Camptown Ladies

by Mari SanGiovanni

  When my brother came back from his weekend, he disappeared shortly after, and I didn’t see him or Erica again for the next few days. The sickening pain of it took residence in my stomach as I constantly weighed which was worse: seeing her and not being able to have her, or not seeing her, knowing she was with my brother, trying to make a go of it with him—as I had asked. After a while, I decided that not seeing her was far worse, since what I imagined she was doing nearly choked the life out of me.

  The camp season was winding down, and everyday another few trailers would be buttoned up for the winter or hauled past the Tap Box Lightly sign at the gate, the drivers giving a series of waves and polite short beeps, which promised they would be back the following spring. Mom and Dad came by only once on the weekends, mainly just for the drive. Uncle Freddie talked about visiting Italy this winter, and possibly staying until there was more work to be done at the camp in the spring.

  It was a particularly chilly day and I saw Lisa standing at the gate, talking to one of the year-round renters. She saw me and gave a quick goodbye to the man as he was heading out, and turned away from me toward the guard shack. I was baffled, since there was never any real camp business to do in the guard shack since she’d gotten to know the town and abandoned the idea of posting any security detail.

  I realized that Lisa, like Erica, was avoiding me. I called out and she stopped as if she had been caught. She turned and reluctantly walked over to me. She knew by the what the fuck look on my face that I wanted an explanation, and when we reached each other, she gave me one.

  “I don’t want to know what I know,” she said.

  I said, fearfully, “Me either.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but Vince is happy. Maybe happier than I’ve ever seen him,” she said.

  “Don’t you think I want that for him?” I asked. “That’s why I stopped it. For him.”

  I tried to remember when I had ever seen Lisa look so serious for so long, but I came up with nothing. And it was more than that: she looked angry. Our eyes locked and she had the same look she had when we’d fought in a pool as pre-teens and both ended up with ripped bathing suits down to our waists, each with our adolescent boobs in full view of our neighbors, who came out to witness the screaming. It would have made the perfect poster for teaching the importance of going for a win/win in an argument.

  “It’s not going to work with them,” she said.

  I said, “It might. You said yourself Vince is happy.”

  “It’s not going to work. Erica just hasn’t told him yet,” she said. “He’s going to be crushed. Again.”

  “She wants to love him,” I said, but even as I said it I realized how ridiculous it sounded. Nobody in love ever has to say they want to love somebody.

  Lisa unleashed her anger at me. “Really? Did she want to love him the night of the bonfire?”

  Oh, God.

  I looked at the ground between my feet, wishing it would open up and swallow me as Lisa yelled at me. “I hate this! I hate that I know it’s over between them and he has no friggin’ idea!”

  “Listen, I made a mistake that night, but I told her I couldn’t be with her, and we haven’t talked since. She probably hates me, and I deserve it.” I took a breath, then blurted, “Please don’t tell Vince. I couldn’t stand it if he knew.”

  “He’ll know soon enough. She’s gone.”

  “What?” I said, now feeling the ground actually opening up at my feet to swallow me up.

  “She said she needed to go back to California to tie up loose ends with her business, and she told me to tell Vince. The saddest part is, he’s not the least bit worried about her not coming back. He has no clue she is gone for good.”

  My head was spinning. “Maybe she just needs some time,” I said, actually hopeful, forgetting everything I wanted, knowing, as Lisa did, that it would destroy Vince when she didn’t return, just like I was being destroyed. On top of it all, I didn’t want my little brother to go through what I was.

  Lisa shook her head at me. Finally she said, “She’s in love with you. I should have known when she first came back here. She didn’t come back for Vince, and she sure as shit didn’t come back for this job.”

  “There’s nothing between us now.”

  She shook her head again. “There is. Go take a walk on the piece of land I gave you, you’ll see. Erica insisted—” Lisa slapped her forehead with her hand. “God, how the fuck did I not know? It should have been so obvious!”

  “What? What did she do?”

