Last Summer (22 page)
Authors: Holly Chamberlin
35
F
rannie sat at her desk in her cubicle at Le Roi Lumber and Homes. She might as well have been at the zoo or at home in bed, she thought, for all the attention she was paying to the numbers on the computer screen before her. The surface of her desk was cluttered with loose papers, thick file folders, and the usual paraphernalia of an office desk—stapler, tape dispenser, an old green mug that held pencils and pens. To the right of her computer sat a framed photo of Meg and Petey taken by Mike Patterson at last year’s Christmas by the Sea event in Ogunquit. Or maybe it had been taken the year before. Lately, Frannie couldn’t remember such trivia. Next to that photo sat the small box Petey had made her earlier that summer at day camp. Paper clips probably didn’t count as treasures, but they were as close as she could come. Petey’s last class picture was in a small frame on the other side of the box. She knew for sure it was last year’s picture because the date was printed across the bottom. Reminders like that were helpful to an aging and stressed-out mind.
rannie sat at her desk in her cubicle at Le Roi Lumber and Homes. She might as well have been at the zoo or at home in bed, she thought, for all the attention she was paying to the numbers on the computer screen before her. The surface of her desk was cluttered with loose papers, thick file folders, and the usual paraphernalia of an office desk—stapler, tape dispenser, an old green mug that held pencils and pens. To the right of her computer sat a framed photo of Meg and Petey taken by Mike Patterson at last year’s Christmas by the Sea event in Ogunquit. Or maybe it had been taken the year before. Lately, Frannie couldn’t remember such trivia. Next to that photo sat the small box Petey had made her earlier that summer at day camp. Paper clips probably didn’t count as treasures, but they were as close as she could come. Petey’s last class picture was in a small frame on the other side of the box. She knew for sure it was last year’s picture because the date was printed across the bottom. Reminders like that were helpful to an aging and stressed-out mind.
All day Frannie had been thinking about Jane’s small favor, which had seemed genuinely given, and then about the appalling news Jane had blurted just after giving her the quarters. Poor Rosie. To have suffered a bout with cutting seemed too awful to even contemplate. All afternoon memories of Rosie as a little girl had bombarded Frannie, so vivid that they had actually caused her to wince. Rosie with her two bright blond braids and old-fashioned pinafore dresses. Rosie clutching her rag doll and watching as Meg climbed halfway up a pine tree in the Giroux backyard. Rosie on her last birthday, when Meg had given her that heart-shaped rose quartz pendant. She had been so happy and cheerful that day. She had been so innocent.
Frannie absentmindedly fiddled with a stray paper clip. Jane had seemed almost stunned after telling her about the cutting. Frannie hadn’t been able to see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses, but she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Jane had been working furiously to hold back tears.
She wondered if Meg knew about Rosie’s cutting, but it was certainly not her place to tell. Besides, she would rather that Meg not know that awful detail of Rosie’s experience. She suspected that knowing her friend had resorted to self-harming behavior would only make Meg feel even guiltier than she already did. And that would negatively affect the girls’ friendship. And so far, that renewed friendship seemed like a good thing. At least, Frannie hadn’t heard about any major explosions between them, and Meg hadn’t been stomping around the house or hiding in her room crying.
Abandoning the paper clip, Frannie picked up a pencil and idly tapped it against the edge of the desk. She strongly suspected that Jane was having a harder time recovering from the events of the past months than Rosie was, and in a way, that wasn’t surprising. Rosie might be what Peter would sarcastically call a delicate flower, but she was resilient in a way that Jane, over the course of the years, had proved not to be. Like that time when one of Jane’s clients, a woman everyone in town knew was unhinged, had threatened to sue Jane over some bogus mix-up involving a pair of capri pants. There was no possible way that Wacko Millie Murphy had had a real case, and Mike had dealt quickly and efficiently with the situation, but the minor bump in the road had left Jane literally prostrate for days. Frannie couldn’t help but imagine what would have happened if she had reacted so hugely to a minor crisis. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head, telling her to “Snap out of it!” and her father’s voice telling her to “Stop dwelling on your own problems and pay attention to the problems of other people!” And what would Peter say? Something to the effect of, “Jeez, Fran, get a freakin’ life.”
It didn’t take much imagination to relate Jane’s fragile nature (Frannie knew that an unkind person would say her overly dramatic nature) to her being an overprotective mother, especially once it became clear that Rosie was going to be Jane’s only child. And, in Frannie’s opinion, since then Jane had relied far too heavily on Rosie as her companion. Disturbingly, Peter shared her opinion. In his words, Jane had stifled her daughter. Well, Frannie thought, every once in a blue moon even the dumbest person was right about something.
