Even though it was raining, she wanted to stay out there forever.
25
Eventually, Hazel, Silas and Eve returned to the shelter of the house. The sound of the screen door slamming could barely be made out against the backdrop of the still-pounding rain. Hazel realized she was short of breath from the rush of it all. The darkness. The rain. The togetherness. She could feel the quick pulse of her heart and her lungs filling and then deflating. She noticed Silas’s and Eve’s chests rising and falling, as well. They, too, were feeling the rush of it all.
Three distinct puddles had already formed on the wood floor beneath each of their feet, a result of their dripping clothes.
“Let me get us some towels,” Silas said as he pulled his soaking wet T-shirt over his head.
Silas’s chest and shoulders were slippery from the rain. Small beads of water had collected on the tips of Silas’s curled chest hair. A few droplets were streaming down his chest onto his abdomen. Hazel could just make out Silas’s musculature beneath the thick skin of his belly. His slightly protruding belly only made him appear more manly, more capable. He then stepped out of his shorts, leaving him in just his tight black boxers for a moment. He dropped his saturated clothing onto the floor with a heavy thud and then turned toward the hallway. His thighs were trunk-like and solid and bulged as he walked away to get the towels.
“Ah, that was fun,” Hazel said to Eve as she ran her fingers through her hair.
Eve had her head tilted to the side and her long wet hair was dripping next to her. Eve’s wet white T-shirt had become see-through, hugging the contour of her breasts and her black bra. Hazel turned away bashfully as she felt her cheeks begin to get hot.
“Ugh, is my mascara running?” Eve had reinserted herself into Hazel’s view, now with her belly exposed as she wrung out the front of her T-shirt. Eve never had any shame about her body. She was always so carefree about exposing her belly button, or hip or breasts or collarbones, but she was always paranoid about her makeup.
Hazel wondered what Eve thought a face revealed that a body did not.
“Hello! Earth to Hazel!” Eve snapped her fingers in front of her Hazel’s face. “Well, is it?”
“Who cares?” Hazel replied and giggled a bit.
Eve smiled and giggled a bit, too. And then nudged Hazel with her hip.
It was so easy to crack Eve’s demanding exterior. And Hazel was delighted about how quickly she could do it. How confident she had become.
Silas returned with a towel around his waist and one more for each of his daughters.
“All right, you two, I’m hitting the hay.” He tossed the towels firmly their way. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Hazel and Eve wrapped the big towels around their dripping clothes and walked toward their room, leaving watery footprints on their way.
“I call first shower!” Eve shouted and picked up her pace. Her legs were constricted by the towel, turning her attempted run into a straight-legged shuffle.
“Of course you do,” Hazel muttered with feigned annoyance and allowed Eve to disappear down the hallway into their room.
Hazel maintained her lackadaisical stride, turning her head side to side and observing the old and creaking walls of the hallway. They were starting to feel like her walls. Walls she liked living between.
* * *
Hazel stepped into an already steamy bathroom to take her turn for a shower. She undressed, left her clothes in a sopping pile on the tiled floor and stepped into the spray. As the warm water washed over her body, she became aware of how cold the rain had been against her skin and hair. Cold water flowed from her hair, replaced by the warm stream of water from the showerhead. She closed her eyes and let the water wash over her. Hazel was warmed inside and out. She felt satisfied and safe. Comfortable and happy.
It had been so long since she had felt those things back at home. So long since she had participated in family life.
Hazel had a sense that many girls her age had chosen to recoil from family life. She had a sense that one day they came home from school and decided to reject their life and home and look to something bigger. She had a sense they looked to friends, or boyfriends, or places far away. That one day they yearned to leave their home and their parents and their younger selves behind. That it happened without consequence.
