Random Acts of Kindness (22 page)

P
ine Lake revealed itself to Claire in pieces both old and new.

On the porch of the Adirondack Inn—where Claire had never eaten before—the eight of them sat in the shade with a view of the lake. They clinked glasses of iced tea and watched the sporty sailboats pass by as they ceded all choice of lunch foods to Sydney, who revealed herself as quite the foodie. Sydney eyeballed the menu, stroking the silk ends of the scarf she’d wound gypsylike about her bald head, and then crooked a manicured finger at the waiter. That waiter soon delivered loaves of warm artisan bread and small bowls of sweet whipped butter followed by an endive salad studded with Roquefort cheese. Plates of rainbow trout in citrus vinaigrette, smoked venison with cranberry chutney, and slivers of roasted duck ensued.

Claire feasted, swooning at every bite. She couldn’t remember when she last ate such a meal. Sydney sampled each plate, leaning toward Claire to share lively anecdotes about a dish of trunkfish she’d tried in the Caribbean, the best gumbo she’d ever had in New Orleans, and the time she ate wild boar in Montreal.

They all worked off desserts of apple crumble and mountain berry pie by taking a walk down Main Street, breaking up into small groups. They all agreed to meet at the city hall flagpole in an hour.

Claire took advantage of the opportunity to set off on her own, wandering amid the flow of visitors and natives, just listening to the broad vowels of the accents that at times sounded Canadian, at other times veered closer to New England, but blended together formed the verbal soundtrack of her summer youth. She passed the bike store where she’d once bought a wicker basket and inner tubes to replace the ones busted on her hand-me-down bicycle. The ancient, overstuffed Smoke Shop that used to stand beside it had been replaced by a tiny cupcake bakery, all powder-pink paint. Though the confections were artful, Claire remembered with a pang of nostalgia how much time she’d spent in the musty, old place perusing magazines and buying bubble gum and flavored lip balm.

She slowed to a full stop as she reached the town library. She stood in front of the bulletin board to read the announcements tacked up under glass. It felt as if she were reading an activity list from her childhood. They announced Monday Movie Night, the Tuesday Tales for children, the Swinging Wednesday concert on the lawn (weather permitting), the next town council meeting, the summer book club, and a gathering of the hikers club.

She also noted the
Save the Adirondacks
sticker slapped on the glass, an image of a straight pine topped with a fist on a red-white-and-blue background. It was the kind of in-your-face icon that Claire knew represented yet another rogue, local political action committee. The Adirondack Park was an odd mix of public and private land. Tension between developers and environmentalists ebbed and flowed as predictably as the phases of the moon. It gave her a pleasant little buzz to see that her hometown was still a hotbed of activism.

Claire caught up with Jin just as she bounded out of the sports shop where Claire had bought her first pair of ice skates—well, the first pair she hadn’t inherited from her older sisters, anyway. The shop had flourished and expanded into the adjacent space. Jin seized her hand and dragged her inside to point at the photos of the local sports teams, old and new, hanging on the walls above the racks of bathing suits. Together they found Lu’s hockey team, with Lu in full goalie gear, as well as a yellowed newspaper clipping of Nicole’s team deliriously celebrating their regional softball championship win.

Claire stood beside Jin and gazed at the photo of those happy young women, and she found her thoughts drifting to her own sleepy, rural town in Oregon, eight miles away from the nearest library, the high school a mixed regional one, the only restaurant on the crossroad strip a restaurant that closed at two p.m. that was simply called The Diner.

She shook herself. It wasn’t fair to compare. And surely, she said to Jin, it must be time for them to gather at the flagpole.

The others were already there except for Nicole and Jenna. Maya and Sydney dug into their bags to show off jars of elderberry jelly, bottles of maple syrup, and hunks of local cheeses they’d bought at the farmer’s market. Claire settled in the grass and listened as they worked out the logistics for a dinner picnic at Coley’s Point, watching the ease at which her old friends arrived at a consensus.

Claire squinted, recognizing the cadence of Jenna’s walk as she and Nicole made their way across the green. Watching them, her throat closed up. Their heads were lowered, close to each other. Jenna stopped now and again to twist and point to different places on her wonky hip.

