Camptown Ladies (39 page)

Mom and Dad arrived early as usual, and Lisa and I busied ourselves with arranging the table with take-out Chinese food. Lisa saw my hands shaking as I opened the carton of rice and she took it from me before I could spill any more of it. It was almost 7:00 and my stomach was queasy from the smell of food, but it wasn’t until mom
wondered if Erica was pregnant that I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to throw up what Lisa had forced me to eat for lunch. I came back, pale and sweaty, but relieved that Mom and Dad were too busy sampling the food to notice I was a quarter of a pound lighter than when I was last in the room.

A few minutes later, we heard Vince pull into the driveway. A small yelp may have escaped me, but luckily it was identical to one Cindy-Lu let out, so everyone looked at the dog, except Lisa, who was watching me. Mom and Dad went to greet them at the door and as soon as they were out of earshot, Lisa leaned over to me to coo a bit of sisterly advice into my ear, “Erica found a way to handle this, so you need to fucking chill!”

I nodded at her numbly, feeling another wave of nausea pass over me.

“Go wash your face again, you look like you’re gonna puke again,” she said, and I gladly took my escape from the kitchen to the bathroom.

I locked the bathroom door behind me and leaned against it. How could Erica think coming here was a good idea right after we had been together? Worse, how could I sit across a table from my brother and her?

Then, a more horrifying thought occurred to me. Maybe this was Erica’s way of blowing the whole thing wide open? Maybe it was Vince who didn’t know what he was walking into. I tried to talk myself off the ledge. No, Erica understood how much I loved Vince, and she wouldn’t do that to me or to him.

Another thought raced across my mind, which seemed more plausible. Maybe Erica wanted me to see them together. Erica holding my brother’s hand, talking about their future, Vince giving her a kiss as he affectionately touches her hair. I felt my stomach lurch again and took some deep breaths. Maybe Erica thought that if I saw him with his arm wrapped possessively around the woman I loved, it would make me have to do something. Then came the worst dread of all: the way my heart was pounding with fierce jealousy, that crazy plan just might work.

I washed my face and took more deep breaths as I tried my best
to repair the makeup that had smeared under my eyes. When I opened the bathroom door, I could hear voices getting animated out in the living room as I walked unsteadily down the hallway. Before I turned the corner, I heard Vince’s voice, “As soon as we clear up this other big mess, next year, we’re going to get married.”

My legs went weak. I couldn’t go in. I braced myself against the wall where no one could see me.

Vince yelled out, “Marie, where are you? You’re missing this!”

I held on to the wall with my sweaty hand as I turned the corner. I saw Vince’s face, happy as I have ever seen him, Mom and Dad blocking Erica from my view as they hugged him, then Lisa’s face, turning to me, her eyes bulging out of her head, totally freaking out. Mom and Dad stepped away so I was face to face with Katie looking back at me.

Vince had his arm wrapped affectionately around Katie, Buddy’s mother, while Buddy was playing on the floor with a toy truck. I blinked hard, yet Katie still wasn’t turning into Erica. I stupidly looked around for her.

Lisa walked over to me, inches from my face so she was blocking my expression from the view of the room. She talked to me as if I was totally stoned or had just failed kindergarten or had failed kindergarten because I was totally stoned.

“Marie, I told you there was something going on with Vince and Katie, didn’t I?” Lisa was nodding her head as a signal for me to agree with her, but even her subtle-as-a-sledgehammer way could not ease me through my shock.

“Where’s Erica?” I mumbled.

Vince looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Well, that’s awkward, Mare. Thanks, for bringing up an ex-girlfriend in front of my beautiful fiancé.” He gave Katie an apologetic hug as she smiled affably at him.

I still wasn’t getting it, and Lisa was losing patience with me, which put us all in great danger of Lisa making it all crystal clear as only she can do. I said to Vince, “But, you said you were bringing—”

Lisa interrupted “He said he was bringing a girl he’s been secretly dating,” Lisa interrupted, “and Vince has been dating Katie.”

“But, why did you hide this from us?” I said.

More confusing than this, while Katie seemed lovely, how could anyone on earth ever love another woman after Erica?

Vince lowered his voice so Buddy couldn’t hear him, “Katie is trying to get her husband to sign some papers, so we were keeping this quiet. You all assumed I was seeing Erica, so it was easy, especially with Erica avoiding me like the plague.”

It was sinking in at last. Vince wasn’t with Erica. He hadn’t been with her all this time. Before I could think about how it would sound in front of Katie, I blurted out, “You’re not in love with Erica?”

Vince said, “Sorry about this, Katie, my sister is a little retarded today.”

“Spread the word to end the word,” Lisa said.

