“Whereas my mom,” Bailey said, “couldn’t forget. Everything was a reminder. The summer starting, their group hanging out together, even the lake itself. It was like a ghost, haunting her.”
“What happened?”
We were almost to the light now. Just beyond it, there was a sign: NORTH LAKE 3 MILES. An arrow pointed the way.
“You really want to hear it?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
We passed under the light. Blink. Blink. Blink.
“All right,” she said. “So it happened in July.”
Nine
July 9, 2000, was my mom’s twenty-first birthday. She’d been with Dad for a year by then, dating long-distance during the school months. By Christmas, they’d be engaged, and she’d be pregnant with me.
But in June, as summer began, she didn’t know any of this. She was just missing her boyfriend, and more nervous than she wanted to admit about starting a new life almost two hours west. She dealt with it the way she did most things, back then. She tried to forget.
Most lake kids liked to party—in that small of a town, there weren’t a lot of entertainment options—but even with this as the norm, my mom had always stood out. Whatever she liked to do, she did to excess. What she was best known for, though, was her disappearing act.
The gist was this: they’d all be out on the water at night, having a few beers at the raft, when someone would notice she was gone. The first time, of course, panic ensued, especially when despite zigzagging the water and yelling, she couldn’t befound. Until Celeste, near hysteria, got back to the shore to call 911 and found my mom sitting there wrapped in a towel, sucking on a cold Pop Soda. She’d swum all the way back, in darkness, then sat and watched as they searched for her.
My dad hated the disappearing act. One time she did it while they were sailing with his friends on the Lake North side, and he was so angry he broke up with her as a result. It took a full week of profuse apologizing before she finally convinced him to change his mind.
Her birthday that year fell on a Sunday, but my mom planned to celebrate all weekend, starting with when my dad arrived on Friday from Lakeview, where he’d been taking summer classes for dental school. She’d been so looking forward to his visit, literally crossing the days off the calendar she kept on her bedroom wall. That morning, though, he called: the mandatory study group for one of his classes could only meet that weekend. He wasn’t coming.
My mom, hurt and furious, screamed at him over the phone before slamming every door on her way out of the house to her car. The next time anyone saw her was the following afternoon, when she came home hungover, slept until noon the next day, then started up again to celebrate her first legal birthday in earnest.
Her party was being held at Celeste and Silas’s new place. By then they’d been married two years and had Jack, who was just starting to walk. The house was small, but homey, and they’d planned a cookout and game night. There were stations for cornhole, pin the tail on the donkey, TexasHold’em, and others. Celeste wanted everything to be perfect.
My mom arrived at the party with Chris Price and an open beer in her hand, then proceeded to down some shots of tequila in quick succession. As her sister began to explain the protocol of game night, my mom heckled her. When she crumpled up her hand-printed scorecard and chucked it at her, Celeste threw her out.
Chris and Silas tried to negotiate a peace, but Calvander girls, stubborn as a rule, were not budging. So Celeste locked herself in her room, crying, while Waverly and Chris Price left together to go to Splinkey’s, the only bar in town. They drank a pitcher of beer and played darts, cutting up, until the guy serving them told them to go home. Instead, they went to the lake.
At twenty-two, Chris was a year older than Waverly, and had a kid on the way with his on-and-off girlfriend, Stephanie. At that moment, they were split, having broken up after fighting about money, impending parenthood, and his own partying. Like Waverly, Chris was known for his love of a good time as well as a sense of humor that bordered on the annoying. Celeste said there were lots of reasons he and my mom were best friends, but a big one was that sometimes, no one else could stand to be around them.
They were alone, then, that night, as they climbed onto Chris’s boat with a six-pack they’d grabbed from the market. It probably felt like old times, high school days, when they’d had nothing to worry about but curfew. But beyond thatbuzz, the real world was looming: Chris was going to be a dad, and my mom was moving away. Bailey said Celeste had always wondered what they talked about that night, alone on the raft in the dark. But Waverly had never said. She never talked about it at all.
What we did know was this. At some point, Waverly pulled her disappearing act, slipping into the dark water. When Chris realized she was gone, he started shouting for her, first half laughing, then angry. By the time he got into the boat to search, he was enraged and, as blood alcohol tests would later show, way over the legal limit. He had to be, everyone said, to forget the contours and landmarks of the lake he knew by heart, and run at full speed into the mooring that was a hundred feet from the Calvander dock. Chris wasn’t in the boat as it began to sink. He’d been pitched into the water, breaking his neck. It might have all started with Waverly wanting to vanish, but in the end, he was the one who was gone.
Emma? You there?
I picked up my phone. It was early morning, the sun not even up, and I’d assumed it was my dad calling from Greece again across time zones. But it was Ryan.
Why are you awake right now?I asked.
Sunrise hike with cast and crew. Bonding experience. My legs are screaming.
I blinked.Cast and crew?
For the musical. South Pacific. I told you, right?
No. You’re in a show? I’m impressed!
Downstairs, I heard a door slam. Even at this hour, someone was up. Probably making toast.
Well it is a drama camp,she wrote back.Dad strongly suggested I stop moping in my room and get involved. Please never tell him I said this but it’s actually kind of fun.
