7. Sunday
CHAPTER 7
SUNDAY
D aniel loved Sundays at Oak Ridge. Sure, he could take it easy any Sunday in October or January or May. But those summer session Sundays, with their lazy drop-in breakfasts featuring donuts from Gertrude’s, and their slow afternoons with campers reading in hammocks and playing games of pickup soccer on the green, all of it bathed in the promise of adventures in the week to come — those were his favorites. He’d gone to temple every Shabbat growing up, with his mother and his grandparents. He hadn’t set foot in temple since leaving for college, except two or three times on the High Holidays when he felt like maybe he should triple check about getting his name rewritten in the book of life, but he sometimes thought of Oak Ridge Sundays as his own little Shabbat. Tranquil. Communal.
He should call his mother.
Daniel didn’t leave camp grounds very often during the seven summer weeks Oak Ridge was open. Those weeks were precious. But he and Drew made a point of beating the post-church rush for brunch at the Chuck Wagon every Sunday, and that meant every Sunday. It was tradition.
At this precise moment, though, waiting on their orders in the cheerful morning light, Daniel found himself wishing that he’d skipped just this once. Because he should have known that, even though Drew wanted nothing to do with the summer camp her grandfather had endowed, she would still ask him how it was going because she was a good friend, and it was important to him. And he should have known that when she asked how it was going, he wouldn’t be able to just say fine like a normal person. Oh no. He would tell her everything.
So it turned out that this week it was Drew’s turn to bask in the warm glow of a friend’s embarrassment. Well, well, well, how the turntables…
“And then…” Drew prompted.
Daniel thought he had more or less finished the sordid tale of his Saturday night, which he had told half in a low whisper, and half in suggestive eyebrow waggles because they were in public for god’s sake. “And then nothing. She got up. We went back inside. It was just…a weird thing that happened.”
Drew said nothing, smiling the smile of vengeful schadenfreude, knowing that Daniel would keep going if she let him. And he did.
“Should I…apologize? I should apologize, right? I mean, it wasn’t intentional, but outcome over intent and?—”
Finally, Drew took pity, and lay a calming hand on his shoulder. “Becker. Breathe. I don’t think she’s going to press charges.”
“Oh my god was it sexual assault?” It hadn’t even occurred to him. It probably was. Now he really had to call his mother.
“Becker. No. Do not call Lynn. I can see you thinking about it. You do not need a lawyer. Your dick went rogue. We all lived through middle school. Including this Maggie McArthur.”
“God, it was exactly like middle school,” he mumbled with his face in his hands.
“You should apologize, though.”
Daniel looked up, surprised out of his pity spiral. “…I should?” He had not expected Drew be on the side of apologizing. They were sworn enemies.
“Yeah. You should go over to her place. ‘To apologize.’” She winked in a way that implied air quotes around the last word.
Aaaand there was the Drew he knew and loved.
“Andrea!” Daniel used her full name to really drive home the opprobrium.
“You clearly need to have a summer fling. And this woman is perfect. You’re into her.” Daniel opened his mouth to object, but Drew cut him off. “Don’t bother. You keep smiling like a goober when you talk about her. And, more importantly, she is leaving the country in six weeks, so you can’t trip and fall into another year long relationship with someone you barely even like.”
“I don’t do that,” Daniel protested weakly. When Drew raised an eyebrow, he added, “…regularly.”
“I just think that one ex-wife is enough between the two of us. Learn from my mistakes.”
“I don’t think your situation is really analogous?—”
“Number 23! One biscuit and gravy, one egg and cheese biscuit!”
“I’ll get it,” Daniel said, jumping up from the bench and heading over to the food truck painted to look like a giant covered wagon.
A new employee Daniel didn’t recognize, a short woman with pale skin and a dark bob, was laying their order on the service window’s counter, but as Daniel reached for the tray, Jake poked his swoopy blonde-haired head out the window.
“Just a sec. Chuck said to give y’all this when you came by.” Jake ducked back into the faux-wagon and grabbed one more white checkered paper container. “It’s a vegan biscuit with mushroom and vegan sausage gravy.” Daniel must have grimaced, because Jake said, “It’s better than it sounds. You know Chuck’s a great cook.”
