“So you’re okay with this, then? Me being here?”
“I’m not afraid of you, Krista. I think in all fairness I should be asking you if you’re okay with me being here. We haven’t even talked in a couple of years. And I wasn’t able to do anything to help you. Aside from some letters, I was hardly any support to you while you were in prison...and I knew you didn’t deserve to be there.”
“Oh, I don’t even think about that, Charley,” Krista said slowly, getting to her feet. “I mean, first of all, I did deserve to be there—just maybe not for the reasons they said. And second, I wasn’t much help to you, either, as I recall. I don’t think you had it that much easier than me.”
Charley’s head slowly tilted to one side as she listened to Krista. This woman had just come out of twenty-three years of hard time while Charley had been considered a minor celebrity making lots of money. Yet she had sympathetic words for Charley. It was almost unheard of that anyone would express such a kindness to her, especially a member of her family. That her success had come at great labor and sacrifice was irrelevant to most people. She was unaccustomed to genuine concern for her feelings.
She bent to pick up one of the two small suitcases. “How’d you like a nice hot soak in our new bathtub?”
“That would be so cool,” Krista answered. “You just have no idea how cool.”
* * *
Charley gave two taps on the bathroom door before entering. The bubbles were high, nearly covering Krista’s head. Charley picked up the empty coffee cup and replaced it with a new one. “This is Amaretto Crème,” she said. “With a little dollop of whipping cream on top for good measure.”
“I don’t drink.”
“It’s just the flavor—no booze. Krista, I have to say something quick before I lose my nerve. And I don’t think there’s any way to preserve your dignity when I say it.”
“Go ahead, babe. I don’t have hardly any dignity.”
“I peeked in your suitcase. The stuff you brought with you...your clothes. The underwear and jeans? It’s no good. You have to let me replace it all for you. With new stuff.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. Orphans in third-world countries have better underwear than you. I’ve spent more on lunch...many times...than it would cost to buy a few new outfits for you to wear this summer. And you’ll need a bathing suit.”
“Gee, we were all girls at the last place I lived, so when we went to the beach, we just skinny-dipped,” Krista said, laughing harshly.
“Maybe some nightclothes. You obviously don’t need nightclothes or robes or slippers in prison.”
“Shower thongs, Charley. Not slippers.”
“Well, you need slippers and beach thongs. Flip-flops.”
“Charley,” Krista said.
“And we’ll get you a decent haircut in Brainerd, if you like.”
“This is so much how I pictured you, Charley. A perfectionist. Throwing money at everything.”
“Please, I don’t mean to hurt your pride, Krista. I just want to help. I want you to be comfortable and feel safe. Don’t deny me the pleasure of—”
“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t deny you your pleasures. I don’t do things to hurt myself anymore,” Krista said, raising her arm high above her head and watching the soap suds run slowly down. “Spend as much on me as you want, Charley.” She laughed. “I didn’t have time to stop at Victoria’s Secret on my way out of Chowchilla. And my beautician was all tied up.”
“Who cut your hair in prison?” Charley asked.
“Whoever could be trusted with scissors. It was usually a guard. But we did have a little beauty shop there, if you use the term loosely.” She sank down in the tub, letting the water and bubbles cover her head. She rose up again. “Way loosely.”
“Well, for right now you can wear some of my stuff.”
This made Krista laugh. “Really, Charley, I can get by for the time being. All right?”
Charley left the bathroom and came back directly with some underwear and and a pair of soft white socks. She dangled them toward Krista, then put them down on the closed toilet lid and left.
“Charley?” Krista called. “When do you expect the phone to be hooked up?”
“Couple of days. Why?”
“I haven’t called my mom yet. I never really believed I was going to get out so I didn’t tell anyone what was happening. I just came straight here.”
“I have a cell...you can call her whenever you want...”
“Maybe in the morning, then. And, Charley?” The sound of the drain gulping bathwater accompanied Krista’s yelling. “I have to check in with my parole officer in Grand Rapids...it was the best I could do... Do you suppose...?”
“I’ll take you there myself. I’ll be your sponsor here.”
“I don’t think I need a sponsor. But, Charley? Oh! Oh, Charley! Oh, my God!”
Charley rushed to the bathroom. There stood Krista, her skin pink from the hot water, wearing Charley’s cotton underwear and matching undershirt. Bright soft whites. Krista was running her hands up and down her sides, over her little rump, around her hips, over her little breasts. “Oh, Charley, these are the most wonderful things I have ever had on my body!” she said with reverence. “I will never take them off!”
“Yeah, well, I think that’s what happened to the last ones.”
* * *
They had to share a bed, Charley told her, because they had only the one mattress so far with two more being delivered. And there was only the one heating pad to keep them warm. Fortunately, there were plenty of quilts and comforters and pillows. “Just like our mothers used to do,” she said. Charley took the flavored coffee and hot cinnamon biscuits to the bedroom on a tray and they nibbled and sipped while they talked.
“Tell me what prison was like,” Charley said.
