charley asked.
“Whoever could be trusted with scissors. It was usually a guard. But we did have a little beauty shop there, if you use the term loosely.” She sank down in the tub, letting the water and bubbles cover her head. She rose up again. “Way loosely.”
“Well, for right now you can wear some of my stuff.”
This made Krista laugh. “Really, Charley, I can get by for the time being. All right?”
Charley left the bathroom and came back directly with some underwear and and a pair of soft white socks. She dangled them toward Krista, then put them down on the closed toilet lid and left.
“Charley?” Krista called. “When do you expect the phone to be hooked up?”
“Couple of days. Why?”
“I haven’t called my mom yet. I never really believed I was going to get out so I didn’t tell anyone what was happening. I just came straight here.”
“I have a cell...you can call her whenever you want...”
“Maybe in the morning, then. And, Charley?” The sound of the drain gulping bathwater accompanied Krista’s yelling. “I have to check in with my parole officer in Grand Rapids...it was the best I could do... Do you suppose...?”
“I’ll take you there myself. I’ll be your sponsor here.”
“I don’t think I need a sponsor. But, Charley? Oh! Oh, Charley! Oh, my God!”
Charley rushed to the bathroom. There stood Krista, her skin pink from the hot water, wearing Charley’s cotton underwear and matching undershirt. Bright soft whites. Krista was running her hands up and down her sides, over her little rump, around her hips, over her little breasts. “Oh, Charley, these are the most wonderful things I have ever had on my body!” she said with reverence. “I will never take them off!”
“Yeah, well, I think that’s what happened to the last ones.”
* * *
They had to share a bed, Charley told her, because they had only the one mattress so far with two more being delivered. And there was only the one heating pad to keep them warm. Fortunately, there were plenty of quilts and comforters and pillows. “Just like our mothers used to do,” she said. Charley took the flavored coffee and hot cinnamon biscuits to the bedroom on a tray and they nibbled and sipped while they talked.
“Tell me what prison was like,” Charley said.
“Oh, not now,” Krista said, sinking back against the down pillows. “Just let me smell and feel these things. Charley, your life is so rich, do you know that?”
She picked up her coffee cup, warming her hands with it, and smiled. She did know. She worked hard for it—she appreciated every moment of it.
“Do you smell all these smells? The lotion and pine and linen and soap...soap that isn’t lye, I mean. The dirt and the lake and the...the...furniture polish?” she asked.
“Yes. And varnish,” Charley said. “I had the hardwood floors sanded and varnished.”
“There’s paint and wallpaper paste and lemon oil.” She closed her eyes and twitched her nose in the air. “There’s vanilla somewhere, some sweet-smelling cleaning fluid. The smell of brand-new muslin and ages-old cotton...what a great combination.”
“Can you smell the wicker? Does wicker have a smell?” Charley wanted to know.
“Sure it does—it smells like a basket or a straw hat. And you know what else? There are a thousand different blossoms around the lake. In fact, this is the best the lake is ever going to smell,” Krista said. “When everything is just coming in bloom. Except maybe the way it’ll smell in fall, when the leaves change and drop off, when the fireplaces are all going, when the pies and turkeys are—” She stopped talking for a moment to sip from her steaming mug and think about smells. Later, when they had run out of things to talk about, she might tell Charley how prison smelled. Maybe. But she’d really rather forget.
“I never think about smells that much,” Charley confessed quietly. “In fact, the only time I was ever made tragically aware of odor was once, after Megan went through a big chemo treatment and she kept saying, ‘I smell like chemicals, don’t I?’ Her skin had a tinny odor to it. It was very strange.”
They were both quiet for a moment. “How is she?” Krista finally asked.
“Well, she’s better now than she was a couple of months ago. She’s gained a couple of pounds, she’s growing hair and her color isn’t pasty. Did she or your mom write you about this latest treatment?”
“She just wrote me what she was going to have done. She said the results have been very good. She said she was optimistic.”
“She had lung, liver and pancreatic metastasis, not to mention some lymphatic involvement. When she was in remission they got her as strong as possible and she donated her own bone marrow for the surgery. Just in case. Once she recovered from the harvest, when the cancer was evident again, they literally wiped her out with chemotherapy. Killed everything that moved, so to speak. Then gave her a cell transplant with her own healthy cells. There isn’t anything more to do now. Except wait.”