But this feeling was forced onto Hazel as soon as Cam walked into her home. It was the day that she started to feel as if she were watching her life rather than being a part of it. That her home shifted from hers to Cam’s. That Jane shifted from being hers to Cam’s. That everything she built and loved had been lost. She would sit at the dinner table with them and watch as they talked and ate. There was a time that felt like long ago now in which she wanted so badly to get back inside those dinners, to get back inside her life. But she learned over time that she couldn’t. Something impenetrable had been built. And, whether it was on purpose or not, Cam and the twins had built it. It wasn’t this way in the beginning with Cam, but it was the reality now.
But she didn’t have any of those feelings up here in Grandor with Eve and Silas.
Her sense of being wanted, being loved, being part of something had finally returned to her. It was everything she needed. Everything she wanted.
* * *
The next morning, Hazel woke up to Eve inspecting herself in front of the mirror. It had become a familiar scene and Hazel was surprised at the constant upkeep required of a girl. The diligence required for a look like Eve’s. Eve could occupy hours putting her hair up into a wild bun on the top of her head and pulling it back down again, picking at blackheads with the tip of a pin, or looking at her own body in the mirror.
As Eve stood in front of the mirror so slightly tilting her hips forward, arching her back, and craning her neck to observe her own butt, it occurred to Hazel that it was something more than vanity. It was almost as if Eve was conducting an intellectual study of her own anatomy. Her skin and her bones, and how it all moved. Measuring the slope of every curve, capturing the memory of a body at a discrete moment in time.
Hazel was no match for Eve. Eve always looked so cool and smart. She was a simultaneous participant and critic of all things in her world. She was angular and athletic but soft and provocative all at once. Even if Hazel could manicure her eyebrows and wear ripped jeans and expensive sunglasses, she would always be just fine. She would never hold up more than medium well under scrutiny. There were so many things Hazel didn’t have. Would never have. She was no match at all for Eve.
Eve caught Hazel’s eye in the reflection of the mirror. It moved Hazel.
“What are you doing when you look in the mirror like that?”
Hazel knew she had so much to learn from Eve. From her sister.
Eve pursed her lips together and kissed the mirror, right on her own lips. Green eyes open and locked on her own eyes the entire time.
Her attention on the mirror was sharp and focused. And then it wasn’t.
Eve reached for her phone, which had been glowing and buzzing without Eve paying it any mind, but she looked at it now as if she were under a spell. Her eyes were wide and absorbent as she lay on her belly poring over her phone. Her knees bent and her feet were swinging behind her as she jammed her fingers into the face of the phone with an impressive speed and rhythm. The phone buzzed and glowed some more in response. There seemed to be a symbiosis between Eve and the phone. She fed the phone and it fed her. They were both wild and abuzz with it. Even watching Eve mesmerized by the phone was mesmerizing in itself. Despite the trance, every now and then Hazel could make out the slightest hint at what the messages on her phone evoked in Eve. Her lips might perk up at the edges. Her eyebrows might press the slightest bit up. Her green eyes might soften sensually.
And then, as suddenly as Eve had been sucked into her phone, she released herself. Eve popped back up from her position
on the bed and posed back in front of the mirror. Back to her sharp and focused attention. And from there, Eve continued as if she had never stopped in the first place.
“I just don’t believe anyone who says that they didn’t get cool until after college,” she said matter-of-factly. “After these years, Hazel, it’s all downhill. We get uglier and uglier, less and less cool, and then we die.” Eve snapped her fingers and popped her hip out.
“And since I am a teenager, I am at peak cool.” She finally turned around to Hazel.
“Which means that I know everything.” She pulled her mouth into a subdued smirk and popped her shoulders up toward her chin.
It was hard to argue with her as she stood there with her long legs stretching out from her worn denim shorts and her golden brown hair draping across her narrow back.
Eve reached her arms out to pull Hazel in front of the mirror, presumably to pore over Hazel’s anatomy instead. Hazel tried to wiggle out of her Eve’s fingers and divert her attention to another activity, but it was no use.
