Twisted Summer

by Willo Davis Roberts

  “Said ‘sure.’ So I’ll go as soon as graduation next spring. If Ma can sell the place, she’ll probably come, too. Trouble is, it isn’t worth all that much, and technically, she can’t sell it to anybody the Association doesn’t approve.”

  Everybody who had cottages at the lake belonged to the Association. The last I knew the Judge was president of it again, and before that it had been his close friend, Fergus. They’d never been fussy about the style of the buildings, or how often they were painted, or how the grounds were kept up—actually, we just had natural grass, beach, and trees, so there wasn’t much upkeep. The only time I could remember their turning anyone down for membership was when a snotty family from Chicago came out to look at one of the houses and to insult both Fergus and the Judge. The man was a big-time lawyer, and he made a remark about the Judge being a big frog in a little puddle, which didn’t go over too well. Plus he managed to drive over the garden Fergus and Ellen had planted, said he couldn’t tell it was anything but raw dirt.

  I think the official language of the agreement everyone had signed said that anybody who bought in should be “compatible” with the current inhabitants. The people from Chicago were rejected by unanimous vote.

  “Let me know your address when you go, okay?” I suggested, hoping my voice didn’t sound the way I thought it did. “So I can send you a Christmas card or something.”

  He lightened up a little. “Next time write something on it, huh? Like, ‘Your loyal friend,’ instead of just your name.”

  “Count on it,” I said, turning into the wind so it would dry the moisture I felt forming in my eyes.

  Neither of us said anything else until we got to the dock where my sister, Freddy, was waiting with an anxious look on her face.

  “It’s about time you showed up,” she shouted as soon as we got close enough. “Molly’s had a stroke, and they had to take her to the hospital!”

  chapter six

  Jack handed me out onto the beach while Freddy came running off the dock. “I’m sorry, Cici,” he said, and then we left him there and hurried toward home.

  “Is Molly really bad?” I asked, looking down at my sister.

  “I think so. An ambulance came, and the Judge went with her. She was on a stretcher, strapped on, and Aunt Mavis drove along behind to bring the Judge home. She said,” and Freddy’s mouth quivered, “that they might not be home for quite a while.”

  She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “Do you think she’s going to die, Cici?”

  How did I know? Nobody in our family had ever died, except Mom’s dad—Molly’s first husband—long before I was born. My other grandparents, Dad’s folks, lived in Akron, and we only saw them two or three times a year.

  I squeezed Freddy’s hand back and walked as fast as I could.

  Everybody was in the dining room when we got there. My gaze swept over the distressed faces as I slid into a chair next to Mom. “Does it look really bad?” I asked softly.

  She had a cup of coffee in front of her, but she didn’t seem to be drinking it. Aunt Pat was stirring sugar into hers, but she wasn’t drinking, either.

  “I think so, Cici.” Mom’s eyes filled with tears. “Certainly the Judge is very worried. I wish they didn’t have to take her so far to a hospital, but the village simply isn’t big enough to support one. At least they have an ambulance here, so we didn’t have to wait very long.”

  Mrs. Graden appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I didn’t know if anybody would be wanting a regular lunch. I made some sandwiches and I had just cleaned some strawberries.”

  “Shipped in from California or Texas,” Aunt Pat muttered. “They won’t taste like Michigan berries.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Mom said, and Aunt Pat and Ilona agreed, but most of the kids dived into the plate of sandwiches. The little kids, I thought, didn’t remember how much fun Molly had been when we were small; they’d missed her at her best.

  “I think I’ll call Dan,” Mom said, pushing back her chair.

  I wished Dad were here. He always took care of things, though I didn’t really see how he could do anything about Molly.

  Ginny was there, having come home after a morning with Randy. I didn’t ask her what they’d been doing, and she didn’t volunteer. Judging by her face, she felt as apprehensive as I did about Molly.

  When Mom came back, she put a hand on my shoulder. “Dad sends his love,” she told me and Freddy. “He’ll try to get up next weekend, unless he needs to come sooner.”

