Wish You Were Here

by Barbara Shoup

  “They’re so poor,” Mom says—exactly what I’m thinking. “And here we are on our way to a fabulous resort. It seems strange. Not right.”

  “I know what you mean,” Ted says. He slows way down as he passes a church, where a group of people spill out into the street. “There’s food here, though. So much grows wild, even. I guess it’s better than being poor in a cold city.” Then, as if he knows I’m thinking how much mileage my dad would get out of a remark like that, he adds, “I know that sounds like a cop-out. Another rich tourist—”

  A van careens around us on the right, its horn blaring. The man at the wheel grins and waves.

  “I’m having culture shock,” Mom says.

  Amy’s fast asleep, her head resting against my shoulder. Kristin keeps reading. Mom glances back at them as we leave the village with the noisy, smiling children behind.

  It’s late afternoon by the time we reach our resort. The bell-man wheels our luggage down a garden path toward a row of thatched bungalows, talking nonstop in a voice that sounds like music, like Bob Marley. “You love it here,” he says. “The sun always shine in Jamaica. Here, people always happy.”

  “We’ll hold you to that.” Ted smiles, and tips him. “That’s why we came.”

  Everyone but Kristin heads straight for the deck off the living room. It’s outfitted with director’s chairs and an umbrella table. There are huge tubs of pink flowers. Wooden stairs lead down to the pool and the beach just beyond.

  “Ted, I think you should know what a shallow person I am,” Mom says. “I’m totally over my culture shock. Oh, this is so beautiful. Isn’t it, Jackson? Can you believe we’re here?”

  I guess I’m over my culture shock, too, because the scene spread out before us seems wonderful: the shimmering turquoise pool, the white lounge chairs all around it. The ocean dotted with colorful sails. Near the surf line, gulls swoop and dive, bringing up their silvery catch.

  “Can we go down?” Amy asks. “Daddy, can we?”

  “You bet,” Ted says. “As soon as we stash our stuff and change. Come on, sweetie.” He swings her up and carries her back inside.

  There are two bedrooms; I’ll sleep in the loft. I go up the ladder sideways, balancing my suitcase. Ted hands my backpack up to me. There’s a bed, a dresser, a desk and chair. Nothing fancy, but I like it. No one can see me, but if I look down, I can see the whole living area. If I look straight across, there’s a great ocean view. The whole back of the house is windows.

  While I change into shorts, I watch Mom. She adjusts the draperies, opens and closes all the doors of the built-in cabinets. “Oh, God, more champagne,” she calls out, finding the bottle that’s peeking out of the huge basket of tropical fruit on the coffee table.

  “For later,” Ted says, kissing her, holding her for a long moment before he takes the bottle to the kitchenette.

  Both of them disappear into their bedroom to change. Kristin has been sitting primly on one of the couches, still in her traveling clothes. Now from my perch I watch her get up and go over to the big window that overlooks the ocean.

  “Get ready, Kristin,” Amy says, joining her. She looks so funny in her fluorescent yellow bikini and little beach shoes, her sunglasses shaped like daisies, that I can hardly keep from laughing.

  Kristin regards her like the traitor she is. “I bet you don’t even have sunscreen on,” she says. “Mommy said we can’t go anywhere without sunscreen on, no matter what. I’m telling.”

  I grab a T-shirt and my sunscreen and scramble down the ladder. “I’ll put sunscreen on for you,” I tell Amy. “You can use mine.”

  “You’re nice, Jackson,” she says, and sighs.

  My hand, spread out, practically covers her whole back. I rub the sunscreen in, careful to cover every bit of exposed skin. “Here, give me your arm,” I say, and rub it there, too. “Other arm. Okay, now your legs.” I squirt some in her hands so she can rub some on her stomach and up near her collarbone.

  Going down the stairs, Amy takes my hand. “Is your dad sad without you?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Our mom’s sad. She’s very sad for us to be gone so long. She said we can call her if we get sad. She wrote down how for Kristin. ’Cause she’s older. Almost ten,” Amy says. “Kristin can read.”

  “Kristin’s smart,” I say.

