One S'more Summer

by Beth Merlin

  “Mom told me you were going to be in Martha’s Vineyard this weekend.”

  I noticed the girl on my father’s arm staring at Joshua, and it had only infuriated me more.

  “She went. I didn’t go,” my father answered.

  “I can see that,” I snapped back at him. I suspected this wasn’t the first time my father had cheated on my mother, only the first time he’d been caught.

  “No, Gigi. You don’t understand,” he said calmly. “This is Samara. She’s a paralegal with the firm.”

  “What’s he paying you?” I questioned her. “Don’t forget to ask for time and a half. I mean, he did drag you all the way to his empty house in the Hamptons.”

  He took two steps toward the hot tub. “Gigi, that’s enough.”

  Joshua climbed out and stood beside me to lend support.

  My father put on his glasses. “Joshua, right?”

  “Yes. Hello, Mr. Goldstein,” he answered.

  “Aren’t you Alicia’s friend?”

  Checkmate. My father knew perfectly well that Joshua had been Alicia’s boyfriend. My father was the top litigator at the most prestigious law firm in New York City. He made his reputation on his uncanny talent for being able to dissect any situation into cold hard facts. He’d just caught me in an equally compromising situation to the one I’d caught him in, and we were, for better or for worse, evenly matched in our wrongdoings.

  “I think we should call it a night and head back to the city,” Joshua suggested.

  My father walked passed us and around to the front door of the house. “That would be a very good idea,” he muttered.

  Samara stood there trying desperately not to make eye contact with me, which only made me feel worse. In reality, she and I weren’t all that different. Simultaneously, I was the other woman and Alicia all rolled into one. It was a complicated paradox. In that moment, when the realization of the situation mixed together with the two bottles of champagne we’d just finished, I knew I was going to be sick.

  I ran inside, and Joshua followed me into the bathroom where I threw up dinner and continued to dry heave until there was absolutely nothing left in me. I broke down and cried on the bathroom floor while he held me in his arms and kissed my head.

  “I just don’t understand. How could he do that? “I sobbed.

  “Shhh, try to calm down,” he said, smoothing my hair.

  “Do you think he loves her?”

  “Georgica, sweetheart, it’s far more complicated than that.”

  “I should go,” I said, picking myself up from the bathroom floor. “We should go. There’s no reason to stay here, not now.”

  As I rose, Joshua wrapped his arms over my shoulders and around my neck, pulling me into his chest. I leaned my head back into him, and he rocked me back and forth.

  “I’m not sorry,” he said turning me around. “For any of it. Are you?”

  “I’m sorry for all of it,” I said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he whispered in my ear.

  Suddenly, the line from the movie Love Story, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” came into my head—a line I’d never fully understood until now. If love meant never having to say you were sorry, and here we both were expressing regret for all we’d done and all we’d been, this couldn’t be love. What it was, though, I wasn’t sure.

  Over the next few months, I’d agonized over that question. From that point on, I’d obsessed over every word he and I exchanged and every glance he threw my way. I clung to his promise that maybe our separation was only temporary. My work suffered, my personal life suffered, and by the time Joshua and Alicia announced their engagement, I was unrecognizable, even to myself.

  Now, almost a full year later, I was hanging on at the other end of a phone, having laid all my feelings on the line. I couldn’t take back what I’d just said to Joshua, and because it was the last time I’d ever plead for his affection, I didn’t regret a single sentence.

  “Maybe it was complicated, but now it’s simple. Joshua, choose me,” I repeated.

  “I can’t,” he answered, his voice losing all power.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Gigi, please get home safe, okay?”

  “Please Joshua, wait—” I whispered to the dial tone.

  I hung up the phone and sobbed so hard that the cab driver pulled over to the side of Second Avenue, where I pushed open the door and preceded to throw up vodka and french fries into a storm drain. The driver helped me back into the cab and then took me to my apartment, where I stumbled inside and passed out on the couch.

  In the morning, my apartment felt stuffy and small, the guilt and shame of the night before completely suffocating me. I stood up to open some windows and noticed a packet with the Camp Chinooka logo peeking out from the pile of mail on my coffee table. I slowly pulled it out from underneath the large pile of bills I’d been avoiding and opened the envelope. Inside was a brochure, job application, and letter from Camp Chinooka’s director, Gordon Birnbaum.

  Dear Camp Chinooka Alumni,

  As we enter into our 100th summer, we need you more than ever. We’re looking for hard-working, fun-loving, energetic, and enthusiastic former campers to return to Chinooka as counselors or head counselors. If you think you have what it takes, and are looking to recapture a bit of your youth in the beautiful Poconos, enclosed is an application. Come join us for our amazing centennial year! We look forward to welcoming you back to the Chinooka family, your home away from home.

  Sincerely,

  Gordon “Gordy” Birnbaum

  The answer was so simple, and now it was staring me in the face. I could work as a counselor at Camp Chinooka for the summer and get away from everyone and everything. I needed a job and a hideout—this was both. I needed time to mend my broken heart and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Most of all, I relished the notion that I could actually revisit a time and place in my life where not every decision was life-altering and the possibilities had seemed wide open. I sat down at the kitchen table and filled out the application, and before I had time to second-guess my decision, slid it into my building’s mail chute.

