Mystic Summer

by Hannah McKinnon

  I turn to face the mirror, feeling the same way. “I guess I was so relieved that Erika had finally picked out a gown, I overlooked the fact this dress is kind of . . .”

  “Hideous!” Peyton sweeps the curtain matter-of-factly aside and steps out. Hideous isn’t the only problem, however. When the seamstress motions me over to the fitting riser, I almost tip over.

  “You’ll need to take small steps in a mermaid design,” she cautions us. I’m already picturing the four of us shimmying down the aisle, like wayward mermaids out of water.

  “It’s too bad there isn’t a slit up the back,” I say.

  “There will be if any one of us tries to dance,” Peyton huffs, as she, too, inches toward the riser. It takes her forever to get there, and we both burst out laughing.

  Erika and the cousins come back and join us. “Look at you girls!” Erika cries, placing her hands on either side of her face. “You’re gorgeous.” But when I try to turn around to face her, she narrows her eyes. “Why are you so stiff?”

  I shrug, apologetically, and shuffle toward her.

  “Oh, good Lord. You can’t walk in this dress, can you?” She spins around to Peyton. “What about you?”

  Peyton forces a smile. “Just need a little practice,” she insists.

  But Erika’s not buying it. “Show me,” she says flatly. Peyton hobbles closer.

  Erika covers her face with her hands. “You’ll never make it down the aisle. Or onto the dance floor!” She turns to her cousins. “Carly. Leslie. Go try yours on!”

  Obediently, they disappear into the changing area with their dress bags. Moments later the curtain opens again, and there stand the Chicago cousins, their mouths zipped as tightly as their dresses. “It is a little snug,” Carly admits finally.

  Erika turns to the seamstress, her nostrils flaring. “Wait here. I’m calling my mother.”

  We wait in uncomfortable silence. I have no idea what kind of fashion consolation Mrs. Crane can offer mere days before the wedding, but moments later Erika’s back with wet eyes and a wad of tissues.

  Peyton gives it her best shot. “Look, I’ve been to several weddings where the bridesmaids all wore different dresses, but something in the same color scheme.” She looks hopefully at Erika. “Shopping here in town might allow each of us to get something that suits our physiques and styles.”

  Erika sits down hard on her plastic folding chair.

  Shopping last minute is our chance. I can almost feel the swish of a shorter, roomier gown against my legs. I can picture all of us hitting the dance floor and posing for pictures and actually eating wedding cake without feeling like we’ve been sewn into sausage casing.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Erika lifts her face from the wad of tissues. “I just loved this gown so much,” she says, running her fingers longingly across my skirt. “It would be a shame to give up on it.”

  Peyton flashes me a warning look. Even the cousins are watching me with intense interest. I know what they all want me to say.

  “And the belt is the exact color of the bows on the reception chairs,” Erika adds, in a small voice.

  The belt. My least-favorite part of this dress. I can feel the possibility of a new dress slipping through our fingers.

  “Mags?” Erika stands up. I can tell she’s about to unravel. “Tell me the truth. You hate this dress, don’t you?”

  All eyes rest firmly on me.

  The Crystal Mall is part of our history. When we were both eleven, my mother took Erika and me back-to-school shopping there. In one week we’d be starting middle school. Erika offered me a swipe of her Bonne Bell root beer lip gloss as we discussed our wish list in the backseat of the family station wagon. “I want to get the pink-and-green Abercrombie rugby,” she announced.

  “The one that was in Seventeen magazine?”

  She nodded piously.

  I knew exactly which shirt Erika was talking about. We’d pored over the magazine’s fall fashion layout, in which a lanky blond model wore the Abercrombie & Fitch shirt, while sitting on the bleachers and watching a homecoming game. I’m not sure if we ached more for the romanticized New England prep school scene, complete with football players and pom-poms, or the shirt itself. But the rugby was somewhat more accessible.

  “Where should we start?” my mother asked, as we stood in the mall entrance.

  “Mom, we need to go to Abercrombie.”

  Mom blinked. “Oh, okay. I guess we can try to find some sales there.” It wasn’t a good sign.