  Amy nods solemnly. “I don’t have to do everything she says, though.”

  I wait for her to go on, wondering if she’s going to say that she knows she doesn’t have to feel the way Kristin feels, either. But she just giggles and in her fluty voice says, “Mommy says the two of us are like night and day.”

  We step from the shade of the palm trees that border the deserted pool deck. The fierceness of the afternoon sun has dissolved, and a few people arc stretched out on the lounges, enjoying the breeze that’s blowing up from the ocean.

  There’s a girl about my age on the lounge next to the one where I help Amy spread her Little Mermaid towel. She’s lying perfectly flat. She has a plastic contraption covering her eyes, so I know she can’t see me looking her over. She’s pretty: long blond hair, kind of like Kristin’s. She’s thin but not skinny. Her skin is pinkish with the beginnings of a tan. She has blue sunscreen on her nose. A book rests, turned over and open, beside her. When she stirs, I look back toward the ocean. From the corner of my eye, I see her sit up, stretch her arms over her head. Oh man, I think. Out of my league.

  Thank God Brady’s not here. He’d take one look at a girl like that and belch or fart or do a cannonball into the pool and get her soaking wet just to establish the fact that he didn’t give a damn what she thought about him.

  “Hi,” Amy pipes up. “I’m Amy. We just got here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep,” Amy says. “We came all the way from Indiana. In a airplane.”

  “Did you?” The girl glances at me and grins. “I bet that made you thirsty. I know where you can get something really good to drink. In fact, I’ll even go get it for you. That’s okay, isn’t it?” she asks me.

  “Oh, sure. Thanks.” Just relax, I tell myself, resisting the impulse to hunch my shoulders. She gets up, in a single move flicks her hair over her shoulders, and pads over to the bar. She returns with a foamy pink concoction that has a sparkly swizzle stick and a pink paper umbrella sticking out of it. Drinking it, Amy looks like a little shrunk-up Hollywood star.

  “She is so cute,” the girl whispers. “Your sister?”

  “Stepsister,” I say. “As of two weeks ago.”

  “No kidding,” the girl says.

  I shrug, mortified to have offered that bit of personal information. Like she’d care. I’m relieved when Mom and Ted appear—until I realize that it would be inexcusably rude to walk away and join them and equally rude to stay and not introduce them to this person I’ve been talking to. Jeez, I don’t even know her name.

  Amy saves me. “Daddy, look!” She raises her glass, and the drink sloshes out on either side and drips onto her stomach. The girl wipes it away with her own towel. “My friend bought this for me,” Amy says.

  “Great,” Ted says. “You’ve got a friend already? “That’s great.”

  “I get to keep the stuff in it, Daddy.” Amy shows him the swizzle stick and the little umbrella.

  “Neat,” he says. “Hey, can I borrow that umbrella if it rains?”

  “Daddy,” Amy says.

  “It doesn’t rain here,” the girl says. “It’s not allowed.”

  Mom smiles. She nods at the girl. “I’m Ellen Harper,” she says. “This is Ted.” She assumes, like any normal person would, that I’ve already introduced myself.

  The girl says, “Amanda Clark.” She chats with Mom a few minutes, then excuses herself. “You take care now,” she says to Amy. She turns to me and flutte
rs her hand.

  “See you,” I say lamely.

  “Amanda,” Amy says when the girl has gone. “That’s an A name. Just like mine.”

  twenty

  The next day Kristin sullenly agrees to join us at the beach, but when she emerges from the bedroom, she’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt, sweatpants, and what looks like a rain hat.

  Ted says, “Honey, you’re going to boil in all those clothes.”

  “Mommy says the sun is terrible here. We have to be very careful not to get a sunburn.”

  Ted points out the long row of bright blue umbrellas near the shoreline. “You can rent them,” he says. “You get under one of those, you’ll have plenty of shade.”

  Poor Ted. She gives him an okay-I’m-a-prisoner-I-accept-it look and puts her bathing suit on. When we get to the beach, she chooses the most remote umbrella, plops down in the canvas chair under it, and sticks her nose in a book.

  “Want to take a walk?” I ask her.