“Drew will be thrilled,” Daniel said in a tone that was eminently diplomatic.
“Oh no, Chuck said y’all both gotta try it. While I’m watching. ‘Make sure the meathead eats it’ is what he told me. That’s you.”
Harsh. But fair.
* * *
Maggie spent most of Sunday wandering around Blue Harbor. It was a rest day from regular activities, but there were campers scattered around the grounds working on their weaving or reading in the shade, and a game of capture the chicken was in full swing on the main field. (Capture the chicken was, as far as she could tell, a cross between flag football and capture the flag except that the flag was a rubber chicken because of course it was.) She should probably have been elbow deep in bookkeeping, but it was sunny and not too humid, and she’d forgotten how much she enjoyed spending a whole day outside. Plus, she was quizzing herself on the name of every child she saw and double-checking with the nearby counselors, so, technically, she was being productive. Getting to know the campers was part of her job. Probably.
All week, she’d been avoiding eating dinner in the dining hall, making her excuses to Chef Chuck and grabbing something portable from the kitchen before heading back to the cottage. She remembered Blue Harbor dinner being a rowdy affair, and by the time 6p.m. rolled around each evening, she had been fresh out of extraversion. Tonight though, she’d braced herself, and when the dinner bell sounded, she joined the parade of people jostling their way through the double doors. Campers sat with their cabins at long, wooden tables. Maggie was pretty sure that, if she checked each one, she’d eventually find the sturdy leg she’d once carved her initials into on a dare. But she was famished, so she made a beeline for the extra seat next to Jordan, the head mountaineering counselor, and their cabin of ten and eleven-year-olds.
Jordan had been one of the first counselors to arrive on the first day, carrying gear that looked well-used in a way that had put Maggie at ease. The person who had walked as many miles as that hiking pack appeared to have traveled definitely knew what to do if there was a lightning storm. Jordan was tall and Black, with long brown and blue box braids that they usually wore pulled up in a bun. They taught and coached at an Asheville boarding school during the year, and, instead of taking their eight-week break off to through-hike a new river or whatever truly outdoorsy people did for fun, they came back to Blue Harbor, where they’d been working since the summer after their freshman year. At 27, they were veritably ancient for a counselor. (Only one of the other activity heads was even old enough to rent a car.) Maggie, who, at the age of 32, was frankly having some trouble with the pop culture references she’d heard the staff throwing around, had felt an immediate solidarity.
Jordan’s campers, on the other hand, did the exact opposite of putting Maggie at ease. Maggie didn’t interact with children very often in her regular life, and she wasn’t at all sure that she knew how to talk to them. They, however, seemed to have no qualms about talking to her. The girl sitting directly across from Maggie, who appeared to be the leader, promptly introduced herself as Mia and began an interrogation.
“So…you’re in charge of Jordan like Jordan is in charge of us?”
“Uh, kind of like that, sure,” Maggie said.
“And Miss Peggy was your aunt? Jordan said Miss Peggy was your aunt.” Mia took a bite of cornbread without breaking eye contact, ready to catch Maggie in a lie.
“Miss Peggy was my aunt, yes,” Maggie said, feeling uncomfortably like she was hooked up to a polygraph machine.
Mia nodded. “I liked Miss Peggy a lot.”
“Yeah, I did too.”
“I wish she was still here.”
“Me, too.”
Mia took another bite and chewed contemplatively. “I don’t know if I like you yet.”
Well. That was fair. “We don’t really know each other.” Maggie extended an arm past Jordan to grab a piece of cornbread from the family style serving dish.
“It’s not polite to reach,” Mia scolded.
“You’re right.” Maggie turned to Jordan. Modeling good behavior was a thing you were supposed to do for children, right? “I’m sorry, Jordan.”
“Apology accepted,” they said solemnly. “You’ll do better next time.” Maggie thought she saw Jordan’s cheek twitch.
Mia, seemingly satisfied, returned to her questioning. “How many marshmallows can you fit into your mouth at one time? I can fit ten!”
“Uh…I…don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Mia sounded genuinely aghast.
“It doesn’t come up very often.”