  Needs to come. Did that mean if Molly died? I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

  The kids ate and gradually scattered, subdued, and the rest of the group broke up, too. Mom and Aunt Pat went out to sit on the lakeside veranda, talking in low voices. Ginny looked at me tentatively. “You want to go swimming?”

  “Not really. I wonder how long it will be before we hear anything?”

  It was a wasted afternoon, because nobody wanted to go too far from the phone. We sat around, not doing much of anything. I wandered into the living room and plunked a little bit on the piano, but it was out of tune. I didn’t know where Ginny went.

  We didn’t hear from Aunt Mavis until almost suppertime. Then it was simply to say that Grandma Molly’s condition was unchanged. She wasn’t conscious. Aunt Mavis and the Judge might be spending the night rather than driving the fifty miles home and then probably having to drive back again in the morning, or maybe before.

  We did eat then. I kept thinking that Mrs. Graden wasn’t as good a cook as Lina. The broccoli was overdone, and so was the roast beef, and there were lumps in the gravy.

  I hoped Jack would show up that evening, but he didn’t. Fergus and Ellen came over and talked out on the front porch, and the Atterboms called to ask about Molly. Everybody talked in hushed voices as if she were already dead. It was unbearable.

  I had so looked forward to the summer, I thought, and look at it. It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. I felt guilty even going for a walk during the evening, though I obviously couldn’t help Molly by sitting around the house.

  I followed the trail above the beach, a path that led across the fronts of all the other cottages. There were patches of woods between each of them, so everybody had privacy, and you couldn’t tell where one person’s property ended and another one began because nobody built fences.

  I came to the place where we’d burned The Sound Wave, marked by neat rows of nails that had dropped onto the sand as the wood burned around them. I was surprised Fergus hadn’t come yet to pick them up so nobody would step on them, but I wasn’t really thinking about that. I was thinking about the people who lived here.

  It had always been like an extended family. Now it was fragmented, with the Shuriks cut out, and some people’s kids off to college, or just home for the summer, like the Atterbom boys, and Nathan and Chet Cyrek. They didn’t seem to be worried about not having jobs, content to work on their tans in spite of all the warnings about getting cancer from too much sun. The only exception was Kirk Atterbom, who apparently had a job in town working as a clerk in the only lawyer’s office.

  I’d never been close to those older kids, of course. Though Zoe hadn’t been much older than I was, it seemed that she’d always been part of their gang. She was the first to wear makeup, wore the most revealing clothes, and just pushed her way into their society whether they welcomed her or not.

  Could she have pushed a little too hard, somehow or other? Gotten mixed up in something that made someone so furious that he’d strangled her in a fit of rage?

  I was barefooted, and I waded in the edge of the water, which was cool and refreshing enough to make me think about going all the way in, but nobody else was around and we’d always been told never to swim alone, in case something happened.

  I splashed along, glancing at each cottage as I passed it. A few people were still eating; the Powells were sitting in lawn chairs and lifted their hands in greeting. Tora was reading, and Hal was talking to his folks, quite earne
stly, about something I couldn’t hear.

  I wondered if anybody was home at the Shurik place. Hesitating for only a moment, I turned inland to find out.

  Lina answered my knock. She looked surprised, then pushed open the screen door and embraced me in a big hug.

  “Cici! Jack said you were here! How good to see you!”

  “You too,” I said. I glanced over her shoulder into the living room, but there was no sign of Jack. “I thought I better come over and say hello.”

  “I’d have been hurt if you hadn’t,” Lina said. “Come on in.”

  I looked into her face. I guess she was only a little older than Mom, but she looked older than I remembered. I suddenly didn’t know quite what to say to her. It was awkward, and I sort of realized why people might have avoided her in the store: not because they disliked her, or held her responsible for what her son might have done, but because they simply didn’t know what to say.

  “I guess . . . there’s been a lot of hurt,” I finally managed uncertainly.

  Lina sighed. “Sit down, child. Or can I still call you that? You’ve gotten so tall! Yes, Cici, there has been a lot of hurt, for all of us.”

