“Don’t worry, Peg. I’ll call you tonight.”
Laine and I exchanged woeful glances. That’s when I wanted to cry.
“It was my fault,” I told my mother on the way home. “It was all my idea. Don’t let Mrs. Cummings punish Laine.”
Later I learned that Laine had said the same thing to her mother. You can see why we were such good friends.
At home that night my parents interrogated me. I had to tell them everything we had done when we didn’t go to dance class.
My father was most upset by the idea that I had lied to them.
“I didn’t,” I protested. “You never asked me if I was going to the class. You just asked if I had a good time, and” (my voice got smaller here) “I did.”
“You knew what we meant by our questions, Anastasia,” my father said. “What you did was deceitful. I’m very disappointed in you. How will we ever be able to trust you again?”
I was in much deeper trouble than I ever could have dreamed of. I said, “If I’d known you would find out, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“You’re missing the point,” my father said.
And they gave me the lecture about lying again. When I think about that incident from their point of view I can understand why they were upset. And now that I’m older and more experienced I have a much better understanding of why you shouldn’t twist the truth around, especially when you’re dealing with people you love. But then I could only see it from my point of view. And from my point of view, the punishment that my parents and Laine’s parents had agreed on was awful.
“You and Laine cannot talk on the phone to one another for the next six weeks,” my mother began.
“On weekends and after school you won’t be allowed to play together either,” my father continued.
It was my mother’s turn again. “But you and Laine will be together two afternoons a week to take a six-week course in ballroom dancing. Only this time we’ll walk you right into the studio and pick you up in the waiting room. No more of this, ‘Meet us in the lobby’ business.”
It was a long six weeks. And I never did like the ballroom dancing. I had sweaty hands to the very last dance, especially the day of the recital for our parents. (There was one.) And wouldn’t you know that I almost always ended up dancing with boys who had sweaty hands, too.
The only good thing about those classes was that when they ended Laine and I could go back to being best friends who could talk on the phone and play at each other’s houses on weekends.
Believe it or not, now I’m glad I took ballroom dancing. I actually learned how to be coordinated. And if a guy knows something like the fox-trot or the lindy I don’t step all over his toes. It’s especially handy when I go to weddings or bar mitzvahs and someone like my father or uncle Lou wants to dance with me.
I think one of the reasons I chose this incident to include in my autobiography is because when it happened I was exactly the age that my favorite baby-sitting charge, Charlotte Johanssen, is now. Charlotte is an only child like me and we love one another like sisters. But still, she’s a little kid. So when I think of what Laine and I did, and try to imagine how I’d feel if I were responsible for Charlotte and she did something like that … well, I get goose bumps all over.
Still, I learned a lot on those afternoons when we skipped classes. Being self-confident and independent during those hours of freedom proved to me that I wasn’t afraid of new situations. And since I’ve had so many of these in my life (remember the two “Ds”), you can see that it’s been helpful.
Sometimes, when I’m baby-sitting for elementary school kids, I try to remember how grown-up I already felt when I was eight years old. That way I won’t treat them like babies.
Even though Laine and I aren’t friends anymore I’m glad we were friends then. We had some great adventures.
They broke the news to me on a hot night in July. We were eating Chinese take-out at the kitchen table. Unaware that my parents were about to depress me, I was innocently eyeing the container of sesame noodles. I was hoping my mother would skip them and go right from her wonton soup to the chicken with snow peas so I could have a second helping of those noodles.
“So, Boontsie,” my father said, “we’ve decided where we’re going for vacation next month.”
“Where?” I asked. I was hoping I was finally going to get to go to Disney World or that we’d go back to Ireland.
My mother said, “We’ve rented a house on an island in Maine for two weeks. You’ll love it.”
“On an island?” I said. “Oh, goody. A resort.” I was remembering a winter vacation we took at a resort on the island of St. Thomas. I was already imagining myself snorkling, taking tennis lessons, and eating candlelit meals in fancy restaurants. My white sundress with the little blue flowers would be perfect.
My mother said, “There’re no resorts on Pine Island. Just a few fishermen and their families. That’s its charm. There’s not much of anything there.”
I stopped worrying about sesame noodles. “What do you mean ‘there’s not much of anything there’?”
“Your father’s been working so hard,” my mother said, “that I thought the best vacation for him would be to go to a place where he could do nothing but relax.”
“What do you mean ‘do nothing’?” I was getting nervous.
“We’ll have a house in the woods,” she said. “And there’s the ocean.”
“So there’s a beach,” I said. “People go to the beach and snorkle and stuff.”
“It’s not that kind of a beach,” my father said.
When you think of beaches you think, “sand” right? Well, the place my parents had picked for a two-week vacation had a rocky beach. “Besides,” my mother added, “the island’s pretty far north so the water will be cold.”
“But it’s beautiful,” my father added.
So, I told myself, forget the beach. I was still trying to make sense of their vacation choice and I wanted to be helpful, so I said, “Probably the only thing to do at night will be go to movies. We should stop going to movies in New York so we won’t have seen everything when we get there.”
“There isn’t a movie theater on Pine Island,” my father said. He was smiling.