  Weeks later, I received a phone call from Gordy’s secretary, inviting me to Camp Chinooka’s New York offices for an interview. I’d already put my apartment on some sites for subletting and spoken to potential tenants about renting for the summer. The morning of the interview, I stood at my closet for what seemed like hours, trying to decide what to wear. A suit seemed too formal, but slacks didn’t seem formal enough. I finally settled on a wrap dress I’d made for myself a few years before. It was perfect.

  My interview wasn’t with Gordy but with one of the other camp directors, Suzanne Tillman. Suzanne was in her mid-forties and had been the drama counselor back when I was a camper. She didn’t remember me. She did, of course, remember Alicia.

  “So, let’s see,” she said, flipping through my application. “You were a camper at Chinooka?”

  “That’s right,” I answered.

  “Wonderful. I was working as the drama counselor back in those days,” she said.

  “I worked backstage in one of your productions of Fiddler on the Roof.”

  She scrunched up her nose. “Really?”

  “My friend Alicia played Hodel in that same show,” I said.

  “Alicia Scheinman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our best Hodel to date. Are you two still close?”

  “The best of friends,” I replied.

  “Wonderful. So, Georgica,” she said, changing the subject, “Why are you applying to be a counselor at Chinooka?”

  “You can call me Gigi. Everyone does.”

  She nodded and leaned in, waiting for my answer.

  “As a kid, camp was the one place you could reinvent yourself. Truth is, I’ve always wanted to go back and work as a counselor. Each summer, something else just seemed to get in the way of me doing it,” I said.

  She le
aned in even closer. “What’s different now?”

  “I’m at a bit of a crossroads, both personally and professionally,” I said.

  She was making notes all over the application. “Can you elaborate?”

  “Up until a few weeks ago, I was a designer with Diane von Furstenberg. I was let go. Now, I’m not really sure what I want to do with my life,” I answered.

  “And personally?”

  “Alicia Scheinman’s getting married in a few months to a really great guy. I’m still very single.”

  She pushed her hair behind her ears. “Say no more. I completely understand.”

  I glanced down and noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  She continued, “We have an opening for a head counselor for Cedar. Think you’d be up to the challenge?”

  The Cedar girls were notoriously one of the worst behaved groups at camp. Thirteen-year-old girls, full of hormones, convinced they were too mature to be told what to do but too immature not to be. They took any chance they could to push boundaries and challenge authority. Only a small number of counselors had ever lasted the whole summer with them, but I was so desperate for the chance to get away, she could have told me I’d be looking after convicts and I probably would’ve accepted the job.

  The interview lasted another half hour. When it was over, Suzanne told me that, pending the background check, the job was mine. I thanked her profusely for the opportunity.

  She called out to me as I was leaving. “Gigi?”

  I turned around. “Yes?”

  “You know it’s just a temporary means of escape, right? Your same life will be waiting for you when you get home.”

  “I just need one more summer,” I replied.

  She nodded and said, “I’ll send all the employment documents when the background check comes through.”

  Armed with a plan for escaping the summer, I was ready to face the world. I just had one hurdle left—facing Alicia.

  Chapter Five

  After my night chasing the girls around the grounds of Chinooka, I was awakened by Gordy blasting music through the camp’s speaker system. His routine hadn’t changed one bit. He turned the music down and screamed into the microphone, doing his best impression of Robin Williams. “Gooooooood morning, Camp Chinooka. It’s 0600 hours. What does the ‘O’ stand for? Oh my God, it’s early. It’s time to rise and shine. It’s a beautiful seventy-two degrees and sunny. Breakfast is in one hour. Last one there, gets no eggs.”

  The entire Good Morning, Vietnam reference went right over the kids’ heads, but he continued with it anyway.

  “Competition for the Gordy is already underway, with Cedar taking a slight lead. What are you gonna do about it, Perry?” Gordy asked before blasting Eye of the Tiger.

  I looked over to my right, where Jordana was mumbling the lyrics to the song in her sleep. I threw my pillow at her. “Hey, rise and shine.”

  “I feel like death,” she muttered back.

  “Between the short-sheeting and my impromptu hike around Chinooka last night, I’m not feeling much better myself. But guess what? We got a shout-out this morning.”

  “Why?” she asked, crawling out from underneath her comforter.

  “He said we’re in the early lead for the Gordy.”

  “Great,” she garbled and rolled back over.

  “Jordana,” I shouted.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” she said, sitting upright in her bed.

  “Okay, now we just have to get them up.”

  “I’ll take the left. You take the right,” she said grudgingly.

  I popped out of bed and stepped onto the cold wood floor. Goose bumps rose up and down my arms and legs. I tiptoed across the room and flipped on the light switch. There was a collective group of moans. Several of the girls covered their heads with their pillows and sank more deeply under their blankets.

