The Wildwater Walking Club (13 page)

“
WE HAVE TO DO IT BEFORE WE LEAVE
,”
TESS SAID
. “
IT’LL
be like throwing ourselves a bon voyage party. I’ll mail the journals and glitter pens…”

“And the retractable clothesline,” I said.

“…and the retractable clothesline. Then tonight we’ll paper the town with right-to-dry signs and hit the road with our tires squealing. We won’t tell a soul, so nobody can rat us out even if they want to.”

“There’s no way I can add one more thing to my day,” Rosie said. “I’ll be lucky to get out of my house by morning as it is.”

“Okay,” Tess said. “Noreen and I will do it. Just be on standby in case we need you to bail us out or anything.”

That got my attention. “You’re kidding, right?”

Tess shrugged. “Whatever it takes to fight the good fight.”

We stepped through the opening in the seawall. The tide was really high today. “Just think,” I said, “the next time we set foot on a beach, we’ll be looking at a different ocean.”

“Cool,” Rosie said. “But can we pick up the pace a little? I’ve got a gazillion things to do.”

We finished our walk in record time. Just as I was reaching for my door, my mother opened it. She was wearing a big white T-shirt and black leggings. Silver humpback whale earrings dangled be
neath my former bicycle helmet. Rosie’s dad was wearing the same outfit, minus the humpbacks.

My mother gave me a big smile. “Oh, hi, honey. I left your breakfast on the stove. You can pop it in the microwave if it’s not hot enough. Kent and I are going to ride our bikes to the Y for a tai chi class.”

I hoped that didn’t mean she’d paid for a lifetime membership. “Hi, Mr. Stockton,” I said.

He kissed my hand. “Kent. Lovely to see you, Noreen. Come on, Lo, we need all the chi we can get at our age.”

“Oh, you,” my mother said.

While I ate my breakfast, I did some thinking. How was it that other people seemed to have no problem having relationships? Even my own mother knew how to do it. Was it that they knew what they wanted? Or maybe they knew what they didn’t want and stayed open to the rest.

I found my dream pillow in my bedroom. Carefully, using some tiny nail scissors I found in the bathroom, I snipped out the stitches at one of the smaller ends. Then I curled up with Rosie’s tussie-mussie book and a legal pad. I took my time, flipping through each section, trying to work with plants I’d be able to recognize from the photographs and could find either in my garden or at the supermarket.

I wasn’t able to find all the ingredients, but I thought I’d found enough of them to get my dreams moving in the right direction. As soon as I finished stitching up the pillow again, I put it right into my suitcase, so I wouldn’t forget it. My clothes would smell great by the time I got to the lavender festival. I smiled at the thought of eligible men from all over the world catching the scent of my dreams and flocking behind me everywhere I went.

I was just about packed by the time my mother came home long enough to change her clothes. “So, Mom,” I said, “are you planning to stay here while I’m in Sequim? I’m just wondering.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” my mother asked.

“No reason,” I said. “I was only thinking everybody else might start to get mad because I’m hogging your whole visit.”

My mother opened my refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. “Not to worry,” she said. “Jimmy and Kevin are going to bring their families by for dinner this weekend, so they can meet Kent.”

“Gee, make yourself at home,” I said.

“Thanks, sweetie.” She came over and kissed me on my cheek. “Oh, and honey, if I’m not home by the time you go to bed, have a wonderful trip, okay?”

I WAS ALMOST
asleep when I heard the knock at my door. I opened one eye enough to read the green numbers on my alarm clock:
9:32. Maybe my mother was having an early night and had forgotten where I hid the key.

I kicked the covers off. I pulled the hem of my T-shirt down as I tiptoed to the door.

Tess was standing on my front steps, dressed all in black and holding a basket of markers and a big pile of poster boards.

I opened the door. “Do we have to?” I said.

Tess pushed past me. “You weren’t asleep already, were you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. I yawned. “I just figured you’d changed your mind, so I got ready for bed.”

“Well, get unready then.” Tess started spreading sheets of white poster board across my dining room table. “And shake a leg—I don’t want to be up all night. Unlike my daughter, I need at least a few hours of sleep to be functional.”