On the matter of Peter, she had gotten a call from him that morning before she had left for work. He had asked for money. Again. Just a loan, he said. Just for a week or maybe two. Frannie had become so bored with this ridiculous routine. Most times she couldn’t even bother to get mad at him. He was always going to ask for money and she was always going to say no.
She couldn’t even wish him married to someone with deep pockets because to wish Peter on another woman was to betray her own sex. Besides, being married to another woman probably wouldn’t stop Peter from appealing to his ex-wife for funds. Peter was not at all acquainted with the notion of shame, let alone that of propriety.
Frannie was distracted from her musings by a peal of feminine laughter from across the room. Marlene Gervais. She always seemed to be laughing or smiling. Frannie might have found it annoying if Marlene had been faking her sunny nature. Well, if she was faking it, she was a consummate actress. And it wasn’t as if she had such an easy life. She, too, was a single parent and her son had some form of autism. She and her two kids—the other was a girl—lived with Marlene’s mother, and everyone knew that Marlene’s meager salary supported the entire household. Still, Marlene seemed to find joy in her life. Frannie wanted to dislike her colleague but just couldn’t. What she could do was to be a little bit jealous of her ability to see the glass as half-full.
Frannie stared at the columns of figures on the computer screen. At the moment, they made little if any sense; no more sense, she thought, than what had become of her life. How, she wondered, had her life become so—so small and joyless? She had been a relatively happy child. Her teen years had lacked a lot of the trauma some of her friends had experienced. Maybe that was due to having such strict parents. Acting out had been unthinkable. Even the years of her lousy marriage hadn’t been entirely terrible because she had met Jane Patterson and that had made up for a lot of what was lacking in her home life. Now she didn’t even have a friend with whom she could celebrate the negative results of her mammogram.
I’m not exaggerating my isolation,
Frannie told herself, as if to be sure that it was true. There was nothing in her life in which she took real pleasure. Nothing. The last time she had tried to do something just for herself was when she had joined Jane’s book group. But what with her job and the two kids and the house and yard work, she just hadn’t been able to keep up with the reading. She supposed she could have gone to the gatherings anyway and sipped wine and nibbled cheese and listened to the other women debate plot development and character motivation, but that had seemed kind of dishonest so she had dropped out of the group. Jane had been disappointed and had tried to argue her out of leaving, but in the end she had given up and accepted Frannie’s decision.
Frannie told herself, as if to be sure that it was true. There was nothing in her life in which she took real pleasure. Nothing. The last time she had tried to do something just for herself was when she had joined Jane’s book group. But what with her job and the two kids and the house and yard work, she just hadn’t been able to keep up with the reading. She supposed she could have gone to the gatherings anyway and sipped wine and nibbled cheese and listened to the other women debate plot development and character motivation, but that had seemed kind of dishonest so she had dropped out of the group. Jane had been disappointed and had tried to argue her out of leaving, but in the end she had given up and accepted Frannie’s decision.
Frannie squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them wide. The numbers on the screen were still meaningless. She wondered if she should talk to Father William about getting involved in one of the church’s social societies. She would simply have to make the time to “have fun.” Sister Pauline was nice, and she had a degree in counseling. Maybe she could give her some advice about how to jump-start her life. Maybe. Or maybe, Frannie thought, sitting up straight in her seat, she should just stop bitching and moaning, and learn to accept that this was her life and that’s all there was to it. Deal. Life’s tough, get a helmet. How many times had her father said that to her as she was growing up? Many, many times. No wonder she had never set her sights very high. She had been discouraged from the first, taught to keep her head down and her complaints to herself.
Frannie firmly pushed away the trace of self-pity that was attempting to make a comeback and looked hard at the screen of her computer.
“Frannie!”
Her boss’s booming voice made her jump in her chair, which made her realize just how flimsy and non-ergonomic the chair was. So much for his promise to get her a new one. Not that she had really believed him. Trip King wasn’t known to be a man of his word. Like, for last year’s office Christmas party he had promised a platter of shrimp. Of course, there was no platter of shrimp, only a plastic plate on which sat crumbling cubes of processed cheese food and a pile of store-brand crackers.
“Yes, Mr. King?” she said, plastering a smile on her face.
“Do you have those new budget figures for me?” he asked.
“Done in ten minutes,” she said, trying not to notice the food stains dribbled down his tie. The man did not know how to use a napkin.
His dry-cleaning bill,
she thought,
must be astronomical.
