“Just one time,” I told him. “OK. Three.”
That was the thing about Forrest. You could tell him something like that and he wouldn’t deliver a lecture. No doubt he’d shoplifted plenty himself when he was my age.
“Whatever you took, I hope it was the expensive brand,” he said.
Now here we were, just the two of us—Forrest and me—out on the highway together. He put on a Bob Seger tape—more music from back in the day. Never mind that the sound of the cars we passed drowned out our voices.
“Living by the sword ...” I had no idea what it meant; I just loved shouting the lyrics as loud as I could as we raced over the highway. There was this feeling as we drove north that something big was going to happen that summer.
Somewhere in Connecticut, when we went through a toll, Forrest said the woman in the booth looked like she’d had a rough day, so he gave her a fifty-dollar bill without waiting for her reaction.
“We’re going to have ourselves some major fun this summer,” Forrest told me as we headed back out on the highway. We’d been listening to the Casey Kasem countdown of the hits of 1973. “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” came on.
“Oh man,” Forrest said. “We’re in big trouble now.”
Trouble? Us? I thought everything was perfect.
“We’ll never be able to get that awful song out of our heads.”
When we stopped for gas—in New Hampshire now—Forrest picked up a couple of matching hats for us that said “Live Free or Die.” There was a store with a fake totem pole out front where he decided to buy moccasins for the whole family, including me. He didn’t need to say this, but I felt it: I was part of this family too.
3
Queen of the Lake
It was ten o’clock at night by the time we reached Wonderland, but we could see the lights of the house from all the way down the long gravel driveway. Then came the familiar old elm tree, where Forrest showed me the tree house he’d started to build for Jilly the previous fall, and beyond that a long run of granite steps leading up to a wide door with a pair of marble dogs guarding the entry.
I knew this place well. But always before, I’d made the trip with my parents—and only for our annual Labor Day weekend visit that I used to look forward to all summer. Three perfect nights. Then the long drive back to New Jersey, knowing a whole year would pass before I got to return. Now here I was with a whole summer at Wonderland stretching ahead of me.
It was dark now, but in the moonlight I could make out the vast rolling lawn where we played croquet and badminton, the rose arbor, the massive stone barbecue where Forrest roasted steaks, the firepit where we made s’mores, and beyond that, the dock, with a Sunfish and a couple of Old Town canoes, along with Forrest’s pride and joy, his Chris-Craft, named for Regina: “Queen of the Lake.”
“It’s about time I taught you how to water-ski,” he said to me.
A picture came to me, of how it would be out on the boat that summer with Forrest. Me in my swimsuit—a slimmer, more shapely versionof myself, baby fat gone, my breasts filled out enough to look good in a bikini—holding on to the rope. No sign of the children or Regina in this picture. Just Forrest and me with the sun shining down on us.
I didn’t know yet that Forrest had a way of promising things he might not deliver.
He carried my red suitcase up the walk. I was still wearing the “Live Free or Die” hat. In his other hand Forrest held the boxes of moccasins.
“Honey, I’m home!” he called out. Just like a dad in a TV show.
In the family room, I could make out the sound of the television set. The children were still up, probably because nobody told them to go to bed. On the screen, a man and a woman were lying on a bed together, kissing with their mouths open. A couple of empty bags of Cheetos spilled out onto the floor. Orange powder on the couch.
Regina lay on a chaise lounge, wearing a long white gown, her hair up in a bun, a string of pearls around her neck. There was a pair of knitting needles in her hands and a blanket over her shoulders.
“You brought Frances,” she said to Forrest—her voice low and whispery. She said this as a person might acknowledge he’d picked up milk on the way home, or a dozen eggs.
Regina scanned my body up and down. Something in the way she looked at me made me know she recognized my terrible secret: I was the only girl in my grade who hadn’t gotten her period.
This was when Jilly raced over to us in her pajamas, carrying an American Girl doll. Watching her leap into her father’s arms as she did, I registered the faintest stab.Imagine what it would feel like, having Forrest for your dad.
“Did you bring me something?” Jilly asked him.
“Boy did I ever,” he said. “I brought you Frances.”
She didn’t seem impressed.
Regina glanced over at me again, taking in my ratty haircut, my red suitcase. Her mouth formed something that resembled a smile, but with Regina you got the feeling it was more like her imitation of a smile, as if she were reminding herself to turn her lips up at the corners. Sheplaced a long, thin, elegant finger on her forehead—that place between her eyes, as if rubbing the spot might make the crease there go away.
