Camptown Ladies (7 page)

Busting outside must have confused the shit out of the attacking bees, since the buzzing in my ears suddenly stopped, but I still beat on both my ears with my fists, just to be sure they had not crawled into my ear canal to make honeycombs or lay eggs. I started screaming at the thought, as I pulled off my shirt, convinced that the grass trickling down my back was the bees moving from my ears to my back.

“Now I can’t hear them!” I shrieked. Oh, God, I was deaf!

“What the fuck are you doing?” Lisa asked, her huge shadow looming over me.

What was I doing? Wasn’t it obvious? I was out of breath with panic, sitting in our front yard, now just in my shorts and bra, my shirt flung into a nearby birch tree. But even in my panic, I knew Lisa would never let me forget how ridiculous I looked, she would learn the sign language for this, even if I could make her realize how I’d been nearly killed.

“I was dusting in Mom and Dad’s room, and, out of nowhere, I was attacked by a swarm of bees!”

“A swarm,” she said, perfectly calm.

“Or maybe it was just a few, but they could still be on me! I couldn’t get away from the buzzing no matter what room I went in!” I said. “They were in my ears!”

I boxed my own ears with another good swat just to make my point.

Lisa came a few steps closer with her weed whacker still in hand as she plucked my shirt from the tree.

“That shirt could be filled with bees!” I screamed as she tossed it
at me. I screamed bloody murder all over again, swatting the shirt to the ground, then kicking it away as neighbors ran outside to help.

Lisa waved off the neighbors and moved toward me with that smirk on her face. I’d seen that expression so many times growing up, and I braced myself. Whatever she had coming, it couldn’t be as bad as what almost happened to me. I had just survived a killer bee attack.

Lisa pushed the button to start the weed whacker and it made a droning buzz, buzz sound . . . my swarm of bees.

“Put on your shirt, you fucking imbecile,” she said.

Five

Allowing Others to Touch Your Wood

Dad, akaWoody, was at his pyramid, making his never-ending adjustments, when Eddie took a break to chat with him while puffing on a cigarette like Greta Garbo. This conversation would be too good to resist, so I took the long way around the Camp Store to stand unnoticed behind the wood pyramid, the plastic wrap glistening in the noonday sun.

I pretended to inspect the shingles on the side of the laundry room, in case Lisa happened by again. Lisa had already been by to tease Dad once already, going off about pyramids and then segueing to ancient predictions about the end of the world: “What makes people think just because it was written a long time ago on some ancient scroll, that it wasn’t written by the Mayan equivalent of the
Enquirer
? There were probably tons of reporters around to write what idiots said or did—just like they do for the celebri-tards today.” Dad just gave a few uh-huhs and continued to tweak his wood.

I observed that Eddie was dressed like an Oscar hopeful D-list actress portraying a pretty but downtrodden scrubwoman. His golden hair was protectively tucked under a dew rag (black polka dots on pink silk, with black velvet piping), knotted in front. Feminine as he was, no woman would have the balls to publicly wear the floral housecoat he had gotten a hold of, but if anyone did, it might have been Dad’s sister, Aunt Aggie.

“This is some fabulous wood you have here, Mr. Santora,” Eddie said, “and believe me, I know good wood when I see it.”

“Why, thanks Eddie. You’re a man of great taste.”

Eddie chuckled and I could hear a smile in my father’s voice
and could tell he was playing with Eddie, who had no idea my father had learned a fair bit of gay slang after our trip to Jamaica last year.

I marveled at my Dad’s liberal view of a guy like Eddie. Dad once told me that in the neighborhood where he grew up, the
fanuks
were regularly beaten straight, so they rarely came outdoors, and this was how the term “coming out” came to be. Dad had clarified, “I like the ones that come out. It’s the fake straight ones I don’t like.” Amen to that, I’d later agree. Nobody hates the fake ones more than the recently dumped.

I could see Eddie’s hip jutting out in his pronounced way, his trim waist adorned with a Homo Depot tool belt he wore like a mini-skirt. He had taken the time to trim it in matching orange-colored Victorian lace. Only Eddie could make a tool belt into a fashion accessory.

“Your wood is a work of art,” Eddie continued, “a monolith, a glorious Easter Island sculpture right here in Foster, Rhode Island.”

Dad said wistfully, “If only my daughters could appreciate the beauty of wood like you do.”

I heard the sticky sound of Dad lovingly patting his plastic wrap, as Eddie agreed and said, “You said a mouthful, Mr. Santora. What dykes know about art, could fit in my fanny.”

They both laughed.
This was my father?

“Besides, if they really appreciated wood, they wouldn’t be lesbos now, would they?” Eddie said.

“I try not to judge,” Dad said. I wondered on which day he had tried not to judge?

“You know, Mr. Santora,” Eddie said, “if you structured this just a bit differently, when people came to take the wood, we could make sure the pyramid design doesn’t get ruined.”

“Take . . . the wood?” Dad said, appalled.

Uh-oh.

“Yeah, we could pretty it up even more and have the folks take the wood from one side only, so the bundles would roll down and replenish itself from the tip.” I was pretty sure Eddie brought up the whole conversation just to say “replenish itself from the tip”
and that he had no idea he was breaking the big news Dad had not considered.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dad said, unprepared to commit, still reeling from the shock that people might someday be defiling his creation.

I could hear shouting coming out of the Guys & Girls Camp Store, so I left Eddie to deal with the trauma he’d started. Mom and Aggie were loudly debating color schemes and when I walked in, they were stationed at opposite sides of the store, waving color swatches at each other. It appeared Mom wanted an eggshell white, while Aunt Aggie campaigned for the robin’s egg blue swatch in her chubby fist. I saw my chance to direct Mom, while knowing I ran the risk of getting taken out by fight shrapnel, which was quite common in our family.

