Chapter 22
— Chapter 22 —
We were friends for a little while, Steena and me. It was her husband’s doing.
During her junior year in college, Steena spent winter semester at the University of Amsterdam, and when she came back that spring, she was engaged to Charlie Wells, with a wedding already planned at his family’s “camp” on Cape Cod two weeks later.
Charlie, who had been skiing with his brother in Baden-Baden, decided to pop down and say hello to his old friend Steena, and the rest was history. They’d dated the summer before, when Steena interned at his family’s real estate development company, so it wasn’t completely out of the blue, but there’d been no mention of him since. Not a single mention of him since! At least that’s what our mother kept saying in a way that made it obvious she was offended to be sideswiped, even though she viewed Steena’s upward mobility as her own personal triumph. Nobody asked if Steena would go back to school in the fall, as if getting married to Charlie was a superior form of graduation.
Aubrey was a very large preemie , so I suspect she was the reason for their rapid engagement, but there was no point in asking Steena about things she didn’t want people to know. It was none of my business anyway.
Charlie was from Somers too, but he was a few years older than Steena and went to a Connecticut boarding school called The Gunnery. His older brother went to Exeter and his younger sister was still at Miss Porter’s. I think because, as a teen, Charlie only saw his brother and sister a few times a year, and mainly at the beach, he viewed them as cheerful playmates and confidantes. He assumed Steena would have the same relationship with me, and since she didn’t want to shit on that assumption and risk appearing uncouth to her fancy in-laws, she started pretending we were chummy too. This is how I ended up being a bridesmaid in my sister’s wedding, even though Steena hated that Nonna had to sew straps on my strapless bridesmaid gown, because my late-blooming fourteen-year-old body couldn’t fill it out.
That summer, Charlie and Steena moved into the Wellses’ pool house in Somers while they broke ground on their own home. Since Charlie was busy managing the construction, he didn’t get out to the Cape as much to see his own siblings, so he adopted me as his cheerful playmate and confidante.
“Hey, little sister,” he’d say after Sunday dinner at Nonna and Babbo’s. “What’s say we grab some ice cream for all these good people?” And I’d get to ride in his red Volkswagen Cabriolet with the top down, Billy Idol blaring on the CD player he’d just had specially installed.
We’d drive to Friendly’s to get one of those sherbet rolls that looked like a watermelon, because that was my favorite, and a half gallon of rocky road, because it was his. Then we’d stop at Baskin-Robbins for Jamoca for Babbo and rum raisin for Steena, because Charlie did not believe anyone with a distinct preference should have to compromise on ice cream in the summer.
Sometimes he let me drive back to Babbo’s, even though I was only fourteen and a half. Holding his hand over mine, he’d show me how to shift gears on his manual transmission.
“Okay,” he’d say, pushing my palm against the leather gearshift. “Take it to second. See how that feels?” And he’d grin like I was a quick learner, even though I couldn’t remember which gears to use and needed him to show me every single time. And when I ground the gears, he’d just laugh, shouting through the rush of the wind, “Everything’s fixable. Don’t let it scare you.”
Charlie didn’t look or act like any of the men in my family. His hair was the kind that had to be styled with mousse and a blow dryer. He wore Wayfarer sunglasses, coral-colored Bermuda shorts, leather-laced boat shoes without socks, and one of those white rope bracelets that shrinks on your wrist and stays put all summer until you cut it off on Labor Day. My Uncle Angelo kept calling him a poncy boy under his breath, and even though I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, I knew it had to do with Charlie’s appearance.
Uncle Angelo finally laid off the jabs when Charlie started bringing Cuban cigars to Sunday dinner. And sometimes when we went out for ice cream, Charlie would leave me in the car and run into the liquor store for a bottle of Brugal. Then he and Uncle Angelo would stand out in Babbo’s yard smoking and drinking rum and talking shit, and Charlie’s laugh would sound just like Angelo’s.
I don’t know if Charlie knew there was anything to mend, but he helped me win Steena over the same way he won Angelo. When we got back from our supply runs, he always let me give Steena her ice cream. She was hot and pregnant, desperate for relief, so I was her hero when I handed over a whole pint and a plastic spoon.
When Charlie and Steena went out to the Cape for one last weekend away before the baby was born, they came back with a white rope bracelet for Uncle Angelo as a joke.
“Here you go, you S.O.B.,” Charlie said, tossing it across the dinner table. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to wear it long. Summer’s almost over.”
Angelo laughed so hard his face turned red.
Charlie got me a rope bracelet too, but he had Steena give it to me. She slipped it over my hand and showed me how to shrink it to size in a bowl of salt water since we weren’t near the ocean.
“You have such small wrists,” she said, wrapping her hand around my bracelet to press the water out. “Our hands are the same size, but your wrists are tiny. I always forget.”
And I was astonished that she’d ever noticed something like that about me.
After Aubrey was born, Steena got sad and lonely and overwhelmed.
“Hey, little sister, how you feel about helping out?” Charlie asked one Sunday when he showed up at family dinner with the baby and no Steena. “I think your big really needs you right now.”
Of course, I wanted all the time I could get with Aubrey. And I wanted to collect moments when my sister was happy to see me. I thought maybe if we had enough of those, we could turn into the kind of sisters who were friends. So, after school, I’d take the bus to the Wellses’ house and watch Aubrey while Steena slept and showered and did her postnatal exercise videos. Charlie brought home dinner from real restaurants, not just take-out places, and before he drove me home, the three of us would eat together in the living room while I rocked Aubrey in her bouncer with my foot.
“See, Stee. That’s what family’s for,” Charlie would say. “You just have to ask, and Freya’s here. What a good sister you have.”
So, for a while, Steena truly did appreciate me. I wore that white rope bracelet well into winter when it stayed cold and damp for hours after I showered. I didn’t want to cut it off. It made me feel like Steena’s whole sister.