  While Mom halted to eye a mannequin dressed in an orange triangle bikini, Erika and I searched the floor for the university-inspired rugby shirt from the magazine ad.

  “That’s the one!” Erika raced to the rack and whisked the shirt into the air. “What do you think?”

  I grabbed the tag. “I think it looks expensive. Ninety-eight bucks for a shirt!” I was sounding like my mother.

  Erika shrugged. “But I love it.”

  The bold watermelon stripes were hard to resist. I fingered the crisp canvas collar. Erika thrust it against my chest. “Wow, Mags. You should get it.”

  “I don’t know.” I was already imagining the multiple items my mother could pick out that would still total less than this one shirt.

  “What’s the matter? You look great.”

  I shrugged helplessly. How to explain to my best friend that my parents couldn’t afford it, without feeling like I was throwing them under the bus?

  “Just show your mom,” Erika insisted.

  She followed me to the lone clearance rack in the rear where we found my mother. “Mom, what do you think about this rugby?” Desperately, I tugged it over my head over my T-shirt.

  “That’s cute.” Then Mom checked the tag. “Oh, honey.” She looked at me apologetically. “I still have to take Jane back-to-school shopping, too. Maybe it will go on sale,” Mom said brightly.

  But I knew the truth. There was no second chance for the first day of school.

  When it was Erika’s turn to make her purchases, she piled her findings on the counter. Cargo shorts, tank tops, a red hoodie. Beneath it all the striped sleeve peeked out.

  It was near the end of the week, during gym class, when it happened. We’d played tennis outside in the gorgeous late summer weather, and when we filed into the girls room to change, I opened my locker. There, hanging beside my jeans, was the Abercrombie rugby.

  I glanced around. Erika was sitting on the bench, two girls down, unlacing her sneakers. My blue shirt, that I’d worn to school, was missing. “Erika?” I whispered.

  She looked over at me. “Wow, Maggie,” she said loudly. The girls around us quieted instantly, listening in. “I love your new shirt.”

  It was then I noticed the sleeve of my blue shirt sticking out of Erika’s backpack. She zipped it up, and when no one was watching, flashed me her pinky finger.

  Now, standing on the bridal shop riser, with my feet practically sewn together in this god-awful gown, I stand up straighter. “Erika. Do you love this dress?”

  Erika nods, sadly. “But you girls can’t move in it. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

  From behind me, I can feel the weight of Leslie’s, Carly’s, and Peyton’s incredulous stares. But I shake my head. “It’s not that bad,” I tell her. “We’ll put a slit in the back. Right?”

  The seamstress nods in agreement.

  “And you don’t think the fabric is too heavy?” Erika worries aloud.

  “Nah. It’ll keep us tame on the dance floor.”

  Behind me Peyton sighs audibly.

  “Are you sure?” Erika asks, trying to temper the excitement in her voice.

  “I’m sure,” I say, running my hand over the insidious green belt. “Besides, look at this.”

  Erika smiles hopefully. “The belt?”

  I smile back as convincingly as I can. “The belt makes the dress.”

  Twenty-One

  The bridal party is scheduled for a lobster dinner cruis
e aboard the Mystic Whaler tonight, courtesy of Trent’s family. The schooner will take us out to Fishers Island, a place I’ve been excited to share with Evan since I first told him I grew up in Mystic. With the dress fittings complete, I want nothing more than to run home for a nap before I have to shower and get dressed in time to meet everyone at the pier. On the way home, I take a turn onto a side street too sharply. Something rolls out from under the seat of my car and hits my foot. Startled, I reach down to retrieve it and lift up Emory’s bright green teething ball. It’s all the excuse I need.

  Cam’s Jeep is in the driveway, and I’m relieved to see that his parents’ cars are not. I park and jog up the walkway. No sooner have I stepped up to the front door than I notice a figure bent among the garden beds across the yard. It’s Mrs. Wilder.

  She kneels, her gloved hands working quickly as she carves small divots in the border. Beside her is a tray of pink and white pansies. “Mrs. Wilder?”

