Camptown Ladies

by Mari SanGiovanni

  I circled the camp and wound up back in front of the camp store, and ducked inside to avoid the view of the construction crew. Mom and Lisa were going at it, while Dad pretended to be restocking the candy shelves. Lisa and I both knew he came into the camp store only to steal black licorice. We ordered extra boxes for him and kept it off the inventory list, and secret from Mom.

  Mom was trying not to shout, which meant she was shouting. “Why the hell would I put the girl’s sign over the boy’s stuff and the boy’s sign over the girl’s stuff?”

  Lisa was laughing at her. “Mom. Don’t you get it yet? Camptown Ladies and Camp Camp attracts a certain clientele. And that clientele has girls that wouldn’t be caught dead buying pink picnic tablecloths and boys that would squeal at the sight of them.”

  Mom snapped, “You’re not making any sense.”

  This fight was a relief compared to the one going on inside my head. Lisa got up on the ladder to hang the Camp Camp Supplies sign over the matching rainbow umbrellas and plastic tumblers. The Camptown Ladies sign was already perched high over the sea of army green merchandise. Mom placed both hands on her hips and sighed a Darth Vader breath. Darth’s appearance was a sign things could end badly.

  Lisa saw me as she came down the ladder and said, “Let’s ask Marie, she’s great at making decisions. She’ll probably want to hang a sign that already fell on her head and hurt her several times, a sign that will no doubt hit her in the friggin’ head again.”

  I glared at her.

  Mom turned to me and said, “Don’t tell me this makes any sense to you,” and she waited for my reply.

  “I don’t have an opinion,” I finally said, deathly afraid to have the crosshairs turned my way.

  Lisa said, “Oh come on, Marie. Make a decision and stick with it. You know, dive in or not, but stick with your decision.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her to tell her to back off, but this never worked, and I knew this time would be no different. Just then, Vince hopped into the store, yelling, “Hey campers!” and his cheerfulness was so bizarre that we all just stared at him. “What?” he said, checking his face in one of the small hand mirrors hanging on the wall. “What are you all staring at?”

  Lisa said, “Those strange little white things in your mouth called teeth. What’s the shit-eating grin about?”

  “Would you mind if I ordered another truckload of beach sand for around the pond?” he asked Lisa.

  “I said, what’s the shit-eating grin about?” Lisa said.

  “Nothing. I want to put some beach sand over near the pond by Katie’s trailer. Can I do it?”

  “Who the fuck is Katie?” she asked.

  “It’s for Buddy,” he answered.

  Lisa said, “OK, who the fuck is Buddy? Are we talking about your dead dog from ten years ago? Tell me you didn’t keep have him stuffed, you were always such a weird kid.” Mom nodded. Even her argument with Lisa could not make her disagree about something that obvious.

  “Buddy is Katie’s son,” he said. “The kid’s favorite thing was to go to the beach with his father, even though he only took him once. Buddy doesn’t stop talking about it, so I thought we could make the pond look more like a beach for when he goes fishing.”

  Dad popped up from the candy aisle as I waited for Lisa to take a crack at Vince. Some kind of joke about Katie, about how notoriously bad Vince’s gaydar was, about—worse, from Lisa’s perspective—how Vince’s horrible fishing technique could cripple a child’s talents before he ever had a chance. But all she said was, “Sure, go ahead.”

  Vince bolted out the door. “Great. I’ll go find Erica so she can negotiate the price for the sand,” he said over his shoulder, and our hopes were dashed that Vince was showing the first sign of a distraction from his heartbreak.

  The distraction of Vince did lead Mom and Lisa into an unspoken truce. Lisa signaled for Mom to hand her a bracket for the sign, and she did so with no comment. Peace at last.

  “So,” Lisa said, “Marie banged Lorn last night.”