Unless he made his poor wife hand-wash his ties. She wouldn’t put it past him. And what was up with that name anyway? Trip. More like Drip.
His dry-cleaning bill,
she thought,
must be astronomical.
Unless he made his poor wife hand-wash his ties. She wouldn’t put it past him. And what was up with that name anyway? Trip. More like Drip.
“Nine would be better,” he said, turning and walking off in the direction of his office.
Frannie turned back to her computer. The columns of numbers on the screen now made sense. As her parents had repeatedly told her, the devil found work for idle hands and a wandering mind didn’t pay the bills.
36
Dear Diary
Thursday, I think
I had to cut again.
Diary
Another day
Still here. I don’t know why. I’m not worth anything to anybody.
I heard somewhere once, maybe in a book or on TV, that some people can will themselves to die. I wish I could remember more, like who those people are and how they do it. But I think maybe they’re special, like shamans, or mediums, people who communicate with the spirit world, and that’s why they can will themselves to die when they know their life here is over. And I think they probably believe that they’re going somewhere else even better than Earth and the human world.
I wish I believed in a heaven, the kind that Mrs. Giroux believes in. I wish I were one of those special people who can see and communicate with another world beyond this one. But clearly, I’m not one of those special people. I used to believe in ghosts. Now, I don’t believe anything except that life is awful.
Why did my mother ever go on about my “specialness”? What did she mean by that, anyway? Maybe she meant it to mock me, like when you call a tall person Tiny or a fat person Slim or a stupid person Genius.
I got an A on my latest history paper.
37
T
he early afternoon was slightly overcast when Mrs. Patterson dropped off Rosie and Meg in downtown Ogunquit. She was on her way to visit a client who was temporarily unable to get around easily due to a broken leg. She had been polite to Meg during the drive, but it was clear to Rosie that her mother was still not comfortable with the idea of the girls hanging out together. Meg, for her part, had been unusually quiet. Rosie had tried to fill the uneasy silence with chatter about a really fun episode of
American Pickers
she had watched the night before. She doubted her mother or Meg had really heard her.
he early afternoon was slightly overcast when Mrs. Patterson dropped off Rosie and Meg in downtown Ogunquit. She was on her way to visit a client who was temporarily unable to get around easily due to a broken leg. She had been polite to Meg during the drive, but it was clear to Rosie that her mother was still not comfortable with the idea of the girls hanging out together. Meg, for her part, had been unusually quiet. Rosie had tried to fill the uneasy silence with chatter about a really fun episode of
American Pickers
she had watched the night before. She doubted her mother or Meg had really heard her.
“I’ll call you when I’m finished with Mrs. Romane,” Mrs. Patterson had told Rosie before driving away. “Have fun and be careful. Hold on tight to your bag. There are a lot of strangers in town this time of year.”
Rosie, hiding her annoyance, had promised she would hold on to her bag. When, she wondered, would her mother ever stop warning her about every little potential danger? Pickpockets, bag snatchers, unexpected rain showers, rabid squirrels, and stray dogs. Probably never. In Rosie’s admittedly limited experience with adults, she had kind of concluded that they didn’t much change, at least, not in big ways.
The girls strolled through the tiny downtown and drifted in and out of the shops. Rosie bought a couple of cashew turtles in Harbor Candy Shop and Meg bought a bag of dark chocolate nonpareils, half of which she ate before they had left the store. After a while they ambled down Shore Road to the mouth of the path that led to the Marginal Way, which would in turn lead them into Perkins Cove.
The Marginal Way was a popular footpath about one and a quarter miles long. It was very narrow in some spots, which was probably why bikes and Rollerblades weren’t allowed. Dragonflies seemed drawn to the flora along the path, and on this hot summer day, they flew past the girls in dizzying loops. The sound of cawing seagulls was at times almost deafening. Still, Rosie liked hearing the big white-and-gray birds going about the business of their lives. (Where did they nest? Rosie often wondered. She had never seen a seagull’s nest.) Pine trees, twisted by years of wind off the ocean, clung to the edges of the rocky cliff, and hardy purple and yellow wildflowers sprang from tiny deposits of sandy soil between the steel-gray rocks. Rosie’s mother had taught her to identify the bayberry and bittersweet bushes, but she had no trouble recognizing the bushes of pink and white roses. Here and there along the Marginal Way benches had been installed in memory of someone who had loved the town or the ocean or both. To the girls’ left was the Atlantic Ocean. To their right were massive, well-kept houses with long, perfectly manicured lawns stretching out before them.
“How much do you think that house cost?” Meg asked, pointing to a three-story pile made of brick and stone with a wraparound porch and what looked like a more modern, attached three-car garage.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Rosie admitted. “A lot. Maybe millions?”