Eve held Hazel in front of the mirror, her palms firmly pressing down on Hazel’s shoulders, and scanned her from top to bottom several times. She squinted her eyes. The black mascara on her eyelids enhanced the drama in her gaze. And then her eyes suddenly appeared more bright and shining emerald than the mossy green they usually were and a smile spread across her lips.
“I think we should try some red lips on you. Pucker ’em up like this,” Eve demanded and then pursed her own plump lips and made kissing noises.
Hazel obliged like girls do—like sisters do—and stuck her lips out and closed her eyes. She felt the cold lip gloss streaking across her mouth. She felt Eve’s face close to hers. She could feel her hot breath on her cheeks.
“Okay, now smack them together so it doesn’t get clumpy.”
Hazel obliged.
“Now smile!”
Hazel obliged again.
“Getting there. Now eyes. Shut them.”
And Hazel obliged once more. She felt Eve’s fingers rolling back and forth on her eyelid. Hazel couldn’t help smiling as she succumbed to Eve’s gentle touch, but she made sure not to move her eyes. She inhaled the scent of the makeup powder and what she had come to recognize as the smell of Eve’s hair.
Hazel felt Eve take a step away from her. Hazel opened her eyes. Eve was still laser focused on Hazel’s face. But not in the overall sense. Hazel could see her pick out specific details. Probably the awkward slope of her nose. The size of her pores. The curve of her cheekbones.
Eve squinted briefly and then smiled with pride.
“Almost there,” Eve declared, standing back and looking at Hazel in the mirror.
“Now take this off,” she said, tugging gently at the bottom of Hazel’s T-shirt. “I think you should wear something sexier.”
“What’s the point?” Hazel asked. “There’s literally no one here but us...and Silas.”
“Ugh, why did you have to remind me?” Eve responded dramatically and picked her phone up off the side table and started texting. Resuming her indifference.
But Hazel wasn’t ready for their time together to come to an end.
“It looks so nice out and who knows where Silas is. Let’s go for a walk or explore or something.”
“Fi...ne,” Eve responded, her face gnarled with feigned acrimony, and then threw down her phone and bent down to pull her sneakers over her feet.
Hazel tugged at Eve’s elbow to hurry her along and as Hazel and Eve walked out of their bedroom, Hazel snuck a glance at herself in the mirror once more. She tried catching her reflection with only a subtle movement of the eyes. She wanted to see herself as she looked to others now. For the first time she could remember, she liked what she saw. Wearing Eve’s makeup and walking beside her, Hazel felt prettier, wittier. Cooler. She felt the possibility of reinvention pulsing through her blood. Her new life was upon her.
26
Hazel led Eve out the door at the side of the house. They had taken the path down to the lake many times already, and Hazel felt a pull toward the woods on the other side of the yard. The crowd of thick trees with their serpentine roots protruding from the earth seemed simultaneously impenetrable and enticing. Hazel took a small step in the direction of the edge of the trees.
“Let’s go that way!” Eve shrieked in excitement. “I’ve never gone that way before!” Eve was always craving newness.
As they reached the threshold of the trees and the cabin got lost in the distance behind them, Hazel thought about the twins. How they always appeared to be in a world all their own. She considered the belief that there was something, some place, in this world that only the two of them could see was definition of siblinghood. Or love. Hazel felt a submerged, prickling sense of happiness as she navigated the indistinct path in the woods with Eve. With her sister.
Stacks of white stones were oriented as if they were the entrance to a pathway. There was evidence of a prior clearing, but it was overgrown with sticks and weeds.
“Ooh. Let’s follow this!” Eve’s energy was building.
Back at home in Verona, Hazel had felt a frantic presence of something trapped inside her. Something big and important that wanted to come out. Something that was all her own. Not her mother’s, or Cam’s or the twins’. Something that was meant to be wild. Unencumbered. She wanted to experience newness. Traverse boundaries. And here she was doing it. With Eve. Surviving more and more on adrenaline. Living in the moment. Preparing for her new life.
