There was a brunch scheduled at the club, to be followed by some kind of cooking contest for the younger kids. Jilly was set to compete in that.
No brunch for me. Jonathan had told me that it was better to eat light on the day of a match—and anyway, on the few times I’d attended events at the club, the members largely ignored me, so why attend? I could hear my mother’s voice in my ear, offering commentary.
Those people all have their thumbs up their ass,she would have said.For people like them, the definition of a hard day is running out of shrimp cocktail.
After the brunch came the triathlon. I didn’t even care anymore, as I would have once, about how Forrest would do. I had no need to be there at the water’s edge as he came in from the swim—an event he’d probably practiced for a lot less than he’d said he did. There was a time when I would have been out there cheering him on, but that time had passed. For me, the big event of the day would come afterward.
79
A Case of Poison Ivy
When Jonathan first brought up the idea of my playing in the juniors’ tournament, I’d told him I couldn’t. Now that the day had arrived, I realized how much it mattered to me. In spite of everything else going on that day, the tournament felt like the most important thing in the world now. The only thing that mattered.
I set the three new tennis outfits on my bed. I’d cut the tags off, but I’d held off on actually trying them on. It felt as if, by putting on one of the new skirts, I’d be wearing a disguise, pretending to be this girl I wasn’t. Only maybe today I’d become her.
I chose the white tennis skirt—short, with sassy pleats along the hem and a matching white top. Of the three outfits, this felt like the boldest and most confident choice. I’d wait until I got to the tennis club to put it on. But as I pulled my training bra over my head, I studied my reflection. Still no breasts to speak of, but I had muscles in my arms and legs now that hadn’t been there two months earlier. For once I actually liked the sight of myself in the mirror.
I could hear Forrest downstairs running the Vitamix. He was making his power shake to get him through the triathlon. Though Prudence had fixed him a mountain of pasta the night before, he was probablymaking the same decision I had for his own big athletic event—to go easy on the food that morning.
As I was getting dressed, I looked out the window. A figure in a hooded sweatshirt appeared to be walking toward the lake and the boathouse. When he turned sideways, I recognized that this was Hayward. Not a boy who got up at this hour, normally.
When he emerged from the boathouse, he laid a piece of paper on the picnic table by the water. From where I stood at the window, it was hard to pick out the details, but it looked to me as if he had set out art supplies of some sort. He had scissors and something that might have been glue. Also what appeared to be a marker.
Hayward worked in the semidarkness on this project, whatever it was, for a surprisingly long time. Fifteen minutes, maybe. I needed to get ready for my match, but I had a hard time taking my eyes off him. There was a sense of focus and determination about Hayward, as I saw him now, that I hadn’t witnessed in the boy who spent his days—as much as possible—reclining in his gaming chair with his hand on the controller and a bowl of Cheez Doodles at his side.
Finally he seemed to be finished with whatever it was he’d been up to. He folded the paper and placed it in his sweatshirt pocket.
He did not return directly to the house. He went first to the row of bicycles lined up next to the house, zeroing in on mine. He took out the folded-up paper and placed it in the basket.
I couldn’t see what Hayward did after this. He disappeared around the side of the house, but when I came downstairs, there wasn’t any sign of him. He’d gone back to bed, was my guess. Hayward liked sleeping almost as much as Regina did.
Downstairs, I found Forrest at the counter in his bike shorts, finishing his shake. For him the day would start with the triathlon. But at the moment, he appeared to be facing a different challenge. He couldn’tstop scratching his arms, his legs. He reached inside his running shorts, scratching wildly at his rear end.
“Damn poison ivy!” he said. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m covered in the stuff.”
“I’ve got some Tecnu in my room,” I told him. “I’ll run upstairs and get it for you.”
The medicine seemed to help. We sat down at the counter side by side. Like the old days, but different.
“You ready for the big regatta?” he asked me. He didn’t know about the rest of it.
What did I care about the regatta? No one had invited me to be on the Chris-Craft. There had been no pirate or wench or Pocahontas costume for me. I had something more significant to do: the tennis tournament.
“It’s going to be really something when we launch that birchbark canoe,” he said. “I don’t think that thing’s been in the water for thirty years. We made that baby tight as a drum, huh? And if I do say so myself, that outrigger I built is a pretty sweet setup. The kids are going to have a ball.”
“I hope it’s steady enough,” I told him. That was the nice thing about the other canoe. You got the feeling a tornado could come and it wouldn’t flip. I did not elaborate on my experience with the Emersons’ other canoe, the Old Town, whose steadiness I’d become acquainted with from my trip to the island a few weeks back, when I’d spied on him and Brenda.
“Wait till you see the fireworks I’ve got planned for tonight,” Forrest said. “Everybody may think we’re just shooting them off for Labor Day, but it’s about giving you a great send-off too. It’s your birthday next week, if I’m not mistaken. Fifteen! Regina and I want you to go out with a bang.”
I studied his face, trying to find in it some evidence of the person I cared about so much, the person I’d always believed to have cared for me, the man who just this week had confided in me about his failures toward his wife, and all of us.
Go out with a bang?Was that the best Forrest could do to express his feelings about my departure?
This was when Jilly appeared, still in her nightgown. Then Prudence, who had shown up earlier than usual to help Jilly with her entry in the Snap, Crackle, Pop Bakeoff at the club—a contest whose entrants tried to come up with new and amazing variations on the old standard recipe for Rice Krispies Treats. She made no further reference to the disclosures she’d made to me about Regina’s dead sister, the secret room. I didn’t speak of it.
To me it was a momentous day, but you wouldn’t have known this from the behavior of anyone else here. There was Hayward, of course—his odd appearance down by the boathouse in those first hours of daylight. I’d discover what he’d been up to when I went out to my bike to ride over to the club later for the tournament. But Hayward was always weird. I felt no urgency to find out what he’d left in my bike basket.
I helped myself to a handful of almonds. This was when Regina floated in. She was fully dressed for once, in one of her Lilly Pulitzer dresses with a pair of matching flats. I figured the festivities at the club had inspired her to get her act together that morning.
