Camptown Ladies

by Mari SanGiovanni

  “Where are we going?”

  She didn’t answer until she had backed up and pulled out of the Camp and her car doors had clicked with their automatic locks. I hoped it was just a creepy coincidence, but my Spidey senses were rarely wrong, so I looked back longingly at the safety of the campground as Lisa pulled away with me, leaving a cloud of dust and gravel, Thelma and Louise-style.

  I asked again, “Hello? I asked where are we going?”

  Lisa was grinning like a twelve-year-old boy who’s just typed the word “boobies” on his computer. She said, “We’re going to get Katie’s ex-husband to sign some divorce papers, then I thought we’d grab some lunch.”

  “Oh, no, we aren’t!” I said.

  “OK. If you already ate, we could just get a drink after,” she said.

  “Sure, after we stick our noses where they don’t belong and get our asses kicked by some lunatic ex-husband. How do you plan to pull this off, and does Vince know?”

  “I got the papers from Katie,” she said, “Vince doesn’t need to know until after it’s done.”

  “Excellent,” I said, following with the most rhetorical question you could ever ask my sister: “Are you fucking crazy?”

  Lisa said, “We were just hanging out last night and Katie left the papers out on her counter. She’s still probably sleeping off the tequila shots I gave her and I’m betting she won’t miss them before I can bring them back signed.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You stole the papers from her trailer.”

  When she didn’t deny it, I slapped my own forehead. “Jesus, Lisa! Katie told Vince this guy has a temper—he’s not going to sign, and how do you know he won’t do something more crazy than what you did?”

  “Who would do something more crazy than me?”

  She had a point. Lisa looked over at me with her cocky smile and winked as she said, “Don’t worry, I have a secret weapon. He’ll sign.”

  When Lisa says, “Don’t worry,” anyone within the tri-state area should do exactly the opposite. As she drove into the next town, I was worried—very worried, and her unusual silence as she drove made me more so. She looked serious, and I especially got concerned when another car cut her off and she didn’t pound her steering wheel and scream out her usual: “Cock in your ass, douchebag!” Was she feeling fragile? I was worried for my sister, but, truth be told, I was more worried for myself.

  When she pulled into a large parking lot in the center of town, Lisa had a huge smile on her face again, and she laughed as I realized we were parking in front of a police station. I grabbed her arm, “Oh, my God. You’re going to report him to the police? What the hell do you have on this guy?”

  She pulled a large envelope from under her car seat. “You’ll see.”

  Then she slid out of the car and I followed as I asked, “Did you hire a private investigator? Does he have a criminal record? Wait! Do you have pictures of him with a donkey? Did you hire the donkey?” She laughed and didn’t answer me, and instead, she made a beeline for the door.

  As I followed her, I thought about how my sister could be hazardously impulsive. Of course there were more times when she acted down right outrageous, but there were also times when she handled things with such authority that the world just stepped in line for her, or, more smartly, cleared the fuck out of her way. I hoped this was one of those times.

  Lisa marched across the station lobby to the front desk and I imagined if there were a crowd, she would have parted them with her sheer will, like a dyke Moses—if Moses wore a Boston Red Sox hat and blue Nike sandals in the New England cold. Behind the desk a large-busted woman with big hair and a kind smile asked how she could help us, and Lisa removed her baseball cap in chivalrous tribute to the woman’s ample jugs.

  “I called ahead,” Lisa said, as if she were picking up a pizza. “Officer Williams is expecting us.” When the woman leaned down to dial the switchboard, I saw Lisa help herself to a long look down the front of her shirt.

  In just a few minutes, a meticulously groomed police officer popped his head around the corner. “Ms. Santora?” We both answered yes.

  “I’m Lisa Santora,” my sister said, sticking her hand out over the counter. She shook his hand in her usual hard grip and I saw the mildly intimidated expression I had seen in a thousand straight guys when they first met Lisa. Typically, this ended when she bonded with them by analyzing every detail of the offense of any given New England sports team. Lisa could non-sexually charm the balls off of most men this way, and you could see them thinking, If only I’d had a sister like this growing up.