I went back to my bedroom and threw on an old pair of jeans.

“Are you trying to get us arrested?” Tess asked when she saw me. She shook her head. “We’re talking basic black here.”

It didn’t seem worth the fight, so I went back to my bedroom and found some black exercise pants and a black T-shirt.

FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO AIR DRY
, Tess had already written in huge green letters on a poster board by the time I got back.

I grabbed another green marker and thought for a moment.
HANG TOUGH
, I wrote.

“Hey, you’re good at this,” Tess said.

“Thanks,” I said. I thought some more.
CLOTHESLINES ARE THE NEW COOL
, I wrote.

“Eh,” Tess said. She chewed the end of her marker for a moment.
DO YOUR PART TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING—FIGHT THE MARSHBURY COMMUNITY CLOTHESLINE BAN
.

I yawned. “Not too catchy,” I said. I drew a clothesline in a few quick strokes.
HANG IT UP
, I wrote,
BAN THE BAN
.

“Okay, fine,” Tess said. “You’re better at this than I am. Come on, we don’t have to be brilliant. We just have to get this done.”

There were four poster boards left. Tess handed me two.
A CLOTHESLINE IS A THING OF BEAUTY
, I wrote on the first one.
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE THE SMELL OF YOUR SHEETS FRESH OFF THE LINE
, I wrote on the second. It was a little bit wordy, but it was important to invoke all the senses in a campaign, and I thought if we could get people to actually smell the sheets, we’d be well on our way.

“Ooh, wait,” I said. I grabbed one of Tess’s poster boards.
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SHEETS
, I wrote.

“Hey, that was my poster board,” Tess said.
DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DRY MY CLOTHES AND I WON’T HAVE TO TELL YOU WHERE TO GO
, she wrote on the last one.

“Are you sure people aren’t going to know you’re responsible for this?” I said.

Tess was already putting the posters into a pile. “You mean,
we’re
responsible for this,” she said. “Come on, let’s hit the road.”

Tess had her hunter green minivan all backed into my driveway and ready for a quick takeoff. When I opened the door on the passenger side, a jug of laundry detergent fell out. I jumped back before it could break a toe.

“What are you trying to do, kill me?” I said. I bent down and picked up the big plastic container. “Don’t tell me we’re going to stage a public wash-in or something…”

Tess was beside me, sliding open the side door of the van so she could stash the posters. “Much better than that,” she said. “Trust me.”

“Ha,” I said.

Tess pulled out of my driveway and put her blinker on to take a left at the end of Wildwater Way. I felt a lump under my foot and reached down to pull up a roll of clothesline. “What’s this for?” I said.

“To hang the posters,” Tess said. “It’ll make them more visually evocative.” She reached around in the space behind the hump between us and pulled out two black ski masks.

“Tell me you’re kidding,” I said. “It’s still at least seventy-five degrees out.”

Tess put one ski mask in her lap and handed me the other. “So, don’t put it on yet. We have time.”

I placed it on the dashboard. “No offense,” I said. “But this isn’t exactly a female gangster kind of vehicle.”

“Hel-lo, it’s called camouflage,” Tess said. “You want to hide in a suburb, you drive a green minivan.”

I thought we were heading for Main Street, but Tess pulled into a parking space at the town common. She yanked her black ski mask over her head.

“Where did you even get these?” I asked.

Tess grabbed mine from the dashboard and handed it to me. “My son went through a ninja warrior phase,” she said. “I saved these and a couple of his weapons. I have a memory box for each of my kids.”

“Sweet,” I said. I pulled the mask over my head. It was hot and scratchy, and it smelled like attic.

“Grab the clothesline,” Tess said. “And there should be a Ziploc bag filled with clothespins and a roll of duct tape, too. Check under the seat if you don’t see them.”

“Why do we need duct tape if we have clothespins?” I asked.

“It’s good to be prepared,” Tess said. “Just in case.”

“In case what?”

