Summer Sisters (20 page)

F
ROM THAT NIGHT ON
nothing else mattered. She counted the minutes until she could be with him, said his name a hundred times a day, smiled to herself just thinking about him. Every love song spoke directly to her. After feeling listless for so many months she had energy to burn. She could work all day and still stay up half the night making love. When she was with him, time stood still. Every cliche she’d ever heard about love made complete sense.

“I don’t mean to pry, Vix,” Abby said, “but how serious is it with you and Bru?”

How serious?
Did she mean were they making plans? They never talked about the future. Wasn’t it enough to be in love? Totally, completely, hopelessly in love?

“I just want you to give yourself every opportunity,” Abby told her. “Don’t mistake physical attraction for love. I did, when I was your age, and it cost me … and ultimately, Daniel, too. I was engaged to Daniel’s father when I was just nineteen.
Nineteen
, Vix. What did I know at nineteen? And nobody tried to stop me. My mother was pleased because he was a law student, someone who’d be able to provide for me. She never thought I should learn to provide for myself.”

“Don’t worry …” Vix said. “I’m going to provide for myself. I have goals.” Isn’t that the motto she’d chosen for her senior page in the Mountain Day yearbook?

A life without goals isn’t worth living
.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Caitlin had asked when she’d seen Vix’s yearbook.

“Goals
. Haven’t you ever heard of goals?”

“What goals are we talking about? I’d say a life without adventure isn’t worth living, a life without learning, a life without sex, even …”

“It’s just a quote,” Vix said. “It doesn’t have any hidden meaning.” She couldn’t admit that her goals included escaping from her family, finding out what else was out there, trying out life on her own, though she knew Caitlin would have applauded her. Instead she asked Caitlin, “What does
your
quote mean?”

“Mean?”

“Yes … since you’re making such a
thing
out of mine. What exactly does ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright’ mean to you?”

“It’s who I am,” Caitlin said. “It’s how I define myself.”

“Really,” Vix said.

“Yes, really,” Caitlin answered. Then she looked hard at Vix. “Why are we having this conversation? Why are we acting as if we’re angry. Are we angry?”

“I’m not angry,” Vix said.

“Good … because neither am I.”

“Maybe we’re scared,” Vix said.

“Scared?”

“Of being apart. Of losing each other.”

“We’re
never
going to lose each other,” Caitlin said, holding Vix in her arms.

It was strange staying at the house without Caitlin. Their bedroom, with all its memories of past summers, felt empty. Vix played a tape they’d made singing “Dancing Queen” … and laughed at how young they sounded. She lay awake on her bed running through the details of every summer, but she could feel the panic of her last morning in this room, too, the morning she’d packed and left at sunrise a year ago, never to return.

“Would you rather stay in the boys’ room?” Abby asked when she’d arrived, anticipating her feelings. Neither Sharkey nor the Chicago Boys were coming back that summer. They were off doing their own things. She would finally have her chance to be an only child, the focus of Abby’s and Lamb’s attention, not that she wanted it now that she had Bru. She was grateful when Abby began to fill the house with guests—her college roommate, who lived in San Francisco; her parents, whom Vix had never met; old friends from Chicago; new friends from Cambridge. They’d eat dinner late and Vix was invited to join them anytime she wished, but after work she’d head for Bru’s cabin in Gay Head.

He’d moved in mid-July—one room, woodstove, no plumbing or electricity, but cozy, with a real bed and curtains made by his aunt. Sometimes, as she slept in his arms after making love, she’d dream of Nathan. One night Nathan, his body straight and tall, was pushing her through the woods in a baby carriage. When they reached their destination, a beautiful vista at the top of a mountain, he tilted the stroller so she could see. But she wasn’t strapped in and she slid out, then down, tumbling
through space, her arms and legs splayed, a look of terror on her face. She cried out in her sleep, waking herself and Bru.

“What?” he asked.

“Bad dream,” she said, burrowing into his chest.

“It’s okay,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m here … I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

She never allowed herself to spend the night in his cabin. She forced herself to climb out of bed, night after night, throw on her clothes, and drive home along Old County Road, the road where Lamb’s parents were killed.

The phone rang late one night at the house, rousing all of them. Lamb or Abby must have picked up and Vix fell back asleep until Lamb knocked on her door and called, “Vix … if you’re awake, it’s Caitlin. She wants to talk to you.”

She picked up the bedside phone, the one they’d installed for Caitlin the summer before. “Hello?”

“Vix … I’m in Arles … you know, the place where Van Gogh cut off his ear? And it’s so fantastic … the colors of the sky, the fields, the village. You’ve got to come … just for a week. And don’t tell me you can’t. If you want to, you can. That’s all there is to it!”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Vix said, still half asleep.

