I had always prayed when I was scared at night, or when I needed something, but when I was about ten years old, I convinced myself that God talked to me through the trees. I was sure of this, though I never told anyone. Who would I have told? Lisa? (“What the fuck are you? An idiot? I’m not going to have a nut bag for a sister, so knock it the fuck off.”) Vince? He was four years younger than me, and easily spooked, so I would have given him nightmares about birch trees. I couldn’t have told my mother, who was only half Italian, and whose concept of anything mystical or religious was for people who had far more free time than she had.
Mom may have been right, since religion came to me for the first time when I was painfully bored. I was in the backyard trying to lay low from Mom, who could hone in on my boredom like a professional bass fisherman, even if I was hiding under the couch like a perch under a sunken log. She would go trolling the house and throw her hook below the couch, then inform me that she needed a hand with the laundry since I was just wasting time. When the weather was good, it was easier to hide my boredom from her, since most of Mom’s chores were indoors.
On this particular day I was laying low outside and I remember it was cold and windy, since I was fantasizing about what it would be like to have been born by a mom who was OK with children hanging around the house during a nice day, watching more than three hours of TV. I nearly caved and went back inside due to the cold, but Sundays were floor-washing day and I didn’t want to get roped into moving kitchen chairs. Plus, washing floors made Mom particularly grumpy. Lisa always said she was grumpy because none of us had yet mastered the art of floating, and she could not accept the impossibility of three children’s feet not touching a floor for a solid hour.
On that day, I did what I always did when I was bored outside; I went across the street into the only entrance to a small patch of woods. I felt lucky we had these woods. It was the only one in the neighborhood and all the kids would have to walk by our house to get to it, and we had it right across the street. This was a safer option than moping around the backyard, where Mom might spot me out the kitchen window.
I watched the wind kick up the leaves into a dance and thought of a game where I asked the trees Yes or No questions. If the trees stayed silent, then the answer was No. If the wind picked up and made them wave, then the answer was Yes. A poor kid’s Magic 8 Ball. At first I asked questions that were silly, like, Would I be rich some day. (The trees said yes—and they turned out to be right.) Then I started to ask questions that I already knew the answer to, to test the unsuspecting trees. (Is my house white? Does Danny Gallagher from my English class have a pimple face, etc.) After the trees had answered eight in a row correctly, I got the eerie feeling that I was not just playing a game. I stopped asking questions and the trees stopped too. I remember sitting in the woods for a long time, until the silence got spookier than playing the game. So, I did what I always did when I was scared (and only when I was scared):I talked to God.
“God?”
Just then, the wind picked up the biggest gust yet and swayed the trees back and forth as if they were enthusiastically, or insanely, nodding their heads and the breeze pelted against my widened eyes. ‘Yes, of course it’s me!’ they seemed to be saying.
When the wind died down, I asked softly again, “Really? It’s you?” And the wind picked up again, in a rage this time, twisting the trees until they bent in impossible ways, seemingly that only something made of rubber could do. The wind kicked up and up, and when I didn’t think it could kick up some more it kicked up again as if all the trees wanted to show me how silly I was to have doubted them.
The leaves were vibrating so fast and furiously that they sparkled like a body of water, cresting in waves that built and fell, then built again. I thought I heard music, I thought I couldn’t breath, I definitely couldn’t move. I thought I had found God.
I told nobody.
My superstitious mind told me I should not mess with powers like this, and quizzing God could get me in a shitload of trouble, like playing with a Ouija board, so I didn’t talk to the trees for a long time after that. But, as the intensity of that first day faded, I began to talk to them again, and this habit followed me into adulthood so gradually that I never had time to analyze if it was a dumb thing to do. I just did it. I still did it—and I still told nobody.
And now I was spending time in a campground, and today I did it instinctively on my walk back through the camp after Lisa shared some news. “She’s coming,” Lisa had said.
“Who’s coming?” I asked.
“Erica. She is taking the job as our contractor.”
“You’re shitting me. Does Vince know?”
Lisa said, “Not shitting you. You should tell him.”