“Wait? For how long?”
Charley let out a small, rueful laugh. “From now on, that’s how long.”
“Well? How does she feel?”
“She’s pretty weak, but she claims she’s feeling stronger every day. She’s emaciated. The doctor has her drinking protein supplements to try to put a little weight on. And she was bald, of course.” Charley shrugged. “She takes at least one nap every day but other than that she seems to be doing okay. That doesn’t mean anything, of course.”
“Why doesn’t it?”
Charley took a moment to answer. “She’s lying about the odds, Krista.”
“Huh?”
“Not lying, that’s not what I mean. They have had good results with this bone marrow transplant after chemo treatment...but unfortunately not on patients whose cancer is as advanced as Meg’s. That’s what this is all about, I think. This opening up the lake house, writing everyone to tell them to come back here one more time. I think she wants to come here to die.”
“Maybe not,” Krista said hopefully.
“Yeah, maybe not,” Charley said. But there wasn’t much hope in her voice.
* * *
To see dawn sparkle across the lake water...this was something Krista feared she would never see again. She’d hardly slept since she’d been out of prison, but was not in the least tired. It would have been impossible to sleep through any sight that underscored her own freedom—like the rising of the sun on Lake Waseka. She sat cross-legged at the end of the dock in the purplish predawn, wearing Charley’s underwear and socks and her own old, ratty corduroy jacket.
She heard the new dock creak behind her and she looked over her shoulder to see Charley coming toward her. Charley wore her warm, furry robe, toasty slippers, and carried two steaming cups of coffee.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Krista said. “I was trying to be quiet.”
“You didn’t wake me. I get up before sunrise every day. I’m trained.”
Krista accepted the coffee gratefully. “That’s how you became so famous. Famous Charley—that’s what we call you.”
“We?” she asked.
“Me, Meg, my mom...”
“Aunt Jo calls me that?” Charley asked, aghast.
“Not really...it’s how I’ve referred to you a couple of times, and when my mom wrote to me, if she mentioned you, she’d put it in quotes. She didn’t mean it disrespectfully. She’s very proud of you.” Krista sipped. “She’d write, ‘I caught “Famous Charley’s” show today. She had on Sylvester Stallone. Who knew what a good sense of humor he has.’ Stuff like that.”
“Hmm.”
“You did all this, then? Fixing up the house and stuff?”
“Uh-huh. With the help of a local decorator.”
“For Meg?”
“I’d buy the lake for her if I could. I only have one sister left, you know.”
Krista reached out and patted Charley’s knee. “And I have two—and haven’t heard a word from one of them in years. Years. I get a holiday card every year from Bev. I think Ma makes her do that. I always heard from Meggie, though. Isn’t she the best one of all of us?”
Charley stared down into her coffee cup. Meg was going to be here in a few days. She hadn’t done all this just to spend the summer crying because her sister was probably dying. But yes, she thought. Megan was the best one of them all.
“How does it feel to you to be back here?” Krista asked her.
“Surprisingly positive. Or maybe it hasn’t really hit me yet. If it had, surely I’d be banging my head or tearing out my hair. This place...the last summer here... I think it must have been the pivotal point.”
“Bunny...”
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of Bunny,” she said. “I was thinking of Andrea.”
“Andrea?”
“Andrea, the baby I was forced to give away. I found her... Rather, she found me, about seven years ago. She’s a mother herself now. She’s incredible, Krista. So beautiful, so smart. She has two darling little girls of her own. I was only seventeen when she was born. I did a kind of crazy thing.”
Krista began to laugh. “Sorry—I don’t think you even qualify...”
“No, I mean, just lately. I called Andrea, told her where I was spending the summer and why. I couldn’t really invite her to the lake for the summer, tempting as that would be. The little girls—I think it might be too much for Meg. But I did suggest to Andrea that she try to come this way if possible. I told her I’d pay for their lodging in a nice place nearby. She could see her extended biological family. Some of them, anyway. And if she’s still interested, she could do a little detective work on her biological father.”
