The Girls of Tonsil Lake

by Liz Flaherty

  She shot me a surprised look, then returned her attention to the surf. “Forget it. It’s nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said immediately. See? This is why I can’t confront people; I always end up feeling bad. “Come on, Andie, give. What’s bothering you and why is Suzanne mad?”

  “She asked if I’d mind if she started seeing Jake and I said I would.”

  “You would?”

  Andie and Jake had been apart for twenty years, since Miranda was eight and young Jake, six. They were the friendliest divorced people I knew, but I didn’t think they still had that kind of connection.

  In truth, though, Andie had been closemouthed about the divorce from the very beginning. Even the day it was final, when she drove down to Lewis Point, she didn’t talk about it as we all sat in my back yard watching the kids play in the pool.

  What had we talked about that day?

  I didn’t mean to say the words aloud, but I must have, because Andie said, “Crabgrass, mascara, and was it true Suzanne was the only girl in first grade who wore a bra.”

  “She wasn’t. Cindy Hathaway wore one.” Vin spoke from behind us. “Scoot over, Andie. You’re hogging.”

  Wearing a black maillot, a tote bag over her shoulder, she joined us on the rock, grabbing our arms to pull herself up. “Of course,” she said, “Cindy was twelve, I believe, by the time welfare figured out her folks had never sent her to school.”

  “Nine,” I corrected. “Poor thing. I wonder what ever happened to her.”

  “I don’t know. They left the lake a couple of years later.” Andie grinned wickedly. “I think Cindy was pregnant.”

  We laughed guiltily. “We’re being mean,” I protested. “She couldn’t help the way she was.”

  “She beat the hell out of every other girl on the lake, plus both the Henderson girls from the farm down the road,” Andie argued. “She could help that.”

  Vin gave her arm a swat. “You’re just mad because she beat you up, too, and you had to spend all summer making everyone else afraid of you again.”

  “Well, there is that.”

  Suzanne walked down the beach toward us and we stopped talking to watch her. Wearing a bikini and with her hair pulled up into a high ponytail, she looked gorgeous.

  “It would serve her right,” said Vin, “if she woke up with another zit tomorrow, right on the end of her nose. No one should look that good at our age.”

  Vin looked pretty great herself, but I knew what she meant. Suzanne had never lost her youthfulness. The rest of us had. The thought crossed my mind that we had grown up in ways she had not, but fortunately the memory of cleaning up Kate Rivers’ yard in our pajamas, even though Suzanne was sealing the casket on her marriage, stopped me from voicing it.

  She climbed up onto the rock with us and settled herself beside Vin with her back against mine.

  “Now that we’re all here…” Vin opened her tote bag. She pulled out a bottle of wine and four glasses.

  When we all held full glasses, Andie squinted at hers. “I don’t believe I’ve ever drunk from actual leaded crystal while sitting on a rock.”

  “No, we always drank our Kool-Aid from the glasses peanut butter used to come in,” I remembered.

  “And we made toasts,” said Suzanne, her voice soft. “To our dreams. Remember?”

  “And to each other,” said Vin.

  “And to the republic,” said Andie, “for which it stands.”

  Suzanne

  I don’t know what I thought Andie was going to say, but that she’d mind me seeing Jake wasn’t it. At first I was mad—after all, hadn’t she gone to the senior prom with the guy I’d dated the entire first semester?

  Then I was hurt. It wasn’t as though I were planning to marry Jake, for God’s sake. I just…liked him. A lot. Okay, a whole lot. He made me feel hopeful. Who understood more about hope than Andie? But maybe she only cared about it for herself.

  Rather than say something I’d be sorry for later, an unfortunate habit of mine, I mumbled something about taking a walk and jumped off the rock.

  It’s hard to walk very far on a beach with your stomach sucked in, so when I got out of sight of Andie’s perch, I found a seat of my own and sat down to feel sorry for myself. Children played in the sand around me, their mothers watching them with eagle eyes, and I remembered when Jean, Andie, and I had sat around Jean’s pool in Willow Wood Estates and watched ours.

