“There is no right thing. I hope to find anything. And I hope I don’t have to take you up on much of that,” she said. “I mean, I’m already wearing your underwear, for God’s sake.”
“You’re wearing Charley’s underwear?” Megan asked.
“Mine wasn’t up to her standards,” Krista said. “It kind of looked like twenty-five to life. Charley’s is exactly what you’d expect—pristine, perfect, bright white, flawless.”
Megan giggled.
“Before we get around to jobs and all that, before my mom or anyone else shows up for a visit, I wonder if we could do something. If it’s not upsetting to you, Meg. I want to know if our memories of a couple of things match.” She chewed her lip. “That morning, for starters. When we lost Bunny. I remember you brought Beverly in, Charley. You were the strongest swimmer. I know you remember.”
“Vividly. Meg?” Charley asked.
“That’s all I want,” Megan said. “You know, I’ve got nothing! Do you have any idea how awful it was having people shield me from the truth? Cleaning it up all the time?”
“I don’t want you upset. Your health...”
“My health needs some honesty. God above! Tell it, Charley. Tell it like it really happened, not the way you told me before, when I was a little crazy.”
“You weren’t crazy,” Charley said. “You were in shock!”
“Let’s have it,” Megan said.
* * *
A couple of weeks or so after Charley lost her virginity, she was awakened by a horrible, high-pitched scream. Then came many screams. Then yelling and hollering and door-slamming. “Beverly! Baby! Come on, baby! Beverly!”
Aunt Jo was in the water up to her knees in her nightgown, calling to Beverly, who clung to the overturned rowboat about a hundred feet from shore. Charley and the other girls all ran to the water’s edge. Louise was sprinting back and forth from the house to the shore, yelling, “Where’s Bunny? Where is Bunny?” She was looking inside, outside, in the boathouse, loft, shed, under the dock, everywhere. Their neighbor, Oliver, came over to see what was happening, but all the action was really onshore. In the early dawn, all they could see out there in the lake was a very still, overturned boat, surrounded by fog and the unmistakable bobbing of Beverly’s head.
Charley didn’t even think. She was the strongest swimmer. She ran into the water, dived and swam. It had stormed the night before and the water was like ice. She reached Beverly quickly. She was alone, silent, holding on to the side of the boat with one small, blue hand. Her eyes were fixed and dilated, her lips were purple edged, her teeth were chattering.
“Where...is...Bunny?” Charley asked breathlessly.
Beverly couldn’t respond.
“Beverly, can you swim back with me?” Charley asked. “Will you put your arms around my neck?” she begged. But Beverly wouldn’t let go of the boat. Charley could see that Beverly’s condition was poor—she was in shock and probably had hypothermia. She didn’t want to waste a lot of time trying to convince her to swim.
“Oliver!” Charley called. He was already approaching them in his little fishing boat.
They had a little trouble getting Beverly into Oliver’s boat, but once she was wrapped in a blanket, they tied a rope to the overturned rowboat and towed it in, too. There was no sign of Bunny anywhere.
Apparently the two littlest girls had grown adept at sneaking out. So adept that no one noticed, not their mothers, sisters or cousins. How many times they’d pulled their prank was unclear because Beverly was hardly talking at all. To anyone. All she said was, “We like to rock to sleep on the lake.” She was catatonic and had to be hospitalized.
The police, sheriff and fish-and-game people were all called, but it took days to recover Bunny’s body. They all stood at water’s edge again as divers brought in Bunny’s swollen, discolored, nibbled remains from the cold water. The baby of the family—Mary Verna—sweet Bunny was only twelve years old. Near as anyone could discern, Bunny had slipped from the boat during that nighttime storm but Beverly was somehow able to hang on. When the storm cleared as the sun rose, the boat was right in front of the house...close enough to have called for help or dog-paddle in.
Louise never cried. Charley thought about that often—she never cried. She had horrible black rings under her eyes, her lips were cracked and her face was gray, but she was dry of tears. When Aunt Jo embraced her to comfort her, Louise kept her arms locked at her sides and turned her face away. Aunt Jo kind of leaned back to look at Lou’s face, questioning this avoidance of affection. Then Charley heard Louise’s very quiet but vicious voice. “Somebody had to pay for what happened here this summer, and we damn sure know it wasn’t going to be you. It’s never you.”