Claire didn’t have to hear what Jenna was saying to know she was describing the developmental hip dysplasia that Jenna had been born with, the Pavlik harness she’d worn as a baby, the pelvic osteotomy surgery she’d suffered in her childhood, the hip abduction braces she’d later hated. Jenna had told Claire the whole difficult story in high school, then confessed that Claire was the only friend who’d dared to ask. It was a litmus test, of sorts, Jenna admitted. She always felt great warmth for anyone who ventured a question rather than pretending her rolling little limp didn’t exist.

But Nicole and Jenna’s deepening rapport wasn’t the sole reason why Claire pushed herself up from her seat by the flagpole, her eyes prickling, waiting with a pounding heart to greet the two women who knew everything.

“Sorry we’re late.” Nicole swung an arm around Jenna’s shoulders as she joined the group. “Jenna’s hip was acting up, so we took it slow. Anything exciting happen while we were gone?”

Claire pressed her hands against her cheeks as everyone laughed and gathered around and ran their hands over Jenna’s and Nicole’s newly shorn heads as if this were some strange female bonding ritual. With her short hair sheared off, Nicole looked strong and fierce, like G.I. Jane. Jenna was a creature transformed, a young Sinead O’Connor, fey and otherworldly. Her lashes swept her cheeks like long, dark wings.

Claire hugged them both while one word rang in her head:
solidarity
.

Later that evening, when they gathered blankets and baskets of food to take up to Coley’s Point, she made sure she gave Nicole and Jenna one of her many hats so they wouldn’t get cold as the picnic inevitably morphed into a late-night bonfire, and then, just as she expected, into a sleepover under the star-blasted skies.

Somewhere around five in the morning, as the embers of the fire smoked and most of the women still huddled under blankets, Claire stood up to watch the first rays of the morning light peep between the distant trees. One by one, her friends joined her at the edge of the clearing. The sky brightened. For a single transcendent moment, their faces smoothed and the few extra pounds dropped off and their muted voices rose in pitch, as if they were standing barefoot in sateen during the morning after their senior prom, as they had all those many years ago.

Perhaps it
was
possible—for one winking moment—to go back in time.

Even the sensation she was feeling was familiar, a thrumming connection to her true community, the quivering of the strands of memory that tied her irrevocably to these friends. As a girl, she’d reveled in this tangle of human connection, but then she’d shucked it—person by person, year by year—as too painful to maintain. Now, on this hilltop overlooking the place where she’d come of age, she realized that the world she’d created for herself after Pine Lake had become a small, meager place, bereft of joy but never of suffering.
This
feeling was what she’d craved, this was the source of that yearning she’d experienced the day Jenna had arrived at her door and offered up a fairy-godmother wish.

For four thousand miles she’d been following her heart, but she hadn’t truly understood what it had been whispering to her until now.

She needed to stay close to the people she loved, no matter how much it hurt.

Claire stole away from the main lodge. She’d been hoping for a moment alone at the boathouse from the moment she’d set eyes upon it. The building sat over the banks of the lake within a stand of yellow birch. The coiling twig work gave the pillars the look of sun-bleached trees. It had an elfish look, a Thai-temple look. Now she slipped off her sandals and pressed her palms together. With the boards hot under her feet she walked with attention, keeping her gaze on the ground just in front of her. Mindful of each step, she wandered up the four sun-drenched bays before plunging back into the cool shade, seeking calm in Buddhist walking meditation.

Sometime later, she settled cross-legged at the end of one of the docks to listen to the gurgle of water. Beneath her, the wood vibrated with every knock of the tethered rowboats in the bays. Her head filled with the aroma of reedy lake shallows, warm wood, and the iron tang of rust.

She heard their footfalls on the grass. She recognized Jenna by the hitch in her cadence and, once they reached the boathouse, the distinctive click of Lucky’s claws. She recognized Nicole by the athletic grace of her tread and the soundless breeze as Nicole dipped down to settle cross-legged right beside her. Nicole had been spending a lot of time with Lu; a vague scent of cigarette smoke clung to her clothes.

They sat together in comfortable, effortless silence. Claire breathed in this feeling. In the weeks and months to come, she would meditate in the shade of her forest garden or in the spot in her den where the sun poured through the window. She wanted to be able to remember the pulse of their presence, every physical tic, every subtle rustle of their clothing. She wanted to be able to summon the spirits of her friends like ghosts.

A warm pressure clambered against her thigh. She opened her eyes to see Lucky climbing into her lap.

Jenna slackened the leash. “Boy, he’s going to miss you.”