  Without looking up, she shakes her head no.

  “Me!” Amy says. “I want to.” So the two of us set out.

  We don’t go far, but it takes forever. Amy stands and watches the waves roll in and out. She mimics the sandpipers skittering along the sand. She stops to pick up shells and puts them in her plastic bucket. All the while, she’s asking me a million questions. Jackson, can octopuses kill you? Do fish live someplace or do they just swim around all the time? Do birds get sunburned?

  “Eeyew,” she says when I show her a jellyfish that’s been washed ashore.

  I poke at it and gross her out again. I say, “What I want to know is, are there peanut-butter fish?”

  “Jackson, there’s no such thing.” But there’s a trace of uncertainty in her voice that makes me smile.

  We turn and head back. Close to our umbrellas, she starts to run. I figure she’s going to show Ted her shells, but she runs right past him. That’s when I see the girl we met yesterday, Amanda. She’s sitting under the umbrella next to mine, even more gorgeous than I remembered.

  “Hi,” she says when I get there.

  I wave vaguely toward her. I’m as bad as Kristin. To avoid dealing with Amanda, I get my book out of Mom’s canvas bag and pretend I’m totally absorbed in it. I watch the two of them from the corner of my eye: Amy presenting her treasures, Amanda exclaiming over them. Kristin is watching them, too. Pretty soon, she lays her book down, stands, and marches over to Amanda’s chair. Amy and Amanda are so absorbed in spreading the shells on Amanda’s beach towel that they don’t notice her until she says in her bossy voice, “Amy, if you want to go swimming now, I have to go with you. Mom said I’m in charge of watching you in the water.”

  “But I don’t want to swim,” Amy says.

  Kristin shrugs, but she doesn’t go back to her chair. “That’s my sister,” Amy says. “Kristin.”

  “Hi,” Amanda says. “Why don’t you bring your stuff over here?”

  The next time I glance over, Kristin’s sitting on the footrest of Amanda’s chair. Amanda’s adjusted her chair to a slant and flipped her long hair over the back of it so Amy can brush it. Her eyes are closed; she has this look on her face like she’s dreaming. Amy giggles when the long strands of Amanda’s hair stick to the brush, and I think of how when we were little, Brady and I used to rub balloons on our heads to make our hair stand on end. When Amanda smiles, I have this weird idea that she’s smiling at what I am remembering.

  “I can French braid,” Kristin says.

  “She can,” says Amy. “Our mom taught her.”

  “Really?” Amanda sits up. “Will you do one in my hair?”

  “Okay.” Kristin’s voice is cool, but when she takes the brush from Amy and brushes the underside of Amanda’s hair so that she can gather it all in her free hand, her expression is rapt. Now Amanda sits Indian style, her back perfectly straight, her hands in her lap. Kristin begins to braid in a cautious but graceful rhythm. When she’s nearly finished, she says, “Do you have a rubber band?”

  “Darn,” Amanda says. “I don’t.” Then, “Wait a minute. Amy, give me my shoe, will you?” Not changing position, not looking down, she unlaces the shoestring in her Reebok, feeling with her fingers for the eyelets. “There you go.”

  “Come here,” Kristin tells Amy. Like a little slave, Amy jumps up and holds the end of the braid so Kristin can tie the shoelace around it. Something about the three of them reminds me of a painting we studied in Western Civ, one I can’t remember the name of. Someone and her handmaids.

  Suddenly I get this burning feeling, like if I don’t get up and do something right this second I’m going to go crazy. I pull off my T-shirt, throw it on my chair, and take off running.

  “Jackson?” Mom calls.

  I don’t look back. I’m like a machine, pumping, pounding. When I know I’ve gone far enough that they can’t see me, I throw myself down on the warm sand and breathe hard. Just chill, I tell myself. She probably didn’t even notice you were acting weird. Why would she? Waves crash and recede, sometimes licking me, and leaving a bubbly white foam on my skin. When my heart stops pounding, I head back, jogging at a steady comfortable pace, planning exactly how I am going to slow down, walk to my beach chair, towel off, and sit down with my book as if I’m a perfectly normal person with no interest whatsoever in anyone but myself. I remind myself that, thank God, I can actually pull this off because I don’t look like a wimp anymore. I may feel like an idiot, I may be an idiot, but I don’t have to be embarrassed by the way I look. Then when I get back Amanda’s chair is empty.