  “I’m Officer Williams. Come right this way,” he said, buzzing us in. Lisa paused to wink at the woman behind the desk before following him. The woman looked concerned, as if Lisa had something caught in her eye. (She had no idea it was her breasts.)

  “I’ll wait out here,” I said, hanging back.

  The police officer said to me, “You can join us if you want.” Then he turned to Lisa and said, “Unless Ms. Santora prefers we meet in private.”

  “This is Marie, my sister, and she’s coming with us,” Lisa said, grabbing my elbow. The police officer led us to his office, and, on his way, turned to ask me, “Traffic still bad out there?”

  “Not bad at all,” I said, put at ease by the way he smiled, like he might be interested in more than my traffic report. When a guy flirts, I always feel it levels the playing field. He may be a handsome cop in a position of authority, but I had the mighty vagina—and the added power (often intoxicating to men) that I didn’t give a flying shit if he noticed me or not. I didn’t know shit about football, but it’s a known fact that boobs and vay-jay-jay could be just as effective as knowing New England Patriots offense when bonding with men.

  Lisa didn’t miss this and raised her eyebrows at me behind his back. When we turned the corner, she said into my ear, “What a cutie—why don’t you give the dick a try!” I was able to pinch her tit before we entered his office, and was surprised to feel she was actually wearing a bra. Wow, this was serious.

  He offered us seats in his office and sat behind his desk, folding his hands like a first-year teacher as he flashed a smile my way again. My first impression was he was charming and likable, and it might have been worth a date if I didn’t so faithfully stick to my rule to avoid any penis I can’t pack in a carry-on suitcase. I also reminded myself that my first impressions about men were often wrong, but he had a lot of pictures on his desk, which likely meant he was a family man who was harmlessly flexing his flirting skills.

  “So, what can I help you with, Ms. Santora,” he said to Lisa, glancing down at his notebook. “You mentioned on your initial call that you were concerned about a friend who is being threatened by her husband?”

  “That’s correct, and please, call me Lisa,” she said, with a smugness that made me worry again.

  “OK, Lisa, would this friend be willing to come in and file a report?”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Lisa said. “It’s kind of messy. There’s a kid involved, and this guy is a real—can I say asshole in here?” Officer Williams smirked at her, and Lisa took that as a yes, so she launched into more involved description. “He also has a bitch of a temper. A real douchebag by all accounts.”

  When the police officer asked if she had been a witness to any of his threats, Lisa answered, “Oh no, he’s a fairly smart douchebag.”

  “Well, I’d like to help, but unless your friend is willing to come in and fill out a report, there isn’t much we can do.”

  “But, he threatened her,” Lisa said, and her serious tone got his attention. He pulled a pad of forms from his desk and made a few notes.

  “Exactly what type of threat did he make?”

  Lisa answered, “He doesn’t want to pay child support, so he threatened never, ever to divorce her.”

  Officer Williams looked up at her. “Well, that’s not the kind of threat we can do anything about—”

  “That’s why I brought something he wo
uld not want showing up at a police station.” With that, she slid the envelope across his desk while I tried to imagine what dirt she’d managed to get on Katie’s husband.

  While he opened the envelope, Lisa plucked one of the photos off his desk and said, “I see you have a lovely family.”

  “I do,” he answered, glancing at me with a look of apology that he was a family man, assuming I was heartbroken and disappointed that I wouldn’t be sampling his dick anytime soon. Cocky, I thought, deciding that I had been wrong about him, that he was not that likeable after all.

  Lisa reached for another photo on his desk. “May I?” she said, not waiting for him to answer. “Can you imagine a man not wanting to pay their fair share for his child? I can’t understand because money doesn’t mean anything to me, which happens when you have too much of it. But, I guess to some people, money means everything.”

  Lisa glanced down at the picture frame in her hands and said, “Oh, wow, your wife is very pretty.”

