Camptown Ladies

by Mari SanGiovanni

  “You’re not going to interfere with my crew, right?” she said.

  “Never,” I answered, feeling a powerful warmth spread within me, which I dearly hoped was Uncle Freddie’s happiness. I thought I saw Erica let out a small smile before she turned her back on me, and I felt the alarming warmth again.

  Later that evening, after Mom and Dad and Uncle Freddie had gone home, Vince, Lisa, and I realized we had been working all by ourselves for quite a while when the lights at the Dove Gaio Mangia shut off by automatic timer, leaving all of us in the dark, except for the moonlight.

  Lisa said, “Well, I’ll take that as a sign from God. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

  Vince loaded up some extra kitchen things in a box Lisa she said she didn’t need and said, “I’ll leave these by your car. I’m done.”

  “You done here, Mare?” Lisa asked me.

  “Almost,” I said, wanting to finish up the last preparations on the buffet area. When my eyes adjusted to the loss of light, I saw how beautiful the atmosphere had become in the hall, even without the tiny lights on. The campfire light and heavy smoke just outside the hall had mixed with heavy fog and created a thick orange glow that held low in the air, pooling inside the hall. The path of the fog was moving, gently swirling as if someone had been drawing patterns into it with a giant stick.

  “Wow,” Lisa said, “fog by campfire light is amazing! It needs to look like this every night. I’m going to pick up a dry ice machine in time for the Dove Gaio Mangia opening. It’ll be fantastic!” As crazy as it sounded, I had to admit it would be beautiful if she could recreate the effect.

  Lisa left and I finished covering the buffet tables with new blue tarps to keep the dampness from settling on the plates and flatware. When I finished, I was struck by the silence of the campground. All voices had fallen to a distant hush, even the gay boys had stopped hooting, and all that could be heard was the pop and crackle of the campfire just outside the hall. It had been smart of Lisa to build a large fire pit within full view of the tables in the hall. I thought, if I were the type of person that allowed myself to stop and enjoy a moment, I would chill out in front of the Dove Gaio Mangia right now, just to feel some time pass.

  Before I could change my mind, I walked to the bench outside the hall near the camp store to sit and enjoy the sounds and smells of the camp. There was a chill in the air, but it was not uncomfortable, especially since the fire had warmed the wood bench seat. I breathed in the smell of pine and sweet wet smoke as I made a conscious effort not to think about Lorn or Erica. It was impossible.

  I heard footsteps to the side of the hall and checked my watch, and was surprised to see it was only ten-thirty.

  “Hey.”

  It was Erica.

  “Hey,” I said back. “What are you still doing here?”

  Erica said, “I don’t want to face your sister if this hall isn’t ready for her opening night. I secured a tarp over the last weak spot in the roof, but there’s a storm coming in.”

  “I heard,” I said. “Want to sit?” I slid over to one side of the bench, feeling the warm wood from the fire once again. She hesitated before joining me. She was dressed too well for someone who had climbed roofs to supervise men all day and I looked away, but not before I thought how campfire light was indeed her best friend. As she pulled her hair band out to shake her hair down, I could smell fresh air and the scent of her shampoo, so I got up to throw another shard of wood on the fire, now making an effort to think about Lorn.

  As if she had been reading my mind Erica said, “It was hard seeing her today.”

  “It was,” I agreed, then repeated what she said in my head as I thought, Had she meant me? The pounding in my chest seemed audible to my ears. I thanked God for the soundproof insulation of my large boobs, fairly certain they would stifle the loud thuds that were bellowing deep within my chest. Thank you, my boobs. Thank you.

  This wasn’t the first time I have thanked my boobs. I thanked them a lot, and to distract my thoughts of Erica, I began recounting the many times—ending with the time I caught my shoe heel in a parking lot pothole, sending me splatting to the pavement—that my boobs hit everything first and saved me from breaking my nose, or my jaw. “Bumbles Bounce,” I thought each time, one of many Rudolph quotes that ran through my head at regular and inappropriate intervals.

