The Drummond Girls

by Mardi Jo Link

  When I’d made the drive to her house that morning, I’d been confused. Now, I just felt empty. Pulling away and leaving her alone in her driveway like that felt wrong, and from my car’s open window I told her so.

  She was unyielding. I could come back later. I could bring the rest of the girls with me, she’d like that. But right then she wanted to be by herself. She and Kenny had lived in that little house on the lake together for fourteen years. His spirit was so large, so infused in the place, it was impossible for her to believe it was gone. It just couldn’t be, not yet, and she wanted what was left of it all to herself.

  “Do this for me,” she said. “Please.”

  Without waiting for an answer she turned away, squared her shoulders, and walked into the house alone.

  Later that night, most of the Drummond Girls, a few of Kenny’s relatives, a couple of his coworkers from the oil fields, and the Peegeo’s faithful all crowded into Linda’s small living room. Drinks appeared, someone thought to bring a large order of Kenny’s favorite Mexican chicken wings, and we shared stories about him until our voices got hoarse and there wasn’t anything left to say anymore.

  “You should have seen him in action,” a rough-looking driller I’d never met told the crowd. “He’d climb up a well, without a harness or nothing, two hundred feet in the air. No fear. I mean it. None.”

  “I was working the day shift at Peegeo’s once,” I said. “And Kenny came in right before we opened with a big roaster pan in his arms. He set it on the bar, lifted the top, this amazing smell came out, and there was a whole cooked turkey inside, still warm. He tore off a piece of meat and handed it to me. I hadn’t had time for breakfast and it was delicious. But I wondered why the whole thing was dark meat. So I asked him where it came from. He just said, ‘Hammond.’”

  At that word, the whole crowd broke out laughing. “Hammond” meant Hammond Road, a thoroughfare that cut through the fields and woods south of town, not too far from Peegeo’s. The speed limit was a zippy fifty-five, but most people went at least sixty, making roadkill, especially the notoriously slow-moving wild turkeys, a constant.

  “Sounds just like him,” Andrea said, nodding. “And I’ll tell you what else. Beware the Kenny pot. Linda, remember that year he rolled all those joints for us, and you didn’t know it, and he hid them in your pack of smokes? And we found them on the way up to Drummond, and he’d written our names on them?”

  “Yeah,” Linda said, shaking her head at the memory. “In black marker!”

  Her eyes were puffy and red but she was smiling. She’d had her alone time and seemed comforted by how many people just wanted to be in the same room with her. Kenny’s favorite, Seagram’s Canadian whiskey, was passed around and the stories poured out, one after another. The only person missing from that gathering was Kenny; I caught myself wanting to call him to tell him to come over.

  It didn’t matter anymore that I hadn’t known what to say to comfort Linda. It didn’t matter that none of us knew what to say. We were there in the same room with her, all remembering the fierce love the two of them had shared.

  One Friday night on the island, our third or maybe our fourth year, it was raining steadily and already dark outside, but it wasn’t late, maybe only ten or ten thirty. This was years before cell phones and we used a Michigan Bell phone booth under the lone streetlight near the island’s hardware store to call home.

  Our custom had been for us all to call our families as soon as we were on the island, so our husbands, boyfriends, and kids knew we’d arrived safely. We’d make it a point to call before we really started partying, because if we didn’t do it right away, we might not remember to do it at all. Initially, Kenny didn’t like the idea of Linda being away from him for the weekend, but once he realized Drummond wasn’t negotiable, he’d actually made things easier for us by creating something he called the man phone tree.

  It worked like this: Linda would pull up to the phone booth and call Kenny. Kenny would call George and Steve, then they’d each call someone, and so on, until every husband and boyfriend knew we were safe, knew we were on Drummond Island, and also knew they probably weren’t going to hear from us for the next few days.

  In the early years when none of us had a cell phone and even car phones were a novelty, the separation from us and home was an essential part of the Drummond experience. More than any other man, it was Kenny who understood that.

