Three Sisters (18 page)

She ate breakfast in a diner that morning, greasy eggs, and toast with too much butter, and coffee that she liked a lot. She drank it hot, with plenty of cream, and asked for another cup. She went into the bathroom and stood in one of the booths, crying again. She washed her face in front of the spotted mirror and, remembering how crazy she had acted, she felt an odd mixture of shame and pride. In school, she saw Marisa and Davey in the corridor; they seemed so innocent, so sweet together.

It wasn’t until that night, when she was undressing for bed, that she discovered she was still wearing Scott’s T-shirt underneath her shirt. She shoved it in the back of her closet with the other T-shirt, the one she’d taken from Liz.

Thirty

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, the Freed family drove up to Piseco Lake in the Adirondacks where they had rented a house. It sat up on a little hill above the lake, a stand of birches on one side, on the other a cottage with a wooden sign over the door, GOOD VIEWS.

Blossom and Daisy Steeber, who owned the rambling, drafty house, lived up behind the hill in a cozy, overheated cottage with low ceilings. Blossy and Dase, as they were known, were both large women, tall and fat, with glasses and enormous, pillowy bosoms. Blossy was the outdoor person, fixing anything that went wrong anywhere on the property, while Dase hardly ever stuck her face out of the house, even on the hottest summer day. Blossy had a son, William, who sometimes showed up to give a hand to his mother and his aunt.

It was something of a Freed family tradition to rent the lake house for long holiday weekends. They had been doing it ever since Karen could remember.

One or the other of the sisters nearly always brought along a friend, sometimes friends. They’d all share the dormitory bedroom upstairs—five cots, five wobbly bureaus—hang around in the mornings giggling in their sleeping bags, eat like pigs, play cards for pennies, and visit Dase and Blossy at the cottage so they could gobble Dase’s ginger cookies.

Karen asked Marisa to come to the lake, but she’d already made plans with Davey for a bicycle trip. “My parents are having fits, but if they’re not going to let me stay home and work this summer, they’ve got to let me do something! That’s all there is to it,” she said, but a moment later, pressing Karen’s arm, she asked anxiously, “Do you think I’m right?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, good,” Marisa said. “Thanks!”

When she heard that Liz had invited Scott for the weekend, Karen thought of staying home, but what would she say? What would be her excuse? She couldn’t use Marisa this time. Then Tobi invited Jason and announced it at supper. “Him up there with us, too?” Karen’s father said. He didn’t look too happy. “Where are we going to put everyone?”

“Jason and Scott can share the back bedroom,” her mother said. “You and I will take the screened porch. And the girls can have the dormitory, as usual.”

That, Karen thought, was about the only as-usual thing about the weekend. Everything was upside-. down, wrong, awful, horrible. Scott’s being there was the worst part of it. She couldn’t bear looking at him anymore. Even hearing his voice made her skin shiver.

At the end of May, the deep Adirondack lake was

too icy for swimming. Every year, someone was sure to say, “What’s the matter with us? Why do we come to the lake when we can’t even go swimming? We’re so strange! Maybe we should find another place for next year.” No one ever took it seriously; in fact, they were proud of their “strangeness.”

This year, on the very first day, Jason asked the same question. “Why do you people come up here if you’re not going to swim?” It was somehow different coming from him, as if he were questioning their judgments, their taste, everything that made up the Freed family lake “tradition.” He put on a tight satin bikini suit, draped a towel around his neck, and went down to the dock.

Liz ran after him. “Don’t be crazy! You’ll have a heart attack! That water is freezing!” Jason dived in and swam a vigorous overhand crawl for about four minutes. Karen and her parents crowded out to the porch to watch. Scott stayed inside, reading ,a magazine. Tobi strolled down to the dock, arriving just in time to hand Jason the towel as he climbed out of the water. He danced around, pounding his chest. It wasn’t clear if it was to warm himself up or a triumphal war dance.

“It was great,” he said, when he came up to the house. He laughed and tousled Scott’s hair. “Hey, boy, you ought to try it.”

“Yeah, boy,” Scott said, jerking away, “maybe I will, some other year.”