“I know. That’s what made me think of you. I don’t want you to miss this. Joanne will give you a week off.
You know she will.” She paused, then added, “And so will Bru … if he really loves you.”

She wished Caitlin would stop tempting her, would just quit telling her everything she was missing. She’d get there someday. On her own.

“I just hoped …” Caitlin said, barely audible, “because I’m not coming back in September …”

“What do you mean, you’re not coming back?”

“I’m taking a year off before Wellesley, to travel and study abroad.”

“When did you decide?”

“Just now,” she said. “But it’s always been a possibility.”

Caitlin began to send postcards, a series of them, each one from a different place, a few cryptic words printed on the back.

I am the most …
You are my …
In the whole world …
We could be …
If only …

They reminded Vix of the messages printed on little candy hearts, the kind her father brought home for Valentine’s Day. At the end of the week she laid them out, trying to find the hidden message, but there were too many possibilities.

Abby convinced her to bring Bru home for dinner. “Really, Vix … this is getting ridiculous. You can’t keep him to yourself forever …” She knew Abby was right but she was nervous, afraid they would … what? Judge him and find him lacking? She didn’t have to worry. He arrived on time with a bunch of cosmos for Abby. He was polite, almost shy, endearing.

Abby served a simple summer meal of grilled sword-fish, island-grown corn, salad, blueberry pie. “We think of Vix as our daughter,” Lamb said, during dessert. “We’re her Vineyard family.”

“Yes, sir. I know that.”

“And we’re very proud that she’s going to Harvard in September,” Abby added.

“I know that, too.” He squeezed Vix’s thigh under the table, letting her know he got the message, a gesture neither Abby nor Lamb missed.

“What are
your
plans?” Abby asked Bru. “Do you think you’ll stay here, on the Vineyard?”

“I’m an islander. I’ve got a good job with my uncles’ construction firm. So long as the market for second homes holds we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“He seems like a very decent chap,” Lamb said that night, after Bru left. “With a bright future.”

“But Vix is so young …” Abby argued, “with her own bright future.”

“Vix isn’t going to do anything foolish, are you?” Lamb asked, to ease Abby’s fears.

Before Vix could answer Abby said, “But she’s in love … anyone with eyes can see that.”

By mid-August Vix was exhausted. The boundless energy of early summer had dissipated. She felt as if she could sleep for weeks. “I don’t like the idea of you starting college in such a rundown condition,” Abby said. “Why not stop working now and take some time off to just relax?”

“I’ll be okay,” Vix told her. But she wasn’t so sure. She felt so down, so depressed.

Bru said, “Maybe you need vitamins.”

“Maybe I just need more sleep.”

“So what’s the point of driving all the way down island every night?” he asked. “What’s the point of sleeping in Caitlin’s father’s house when you could be sleeping here with me?”

She couldn’t answer his question. She didn’t really understand it herself. She only knew she needed Abby and Lamb. She needed to feel connected. She felt safe with them. But every time she tried to explain that to Bru he’d get defensive.

“You feel safe with them but not with me?”

“It’s not a competition. It’s not you against them.”

“Sometimes I feel like it is. And there’s no way I can win.”

“You’ve got it backwards,” she told him.

On her last night on the island they made love until dawn. “Think that’ll hold you till we see each other again?” Bru asked.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “How about you?”

“I’ll just think about tonight. And if that doesn’t do it, there’s always the phone.” But when the time came, when she tried to get out of bed, he reached for her and
whispered, “Stay with me, Victoria. I need you here, in my arms … please don’t go.”

And at that moment she felt that nothing … nothing would ever matter but this.

PART THREE
We Are the World
1983–1987

26

A
T
H
ARVARD
she called herself Victoria.

Maia, her freshman roommate, an elfin princess from New Jersey, with colorless braces on her teeth—
Don’t even ask! It’s my second round of orthodontia. My parents are thinking of suing
—took one look at Bru’s picture and said, “God … what a great-looking guy. I love those rugged, outdoorsy types. Where’s he go to school?”

“He’s out of school.”

“Really. What’s he do?”

“He’s in construction.”

“Construction?”

“He works for his uncles. They build houses … on the Vineyard.”

“Oh, wow … the Vineyard. I hear that’s a great place. So where’d he go to school?”

“On the island.”

“Really? There’s, like, a college on the island?” She hated Maia already and they’d just met.

The freshman class was filled with high school valedictorians, people who’d scored in the high fifteen hun
dreds on their Boards. They were talented, brilliant, intense, and competitive, used to being number one in everything they tried. Graduating second in her class from Mountain Day meant nothing at Harvard. It was a joke. She couldn’t imagine why they’d admitted her. She was out of her league, to use Tawny’s expression.