“Yeah. And there’s probably just some weird old couple living in there, dressed in rags and rambling around a bunch of empty rooms.”
Rosie glanced at her friend. “What in the world would make you think that?”
Meg just shrugged.
A few minutes later the girls were forced to slow their pace. They had caught up with a group of middle-aged people, two men and two women. And by middle-aged, Rosie meant that they were older than her parents but not old enough to be, say, her grandparents. The two women were dressed a lot alike, both in bright-colored capri pants, white T-shirts, and white sun visors. And the two men were dressed alike, too. They were wearing khaki pants, striped polo shirts, and the kind of hat Gilligan wore in that old goofy TV show. Rosie found herself wondering about the four of them. Maybe they had been friends for ages, maybe even since high school or college. Rosie could see the glint of a yellow gold wedding ring on all four of them. Maybe they had been in each other’s weddings and gone on vacations together when their kids were little and—
“Playing tourist is fun,” Meg muttered under her breath, ending Rosie’s speculations. “Except when you get stuck behind a bunch of people walking, like, in slow motion.”
Rosie shrugged. “Why does it matter? We’re not in a rush.”
“You are just way more patient than I am.”
“I’m aware. Why don’t you try to enjoy the view of the water?”
Meg made a face. “I’ve seen the ocean a thousand times.”
“But it looks different all the time! Sometimes it’s blue and sometimes it’s gray and sometimes it’s as flat and shiny as glass and—”
“It’s just water, Rosie.”
Rosie laughed. “Wow, you are in a bad mood!”
“I’ll be in a better mood when we get off this stupid path!” Meg said darkly.
Finally, as if sensing the grumpy adolescent behind them, the two middle-aged couples ushered Meg and Rosie past them. Rosie thanked them. Before long the girls had reached Perkins Cove, which was jammed with vacationers and day-trippers.
“Shopping!” Meg announced. Rosie followed her into a really good jewelry store called Swamp John’s. Meg spent close to a full ten minutes pretty much drooling over a silver bangle bracelet. Finally, Rosie pulled Meg away from the display case, still moaning about how much she wanted the bracelet and how unfair it was that she couldn’t afford it.
“Why do you go into jewelry stores if it’s only going to make you miserable?” Rosie asked when they emerged into the sunlight. “It seems, I don’t know, counterproductive.”
“Because I get ideas for what I’m going to buy when I have a lot of money,” Meg explained, with a final look over her shoulder at the store’s display window.
“I only see you get frustrated. You know, they had some nice necklaces made with beach glass. You could probably afford one of those, if you saved up a bit.”
“Beach glass!” Meg cried. “No. Way. I want real stones, like aquamarines and diamonds and rubies!”
Rosie decided to let the subject of jewelry go away.
Just yards away a giant tour bus was letting off a group of elderly men and women just outside a restaurant called Jackie’s Too. Well, there were mostly women, Rosie saw after a moment, and they were filing inside the restaurant for lunch. Rosie thought it was nice that older people could get around and visit different places instead of being cooped up in their retirement villages or in some awful nursing home. She had never understood why some people thought being old meant being boring or useless.
“I don’t ever want to be old,” Meg said as the last of the group disappeared into the restaurant. “Ugh.”
“What’s so ugh about being old?” Rosie asked.
Meg shuddered. “Just—everything.”
“Maybe those people are happy,” Rosie said. “I mean, it’s a beautiful day and they’re out for lunch by the seaside. How miserable could they be?”
“They could be super miserable.”
“Are you saying you’d rather die when you’re young?”
“No, not young,” Meg said. “Just not ... old.”
“Well, I hope I live to be old. Maybe not one hundred, but at least into my late eighties. There’s so much I want to do!”
Meg frowned. “You do realize, don’t you, that people in their eighties have brittle bones and all sorts of icky skin tags and blotches. You are aware that half the time they can’t remember their own names and have to eat only bland, mushy foods because they have no teeth and their stomachs are rotted. And cataracts. They can’t even see without, like, having an operation to vacuum out their eyes.”
Rosie stared at her friend and then grinned. “I don’t think cataracts are ‘vacuumed out.’ Anyway, wow. You’re in a really, really, really bad mood today! Did you fall out of bed again?”
Meg just shrugged.
“Well,” Rosie went on, “I’m not going to worry about stuff like brittle bones or senility. I want to enjoy today, right now, this very moment.”
“Is that what your therapist tells you to do?”
“Advises me to do,” Rosie corrected. “And, yes, it is. You should try it sometime.”