  She turns, her trowel poised above the soil. Mrs. Wilder’s expression is flat, her normally tidy brown bob frayed with the day’s humidity.

  “I guess you’ve heard,” she says, sitting back on her haunches.

  I hesitate, unsure of what she means. “Is everything okay?”

  “Emory’s back at Yale.” She turns back to the garden bed. I watch her complete the row of divots she’d been working on, as I stand there trying to make sense of what she’s just said—one, two, three more small holes. Then, discarding the trowel roughly, she reaches for the plastic tray of flowers. “She has thrombosis, but she’s stable now. I just left them a couple hours ago.” She plucks a clump of pansies from the tray and separates the roots.

  “I had no idea. When?”

  Mrs. Wilder tucks the flowers into a hole, patting them snugly into the ground. “Emory seemed fine after the procedure on Wednesday, but yesterday morning she starting showing symptoms of low oxygen and her leg was turning blue.” She pauses, and wipes the back of her hand across her forehead. “They took her to Lawrence Memorial, then transferred her right over to Yale.”

  “I’m so sorry. Is she going to be all right?”

  She seizes her trowel and looks at me. “She has to be.”

  I have never seen Mrs. Wilder looking like this. She has always been a somewhat intimidating, if polite, woman, a protective mother of her only son. Now, sitting among the vigor of her flower beds, she appears hollowed out. “Is there anything I can do to help? Would you like a ride to the hospital, when you go back?” I am babbling, unsure of what to offer, unsure of what the Wilders would even need right now.

  “No, thank you. I was there all night. I just came home to rest.”

  I look at the garden bed and it’s then I register the numerous piles of plastic flower trays, discarded and tossed aside, all around the yard. The borders of each bed are freshly overturned, the dark soil baking already to a pale brown in the sun. “Why don’t you come inside and have a glass of water?” I ask. She looks down at her shaking gloves, smeared with dirt. I almost expect her to ask me to leave.

  Instead, she rises uneasily. “Okay,” she says.

  She holds the back door open for me, and when I realize that she hasn’t followed me into the kitchen, I hesitate. I find her in the living room, lying on the couch.

  There is a pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator. I fill a glass. But instead of bringing it to her, I start opening cabinets. I find what I’m looking for in a bottom drawer. It’s the red tin tray that I have seen Mrs. Wilder use over the years to serve. To serve bowls of Jell-O, in every color, the Christmas that Cameron had his tonsils out. To bring us lemonade on their back porch, the first summer we dated. The red paint has faded and there are small dings along its edges. But now I pull out the familiar tray and place her iced tea on it along with a bowl that I fill with some yogurt. I find a banana on the counter and slice it quickly, adding it to the mix.

  When I return to the living room, Mrs. Wilder’s eyes are closed. They flutter open as I approach. She looks surprised to see me, but I motion for her to stay where she is and pass her the cold glass. Her eyes water when I press it into her open hand.

  I am two exits away from Yale. Mrs. Wilder is back at home, hopefully still resting on the living room couch. Erika is at the club with Peyton and Mrs. Crane, going over the menu one last time. Evan and the men will be playing golf until the dinner cruise. He does not understand what I am doing.

  “What do you mean you’re driving to New Haven? Where are you now?” he’d said.

  “It’s my friend Cam. His little girl, the one I told you about, is back in the hospital.”

  He’d hesitated, and I wondered which had given him more pause: the mention of Cam again, or the fact that there was a seriously ill child. “I’m sorry to hear that. But tell me again why you’re going there?”

  “Because it’s serious,” I’d snapped. Because he may need me.

  Evan didn’t argue, but his tone was curt. “So I take it you’ll be back in time for the river cruise.” It wasn’t so much a question.

  “I’ll call you when I know more,” I’d said, before hanging up.

  I take the elevator up to the pediatric cardiology wing. Cam’s father is with him, Mrs. Wilder had said. As I walk down the corridor past patients’ rooms, I wonder what I will say to them, but then I remind myself that I don’t really have to say anything. I’m here.