“Hell no! Your idea, you do it.”
“You want them back together, too, and you’re much closer to Erica. You tell him. It’s a good sign that she agreed to come,” Lisa said.
Was it a good sign? I silently asked the row of trees looming behind my sister.
Immediately, the wind whipped through the campground, pulling the pines into a frenzied dance on the horizon. Maybe it was.
“Where the fuck did this wind come from?” Lisa said, “It’s been still all day.”
The trees seemed to be dancing an enthusiastic “Yes!” celebration. Or maybe they were flailing their limbs to warn us about a horrible mistake Lisa had made. Good sign or not, I realized selfishly that I wanted Erica to come. I had missed her, and missing a person like Erica was not the easiest thing to do. To the world, Erica was not the warm and fuzzy type; she was more like the cold and prickly. But toward me she was cool and neutral, and I was flattered by it, since this was Erica’s version of warmth. My brother liked this about her too. When Vince first met her, he had interpreted her tossing a few barbed comments his way as a sign that she might like him, and he’d turned out to be right.
I wrangled a job out of Erica and used my new fortune to pay for a distraction. What I had bought myself was a job with a talented and overbearing boss. Over time, I had noticed her critical assessments about my work had slowed to an occasional snide comment, and, with Erica, this was probably the only evidence I would ever have that we had become good friends. No criticism was like someone else saying “Good work!” and I understood the gruffness of her. I was Lisa’s sister, after all.
Erica was a dangerous spitfire, who carried just over the safety level limits of butane; an attractive Bic lighter in a stunning fashion color, one that always seemed just shy of torching a person if they irritated her. She cranked hard on that flint when someone had the misfortune to annoy her, but there was something about Erica that stopped her just short of being a bitch. Erica was ridiculously attractive and savvy, and I often thought that had she also been charming, it would have been overkill, and I might not have approved of her being my brother’s girlfriend. Too much of a good thing.
It was her cocky and caustic edge that fascinated me from the day we met. I had called her business, looking for a contractor, by checking the Pink Pages to support the gay and lesbian community in my new neighborhood. Somehow, Erica had managed to convince me she was the woman for the job by insulting me over the phone. The balls on this woman, the irritating and unfathomable nerve.
Before I hired her as my contractor, I had one demand of my own: I wanted to work on my house with her. Erica answered with a stipulation of her own: “Will you take orders even though you’re paying me?” This would have been a warning sign from anyone else, but, looking back on it now, I realized we had built a friendship as she barked orders at me.
Vince had a crush on her the second they met, and I warned him he was barking up the wrong tree, that while she looked like a straight girl, she was one of my people, but Vince convinced himself he could turn her, as I convinced him he was an idiot. After months of letting both of us think she was gay, I busted her when she showed up one day in a cute sundress. (To her credit, Erica never curtailed her truck driver language
while wearing a dress.)
Concerns about Vince aside, having her join our Camptown Ladies project would be just what we needed, since Lisa was clueless about the larger jobs. I knew from experience that Erica could assemble a crew to whip the place into shape. More importantly, Lisa was in her frequently wrong, never in doubt mode, and this can prove dangerous, especially with nail guns lying around. With so many roofs needing to be replaced, and special roofs at that, and log walls to be replaced and electrical and plumbing to be added or completely updated, we were in dire need of someone we could trust. Truth be told, our greatest building achievement so far had been Dad’s woodpile.
Eddie, however, was cruising along just fine, except for the fact that we were doing everything backward and the structure needed to be addressed before the cosmetics. Lisa had the money to burn, so Eddie was doing what he could to prep the rec hall and ready his decorating decisions. Today I was stopping by the rec hall on my way to get the leaf blower take another crack at managing the pine needles in the worst buried sites.
Lisa was standing at the entrance of the rec hall, testing the ice cream inventory of Mom’s store by chomping on a vanilla filledwaffle cone thing and beaming at Eddie as if she had sired him. Lisa has a way of doing this; of claiming something with such convincing authority that I knew I would soon have to fight the urge to put my arm around her and offer the proud papa a cigar for the fine job she did raising her son to be a decorator.