  The kids had been so cute, all seven of them born in a four-year time-span. Now they were grown and I didn’t know where the time had gone. Miranda had been a godsend to her mother during Andie’s illness, and young Jake had made her laugh when no one else could. Even Jean’s kids had helped. Carrie and Kelly brought meals and Josh and Laurie came and just sat by her bed when she was too sick to do much more than lie there.

  Sarah had sent her a get-well card with a note in it after I’d called her in tears, certain Andie was going to die. Although she hadn’t had any sympathy to spare for me, I was glad my daughter had given some to Andie.

  I hadn’t heard from Tom in months. I didn’t even know where he was.

  I hadn’t been with a man since a relationship with an ad executive from Indianapolis had fizzled last winter and the only one I was interested in had been declared off-limits by his ex-wife.

  My job, my career, the one thing in my life I was proud of, was going to hell in a hand basket.

  And I had a forny zit.

  After awhile, bored with my own admittedly crummy company, I headed back toward Vin’s house. I approached the flat rock where I’d sat with Andie earlier and saw that all three of the girls were on it now. I stopped for a minute, my feet in the freezing shallows, and watched them.

  How splendid-looking they all were. Vin with her sophisticated New York looks, Jean all neatness and sweet smiles, Andie with her dandelion fluff hair and eyes like shining blue pieces of the sea in her thin face.

  I wanted to cry, no longer because I felt sorry for myself—though I still did—but because I was so happy to have those women in my life.

  I climbed back up on the rock.

  We stayed down there for over an hour, sipping wine and laughing loud and often. It wasn’t over between Andie and me yet, but if it came right down to it, her friendship probably meant more to me than dating her ex-husband did, so we’d just have to see what happened.

  “Who’s going to cook tonight?” asked Vin.

  “You are,” said Andie. “You had the bright idea to bring those damned cookbooks. You should be the first one to use them.”

  Vin frowned. “Well, if I’m cooking, I say we walk down to the harbor and have lobster.”

  With a heavy sigh, Jean pushed herself off the rock. “Fine. I guess I can do the dishes.”

  For some reason, that struck us all funny, and we laughed all the way to the house, shoving each other off the path and working our usual way into bladder jokes. Which aren’t really jokes anymore but we laugh at them anyway.

  There were messages on the answering machine at the house. David for Jean. Paul for Andie. Kelly for Jean. Marian Nielson for Vin. Jake for me.

  Andie and I looked at each other. She smiled, just a slight tilt of her lips. “Tell him I said hello.”

  Vin

  I never would have thought one could get into the habit of rising before dawn. Even for a self-professed morning person, five o’clock is borderline ridiculous. Nevertheless, it’s when I’m getting up these days.

  Usually Jean’s already up, sitting at the kitchen table with coffee, her laptop, and a bottle of antacid. When I suggested that a little less coffee might mean a little less white chalky stuff, she gave me a distracted look and said, “Good. You want to warm mine up?”

  I wasn’t sure what she thought she’d heard me say, but I refilled her cup anyway, feeling like an accessory to a crime.

  Andie’s always the next one up. You don’t say much to her in the morning unless you want to have your head bitten off. “Good God, An
die,” I said this morning, cowering behind the refrigerator door, “if you hate mornings so much, why don’t you sleep in?”

  “Leave her alone, Vin,” Jean mumbled, staring at her computer screen. “It’s the only fun she has.”

  “Bitch,” said Andie.

  Jean gave her a sidewise look. “Scum of the earth.”

  “Slut.”

  “Tramp.”

  “Dick licker.”

  If anyone else had said that to Jean, she would have lapsed into hurt silence, her bottom lip stuck out in just the slightest of pouts. When Andie said it, she only gave her a pitying look. “Really, Andie, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “Give me some time.” Andie sat down, holding her coffee cup in both hands, warming them against the morning chill that finds its way to Maine even in June. “It’s early yet.”