  “Lisa, what the fuck!” I yelled, and I punched her in the arm as hard as I could before she got me in a headlock vise grip. In seconds my nose was touching the floor. From that angle, I could see the piles of Dad’s secret candy wrappers that he had shoved under the shelves.

  “Girls!” Mom yelled, and I heard Dad’s licorice-muffled laugh. Mom heard it too, and even with my face to the floor, I recognized the sound of Mom giving him a gentle smack on his arm. “Stan! Stop stealing candy!” and Dad laughed again. It was so awkward for us kids when the parents were flirting.

  Later I saw Vince hanging by the pond, looking more like his angst-filled self, and I summoned the nerve to approach him.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey. What’s going on?”

  “I have a date tonight,” he said.

  I put my arm around him, casually, like he was an ottoman to my arm. “That’s great,” I said, gently, not wanting him to think it was a big deal and chicken out. “Katie asked you?”

  “Nope,” he said, “I asked her, and she said yes.” Then he tossed a flat stone across the pond. Six perfect skips, though it seemed his throw was less to skip the rock than to relieve an irritation.

  “Maybe you could teach Buddy. You were always good at skipping rocks.”

  “Not like Lisa,” he said miserably.

  “Well, no,” I said.

  “Lisa used to say I should leave my skipping to hopscotch.”

  “Well, you were pretty good.”

  Vince attempted a small laugh, but it came out as a cough. “The thing is, Katie said yes, which surprised me, since technically, she’s still married. She wants a divorce, but the guy won’t sign because then he’ll have to pay child support.”

  “But they’re separated, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, then just see where it goes,” I said. “It’s just one date.”

  Vince looked at me. “I’m not going.”

  He threw another stone into the pond, but this time the stone plummeted without a skip. I was confused and said, “You said you had a date tonight.”

  “Right after I asked Katie, Erica asked to see me tonight. I have to see where that goes first.”

  Though I was standing right there on solid ground next to my brother, my stomach convinced me I had just fallen off the roof again.

  Twenty-Six

  Every Day Is Gay Day

  I waited a few minutes so Vince wouldn’t get suspicious, then stormed over to where Erica had obviously returned back to her usual self and was shouting up at her crew, who was still working on the Dove Gaio Mangia roof. “Never in my life have I ever seen such a crew of women! Three days on a goddamned roof!” Even at a distance I could hear the wheezing laugh of my Uncle Freddie as he threw some shingles down, just a few feet away from hitting Erica. “Freddie, you throw like a friggin’ girl! Did you follow the Red Sox back in the day?”

  Uncle Freddie looked over the roof edge at her, “Yes,” he said.

  “Remember Fred Lynn? Well, I’m just gonna call you Lynn to remind you how you throw like a girl!”

  My uncle laughed again, but he also had the good sense to go back to his work. She yelled up at him again, “Lynn and crew, I don’t have all night, I have dinner plans, so move it! You guys, on the other hand, are gonna be eating shit on shingles for dinner if you don’t get going! There will not be a tarp on this friggin’ roof tonight!”

  I approached her and Erica started a bit when she saw me, but quickly recovered, turning her eyes back to the roof as she snapped at me, “Your uncle is part of my crew, don’t ask me to treat him differently.”

  I said, “Why would I ask you to treat a man in his seventies differently than men in their thirties? I need to talk to you about something else.”

  My heart was beating wildly from standing near her and I lied to myself it was my anger.

  “So, talk,” she said, with the same disinterested tone in her voice she r
eserved for vendors she prefers not to do business with, letting them go through their spiel before handily rejecting them.

  “Not here,” I said, with a tone just angry enough for her to take me seriously.

  I walked ahead so I couldn’t smell the scent of her hair, and she followed me at a distance until we reached the secluded parking lot where she had left her truck. I walked around to the other side of it for more privacy, and when she came around the truck, she completely disarmed me when I saw the pain in her eyes. I told myself that it didn’t matter, what she planned to do with Vince was wrong. If anyone knew that, it was me. I took a deep breath and spoke in a low voice.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked her.

