The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

by Kim Fu

  Dina liked lying in bed on weekend mornings, lifting one leg and turning it this way and that, seeing from which angle it looked the thinnest and most elegant. She liked the long bones of her dainty feet, the sunken canyon of her stomach, from which her hip bones jutted like mountain peaks. She ignored her mother, who banged on the door and said, “Ai!” in a short, authoritative bark, a sound that was neither Chinese nor English. When Dina wandered out into the kitchen in her pajamas, after the rest of the family had already had half a day of living and were sitting down to lunch, her mother said, “You act like an invalid. Idle, useless, garbage girl!”

  Their father had a quick death: a whirlwind ER visit, diagnosis, one week of Mr. Chang sitting in a hospital bed and apologizing for being a burden, asking tentatively for water and who won the Stanley Cup and how the business was doing; two weeks of ashen silence and stillness, brief, mewling hallucinations, a barely heard and denied request to go home; three days of morphine instead of food and water. To the palliative care doctors, Mrs. Chang said, over and over again, “Are we there already?” as though she’d fallen asleep on a road trip.

  Dina and Mrs. Chang reacted similarly, with numb disbelief. It had been so fast, he was there and then gone, a sudden hush in place of the background noise of his presence—the TV on in the evenings, his small form shuffling through the house, his puffing blue truck coming and going. Yet everything went on. Mrs. Chang went back to work almost immediately. Dina went to school.

  Victor, on the other hand, stayed home to cry in his room. Their father had passed at the end of his last year of high school, and he’d already been accepted to university, so what did it matter? His teachers were understanding, shuffled him quietly out. He backed out of his summer job lifeguarding and spent the three months before college moping around the house. He had been like Dina, or so Dina had thought, effortlessly popular and attractive. Dina’s girlfriends had hung around the house gawking and made Dina accompany them as they followed Victor to the beach, sighing as he emerged from the water and peeled off his wetsuit, dropping hints about the prom he ultimately wouldn’t attend. Now he was a soggy-eyed sap who insisted on hugging Dina hello or goodbye whenever they’d been or were about to be apart, no matter how brief the interval, until she asked him to stop. “We never hugged before,” she said.

  Even Mrs. Chang thought he was being melodramatic. “It’s not like him,” she insisted. Dina recognized this was a nonsensical statement—Victor had never lost a father before, so how would they know what he’d be like? But the extravagance of Victor’s grief made Dina wonder what she’d missed. He must have had a relationship with their father that she didn’t know about. They must have talked when no one else was around. Secret man things, father-son things.

  When Victor came home for Christmas after his first semester at university, he’d gained weight, his wiry muscles reformed into stocky, bricklike blocks. His sparing adolescent acne had been aggravated into red craters. Dina stared at his changed face all through their first dinner together. She felt betrayed. Alarmed. Someone beautiful could become ugly. Beauty, before, had seemed intrinsic, something she possessed as certainly and irrevocably as her brown eyes. And what was the cause? Had he lost it through neglect, or had he willfully destroyed it? Could it happen to her?

  Alone, Dina and her mother lived like roommates. Without Mr. Chang’s cooking, Mrs. Chang went out every evening. Dina more or less stopped eating altogether. The panic had lessened as the years passed, but meals continued to be tedious, all that chewing and gnashing and sitting around, made worse by other people’s seeming rapture: This is soooo good! When she’d been required to attend family dinners, Dina had managed a small bowl of rice and bits of meat and vegetables from her father’s soups and stir-fries. Left to her own devices, she forgot to eat dinner, woke up late and hurried to school without breakfast, bought a can of ginger ale and a packet of crackers from the vending machine at lunch.

  In class, her daydreams wove a soft, protective barrier around her mind, blocking out whatever the teacher was saying, cushioning the feeling in her brittle bones as she carefully sat them down on the hard wooden and plastic seats. Prima ballerina, pop star, rock star, movie star, runway model. In her mind’s eye, red carpet unrolled beneath her feet down the school hallways. The flickering at the edge of her vision was from camera flashes, the roar in her head from applause. Sleep and waking life flowed into each other easily, were almost one and the same.