“Everyone should know how many marshmallows they can fit in their mouth at one time.”
Maggie looked at Jordan for assistance, but they just shrugged and said, “I can fit twelve.”
Without another word, Mia stood, marched to the front of the dining hall, and knocked on the door labeled “Staff Only” with an air of authority until someone inside heard the pounding over the ambient bustle.
Maggie watched, fascinated, as the kitchen staffer who opened the door spoke briefly to Mia and then slipped back into the kitchen, returning with Chef Chuck himself. He listened to Mia’s monologue, nodding seriously. Then he looked up and scanned the dining hall until he caught Maggie’s eye and flashed her a terrifying grin. Before she knew it, Mia was back at the table with an unopened bag of marshmallows.
“Chef Chuck says these are only for you, not for us. He says he can fit 17 marshmallows. Chef Chuck is the best.”
And then, somehow, Maggie was in a one woman chubby bunny contest. The cheers from the campers at her table caught the attention of their neighbors, until the entire dining hall had turned toward her, the commotion of forks scraping against plates quieting so that everyone present could bear witness to Maggie McArthur, Interim Camp Director, dutifully repeating the words “chubby bunny” as a ten-year-old judged her diction and handed her additional marshmallows to stuff in her mouth.
It was ridiculous, and pretty gross, and also a clear example of food waste. And it was freely, gloriously silly in a way Maggie had almost forgotten she could be, hadn’t been since she was a camper at Blue Harbor herself.
And, then, much to Mia’s satisfaction, Maggie, too, was a person who knew how many marshmallows she could fit in her mouth at one time.
Thirteen.
After dinner, Maggie and Jordan joined the procession of campers and counselors heading back out the double doors and down to the first of the summer’s weekly Sunday campfires.
The old campfire circle had always been one of Maggie’s favorite places, not just at Blue Harbor, but anywhere. When she was younger, it had seemed like her own secret garden, hidden from sight by a copse of oak and maple. You had to know it was there. A narrow path leading into the trees eventually opened up on four concentric rings of low grey stone walls that served as benches. The summer leaves shaded them from the sun during the day and from the outside world at night. In the middle was a round platform, made from the same stone and surrounded by a three-foot wide moat. Stepping-stones created a path across the mossy water.
Maggie clicked off her flashlight as she slid into a spot next to Jordan on the outermost stone ring. The platform crackled with the heat of the well-fed fire. Embers drifted off the flames, landing silently in the surrounding water, creating an ephemeral mirror of the stars that glowed in the night sky overhead. The campers’ usually loud chatter always calmed to a murmur in the campfire circle.
Because she’d brought up the rear of the group, she’d hardly situated herself before the three counselors who’d been nominated as the summer’s song leaders made their way down to the edge of the moat. A hush fell with the first strum of a guitar, and the circles of campers and counselors began, as they had for decades, with the Blue Harbor song.
Maggie sat and sang along to the Johns — Denver and Prine — to Joni Mitchell and the Indigo Girls, and to folk songs whose writers were lost to the ages, not having to listen to her own surely off-key singing as it blended into the larger chorus. She stared into the fire, letting the ever-changing orange flames mesmerize her, lull her, revive her. She had never found anything else quite like this feeling. Not in Europe’s packed museums or its ancient cities or modern bars.
She was caught off guard by the opening hum of the traditional closing song. It was sung a cappella, and the campfire circle was alive with the low buzz of hundreds of voices singing in tune. The song was much sadder than she’d remembered. Or, not sad, really. Melancholy. A reminder of how short and sweet a summer could be.
MmmHmmm, I want to linger.
MmmHmmm, a little longer.
MmmHmmm, a little longer,
Here with you.
MmmHmmm, it's such a perfect night.
MmmHmmm, it doesn't seem quite right.
MmmHmmm, that this should be,
My last with you.
MmmHmmm, and come September,
MmmHmmm, I will remember,
MmmHmmm, our camping days,
And friendships true.
MmmHmmm, and as the years go by,
MmmHmmm, I'll think of you and sigh.
This is goodnight
And not goodbye.
A single tear rolled down Maggie’s cheek in the firelight before she gathered herself and then her things.