The Drummond Girls
Page 26
Not that we don’t still party. I do anticipate our over-the-bridge Jell-O shots—well, okay, shot, singular, because even though they’re tempered with whipped cream, too many of those things can really tear up your stomach. I have a prescription for Xanax, just two pills once a year, for crossing the bridges on the way and back home. I can still take command of the pool table at Chuck’s when I really want to and have energy to burn on the island the way I rarely do at home anymore.
“Sleep?” we still like to joke. “You can sleep when you’re dead.”
I think of the island as a her; as our ninth Drummond Girl, yet of course she’s been with us all along. Watching over us. Growing us up. I’ve come to love a new ritual, one that’s ordinary and has nothing to do with partying, winning at pool, or living through back-to-back all-nighters. The luxury of lingering.
I’ve always been one of the first people up, and ever since we moved to Paw Point Lodge, I’ve loved to take a steaming mug of fresh coffee out onto the big front porch. Still in my pajamas and often with a coat on against the early damp, I’ll sit on those wide log steps, look out, and try to absorb Potagannissing Bay into every cell of my body. Not to take home anymore, but just to have inside of me for one more moment.
I’d been so focused on rearing my sons that for what had seemed like a lifetime my mornings back home were hectic. Scrambling for clean clothes, making their sack lunches, and getting them to the bus on time. When they became teenagers, it was new clothes, lunch money, and jump-starts on batteries in used cars.
My Drummond mornings were dominated by mythically sized hangovers, for which Jill’s breakfasts were the only cure. Now, the mornings here are simpler. Waves on the water, the sound of wind through reed grasses, the smell of ancient pine trees, all surrounded by those timeless dolomite boulders.
Unless someone in a fishing boat happened by, there wouldn’t be a single man-made sight or sound from me to the bay’s distant horizon. Miles of just… nature. And I couldn’t help wondering, how many such wild and remote places were left in the Great Lak—
“Hey! Anybody make the decaf?”
The exasperated voice coming from somewhere inside was as familiar to me as my own. Bev was an early riser, too, and she’d pushed open the screen door and stood in the doorway, looking like a baby bird the morning after a hard rain. Her short hair stuck straight out, and I could see the cords pulsing in her neck.
“Good morning, Bevy,” I said, obnoxiously cheerful.
She quickly disappeared into the house, but not before I caught sight of her outfit. A pale pink corduroy shirt two sizes too big over tight lime-green stretch pants with flowers in odd places. The Day of Flamboyance was starring in the acclaimed contemporary drama, Brewing Decaf.
Then the morning opened the rest of the way, and all my Drummond sisters eventually found themselves out on the porch with me. Some, like Bev, were still in their pajamas, and some were already dressed, showered, packed up, and ready—physically at least—for the trip home.
“Why does it always have to be sunny the morning we leave?” Andrea asked. “Every stinkin’ year?”
We still had a little bit of time, at least an hour, and I loved these last moments on the island, rain or shine. I wasn’t ever quite ready to leave, but I also knew we’d be back. And that the island would be here for us a year from now, no matter what was happening in our regular lives.
Over at the edge of the porch, in the last chair, Bev reclined, arched her back, and stretched out her legs. She’d bought new slippers for the trip. Pale pink terry cloth slides. They matched her shirt and, compared to my raggedy flip-flops, looked cozy.
Bev was still beautiful, even though she’d gotten so thin since she’d retired. I often worried that she forgot to eat. But the steam coming from her mug looked like it had both awakened and warmed her, and there was a healthy glow in her cheeks. There was no tension in her face and even her shoulders, sometimes so tense, looked relaxed. Whatever funk had come over her earlier seemed to be gone.
“Enjoy it,” she said slowly, thickly, as if the cold sun beaming upon her was a drug. She spoke quietly, and I’m pretty sure I was the only one who’d heard her. Her head rested against the back of the log chair and her eyes were closed.
“What’d you say, Bev?” Jill asked.
“The sun, the morning, the island,” she said, louder this time. “Time. Just enjoy it.”
Her tone was half weather prediction, half admonition. She didn’t open her eyes or shift her position, just stayed in that languid pose until it was time to leave.