  She sank into her rocker, and I lowered myself onto the couch facing her, wondering rather wildly why I’d come. Jack wasn’t here, and nothing I could say would make any difference about what had happened. I’d been able to talk to her so easily in the old days, but that time was past, and my tongue seemed to have gotten paralyzed. Desperately, I blurted, “I missed you, Lina.”

  A faint smile touched her lips, as if she were grateful for that, at least. “You kids were almost like my own, after all those years of cooking for you,” she said.

  “You’re a better cook than Mrs. Graden.”

  “Don’t be too hard on her,” Lina said. “The Judge is an exacting man to do for, and she doesn’t know all your tastes yet, the way I did. I heard in town that Molly had been taken to the hospital. Is there any news?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I think she’s . . . really sick. The Judge and Aunt Mavis stayed with her. We’re all afraid . . . she might die.”

  “I’ll pray for her,” Lina offered, and I remembered how she’d always incorporated such thoughts into her conversation. “She’s not so terribly old—seventy-one, and my mother lived to be eighty-seven—but she hasn’t been really well for several years now.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. “I don’t know how everybody will stand it if she dies. I don’t think we can bear it.”

  She reached over and touched my hand. “We all bear what we have to, Cici. I’ve lost a husband and both parents, and now Brody . . . In a way, having him in prison is worse than if he’d died. Especially when I know he’s innocent, and he’ll be shut away there for so long—”

  I didn’t understand how her voice could be so steady. My tears spilled over and I felt them trickling down my cheeks. I couldn’t have said whether I was crying for her, or Brody, or Molly, or myself. Even if any words had come, I couldn’t have spoken them right then; my throat kept closing up.

  “I’ve thought and thought about it all,” Lina said, rocking gently. “About Brody, and the kind of young man he is. And about Zoe, too. It was Jack she pestered most, not Brody. He brushed her aside as if she were an annoying gnat, giving her no more thought than he’d give a mosquito. Jack was the one who was irritated with her. He’d slam doors and drive around the block in town to keep from having to give her a ride home. He’d tell me to say he wasn’t home when she came over here. I never could quite come straight out and lie about it, so he’d duck out the back door if he heard her coming, wait in the woods until she’d gone.”

  That surprised me. He’d never complained about Zoe.

  “She was a rather pathetic girl,” Lina said now. “I felt sorry for her.”

  “Why? She was beautiful!”

  “Pretty, anyway,” Lina admitted. “But she always had to be the center of attention, or felt she did, and of course she couldn’t be, not with everybody. I think her daddy worked away from home too much, and she didn’t get enough from him, though he spoiled her when he was home. Virgil and Carol Cyrek never did quite know what to do with her. She didn’t fit the mold they thought little girls should fit, and they already had their hands full with Chet and Nathan. And of course the boys didn’t help much. They thought the things Zoe did were funny, and they egged her on, getting her to show off and do outrageous things. Yes, I felt sorry for Zoe. No matter how much attention she had from other people, it was never enough, because it didn’t come from her daddy, maybe.”

  She laughed a little. “Listen to me, giving you the benefit of all those insights I got from reading magazines and advice columns.” Her amusement faded and after a moment she said softly, “She’d sit right there, where you are, and talk to me sometimes, when Jack wasn’t here. I could tell she was lonely, and she talked about some wild things she was going to do, things that would have got her in a heap of trouble if she’d actually done any of them.”

  It was hard to think of Zoe as an object of pity, when most of us had envied her so much.

  Lina picked up her crocheting and began to work on the baby sweater she was making. “I do these things on consignment for one of the gift shops in Traverse,” she commented when she saw me looking at it. “Every little thing helps pay the bills, and I enjoy it. No, I felt real bad for the Cyreks when Zoe died. They were shattered, same as I am about Brody. The difference is, they think he did it, and I don’t.”

  I swallowed. “Who do you think actually strangled her?”