  A month after he died, Linda turned fifty. To celebrate, all the girls took her on an overnight to a nearby hotel with a casino. Anytime I’ve looked back at the decision to escort our still very much–bereaved friend out of town for dollar slots and blackjack after just losing the love of her life, it has seemed bizarre. Linda wasn’t much of a gambler even in happy times, and luck was obviously not something she was on good terms with in the summer of 2005. Whenever I’m tempted to pass judgment on our decision, I try to remind myself we really were only trying to help.

  Linda was still so sad, and we just wanted to do something, anything, to take her mind off her heartache. One night away to mark a milestone birthday had seemed like a good way to do that. As far as the location was concerned, we were on a budget (as always), and hotel rooms at the Petoskey casino were inexpensive, even in the summer.

  Plus, Petoskey was only about an hour north of Traverse City, so not an expensive trip gas-wise, either. Andrea did have to stop to fill up, though, and inside the station she bought each of us a pair of plastic sunglasses from a revolving carousel near the cash register. We put them on and pretended we were movie stars. Separately, we were adult women with jobs and responsibilities; together, we were just girls, even in the darkest times. Sometimes, like with those glasses, because of the darkest times.

  Linda hadn’t been at all excited about her big birthday and didn’t even want a party, let alone an overnight trip. We’d insisted, though, and she tried to have fun, but for the most part, our hijinks didn’t work.

  “I’m Ali MacGraw,” she’d said in a monotone, striking a somber pose from Love Story.

  The rest of us didn’t look much like the famous women we’d tried to impersonate—Susan Sarandon for Bev, Drew Barrymore for Jill, Diane Lane for Susan, Sandra Bullock for Andrea, and Julia Roberts for me—but Linda’s long black hair and dark eyebrows were straight from that 1970 tearjerker.

  “You could be her,” Bev said, and we were all startled by how much Linda seemed like a tragic character from a movie.

  When October came, Linda was still just trying to make it from day to day, but she wasn’t the only one of us who was hurting. Bev’s pain was physical—she still favored her shoulder, which remained weak and tender from the broken collarbone. Even nine months after the accident, she still couldn’t bear the weight of her purse strap or even a heavy coat for more than a few minutes without wincing in pain. The rest of our aches were inside, hurts no doctor could mend. Pam’s mother had been in and out of the hospital with a variety of serious maladies, and Andrea’s mother, only in her sixties, had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Jill and Tony’s marriage hadn’t worked out, and in February, they’d divorced. The split might have happened sooner if Jill hadn’t been so fond of her stepson, something that made the end of the relationship even more painful for her.

  “I think he was the one I loved all along,” she’d said.

  I thought of my bond with my own sons, my middle one about the same age as her stepson, and understood what she meant. I hadn’t escaped the Drummond Girls’ darkest year, either. The reason I’d been alone when Linda needed me, the reason my sons hadn’t been at home, the reason their father was renting the little red house across the street was because we’d split. Two weeks before the girls and I left for Drummond, I’d had my husband served with divorce papers. After nearly twenty years of dark moods, I was tired of being his cheerleader. Our marriage had turned otherworldly, a place where two sleepwalkers occasionally bumped into each other, mumbled something nasty, then changed course.

&n
bsp; No one was in any kind of party mood that fall, but we’d taken the pledge, and so we packed up, gassed up, and headed north anyway. Until now, we’d considered the island our place to let loose and celebrate; that year we just hoped it could be a place to heal. Or, if not that, then at least a place to rest up and forget everything that waited for us back home.

  “I just can’t see getting dressed today,” Andrea said. “I mean, why?”

  “I’m with you,” Linda said.

  It was three in the afternoon and Andrea was still in her robe. I looked around the house and realized the rest of us hadn’t thought much about being properly clothed, either. Bev’s ankles poked out of a pair of sweatpants that were too short, and on top she was wearing a plaid flannel shirt buttoned wrong. She couldn’t wear anything that pulled over her head or pants that zipped because her arm still hurt too bad for either. Even buttons were a chore. Linda was wearing dark blue everything—pants, sweatshirt, socks—I supposed as an alternative to black. I had on ragged pajama bottoms and the T-shirt I’d slept in. An old pink one that read in loopy script “Barbie Dumped Ken.”

