Perennials, page 21
And so, camp: Maybe she could feel there, finally. Maybe she could cry there, be less selfish there. If any place could bring it out of her, that would be it.
So she convinced them, using the same words Jack had. Helen would have wanted it that way, she told them. There was no place she had loved more. And ultimately, everyone was too tired to argue with her.
It was mid-September and strange to be back so soon after the summer had ended and to be there for a reason other than for camp itself. The weather hadn’t changed much, but there was a slight chill in the air, and when a fall-like breeze came through, it gave the campers and counselors shivers—not because it was particularly cold, but because it felt incongruous with the warmth they associated with the place.
There were over three hundred people there: campers and counselors but also members of the Larchmont community who had driven en masse to the Berkshires to pay their respects once again.
For the first time, Rachel did not want to return to camp. Not just for the obvious reasons—the way she had left and the reason she was returning—but because of the mismatched nature of it all. You didn’t leave camp in July. You didn’t go back to camp in September. And you didn’t return for something like this. The natural order of everything was thrown off. Camp used to be the one place where you could trust that the only thing to change every year would be you. Now it seemed that even camp couldn’t be trusted.
She had not gone to her father’s funeral, and neither had Denise. But Denise insisted they attend Helen’s memorial at camp—she told Rachel she would regret it if she didn’t go, and she was right—and so two weeks into her sophomore year, Rachel returned, flying from Michigan to New York for the weekend. They drove up to Lakeville in silence; there wasn’t a lot to say.
People were gathering quietly on the beach, all of them standing, arms crossed around themselves. Some adults were exchanging quiet words with one another. Rachel was surprised by the campers who had returned, though of course, when she thought about it, she shouldn’t have been. Sarah had taken her shoes off and was standing with her bare feet in the water. She looked so unnatural wearing black. Danny Sheppard and Mikey Bombowski were standing next to each other a few feet behind Sarah, awkward, not talking. They were supposed to be home, back in their real lives, missing camp and gearing up for a new school year in which they would hold their pure memories of the summer close, a sunny reserve of simplicity to turn to on colder days. Rachel remembered Mikey and Helen outside the athletic shed, how Helen had dropped his hand when she saw her.
Denise stood next to her as they looked around for any member of the Larkin family.
“Is that him?” Denise whispered, pointing to Jack. He was wearing a suit, and he was standing off to the side of the mourners. He had a piece of paper folded in his hand; he would probably deliver some sort of speech.
“Don’t,” Rachel said to her mother.
Rachel then spotted Sheera, wearing the same black dress she had worn the night of the dance. Rachel had been certain that she would never see the girl again. Sheera was standing next to her father, both of them erect, patiently waiting.
Rachel left her mother where she stood and approached them. “Hi, Sheera,” Rachel said.
Sheera started. “Hey, Rachel.”
“Thanks for coming,” Rachel said. She put an arm around the girl, and Sheera leaned into it.
“I had to pay my respects.”
This made Rachel tear up. “That’s very kind of you,” she said.
She removed her arm from around Sheera and shook her father’s hand. “Thank you for being here, Mr. Jones.” He nodded. Rachel had not seen him, either of them, after Sheera’s accident.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” she added, but as soon as she said it, it felt trivial. She felt trivial.
He shook his head. “Let’s not,” he said, and he put an arm around Sheera, taking her back.
When Fiona saw Rachel at the beach, the first tears came. She suddenly felt it all: the anger of Helen leaving her early, and of Rachel leaving her early too, as if she was realizing for the first time that the two things might somehow be related. As if it could, maybe, somehow, be Rachel’s fault. How easy that would be, to be able to blame Rachel, to believe that the two of them had conspired with each other to leave Fiona there all alone on the day that she needed Rachel the most.
Rachel too began to cry as she approached her friend. They embraced for a long time, their arms held tightly around each other while they heaved in and out.
When Fiona finally let go, the first thing she said to Rachel, face stained with tears, was “Why did you leave?” Fiona was so angry she almost couldn’t speak. She was spitting out her words like chants, as if she were possessed. “You should have been there,” she kept repeating. “You should have been there.”
“I wish I could have,” Rachel said, as gently as she could. She went in to stroke Fiona’s hair, but Fiona pushed Rachel’s hand away.
