Postcards From Last Summer

by Roz Bailey

  At times like this, I could fool myself into believing there was a very real connection between Bear and me. Close your eyes and pretend you’re a girlfriend. Of course, I’d never even been inside his VW camper, never visited the inner sanctum, but then I’d never heard of a girl who had.

  “You should write some of those things down,” I told Bear. “Such vivid images.” I had always found his surfing adventures fascinating.

  “Yeah, maybe he could make it into a limerick or something.” Steve grinned maliciously, then bit into a hunk of sandwich.

  Skeeter snorted, that pig snort he’d perfected at the age of ten. “There once was a loser from Brooklyn, who surfed Maui and . . . wait. What rhymes with Brooklyn?”

  “Nothing, dirtbag,” Steve said.

  Charlie held the relish tray while Tara took some pickles. “Finding a rhyme for Brooklyn, I believe, would be a challenge for an experienced lyricist.”

  “Oh, you’re just jealous that you don’t have the gift, Stephen,” Ma chastised. “Now Lindsay here, there’s a talent. Though we haven’t seen your writing lately, have we? Weren’t you working on some short stories for one of your classes?”

  “It’s just a hobby, Ma,” I said, quickly changing the subject back to surfing, something everyone would pick up on. “Did you hear, Ma? Charlie rode his first wave today.”

  And my mother gasped and made a fuss over Charlie’s feat as Steve mentioned a surfing competition down the coast, and the conversation took off once again.

  Biting into a juicy slice of peach, I felt a twinge of longing for the way things used to be, back when Elle and Darcy nearly lived in this house. Funny, the things you remember. Elle used to jump on my brother’s back and hold on until he rolled onto the ground. Darcy once played a whole game of Life with her swimsuit stuffed with a roll of wadded toilet paper, not caring when Steve and his friends walked through the room gaping. With my girlfriends around, I never had to worry about being outnumbered by Steve and his friends. Most of all, I didn’t have time to worry about anything.

  I missed them both.

  8

  Elle

  Stuck in Connecticut, Elle DuBois sat at the edge of the turquoise pool, kicking her legs to break the monotonous surface of the water. She loved swimming and had already done thirty laps, which was not the easiest feat in a pool shaped like a warped Frisbee.

  “Do you guys ever swim?” she asked her cousins.

  “Sure we do. I do all the time.” Liam looked up from the filter, which he’d been reaching into, showing off in that eight-year-old boy show-offy way by pulling out insects and leaves and gunk with his bare hands. He slammed the filter cover on, stood at the edge of the pool, and called, “See?” as he cannonballed into the water.

  “Ach!” his sister Gabby scoffed from the lounge chair behind Elle. “You little freak! Jump from the other side.”

  “I don’t get it,” Elle said. “Everyone on this street has their own pool. And right now, it’s almost eighty degrees, and no one but Liam is using it.” She squeezed water out of her hair, pondering the mysteries of suburban Connecticut. “What’s that about?”

  “People have other things to do,” Gabriella said with an air of importance that made Elle want to flick her on the shoulder. Then again, most things Gabby said made Elle want to inflict some form of torture. Like the first night Elle arrived and Gabby asked if she had to share her room with Elle. And if she could still go to her friend’s house for a sleepover. And if she needed to include Elle at the birthday party she’d been planning for so long “with only my best friends.” A pool party, this Saturday. A stupid idea, as far as Elle was concerned, since neither Gabby nor her “very best friends” were going to go near the water.

  This suburbia thing was worse than she’d expected.

  Her cousins were complete strangers, little power brokers embedded in television shows and electronic games Elle had never even heard of. Aunt Deanna couldn’t have cared less that Elle was there, as long as she had a chance to do her “thing,” which was daily workout sessions at a gym where the women idolized emaciated models and talked about the evils of carbs and alcohol. Uncle Thomas was the sort of guy you could talk to, a lot like his brother, who used to be Elle’s confidant before he’d decided that having a teenaged daughter made him feel too old. Unfortunately, Uncle Thomas was gone from the house most of the day and evening, absorbed in the business of lawyering for Keller and Steinberg.