  Lisa raised her voice again, “I can forget about what she did. What I can’t forget about is what you did! The three of us have screwed up a lot of relationships, but we never, ever did something like this to each other!”

  I stood paralyzed as Lisa turned and walked away from me, mumbling to herself, “I fucking hate knowing this.”

  “I hate knowing it too,” I said, but Lisa had already gone.

  I stayed standing in the middle of the street like an idiot, until a group of teenagers used the camp entrance to turn their car around and nearly ran me over. After the car screeched off, leaving me unpunished for my sins, I regretted the car had not made me a hood ornament by plowing into me. And worse, I regretted being so much more irritating and painful to my sister than a rogue pube.

  Thirty

  Why Some Things Are Wrapped In Plastic

  It was getting much too late for a long walk in the woods, but I went anyway. I’d seen the piece of land Lisa had given me only on the first day we’d toured the camp, so, on top of all my other worries, I was concerned that even if I could find my way there, I might not find my way back. The light was fading quickly, so I tried to comfort myself by whispering stupid questions up to the trees.

  “Will I find my way back?” I asked. The trees swayed yes in a heavy breezy. I pushed my luck, “Will Vince and Erica stay together?” The trees stilled to a negative, creepy silence. “Will Vince be happy again?” My heart lifted as the wind kicked up above me and the treetops swayed gently back and forth, in a definite, cheerful yes. He would be happy again, I told myself; of course he would be.

  I walked farther, working up the courage to ask, “Will Erica and I ever find love again?” The wind picked up in the distance, and as it approached, the sky above me filled with the sound of trees celebrating an emphatic yes. It made me feel better, just as it used to when I was a kid. And, just as I did when I was a kid, I hedged my bets and stopped asking questions for fear I wouldn’t like the next answer. Except for my choices with women, quitting while I was ahead was something I understood, and, as I trudged through the woods, I wondered if, had I not inherited money, I could have made a good living playing cards.

  I was still looking up at the trees, considering other questions worth gambling on, so when I saw it, it took me completely by surprise, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Off in the distance, where just a few months ago it had been only wilderness, there stood a perfect little log cabin in the woods. Even from the obstructed view in the trees where I stood, I could see it was built in my favorite style, with high loft ceilings and a low area of the roof that overhang the front door. The dark logs were filled in-between with a white sealant I had told Erica I loved long ago because it reminded me of a gingerbread house from a childhood book my dad used to read to Lisa and me. This was something I confessed over drinks one night. She had at the time acted aloof, in the cool Erica-way she had when you shared something a bit too personal. I assumed she was too preoccupied with budgets, client billing, my brother, or maybe the wine we were sharing to really hear me.

  She had heard me. Slowly it sank in.

  Erica had built me a perfect log cabin home in the woods.

  I couldn’t ignore my body getting the best of me as I walked toward it, as I noticed all the details she’d added, all the details for which I had complimented during our time together looking over photos in her portfolio. Other details I had revealed closer to the end of our business p
artnership, and one, she revealed to me one night over several glasses of Brunello wine. Erica had been lit enough to say something warm and fuzzy, shocking me at the time. She said her dream was simple: to build the perfect home for the person she loved. At the time, I had been a bit drunk on the wine as well, and I laughed at her, but I had been so happy for my brother. At the time, I had no idea that I was the one in her heart. Maybe she didn’t realize it then, either.

  She had built me my dream house, complete with a small front porch, built with the sole purpose of having a place to put the two identical antique rocking chairs, bookends on either side of the porch, facing the brook.

  I quickened my pace, but my wild heartbeat was not from the walk. I loved Erica, and she loved me. She was not a woman who expressed her thoughts well in words, but she had built this beautiful home as a monument to what she felt—right down to hollowing out the small window box logs and filling them only with warm colored mums. Not a dreaded purple-colored flower among the group. I hated purple. She’d heard that too. I was amazed by modern skylights set beautifully in a roof with a charming rustic design, the front door the exact warm wood stain she knew I preferred (the one I always wanted to use, despite what her client wanted) and except for a sweet little pathway, the landscaping was left raw and natural, to blend with the woods, just as I would have wanted.