Soon we’d locked up the lodge, returned the key, and were in line for the ferry. It docked right on time, unloaded, and Susan and I drove onto it effortlessly, both of us parking exactly where the crewman indicated. The person directing us was young and slim—did they let teenagers work the ferry now?—and we did exactly as he instructed, with Susan first, me behind, tight against the railing.
Andrea’s sunny forecast held, and the bright light made the white metal of the ferry gleam. Even so, all seven of us stayed inside the car for the ride back. The ferry wasn’t novel anymore and up ahead of me I could see the girls in Susan’s car chatting happily away, as if they’d just seen each other again after a long absence, instead of spending the whole weekend together, talking anytime they weren’t sleeping.
The wind was light and I pushed the button opening the sunroof on my new Ford SUV. We’d parked facing toward home, and so I had to turn awkwardly in my seat in order to look back. The cold spray of DeTour Passage splashed through the opening and onto my face, but I didn’t care. Whether arriving or departing I had loved that view from the first moment I saw it. Nothing but waves splitting onto man-sized dolomite and pudding stones, sugar maples and black poplars swaying in full fall color, and a hill dense with evergreens.
A woman could find herself in there, I thought. She and her friends could walk on in and find out exactly what they were made of.
EPILOGUE
Drummond Island’s northern coastline.
It is sometime in the not too faraway future, October, and we are racing the dark.
In the twilight, an otherworldly glow seems to come from inside the sugar maples, the ones decorating the north shore of Lake Huron. Driving away from home, I felt nothing but anticipation. My sons are grown now and on to their own lives. My husband is happy for the time at home alone. He can fix the downriggers on his fishing boat and tinker with the oil pan on the snowplow, too, without me hovering nearby, offering advice. I have a lot of feelings inside of me for him, and not one of them is mechanical.
“Have fun, my Mardi,” is what he exhales into my neck when he hugs me good-bye. I feel every muscle in his arms. It’s unseasonably cold, and even through his thick canvas jacket, I feel them.
Whatever year this is, we’ve just crossed the Mighty Mac. The bridge authority’s driver’s report was “all clear,” with visibility estimated at “one hundred miles plus.” We are safely over.
There are no other cars on the road. No other headlights, no taillights, no lights at all save the nav screen and its blinking green arrow, pointing forever forward.
I’m driving, Bev’s sitting in the passenger seat, Jill and Andrea are in the back messing with a playlist, when, from up ahead, Linda uses Susan’s cell phone to call us and impart this detail: As a meteorological concept, visibility is not an exact science. It is simply an estimate of how far one thousand candles can be seen when illuminated against an unlit background. How cool is that, she wants to know.
We are not one thousand candles; we are only eight. Our background is just up ahead and we won’t even need igniting. Just like those scarlet and gold maple leaves, we are lit from within. We hurtle toward Drummond, burning inside with love, adventure, shared memories, and life.
Linda has ideas. Tomorrow we can take a guided tour out to the Fossil Ledges or maybe even Marblehead, the remote and scenic cliffs on the island’s northern shore. There’s a man with
a new touring business who will do the driving for us, sixty dollars a person but probably worth it. Or we could just hike there. Six miles through some pretty wild and dense woods but also probably worth it.
Bev likes the second idea. She’s nearly seventy now, still has her same hiking boots from 1995, but even so, with her buoyant stride she’ll be the first of us to the trailhead. Bears? No, she’s not worried about bears. She’s not worried about anything.
A grin takes over her face. “Remember that year we danced at the Northwoods?” she asks. “Remember how great that band was?”
I don’t remember, and I glance out her window at the water, watch it pass by at highway speed, and then refocus on the road ahead. We are racing the dark.
Bev didn’t volunteer or learn to play the piano after she retired, but she did travel. Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, and next, Spain. Sometimes I get to be the one who picks her up from the airport. I get to look into her eyes and see the lively person inside, still so engaged with the world. Often, when I’m with her and she is walking me around her garden, telling me about each plant, where she bought it, how much it cost, the environment it prefers, whether or not the deer will eat it, I find the face of the girl I imagine she once was. Alert, curious, happy. I wonder if she ever looks at my face, notices a new smile line, a new forehead wrinkle, and sees the girl I’ll always be.
Just as we clear DeTour hill, the last bit of a red sun sinks into the tamaracks. We’ll be first in line for the ferry this year because Drummond is waiting and we are racing the dark.