The outline of the path was becoming increasingly difficult to decipher as they marched over budding plants and fallen leaves. The woods were quiet, not a word spoken, but both Hazel and Eve were radiating energy. The silence intensified the reality of being out there by themselves. They climbed over sprawling bushes and fallen sticks. They swiveled their heads to take in the crackle of the branches and buzzing of insects, and the patter of little animal paws.
Hazel had her eyes on the back of Eve’s heels moving rhythmically, when her feet stopped abruptly in the dirt. Her head tilted back, her long, flowing locks now reaching down to her butt. Hazel followed the line of her gaze.
A pergola, at least ten feet tall, emerged in front of them. It was strange to see wood so neatly ordered in a geometric grid amongst the gnarled and sprawling trunks and branches of the wild trees. The legs of the entranceway, firmly planted in the soil, appeared to grow straight and strong directly from the earth. The structure itself was erect and rigid, but the vines hanging down from it were twisted and winding. They poured over the roof and meandered around the wooden posts. The leaves of the vines were ornate and ambrosial, bursting freely outward in every direction. Some of the leaves appeared brown and untended at their tips, but it didn’t detract from the lifelike quality of the thick, verdant cloak wrapped maternally around the frame. It almost appeared as if the whole thing were breathing.
It was enchanting.
First Eve and then Hazel inched toward it, so as not to disrupt it.
Hazel pulled the tips of her fingers down along the wooden post on the right side of the entranceway. As she crouched down and reached the base, her pointer dipped into a slight groove in the wood, stained in a slightly darker color.
Silas’s signature cube.
Eve was now standing before the opening in the front, the tips of her toes a centimeter from the shadow line of the overhanging vines. Eve turned her head toward Hazel. Her eyes were glowing and thirsty for more adventure.
Hazel stood up and walked the few steps over toward Eve until their hips were touching. The entrance was darker than Hazel expected. The pergola appeared to stretch several yards back but the distance was distorted and obscured with only a luminous, and oddly two-dimensional, circle at the exit, so they couldn’t gauge the distance. Light shone through the tunnel in random beams between the spaces in the leaf cover.
The girls held each other by the hand and apprehensively entered. The air was cooler and more fresh underneath the cover of the leaves. The earth felt moist and soft beneath their feet, occasionally making a faint gushing noise as they pressed their feet in.
Then Eve let out a guttural, exploding shout. It was short and piercing. And then her shout turned into a vivid, fervent laugh. Hazel yelped, too. The loud freakish sound amplified and then diminished the quiet and tension that had previously engulfed them.
Hazel smiled and then yelped again, and laughed and took off into a run. Eve dashed off behind her and with just a few long strides they reached the opposite end of the pergola, the clamor of their voices rippling off into the woods.
The ground sloped down in a slight gradient and small gray stones of varying geometries and sizes lined another short path into a clearing. There were the remnants of a beautifully constructed garden that appeared to have once been tended with great care and contemplation, despite evidence of current neglect.
There were neatly tilled dirt rectangles, some with fences around them and narrow stone-lined walkways between them. Smashed flowerpots exploding with soil and chipped ceramic orbs were interspersed around the site. A rusty wheelbarrow was turned over on its side and a pair of gloves and sneakers that had been stiffened and distorted from rain and the sun lay in one of the fenced-in areas. There was a bench off to the right that had been scratched and defecated on by woodland critters but still maintained the elegance of its form. The armrests curled down gracefully into the seat, which was gently curved to accommodate the roundness of a body. A stack of stones formed a short set of steps up to a grassy area that was matted with rotting leaves. A tire swing hung over the area from a substantial but old tree branch above. A thick sinewy spiderweb stretched across the entire center of the tire. On the adjacent branch hung a bird feeder with scraps of pecked-at seeds and pellets. In the corner of the area was an assortment of bold, colorful flowers resting in a large basket that caught Hazel’s eye.
That Summer in Maine Page 17