I stood next to Lisa at the doorway, marveling at the site of Eddie on all fours. He was humming “It’s Raining Men” while he scrubbed the urine-stained corners of the hall as Cindy-Lu sat nearby, hurt and disappointed that Eddie was ruining the urine perfume they had bonded over. She whined and he leaned until he was nose to nose with her.
“I know, my darling. But the world doesn’t understand the beauty of these things as we do. Trust me, once the boys start drinking, there will be plenty more where that came from.”
Perhaps the only thing gayer than watching a man with a pink boa scrub urine stains while singing “It’s Raining Men” is . . . well . . . my sister and I decided there just isn’t anything gayer. Eddie cheerfully worked with his nine-pound supervisor at his elbow until the bleach smell drove Cindy-Lu to the farthest corner of the hall, disgusted by his choices.
Lisa said, “I don’t like my dog hanging around this filthy floor. She sleeps with me, and a Miniature Doberman is like a heat-seeking missile in bed. I sleep naked, so sometimes I wake up with her so buried in my crotch that she’s wearing my labia like a Princess Leia wig.”
“Charming,” Eddie said.
“Keep singing, Eddie. I love that song. If only it could rain men, huh?”
“Tell me about it, honey!” he said.
Lisa said, “It would be great. The fall would kill most of them.” Pleased with herself, she took a dramatic lick from her ice cream.
“What the hell are you eating now?” I asked her.
“It’s called a Choco-Taco. Very yummy.”
She turned the ice cream taco vertically and shoved it in my face and shouted, “Look, a vagina!”
I pushed it away, but not before she had nailed my nose with vanilla.
“I had Mom order these for the dykes. I got Drumsticks and Bomb Pops for the boys—they’re shaped like penises and butt plugs. Oh, and Hoodsie Cups. Despite the boring shape, there is just about nothing gayer than a Hoodsie Cup.”
We both looked at Eddie, who was wiggling his ass in time with his scrubbing and humming. I should have known better than to point out when Lisa was wrong, but I tried, and she shoved the Choco-Taco in my face again.
“Licking something taco shaped is the only thing that will cure you,” she said.
I pushed it away again, but she shoved it into my face harder; this time, the ice cream entered my nostrils. I tried to push her away but it was pointless, she was too strong, and I was in a weakened state, choking and laughing. Years of different variations of the same struggle flashed before my eyes. The pool fight, the car fight, the beanbag fight, the shopping cart fight. They all ended the same: Lisa wins.
“I’m doing this for your own good!” Lisa said, with such certainty I almost believed her. Still, I managed to bat her hand away.
Eddie yelled over his shoulder at me, “She’s right, honey, it’s for your own good, just lick it.”
“Girls! Stop that out there!” Mom yelled from inside the store.
Eddie giggled, “Your mom called me a girl again.”
“There’s no window. How the fuck does she do that?” Lisa said, letting me go at the sight of Mom rounding the doorway.
“Language!” Mom yelled.
I wiped the chocolate and vanilla from my mouth onto my sleeve. I whispered, “She can hear through walls.”
“Looking good, Eddie!” Lisa shouted, the thunderous echo making Cindy-Lu cower as Lisa stuffed the rest of the ice cream in her mouth, despite my nostril contact. “Work it, boy! Bottoms up, elbows down, you dog!!”
Eddie delicately put a rubber-gloved hand on his hip, “Girl, I just know you’re not talking to me like that.”
I said, “Lisa, what would you think about hanging an Italian Horn somewhere in here for luck?”
She answered, “I suppose it’s less creepy than the string of rosary beads Aunt Aggie wants.”
Eddie piped, “You Catholic types are weird.”
“Amen,” Lisa said.
Eddie said, “I don’t get it. The whole drink the wine and eat the host.”
“Only if she’s hot,” Lisa said, before she walking off. She thumped me on the back, hard, and said: “Well, I’m off to stock the pond with some fin-less brown trout.”
Eddie waved his rag, “Isn’t the pond that way?”
I laughed at him. “She says that whenever she has to go to the bathroom.”
Eddie shook his head in disgust. “Dykes,” he said as he lovingly scrubbed a petite spot of urine.
It felt good to laugh again, and as I scanned the edge of the campground the trees waved, laughing with me. I would always keep my Tree-as-Magic-8-Ball religion to myself. It was a bizarre part of me and I needed it . . . just like I needed to hear Mom and Aggie snapping at each other over what shelf the plastic tablecloths should be stored on. I needed to see how Eddie would visually transform a smelly teen recreation hall into my sister’s dream. I needed to watch my Dad fester, dramatically guarding his wood like the insane man that comes barreling out his screen door when neighborhood kids make the unfortunate choice to cut across his lawn. I needed to hear Lisa barking orders like an insane short-order-cook-football-coach, using insults and sarcasm to motivate her weary and mostly unskilled team. I needed my brother and I to forget two women; one who was coming back too soon, and the one I realized I’d never had.
Seven
Testing For Soft Spots
I knew Vince wanted Erica to come, for all the wrong reasons. He looked like a heartbroken, but hopeful, boy, with dreams of still winning the girl. “This might be our only chance. I would have never gotten her back with Erica in California and me in here in Rhode Island.”
It was then I feared the trees had been signaling doom, and I had misread it. “Remember, Erica is coming to help us with the Campground,” I said.
“It’s a long way to come for a contracting job when she’s doing so well out there.” He was trying to stifle a grin. It was a grin I hadn’t seen in so long.
I tried again, “She’s doing it as a favor to Lisa. That’s probably all, Vince.”
Still, I supposed there was a chance, since it really didn’t make any sense for her to take the job. She’d be leaving lucrative clients out west, to come across the company to be closer to someone she just broke up with, yet she had decided she’d be the lead contractor of a campground? Maybe there was still a chance for her and Vince, but I knew better than to encourage him since, by the look on his face, he was already counting on it.
A few days later, Erica and what she called h
er “scouting” crew of three roared into Camptown Ladies in a rented, flatbed, diesel engine truck, outfitted with ladders and tools and some other heavy gear I could not identify. Since Lisa and Mom had forced me to eat a meatball sandwich for lunch, I did a quick face check in the mirror before heading outside to greet her. It had been over eight months since I had seen Erica at my Uncle Tony’s wedding to Lorn’s mother. Since then, the phone calls between us had dwindled down to nothing, the last few times with me doing the calling. Erica had been all business over the phone, except for Erica always getting in one cold comment about Lorn, “Dump her before she makes a fool out of you.”
“Too late,” I would say, and she had been right.
Erica hopped out of the truck, her hair stylishly pulled back from her face by the expensive sunglasses perched on her head. Erica was dwarfed by the doublewide truck, making her look nothing like the mighty woman I knew she was. In strength, her personality was the level of my sister, though her barbed comments were a bit more tasteful than Lisa.
I could see by her hands-on-hips pose she was already accessing the structure of the Camp Store and the tired rec hall with the oddly sparkling cement floor. She dropped her hands from her hips when she spotted me.
“Hey,” I said.
Erica just stared at me, as if I were a stranger.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, scanning for meatball on my shirt.
“Italian’s aren’t supposed to be thin,” she said, disapprovingly.
“I’m still fatter than you, and I just had a meatball sandwich,” I said.
“Well, you look terrible.”
Her concern flustered me a bit.
“Well, you look great, as usual, bitch.” I said, and she did.
Erica was a gorgeous woman. It was no wonder Vince had fallen for her the first day they met, right after she’d insulted his shirt (and deservedly so). Done deal; he was hooked. I remember thinking back then: Who wouldn’t be, poor bastard. I always expected to see a trail of men following behind her like ducklings, and my brother expected this, too. Lisa had warned me back then, “Vince aimed too high this time.” When I reached Erica, she surprised me with an awkward hug.
Camptown Ladies Page 6