“Oh, not now,” Krista said, sinking back against the down pillows. “Just let me smell and feel these things. Charley, your life is so rich, do you know that?”
She picked up her coffee cup, warming her hands with it, and smiled. She did know. She worked hard for it—she appreciated every moment of it.
“Do you smell all these smells? The lotion and pine and linen and soap...soap that isn’t lye, I mean. The dirt and the lake and the...the...furniture polish?” she asked.
“Yes. And varnish,” Charley said. “I had the hardwood floors sanded and varnished.”
“There’s paint and wallpaper paste and lemon oil.” She closed her eyes and twitched her nose in the air. “There’s vanilla somewhere, some sweet-smelling cleaning fluid. The smell of brand-new muslin and ages-old cotton...what a great combination.”
“Can you smell the wicker? Does wicker have a smell?” Charley wanted to know.
“Sure it does—it smells like a basket or a straw hat. And you know what else? There are a thousand different blossoms around the lake. In fact, this is the best the lake is ever going to smell,” Krista said. “When everything is just coming in bloom. Except maybe the way it’ll smell in fall, when the leaves change and drop off, when the fireplaces are all going, when the pies and turkeys are—” She stopped talking for a moment to sip from her steaming mug and think about smells. Later, when they had run out of things to talk about, she might tell Charley how prison smelled. Maybe. But she’d really rather forget.
“I never think about smells that much,” Charley confessed quietly. “In fact, the only time I was ever made tragically aware of odor was once, after Megan went through a big chemo treatment and she kept saying, ‘I smell like chemicals, don’t I?’ Her skin had a tinny odor to it. It was very strange.”
They were both quiet for a moment. “How is she?” Krista finally asked.
“Well, she’s better now than she was a couple of months ago. She’s gaine
d a couple of pounds, she’s growing hair and her color isn’t pasty. Did she or your mom write you about this latest treatment?”
“She just wrote me what she was going to have done. She said the results have been very good. She said she was optimistic.”
“She had lung, liver and pancreatic metastasis, not to mention some lymphatic involvement. When she was in remission they got her as strong as possible and she donated her own bone marrow for the surgery. Just in case. Once she recovered from the harvest, when the cancer was evident again, they literally wiped her out with chemotherapy. Killed everything that moved, so to speak. Then gave her a cell transplant with her own healthy cells. There isn’t anything more to do now. Except wait.”
“Wait? For how long?”
Charley let out a small, rueful laugh. “From now on, that’s how long.”
“Well? How does she feel?”
“She’s pretty weak, but she claims she’s feeling stronger every day. She’s emaciated. The doctor has her drinking protein supplements to try to put a little weight on. And she was bald, of course.” Charley shrugged. “She takes at least one nap every day but other than that she seems to be doing okay. That doesn’t mean anything, of course.”
“Why doesn’t it?”
Charley took a moment to answer. “She’s lying about the odds, Krista.”
“Huh?”
“Not lying, that’s not what I mean. They have had good results with this bone marrow transplant after chemo treatment...but unfortunately not on patients whose cancer is as advanced as Meg’s. That’s what this is all about, I think. This opening up the lake house, writing everyone to tell them to come back here one more time. I think she wants to come here to die.”
“Maybe not,” Krista said hopefully.
“Yeah, maybe not,” Charley said. But there wasn’t much hope in her voice.
* * *
To see dawn sparkle across the lake water...this was something Krista feared she would never see again. She’d hardly slept since she’d been out of prison, but was not in the least tired. It would have been impossible to sleep through any sight that underscored her own freedom—like the rising of the sun on Lake Waseka. She sat cross-legged at the end of the dock in the purplish predawn, wearing Charley’s underwear and socks and her own old, ratty corduroy jacket.
She heard the new dock creak behind her and she looked over her shoulder to see Charley coming toward her. Charley wore her warm, furry robe, toasty slippers, and carried two steaming cups of coffee.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Krista said. “I was trying to be quiet.”
“You didn’t wake me. I get up before sunrise every day. I’m trained.”
Krista accepted the coffee gratefully. “That’s how you became so famous. Famous Charley—that’s what we call you.”
“We?” she asked.
“Me, Meg, my mom...”
“Aunt Jo calls me that?” Charley asked, aghast.
“Not really...it’s how I’ve referred to you a couple of times, and when my mom wrote to me, if she mentioned you, she’d put it in quotes. She didn’t mean it disrespectfully. She’s very proud of you.” Krista sipped. “She’d write, ‘I caught “Famous Charley’s” show today. She had on Sylvester Stallone. Who knew what a good sense of humor he has.’ Stuff like that.”
“Hmm.”
“You did all this, then? Fixing up the house and stuff?”
“Uh-huh. With the help of a local decorator.”
“For Meg?”
“I’d buy the lake for her if I could. I only have one sister left, you know.”
Krista reached out and patted Charley’s knee. “And I have two—and haven’t heard a word from one of them in years. Years. I get a holiday card every year from Bev. I think Ma makes her do that. I always heard from Meggie, though. Isn’t she the best one of all of us?”