“It’s always about you, isn’t it? How did this still manage to be about you?”
“What do you mean?” Rachel asked cautiously.
“The hospital. You weren’t there.”
Rachel shook her head. “I wanted to be. So badly. Believe me.”
“You should know better than anyone,” Fiona said, so incensed, she knew she was about to say cruel things. “I was there for you when your dad died. I got it, before anything even happened to Helen. I got that it was so hard and complicated. But where have you been since this happened? Gone. You left camp without a word. I got one measly five-minute visit. You didn’t even bother to talk to me at the funeral.”
“You didn’t want me to,” Rachel said, her voice quiet, trying not to think of her dad anymore.
Fiona was right: Rachel’s relationship with her father had been complicated, but so had the one between Fiona and Helen. Rachel was the only person who knew the extent to which the sisters never got along. When they were younger, Fiona had told Rachel that she wished Helen had never been born—both of them remembered the sentiment clearly now. Rachel knew it couldn’t suddenly feel so uniformly tragic and simple, and Fiona hated being reminded of how much Rachel knew about her.
Fiona kept going, possessed. “Do you know how stupid I felt, pretending like I knew where you went but actually having no idea?”
Rachel took a deep breath. “Do you know why I left camp?” Oh, she thought, maybe this isn’t the time. She knew it wasn’t the time, but the bait had been too tempting.
“No, and I don’t even care anymore.”
And that was when they heard it: Denise’s harsh New York accent raised above the din of the three hundred mourners.
“You piece of shit. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
The girls looked toward the voice down the beach a few yards away. Denise, a full foot shorter than Jack, was pushing the man’s chest hard, like she wanted him to fight back. He kept taking small steps in retreat with his hands up. He seemed confused as to who she was.
“Ma’am, please, calm down.”
“Don’t you tell me to calm down.” She was craning her neck to look up at him, but she seemed unconcerned by the size difference. “You watched my daughter get raped.”
She waited. She let the word land. Now he knew who she was.
“You are a weak, impotent man.”
Denise continued to shove his chest, but Jack was no longer moving backward. Instead, he stood still as she threw curse after curse at him, his dress shoes cemented into the sand.
“You’re a pervert,” she spat, “a sick, fucking pervert.”
Rachel and Fiona remained where they stood and watched silently, shocked and exhilarated by the extraordinary amount of power and adrenaline that seemed to be coming from Denise. Rachel didn’t think she had ever seen her mother so strong and so sure. Fiona did not dare to look at Rachel.
And then something happened that the girls would forever after know as one of the strangest, most memorable moments of their young lives. As Denise pushed and cursed at Jack and pushed him some more, seemingly exhausting herself but not slowing down, and as the entire crowd of mourners watched it, Amy Larkin—grieving Amy Larkin, who had just lost her young daughter, who had been bedridden and unable to walk unaided for the past month, who had never before had anything of consequence to say to Denise—standing as tall as she ever had, strode over to Rachel’s mother and took the woman by the arm.
At the touch, Denise turned to Amy and immediately stopped pushing. She looked at the woman, bewildered. Amy nodded and took Denise into her arms. Denise accepted the embrace and, in one single moment, fell into it with a low, mournful groan.
Rachel was sure it was the ugliest sound that had ever come from her mother’s mouth. “I’m so sorry,” they heard Denise saying between sobs. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Amy stroked Denise’s hair. “I know,” she said. Jack stood over the women, perplexed by the scene in front of him. Powerless as he waited for it to be over.
Then Amy looked up at Jack as if she had forgotten, until then, that he was there. She said to him very clearly and very calmly, “I think you should go now.”
Who would say no to a mourning mother? Amy seemed to understand this, that all the power in the world suddenly belonged to her. The two women walked away from the shore, away from Jack, and toward the back of the crowd. Once they had settled there, and Denise’s sobs had slowed, they watched as Jack ambled onto the trail leading away from the lake and disappeared. The memorial-goers were still standing there, looking around, speaking in low tones to one another, waiting for some sort of order to resume, waiting for someone new to take charge. Jack was supposed to make the opening remarks.
Fiona looked at Rachel and Rachel at Fiona. “I didn’t—” Fiona started to say.