  I grabbed a few more pieces of wood and threw them into the struggling fire and stood watching the fire an extra moment before I turned to look at her. How long had she been staring back at me? Erica’s serious expression brought the thudding back—or was it just the nearness of her? I heard Rudolph’s thrilled and nasal voice, “She thinks I’m cuuuuuuute!” while I sat stewing in hatred of the part of me that was so thrilled to hope, the part of my idiotic heart that was galloping wildly out of control.

  When I walked back to the bench, Erica looked away from me, staring hypnotically at the campfire as I heard the distance voice again, although this time it was warning me: Of course Vince loves her, look at her. Vince will always love her. Don’t forget that. Ever. And don’t forget the person I used to be, the person that chased Lorn Elaine like a lunatic from one side of the country to another, dragging her out of the closet kicking and screaming in total fear of what it would do to her career—all because it was what I had wanted. Well, not this time. Not with this woman. Not to my brother. Not ever. Not that I even had a chance.

  Erica looked back up at me as if she’d somehow heard, and I quickly sat back down.

  I felt her arm graze against mine as she reached deep into her jacket pocket. She handed me a flask.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Your Dad left it on a table back there. Tequila.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Let’s give it back to him empty. That’ll teach him to leave things lying around.”

  I smiled at her. “I wondered why he was so generous with the wood today,” and she laughed.

  Note to self: Don’t make her laugh. She is ridiculously beautiful when she laughs. I remembered working so hard to make her laugh before. Before, when I was clueless.

  I spun the plastic top open and took a long swig and passed it to Erica as she said, “For his birthday, you should get him a real flask. What’s with this Tupperware version? It looks like something truckers pee in on long hauls.”

  I laughed. “Airplane proof. He bought that to take on the Jamaica trip a while back.”

  “Your dad is crazy.”

  “And this is news?” I said.

  She took a long swallow and we sat side by side, both feeling the warmth of the hot liquid slide into our bellies. A symphony of crickets drowned out the fat croaking bass note of a nearby bullfrog.

  “Jamaica is where you met her,” Erica said, and I didn’t answer.

  I was thinking about how so much had changed. How Erica had joined us in Jamaica for Lorn’s mother’s wedding to my Uncle Tony, and how she had been in love with my brother, and how it didn’t seem that long ago.

  “You should stay away from her,” Erica said in a low voice I didn’t recognize. She took another sip from the flask before handing it to me.

  I nodded and said, “I learned who I need to stay away from.”

  I said this knowing that not once in my life had my dim-witted heart ever listened to a word I said. I pulled another long swallow from the flask, and half-closed my eyes. There was warmth spreading on my face from the tequila and the fire, but it was nothing compared to the side of my body that was nearest to her.

  There was a long silence, then Erica took two sips in a row, and coughed a little from the strength of it. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft.

  “Marie. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”

  I didn’t know this voice, either. This voice could say anything. The voice that said my name like that could change everything. I pretended I didn’t hear her, stood up and started talking.

  “I know the schedule has b
een tight and there’s still a lot of work to do, but Lisa is hell bent on opening the restaurant tomorrow night.”

  I was rambling, and by the look on her face, she thought I was rambling, too.

  “So, I guess I’ll head out so tomorrow I can start out early.” She nodded at me, and the look on her face was heartbreaking. My stomach turned as I wondered if maybe I was wrong and she wanted to talk about Vince. Maybe she wanted me to help get him back for her. Maybe the look on my face was already revealing I didn’t want this. Maybe I needed to follow my instincts and just get the hell out of there.

  I asked her, “You OK with putting out this fire?”

  There was a long pause as her eyes met mine, as if she was searching for another choice from me, before she finally said, “Yes, if you need me to, I’ll put it out.”