Part of the tradition, part of the fun of going to the lake house had always been to spend hours outside on the big porch that wrapped around three sides of the house. They star-watched on the unroofed side, lying flat on their backs on blankets

thrown down on the floor, Dr. Freed playing teacher, a star book open on his chest, beaming a torch into the sky. “See that blue-white star, that’s Vega. Now who remembers what constellation it’s in?”

They had played bridge and chess on the rickety little wicker porch tables, kept an enormous puzzle going on another table—everyone who passed would stop and add a piece or two—they read and napped on the lumpy old couches, and every year her mother said, “I don’t know why, but I always sleep better on this awful couch than in my own bed.” The porch had been their outdoor living room, everyone’s favorite place. You could even sit out there when a storm swept across the lake and watch the green lightning strikes over the water.

But this year, almost as if the weather was underlining how changed everything was, the big, dramatic lake storms were absent. Instead, day after day, fog and rain filled the air. The windows streamed, the rain pounded on the tin roof. Had the house always been this damp and creaky? They kept a fire going in the cast iron stove in the living room, but the moment you walked away from it, you felt the damp creeping in.

The morning after they arrived, Jason rapped on the dormitory door. “Tobi Freed, come out.” He opened the door, stuck his enormous, gleaming head in. “Up, woman.”

Tobi waved an arm at him from under her sleeping bag. “I’m coming. Scram, Jase, I’ll be there when I’ll be there.”

But the moment he closed the door, she got up, and then so did Liz. “You sleeping in?” Liz asked Karen. She pulled on overalls, an embroidered shirt,

a big knit sweater. “See you.” And off she went. To be with Scott, of course.

Karen got out of bed. Did she hate Scott? She didn’t know, she really didn’t. Maybe she still loved him, and hated him, too. She was really clear about only one thing. She didn’t want anybody to know what had happened in his apartment. Not her mother, not her father, especially not Liz.

She avoided Scott as much as possible. If he came into a room, she walked out. She never talked to him. She didn’t think anybody noticed. But it wasn’t always possible to avoid him. Meals were communal, and in the evening there was no other place to be comfortable except the living room.

Curled up on the couch, Karen stared into the fire, waiting for enough time to pass so she could go to bed without anyone’s commenting. Her father, arm linked through hers, kibbitzed with Liz and Scott as they played checkers. Tobi flipped the pages of a ten-year-old magazine; her mother was knitting. Standing by the window, giving out one hair-raising yawn after another, Jason said abstractedly, “Nature sure is boring.”

The next day was the same, except they didn’t even have the distraction of Jason’s swimming. It rained. Everyone hung around the house. Nothing got off the ground, nobody wanted to do any of the things they’d done other years, like making s’mores over the fire or playing trivia games or speculating about Dase and Blossy.

Liz and Scott put on slickers and rubber boots and went out for a walk, then Tobi and Jason went out, but in a different direction. Karen tried to settle

down with one of the chewed-up fifties science-fiction novels that were all over the house. Her mother was curled up on the opposite end of the couch. “Mexo,” Karen read, “called Linko in for consultation. Linko, you say you believe there are other worlds out there in the galaxy? Surely they’re not as advanced as ours?’ Linko clasped his six hands in front of his chest. There, at that very point, Mexo’s thoughts came to him. ‘Mexo,’ he said soundlessly, projecting his thoughts to Mexo’s—”

“Karen?” her mother said. Karen put down her book. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

Karen nodded.

“You seem—I don’t know. You’re so quiet lately. Has something happened?”

Karen shook her head.

“Are you sure? Do you want to talk to me?”

“I guess I’m just—just—” She wanted to say bored! Tired! Anything to fill in the gap. But her mother was looking at her so sympathetically that her throat swelled and she couldn’t speak. It was awful. She couldn’t take it. Not sympathy. Not now.

“It’s really a shame Marisa couldn’t come up,” her mother said. “I know it’s hard on you this year.”

“I’m okay.”

Her mother patted her leg. “I hate to see you feeling so down. Want to do a puzzle together?”

“No, Mom. It’s okay. Really. This book is great.” That brightened her mother up.

“Maybe I’ll read it when you’re done.”

