For a moment, the sight of those men rolling the red clay left me transfixed. Or maybe what fascinated me was the life of a girl like Olivia, for whom they were preparing the playing surface now—a girl for whom this place was as familiar as, for me, it was exotic and magical.
“I don’t think that girl wants to be my friend,” I said to Forrest. He’d seen it all, of course. The way that mother took in the sight of him. Her daughter’s disdain when she’d looked me over.
“Pay no attention to her,” he told me. “The main thing is, we’re going to have a more interesting summer than the lot of them.”
We were a team then. We understood each other and the world. It was as if we had a club all our own with only two members.
Afterward, Forrest brought me to a place called the Caboose. He wanted to buy me a milkshake, but I said no thanks.
I ordered a Diet Coke. Forrest introduced me to the manager. Anytime I wanted, he said, I could come by with or without the children for ice cream or snacks. He did the same at the little grocery store down the street from the Caboose, where the vegetables were set out like jewels, and gourmet cheese from France filled one entire wall.
“Whatever this girl orders, just put it on our account,” Forrest said.
I could have whatever I wanted. Nobody had ever suggested this before.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not in New Jersey anymore,” Forrest told me, back at the house.
He took me to where a row of bicycles was lined up in a rack. He reached for one.
“You’re going to need to get around town,” he said. “Do errands. Take the kids places. Normally, the girls we hire for the summer have their license, but since you don’t, it seemed like a good solution to pick this up for you.”
He had bought me a bike—yellow, twenty-one speeds, with a basket on the front. “For when you go pick up the croissants,” he said. “Or just ... have an adventure.”
I never had a bike like this before. I owned a very old one for a while, back home, but someone stole it.
“It will be good exercise for the kids, riding their bikes to the club along with you instead of getting driven around all the time,” he said. “Those two spend way too much time in front of the TV set.”
I couldn’t speak, the bike was so beautiful.
“I think this baby deserves a name,” he said. “What do you want to call her?”
It just came to me. “Buttercup,” I told him.
7
A Training Bra, a Box of Tampons, a Journal
It had occurred to me on the drive up from New Jersey that my breasts might develop enough over the course of the summer—finally—that I’d need a bra, an item I’d be unlikely to procure without the embarrassment of asking for a ride to town. Weighing on me even more heavily was the question of how I’d deal with it if I got my long-overdue period that summer.
Regina Emerson was not the type of person you’d ask to drive you someplace, and though Forrest would have taken me to the store, no problem, that would mean sitting next to him on the way home, in the front seat, with the bag containing tampons on my lap.
Now, thanks to the gift of the bike, I had my own transportation.
That first morning, before setting off for the club, Forrest had reached into his wallet and peeled off a bunch of bills—a hundred dollars’ worth, it turned out, when I counted them later. “Anytime you need more, just let me know,” he said.
Now I stuffed a few dollar bills into the pocket of my shorts and jumped on Buttercup, heading downtown to pick up supplies. Along the way I passed the houses of the Emersons’ neighbors—vast family mansions along the lakefront and then, as I made my way from the water, more modest homes, though still way nicer than where I’dcome from. There was a plant nursery, a dog grooming establishment, a beauty salon, an ice cream parlor. At the top of the hill sat a wonderful old stone building, the Lake Catherine Library.
All told, the ride to town took no more than fifteen minutes. With my hands placed squarely on Buttercup’s handlebars, I was in no rush. I tried out all the gears, threw my head back to feel the wind rushing past.
MacDougall’s stocked pretty much everything. I spent fifteen minutes walking the aisles, getting up my courage to make my purchase, and when I did, I added toothpaste and bobby pins and Kleenex to my basket to make the presence of that box of tampons less obvious. While I was at it, I picked up a training bra.
Back at the house, up in my little attic room under the eaves, I placed the box of tampons in one of the drawers, concealed under my three T-shirts. I put on my training bra and stuffed toilet paper down the front, one clumped-up piece on each side. I almost looked like a regular teenager.
The family was in the sunroom—Regina with a book, the children playing Chinese checkers, though only Jilly seemed invested in the game. Hayward looked up when I walked in. Maybe I was imagining things, as I did so often, but it seemed as though he was staring at my chest again. A smile came over his face. Not the good kind.
“It’s Forrest’s poker night,” Regina said. Slowly, like a person in a dream, she rose from the sofa and drifted over to the table, where Prudence had set out the meal. “So it’s just the four of us tonight.”
I hoped I’d concealed my disappointment. Without Forrest around, things were a lot less fun. Standing over the table, she turned to me with that odd look of hers that never seemed focused on anything in particular.