  Suzanne wandered down when we were midway through the second pot of coffee. With murmured good mornings, she poured herself some and sat in the remaining chair. She tucked a foot up on the seat—which I’m not sure I can do anymore—and began painting her toenails a shiny plum color.

  When she was finished, Andie asked acidly, “Do you have a purple bikini?”

  “No. Purple shorts. Give me your foot.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  But she stuck her foot out, and Suzanne took it in her lap. “Grab me the lotion off the sink, will you, Vin?”

  We all walked down to the village for breakfast with purple toenails sticking out of our sandals. Our feet had been lubricated and massaged and our cuticles trimmed. The whole thing had felt wonderful.

  Halfway there, I stopped walking and hugged Suzanne. “Thank you,” I said.

  Jean gave her a squeeze. “Me, too.”

  Andie said, “Give me a break.”

  “I already have,” said Suzanne. “I haven’t killed you yet.” She gave Andie a pat. “But I’ll make sure your nails look real pretty in your coffin.”

  Jean snorted, which got us all started. We were standing in the path with our legs crossed, howling with inappropriately loud laughter, when a male voice called, “There they are, visions of feminine pulchritude, the girls from Tonsil Lake.”

  Before I could answer Lucas, Andie said, “Well, no, it’s actually the Weak Bladder Society of Hope Island,” and off we went again.

  “You know what’s bad,” said Jean, leaning against me and wiping her eyes on the tail of her shirt, “is that Toby is into potty jokes right now and I keep telling him they’re not nice. I’ll never be able to look my grandson in the eye again.”

  When we had settled down and Suzanne’s hand was clamped over Andie’s mouth to keep her from setting us off again, I introduced Lucas. I saw speculation coming into Jean’s eyes. She exchanged a furtive but significant look with the others, and I felt like smacking all of them.

  “Would you like to join us for breakfast?” asked Suzanne.

  “I don’t know.” Lucas’s gaze was on me. “Is that all right with you?”

  What would he think of Suzanne’s obvious flirtation? Would he be attracted to it or would he pity her efforts to stay young? Would he be repelled by Andie’s raucous humor, uncomfortable with Jean’s eagerness to please?

  Mark had liked my friends only one at a time and in very small doses, preferring that I visit them on my own when I went to Indiana to see my mother. It had been one of those little sore places that seem to find their way into every marriage. I’d put it into a mental folder with my inability to be in the same room with his two children without wanting to scream, and tried to leave it there.

  But Mark had been my husband. Why did I care what Lucas Bishop thought? He was only a summertime friend, not someone I lived with and loved, even if I did allow him to call me Lavinia.

  “Of course you should join us,” I said, taking his arm, “and you should buy our breakfast, too.”

  He exchanged a twinkling look of shock with Suzanne. “All of you? I’m just a simple island doctor who still gets paid with lobsters and blueberry pie, when he gets paid at all.”

  Andie shook her head. “Forget it, Doctor. No one’s buying it.”

  Breakfast was as usual. Andie had forgotten her medication, which earned her a scolding from Jean, and Suzanne was obsessing over the two pounds she’d gained. Jean mentioned needing another bottle of antacid and I went into a little tirade of my own concerning her dependence on it, subsiding in embarrassment when everyone stopped talking and stared at me.

  Just then, Meg from the bookstore stopped by our table and, after greeting everyone, proceeded to discuss Jean’s book-signing which was to take place this coming Saturday. Something Jean had neglected to mention.

  When Meg left, there was silence at the table. Suzanne, Andie, and I all favored Jean with an accusing stare that should have shriveled her up right where she sat. Lucas’s eyes danced between the four of us, a look of expectancy on his face. “I’ll watch the clock for you if you want to go at it,” he offered.

  We ignored him.

  “My goodness,” Andie drawled, “one would think she was ashamed of us, wouldn’t one? I mean, after all, we might show up at her autograph party with tobacco on our teeth, saying ‘ain’t’ and spitting on the floor.”

  “Shut up, Andie,” Jean muttered, her face red. Jean didn’t blush well, and her skin looked mottled. It served her right. “You know that’s not true.”

