The Second Summer of the Sisterhood Read online

  Everybody screamed on the sidelines. Billy turned and gave Bridget a thumbs-up. It was a stupid gesture, but she smiled at him anyway.

  Burgess won 1–0. The guys on the team and their friends and all their pretty groupies went out to celebrate, and Bridget went home to her boardinghouse alone. But she was too ramped up to stay in her room, so she dug her running shoes out of the bottom of her suitcase. She hadn’t used them in months. She put them on and stepped outside.

  She ran straight down Market Street all the way to the river. She remembered the pretty, overgrown path that ran alongside it. The place with the arrowheads. On the far side of the river she saw the ancient, broken-down oak trees giving shelter to hardy weeds and climbers at the expense of their own failing branches.

  She’d run so many miles in her life, her body seemed to welcome the exercise. On the other hand, it started to complain after only a mile or so in the July heat. She felt all the extra weight on her hips and shoulders and arms. It wrecked her stride and it wrecked her breathing.

  Her mind flashed to the Traveling Pants. Just this morning she’d sent them on their way. She hadn’t even worn them. She felt angry at herself, and it made her run faster and farther. And the longer she ran, the more she felt like she was carrying a burden and she wanted it off.

  Lena distinctly remembered the last time the Rollinses had had their Fourth of July barbecue, because she had thrown up all over the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She had always blamed the watermelon, but one could never be certain. They had been ten years old that summer.

  The barbecue had been an annual tradition from when they were babies, but the year they were eleven it went on long-term hiatus. Though nobody ever said so, Lena knew it was because of Bee’s mom. The relationships between the grown-ups were never easy after that.

  She wasn’t exactly sure why it had been resurrected now, six years later. For a brief moment she had feared it was because Bee was away this summer, but she realized that Tibby’s mom had issued the invitations before Bee had impulsively up and gone.

  Lena had another troubling thought: Had this party made Bee want to leave town?

  But Lena didn’t really believe that. Bee had willingly—willfully—endured gatherings that had been harder than this one. In May she had inexplicably decided to attend the annual mother-daughter sports dinner, in spite of all their efforts to make other plans for her that night.

  As they pulled up to the Rollinses’ groomed and gardened house, all the Kaligarises together for a rare family appearance, Lena promised herself to go easy on the watermelon.

  “Now, who husked that beautiful corn?” Tibby’s mom asked by way of greeting as Lena and her family made their way to the backyard. Lena could see that the corn, speckled light and dark yellow, was piled pyramid-style on a blue platter.

  “That would be me,” she said modestly.

  She watched the mothers hug and kiss, one shoulder pat, one cheek each. Lena noticed that her mom seemed particularly stiff. The fathers shook hands with each other and talked in deeper voices than they used at home.

  Lena spotted Carmen standing several yards from her mom. Carmen wore a short denim cutoff skirt, a white tank top, and a red scarf tied at the back of her long hair. Lena was always impressed. Today Carmen managed to look sexy and patriotic at the same time.

  Tibby was skulking around the periphery of the yard with her movie camera. She was wearing a bleach-spotted army green shirt and mangy khaki shorts. She didn’t look sexy or patriotic.

  The three girls found each other quickly, like parted bits of mercury, and clumped together on the side of the deck. They watched as Christina and Ari repeated the stiff hug-and-kiss gestures.

  “What’s up with your mom?” Carmen asked.

  “She doesn’t look happy, does she?” Lena noted.

  “Is she still mad at you about the Eugene thing?” Carmen asked.

  “I think so,” Lena said. “She’s been weird.”

  Carmen looked at the sky. “I miss Bee.”

  “I miss her too,” Tibby said.

  Lena felt sad. She grabbed one of Tibby’s hands and one of Carmen’s. They squeezed and dropped them before it got sappy. They sometimes did this when one of them was missing.

  “She has the Pants still,” Carmen mused.

  “I hope she’s all right,” Lena said.

  Silently, they considered the various ways in which Bee was crashing around Alabama, armed with the Pants.