  “My answer depends on what you’re attacking me for.”

  “I think you know,” I said, my voice rising.

  “What, Marie? What on earth do you think you have the right to school me about? My attitude? My crew? Or is it my date with your brother?”

  “Don’t do this to him,” I said. “He was just starting to get better and you’re pulling him back in!”

  “You were getting better too. How was your reunion with the actress last night?”

  Erica’s venom dissolved at once into sadness. She turned away from me, and my heart felt trapped in a cold metal vise. No, Erica, I thought, please stay angry with me. This was so much harder.

  She asked quietly, without turning around, “Was being with her everything you hoped it would be?” Her words barely got out, getting caught in her throat. When she turned back to me then, and I saw her eyes were filled to the brim, the vise tightened around my chest. Erica would sooner die than have somebody see her cry, so witnessing this was worse than if she had struck me hard across the face. My own eyes now burned at the corners, threatening tears, while Erica’s anger spiked out of nowhere again.

  “I have to accept you feel nothing for me, and I will! I have to accept that and forget about this, and what a fool I’m making of myself. But I shouldn’t be standing here, wasting my time, letting you tell me who I should and shouldn’t spend my time with!”

  I lowered my voice to a gentle tone, hoping she would follow. “Just please don’t give him hope. You’ll hurt him all over again,” I said. “If anyone knows what a brainless thing it is to get back with someone you don’t love, it’s me.”

  As soon as I said it, I realized, I had probably blown my cover about Lorn. She now knew I didn’t love her anymore.

  Erica studied me, then asked, “Are you sure this is all about protecting him?”

  “I’m sure,” I said quickly, and I took a step back from her. I knew I didn’t sound sure, and Erica knew it too. She took a step closer and held my face, as she had on the roof, only her eyes were blazing with pain and anger. Hit me, I thought, I deserve it. But then, her gaze moved to my lips and I saw her face soften and this terrified me so much more than her anger. I tried to shake my head no, but she had a good grip on me.

  “Erica, please,” I said, but my voice betrayed me and sounded as if I was begging her to do exactly what she was thinking. Then, she kissed me, and my entire world was tossed upside down again.

  Just one kiss, I thought, I’ll stop after this.

  She held my face tightly against hers, and I lied to myself that that was why I couldn’t pull back from her. It wasn’t at all because her mouth, so hungry and warm, made me weak, and drowning in her until I was Greg Brady on his wave again, only the wave was lifting me up high, maybe miles above earth, lifting us both so high that I was safe from Vince witnessing that I was taking her for myself. He could not see us from way up here on this wave. We were so high up he could never get to her. She was all mine.

  Why shouldn’t she be mine? She wanted me, the grip on my face and then the back of my neck told me I was right about that. Erica cried in a whisper against my mouth, “I can’t stand that you were with her,” then she kissed me harder. “I hate that, I hate it.” This is the moment I learned there may be nothing more passionate than an angry kiss.

  If she had let me pull back an inch from her mouth, I might have told her I had not been with Lorn; it had been her, it was my need for her that made me take Lorn last night. But who would believe a line like that? Though it had been completely true.

  I had run away from Lorn the second I could no longer pretend she wasn’t Erica. And now all I wanted was for Erica to know that she owned me, completely, even though I couldn’t have her. My brother loved her, so I couldn’t. And we were outside where we could be seen by anyone who happened to come walking around the side of her truck.

  I was going to tell her all this, all this as I brought my hands to her face to pull her mouth off me, to stop the insane bliss that was her body pressed against me, soft and strong as I knew it would be. But my hands disobeyed me, and instead, I slid my fingers into her hair to press her mouth harder, still against mine to continue the mind-numbing kiss, angry, passionate, sad—and so hungry. How many times had I thought about touching her hair? Hundreds, likely thousands without me consciously knowing it. And now, knowing what it felt like, would I ever think of anything else?