  “It’s just for the summer,” her mother had stressed, back in the safety of their close but cozy London flat. “In September, as soon as the dorms open, you’ll have your own room in New Haven.”

  “I don’t understand why I can’t stay here,” Elle had insisted, causing her parents to exchange that look again: the pale, stone-faced panic that their daughter was going to unearth a boulder they’d hoped was safely embedded. “Or I could go to Africa. Wouldn’t Africa be a fabulous life experience?”

  “Nigeria is no place for a young woman these days,” her mother said candidly. An immunologist, Genevieve DuBois was employed by the World Health Organization, and at this point in her career a move to their offices in Nigeria was the key to advancement. Elle got that, and though she would miss her mother, she could live with the distance if it would keep her near her chums in London. “Right now, your education is of utmost importance.”

  “And your mother and I agree that it’s time you returned Stateside. Time for some cultural exposure, too.”

  “I have all the culture I need here in London,” Elle argued. “I don’t see why I can’t stay here with Dad.”

  At that point she’d caught her mother scowling at her father, a quick facial barb before she turned away, pretending to study the flower box of petunias outside the kitchen window. Elle felt the moment like an earthquake along a major fault; the earth was rumbling and two geographic plates were rumbling, rubbing against each other, pushing for power even as they shifted away from each other.

  “What?” Elle pressed. “What is it?”

  “You can’t stay here,” her mother hissed. “Dad is giving up the flat.”

  “Genevieve! I thought we agreed—”

  “I never agreed to anything,” Elle said. “Why didn’t anyone ask me what I wanted? Why didn’t you tell me, Dad?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” he snapped. “Your mother’s off to her new job in Africa and you’re to return to the States to finish university.”

  “But why aren’t you keeping the flat?” Tears were welling in her eyes, damned tears over this unexpected ambush. She swiped at her face with one hand, then pointed to her small bedroom. “I can stay in my room. Right there . . .” Her voice was quavering.

  “It’s too late,” her mother said. “Dad’s decided he needs a new start. Another stab at . . . oh, I don’t know, what is it you’re looking for, Jasper?”

  Never before had Elle seen her father gripped by horror. “This is not the appropriate time or place,” he growled.

  The strain was obvious on Genevieve DuBois’s stricken face as she turned back to Elle. “Pardon me for being inappropriate, but I really don’t know the proper way to tell our daughter that you’re shacking up with your twentysomething girlfriend.”

  That had been the moment when Elle’s life rumbled out of control.

  Suddenly, her father wouldn’t talk to her, not in the honest, open way they’d always maintained. After Dad packed a suitcase and slipped out of the apartment with a guilty kiss to her forehead, Mom had apologized halfheartedly, her voice cracking with emotion as she said that Dad was “in crisis” and that it was best for Elle to head back to the States, where she could set herself on solid ground, make some friends, embrace her own culture.

  “Shopping malls and baseball and McDonald’s?” Elle thought as her mother locked herself into the bathroom for a shower. “I think I can live without those displays of conspicuous consumption.”

  Her mother didn’t answer. But a minute later, when Elle pressed
her ear to the door, she could hear the shrill mew of sobs only slightly muffled by running water.

  And that was the worst part—worse than banishment back to the States. The fact that her parents had lost control of their lives—that they had lost momentum and security after having traveled the world as best friends—that part frightened Elle most. Because if their lives were spinning out of control, how was Elle supposed to find solid ground?

  Liam was singing a song, trying to goad his sister. “Chuck, Chuck, bo Buck. Banana-fana . . .” The name game, with an interesting choice of names. Elle had to admire his adventurous spirit.

  She cupped a handful of water and let it trickle down her neck as she floundered for a way out of this cage. Yesterday she’d walked for an hour, cutting across people’s lawns and gardens because there were no sidewalks or paths. All that walking, and she’d arrived nowhere, since there was nowhere to go. She’d asked Aunt Deanna about buses or mass transit, which made the poor woman seem perplexed and horrified. “Not in this neighborhood,” her aunt had said, “but Gabby will be happy to drive you anywhere you want to go.”