  “I gotta go,” Tibby held up the camera. “I’m working this weekend.”

  “Are we still going to the thing at the Mall tonight?”

  “Sure,” Lena said unenthusiastically. Every year on the Fourth, a big group of kids from their high school gathered by the reflecting pool to hear bands and watch the fireworks. Lena felt it was incumbent upon her as a teenager to go, but she didn’t like crowds and she didn’t like parties.

  Effie appeared with two hamburgers, a mountain of potato salad, and two ears of corn.

  “Hungry?” Lena asked.

  Effie ignored her. “I want that skirt,” she told Carmen.

  “You can borrow it,” Carmen offered magnanimously. As an only child, Carmen appreciated the novelty of Effie.

  Lena surveyed the party. In the old days it had been full of counterculture types. Tibby’s parents used to be the young, cool ones. Somebody had always pulled out a guitar and played folk songs and the odd Led Zeppelin tune, which her parents never knew that well on account of being Greek. Lena suspected in hindsight that a lot of the grown-ups had been enjoying bong hits in the finished basement while the kids chased each other around on the lawn. Six years later, the Rollinses’ friends were a lot less scruffy. Most of them had toddlers and babies.

  Suddenly Lena realized why this party had been reborn. The Septembers and their parents were vestiges of the Rollinses’ first phase of parenting. Tibby’s mom had invited them again for old times’ sake, but this party was really about their second-phase friends, the parents of all of Nicky’s and Katherine’s friends. In fact, Lena strongly suspected she was going to get hit up for baby-sitting before the night was over.

  It made her feel a little bit sad. She understood better how it was for Tibby. She considered how she would have described this feeling to Kostos if she were still writing real letters to him. Maybe it was just the sadness of time passing. Maybe it was a regular-life kind of heartache.

  Lena, Effie, and Carmen ate on the grass and watched the babies run around. Then Lena watched with some foreboding, when the dessert platters came out, as the little kids scarfed pounds of drooly pink watermelon.

  The sun had hardly begun its descent when Lena’s mother appeared at her side looking out of sorts. “Lena, we’re going to go. You’re welcome to stay if you can get another ride home.”

  Lena looked up at her in surprise. “You’re going already? It’s pretty early.”

  Ari cast her the “I don’t want to talk about it” look. Lena had been getting a lot of those lately.

  “I’ll come too,” Lena said. When at parties, Lena often yearned to be home in her room. Even Effie decided to leave with them. Lena guessed that was because the only available guys were under four years of age.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lena saw Carmen’s mom beckoning Carmen over. Christina wore the Christina version of the look Ari was wearing. What was going on?

  Ari went straight for the car without making any apparent good-byes. Lena zipped to Carmen’s side. “What’s going on?” she murmured.

  “I don’t know.” Carmen looked equally bewildered.

  They both bore down on Tibby in the empty kitchen. “What’s going on?” they asked her.

  “God, I don’t know.” Tibby looked a little shell-shocked. “They were closed up in the dining room, the three of them. Your mother thinks my mom and Carmen’s mom told you some big secret about Eugene. They were whispering, but you could tell they were pissed.”

  Lena groaned. She heard the e
ngine revving outside. “I’ll call you guys later. My mom is about to drive away.” The three of them hugged quickly, parting as friends while their mothers left in anger.

  Lena sat in the backseat on the drive home feeling a whole new kind of sad. She’d had some unarticulated hopes for this thing. On some level she’d had a fantasy that their mothers would remember how much they loved their daughters and each other and effortlessly strike up their old friendship again.

  Now Lena felt like she understood how it was for Carmen, with her divorced parents. It was a basic human desire to long for the people you loved to love each other.

  Lena watched her mother’s tense face through the rearview mirror. Effie cast Lena questioning looks. Her father, seemingly oblivious, finished the piece of watermelon he’d brought with him. At least Lena hadn’t thrown up.