The pup stretched under Claire’s fingers, closing his big, brown eyes as she gave him a good rub. “He’s got a long way to ride home, poor little pup, but at least he’ll have Zoe to scratch his ears. Have you come here to fetch me back to the lodge for dinner?”

“Not just yet.” Nicole shifted her seat, the boards creaking beneath her. “Riley promised to ring the bell when dinner is ready.”

“Sorry I bugged out of cooking.”

“Everyone did, once Sydney took over.” Nicole raised her face to the sun. “It’s sad to think we’re all leaving tomorrow.”

Claire felt a pang so sharp she winced. “The flights are all arranged then.”

Nicole said, “Jenna’s leaving at nine a.m. to fetch her mother and pick up Zoe at camp. Lu offered us a ride to the Albany airport at noon.”

Jenna piped up, “It’s not too late to change your minds, you know. I could use some help with a certain cranky teenager.”

“Sorry.” Nicole nudged off one sandal and then reached for the other. “I wouldn’t inflict upon Zoe the sight of Claire cross-legged in the back humming ‘
Ommmmmmm
.’ And besides, as a group, we’re a little scary.” Nicole put her sandals aside and brushed her hand over her shorn head. “No reason to give Zoe an excuse to escape the car screaming she’s been captured by a cult.”

Claire still wasn’t quite used to seeing Nicole and Jenna bald. Of all the women, Jenna might just benefit the most from the change. Already there was a brave tilt to her jaw. On the other hand, by the frequency at which Nicole ran her hand over her head, the buzz cut had apparently left Nicole feeling unnerved.

Claire hoped Nicole would look in the mirror soon and see what Claire saw: someone fresh, peeled, newborn.

Three days and four nights with these old friends—not just Jenna and Nicole, but all of them—and she felt as if they’d hardly cracked the surfaces of one another’s lives. Last night they’d designated the wicker love seat at the far end of the back porch as the “crying couch.” This morning they’d take a group picture in the same positions as their high school graduation photo—the one where everyone sported hot-pink hair. Even if they’d all stayed a month, Claire wasn’t sure that would be enough time to get as close to each one of them as she’d become to Jenna and Nicole after so many miles together.

Already her eyes began to prickle. She couldn’t fully absorb what her friends had done for her sake. And yet, as with any act of love, it came with the weight of hesitant and yet so very hopeful expectations. It was the weight of those expectations that had propelled her to this boathouse, to this lakeside, to the hour of walking meditation in search of clarity.

Claire said, “Do you guys remember when we gave out coffee in Chicago?”

Nicole unfolded her legs to swing her bare feet into the water. “Is this a pop quiz?”

Claire smiled. “Do you remember that one guy by the street sign, right in midtown? He was scruffy and thin, hungry looking, alone. Wild blue eyes.”

Jenna nodded. “He was jittery and not in a good way.”

“He wouldn’t take the coffee.” Claire combed her fingernails down Lucky’s back. “I stood there holding it out, waiting. I just wanted to give him something warm. A simple gift. So I left it on the ground in front of him. When I looked back a few minutes later, I noticed he’d shoved his hands in his pockets and crossed the street. He’d left the coffee just sitting there, abandoned.”

Nicole said, “You give out three dozen coffees and the guy you remember is the one who refused you.”

“All my life, I’ve been the one giving charity. I’ve been the one delivering the winter coats, handing over the tip jar, offering my time after hours for tutoring. I’ve seen stone faces like his before.” She thought of Theresa, glaring at her from a Cannery Row stoop as Claire unloaded charity coats from the trunk of her car. “But only now, today, do I really understand.”

Nicole asked, “Understand what?”

“Accepting help is a very hard thing to do.”

She became aware that Nicole had gone very still. Her friend leaned over to peer deep into the water.

“But it wasn’t difficult for my sister Melana.” Claire summoned her ghost to this place, Melana as she wanted to remember her—full-cheeked and rosy, joking about her generous hips and laughing at her own bad puns. “Every time my sisters and I talked with her about her treatment, Melana always chose the route we wanted, the route that offered hope. She always said, ‘We’re going to fight this,’ or ‘We’re going to beat this.’ She chose those words because they always made us feel better.” Claire pressed her face against Lucky’s warm back. “Later, when I remembered those conversations, I got so furious at myself and my sisters. I felt that we’d pushed Melana into treatments that stole what little life she had left in her. For a long time, all I could remember was her suffering.”