  Officer William forced a polite smile as he pulled out a stack of legal papers from the envelope. I watched as his smile quickly faded.

  Lisa said, “You may already be familiar with this guy. In the second envelope, there are exactly fifty thousand reasons why we need to get this jerk to leave my friend alone and grant her a divorce. Just don’t open that envelope in front of my sister, she shocks so easily.”

  I shot Lisa a look, but she was ignoring me. Officer Williams reached in and pulled out the second envelope, tore it open behind his desk, looked inside, but did not reach in.

  Lisa said, “With all the scumbags like this you have to deal with, I bet they don’t pay you enough for this job.”

  “I do fine,” he said, clearly insulted. He looked down at the envelope again.

  Lisa said, “Shocking, right?”

  When he looked up again, his expression had iced over and there was a dead look in his eyes that chilled me. “Nothing shocks me anymore,” he said. “It’s the nature of the job.”

  Despite him saying that, I thought he’d seemed rattled by what he saw and I wondered what kind of monster had Katie been involved with that would freak out a cop? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  Lisa said, “The funny thing is, my brother wants to marry this woman, so the scum wouldn’t end up paying any alimony anyway. I think what I have there is enough to convince him. If you think so too, maybe you could verify that the police took note of it.”

  He thought it over while still looking at Lisa. He was calm, but I saw an irritation boil under his surface. Maybe he was the type of guy who got pissed when ordinary citizens tried to do his job for him, especially when it was a woman. Lisa handed me the picture frame she had taken from his desk. “Marie, take a look. Officer Williams has a very pretty wife.”

  Though I was used to Lisa checking out men’s wives, since it was a game she played to make me laugh, I had no idea why she would do this now. Her favorite part of the game was seeing how sexual she could get with her comments while still keeping the guy clueless that she wanted to bang his wife. The game would start with, “Oh, she’s pretty,” but it deteriorated to, “I’d like to have me some of that” with alarming speed. I was pretty sure she wasn’t stupid enough to play the game with a cop, but you never know.

  Officer Williams put the smaller envelope in his drawer and picked up his pen. He wrote something on the papers before putting them back in the envelope and sliding it across the desk. “You should be careful how you deal with this guy, Ms. Santora. You never know what will push his buttons.”

  He was most definitely angry, and although his build was not large he appeared to be a guy you shouldn’t piss off. His change of temper confused me, but when Lisa stood up quickly, she was the one that alarmed me most.

  “Good advice,” Lisa said, taking the envelope from him. I started to put the picture frame down, and did a double take when I realized the picture was of Katie and her son Buddy. Horrified, I kept my mouth shut as I numbly followed my sister out of the office.

  It wasn’t until I was walking through the station that my knees went weak as I realized Lisa had just bribed a police officer with fifty thousand dollars. She walked ahead of me with her envelope in hand, and her walk had the same Don’t fuck with me strut she had after beating the crap out of a playground bully in fourth grade.

  When both car doors were closed, I turned to Lisa, not raising my voice because I was much more scared than angry. “I can’t believe what you just did. Do you have any idea how much trouble you could get in if he reported you?”

  She nodded her head, and for the first time I saw she had been hiding her fear. A sheen of sweat was on her face and her hands shook a little as she reached into her bra and pulled out a small digital recorder. She shut the machine off and stuffed in her glove box. “Insurance on my fifty thousand,” she said.

  I remembered something I had not thought about in years. After she had beat up that playground bully, she made us cut through the woods on the way home. Then she’d insisted I hit her in the face until her lip split. It was insurance so she wouldn’t get in trouble, since, of course, the bully hadn’t landed a single punch against Lisa. Today, Lisa had gone a bit more high tech. Her split lip had matured into a digital recorder, and her best insurance had been in her bra.