  All of the accoutrements of Mariner’s Passage—the balconies, the tile kitchen, the view, even the pool table—didn’t seem all that important anymore. Such luxuries were for happy people. Whole people. I pulled open the refrigerator door and considered my options. Orange juice, Diet Coke, beer. There was something soothing about drinking a can of Miller while still wearing your pajamas. The thin cool of that aluminum touching your lips even before a toothbrush did just said, “Fuck it.”

  Linda was usually the social one, the planner, the person who roused us in the morning and got us to commit to either this activity or that one. Two-tracking, Maxton Plains, Chuck’s, or rock collecting could have been good options, but without another word, she’d headed outside to the deck, the sun, and the hammock; flopped down face-first; and took a nap.

  Jill cooked eggs and toasted bagels, Pam read a People magazine, Bev and I played pool, Andrea played darts, Susan worked one of Linda’s puzzles, and Linda napped. And napped. That evening, Andrea found a cabinet full of VCR tapes. Dave, the owner of Mariner’s Passage, must have been a fan of dated action movies because there were three shelves of Rambo, Dirty Harry, and more Death Wishes than I’d thought existed.

  On one shelf we found a few movies with women in the featured role, located the VCR, and hooked it up to the projection screen television. Andrea and I brought down pillows and blankets and lay on the floor. Jill and Pam took one couch, and Susan and Linda shared the other. Bev stretched out in the leather recliner, and for six hours we barely got up to go to the bathroom. Julia Roberts uncovered a conspiracy, Diane Lane eluded a plot to kill her, and Sandra Bullock drove a bus off one freeway and onto another just to impress Keanu.

  Later, we would enjoy the elaborate kitchen and the big deck. We’d watch freighters pass on the St. Marys River and Bev and I would play marathon games of pool. Just not on that day. We could have watched six hours of movies back home—we didn’t need to drive three hours and cross a bridge and ride a ferry to do that. We wouldn’t have, though. If we’d been home, we would have been working, running errands, cooking, carting our kids somewhere, then somewhere else, or cleaning the house. Instead, we cheered on those actresses as they triumphed over bad men with bad aim and bad driving. The heroines’ feats were impressive, yet seemed easier to pull off than the challenges we faced back home. The weekend would end; it always did, except there was no hero’s welcome waiting in Traverse City to greet us upon our return.

  “Anyone else up for a walk?”

  “I’m not,” Linda said. “But I’d be willing to go for a two-track if anyone else wants to.”

  That was the first glimmer of the old Linda we’d seen the whole weekend and perhaps the only thing that would have motivated us to get dressed. The ride from Mariner’s Passage down Dix Point Road through town and out Maxton Cross Road toward Maxton Plains was a quiet one. At least inside Andrea’s car it was, and we could imagine the same mood surely gripped the inside of Linda’s Blazer.

  None of us had lost a man we’d loved; the only thing that was going to bring Linda back was time. It was an odd feeling to hope the worst of her grief would pass quickly, yet to also want to slow time down while we were there together on Drummond.

  Linda made her way to the Maxton Plains and parked. Although the Nature Conservancy had made the property open to the public, we’d visited three or four times over the years and had never seen anyone else there. We got out, stood together, and just looked for a while. The last time we’d been there, Mary Lynn had been with us. The last time we’d been there, Kenny was alive, I was married, no one we knew had cancer, and Bev was still whole.

  Wind blew through the prairie grasses and poplar leaves, and it sounded as if they were speaking their own language, one we could all feel even if we couldn’t translate the actual words. You’re here, right now, in this moment, in this place, the voice seemed to say. You’re alive, and it’s a gift, even when it hurts.

  Linda walked off on the alvar alone. Instead of following behind, we all went in different directions. Maxton Plains is a place where you can’t help but look down while you’re walking. Ancient evergreen roots claw their way over the flat rock. Moss grows in shallow depressions, and wildflowers somehow thrive in small holes where tiny bits of soil and rain collect.

  Our walks felt timeless that day. As if Maxton Plains had been Maxton Plains before it had a name, before there were names or language or even people, and as if we knew it would still be Maxton Plains when all of us were gone.

