Delta Girls (20 page)

Karen loved knowing they were listening to the same thing as they lay in bed across the hall from each other; she liked to think they even dreamed in sync. They felt more like a team than ever. She knew each groove of his hands. His hands knew just where to hold on to her body for maximum lift, maximum speed. Their eyes would lock and they would know things they didn’t have to say out loud. It was like having a twin. A twin you just happened to want to kiss.

FOR CHRISTMAS, NATHAN
designed a necklace for her, had it made by a local jeweler—a flat, oval opal set in silver, with little silver circles and stripes to represent all the markings on an ice rink, a small silver heart at the center of the iridescent stone. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She felt silly handing over the Old Spice cologne and shaving mug she had begged her mother to pick up at Woolworth’s—it was the only “male” present she could think of, and he ended up getting matching sets from three other people at the rink, but he seemed touched. At least she had made her own card:

“Sorry it’s so cheesy,” she said, sure he was going to make fun of her and her silly rhymes, rhymes she had slaved over much longer than she’d ever admit.

“It’s perfect.” He wrapped her in a big hug and whispered a breathy “I’m rarin’, too,” in her ear. A warm shiver traveled down her body.

“Sorry.” He sprang away from her. “That’s the old Nathan.”

Bring the old Nathan back
, she wanted to say, but she let him maintain his decorum. “You’re doing good,” she said, and his smile sent more warmth through her limbs.

ON NEW YEAR’S
Eve, Deena brought a portable TV into the garage dance/Pilates studio, along with a space heater, so they could watch the countdown to 1997. They didn’t normally work out that late into the night—Karen was usually sound asleep for a few hours by midnight—but the rink was closed on the first, and Deena thought they should ring in the New Year training.

“It will set our intention for the year,” she said. “Let the skating gods know we mean business.”

Karen could barely keep her eyes open as she did her exercises on the Reformer, slipping her feet into the straps and moving her legs in big circles as her body slid back and forth on the castered table. She knew Nathan tried not to look over at her when her legs were at their widest open. She watched him steal glimpses of her in the studio mirrors and wondered what the old Nathan would have said when he saw her in that spread-eagled position.

Deena had a bottle of champagne and a bottle of sparkling cider ready in an ice bucket, a glittery paper hat on her head.

“One minute to go,” she said. “Better grab your glasses.” She had been sipping from hers all evening as she led them through their workout.

She handed them each a glass and a noisemaker as seriously as if she were handing them a parking ticket.

“May 1997 be the year you hit the big time.” Deena took a swig even though the countdown hadn’t started.

Karen hadn’t been too excited about New Year’s, but when Dick Clark said “Ten” and the ball started its descent in Times Square and Nathan grabbed her hand, she started to feel giddy. The three of them counted down together, Karen and Nathan smiling into each other’s eyes. After “One,” they all cried out “Happy New Year!” Just as Nathan leaned toward Karen, Deena swooped in and kissed him right on the mouth. Karen knew she should be upset, but Nathan kept his eyes locked on hers the whole time, and she felt as if he were kissing her, too, as if he were kissing only her, as if her mom’s lips just happened to get in the way.

W
E USUALLY FINISHED PICKING BY THE TIME THE SUN
was at its most punishing, but some days the heat was fairly intense. The shadows cast by the pear trees offered a measure of relief, and the Vieiras would put up a couple of portable shades so we’d have a place to rest out of the sun, plus they’d always set out a couple of plastic jugs full of ice water. Sometimes, though, one of us would get a little woozy, a little dehydrated. The other pickers knew the drill; if there were any signs of heat illness, they’d make sure their fellow worker lay down in the shade; they’d tear strips of cloth from their shirts, drench them in ice water, lay them on foreheads and backs of necks and across inner wrists. They had seen too many co-workers fall in the more exposed fields—grapes and melons and peppers; they even knew of foremen who had succumbed to heatstroke after driving tractors all day in the sun.

It was worse with the new people, the spectators. First of all, they didn’t know how to pick. Even though Mr. Vieira gave them a tutorial, showed them how to lift the fruit from the tree, they
thought they knew better. They looked for shortcuts. Yanking pears, causing the stem to separate, leaving the top of the fruit an open wound. Throwing the ladders into the trees to knock fruit down, scarring the bark. Climbing up into the trees, scratching themselves from head to toe, letting the fruit fall with a splat. They often tripped on the shaggy, uneven grass between the rows of trees. They weren’t used to this kind of work. Their faces turned beet red; their clothes clung to their bodies, soaked with sweat.

“You need to be careful, Dad,” Ben said to Mr. Vieira. “These people aren’t covered by workmen’s comp. You could get your ass sued so easy.” I felt embarrassed that hearing Ben say the word “ass” made my heart skip, especially given the context. He and I had both been so busy since I decided to stay; we hadn’t had much time to talk. But I was always happy to see him in the orchard, always happy when our eyes briefly met.

“We need the pickers.” Mr. Vieira’s mouth was set; a shimmer of fear crossed his face.

“You could lose a lot more than the crop if one of them gets hurt,” said Ben before he drove off in the tractor.

I watched an elderly woman lose her balance as she reached for a pear. Her husband caught her by the elbow. His face was flushed and wet beneath his fisherman’s cap.