“Sure.” Karen picked up the silly book again. When Liz and Scott came back a little later, she left the room. She thought she felt Scott’s eyes on her, felt them almost like words. But what was he saying? He had nothing to say to her. And she had less than nothing to say to him.

But after lunch, when she was washing the dishes, Scott came into the kitchen. “Hello, Karen.”

Don’t say hello to me! Just leave.

He sat down on a high stool. “Want some help?”

I don’t want anything from you.

“I’ve got good dish-drying credentials.”

She held a glass up to the light, dipped it into the suds again. The back of her neck was rigid as a flagpole.

“I feel you’ve been avoiding me.”

Really? I can’t understand where you got that idea. “Karen—” He whistled through his teeth, a little questioning whistle. “I want to talk to you. Have something to say to you—” His voice so mild, hesitant. Did he think she’d forgotten how he’d cursed her? Kissed her, then cursed her. Damn it! Damn it, get out of here! “About that morning—” He bent closer to her. “Do you know what I’m referring to?”

She threw a handful of silver into the sink. Water splashed up.

“You seem pretty mad at me, Karen.” He sighed. “Look, I’ve been thinking about that morning and I have to say—I should say—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she burst out. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

“I can understand that—”

“Can you?”

“I don’t want you to be bitter, Karen, that’s partly what I want to say. I mean—”

She turned on him. “I don’t care what you mean!

I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t want to talk about what?” Liz said.

Karen’s stomach drummed. She hadn’t heard the door open, nor had Scott from the look on his face.

“What’s happening? You two look like you’re conducting a funeral.”

Scott got up, knocking over the stool. “Oh, we’re just chatting. Want to go for a walk?”

“Another one? No, thanks, I’m walked out. Anyway, maybe we should help Karen clean up.”

“No! I don’t want any help.”

Liz glanced at her, then at Scott. He picked up the stool. Then they went out. Karen finished the dishes mechanically, rinsed out the sink, and went into the living room. Her mother was sleeping outside on the porch, all wrapped up in a blanket. Her father was cleaning out his baitbox. He glanced up, smiled at her. “All done? Make sure you get one of your sisters to pull kitchen duty tonight.”

She sat down again with Mexo and Linko, reading, turning pages, words entering her mind meaninglessly. I don’t want you to be bitter. What business was it of his? Why did he even care? Let him just go away and leave her alone. She’d made a huge mistake, acted like a fool—did that mean she had to be reminded of it for the rest of her life?

Thirty-one

Ready?” her father whispered. Karen nodded. They went quietly down the stairs. Nobody else was up yet. Outside, the sun coming up over the trees across the lake looked like a big, smooth, yellow egg. Their footsteps clattered in the quiet as they walked to the end of the T-shaped dock. “We could take out a boat,” her father said.

“No, we always fish off the dock.” It was their last day at the lake house. She wanted something, one thing at least, to be just as it always had been. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she and her father would fish off the end of the dock. They baited up and dropped their lines into the water. She caught the first sunfish, then her father caught two pretty little perch, and Karen caught another sunny. It was a perfect, peaceful hour.

Even the violence of killing and cleaning the fish, her least favorite part, was easier today, because it, too, was a repetition of past years. They knelt down on the dock, side by side, the fish on the stringer

flopping and leaping on the boards. Her father stunned each one with a blow to the head, using the side of the red fish scissors, and passed it to Karen, who slit the belly and pulled out the guts, then passed it back to her father for scraping.

When he took the fish up to the house, she decided to stay. “Maybe I’ll catch a few more.” She took in two sunnies, one right after the other, both too small. She threw them back. A motorboat raced by, whipping up the water, a door slammed somewhere, a dog howled. She had a few more bites, little guys, probably the same dumb fish. Sneakers clattered on the dock, breaking into her peaceful concentration. It was Scott, trotting toward her, hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.

She fumbled in the tomato juice can for a worm. Too skinny, what she and her father called a lastie. She dropped it back, found a fat worm. Beauty! as her father would say.

“We didn’t really get to talk the other day, Karen.”

Bla bla bla. Glub glub glub. What was this big, unwelcome fish doing here?

“Something happened that we can’t—I can’t just ignore.” He touched her head. “Karen—”