  The nurse at the main desk tells me in no uncertain terms that it’s family visitation only when I stop to inquire about Emory’s room number. I don’t even hesitate. “I’m her mom,” I lie. She looks at me funny, and I realize that I would know where my child’s room was if I were truly Emory’s mother. If I were Lauren, I would be in there already, with her.

  But she points down the hall. “Eleven A.”

  I force myself to slow down as I reach the doorway. Outside I take a deep breath, and smooth my hair.

  When I step inside the room, I’m surprised to see three silent figures hovered around the bed. Two men, Cam and his father, have their backs to me. But the third is on the other side of the bed, facing my direction. She looks up when I halt in the doorway. Her blond hair frames the angles of her face, her eyes a lucid blue against her pained expression. I recognize her immediately from the picture in Cam’s room. It’s Lauren.

  Cam sits beside me in the cardiac waiting room, playing with a stray thread on his T-shirt.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s stable now,” he says, his voice thin with fatigue. “Last night—” he begins, then stops. He returns his attention to the stray thread. I watch as he tugs it gently, then tears it off.

  “I just heard,” I say. “I was in such a rush to get here, but I should’ve run downstairs and gotten you a change of fresh clothes. Or something.”

  He looks at me. “You were at my house?”

  “I was returning something.” I fumble with my purse. When I hand Cam the green teething ball, his fingers shake. He presses it to his nose and closes his eyes.

  I reach around the breadth of Cam’s shoulders and squeeze. He doesn’t cry. We sit in silence, side by side on the bench. Finally he clears his throat. “Dr. Weil did more imaging. The patch appears to be holding and the blood clot is breaking up. As long as she responds to the heparin, we should be out of the woods, for now.”

  I lean my head against his arm. “Thank God. All I could think about on the drive here was seeing her.” But Lauren is here now, I remember. And this is not my place.

  After a while Cam runs his hands through his hair and stands. I let my arm fall away. “I’ve got to get back.” He looks down at me. “Thank you for coming, Griff.”

  I nod. But it’s too soon for me to go. There are too many unknowns. What does it mean that Lauren is here? And is she going to stay? They’re questions I have no right to ask of Cam, especially not now.

  Cam motions for me to follow, and I do, uncertainly. When I arrived and saw them standing over her bed together, I’d halted in the doorw
ay. Cam had turned to me, then, and walked me wordlessly to the waiting room. I didn’t even get close enough to Emory to see her.

  But now, instead of stopping at the bank of elevators to see me out, to my surprise Cam passes them. He motions me back down the hall, back to Emory’s room. His father is sitting in a corner chair, dozing. Lauren is still standing by the bed. “Lauren,” Cam says, “this is my friend Maggie.”

  She looks at me warily.

  But it’s Emory I can’t take my eyes off. She is sleeping. Someone has wrapped her snugly in a white blanket and she’s wearing a pink pediatric gown, a cluster of tubes climbing up out of the neckline. A plastic oxygen mask is taped across her face, but I recognize the familiar curve of her tiny nose through it. One little arm is thrown up over her head, just like she does when she naps in her crib. The other rests by her side. Instinctively, I reach over the bedrail and tuck my finger into her hand. My eyes sting when her fingers flex around mine.

  At that moment I look up. Lauren is watching me. She doesn’t smile or even hold my gaze. But it’s not that that strikes me. It’s the rawness of her beauty juxtaposed by the stillness of her body. I can’t help but imagine Jane in this situation. In spite of the machines and IV tubes, Jane would be in the bed, or somehow perched on the edge of the bed, pressing some part of herself carefully but clearly against her child. There would be tears or whispers or humming. Some physical or audible melody of a mother’s angst-ridden love. There is none of that with Lauren.

  “I should go,” I whisper.

  Cam thanks me for coming. His father stirs in the corner chair. Lauren still says nothing.

  In the doorway, I can’t help but look back. The sun is high outside the window, bathing the sterile hospital room in light. There are two heads bowed together over Emory’s bed. Her mother’s hair the color of an angel’s.

  It’s not until I reach the parking lot and climb behind the steering wheel of my hot car that I cry.

  Twenty-Two