  It had been a hard year for us, but it had been a difficult one for Drummond Island, too. At least from our perspective it had. The Northwoods had been sold and the new owners had changed the name. At Chuck’s, Garthalene and Missy were in a management feud, and when we’d lined up for the car ferry, we saw a big sign announcing more bad news. The Fogcutter had gone out of business. Worst of all, the Barb’s Landing sign had been taken down. Frank’s health wasn’t good, we’d heard, and he’d moved to Florida.

  “Feels like I should call home, but then I remember there’s no one to call,” Linda said.

  We let that emotion sit for a while. If one of us had lost our husband, we’d still have people to call. Our children, our parents, perhaps a sibling. Linda had no one.

  “It would make me feel good if you’d make your calls,” she said. “Really. It would.”

  Susan, Pam, and Andrea all had cell phones then. They pulled them out of their pockets and purses and started dialing. No signal.

  They tried walking around the alvar a bit but still nothing.

  Kenny’s man phone tree had gone the way of the pay phone and the phone booth. Linda didn’t have a cell phone then, and even after years went by and we’d all had first TracFones, then flip phones and finally smartphones and tablets, none of us could ever talk her into getting one.

  Who would she call? Everyone who mattered was on the island.

  Back home, Linda’s landline was still in Kenny’s name. Years passed but she never took his name off the listing. Even today if you try to look her up, you won’t find her in any telephone book. No, if you want to call Linda, you either have to know her number by heart, get it off the typed list probably still taped to the wall at Peegeo’s, or you would have had to have known Kenny.

  Every so often, the opposite happens. Someone trying to reach Kenny calls and gets Linda instead. She answers, the person on the other end of the line asks for him, and it’s always someone selling something—a political party, a vacuum cleaner, and once even a medical alert system. When they begin their spiel, she usually just hangs up.

  Sometimes, though, when she’s not feeling too charitable, just for the shock value she tells the caller he’s dead. In the silence that follows, Linda swears she can hear that laugh. “Huh, huh, huh.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE 2009

  From left, Bev, Susan, Linda, Andrea, me, and Jill with t
he Pigeon Cove geocache.

  A month or so before our sixteenth trip to the island, Andrea had asked for our T-shirt sizes and Linda wrote them down in her special Drummond notebook. Why? We didn’t know, because as soon as we’d answered the two of them closed like a vault to all of our questions. Linda changed the subject—who was bringing hamburger buns for her sloppy joes?

  Over the years we’d moved from the trailers at a fishing camp to a log mansion, from one rusty Jeep to two SUVs with satellite radio and heated leather seats, and our weekend kitty had grown from $300 to more than $2,500. Yet despite the years, despite the improvement of our fortunes, despite our (somewhat) more sophisticated palates, certain things never changed. And one of those was that we all still craved a Linda sloppy joe after a night at Northwoods or Chuck’s. At least all of us but Bev, who couldn’t eat beef because it aggravated her hiatal hernia.

  When we met at Peegeo’s to load up, Linda and Andrea handed us each a white T-shirt. A small medallion on the front read “D.I.” and “2009.” Underneath, they’d added our nicknames, and Wohelo, the Secretary of Defense, the Sheriff, Gamer, Jukebox Hero, Washycocky, and Pool Shark were island bound again.

  It was still amazing to me how easily we slipped into our Drummond Island alter egos; how our shoulders relaxed, our eyes brightened, our step got bouncy. We became part of the island and the island’s culture that year before we’d even left Traverse City. I suppose I was the one who’d initiated the launch sequence.

  “Linda,” I said, as we were getting into the cars, “did you tell everyone the news?”

  “Yup,” Linda answered, all business. “Everyone knows there’s a cop on the island now. If there’s a problem, we’ll sic Jill on him.”

  “Well,” Bev added matter-of-factly, “if he’s at all good-looking, I’ll do a washycocky on him.”

  We all burst out laughing. The image of a sixty-five-year-old woman—albeit an attractive, fit, aerobic bunny of a sixty-five-year-old woman—subduing a police officer with some version of her island nickname was quite a thing to try to imagine.