  “Oh, how many nights I’ve spent thinking about that! Nights, when I can’t sleep. And Jack and I have talked about it, over and over. If it wasn’t Brody, it must have been someone else, and it’s hard to imagine who. If that Carl Trafton hadn’t had witnesses that he was miles away—and that his old car wasn’t running that night—I probably would have suspected him.” Her foot kept pushing a little, keeping the chair rocking. “Maybe it was only that scar on his face that made him look sort of sinister, but he was way too old for Zoe, and I don’t think he was up to anything good here. I always kind of had the feeling he came here—to the lake, I mean—deliberately, for a specific reason. I’m not sure why, except that he asked a lot of questions about everybody living here. Brody said he was probably casing the place, figuring out who had something valuable he might get away with, but nothing ever turned up missing as far as I know.”

  “So you never figured out who might have killed Zoe, or why.”

  She made a small sound deep in her throat. “It’s maybe not too hard to figure out the why of it, the way she was. Always flirting with someone, didn’t matter if it was Jack or old Fergus, or Ed Kraski with his wooden leg. Didn’t turn that girl off even if they were old and had their wives with them. She was too young and inexperienced, in spite of how much practice she’d already had, to realize that it can be dangerous to tempt a man too far. I don’t think she’d really have cooperated with a fellow as much as she might have led him to expect, and if she made him think she was going to do something she then refused to go through with, and laughed in his face, he might have strangled her in a moment of frustration.”

  “But you don’t have any idea who he could have been.”

  “No. Not really. Only that it wasn’t Brody. He was so head over heels in love with your cousin Ilona he couldn’t even see another girl. They made such plans, those two. And then she believed the worst of him, same as everybody else.”

  She reached out and turned on the lamp, then slapped at a mosquito that landed on her arm. “Dratted things. Poor Zoe was like that, always buzzing around making a nuisance of herself, and somebody finally swatted her. I doubt if she ever imagined that.”

  She sounded quite sincere in her sympathy for Zoe. I wondered how she could, considering that the girl was the cause of her son being convicted of murder. But Lina had always been like that. Reasonable, calm, smoothing over troubled waters, as Molly used to put i
t.

  “It must have been someone who lives here at the lake, don’t you think? I mean, Jack said the gate was shut and nobody could drive in—”

  “They could have climbed over, of course,” Lina said. “But the consensus was that it was somebody already here at the lake. And most of them were content to let it be Brody. We never were quite like the rest of the residents, you know. I mean, I was a servant, a cook and housekeeper, and my boys picked cherries in season and chopped wood for people who had boys of their own who could have done it. So we were the outsiders, for all we’d lived here as long as anybody.”

  “We never thought of you as outsiders,” I protested. “We thought of you as family, Lina.”

  She gave me a weary smile. “I know you did, Cici. And I felt the same way about you.”

  “Jack said . . . you quit. The Judge didn’t fire you.”

  “I quit,” she confirmed. “Because it was obvious he thought the same as everybody else, that Brody was guilty, though he never actually said so, to me. But when I begged him for help, he said there was nothing he could do, and I knew that wasn’t true. I’d watched him all those years, pulling strings, getting his way about anything that mattered to him.”

  There was a lump in my throat. “He didn’t do anything . . . illegal, did he?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. He wasn’t unethical. But he knew everybody, and his opinion, his vote, counted for more than other people’s. You must have noticed, when the committee meets to decide anything about what happens here, people wait until he speaks and then they agree with him. He’s head of the school board in town, and I only remember one time in twenty-five years that he didn’t get his way about what went on in the schools. Even then, in that business about sex education in fifth grade, he didn’t give in entirely and the rest of the board compromised. He’s probably the biggest contributor both to the church and the Friends of the Library, so they don’t buck him much, either. He could have made a difference in the way things turned out for Brody, but he said he couldn’t interfere. He said whatever the police did was what the rest of us had to go along with, but I know he didn’t always feel that way. Remember years ago, when you were a little girl, when Ron Davis was accused of setting fire to the school, and the Judge went to bat for him? Got him off, too, even though they never found who actually did it, if it wasn’t Ron. So he could have stepped in, talked to a few people, got them to investigate a little further. He refused, and I just knew I couldn’t work there in his house any longer.”