  “She went running,” Amy says, pointing vaguely in the opposite direction from which I’ve come. “Like you, Jackson. She can run really fast.”

  Kristin says, “She asked us to watch her things.”

  I shrug, like it’s no big deal to me what Amanda does. I drape my towel over my head and lie down on the lounge chair as if exhausted from my run.

  “Isn’t she the sweetest girl?” I hear Mom say to Ted. “Did you hear her telling me she was an only child? Her parents are older, retired. From San Francisco. She’s in boarding school out East somewhere, some girls’ school. They take her on these fabulous vacations when she’s on break, but I gather they’re not much fun. They stay in the condo and play bridge, she says. I think she’s lonely.”

  “She’s a knockout,” Ted says.

  “Hmmm,” says Mom. “I’ll bet she doesn’t know it.”

  This I find hard to believe, but when Amanda comes back from jogging I think maybe Mom is right. Or at least I think that if Amanda does know she’s pretty, maybe it’s not the most important thing in the world to her. I mean, most girls I know will sit by a swimming pool for hours and never go in the water for fear of messing up their hair or their makeup. But Amanda comes flying down the beach, all sweaty, and dives into the ocean to cool off. When she comes out, she takes a baseball cap from her beach bag and puts it on, flipping her long braid through the hole in the back. She plunks down on the sand to play with Kristin and Amy.

  Amy has a bunch of little pastel-colored ponies, and they decide to make a stable for them. They make a round wall, then build up little stalls inside, one for each of the ponies. They make a forest all around by dripping wet sand into tall treelike forms. An evil forest, Amanda says.

  “But these are magic ponies. Two beautiful little girls have been kidnapped by bad spirits and only these ponies can get their parents through the forest and take them to the right place to rescue their children.”

  Amy gallops one of the ponies over the sand to Amanda, then another one right up the arm of my chair. “Okay, you and Jackson be the parents,” she says. “You and Jackson ride the magic ponies to the forest and find us, and then we all live happy ever after.”

  I sit, paralyzed, my book in my face, praying that Amanda will either ignore her or sug
gest another game. But she reaches over and jiggles my bare foot. “Dear,” she says in a high whiny voice. “Would you please stop reading and get on the magic pony, so we can find our poor lost children? And then could you give me a hand building a walled fortress, so we’ll all have a place to live happy ever after in?”

  Amy giggles wildly. “Come on, Jackson,” she says. “Play.”

  That’s how I end up down on the sand so close to Amanda that I feel like I might have a heart attack any minute.

  “Here,” she says, handing me a Coke cup. “You can make the turrets.”

  I can handle that: scooping wet sand, packing it, then turning the cup over just right, so that a perfect, round turret appears. With the sharp edge of a shell, I make elaborate markings on each one.

  “Like a medieval craftsman,” Amanda says. “Did you know that sometimes they used to carve really bizarre things in cathedrals? Way up or in dark places, where it’s hard to see?”

  That gets us to talking about school and various classes we’ve taken, and I tell her about my favorite class, Western Civ, and how we had to make up our own circles of hell when we read the Inferno.

  “Like for televangelists,” I say. “They’d have to spend eternity preaching to adoring old ladies who are totally poor. And food-packaging people. They’d be buried in their own paper and plastic crap, forever one breath short of suffocating to death. Righteous vegetarians—”

  “Eating cheeseburgers.” Amanda laughs. “McDonald’s Quarter Pounders. How about people who hate art? Put them in a dark room watching slides of great paintings forever and ever. And every day, there’s a test. I loved the Inferno when we read it,” she says. “But we never got to do anything fun with it, like that. My school is so serious. So predictable. Everybody’s exactly the same.”

  “That’s one problem we don’t have,” I say. “Everyone being the same.” I tell her about the weird mix of people in the city school I go to.