  And this was when I knew the trees had been wrong. We would both never find a love like this again; a love that could inspire and build something as perfect as this.

  I walked up the steps onto the porch. The wood made a soft creaking sound like music beneath my feet. (Had she orchestrated that too? I imagined her doing her roof walk, only this time on a porch, instructing the workers to nail and loosen boards to create just the right sounds, since I had told her a porch should make creaks as you walk on it.) I knew the door would be locked, and I knew where the key would be. Erica and I had worked on many houses together, and when there was an actual key to share, and not just a code, we would always leave it under the closest shiny object nearest to the front door.

  In the corner of the porch was a small grouping of decorative tin milk jugs, and I lifted the shiniest one to find two keys on an oversized ring. The standard key was for the contemporary deadbolt, but the other, a beautiful antique pewter skeleton key, was for the keyhole under the antique doorknob. She knew I loved skeleton keys.

  I released the deadbolt first, and then slid the skeleton key into the door, and it made the most perfect trio of clicks as it released the lock. And when I pushed open the door, a shiver ran through my body as the smell of the place washed over me. It smelled like a well-kept library. The combination of the logs, knotty pine, and other woods made my head feel like I had just pleasantly huffed some varnish.

  I flicked on the light switch by the door, which illuminated beautiful light fixtures, with thick glass hurricanes shielding light bulbs that flickered like candles. I drank in the sight of the place with watery vision. A stone fireplace took up one entire wall of the living room, the stones left natural and uncut, a stark contrast to the wood floor, which gleamed with fresh varnish. Erica had created a built-in table against the wall under a large set of multi-paned windows. My eyes burned and my throat tightened at the sight of this perfect spot to share meals with her—if she were mine, if this were our place to share, and if I could actually share a meal with her instead of devouring her.

  There was a pair of hammered pewter candlesticks on the table, the kind Scrooge would have, with a cradle for your thumb for easy carrying, holding cream-colored taper candles, already burned to achieve dripping on the sides. I touched the tip of the blackened wick where Erica had lit the candles and saw next to them a box of long wooden matches. (She told me once that her grandmother believed it was poor taste to display candles with unburned wicks, and our last tradition as we finished a house was to burn the tips of all the new candles we bought for any new house we had finished.)

  I walked across the room to an expansive kitchen with a center island with six burners and a black wrought-iron pot rack hanging from the ceiling above it. There were several old heavy cast-iron pans hanging on the pot rack, as if many meals had already been prepared in the warm kitchen, and I was passing through someone’s happy home like a sad little ghost, padding around the rooms in my socks. (I had slipped off my muddy shoes at the sight of that perfect floor.)

  I walked through the kitchen as if in a dream and found a second back staircase leading to the loft. I touched the smooth hand railing and the tongue in grove knotty pine boards that lined both sides of the stairwell. Erica knew how much I loved knotty pine—and teased me about how lumberjack-dykey it was. When I reached the upstairs, the sight took my breath away. The loft-style master bedroom had vaulted ceilings with exposed beams between each skylight, offering a perfect view of the starry evening sky and the tops of the surrounding trees. But, worse than that, much worse, was that there was already a bed.

  Not just any bed, but an antique four-poster bed, centered under the highest point of the slanted ceilings. White gauzy curtains hung from the frame between the posts, around a mattress still sealed in plastic, and a plush blanket at the foot of the bed. Had Erica guessed I would love the house so much that I would need to sleep there the first time I saw it?

  I took off my jacket and balled it up before sitting on the bed. I realized I was crying for her again, and my exhaustion shoved me down on the bed—a bed I knew I would never share with her. Grateful for plastic-covered mattress, I pulled the blanket over me, laid my head down, and drifted as I felt the tears pool around my face, unabsorbed by the plastic.