Rachel shook her head and took Fiona’s hand. Emboldened by their mothers, perhaps, or by what one might call a ghostly atmosphere down at the lake that day, with Helen’s memory hovering so close, each girl saw the other fully in that moment.
—
Later they planted a garden for Helen near the stables at Camp Marigold. The Larkins donated her horse, Dandelion, to the camp, less out of benevolence and more because of the grief that would have come with having to care for her, day after day. And once they decided to donate Dandelion, Fiona wanted Josie to go too; she couldn’t bear to separate them.
Helen would never have to realize, years later, what Sarah had had to endure, that clenching her teeth and waiting for the sex with Danny Sheppard to be over wasn’t normal or okay. She wouldn’t live with a scar from that glimpse of Yonatan in the shed that night, wouldn’t ever know why Rachel left camp.
All the girls Helen loved and hated would not be formative in the development of her adult self, would not be discussed in therapy nor play major roles in her future relationships with her roommates, her bosses, her mother-in-law. She would not be threatened by women or seek to defy them.
In her adult siblings’ homes, and those of her aging, divorced parents, Helen would remain suspended in the same picture: Camp Marigold, July 2006, half-smiling at the camera, as though taken aback by it, her blond curls fading at the edges into a sun-softened day. Hipless, flat chested, some time before she would have gotten her first period. Downy tanned legs in kid-sized medium shorts. She was perfect. She had left perfect. Though no one admitted it, or outwardly wished it upon themselves, when it came to Helen, they silently agreed: They all thanked God she was a late bloomer.
—
But in that moment at the beach, when Denise had lashed out at Jack, and everyone was standing silent and confused about what was supposed to happen next, Rachel said to Fiona, “Maybe you should go up there.” There was no one else equipped to speak. Fiona knew this too. She nodded, let go of her friend’s hand, and made her way to the front of the crowd.
For my parents
And for Eleanor: May you hold on to
your girlhood as long as you can
Acknowledgments
Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, my agent, took this project on in its nascent stages and helped me to shape it into something more like a book. Her savvy, generosity, and dedication have been career-making and life-changing.
Andrea Walker is a dream editor: whip smart, incisive, and most of all, kind. I don’t know how I lucked into getting to work with her, but I’m so glad I did.
Kaela Myers, my sister in ampersand, has been incredibly helpful throughout this entire process. Janet Wygal’s copyediting skills are out of this world. Lucy Silag, Andrea DeWerd, and the rest of the lovely folks in the publicity and marketing departments at Random House have shown nothing but excitement and dedication for Perennials, and I am so grateful to them.
Susan Kamil and Andy Ward: Thank you for believing in this book.
To the many more working hard behind the scenes, both at Random House and DeFiore and Company: Thank you.
Kelly Farber is my unofficial guide through this wild world of publishing, and I couldn’t get by without her honesty, intel, and humor.
I’m extremely grateful to the Columbia University Writing Program for providing me with two years to write and, consequently, a second home. My teachers, particularly Elissa Schappell and Rebecca Godfrey, helped me to spring Perennials into being when it was just a bud. Victor LaValle helped me turn it into a novel. Corinna Barsan’s input was instrumental to the revision process. I’m thankful to all of my peers and professors, too many to name here, who read drafts and pushed me to do better.
Katie Abbondanza, Julia Bosson, Kea Krause, and Soon Wiley are brilliant readers, writers, and people. Dr. Matt Cummings called me on his overnight shifts and patiently explained heart conditions and concussions to me. Ellie Hunzinger, my English rose, was my British vernacular adviser. Elise Brandenburg taught me about horses.
My best friends, Laura Ferrazzano, Kelsey MacArthur, Lauren Pagano, and Marissa Danney, live in the girlish heart of this book.
And the greatest thanks to my family, for their love and unwavering support: the clans of Cambridge, Corvallis, Newport, and Whippany; my grandmother, Connie Berman; my brother, Sam Berman; and my parents, Tony Berman and Jill Remaly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MANDY BERMAN is originally from Nyack, New York. She is a graduate of the Columbia University MFA Writing Program and now lives and writes in Brooklyn. This is her first novel.
mandyberman.com
@MandyBerman
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Mandy Berman, Perennials