“Or restaurants,” my mother added. “That’s how quiet it is.” She was so delighted by this fact that she let out a little laugh.
Happy that there weren’t any restaurants or movie theaters? They were acting incredibly weird.
My mother went on, “There isn’t even a grocery store.”
“What’s so great about that?” I asked. “No restaurants or grocery stores means no food. What are we going to eat?” Were we going to spend two whole weeks playing Swiss Family Robinson?
“We’ll shop on the mainland and bring it over in a motorboat,” my mother said.
“What if we forget something?” I asked.
“Then we’ll just have to do without,” she answered. It was going to be like the Swiss Family Robinson.
My mother shoved the container of noodles in my direction. “Stacey, honey,” she said, “I don’t want sesame noodles tonight. Why don’t you finish them?”
I looked down at my plate. It was empty. I’d been eating without knowing it. “Sure,” I said. “Why not? It may be the last food I eat.” I poked my chopsticks into the sesame noodles and dragged them onto my plate.
My father laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic, Anastasia. You’ll have a wonderful time. There’s bound to be someone your age on the island for you to play with.”
Someone? I thought. One person? What if I didn’t like her? What if that one person was a him?
I spent the next two weeks before this so-called vacation being grumpy about it. Laine, who’d just come back from a vacation in Paris with her parents, was totally sympathetic. Most of my other friends were at sleepaway camp, so Laine and I would talk about the exciting time she’d had in Paris and the boring time I would have in Maine.
Meanwhile
my parents couldn’t have been happier.
My father went to a bookstore and picked out a bunch of paperback spy thrillers to read. He also said that maybe he’d do a little fishing.
My mother stocked up on her favorite staples, such as olive oil, honey mustard, and balsamic vinegar from Zabar’s. She even bought two pie tins. “It’s blueberry season in Maine,” she explained. “I’ll make homemade pies.” My mother never made pies. Nobody I knew made pies. If we wanted pie we went to a bakery and bought one.
“What’ll I do?” I asked.
“You can help me cook,” my mother said. “This would be a perfect time for you to learn how.”
“And maybe you’ll want to do a little fishing with me,” my father added.
I ran to my room and called Laine with the latest update on my parents’ madness. “He’s going to fish,” I said. “You know, catch innocent fish with hooks and everything. And she and I are going to cook the fish.”
“I wonder who’s going to cut off their heads and clean out their guts?” Laine said.
“Not me,” I told her. “I’m not going anywhere near those fish.”
“Go see what they’re talking about now,” she suggested.
“Okay,” I said. “You wait. Don’t hang up and I won’t hang up. I’ll be right back.”
I snuck into the hall, listened to my parents for a minute, then ran back to the phone. “They’re talking about lobsters,” I told her. “They said it would be great to eat lobster all the time. I don’t even like lobster.”
“Lobster is what Maine is famous for,” Laine said. “And they’re not hard to cook. You don’t even have to kill them. You just throw them live into boiling water. When the shell turns red they’re cooked. Oh, yeah, and you don’t have to take their guts out until you eat them. Some people think the guts are delicious. I watched my dad eat them once. They’re this pukey shade of green.”
“Ew-ww! They put them live in boiling water and eat their guts? My parents are turning into cannibals.”
“Bring a lot of books,” Laine advised. “And be prepared to be b-o-r-e-d.”
That night Laine asked her mother if I could stay with them while my parents went on vacation. She said no.
Two weeks later my parents and I got up at five-thirty in the morning to get an early start on the eight-hour drive to Maine. My mother brought along a separate suitcase just for the stuff she bought at Zabar’s.
I had followed her example and gotten a two-week supply of candy and apricot rolls. In those days I depended on apricot rolls to get me through the day. There were twenty-eight of them in my suitcase. Two for each day. I imagined myself sitting under a tree being so bored that I had nothing to think about but when I’d have my next apricot roll.
My father came into my room. “Let’s go, Stacey,” he said. “We want to get an early start.”
He was carrying his briefcase. “Hey, Dad,” I said, “did you forget we’re going on vacation?”
He whispered, “I have a little project for work that I’ve got to do. But let’s keep it a secret from your mother for now. Can I put my briefcase in your suitcase?”
“Sure,” I whispered back. “If it’ll fit.”
He seemed relieved that I agreed. He opened my suitcase. “Let me see what we can do here,” he said as he moved my candy and apricot rolls from the top of the suitcase into the corners. “You’ll want to put that candy in a container when we get there,” he told me. “We don’t want to have an infestation of ants in our house. Or raccoons. Skunks like candy, too.”
“You’re teasing me, Dad,” I said. “And I don’t think it’s funny. I’m not in the mood.”
“I’m not teasing you,” he said. “I told you we’re going back to nature.” He patted me on the head. “Lighten up, Boontsie, it’s a vacation.”
The pat on the head reminded me that I hadn’t packed my barrettes, headbands, and ribbons. “I forgot a few things,” I told him. “But you can close my suitcase. I’ll put them in my backpack.”