Charley stared down into her coffee cup. Meg was going to be here in a few days. She hadn’t done all this just to spend the summer crying because her sister was probably dying. But yes, she thought. Megan was the best one of them all.
“How does it feel to you to be back here?” Krista asked her.
“Surprisingly positive. Or maybe it hasn’t really hit me yet. If it had, surely I’d be banging my head or tearing out my hair. This place...the last summer here... I think it must have been the pivotal point.”
“Bunny...”
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of Bunny,” she said. “I was thinking of Andrea.”
“Andrea?”
“Andrea, the baby I was forced to give away. I found her... Rather, she found me, about seven years ago. She’s a mother herself now. She’s incredible, Krista. So beautiful, so smart. She has two darling little girls of her own. I was only seventeen when she was born. I did a kind of crazy thing.”
Krista began to laugh. “Sorry—I don’t think you even qualify...”
“No, I mean, just lately. I called Andrea, told her where I was spending the summer and why. I couldn’t really invite her to the lake for the summer, tempting as that would be. The little girls—I think it might be too much for Meg. But I did suggest to Andrea that she try to come this way if possible. I told her I’d pay for their lodging in a nice place nearby. She could see her extended biological family. Some of them, anyway. And if she’s still interested, she could do a little detective work on her biological father.”
“Detective work? You don’t know where he is?”
“I don’t even know who he is. I mean, who he really is. I thought he was a twenty-two-year-old Harvard law student when I fell for him, but when some of the other lodge waiters told him I was the underage granddaughter of a superior court judge, he ran for his life. It turned out he was a nineteen-year-old local boy who hadn’t gone to college at all. He said his name was Mack and that’s all I ever knew. What are the odds Mack is his real name?” She laughed bitterly. “We were whisked away before I even realized I could be pregnant. Before I could even go back to the lodge and ask what his full name really was, although I didn’t want him by then. He really took me for a ride.”
“But...did you want to go on that ride?”
“Oh, yes,” Charley said. “Or no. I wanted to kiss and hug and cuddle and feel love and passion and fantasize about how much better I was going to make my life than our mothers made theirs. And the reality is that if I had not had that awful summer, I wouldn’t have had the volatile power and focus to do what I did. All that anger. It’s what I used to get everything I ever got.”
“I guess if Meg is the best one of us all, then you’re the most successful one of us all.” Krista drank her coffee and looked off in the direction of the first pink streaks of dawn. “And I’m the baddest one of us all. But who cares? Who could care when you look at something like that? God, Charley, have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”
Charley felt the tangy presence of her own sentimental tears—sheer joy at seeing Krista’s reaction to dawn outside the walls of a prison. This was something she hadn’t even considered, that she’d have this kind of reunion. Both with her cousin and with her own consciousness. She could not have appreciated the sunrise half so well without Krista to exclaim on its unique beauty. “Ahhh,” was all she could say, for certainly she had seen dawns more beautiful than this. There was one on the China Sea that had moved her to tears, another from a mountaintop in the Greek isles. Perhaps the most beautiful of all—over the crown of her newborn baby boy’s head, born at dawn eighteen years ago.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Krista.”
“No one’s more glad of that than me! So, who actually owns this place now?”
Charley shrugged, thinking. “I suppose Grandma Berkey does. It obviously hasn’t been sold. Which raises some interesting questions, now that you mention it.”
“I
should know who actually owns the place,” Krista said, paying little attention to the prospect of interesting questions. “I know Meg invited everyone to visit this summer, which is nice, but I need a place to stay and I have to have the permission of the owner. You know?”
“You have my permission,” Charley said dismissively.
“No, you don’t understand,” Krista said. “I really have to know who to ask. I have an obsessive need to do things the right way.” She touched Charley’s arm, drawing her attention. “There are rules. Understand?”
“Sure,” she finally answered. “We’ll take care of that.” Then, remembering something, she said, “Krista, I looked in the other suitcase, too. Last night. I wasn’t really snooping. I was looking for your clothes and then for what else you might need.”
“You were snooping,” Krista said.
“Where’d you get the typewriter?”
“My mom sent it. I asked her for it—she found it at a thrift shop. She said she wished it was a laptop, but she couldn’t really afford it. But she wanted me to have something for writing.”
“Can I buy you the laptop?”
“I really don’t need it.”
“I want to. Because you’re doing the one thing no one could do. You’re writing about it. Trying to get it down. I saw the pages. God, I’m so relieved. I’m so glad it’s you and not me.”
“It’s hard. I’d like to do it right. I mean, correct. I mean, true. Shit, I don’t know what I mean.”
“Where are you getting the stuff? The information?”
“Well, I’d ask a question here and there of my mom or Meg. I could get Meg to go undercover to Grandma Berkey. I think she even enjoyed it. Plus, I remember things. Meg doesn’t, Beverly won’t talk about it, you and Hope were pretty scarce with other things on your minds.”
“They know about the book, your mom and Meg? The story? Whatever it is?”
“No. I told them it’s for my therapy. So I could get ‘well.’ And get out. I lied.”