Over twenty years later those words and the icy tone with which they were delivered could still make Charley shiver. She never understood what they meant.
Bunny was buried and the family was rocked to its core. The unraveling began immediately. Uncle Roy had already abandoned them and he never returned, leaving his family adrift and unsupported. Aunt Jo sank into a deep depression. Beverly slipped into some kind of psychosis and had been taken to a hospital. Krista started skipping school, shoplifting and hanging out with hoodlums. Hope left her miserable mother and hoodlum sister and moved in with Grandma Berkey and the judge. Louise was filled with rage. Megan withdrew from everyone and seemed to hum quietly to herself all the time. All the time. Like she was off her rocker, too.
Charley couldn’t do anything to help her family. She was struggling as much as the rest of them and she needed her mother, but Louise was not emotionally available. Charley waited as long as she could, hoping to find Louise alone, receptive and of stable frame of mind.
“Mom?” Charley said one day in October. She had looked for the right moment and even now it didn’t seem right but she couldn’t wait any longer. “Mom, can I talk to you for a minute?”
Louise looked at Charley over the top of her sewing machine. She had immediately cleared out Bunny’s room and set up her sewing there. She sewed from morning to night—clothes, curtains, place mats, slipcovers, pillowcases, aprons. Things no one wanted or needed.
“Mom, I have a problem. A really big one,” Charley said, then hung her head and looked at her feet.
Some instinct must have propelled Louise out of her chair. She came around the machine and stood in front of Charley.
Charley took a deep breath and lifted her head. She looked into her mother’s eyes and said it. “Mom, I’m pregnant.”
For a moment the storm simply gathered in Louise’s gray eyes and then, like a shot, her hand came from nowhere and slapped Charley across the face. The sting temporarily blinded her.
“How could you,” Louise shouted. “How could you do this to me!”
* * *
“Is that how you remember it?” Charley asked Krista very softly, a catch in her voice.
“Pretty much,” she said. “I didn’t hear what our mothers said to each other. For a long time I thought my mother must have loved Bunny more than her own kids. She seemed oblivious to us—we were hitting the skids. Especially me. I think I get it now.”
“What’s there to get?”
“Something else happened here that summer. Something Louise blamed my mom for. She couldn’t have possibly blamed my mom for Bunny’s death. No one was at fault there—it was a terrible accident.”
“Can you ask your mom?”
“Eventually,” Krista said. “I have a lot to atone for before I’m going to be trusted with secrets. You okay, Meg?” she asked.
Meg wiped her eyes. “I’m happy,” she said.
“How can that possibly make you happy?” Charley asked. “It’s a horror story!”
“It’s the real story,” Meg said. “Not the tidied-up version.”
“It is that,” Charley said. “And that’s when Mother really changed. Louise was never easy. In fact, she was damn difficult at times. She always had an ugly temper.”
“But not around Aunt Jo,” Megan reminded her.
“That’s why summers were so great,” Charley said in a somewhat reverent breath. “Aside from some occasional bickering, there was no craziness. I used to like my mother.”
“I loved Aunt Lou,” Krista said. “She was strong and brave.”
“And funny,” Charley said. “So funny she’d have us all wetting our pants.”
“And decisive,” Meg said. “No matter what came up, she knew what she wanted to do. She never hesitated.”
“It’s like all the good parts of Louise were sucked right out of her,” Charley said. Then more quietly: “I used to depend on my mother. I used to love her. But when I needed her most she turned on me.”
Chapter Eight
A couple of days later Krista decided she couldn’t put it off another minute—she needed a job. The enormity of this challenge threatened to paralyze her, so she thought she’d better get right to it. She didn’t drive and she had no vehicle; she would have to find work close by or impose on Charley. Plus, her job skills were worse than minimal; they were felonious. She could see only one option at the outset—the lodge.
As she approached, she was impressed by the condition of the place. It had been renovated and expanded. It didn’t appear to have gone a year without fresh paint; the grounds were lush and immaculate. The big central lodge rivaled any major citified hotel—she knew this from pictures in magazines. She looked through the brochure she found in the huge lobby—there were banquet rooms, a large dining room, cocktail lounge and gift shop. There were over a hundred rooms. The facilities included tennis courts, riding stables, outboard docks, boat ramps, a bait and tackle shop. There were also cabins—a long string of them along the shoreline. The cabins had their own kitchens and patios and were reserved long in advance of the peak summer season.