Susan calls again. Andrea puts her on speaker. Remember your ferry manners, she says, and then I hear Pam and Linda hooting in the background. Jill throws her head back and laughs out loud. Those girls are fired up, she says.
About this time, Bev will ask how many years it’s been.
Then we’ll drive onto the ferry, the island will come into view, and we’ll all know the answer.
It’s been always. It will always be always.
It is the first weekend in October and we are racing the dark.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
On my computer there is a folder titled “These Great Women,” archiving the correspondence between my exceptional agent, Jane Dystel, and me. She knows how to be a friend, and that’s why she knew eight waitresses bound for a wilderness hunk of up-north rock had a story to tell. And it sometimes felt like my editor, the kind and wise Gretchen Young, traveled back and forth to the island with me in this journey of memory. These two women do have a natural environment—Manhattan—and yet, take it from me, they are both Drummond Girl material.
My friend Kris Love said yes when I asked if she could draw a map. Then she presented me with the work of art on pages viii and ix.
My husband, Pete, and my son, Will, both endured my preoccupied state of mind with resignation, patience, and carryout dinners. While I disappeared into my pink-walled office, they carried on, building museum-quality custom furniture and graduating from high school, respectively. My parents did not raise me to kidnap police officers or bait nuisance bears, yet they’ve supported “this writing thing” both emotionally and financially, so please absolve them from any responsibility for my questionable judgment. It’s a Drummond thing.
Would your best friends let you write a book about them? A book that included words like washycocky, pot brownie, fish gut protocol, blow-up doll, and sissy la-la? Mine did. There would be nothing to tell if Jill hadn’t gotten married young, if Andrea hadn’t said there was going to have to be a party for that, and if Linda hadn’t loaded up her old Jeep Cherokee, told us to get in, and then headed north. There would be nothing to tell if they hadn’t invited me along, and then Bev, Mary Lynn, Pam, and Susan, too.
They are my sisters, my true north, and to them I pledge with all my might.
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
In chapter one, the author expresses her desire to fit in. How does this desire carry through the memoir? Is it realized? How?
Although the characters all live in Traverse City, most of the action takes place on Drummond Island. Which of these locations feels like home? Have you ever felt at home someplace other than where you live?
The friendship between the author and Bev begins in chapter two, but it changes over time. How?
Aging and memory loss are specters throughout the memoir, most directly for Bev, but for some of the other girls, too. How does the memoir deal with this?
How crucial is Drummond Island to the bond these women share? Do you think the isolation from others enables them to become closer? How often do you get away with your friends?
The Drummond Girls have such different personalities and come from all walks of life. Which woman’s story do you identify with most? Why?
How does the author address the importance of voyage? What role does travel play throughout the memoir and how do the road trips enhance the women’s friendship?
As the story progresses, we see the girls face life’s milestones (marriage, pregnancy, and motherhood) and challenges (financial hardships, divorce, and death). How does friendship carry the girls through? How do your own friendships help you through life’s big moments?
How do the Drummond Girls keep the tradition alive all these years without life’s disruptions? How does the author describe this commitment?
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Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
MAP
PROLOGUE OCTOBER 2013
CHAPTER ONE 1993
CHAPTER TWO 1995
CHAPTER THREE 1997
CHAPTER FOUR 1998
CHAPTER FIVE 1999
CHAPTER SIX 2000
CHAPTER SEVEN 2001
CHAPTER EIGHT 2002
CHAPTER NINE 2003
CHAPTER TEN 2004
CHAPTER ELEVEN 2005
CHAPTER TWELVE 2009
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 2011
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
READING GROUP GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
NEWSLETTERS
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
The events described in these stories are real. And while all eight of my Drummond Girl sister witches are portrayed with their given names, I’ve given a few outsiders fictitious ones, for reasons that should become obvious. Be advised: While on Drummond Island, I was a pool player, a partier, a hiker, and a friend. Not a journalist.
Copyright © 2015 by Mardi Link
Reading Group Guide copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Design by Christine Foltzer
Cover photograph provided by the author
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: July 2015
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Map of Drummond Island by the painter Kris Love.
All photos courtesy of the author.
ISBN 978-1-4555-5475-1
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