Tess ignored me. We got out of the minivan. Tess walked around to get the posters, and I reached back into the van and rooted around until I found the clothespins and duct tape. Then I shut the door and looked up through the holes in my ski mask. The moon was almost full, and the whole sky twinkled with stars. It made me
think of Annalisa. I hoped she was doing okay. I hoped I’d get to meet her one day, which was crazy, but probably no crazier than standing around wearing a ski mask on a hot night in July.

The side door closed with a click. There was one other car, down at the far end of the single row of parking spaces that flanked one edge of the town common. Tess walked right up to it and banged on the windshield with her knuckles.

Under the light of the silvery moon, we watched two teenagers pop up from the backseat. I had a sudden, random feeling one of them was going to be Hannah.

“Get the hell out of here, or I’ll call both your parents,” Tess growled in a voice that scared even me.

“Whoa,” I said. “Shouldn’t they at least find a secluded place to do that, like we used to?”

“Don’t get me started,” Tess said.

“Would you really call their parents?” I asked. “I mean, if Hannah was in that car, would you want somebody to tell you?”

“I’d rather they offered to keep her for the rest of the summer,” Tess said.

I followed Tess across the common. She was taking big, purposeful steps, and I took a couple of Rosie-like hops to catch up with her.

Lots of New England towns have village greens at their centers, and even I knew that the town common was the pride and joy of Marshbury. It had huge statues, stone benches, and an enormous fountain. Plus plaques honoring soldiers who’d been killed in wars. And gorgeous trees and gardens dotting a vast stretch of manicured lawn.

But what I was really noticing most right now was its location. The Marshbury common was shaped like a big triangle, with a well-traveled road running along each of its three sides.

“Tess,” I whispered. “We are sooooooo going to get caught.”

Tess put the stack of posters on the ground and reached for the clothesline I was holding. “Okay,” she said. “Take this end and head down to that tree over there….”

“Can’t we go somewhere a little less conspicuous?” I said. “Maybe we can duct tape them to telephone poles around town. I’ll drive and you can jump out of the car—”

“No way. They’ll get totally lost in all the yard sale signs. We have to hang them all together to make a big statement. Half the town will drive right past here tomorrow morning on their way to work.”

A car drove past now and put on its high beams. I ducked. “Okay,” I whispered. “Just hurry.”

My heart was beating like crazy, but I wrapped my end of the clothesline around a tree. Tess looped hers around the neck of some Revolutionary War guy, who was about the same size. She tore off a piece of duct tape and covered his eyes with it, then stood on her toes and gave him a kiss on his bronze cheek. “Keep it under your hat, big boy,” she said.

“Tess,” I whispered. “Hurry.”

We got all the posters clothespinned on as fast as we could, and when we finished, they stretched across the width of the common.

Tess stepped back for a better look. “No one’s going to miss them in the morning, that’s for sure,” she said.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I was more than ready for a quick getaway, but Tess walked to my side of the minivan with me. She opened the door and pulled out the laundry detergent.

“What’s that for?” I said.

“Follow me,” Tess said.

I was too curious not to. We headed right for the fountain. It was huge, plenty big enough to have a wading party in, and kids and
dogs were always splashing around in there whenever I drove by on a nice day. Three enormous verdigris elephants stood on their hind legs in the center, spraying water out of their trunks.

Tess unscrewed the cap and started pouring the detergent into the fountain.

“Ohmigod,” I said. “Tess, I bet we can get into serious trouble for this.”

Tess kept pouring. “Relax. It’s hypoallergenic, biodegradable, nontoxic, and free of petroleum solvents. It doesn’t clean for shit, but it sure makes great bubbles.”

WE’D HIRED AN AIRPORT SHUTTLE SERVICE TO PICK US UP AT
3:30 and drive us to Logan Airport for our 6
A.M
. flight. We’d all decided that if you factored in the cost of airport parking and aggravation, plus the fact that we could split it three ways, the shuttle was definitely the way to go.

I’d expected Tess to be already out in her driveway, giggling and singing “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” in the dark, but when I rolled my suitcase outside, I was alone. Seeing the same stars that had witnessed us vandalizing our town common gave a dreamlike mantle to our adventures last night. Not seeing Tess made me wonder if I’d somehow gotten the day wrong.

I was just about to run back in to check my calendar, when Tess’s front door opened. She stood there for a moment under her outside light, talking to someone behind her. Finally she walked out the door with her carry-on. Her husband followed, rolling a suitcase behind him.

I felt a little bolt of jealousy. Must be nice to have a semicute, loyal husband who got up at this insane hour to say good-bye to his wife, even though he’d be exhausted at work all day. I tried to picture someone loving me enough to wake up at 3:30
A.M
., but I couldn’t quite get there.

I dragged my suitcase across the grass to Tess’s driveway.

“I don’t think I can go,” Tess said.

“What?” I said.

“Of course you can,” her husband said. “I’ll handle it.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Hannah hasn’t come home yet,” Tess said. “If she’s okay, she is so completely grounded for her next nine lives.”

A white van pulled into Tess’s driveway. Her husband put his arms around her and kissed her on the lips. “Love you,” he said.

“Love you, too,” she said. “Call me the minute she gets home. No, make her call me. No, don’t. I don’t want to ruin my trip. Never mind. You figure it out.”

The driver got out and put our suitcases in the back of the van, and Tess and I climbed in. Rosie was waiting on High Street, at the end of her long dirt driveway.

“Woo-hoo,” she said as she jumped into the seat behind us. “I’m out of the house!”

Nobody said anything.

“What happened?” Rosie said.

I turned around. “Hannah’s not home yet,” I said.

“She’ll be fine,” Rosie said. “God, I so don’t want to let Connor and Nick be teenagers.”

Nobody said a word until we got to the Marshbury common. “Well, will you look at that,” the driver said. “I don’t know how I missed it on the way into town. Must have still been half asleep.”

Tess’s and my posters were softly lit by the stars, the moon, and the streetlights. They flapped gently in the predawn breeze. We’d done a great job on the lettering. All of the posters were legible as we drove by, even wake up and smell the sheets, which had slipped out from under one of its clothespins. You just had to turn your head sideways to read it.

But it was the bubbles that really got your attention. Overnight
they’d multiplied and taken on a life of their own. They’d overflowed the fountain and surged across the manicured grass of the common. They looked like a cross between a seriously late snowstorm and an effervescent tidal wave.

Rosie poked me between the shoulder blades. Hard.

In front of us, the driver shook his head. “Stupid kids,” he said. “Wait till the cops get their hands on them.”

TESS GAVE HER
husband one last call before the flight attendant made us turn off our cell phones. “Nothing?” she said. “Okay, call Kayley’s house and see if she came home last night. If Kayley’s home, have them wake her up, and make her call everyone she could possibly be with. And then try you-know-who’s house, just in case they’re back together again. There’s still time for me to get off the plane. Okay, okay. I’ll call you from Atlanta.”

I had an aisle seat. Tess was across from me on the other aisle, and Rosie had the window seat beside me. I glanced over at Rosie. She was ghostly pale and white-knuckling both armrests.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Rosie shook her head. “I hate to fly,” she whispered.

Tess leaned over the aisle to get a look at Rosie. “Don’t worry, sweetie pie,” she said. “I have Valium.” Tess reached under the seat, unzipped her carry-on, and pulled out a Baggie filled with pills.

“Here, switch seats with me,” Tess said. I switched.

“How’s she doing over there?” I whispered once we’d reached cruising altitude.

“Sleeping like a baby,” Tess whispered back. “Get ready, though, she’s got an aggravating little snore.”

“Good thing you packed your Valium,” I said.

Tess pulled a magazine out of the seat pocket in front of her.
“Like I believe in pharmaceutical drugs. It was one of my vitamins. Magnesium. I have to take it with my calcium pills so I don’t get constipated.”

“Seriously?” I said.

“What, calcium doesn’t do that to you?”

I shook my head. “No, I mean you didn’t really give her Valium?”

Tess leaned across the aisle. “Once I gave my husband one of the kids’ old vitamins and told him it was Viagra. Smurf blue and probably ten years old.”