“Detective work? You don’t know where he is?”
“I don’t even know who he is. I mean, who he really is. I thought he was a twenty-two-year-old Harvard law student when I fell for him, but when some of the other lodge waiters told him I was the underage granddaughter of a superior court judge, he ran for his life. It turned out he was a nineteen-year-old local boy who hadn’t gone to college at all. He said his name was Mack and that’s all I ever knew. What are the odds Mack is his real name?” She laughed bitterly. “We were whisked away before I even realized I could be pregnant. Before I could even go back to the lodge and ask what his full name really was, although I didn’t want him by then. He really took me for a ride.”
“But...did you want to go on that ride?”
“Oh, yes,” Charley said. “Or no. I wanted to kiss and hug and cuddle and feel love and passion and fantasize about how much better I was going to make my life than our mothers made theirs. And the reality is that if I had not had that awful summer, I wouldn’t have had the volatile power and focus to do what I did. All that anger. It’s what I used to get everything I ever got.”
“I guess if Meg is the best one of us all, then you’re the most successful one of us all.” Krista drank her coffee and looked off in the direction of the first pink streaks of dawn. “And I’m the baddest one of us all. But who cares? Who could care when you look at something like that? God, Charley, have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”
Charley felt the tangy presence of her own sentimental tears—sheer joy at seeing Krista’s reaction to dawn outside the walls of a prison. This was something she hadn’t even considered, that she’d have this kind of reunion. Both with her cousin and with her own consciousness. She could not have appreciated the sunrise half so well without Krista to exclaim on its unique beauty. “Ahhh,” was all she could say, for certainly she had seen dawns more beautiful than this. There was one on the China Sea that had moved her to tears, another from a mountaintop in the Greek isles. Perhaps the most beautiful of all—over the crown of her newborn baby boy’s head, born at dawn eighteen years ago.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Krista.”
“No one’s more glad of that than me! So, who actually owns this place now?”
Charley shrugged, thinking. “I suppose Grandma Berkey does. It obviously hasn’t been sold. Which raises some interesting questions, now that you mention it.”
“I should know who actually owns the place,” Krista said, paying little attention to the prospect of interesting questions. “I know Meg invited everyone to visit this summer, which is nice, but I need a place to stay and I have to have the permission of the owner. You know?”
“You have my permission,” Charley said dismissively.
“No, you don’t understand,” Krista said. “I really have to know who to ask. I have an obsessive need to do things the right way.” She touched Charley’s arm, drawing her attention. “There are rules. Understand?”
“Sure,” she finally answered. “We’ll take care of that.” Then, remembering something, she said, “Krista, I looked in the other suitcase, too. Last night. I wasn’t really snooping. I was looking for your clothes and then for what else you might need.”
“You were snooping,” Krista said.
“Where’d you get the typewriter?”
“My mom sent it. I asked her for it—she found it at a thrift shop. She said she wished it was a laptop, but she couldn’t really afford it. But she wanted me to have something for writing.”
“Can I buy you the laptop?”
“I really don’t need it.”
“I want to. Because you’re doing the one thing no one could do. You’re writing about it. Trying to get it down. I saw the pages. God, I’m so relieved. I’m so glad it’s you and not me.”
“It’s hard. I’d like to do it right. I mean, correct. I mean, true. Shit, I don’t know what I mean.”
“Where are you getting the stuff? The information?”
“Well, I’d ask a question here and there of my mom or Meg. I could get Meg to go undercover to Grandma Berkey. I think she even enjoyed it. Plus, I remember things. Meg doesn’t, Beverly won’t talk about it, you and Hope were pretty scarce with other things on your minds.”
“They know about the book, your mom and Meg? The story? Whatever it is?”
“No. I told them it’s for my therapy. So I could get ‘well.’ And get out. I lied.”
“That’s okay. You do what you have to do. Writing it down is important to everyone, even the ones who don’t know it. And you’re on the right track, I can feel it.”
“You read it?” Krista asked.
“The first sentence. It’s a very good first sentence.”
They had a moment of silent communication as they both thought about that first sentence.
My grandfather kicked my grandmother in the stomach when she was pregnant with her first child, so it’s a wonder any of us are here at all.