  “But Mom!” Gabby had shrieked in a barrage of whiney complaints that had sent Elle scurrying from the family room with its slippery leather sofas facing a big-screen TV that seemed to be running 24/7. Unfortunately, having fled the family room, Elle had nowhere to run to. The room she shared with Gabby was so Gabby-inspired, with its canopied bed, tiny tulip wallpaper, and red microblinds, that it provided no refuge for Elle. With no spare, quiet room in the house, nowhere to walk, and her only mode of transport the grim prospect of a car ride with her sulking cousin to the mall, Elle felt trapped.

  That was when she’d discovered the pool, the shimmering turquoise retreat that the family had seemingly abandoned . . . until today. Now that Elle had staked her claim on the great outdoors, Gabby and Liam had risen in protest, dusting off the lounge chairs and pretending to care about the pH balance and the filter system.

  Liam was out of the pool now, creeping behind Elle.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He giggled.

  “Trying to drip on me?”

  “And it’s working,” he said.

  Elle reached behind her and grabbed hold of something—his ankle. She gave a tug and he fell onto her, sopping wet. Laughing, she leaned forward and they fell into the pool together in a burst of bubbles.

  “Gross!” Liam gasped when his head popped above the surface. “She touched me! My own cousin! Ew!”

  “Get over it,” Elle said, bringing a leg to the surface to kick water in his direction. “You’ll survive.”

  “Let’s play a game,” Liam said. “We can dive for pennies in twelve feet.”

  “Burn!” Gabby shouted. “Dad said no more coins. They’re clogging the filter.”

  “That is not a burn, and how can a penny get in the filter? Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh! It doesn’t float, you penis-head.”

  “Dad said,” Gabby insisted.

  “Penis-head.” Elle wiggled her toes in the water. “And I thought I’d heard them all.”

  “Okay,” Liam went on, now peeking into the side of the pool’s filter. “How about Marco Polo. Or races. No, wait. Let’s do a diving competition. Elle, did you know I can do a double backflip?”

  “Really? I can’t do a single backflip.”

  “You’re not allowed to do flips off the side,” Gabby squawked. “God, don’t you know anything?”

  “More than you,” Liam taunted his sister as he climbed out of the pool. He positioned himself on the edge, facing away from the water.

  “Don’t you dare,” Gabby threatened. “Stop it now.”

  Although Elle realized a backflip probably wasn’t the safest maneuver, the goading in Gabby’s voice made her wish Liam would do it—just launch himself into the air and bundle into a spinning ball and land in the water with a splash that shot chlorinated water all over her new swimsuit. God, she hated when bullies prodded and dared. More than once, she’d gotten herself in trouble taking up the challenge. Usually, she got away with it, but not that day on Bikini Beach, that stormy day when they’d all been warned to stay out of the water because of the riptides that had been reported . . .

  “Don’t you dare,” Darcy had warned. “Don’t be an idiot, Elle.”

  “I just want to go for a swim,” Elle had said, edging out along the rocks of the jetty. Jagged, black chunky rocks. She’d expected the wet part to be slippery, but it wasn’t hard to gain footing. Stepping from one to another, her arms outstretched like a graceful gymnast on the balance beam.

  That day on the rocks had been a turning point, one of those moments she would later point to and think, that was it, that was the moment it all started to go wrong. Mom, being a doctor, began to ask herself how she missed all the warning signs. Her father insisted on selling Gram’s house and whisked Elle away from “negative influences.” That was the beginning of many visits to a coven of therapists who, at the time, seemed very nosy about Elle’s personal business.

  Those jagged rocks, hundreds of them dumped there by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent another hurricane from wiping away the beach and tearing a bay into the coastline . . . there was something mesmerizing about the rocks that day: a dark whispering spell that seemed to summon her even before Darcy voiced the dare.

  “You’re full of shit.” Darcy stood there, hands on her hips, an indignant princess. “You’re not going in the water. And I know why you’re doing this, Elle . . .”