Then Vince walked over to me and hissed, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Where would I even begin to answer that question? When I didn’t answer him, Vince said, “I’ve barely seen Erica in months. I assumed she was seeing someone else.”

I said in a shrill and shaking voice, “And we assumed she was seeing you.”

Vince laughed at me.

“What the hell is so funny?” I asked, still stunned.

Vince said, “When you didn’t get back with Lorn, I wondered if it was because of Erica. She obviously didn’t come back for me, so I backed off. Lucky I did, so I could fall in love with Katie, and this little guy too.” At that, he smiled down at Buddy.

Lisa looked back and forth from me to Vince and back again and yelled, “Holy shit! You both backed off from Erica for each other—how
fucking romantic!
This is just like the
Gift of the Magi—
only with pussy!”

The world had almost righted itself, my brother was in love, I was in love, and it was not with the same person. One day all was lost, and now there was hope. There was only one problem: Erica had
closed up her apartment and she was not answering any calls. She had left, and because money was no object (and I was so in love I couldn’t see straight) I booked the first available flight to California to find her.

Lisa thought I was crazy, but she helped me pack a bag anyway, and drove like a madwoman to get me to the airport for a flight time that was a bit ambitious. As my sister careened us across town toward the airport, with me wincing and covering my eyes from several near-missed collisions, Lisa revealed she had concocted a plan to get Katie free of her ex-husband so Vince could marry her.

“Oh, God,” I said, both from another near miss and from whatever her next crazy plan could be. “What are you going to do, have him put in a dumpster?”

“That would be stupid,” she said, staring at the road as if it were a video game. “Always better to use several dumpsters.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Tempting idea, but I’m working on a plan that’s much simpler.”

There was no use arguing with Lisa. After all, this was a woman who’d bought an unprofitable campground after looking at a few photographs and was now getting write-ups on her restaurant from the most respected food blogs all over the web. While her idea had seemed crazy at the time, next year we would either have to either turn campers away or expand the campground.

We arrived in time for my flight and Lisa pulled up in front of the airport with a screech. She grabbed my arm before I could hop out of the car. “Hey, I’m sorry about before. You know, for being so pissed with you.”

I smacked her hand hard on the back of her knuckles, like when we were kids, and said, “I get it. You were just protecting our wimpy little brother.”

She smiled and said, “He’s not tough like us.” Then we hugged with our tradition of slapping each other hard ridiculously hard on the back (until I yelped) and then I hurried off. Lisa yelled over the crowds, “Good luck bagging our brother’s ex-girlfriend!” Then she yelled, “Ew! Have you ever thought that the two of you have both—”

“Shut it!” I yelled back, but I couldn’t help laughing as I ran with my bag toward the door.

I drifted in and out of sleep on the plane, waking every time I remembered names of people or clients she had mentioned, or that I had met. Since most of her clients had been well-known actors, I knew there were very few I would be able to contact. “Excuse me, Mr. Nicholson, have you seen your contractor this week? I drifted off again after counting Hollywood sheep outfitted with fake tans, teeth, and, most horribly, tits.

What seemed like just minutes later, I awoke on the plane. Only it had been hours, and I was not on my way to LA as I had dreamt. I had already spent a full week searching for Erica, only to come up with nothing. I had been dreaming of how hopeful I was when I had first flown out to find her. Now I was on my way back home with the full realization that Erica was not a woman who wanted to be found.

Thirty-Two

Sometimes Your Best Insurance Is In Your Bra

“I’m sick of you moping around. You’re coming with me,” Lisa announced, as she grabbed my arm and walked me to her car like a criminal. Who was I to argue? With winter coming and so little to do at Camptown Ladies, I had been moping around for weeks.

“Where are we going?”

She didn’t answer until she had backed up and pulled out of the Camp and her car doors had clicked with their automatic locks. I hoped it was just a creepy coincidence, but my Spidey senses were rarely wrong, so I looked back longingly at the safety of the campground as Lisa pulled away with me, leaving a cloud of dust and gravel,
Thelma and Louise-
style.

I asked again, “Hello? I asked where are we going?”

Lisa was grinning like a twelve-year-old boy who’s just typed the word “boobies” on his computer. She said, “We’re going to get Katie’s ex-husband to sign some divorce papers, then I thought we’d grab some lunch.”

“Oh, no, we aren’t!” I said.

“OK. If you already ate, we could just get a drink after,” she said.

“Sure, after we stick our noses where they don’t belong and get our asses kicked by some lunatic ex-husband. How do you plan to pull this off, and does Vince know?”

“I got the papers from Katie,” she said, “Vince doesn’t need to know until after it’s done.”

“Excellent,” I said, following with the most rhetorical question you could ever ask my sister: “Are you fucking crazy?”