Meg nodded over Rosie’s shoulder. “Here’s something you can focus on this very minute. Stella Charron.”
“What about her?” Rosie asked. She felt a momentary flicker of panic but managed to tamp it down. She was only a victim if she let herself be a victim. That’s what Dr. Lowe had told her.
“She’s coming our way.”
Rosie turned and for a moment didn’t recognize the girl walking toward them. She had gotten an entirely new haircut, something Rosie thought was called a pixie cut—Meg would know for sure, she thought—and she was wearing ragged cut-off jean shorts and a cotton top with long, bell-shaped sleeves and lots of intricate embroidery. The design looked Indian, Rosie thought. The whole outfit was really different from the sort of clothes Stella used to wear, preppy stuff like polo shirts and chinos. It was all a bit puzzling.
Stella came to a stop a few feet away. “Hey,” she said, sticking her hands in the back pockets of her shorts. “Can I talk to you guys?”
Meg looked to Rosie. Rosie nodded.
“Okay,” Meg said.
Stella smiled and came a bit closer. “I just want to say that I’m really sorry about what happened. I swear I didn’t even know about some of the stuff Mackenzie did until it was over. Like ...” Stella’s cheeks flushed. “Like what happened with your hair, Rosie. But I still should have said or done something to stop them. I’m sorry.”
Rosie nodded. It was a moment before she could trust herself to speak without crying. This was something she had never, ever expected. “Okay,” she said then. “Thanks.”
Meg glanced again at Rosie before asking, “You’re not friends with them anymore?”
Stella laughed a bit nervously. “I never was their friend. And they weren’t my friends, either. Mackenzie and Courtney and Jill don’t know anything about friendship. All they care about is, I don’t know, power. And making people feel bad. I don’t really understand what it is they want. Maybe they don’t, either.”
“Then why did you hang out with them?” Rosie asked. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she believed that Stella really was contrite and not trying to fool them into anything.
“I don’t really know,” Stella said with a shrug. “I mean, things were kind of weird at home for a while. My little sister got sick and my parents sort of checked out as far as I was concerned. I guess I just went a little crazy for a while.”
“Sorry,” Meg said. “Is your sister okay now?”
“Better. Thanks. And my parents finally remembered I’m alive, too. Anyway, I can’t believe Mackenzie even wanted me around. I was never really part of that group.” Stella laughed. “Actually, she liked the fact that I had a bunch of money to spend on stuff. I wound up paying for her almost every time we went to a movie. Do you know how many pairs of those stupid plastic glittery hoop earrings I bought her, the ones everyone was wearing last year? Like, twelve or something like that.”
Meg winced. “Yikes.”
“I know,” Stella agreed. “I was totally used. But I kind of let myself be used, too. It’s actually pretty embarrassing when I think about it. But at the start, Mackenzie made me feel so special, like I actually mattered.” Stella gave an exaggerated shudder. “Ugh. It freaks me out to think about it.”
Rosie knew all about memories that freaked you out. And many of hers, she wasn’t ready to share. She didn’t know if she would ever be.
“And I have to confess about something else,” Stella was saying. “Back around Valentine’s Day I gave Mackenzie the money to buy a prepaid phone. She told me that her cell was dead and that her father wouldn’t get her a new one. I had no idea she was lying or that she was going to use the prepaid phone to send that text to everyone about Rosie and Roger. I swear. I kind of figured it out after, and I was so mad I confronted her. I asked her if she’d lied to me.”
“What did she say?” Meg asked.
Stella shook her head. “She totally denied everything. And I didn’t get the phone back. And, like, the very next day she was using her regular phone. I felt really bad about it all. I’m sorry, Rosie. If I had known what she was going to do I wouldn’t have given her the money in the first place, I swear.”
“It’s okay,” Rosie said. “Thanks for telling me.”
“So, did you believe that Mackenzie was telling the truth?” Meg asked sharply. Rosie thought she sounded like a lawyer for the prosecution. “Did you believe that she wasn’t responsible for the text?”
“No,” Stella admitted. “I knew she was lying but I pretended to believe her. I was still too under her thumb to break away. I guess I was scared she’d do to me what she’d done to Rosie.”
Meg blushed and nodded. “I think I understand.”
“Anyway,” Stella went on, “after school got out I finally went to my mother and told her about who I’d been hanging out with and all. She helped me understand a lot of stuff. She said that being friends with people like Mackenzie is the same as being in an abusive relationship, like what sometimes happens in marriages. The bully is always blaming the victim for his own cruelty, then apologizing, and then being cruel all over again.”
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