  Over the girls’ room sinks, her girlfriends complained, “God, you’re so thin, and I’m such a cow.” Dina couldn’t summon the energy to respond. It felt like they were speaking to her from the other end of a tunnel, echoing, at a remove. “You’re so lucky. You have that Asian metabolism.”

  Victor came home for the summer. Mrs. Chang had booked his flight for him. They picked him up from the airport on the mainland in Mrs. Chang’s new car. She had to honk and wave from the silver Lexus before he recognized them.

  “You guys didn’t need to drive all the way out here,” Victor said. “I could’ve easily taken the bus and the ferry across myself. And I still don’t understand why you had me fly to Vancouver instead of Victoria. Was it that much cheaper?”

  “Oh, I wanted to show you something,” Mrs. Chang said.

  Victor craned his head around in his seat, trying to talk to Dina with the forced interest he’d had in her since their father died. Dina strained to answer his questions. School was fine. She was fine. Her friends were fine.

  They pulled into a private parking lot underground, beneath a skyscraper of turquoise glass. Mrs. Chang waved a bar-coded plastic card and the gate opened. She parked in a numbered spot. “What are we doing here?” Victor asked. Mrs. Chang got out of the car and headed toward the elevator, her children rushing to follow.

  Once they caught up to her, Victor asked, “Is this a property you’re showing?”

  Mrs. Chang watched the numbers increasing on the digital dial.

  “Mom? Hello?” Victor said.

  She used the key card to open the door to one of the condominiums on the twenty-eighth floor. The door swung open to a startling vista, through a wall of glass: the harbor and the waterways, the snow-laced mountain range beyond.

  The condo was empty of furniture, so the two Chang siblings gravitated to the windows. It was a corner unit, with one bank of windows facing the water and the forested coast to the north, while the other showed the glittering towers of the city.

  “We’re going to move here,” Mrs. Chang said.

  Victor turned, distraught. “What? Why?”

  “I’m getting remarried. His name is Mr. Davies.”

  “You never mentioned him before,” Dina said, still gazing out the window.

  “Well,” Mrs. Chang said, “I didn’t think it was any of your business. It didn’t affect you, until now.”

  Victor asked, “Is this his place?”

  Mrs. Chang chuckled, a private joke. “No, I own this place.” She considered for a moment and then added, “I own lots of places.”

  Victor said, “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? What I said. I own lots of places. Here, and in Toronto, and in Hong Kong, New Jersey, San Diego, Los Angeles . . .”

  The house they’d grown up in had been a quaint, ramshackle three-bedroom bungalow, twenty minutes from the beach. The small kitchen centered on an olive-green dishwasher that didn’t work; their father had washed everything by hand. The detached garage had leaned during the winters, under the weight of snow. Victor gaped. “Why didn’t we know about this?”

  “It wasn’t any of your business either. You were children. They’re just investments.”

  “I can’t believe this,” he said.

  Dina smiled quietly to herself, the million-dollar views spread out beneath her like a feast. Like the girl who found out she was a princess, the boy who found out he was a wizard, she’d always known. Of course they were secretly rich.

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  They kept almost nothing from the old house. Mrs. Chang supervised as all-new furniture filled the rooms of the condo. Dina’s favorite piece in her new room was a heavy standing mirror in the corner, the border made of real mahogany. It was no child’s toy, not something you’d cover with puff paint and stickers.

  Mr. Davies arrived as stunning, early-evening light poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, where Victor stood. Dumbfounded, still or again. Cheerful and blathering, Mr. Davies and his mustache rolled in a suitcase full of cookware, his free arm loaded with groceries. He put the food away and cooked while the Changs watched and didn’t offer to help. Mrs. Chang sat in a new, relaxed pose on her new sofa, drinking a glass of wine, her feet bare—no slippers. Dina had never seen their mother drink alcohol. Her feet were swollen and square in a way that looked unhealthy, her toes hard little nubbins of yellowing flesh and nail. Dina had never seen her feet before either.

  Mr. Davies served them scallops in cream sauce. Fat, buttery white orbs in a slick white puddle. Dina’s only previous experience with scallops were the stringy yellow bits her father had rehydrated to flavor soup. Mrs. Chang ate with relish, her knife scraping the plate. Dina and Victor picked at their dinners.