“You might want to take a rest,” I told them. They looked both startled and grateful as I led them to the shade and got them each a cold cup of water.

“Do we know you?” the woman asked. “You look so familiar.”

“I doubt it.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “I don’t know too many people.”

“You’re not Carol’s granddaughter?” the man said. “From Des Moines?”

I let myself breathe again. “Sorry.” I smiled, adrenaline still prickling my nerve endings. “I’m afraid you have the wrong girl.”

———

THE HOUSEBOAT FELT
exposed, even with all the blinds closed, even with all the campers across the slough set back from the edge of the levee. The Coast Guard cutter often hovered not too far outside, depending upon the location of the whales. And the whales kept circling back to our little island, to the nice big turn-around spot by the pier.

Sam showed up in her boat just as Quinn and I were finishing our dinner on the deck—it had been a long time since we had spoken. She had become a stranger.

“Hey,” she said as she tied up her boat. “I have to talk to Ben—is he around?”

My cheese sandwich got stuck in my throat. “He’s working on the tractors,” I said, coughing. Why did she need to talk to him? I felt a surge of panic. She would pull him right into her orbit, if she hadn’t already; they were obviously on a first-name basis. I wanted to grill her, to tell her to stay away from him, but instead I just asked, “What’s going on? Is it safe for us to be here?”

“As long as you don’t turn on your propellers, the whales should be fine,” she said; I guess she had forgotten she had told me this before. Probably the only thing she remembered about me was that I was a lowly picker.

The mother whale made a brief appearance; when her back arced up, I could see the festering cut on her side. Other boats weren’t allowed to come within five hundred yards of the whales now.

“What about us?” I asked. “Are we safe here?”

“The whales won’t do anything to you,” she said, giving me a smile that felt like pity. “But I can’t speak for anybody else.”

A NEWS HELICOPTER
buzzed overhead, crimping the water into fine pleats. I ducked into the buffeted houseboat before the camera could find me. More and more reporters had been showing up lately to cover the story; they wanted to talk to me, to Quinn, since we were the first in Comice to see the whales, but
I begged them off with a “No comment” and the harshest, most unphotogenic glare I could muster. Quinn was furious with me—she wanted to be on TV, to have her picture taken for the paper—but I didn’t back down. We watched Abcde get interviewed again and again, watched Mr. Vieira, Ben, Sam, others on the rescue team, some of the spectators, wax rhapsodic about the whales into one microphone after another. Reporters came from as far as Hong Kong, but Mr. Vieira thankfully only let a couple of them in at a time. They usually weren’t too keen about picking a bag of pears to get their story.

“I want to be famous, like Abcde,” Quinn said, pouting.

“No you don’t,” I said. “Fame screws with your life.”

“You
screw with my life,” said Quinn.

“You wouldn’t have a life if it weren’t for me,” I reminded her, a bit more sternly than I had intended. She let out the loudest sigh in the world and turned back to her book, but not before fixing me with a withering stare.

I slit the blinds with my fingers and looked outside. The whales must have moved on for the time being; the Coast Guard boat was gone, leaving just the shadow of a wake. Sam would have to catch up with them somehow when she was done talking with Ben. I tried not to think about how long she had been up there with him. The helicopter had thankfully left, too; only the barest of its reverberations still shivered across the water, rocking the boat gently. Everything left a trace in a slough; the water showed when something had been there. At dusk, the setting sun caught every wake, made the trails behind the Coast Guard boat, behind the whales, shimmer like quicksilver. I wondered what markings Quinn and I would leave behind here. Hopefully ones that would briefly glimmer, then disappear, impossible to trace. Unless Ben wanted to find me.

I
N NASHVILLE, DEENA HANDED KAREN A KEY TO HER
own room in their giant atriumed hotel.

“You’re turning eighteen this weekend,” Deena said. “Consider it your birthday present, sweetheart.”

Karen raced up the glass elevator as her mom and Nathan were still checking in. Her very own hotel room! She stripped off everything but the necklace Nathan had given her and jumped on the bed naked—something she had never let herself do at home—the necklace thwacking against her chest. She threw the comforter aside and rolled around on the velvety blanket. She felt like Marilyn Monroe as she smiled for an imaginary camera above the bed, posed with her legs in the stag position, her head arched back.

Then her mom knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there?” she called, and Karen immediately crawled under the covers, embarrassed.

“Fine!” she called back, grabbing her tracksuit out of her luggage, quickly wiggling into it.

“Get some rest,” her mom called. “We’ll head to the rink in a couple of hours.”

Karen lay on the bed, catching her breath. She was tempted to slip the tracksuit back off—it felt scratchy against her skin—but didn’t want to risk having her mom show up again.

THINGS HAD BEEN
tense with Deena since New Year’s. They hadn’t talked about that midnight kiss, but every once in a while, Deena sidled over to Nathan as if it had made him hers, and Karen’s stomach would press in on itself.

She thumbed through the heavy binder full of hotel information, lingering on the room service menus. When she dialed downstairs and tried to order a hamburger and crème brûlée, though, she found out Deena had put a block on her account. The minibar was locked, too, with no key in sight. She wandered over to the small bowl of fruit that sat on the table overlooking the pool; a card stuck inside read
Congratulations, Skaters!
Karen found herself getting excited again. They were really here! She took a bite of the waxy green apple and jumped around a little bit more.