  Really? Elle thought with a secret smile. If you know, then I wish you could explain it to me: the cutting, the brushfires in the dunes, the plover eggs stolen from nests and cracked on the sidewalk. Elle was always getting in trouble, always the one behind small bits of mischief that horrified her parents. She’d been riding a wave of self-destruction, on a highway to hell, but none of the grown-ups had understood what pushed her.

  “At the age of ten you should know better,” her mother said, sitting upright on the sofa during a family meeting. “Playing with fire? Think of the wildlife at stake in the dunes. And I can’t imagine the tragedy if the fire had spread from the dunes to someone’s house.”

  But it was a game, Elle wanted to tell her. A game of skill, or so Darcy had said. Here’s how you play: Whoever can toss a lit match the farthest without the flames going out wins.

  But Elle hadn’t mentioned the game. She was the only one caught, and she knew it would be the ultimate betrayal to give up her friends.

  So Elle took the rap for the brushfires. And Elle got blamed for the smashed plover eggs, and for a stolen bicycle she knew nothing about. And when her parents grounded her, then found her in her bedroom slicing into her arm with a razor, she didn’t have an answer beyond the simple fact that they had sequestered her in her room and she was bored out of her mind and helpless to stop the anger that swirled in the pit of her stomach and lashed over her, reminding her that she was a stupid, moronic idiot whom no one cared about.

  All those merciless names Darcy had called her every time she refused to follow her to the ice cream shop or on those fancy picnic lunches packed by the Loves’ maid. Triangles of turkey sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Mandarin oranges packed in delicate Tupperware cups. And for dessert, Twizzlers and pixie sticks and nonpareils that Nessie had frozen to keep the chocolate from melting during the picnic.

  Elle hated those lunches, the evidence that so many people cared about Darcy Love. She had them all wrapped around the tendrils of her flaxen hair.

  “Don’t you dare jump, you moron!” Gabby snarled at her brother, jarring Elle back into the present.

  Why do bullies have so much power? She stood up at the edge of the pool, wondering why she ever let Darcy get to her.

  Whatever had happened to Darcy, anyway? She’d just run into Tara, and over the years she’d gotten a few postcards from Lindsay, her only real friend in the group, but Lindsay had never mentioned Darcy.

  Why am I even wondering? Why
don’t I go there and check it out? She could stay with Lindsay; the McCorkles always managed to squeeze one more into their rambling house with its screened porches, window seats, and attic cubbies. Of course, there was the sticky matter of getting clearance from the relatives. Not that she couldn’t just leave, but she didn’t have a U.S. dollar to her name, and she sensed that hitchhiking was not the thing to do in the States these days.

  Damn, but her parents had cut her off at the knees. Didn’t trust her. Pissed her off to no end.

  Did she have Lindsay’s number in her cell?

  “Elle . . .” She was jarred from her plan by Liam, who leaned into the pool, bored as usual. “Do you want to have a race?”

  “Just as long as you don’t splash me,” Gabby carped.

  “I have an idea,” Elle told Liam, feeling brighter as she curled her toes over the edge of the pool and flexed her knees like a racer on the starting block. “Let’s jump together. Why don’t you come to this side of the pool.” She motioned him over, secretly pointing a finger toward Gabby lounging in the chair behind them.

  Glancing over one skinny shoulder, Liam shot her a look of annoyance. But he came around the pool, water slapping on the pavement under his flame-print swim trunks.

  “Right here.” She showed him where to line up for maximum effect. Then, on the count of three, Elle and Liam cannonballed into the water. When Elle surfaced, Gabby was on her feet, shrieking.

  “I hate you both!” She dabbed at her face with a towel, then headed into the house. “I’m telling Mom!”

  “I think we’re in trouble,” Liam said, grinning.

  “It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.” Elle floated onto her back, loving the silky feel of warm water around her body and the satisfaction of having annoyed Gabriella. Nothing like bullying the bully. Gabby would be relieved to have her cousin drop out of her life again. No love lost there, though Elle would sort of miss Liam. It wasn’t often Elle met an eight-year-old who could beat her in a game of spades.