  Seconds later, I heard my sister downstairs. The thought occurred to me that Lisa may have been here a dozen times without me knowing; the house was so far away from the main trails of Camptown Ladies that you would never stumble upon it unless you went looking. After seeing the log cabin, Lisa knew what Erica felt for me, and had I seen it, or her plans for it, I would have known too. I heard Lisa drop her keys on the table before climbing the stairs. I braced myself for disappointing her again, but couldn’t find the strength to wipe the tears from my eyes as I sat up.

  Just as I thought Lisa’s footsteps sounded too quick, too light, and I wondered if an intruder had slipped into the place, Erica appeared in the dim light of the hallway, and I gasped at the sight of her. She had grabbed the metal poker from the fire and had it raised above her head, ready to bash in the head of what she thought might be an intruder.

  We both wore the same expression—alarm and panic, which turned to raw emotion. The sight of her brought overwhelming joy and sadness in equal parts. I let out a breath, not sure for a moment if I had been dreaming, not sure if she was really there. As she dropped the fire poker, the clang of it hitting the floor was a loud confirmation; she was really there. She walked into the bedroom and came toward me as I drank in the smell of her, even from the doorway, and the perfect little log cabin disappeared around me as it only could in it’s creator’s company.

  I’d thought of nothing but her since our night in the woods, and Lisa had just convinced me hours ago that I might never see her again. And, finally, I had convinced myself that it was for the best. And now, she was here.

  Maybe if she had walked over and grabbed me, I might have been able to resist her. I might have had a chance of pushing her away, remembering how hard it was to regain my sanity after being so close to her, after having her. But she didn’t touch me. Instead, she came over to the bed and knelt down in front of me, her worried expression like that of a child who lost her puppy, and she said, fearfully, “Do you love it? I want so much for you to love it, even though I can’t be with you here.” Then her eyes filled as she searched my eyes, my silence distressing her as she asked again, “Do you love it? I need for you to love it.”

  She wasn’t asking to be with me, not fighting what she knew we couldn’t have, only asking if I loved what she had built for me. It would have been downright diabolical, if she ha
d not been so tragically and completely sincere.

  And there was nothing for me to do but to reach for her then, pulling her up off her knees, feeling her hesitate and make a tiny whimper (a sound that was so unlike any sound that should come from this woman) as my face came close to hers. Then, knowing I was so completely lost, my mouth had nowhere to go but to sink into her lips, and the blinding warmth and softness of her stripped away what remained, if anything, of my sanity, and all I could think of was having her again.

  Somewhere in our long and frenzied kiss, I told her, “I love it here, I love you,” and I tried to warn her with a whisper, “We just . . .” but she covered my mouth with hers and swallowed my words, and I didn’t try to warn her again. Then, when my breathing was so heavy and she knew I couldn’t speak, she pulled away to whisper into my ear, “I’m leaving tomorrow. I can’t be near you anymore.”

  My stomach was falling into a pit a mile below earth, and I wanted to hang on to her. I wanted to stop her. I kissed her, hard, and this time she pulled away.

  “I told your sister,” she said, “and I should have told Vince, but I couldn’t. I can’t love him. Not with you here. Maybe if I leave, someday I’ll be able to love someone—” She stopped, maybe seeing how the words crushed me. Love someone else?

  She seemed to register the pain I was feeling and she kissed me back, harder than before. I took her face in my hands and in desperation, mixed with a senseless passion, I kept hold of her and considered telling her not to leave. But what would I say? Please stay so we can continue to torture each other? Or worse, Stay so my brother will be led on to greater pain when he finally found out about us? It would be crazy to think we could hide this—especially now, with this house.

  But Erica stopped my thoughts with the heat of her mouth as it trailed from my lips to my ear, then to my neck, and I realized where I wanted her to go next. I realized, too, there must be no proper place for me other than hell, and if I was going to hell, then I might as well be totally fucked. I loved this woman. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care what happened after this. I pulled her onto the bed with me.