  There was no mistaking that tone in her voice, but I tried to tell me I had not heard it, and I wished I had left right then instead of braving one more glance at her. She was no longer the Erica I knew, and I supposed, might never be again. The old Erica was cool, confident, and unreadable. People understood this at her first firm handshake, as I had. But this new Erica—she seemed unsure, and worse, much worse, she looked scared and . . . sadly hopeful, just like Vince had looked so many times after she came to the campground.

  She said she was OK with putting out the fire, so I left her there.

  “Goodnight,” I said, and I walked away into a night that had turned unexpectedly cold.

  Vince was yelling at me. “Tell me it’s not true!”

  My mind raced. I needed to lie to him. But how could he already know, when I just learned it tonight? Had he seen us sitting together on the bench? Or, maybe he had seen it long before I did. Maybe Lisa had suspected and told him.

  He knew me well enough to suspect how I looked at her, and more suspicious, how I avoided looking at her. Why had Lisa asked her to come? Why couldn’t that damned tiny voice have shouted out sooner what I should have known all along? When Lorn left me, it was Erica I had craved seeing. For comfort, I had told myself. Ridiculous, I told myself now. Erica was not a person you look to for comfort. I had wanted something I wouldn’t let myself admit.

  And now, somehow, Vince knew.

  I felt a violent crack across my face, the sound ringing loudly in my ears. Had he hit me? My baby brother whom I loved more than anything in the world? Even in childhood when we fought as siblings do, we never conceived of raising a hand to each other. My jaw throbbed like it does when I clench my teeth at night, and tears stung my cheeks as if he had caused an open wound. It burned. Had he been wearing a ring when he struck me? I glanced at his hands and saw his wedding ring, the edges glinting sharply in flashes of light. Why was he wearing his old yellow terry cloth robe? Had he married Erica? Please tell me he hadn’t married Erica—and why couldn’t my boobs insulate my chest from this pain? Everyone could hear the loud thudding now, it sounded like thunder. Another violent clap of pain in my ears, this time with a blinding flash of light. I deserved it, but he couldn’t have hit me.

  Of course Vince had not hit me. I sat up in my bed and thunder cracked above the roof again. I had been asleep for only two hours, yet it felt like I had destroyed several lives within that tiny space of time. It had been a terrible dream, but before I could sort it out, another crack of thunder released a heavy deluge of rain. I could hear the gutters outside my window overflowing and I flew out of bed to throw on whatever clothes I could find. I had one thought: the roof of Dove Gaio Mangia. I had to go check on what my sister thought was the heart of Camptown Ladies. Maybe it was knowing what a big day it would be for Lisa tomorrow, or maybe it was the freshness of the dream that made me want to avoid my brother, but I decided to let them sleep and head back out to the campground alone.

  Twenty-Two

  Stormy, Stormy Night

  I told myself I was overreacting to the severity of the storm, since I didn’t want to believe it was my dream that made me not want to wake my brother. My heart was still pounding from the memory of it, yet as I drove through the night, I told myself it was the storm that seemed to be building in strength. I knew better than to ask the trees a friggin’ thing, since the pines were bending as if they were made of rubber, so I would not like their dramatic answers.

  It seemed to take a ridiculous time to get to the camp as mini flash floods covered some of the dirt roads, and I had to push through very slowly or risk the car stalling out. It turned out I had not overreacted, and now that I had arrived, I thought it was stupid not to wake Lisa and Vince. I was reaching for my phone when I saw Erica’s truck was already there.

  I wasn’t surprised. Of course Erica would be there. I saw the white of her jacket moving back and forth from her truck to the Dove dining hall, and the huge flash of blue from the largest tarp being pulled off the buffet table. I was no sooner out of my car and into the thick mud when she started barking orders at me.

  “Help me hoist this onto the roof!” she screamed, but I could barely hear her over the storm.

  I saw the source of her panic. A leak had started from the roof and was bleeding a steady stream of water into the main seating area of Dove Gaio Mangia. Erica had already moved the tables away and constructed a makeshift trough from a piece of half pipe lined with a tarp to direct the water off the floor and safely away from the building. Remarkably, under some protection of the nearby pine boughs, our campfire was still smoldering, but now it emitted the sickening odor of a burned-out building.