  Thirty-Three

  Hoisting The Boobs For a Clearer View

  It was the end of October, and Camptown Ladies and Camp Camp were finally officially closed to the public. Lisa had served her last dinner for the remaining small group of hardcore season campers the previous weekend, which now included a large pack of hardy lesbians. There was not a gay boy in sight once a bona fide nip had settled in the air, as they’d all tucked their tails off to warm weather the second they could no longer adequately show off their shaved chests. (I expressed to Lisa how glad I was there was no pressure for lesbians to shave their chests, being Italian and all.) Trailers were once again buttoned up for the winter and everyone had moved on, leaving rows of permanent vehicles as collateral promises that everyone would be back in the spring. I was there when they had checked out, and all they could talk about was the food, especially the lesbians: they would be back in droves, and next year, they would come prepared with larger, eco-friendly takeout containers.

  I had permanently moved myself into the log cabin, and Vince had moved Katie and her son into the condo after Lisa decided to be a snowbird and spend the winter in Florida. Lisa’s exact words had been: “I’m taking a lesson from the fairies and heading where the bitches are wearing less clothes.” And off she went. (Lisa’s snowbird was more like a rooster . . . with the mind of a cock.)

  Uncle Freddie had left long before for Italy and I settled into a solitary existence I assumed I would dislike. Remarkably, it ended up being a relief not to have to act cheerful around Vince, when I really just wanted to sit and brood over Erica. I did lots of that, since one of the many advantages of being wealthy was I didn’t have to do anything but make sure I had food in the cabin, and wood for an occasional fire. When I was feeling particularly industrious, I would bundle up and clear portions of the grounds surrounding the cabin, which eventually gave me a cleared path all the way to the main road. It was an improvement on the path Erica created when she built the place, since she had to clear enough trees to get equipment through to build. When it could almost pass as a driveway, I moved my car from the Campground Ladies to make the trips out for food much simpler, and hikes only for pleasure.

  One afternoon, I was walking back from the car toward the log cabin when I pictured Erica standing up on the roof, sunglasses perched on her head, looking down at me with that smile. I put my things down on the porch and surveyed the railing around it. Before I could talk myself out of it, I climbed onto the railing, and gripped the edge of the roof to attempt to pull myself up.

  Images of the night of the storm kept going off in my head like flashes of lightning. I coached myself out loud, but it turned out I was the type of coach t
hat would get shit canned from even the worst community college: Come on, you fucking weakling, pull yourself up! What is wrong with you? You climb like a fucking girl! What kind of lesbian are you anyway? A disgrace to your kind! You were always a wimp!! It’s those tits of yours. Listen, if you can’t haul them around, you have no business having those fun-bags!

  When had my inner voice turned into Lisa?

  Negative coaching was not very inspiring, and my arms were too weak to haul myself over the edge, and the closest I got was on the first try. Even the image of Erica up on the roof, hands sarcastically planted on her hips, couldn’t give me the strength to hoist myself up. I couldn’t do it even when I imagined getting over the edge would allow me to kiss her again.

  When I had lowered myself to the porch railing, I realized my arms weren’t the only failed extremities. My legs had also gone weak with the memory of almost falling off the roof of the Dove, saved only by Erica’s grip, then later by her kiss.

  I attempted this silliness every day, and every day I got closer. By the second week, I decided I’d better get a TV, that the alone time was taking its toll. Would I someday be the spooky weird lady in the woods, the Freddy Kruger of Camptown Ladies? Would the young campers tell stories about how I would wait on rooftops for an unsuspecting person to walk below, before swooping down for the kill? All good questions, I thought as I prepared to attempt my roof walk again. I positioned my hands closer together this time, having learned I had more leverage that way, and reminded my legs that on three, I would have to spring as hard as I could, as the first attempt would be my best chance of success.

  “Mare, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Mom won’t let me say that word,” said a tiny voice, and I knew without turning around that it was Vince and Buddy. I imagined Erica on the roof, my brother behind me, having changed his mind about giving her up, and my legs sprang with the adrenaline rush from being watched. I was determined to get up this time, and I did, easily. After I’d pulled myself up, with feet pumping an invisible bicycle, I spun myself around into a seated position, like I had been doing this effortlessly for days.