  Then I felt the tip of Erica’s tongue touch mine, Greg Brady got completely knocked off his board once more, the ridiculous heat between us so intense that it made my head spin. By some miracle, the world righted itself again, and I was reminded by the sudden quiet of the campground that we could be seen, and she was definitely not mine. As wrong as it was for me to take Lorn when I knew I didn’t love her anymore, this was much more wicked. My brother loves this woman. Vince, who’d had dozens of women before her and had never come close to marriage, had fallen for this woman the moment he met her. He had wanted to marry her.

  I pulled myself from her, and put up both my hands against her shoulders to keep her back from me. I spoke in a wobbly voice that sounded anything but decisive, “No, Erica, I can’t. Not ever.”

  The tears of pleasure that had streaked down her cheeks when I had responded to her kiss were now changing to pain as I held her apart from me. I was vaguely aware I might be crying as well, but all I could feel was her pain, and I fully understood all the hurting I was causing her. I had been on the other side of it with Lorn, riding the rollercoaster of her push and pull. The difference here was that Erica knew where I stood, and where I could never stand. I knew from the look in her eyes that she had guessed the depths of what I felt for her, and what I couldn’t feel for her—and they were exactly the same damned thing.

  “Erica, I can’t.”

  Erica unlocked her eyes from me and finally looked down, sending a fresh pair of tears down to her boots, and I felt her strength sap away as she stopped fighting me. My hands were no longer keeping her apart from me, but instead, they were now resting, exhausted, on her shoulders. Finally, she backed away from me.

  “Vince reminded me so much of you,” she confessed in a raw whisper, as if, right now, she was just figuring this out. “He did right from the beginning. I know understand why I thought I loved him, what my connection was to him. I know why I hated Lorn back then, too. I told myself I hated her because she would hurt you.”

  Erica had hated Lorn. Why hadn’t I seen that?

  She leaned against her truck, defeated. She said, “When I met your brother, I thought everything I felt for you I could maybe feel for him. He’s so much like you. He even looks like you.” Then, in a desperate, childlike voice she asked, “If I can’t have you—and he is so much like you—you think someday I could love him, too?”

  I waited a long time before I whispered, “I don’t know. I hope so, for his sake.” But my heart was aching excruciatingly at the thought. My body was still saying: mine. I want her. She’s mine.

  Erica wiped her eyes with her sleeve as she said, “I’ve never not taken whatever—”

  “I know,” I said.

  But her determination withered as she said, “But I don’t want to hurt him again. This is going to sound awful. I sometimes think if I can’
t have what I want, my best chance of falling in love ever again is with Vince. If I could learn to love him, maybe I could feel like this again, someday.”

  “Please don’t,” I said, before I could stop myself. I hoped I sounded as protective of my brother as I felt, and not like I was begging her not to be with anyone but me. At that very moment, I was not sure which I meant. I took a deep breath and said, “Please don’t risk hurting him.”

  She looked at me with a flicker of hope in her eyes, searching mine for a different answer as she said, “I’m sorry that I can’t love him more than you.”

  “And I’m sorry, but I do,” I said.

  At that, Erica backed off, just as I had needed her to. She nodded her head slightly before opening the door to her truck, and got inside. When the door shut and she pulled away, I fought the urge to chase the truck like a wild dog, biting at the tires to stop her from going. And now that she was moving away from me, I wanted to tell her how I feared my heart might stop beating if I gave her up, and I knew that my brother wouldn’t want that, so could she please come back?

  My other choice beyond chasing the truck like a junkyard dog was to let myself cry, but since I was no longer hidden by Erica’s truck, this was as impractical an option as chasing a flatbed down a dirt road. Greg Brady’s monster wave was long gone and it was me washed up on the shore, beached with a mouthful of sand, bathing suit ripped and spun around backward, and a crusty starfish stuck to my left boob (the big one), like an aquatic version of a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction.