*
Summertime transformed northern Michigan. Kewaunee swelled to twice its normal size, and all day, every day, sailboats coasted across the bay. The roads, which were mostly empty all winter, clogged up with traffic, so it took even longer to get from Silver Lake to downtown. For us, good weather meant the beach. We split off from the tourists and camped out in the dunes, on a little shelf we’d found where there wasn’t much grass and where we had both a clear view of the water and some privacy. We went in funny combinations, depending on who was working and when—often it was just Tidbit and us, since Greg had gotten a job at the Dairy Queen. Now and then Ryder came too, and sulkily watched us from a blanket on shore, his shoulders freckling in the sun, a tuft of sandy hair at his breastbone that I always found myself wanting to touch. We texted sometimes, in a desultory way, and had kissed again since the night in the rowboat—once in his car, the center console digging into my hip, after he gave me a ride to the failing Family Video, and again a week or so later, under the jungle gym behind Marlena’s house. I’d enjoyed myself that time, and had even let my fingers stray down to the hardening lump in his pants. “Don’t stop,” he said, his face a blur of shadow, but after a few minutes I did, feeling a surge of glee when he groaned with legitimate pain. It helped that I didn’t like like him, really, especially after what he’d told me about Marlena’s dad and the police, and that what we did gave me very little sexual pleasure. It was enough that in profile he looked a bit like Cary Grant from the poster that hung in the Gaslight Cinema lobby. That, and the buzz I felt when I could tell he wanted me.
The best was when Marlena and I went to the beach alone. I’d been worried that Marlena and Jimmy’s relationship would translate into her spending less time with me, but the opposite was true—we were together all the time now. Whatever was going on between her and my brother had even put an abrupt end to the way she’d sometimes go missing for a day or two without warning or explanation. I thought my brother had put an end to Bolt.
On a night while her dad was away and Jimmy was working a night shift, Ryder and Greg stayed over with us at the barn. For hours Ryder had ignored me, directing his stoned commentary to Marlena and Greg, while I sat on one of the beanbags, drinking quietly, noticing, in my misery, the way his jeans rode up and exposed where his hairy calves met his socks. I knew that his indifference meant I’d failed at some feminine calculus, and that I would continue to fail, as long as Marlena was part of the equation. The next morning we woke up early and abandoned the boys. Marlena stole the keys from Ryder’s pocket, digging her nails into my arm to keep me from giggling, waking them up. She stuck a note to Ryder’s forehead, touching him with an ease that gave me a flash of violent anger. Plz make Sal b-fast. Back soon. XOXOXOX.
I kept waiting for the police, but when weeks went by and nothing happened I started to wonder if Ryder’d exaggerated the whole thing. How could I tell her about Ryder going to the cops without telling her that I’d slept with him? And anyway, he was still dealing—sneakily, and only to old clients—but still, not such a change from business as usual. He texted buyers from a phone that was different than the one he used to text me, and I’d seen the hollowed-out children’s Bible in his van, I knew what it was for.
*
I have just one picture of myself from that year—the Polaroid that I keep tucked away in that shoebox. We didn’t take many. Facebook was very new, then, and mostly used by college students, so little of our life was online yet. I’d uploaded a bunch of photos onto my family desktop, maybe I emailed them to myself at some point, I don’t know; they’re lost now, as gone as that time itself. Jimmy bought the camera for Marlena as a gift, and she’d taken it to the beach with us the day after she got it. Greg snapped the picture as Marlena and I were walking back from the water, toward our blanket. I remember being annoyed. Like most girls like me, insecure, full of hatred for my body, I disliked having my picture taken. How different those manifestations of me were from how I saw myself.
Marlena took the picture from Greg and shook it, as the instructions said to. We watched it develop. There we were, both of us squinting in the sunlight, our faces all laughter, our bodies strong and suntanned, sparkling with water. Beautiful.
“Yikes,” I said, because I still didn’t know how to say what I thought, especially if it required confidence.
“What do you mean, yikes! You’re a supermodel.”
“I don’t want to look at it.” But I took it from her anyway and looked at the girl beside Marlena in the photo. Now I wonder, why did I spend so much time hating her? Hating her out-stuck ears, the curve of fat below her belly button, her cravings and urges and all her messy feelings? She had a clever face. She looked normal and fun, like someone I might have passed on the street, arm in arm with her equally perfect best friend, and envy. I dropped the picture and sprinkled it with a palmful of sand.
“Don’t do that,” Marlena said, rescuing it. “That’s mine.”
I can explain it now, I think. I think I was sorry that I didn’t love her enough.
*
After Culver’s, Dad stopped picking up his phone. Whenever I called, “Country Roads” played on and on. He texted me just twice after our lunch—first, a photo of him and Becky eating fried clam strips at a restaurant overlooking Niagara Falls (happy as clams!), and then, less than a day later: Misz ya boops!
“Have you heard from Dad?” I asked Mom at dinner.
“Nope.” She sipped her wine, the ice clinking against the glass.
“What about you?” I asked Jimmy.
“Ha, yeah right,” Jimmy said. “We’ve been giving each other the silent treatment since January.”
“He’s probably just busy or traveling or something, honey. Don’t you worry about it. It’s not your responsibility. He’s the parent. He’s the one dropping the ball, not you.”
Later that night, Mom asleep, Marlena off somewhere with Jimmy, I wrote an email.
from: Catherine <[email protected]>
to: Dad <[email protected]>
subject: thanks a lot
I called you yesterday. You didn’t pick up. I called you the day before that, and a few days before that, and pretty much all the time since we moved up here and guess what Dad? You never pick up.