As I took long twists of ribbons out of my drawer another question about the island popped into my head. “Dad,” I asked, “are there snakes on that island?”
“I suppose,” he said. “But they’re probably not poisonous.”
“Probably not poisonous?” Didn’t my parents even care about my safety anymore?
My dad said, “Come sit on this suitcase, will you?” With my weight he was finally able to close it. It was stuffed to the gills with my favorite clothes, books, and toys. I was even taking an old Barbie doll that I’d lost interest in and some of her clothes. And of course I had my teddy bear, Goobaw. And my father’s briefcase.
By six-thirty we were in the car and ready to roll. As we drove past Laine’s block I thought, Good-bye, Laine.
Then we passed my favorite restaurant. I thought, Good-bye, restaurants.
Good-bye, movie theaters.
Good-bye, pizza parlors.
Then it was, Good-bye, New York City.
My parents took turns driving. During my mother’s turn my father took a nap. She caught my eye in the rearview mirror and whispered, “See how relaxed he is already? Two weeks without work is going to make your father a new man.” I guess they were already having problems in their marriage and she was wishing he’d change. I was wishing that I didn’t know he’d brought his briefcase.
Five boring hours later I said good-bye to highways. The farther north we got the more uncivilized things became. Pretty soon there weren’t even any decent radio stations.
Whoever had rented us the house told my father where the last supermarket was so we could get our groceries in a decent-sized store. It took a whole hour to buy what we’d need for two weeks.
Then it was another half-hour drive on curvy dirt back roads before we got to the shore. When we were finally at the dock where we’d get a boat to take us to the island, my father said, “Too bad it’s not a nicer day.”
“It’ll clear up tomorrow,” my mother said. “I think it’s beautiful just like this.”
Boy, I wondered, is she going crazy? The weather was lousy. It was cloudy and damp — and even though it was August, I felt cold.
We went into this garage near the shore to hire someone to take us to the island. I never thought all our stuff would fit on that boat. But Mr. Stanley (he’s the guy who owned the boat) said, “It’ll fit in her. Don’t you worry, miss.”
It wasn’t the most relaxing boat ride. The water was choppy and it took forever. But, I thought, boats and water. If I could learn to water ski the vacation wouldn’t be wasted. I tapped my dad on the shoulder to get his attention. “Is this the boat we’re renting?” I had to yell it twice to be heard over the roar of the motor.
“We’re not renting a boat,” he yelled back. “Mr. Stanley will come get us at the end of the two weeks.”
We weren’t going to leave the island for two weeks? As we were chop-chopping over the water I could see the island from one end to the other. It wasn’t very big. It was small. And my parents hadn’t exaggerated about how few people lived there. When we were unloading our suitcases and groceries onto the dock in front of the house we were staying in, Mr. Stanley told me there were only three families on Pine Island. I told him that more people lived on one floor of my New York apartment building than on that whole island.
He said, “All nice folks here. But it is pretty quiet for the young ones. I guess there’s one girl your age. That O’Connell girl.”
After all our stuff was on the dock he got back in his boat to return to the mainland. As he roared away he turned and gave me a smile and a wave. No wonder he’s smiling, I thought. He gets to leave.
I waved back, but I definitely was not smiling.
“Isn’t that a darling house?”
My mother was pointing to the top of the rocky hill that rose behind the dock. “Look at it, Stacey — the way it cuddles into those pine trees.”
The house wasn’t painted and it was surrounded by woo
ds. “There aren’t any screens on the porch,” I pointed out. “It’ll be buggy.” (I knew something about living in the country.)
My father took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I thought he was mad at me for being such a grump, but I don’t think he even noticed because he said, “Just breathe that air, Boontsie.”
So, I thought, breathing’s going to be the big activity around here.
He took another breath. “The smell of pines. I’d forgotten how wonderful it is.”
I took a deep breath. It smelled like bathroom deodorant to me. What was so wonderful about that?
I soon learned there was another activity on the island besides breathing. We had to carry all our stuff up seventy-three rickety steps to the house. It took three trips.
By the time we got our luggage and groceries in the house and unpacked it all, it was already getting dark out. “I guess we’ll wait until tomorrow to explore the island,” my dad said.
Right, I thought, exploring rocks and trees should be thrilling. Then what do we do? Bake pies?
I walked around the house.
“Isn’t it a darling place?” my mother said. “I knew you’d love it.”
“I’m looking for the phone,” I told her. “I’ve got to call Laine. I promised.”
My father said, “We’re roughing it, Stacey. There aren’t any phones out here.”
“No phones! Then we’re totally cut off from civilization. That’s horrible! It’s dangerous! What if we get bitten by a snake or something?”
“Well, we’re not alone on the island, Anastasia,” my father said. “There are three other families.”
“Unless they’re smart and went someplace else for their vacation,” I said.
* * *
The next morning I woke up to the sound of the ocean crashing on the rocks. At first I thought it was the crosstown bus needing a new muffler. But then I opened my eyes and saw a pine ceiling a foot from my face. When I reached over the side of the bed and couldn’t feel the floor, I got the whole picture. I was on the top bunk in a small bedroom in a small cabin on a small island.