  “Oh, dear me, I didn’t think to ask if either of you is a vegetarian,” Mr. Davies said.

  “They’re not,” Mrs. Chang said.

  “Vegan,” Dina said, inspired. She pushed her plate away. “I’m vegan now.”

  Mrs. Chang wiped the last of her cream sauce with a hunk of bread. She took a bite, swallowed, and said, “The nonsense with you is endless, isn’t it?”

  “That’s no trouble,” Mr. Davies said. “No trouble at all. I bought a nice piece of liver for tomorrow night, with cabbage and oranges, but I’ll make extra cabbage.”

  As he cleared their dishes, Mr. Davies said, “No need to help clean up. I’ve got it,” though no one else had moved to stand.

  Victor led Dina out onto the balcony. They were buffeted by strong winds up that high, and they pressed back against the glass door. Victor had to speak loudly and close to Dina’s ear to be heard. “What do you think of Mr. Davies?”

  “He’s ridiculous.”

  “Do you think he’s after Mom for her money?”

  “Maybe. Better someone her own age than some young boy toy, I guess.”

  Victor shook his head. “I can’t tell if it’s weird seeing her with a white guy, or if it’s just weird seeing her with anyone who isn’t Dad.” Quieter, almost to himself, he added, “It’s like she just threw away our whole lives before now, like none of it ever happened. Like I dreamed it.”

  But that’s how you become someone new, someone better, Dina thought. Someone rich and famous. She rubbed her wrists to clear away a sudden sense memory, the sensation of ropes wrapping around her skin. Victor said something more, but the wind swallowed up his voice, and Dina let it go.

  One of many things Dina loved about living on the mainland: the malls. To counteract the elaborate breakfasts and dinners Mr. Davies managed to foist upon her—the bites she took to get him off her back—she walked through the connected downtown malls after school. She liked looking at the window displays, the faceless mannequins arranged in dispassionate groupings, elbows cocked for shining handbags. Sometimes alone, sometimes with the group of girls who had claimed Dina on her first day at her new school, identifying her as one of their own. They were, in a way, indistinguishable from her girlfriends at her old school. Richer, more ethnically diverse, quicker to whip out their parents’ credit cards for a tube of lip gloss or a Frappuccino, but the same overexcited voices, the same walking with linked arms, the same topics of conversation, tolerant of Dina’s drifting inattention and mindless mimicking.

  They squealed about some boy, so Dina squealed along with them. Dina hadn’t developed a sexual interest in men or women. Men’s bodies all looked the same, a doll-like contiguousness, one undifferentiated lump and a sad little offshoot, an accidental skein of flesh. Taller, shorter, fatter, thinner, yes, but somehow all the same, the same basic figure underneath. Women, on the other hand, were too varied, a universe of alien life. It was hard to believe they all belonged to the same species. To Dina, most of them seemed ill made, factory defective, to be tossed aside at the end of the line. It was clear to her how they should look and how they fell short. Men’s bodies bored her; women’s bodies made her uneasy, like a painting on a wall hung askew, a hair in the icing of a cake.

  Dina was with her new friends when she saw the poster. Hot-pink text on a black background. It was an open call for a modeling agency, that Saturday at the mall at 9 a.m. “Oh my God,” one of her friends said. “You have to be there.”

  They followed Dina back to the condo, rooted through her closet for the right outfit. Mrs. Chang appeared at the open door to Dina’s bedroom. Dina was the only one who noticed her. Her mother leaned on the door frame as she listened to the chatter, the heap of rejected clothes building up on Dina’s bed.

  “Maybe your yellow dress,” Mrs. Chang said.

  The other girls stopped. “Hello, Mrs. Chang,” one of them said in a deferential voice that made Dina want to roll her eyes.

  “Yellow washes me out,” Dina said.

  “No, no.” Mrs. Chang stepped into the room and the girls stepped aside. Mrs. Chang had recently developed a problem in her left knee. She had surgery scheduled for later that year. Sometimes she used a cane, but on this occasion, she limped forward under her own power. She took the yellow dress from Dina’s closet and laid it out on an empty spot on the bed. “It makes you look young. Fresh.”

  “Ooh,” her friends cooed. “Yeah, that. Definitely.”