The woman behind me leaned into the aisle. “It worked?” she whispered.

“Like a charm,” Tess said.

As soon as we landed, Tess called her husband. “Thank God,” she said. “Oh, puh-lease, a likely story. Yeah, yeah, okay. Right, don’t let her out of the house for a second. Okay, work, but call and double-check she’s really on the schedule. No, I don’t want to talk to her. I’m trying to have a vacation, not that she hasn’t ruined it already. Okay, okay. I will. I won’t. Okay, call you later. Love you, too.”

“She’s all right?” Rosie and I both said as soon as Tess hung up.

“Fine,” Tess said. “At least until I get my hands on her.”

Eventually they let us deplane, and we rolled our carry-ons along the ramp and into the terminal.

“I still don’t get how you can fly from Boston to Seattle and have to go through Atlanta,” Tess said. “It’s a total waste of fossil fuel.”

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “We got here early, plus we have an eighty-three-minute layover. This airport is huge. I bet we can get four thousand steps in before we have to board.”

Rosie yawned. “No way. You two walk. I’ll sit and watch our carry-ons.”

“Slacker,” I said.

“Sorry,” Rosie said. “It’s just that I’ve always been really sensitive to drugs….”

Tess grabbed one of her elbows. “I think we’d better keep you walking then. We don’t want any drug overdoses on this trip.”

We bypassed the tram and the moving sidewalk and kept walking, even on the escalators. We checked out some great stone sculptures from Zimbabwe while infectious Zimbabwean music played overhead, a tribute to the African roots of a large percentage of Atlanta’s population. I thought it was great that more and more airports were supporting artists and giving travelers something to look at while their flights were inevitably canceled or delayed.

Fortunately ours was almost on time. Better yet, by the time we’d grabbed something to eat at the Atlanta Bread Factory and found our seats on the plane that would actually take us to Seattle, we’d dragged Rosie around for 4,133 steps. I flipped my pedometer closed. “Wow,” I said, “not bad.”

Tess turned to check on Rosie. “How’re you doing, kiddo? Need another dose?”

“I don’t know if I dare,” Rosie said. “Okay, but just a half this time.”

A LITTLE MORE
than nine hours after our first plane took off, our second plane finally landed in Seattle.

The seat had flattened my hair into the back of my head, maybe permanently. I tried to fluff it up with one hand while I pulled my carry-on with the other. “Boy, am I tired,” I said. “I can’t believe we still have to pick up our rental car and drive to Sequim. Maybe we should have planned to spend tonight in Seattle.”

Tess finished resetting her watch. “That wouldn’t have made any sense at all. It’s only noon here, plus we’re heading in the opposite direction.”

“I’ll drive,” Rosie said. She was rolling her suitcase ahead of us like a racehorse. “I feel great. I haven’t slept like that in years. I am so getting my own Valium prescription when we get back.”

“Nice art here, too,” I said. We looked up at a row of suitcases and one guitar case suspended high above us. They had holes drilled through their centers and a metal bar threaded through, and they were twisted at random angles.

“That’s such a great piece,” Rosie said, “although I feel a little bit sorry for that poor guitar case. I’m trying to decide if I like this or the sea creatures embedded in the walkways at Logan better.”

“Apples and oranges,” Tess said. “This one is much edgier, and the sea creatures are more, I don’t know, aquatic.” She stretched her arms overhead. “You know, except for my stiff back, it almost feels like we’ve spent the day museum hopping. Come on, let’s go get our rental car.”

“Why is everybody in our line?” Rosie asked a few minutes later. There were five rental car counters lined up side by side across from the baggage claim carousels. Each of the other lines had about three people in them, while the line in front of Nationwide stretched back endlessly.

“I picked it because it was the cheapest one online,” I said.

“By how much?” Tess said.

I shrugged. “Maybe a dollar or two. Per day.”

“People think it’s all about sexual predators, but this is how you really get in trouble on the Internet,” Tess said. “From now on, always go with the second cheapest offer.”

“Welcome to Sea-Tac,” the woman at the rental car counter said an eternity later. “This your first time?”