  Carma,

  Stop worrying, okay? You didn’t say so on the phone yesterday, but I could tell. So stop it. I’m fine. I need to be here, and pretty soon, I may even figure out why. Did I mention Billy? Oh, I guess I did. About fifteen times.

  So here are the Pants, back to you again. Did they seem to go around fast this time, or is it just me? I can’t tell you how I did with the Pants. I can’t talk about it. You have to wait till the end of the summer and then I’ll have some big things to say. I just know I will.

  Hey. Have fun at the big old Rollinspalooza. Give Nicky and Katherine a little tickle torture from me. And tell Lenny to go easy on the watermelon.

  Love, love, love. All ways all the time, Carmabelle.

  Bee

  Tibby felt the heat of Alex’s body as he leaned close to her. His chin was probably less than six inches from her shoulder.

  “I love this,” he said.

  No, I love this, she thought.

  It was a series of fast clips of her mother not having enough time. It had been a setup, really. Tibby had told her mom she wanted to do an interview, and Alice had spent most of the weekend putting her off. First with the towel on her head and her toenail polish drying. “Honey, can we do it later?” Then poking her head out of the bathroom. “Sweetie, I just don’t have time this minute.” Then frustrated and shiny up to her elbows in pink ground beef, making hamburgers for the cookout. “Can you just wait till I’m finished making these?”

  Tibby ran the clips shorter and faster as they mounted. Gradually she increased the speed of the video so her mother’s voice got higher and her movements increasingly jerky as the documentary progressed.

  “Why don’t you throw this in?” he asked. It was a close-up of red Popsicle juice running down Nicky’s forearm.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “’Cause it’s a cool shot. Also, you don’t want it to get predictable.”

  Tibby turned her face slightly, so she could see more of him. She was both awed and chastened. He was so good at this. Whereas her ideas were predictable.

  Subtly he was pushing her past the pure slapstick humor she had begun with, toward a darker, more chaotic portrait. Tibby knew it was more cutting, but it was also more challenging.

  For good measure, she threw in a random shot of a yellow patch of grass in her otherwise green backyard.

  “Brilliant,” he said, nodding.

  He was a good teacher. She was a good student. And Tibby felt some tiny, evil pleasure in the fact that Alex had taken such an interest in her movie, and that Maura had barely begun filming.

  Tibby glided all the way back to her dorm on the word brilliant.

  When she got to her room, Brian was there.

  “Hey,” she said, surprised.

  “I came back. Is that okay?”

  She nodded. Part of her wasn’t so sure.

  “I wanted to see how your movie was coming.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She knew the last time he’d come, he’d made himself indispensable to a local copy shop whose computer network had been on the fritz. At least he’d be working.

  She looked at Brian’s thoughtless clothing. What was his home like that he seemed to want to be in it so little? She wondered, and yet she didn’t ask him about it, did she? For years his life had been a video game in front of a 7-Eleven. Now, it appeared, it was Tibby.

  “I have to work a lot,” she said. “I’m supposed to show the first cut on Sunday. We’re giving a little film festival for Parents’ Day,” she explained.

  “That’s okay. I have stuff to do too.” Brian settled himself on the floor with his notebooks and pencils to demonstrate.

  Tibby set her computer up at her desk. She needed to lay in the soundtrack tonight. She had thought she knew what songs she wanted, but now that she’d seen what Alex was working on, she was worried hers were too . . . predictable. She thought of all his hand-printed CD cases. He probably knew all the musicians personally. She felt like a stupid teenybopper, buying her CDs at Sam Goody.

  She set about finding some lesser-known songs from lesser-known bands. She could create a hodgepodge and vary the speed so the actual songs would be almost unrecognizable.

  She played the sequence she and Alex had worked on. She played it over. She cued up the song she wanted and sped it up to herky-jerky speed. She was deep in concentration when she realized Brian was looking over her shoulder. She turned around, trying to block his view of the screen with her head.

  “What?”

  “Is that it?”

  “A part of it,” she said a little defensively.

  His eyes were troubled. “Do you think your mom might be upset if you show her in the bathroom with a towel on her head?” He asked it as a real question, not an accusation.