  “You should go early,” Mrs. Chang said. “I can drive you.”

  “It’s only at the mall,” Dina said. “I can walk.”

  “You’re not worried about getting sweaty? Your hair getting”—Mrs. Chang made a fussing gesture with her hand— “by the wind?”

  “Good point,” said the chorus.

  “Okay, I guess I could use a ride,” Dina said slowly. “Thanks.”

  On Saturday, to a rapping on her bedroom door, Dina lifted her head partway from the morass of dreams and pillows, then rolled over and fell back asleep. When she woke again, the clock face read 8:50. She jumped up and ran to the bathroom, swearing. It would take at least fifteen minutes to do her face—thirty minutes to do the look she had originally planned, which was out of the question now. In her yellow dress, powder choking the sweat her skin strained to produce, she hurried into the main room. Her mother and Mr. Davies sat at the glass dining table, another grossly rich meal between them, a tray laid with brie, custard buns, and tea. “Why didn’t you wake me?” Dina demanded.

  “I tried,” her mother said.

  “Well, let’s go already!”

  Mrs. Chang took the cane off the back of her chair and pulled herself to her feet. Spitefully slow, Dina thought.

  They were quickly stalled in a construction-heavy web of one-way streets. The leather interior of her mother’s Lexus still had a new, outgassing smell that turned Dina’s empty stomach. “It might be faster for you to walk,” Mrs. Chang said.

  Dina touched her flat-ironed hair. Showing up a mess was worse than showing up late, she decided.

  When they pulled up alongside the mall, they could see a line of girls that stretched around the block and out of sight. Dozens, maybe hundreds, many with their mothers. “I told you that you should have come early,” Mrs. Chang said, her tone flat and unscolding.

  Dina hopped out of the car and navigated her way to the back of the line.

  The day was gray, a damp chill in the air. Dina stood for almost three hours as the line crept forward. Some of the girls took off their heels and stood on the filthy sidewalk in their bare feet or stockings. Some sat down, tugging at their tight skirts. Without thinking, Dina rubbed her eyes, which were starting to strain against the diffuse brightness of the overcast sky, wishing she’d brought sunglasses.
She saw the smudge of black and shiny flesh-tone against her hand and cursed aloud.

  She didn’t have a headshot/résumé or a portfolio binder, like most of the girls. It hadn’t even occurred to her. What had she expected? To walk into a room and have someone behind a table leap up in delight and recognition. Yes, he’d cry. You. You’re the one I’ve been waiting for. You have it!

  Finally, someone came outside and told them that was it, they were done for the day. Dina trudged home. Her mother and stepfather had gone out, and when they returned, they left her alone to mope in her bedroom without the I-told-you-so she’d expected.

  Six months later, she saw a similar poster for a nationwide talent search at the same mall. This time, she had four weeks to prepare, and she wasn’t going to screw it up again. She asked her mother if she could take singing lessons.

  Mrs. Chang was lying on the couch. The silky fabric of her trousers revealed the shape of her legs. Her left leg had shrunken and atrophied, while her right had solidified, grown visibly muscular, the calf bulging like a melon. “Singing lessons?” she repeated.

  “Yes. I picked out a school and a teacher and everything.”

  “How much?”

  “A hundred and twenty dollars a session.”

  “How many?”

  “I called and they said they have room for me to do one a week, for three weeks, before the talent search.”

  Dina had come armed with the teacher’s credentials, the history of the school, its location—near their home and her school, she wouldn’t need a ride—but Mrs. Chang just closed her eyes. “Bring me my checkbook. It’s in the top drawer of my desk, in the study.”

  In the hallway outside her teacher’s room at the music school, children and their parents passed where Dina sat on a wooden bench. Young children. Dina was the oldest student there. The door to her teacher’s room opened and a boy of perhaps nine or ten walked out. Dina was called next.

  The room was small, with a high, angled ceiling that ended in a line of windows, and just enough floor space for a grand piano, a stool, and a bookshelf. Her teacher was an older woman named Linda, a once-famous jazz singer, her silver bangs flattened by a barrette, in a sweater and wool jumper. When Dina came in, Linda was sitting at the piano. They shook hands awkwardly. Linda told Dina to sing anything she liked.