Rosie yawned and handed the woman her license. “Yes,” she said. “We’re heading to Sequim for the lavender festival.”

“Oh, you’re going to love it,” she said. “Here, let me find it on the map for you. Where did you say you were going again?”

Tess started to giggle. Then I did. “Bathroom,” Tess said.

We were still laughing when Rosie found us outside the bathroom. “It wasn’t that funny,” she said.

“Ohmigod,” Tess said. “It was the funniest thing I’ve heard in my whole life.”

“Then you need a better life,” Rosie said.

“No shit,” Tess said.

Tess and I started laughing all over again.

“When did you two become new best friends?” Rosie asked.

The airport was south of Seattle, so it turned out to be a pretty easy two hours to Sequim. We drove south until we got to Tacoma, then headed northwest toward the Olympic Peninsula. On the map, the Olympic Peninsula looked like an arm reaching out across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and waving to Victoria, British Columbia.

Right around Gig Harbor, Rosie read a sign out loud: “
CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS
.” She fumbled with her left hand until we heard the click of all four doors locking.

I flipped through my travel guide. “That’s the Washington State Corrections Center for Women.”

“If they make it this far, I say we pick them up,” Tess said. “They probably just need somebody to believe in them.”

“You sure you don’t want to stop and do some quick volunteering?” I asked. “It says here they have a great Prisoner Pet Partnership Program.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Rosie said.

We were quiet until we came to the Hood Canal Bridge.

“Wow,” Tess said.

“Will you look at those views,” Rosie said. “Just incredible.”

“It’s the third largest floating bridge in the world,” I read. “It connects the Kitsap Peninsula to the Olympic Peninsula.”

“I can’t believe these huge trees,” I said a while later.

“Doug firs,” Rosie said.

“Doug Fir,” Tess said. “I think I dated him in college. Tall guy, right?”

Sequim was a surprise. I’d expected just a quaint little village, but it was a lot more spread out than I’d pictured, hugging the highway the way towns in Vermont did. Then it stretched through farmland out to the ocean. It felt both familiar and completely foreign to be near the ocean, but in full view of whitecapped mountains.

“Wow,” Tess said. “It’s like New England in an alternate universe.”

“And how about that lavender,” Rosie said. “Look, even the gas stations have perfect displays of lavender.”

“Ooh,” I said, “what’s that kind of lavender called with the dark pink bunny ears?”

“Spanish lavender,” Rosie said. “It’s not a true lavender, but isn’t it great?”

She pulled our cramped white rental into the Sequim Suites parking lot.

“And what’s the one over there that looks like a punk rocker?” I pointed to a big clump of purple lavender with one pale pink section running through it like a streak.

Rosie laughed. “It’s probably a hybrid trying to revert back to its original self.”

“Wherever you go, there you are,” Tess said. “I hate that.”

I leaned out my window for a closer look. “How do you know it’s not just becoming the color it’s always wanted to be?”

Rosie put the car in park. “Geez, we definitely should have gone for the standard instead of the midsize.”

“Well,” I said, “they don’t make it easy. I thought the midsize sounded bigger.”

“Well,” Tess said, “obviously if it was cheaper, it was smaller.”

“Okay,” I said, “next time you get the car.”

“Come on,” Tess said, “let’s check in and go drink our dinner.”

“It’s only three-thirteen,” I said.

“Not for me,” Rosie said. “I haven’t changed my watch yet. Hey, do you think I dare have a glass of wine? I mean, do I still have Valium in my system?”

Tess was already yanking our suitcases out of the car. “Come on,” she said. “I want to check my e-mail. Maybe there’s something from Annalisa.”

The woman behind the reception desk, who had great cheekbones and a slightly gap-toothed smile, was about our age. Her name was Nancy, and she couldn’t believe I’d remembered her sneakers. “Are you sure?” she kept saying. “You know, I would have given you the room anyway.”

The lobby was bursting at the seams with people. “Is it always like this?” Rosie asked.

The woman tucked the sneakers behind the counter. “Just for the festival,” she said. “Wait till you see it tomorrow.”