  With the main floor and tables protected, Erica’s concern now shifted to the roof. “Hold this,” she said, stuffing the folded wet tarp into my arms as she grabbed one of the columns and hoisted herself up onto the railing before I could protest. I knew it was no use trying to talk her out of it, despite the danger of the storm. For a moment, I was paralyzed with fear, imagining her slipping off the wet roof or, worse, getting struck by the lightning that lashed dangerously close at the woods surrounding us.

  Erica leaned dangerously over the side of the roof and extended both arms. “Toss it!” I threw the heavy tarp and she caught it, and as I feared, the weight of it nearly pulled her over the edge. She regained her balance and disappeared with the tarp, and I, with a lot more effort than her, hoisted myself onto the railing and tried to pull myself up to the roof to help her.

  Erica yelled, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “You need help, now give me a hand, will you?” I yelled back.

  She grabbed my hand and, with great effort, helped to pull me up, but directed me to stay clear from the new clay tiles, which would be very slick in the rain and likely to break under my unskilled footing—though she didn’t phrase it quite like that.

  Erica had her tool belt on, and hammered down the original tarp to the old roof shingles until it was secured, and even in the madness of the storm, I noticed she still kept her distinctive nail-tapping pattern, only at a faster pace. Then we laid the larger tarp over the first one, the pelting sound of the pouring leak immediately slowing beneath us, then stopping all together.

  “It’s working!” I yelled. She smiled over at me, and my stomach flipped over as if I had tumbled off the roof, and at the next loud clap of thunder, I treated myself by mumbling an “Oh, fuck” that only I could hear.

  Erica nailed down the second tarp, pulling up a few shingles and using those to trap the tarp at each corner and nail them both to the roof to stop the wind from pulling it up like a sail. Before she secured the last corner, it whipped up in the wind as the storm charged closer.

  Without thinking, I quickly headed for it and slipped, which sent my foot crashing through a soft spot on the roof—so noiselessly compared with the thunder clapping over our heads, that Erica never looked up. Before I could think about what a bad idea it was, I had yanked my foot out violently out from the hole, which sent me flying down the side of the roof, the clay shingles too slick for me to stop sliding, until I got to the very edge. I pictured myself as Wile E. Coyote, having f
ailed at one of his harebrained schemes, my legs flailing over the side of the roof like I was peddling an invisible bike.

  “Erica!” I shouted, but the thunder droned me out, “Erica!” I yelled again, weaker this time, but the thunder had paused, so she heard me and whipped her head around.

  She dove at me in an instant, grabbing both my arms with no fear that I would pull her over the side with me, though it seemed likely this would happen. Her face was pressed against mine and I said into her ear, “I think the fall won’t kill me, but I could break both legs.”

  “You’re not going to fall!” she shouted into my face, her voice straining from the weight of me. “And don’t bother looking down. That’s not where you’re going!”

  I was petrified, but somehow I managed to say against her face, “I’ll just look down your shirt, OK?”

  “Yes, do that,” she said. Then she scared me with the panic in her voice, “Just don’t let go of me!”

  Maybe the fall could actually kill me with a juicy head injury, I thought, the terror making my legs go numb so that I could no longer pedal into thin air, trying to catch the edge of the roof. Erica dug her fingers painfully into both my arms like the claws of an animal, and I held as tightly as I could to her jacket, slick from the rain and threatening to tear right off her from the heaviness of my grip.

  “Don’t let go of me,” she said again, but this time her voice was soft in my ear.

  I shivered, I hoped from fear. Then I said, “This Grinch re-enactment sucks.” Then the fear found my voice, and I said in a ragged breath, “Please don’t let me go!”

  “No, never,” she groaned between her teeth. I could see over her head that Erica was using every bit of strength she had in her legs to create traction against the shingles so we both didn’t go hurtling over the edge.