  “Do we?” Suzanne’s voice was a little high, and the red spots on her cheeks were becoming. Her eyes were wide and bright. “You never even mention your signings till they’re over.”

  Jean tossed me a beseeching look, and I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. I wasn’t even going to examine the thoughts I’d had an hour earlier when I introduced them to Lucas. This was Jean, not me. She had spent a morning—with Suzanne—cleaning a neighbor’s yard in her pajamas with her hair looking like a fright wig. I would have called and hired a cleaning crew, anonymously and on the spot, but I doubt I’d have gone myself.

  “You don’t understand—” Jean began patiently.

  “You got that right.” Andie sipped her coffee, her blue eyes glaring over the top of the thick restaurant cup.

  “They’re boring, is all,” said Jean. She looked down at her plate, which she’d hardly touched. “You sit there and people come by and say things like ‘when are you going to write a real book?’ and ‘do you know John Grisham?’ and then they don’t buy your book. You smile till your cheeks shake and you apologize to the store manager because you’ve screwed up her entire day and only sold six books.”

  “Oh, Jean, you’ve done better than that,” Andie scoffed.

  “Sometimes, yes, especially when I’ve signed right there in Lewis Point. I guess the thing is that writers are supposed to have thick skins, because rejection is such an inherent part of the business, but you know me.” She laughed, an entirely unconvincing sound. “I get my feelings hurt if the clouds obscure the moon; imagine what it does to me when no one wants to buy my book.”

  “I still don’t understand why you don’t tell us,” said Suzanne. “We’d at least be a support group.”

  “Yeah,” said Andie, “we’re good at that.”

  “Because I’m always the strong one,” said Jean, and none of us disagreed with her. “I don’t want you to see me being rejected and embarrassed.” She laughed again, sounding a little more like herself. “It’s bad enough you’re seeing me being embarrassed now.”

  “Do David and the kids come to them?” I asked. I’d been at book-signings that were attended by the author’s entire extended family as well as every friend she or he’d had since kindergarten. I’d also been at ones like those Jean described.

  “No. They did the first one I ever had, of course, but not since then. I’ve asked David not to come and I don’t tell the children until they’re over. They don’t like it, either,” she admitted, “but it’s the easiest way for me to cope with it.”

  Lucas said, “I hope you don’t mind if I
come and bring my sister-in-law. If I don’t, she might never let me go out on their lobster boat again and that’s about my favorite thing to do.”

  “I’d be pleased if you would,” said Jean. She passed a warning look around at the other three of us. “But not you. You stay away.”

  Chapter Seven

  Suzanne

  I’m worried about Tom. More than usual, I mean. Sarah hasn’t heard from him in nearly a month, his father in longer than that. Trent has pretty much thrown up his hands when it comes to his only child, but he still grows concerned when a period of time has gone by with no contact just like I do.

  I told Jake about my concern. He said, “Let me check with young Jake. Unless his mother already has?”

  When I said I hadn’t talked to Andie about it, Jake hung up and called me back a half hour later.

  “He saw him a few weeks ago, Suzy-Q. He said he was pretty messed up.”

  The sympathy in his voice had tears rolling down my cheeks in a heartbeat. “I swear,” I said, sniffing, “it was easier when he was in jail. At least I knew where he was.”

  I called Sarah back to tell her young Jake had seen her brother.

  “I knew that,” she said, “but it doesn’t help us to know where he is now.”

  “How did you know? And why didn’t you tell me?” I probably sounded accusing, but I couldn’t believe Sarah’s dislike of me went deep enough that she would withhold information about Tom just to hurt me.

  “I knew because Lo told me—young Jake, I mean—and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you asking questions about him and me.” She sighed. “Also because it would just make you worry more. Tommy was in pretty bad shape.”

  “That’s what Jake said.”

  “Are you seeing him? Old Jake?”

  I didn’t like the reference to him as old, though I guessed that was no different than referring to his twenty-six year old son as young. “Sort of.”

  “Mother, maybe…” She stopped.