“Lisa already decided on the colors,” I said, and Mom sighed as if I had wasted a year of her life.

Aunt Aggie snapped, “So why are we even here?”

I wanted to ask that very question myself, but I didn’t dare.

“So, what are the colors?” Mom asked, followed by a second Darth Vader sigh.

“Pale olive green on one side, and lavender on the other,” I answered.

“It’ll look ridiculous, but whatever she wants,” Mom said. She began rifling though the swatches for the least-offending versions of olive and lavender as Aggie snorted behind her. They shook their heads in unison—a silent agreement that despite each other being wrong, the younger generation didn’t have a clue.

Mom walked over to the “Girls” side of the store near the feminine products section, and held the lavender swatch against the wall. It looked good against the blue packaging on the tampon shelf, but I had to correct her.

“Nope,” I said, “olive green is for the girls’ side and lavender is for the boys’.”

“What?” Aggie and Mom said together, as if I had commanded them to strip naked and call a taxi.

“That’s what Lisa wants,” I said, leaving the store with Mom and Aunt Aggie in amicable agreement that my sister and I were stupid
asses, a fact that many couldn’t argue. Nothing could bring Aunt Aggie and Mom to a united front more quickly than ganging up on one of the kids.

“They take after their father,” I heard Mom hiss, and Aunt Aggie cackled in agreement.

Outside, I found Eddie had convinced Dad to take steps to preserve his art. He had begun structuring a second wall of wood around the base of the pyramid, while Dad stood silently, as if observing a molestation. Eddie continued to plead his case for the changes, and he was as animated as a young mother in a supermarket, trying to keep her spoiled child from losing his shit.

Eddie said, “When people take the wood from this area, the pile will spill from the top to this second protective wall, like a moat. This way, you can just replenish the pyramid from the top. It’ll keep the design from getting ruined by people taking wood from wherever the fuck they please. Otherwise they’ll ruin this beauty.”

This must have convinced Dad, because he spun into action as if he had joined the Red Cross to haul emergency sandbags to shore up a dyke. He was moving so quickly, I was tempted to yell, “We must save the village!” but decided to leave them be.

Two problems solved, I thought, as I wondered where my brother and sister had gone off. I walked the main trail of the camp and noticed it had gotten cold enough to see my breath. Aunt Aggie and Lisa must be in heaven, I thought, wishing I had inherited their tolerance of the cold. California weather had suited me. I had always thought of the cold weather like an enemy encroaching on my camp—this time, literally. I did feel some comfort in the colder weather; it was a reminder that I was far away, from California, and from Lorn.

A few of the year-rounders had opted to leave their trailers for the late fall and winter, despite the sale of the camp. Many were likely to never move again, since the years of occupying the same patch of woods had encapsulated them in the trees. There were dozens of trees that would have to be cut to get the trailers out, but this would prove impossible as well since it was clear the trees were the only things holding some of them together.

There were signs of life, though. Family signs: The Williams, The Homans, The Rileys, The Henrys, and The Sarnos, each announcing their family’s presence with a favorite icon or theme. I made a mental list of the most popular: Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, butterflies, frogs, and the ever-popular Betty Boop squatting (panties showing) over a tiny garden of tulips.

Most signs were handmade, badly drawn cartoon characters sawed roughly out of painted wood. Crafty but deformed renditions of Mickey, Minnie, and Betty stared back at me with creepy, asymmetrical eyes, and peeled painted skin, appearing like radiation burned versions of their more famous counterparts. Some sites had “duplicates” for sale, standing in line like cartoon solders, each attempts at a duplicate of the last, some morphing badly from the more careful first whack of the camper’s newly acquired jigsaw. The originals, more carefully cut and painted, proudly sported “This one not for sale” signs.

Some campsites had remnants of past holidays and seasons; July 4th flags as whirligigs, garden stakes made of sawed-out wood tulips, random Halloween characters scattered in trees and on trailers for the holiday weekends, all compacted on a camper’s calendar and celebrated between spring and early fall. Christmas in July was the most observed holiday, celebrated with chunky wooden Mr. and Mrs. Claus characters perched on porches, and leaning against children’s bikes and skateboards as if on guard duty.

There were more unique sites, revealing a bizarre cottage industry that had taken hold of the camp. People had taken to selling oddball crafts, and advertised them by tacking up signs on the walls of the public toilets, zipped inside clear plastic baggies for protection from the rain. Inside were photos of items for sale, with a site number for easy shopping. There were knitted scarves shaped like giant caterpillars and snakes, crudely painted initials that appeared hacked out by a drunken woodworker set loose on a scroll saw binge, and an odd assortment of giant bugs and figures made from common household items. My favorite was an aluminum soda can, split open, rolled and painted to look like a ladybug, with the words “CLING PEACHES IN LIGHT SYRUP” still visible under the washy red coat of paint. I noted the sun-washed gray polka dots on the wings,
which were probably black last summer, but had not weathered through the miscalculated overstock inventory, which made me wonder if things ever got marked down.

One seller specialized in several variations of a Tin Man made of vegetable cans, and a smaller version where the character’s “pants can” could be pulled down. Leaving nothing to chance, there was a red arrow pointing down to the tin man’s crotch and the word “PULL!” painted on his tomato sauce can belly. If you did as instructed, you were rewarded with the revealing of a stubby penis made of wood and mounted on a spring for movement. There were signs everywhere shouting the prices based on size of the cans, and Polaroid photos of happy buyers trapped in Ziploc bags, their ghosting images fading in the sun as they posed with their new tin friend, all tasteful photos with the pants cans in the up position.