French Braid(7)

“Well,” Serena had told her mother, “at least Aunt Alice might come.”

“Maybe,” Lily had said. “Although you know your aunt Alice. How she’s always tut-tutting me whenever we get together.”

Serena had given up.

The fact was, she reflected, that even when the Garretts did get together, it never seemed to take, so to speak.

Without moving, she slid her eyes in James’s direction. He was reading a screenful of text. (He had the most extraordinary ability to read entire books on his phone.) Absentmindedly, he was chewing his lower lip.

Serena’s best friend in high school had been a boy named Marcellus Avery. This wasn’t a romance; it was more a kind of mutual aid society. Marcellus had weirdly white skin and very black hair, and everybody made fun of his name. And Serena weighed about ten pounds too much and could not for the life of her cope with any sort of ball—baseball, tennis ball, soccer ball, any sort at all—in a school where sports were paramount. At lunch they would sit together and talk about how shallow all their classmates were, and on weekends he would come to her house and they would watch foreign movies in her parents’ TV room. Once, though, he had let his hand settle oh-so-casually next to her hand on the couch between them, and when she didn’t move hers away he had leaned imperceptibly closer and planted a soft, shy kiss on her cheek. She still remembered the velvety feel of the fuzz above his upper lip. But nothing more had happened. In a moment they had drawn apart and stared fixedly at the TV again, and that was the end of that.

The funny thing was, though, that now Serena realized he had been absolutely beautiful to look at. His head had had the most perfect shape, like a marble statue’s head, and for some reason it had always made her think of how much his mother must love him. She wondered where he was today. Probably snatched up in marriage by someone, she thought—some woman smart enough to recognize his worth. And here Serena sat, next to a boy who was no different from her classmates back in high school.

All she could think about was how long it would be before this train ride came to an end and she could be on her own again.





2


The Garrett family did not take a family vacation until 1959. Robin Garrett, Alice’s father, said they couldn’t afford one. Also, in the early days he refused to leave the store in anyone else’s hands. It was Grandfather Wellington’s store, was why—Wellington’s Plumbing Supply, turned over to Robin’s care only grudgingly and mistrustfully after Grandfather Wellington had his first heart attack. So of course Robin had to prove himself, working six days a week and bringing the books home every Saturday for Alice’s mother to examine in case he’d slipped up somewhere. Face it: he was not a born businessman. By training he was a plumber; he used to buy his parts at Wellington’s just so he could catch a glimpse of young Mercy Wellington behind the counter. Mercy Wellington was the prettiest little thing he’d ever laid eyes on, he told his children, and all the plumbers in Baltimore were crazy about her. Robin hadn’t stood a chance. But miracles do happen, sometimes. Mercy told the children she’d liked his gentlemanly behavior.

Then after Grandfather Wellington died and the store became Robin’s—or really Mercy’s, legally speaking; same thing—he had acted even more tied to it, more obligated to oversee every last nut and bolt of it, and so they still took no vacations. Not till he hired an assistant manager whom he referred to as “young Pickford,” a good-natured sort without a lot of brains but steady as a rock. That was when Mercy said, “All right, Robin, now I’m putting my foot down. We are going on a family vacation.”

Summer of 1959. A week at Deep Creek Lake. Rustic little cabin in a row of other cabins just a walk from the lake itself. Not actually on the waterfront, because Robin said that was too pricey, but close enough; close enough.

In 1959 Alice was seventeen years old—way past the stage where traveling with her family could be any kind of thrill. And her sister, Lily, was fifteen and madly in love with Jump Watkins, a rising senior at their high school and a champion basketball player. She could not possibly leave Jump for a whole week, she said. She asked if Jump could come to the lake with them, but Robin said no. He didn’t even bother giving a reason; he just said, “What? No,” and that was that.

So for the girls, the trip was nothing much to look forward to. It had arrived too late in their lives. For their brother, though…well, David was only seven, the absolutely perfect age for a week at a lake. He was a joyful child anyhow, delighted to take part in anything new and different. From the moment he heard they were going, he started counting the days on the calendar and planning what to bring with him. He must have envisioned the lake as a sort of oversized bathtub, because he proposed to pack his plastic tugboats, his wooden sailboat, and his little wind-up plastic diver. Mercy had to explain that they might float away from him in all that water. “I’ll get you a beach bucket at the dime store instead,” she promised, “and a shovel.” So after that, he went overboard in the other direction and started singing sea songs. “My Bonnie lies over the ocean…” he sang in his clear little voice, and he renamed his cowboy doll Bobby Shafto. (He was always renaming his cowboy doll, which he still took to bed with him nights, although he hid him in the closet whenever he had playmates over.) “Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea,” he sang, wafting the doll over his head in a horizontal, swimming position. “Silver buckles at his knee…”