  “Good morning, girls,” I said as cheerily as I could. “Time to get up. We have a lot to do this morning.” More groans.

  I walked back over to my area and got dressed while Jordana and Tara went around to each of the sleeping girls and basically shook them awake. I took my hair straightening iron into the bathroom and had just started to try smoothing out the mess on my head when the lights in the bunk flickered. I ignored it until they shut off completely.

  “What just happened?” I yelled.

  “We blew a fuse,” Tara answered.

  “How is that even possible? All I plugged in was my hair iron.”

  “Your hair iron, but their alarm clocks, fans, and iPod chargers. It’s too much for the old wiring,” Jordana said as she flipped the switch in the fuse box.

  “Girls, please unplug some of your things so I can use this real quick.” They all stared at me blankly. “Now!” I insisted.

  I waited a few seconds and plugged the iron back in. The lights flickered and went out a second time. I pulled the cord out of the wall, walked over to the fuse box, and flipped the switch again.

  “I don’t think you can use your hair iron in the bunk, Gigi,” Tara said.

  “Thank you for your observation, Tara.”

  “No problem.”

  “What’s the matter?” Jordan asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, looking enviously at her stick-straight red hair. I threw my own hair up into a bun and pulled out the work wheel from one of my cubbies.

  “For those of you who may not know, this is a work wheel,” I said, gesturing Vanna White style. “You’ll notice that I included my name, Tara’s name, and Jordana’s name on the wheel. We live here too, so I thought it was only fair that we help out.”

  A few of the girls raised their eyebrows, surprised we would volunteer ourselves when we didn’t have to. “I’m going to give it a spin, and let’s get this party started,” I said, giving the wheel a good turn. I doled out all of the chores and clapped my hands to get the girls moving. “All the cleaning supplies are under the sink. Let me know if you need anything.”

  After I finished cleaning the bathroom (lucky me), I went outside for roll call. A lot of very tired-looking campers and counselors lined up in front of me.

  “Hope you girls had a great first night at camp. Bunk Eleven, I hope you girls slept well. No other bat incidents?” I asked, smiling. Brooke and Michelle, Bunk Eleven’s counselors, looked incredibly confused. “I’ll be in the gazebo after breakfast to do activity sign-ups. We already have a slight lead on the Gordy, so let’s keep it up going into the dining hall. Repeat after me: ‘Cedar girls, Cedar girls, we’ve got the spirit. Cedar girls, Cedar girls, come on, let’s hear it.”

  The girls half-heartedly repeated after me. After a few more rounds, they joined in the chant, which grew in volume with each repetition. Perry was waiting for me outside the dining hall.

  “Morning, Princess,” he said, leaning back into the wall.

  “Morning,” I grumbled back.

  “You look like you could use a latte.”

  “You have no idea.”

  He held the screen door open for me. “Well, there’s cold, watery coffee inside—enjoy,” he said.

  When I got into the dining hall, I noticed the Birch boys were dressed head to toe in Chinooka blue and gold and were sitting silently at their tables. When they spotted me, they started singing. “We love you, Gigi, oh, yes, we do. We don’t love anyone as much as you. When you’re not near us, we’re blue AND GOLD. Oh, Gigi, we love you.”

  They repeated the song several times, and Perry joined in. After the third verse, I motioned for my girls to stand up and recite the cheer from earlier. The two groups were yelling as loudly as they could until Gordy got up to the microphone and motioned for silence.

  “Seems like we have a heated competition this year for the Gordy. Keep it up,” he said excitedly. “I want to welcome everyone to their first full day at Camp Chinooka. We’ll be following the normal schedule. Activity sign-up will be in the gazebos right after breakfast. Fiddler on the Roof auditions will be at 2:00 this after
noon for the girls and at 4:00 for the boys. Have a great day and enjoy breakfast.”

  As soon as Gordy stepped away from the microphone, Birch went right back to singing. I spotted Perry in the corner, laughing.

  I stood up on my tiptoes. “Okay, enough with the song, guys. I know you love me,” I yelled in their direction. The singing just got louder. “Can you stop this?” I shouted at him.

  “Ask me nicely, Princess,” Perry shouted back.

  “Can you pretty please with a cherry on top stop them from singing?” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  And just like that, with a single nod of his head, they stopped. It was infuriating. I got my tray and filled a bowl with cereal. I grabbed a banana off the center table and sat down with the rest of the Bunk Fourteen girls, who were busy eating their breakfast.

  “He likes you,” Tara said to me as I unloaded my tray.

  “He does not,” I replied.

  “Yes, he does,” Rachel, a camper, chimed in.

  “Well, if I don’t like him, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Madison asked.

  “Girls, enough,” Jordana reprimanded. “Let Gigi eat her breakfast in peace.”

  I sneaked out to the gazebo before breakfast ended to wait for the girls. I called each bunk over to choose their first week of activities and took down the names of the girls planning to audition for Fiddler on the Roof. Hannah Davidson, one of my campers, told me she’d tried out for the role of Hodel the summer before but was too young. This summer, she was finally the right age and desperately wanted the part.