  She looked at him as if he were some kind of doofus. “It’s a film. Her feelings aren’t the point. It’s supposed to be . . . you know, like, art.”

  Brian wasn’t backing off, art or not. “But if she sees it, it might make her sad,” he said simply.

  “For starters, she isn’t going to see it. Do you seriously think my mother would show up for Parents’ Day? She doesn’t have time to read my report card.”

  “But won’t you feel bad, making a movie about her that you wouldn’t let her see?”

  “I’m not saying I wouldn’t let her see it!” Tibby snapped. “It’s totally fine if she sees it. I don’t care. I’m just saying, there’s no way she’s showing up for the festival, so it’s kind of irrelevant.”

  Brian didn’t say anything more, and he didn’t watch any more of her movie. Quietly he drew as she played a loud section of a song again and again and again at varying speeds. That night there wasn’t any whistling.

  “I guess she’s still angry. I’m not sure. She isn’t talking to me,” Lena said, squeezing the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she used both hands to hang up blouses.

  There was always so much clothing to put back. For every twenty pieces of clothing a shopper tried on, she usually bought about one. And when Lena had anything to do with it, she bought none. Lena had no knack for sales.

  “What a surreal party. At least I got a lot of it on film,” Tibby said.

  Lena noticed the disjointed music in the background. Tibby was too progressive to like anything that just sounded good.

  “Did you film the argument?” Lena asked heavily. She wasn’t sure why the mothers’ discord bothered her so much. Well, unless you considered that it was all her fault. There was that detail.

  “Some of it. By mistake I erased the end of it, though, when I was filming my mom racing around the house with a diaper wipe stuck to her heel.”

  Lena laughed anemically. “Oh.”

  “My mom is a freak. When I left, she was still rambling and muttering about how your mother should be more open with you. Like my mom would spend ten seconds telling me anything.”

  Lena clamped a bunch of hangers under her arm. “Yeah,” she said absently.

  There was silence on the other end.

  Lena suddenly realized she had broken a basic rule. You could rail against your mother. You could listen patiently while
your friend railed against her mother. But you must never rail against your friend’s mother or agree with aforementioned railing.

  Lena hadn’t meant to do it, but it was too late now.

  “It’s not like she’s the only freak,” Tibby said, a little quietly.

  “Yes. No. I mean, no.” Lena was trying to get a slippery blouse onto a hanger. She’d never been good at doing two things at once.

  “And maybe you shouldn’t have tricked her into telling you about that guy.”

  “Tibby, I didn’t trick her.” Lena stopped herself. Yes, she had. “I mean, I’m sorry if I tricked her, but still, she didn’t have to—” By mistake, Lena pushed a number with her cheek. Beeeep.

  “She didn’t have to what?” Tibby snapped combatively. “Tell you all that stuff you were trying to get her to tell you?”

  “No, I mean . . .”

  “Excuse me. Uh, hello?” A woman was waving at Lena from a fitting room. Lena could hear her voice and see the arm.

  In her anxiety, Lena let the blouses swish to her feet. She stepped on the arm of one. “Tibby, I—I can’t—”

  “The sad thing is, my mom was trying to be big pals with you.”

  Lena’s frustration bubbled over.

  “Tibby! I’m not criticizing your mom! You’re the one making a film of her trailing a diaper wipe around the house!”

  Tibby was quiet. Lena felt horrible. “Tib, I’m sorry,” she said gently.

  “I’ve gotta go. Bye,” Tibby said, and she hung up.

  The four of them had a policy that they never hung up on each other, no matter how mad they were. Tibby had come about as close as you could get.

  “Excuse me?” the shopper called again.

  Lena felt like crying. She dragged herself over to the fitting room. “Yes. Can I help you?”

  “Do you have these in the next bigger size?” The woman waved a pair of pants over the curtain.

  Lena grabbed them and headed for the racks. Women always seemed to bring the size they wished they were to the fitting room, rather than the size that would actually fit. Lena fetched the pants in a twelve.