Chapter 4
Abby and I had some time to kill before our next meeting. She invited me to join her at the arts & crafts studio to meet her best friend, Maggie, who had been hired to run that program, and Maggie’s husband Roger. In their civilian jobs, they all taught together at the same elementary school.
“Wait, your friend came here with her husband?” I asked.
“Yeah, they’re one of those couples who does everything together.” Abby gave the slightest eye roll.
“I guess that’s nice and all, but there’s no scenario where I could imagine my husband working here with me. Could you?” I asked.
“Barry? Are you kidding?” Abby said. “No way. It’ll be a wonder if my house is still standing when I get home.”
“Ronnie, my husband, would have no patience for other people’s children.”
“Trust me, I completely understand.”
“Is Roger working with Maggie in arts & crafts?” I asked.
“Oh no, no, he’s running the radio station.”
Abby pushed the screen door open, and it slammed behind us. We had entered a vast wooden building with three ceiling fans whirring on ancient beams. The place smelled like turpentine, clay, and soapy water. But there was also a familiar comforting aroma—freshly brewed coffee.
Across the room stood a statuesque redheaded woman wearing an apron, bent over a slop sink, elbow-deep in suds and steam.
“Hey, Maggie, I want you to meet Lori. She’s in the room across from mine.”
Maggie turned off the faucet and rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead, wiping away the sweat before she dried it on the edge of her smock.
A large man sporting a goatee walked toward us. Everything about him was oversized including his resonant baritone. “Nice to meet another adult.” It made perfect sense that Roger was the disc jockey.
“Wow, this is the second time today that my advanced age has been part of the conversation,” I said.
“No disrespect intended. Maggie and I’ve noticed that we’re old enough to be the parents of most of the counselors,” Roger said.
“Of course, we would’ve had them when we were fifteen.” Maggie smiled. “I just made a fresh pot of coffee. Can I pour you some?”
Maggie had set up a coffee station that included every type of sweetener and tiny containers of half and half like they had at diners.
I took a sip. “This is delicious.”
“I know, right? Honestly, it’s only Folgers, but I think it’s the water from the slop sink that makes it so good,” Maggie said.
We all looked at the filthy industrial-sized basin on the other side of the room. The spigot was covered in decades of dried clay and who knew what other kinds of toxic waste.
I looked inside the cup. “You mean I’m drinking dirty-water coffee?”
Maggie held hers up. “Yup.”
There were four large wooden tables with benches, covered in old paint, glue, and glitter stains. We sat down together at one of them. It brought back happy memories of making hand molds and popsicle stick boxes at the bungalow colony.
“So, tell us, what brought you to Woodlands?” Maggie asked.
“You mean instead of basking in the sun on a Greek Isle with my husband?”
“He was alright with you leaving him for the summer?” Abby asked.
“He’s a trial attorney and preparing for a big case this summer.” I shrugged. “With the three of us here there are no distractions, so he can mentally shelve us and work around the clock without any guilt.”
I wasn’t about to tell them how unhappy I was with my husband.
Ronnie put his work ahead of his family.
What really put me over the edge was when his colleagues took center stage in front of our marriage.
It was all about what Ed, his managing partner, thought, and wore, and did. What I said didn’t matter.
“Seems like a good solution,” Roger said.
Even I bought it. “What about you guys? How did you all end up working here?”
“A friend sent her kids here last summer, and they had a blast,” Abby said.
“I looked into the camp, met with Jack, and told him that I’d only send my kids if I could go too.
I waited a long time to have children, and there was no way I’d send them anywhere without me.
If I can figure out a way, when the time comes, I’ll go with them to college. ”
I laughed. “And your husband?”
“He wasn’t at all happy about it, but I didn’t give him a choice,” Abby said.
I swirled the swizzle stick in my cup and thought about all the arguments Ronnie and I had about sending the girls to sleepaway camp. In the end I hadn’t given him a choice either.
I looked up and asked, “What about you two? How’d you end up working at Woodlands, the sleepaway camp voted the best brother/sister camp on the Eastern Seaboard?”
Roger laughed. “When Abby said she was going to camp with her kids, we called Jack and asked if we could go with our son Tony. Jack wanted to meet us in person, so he invited us to his home on a Sunday morning.”
Maggie said, “You’re not gonna believe this. Roger, tell Lori about the first time we met Jack and Marilyn.”
Roger shrugged. “It’s early on a Sunday morning. We had to drag Tony out of bed, Sundays are his only day to sleep in. We knock, wait a bit, and finally a woman wearing a bathrobe, looking frazzled, answers the door. She just stares at us, twirling her hair.”
“She doesn’t ask who we are, why we’re there, just stares blankly at us, obviously confused,” Maggie said.
Roger continued, “I hear Jack call out, ‘Marilyn, who is it?’ And she says, ‘I don’t know.’ Jack shows up in his bathrobe, and now we are all just staring at each other.
I tell him who we are and that he asked us to come and meet him.
Marilyn turns to Jack and growls, ‘You didn’t tell me we were expecting anybody.
’ She gives us a final once-over and turns away in a huff. ”
“Like we’re the trash someone left on her porch,” Maggie added.
“Jack’s not embarrassed or apologetic,” Roger went on. “He looks over his shoulder and says to Marilyn, ‘I forgot we were having company.’ He turns back to us and says, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow to make another appointment.’ Then he notices Maggie’s holding a cake box from the best bakery in Boca.”
“He grabs the box from my hand, asking, ‘Is this for me?’ and then the door closes in our faces,” Maggie said.
“I would have thought you were exaggerating, but Jack obviously has scheduling issues,” I said. “When he came to visit us, he showed up three hours early! I hadn’t even had the chance to tell my husband he was coming—talk about making things awkward.”
“Awkward is being kind,” Roger said.
“He’s probably one of those guys, you know, because he’s good looking, he thinks he can get away with being inconsiderate,” I said.
“I wouldn’t argue the point,” Maggie said.
“Personally, I don’t find Jack the least bit appealing,” Abby said and took a sip of her coffee. “What nerve showing up early. How’d your husband react? If I surprised my Barry like that, he would’ve had a total conniption.”
“Ronnie readied his arsenal of lawyering skills and peppered Jack with all kinds of questions. I was so embarrassed when he asked what if one of our daughters gets attacked by a bear.”
The three of them nervously chuckled.
“Back to you guys. Why did you decide to work here after being treated so rudely?” I asked.
“Because Abby’s kids, Cooper and Ashley, are besties with Tony, and they really wanted to go to camp together,” Maggie said.
“I’d already signed on, and there was no way I was leaving them to swelter in the Florida humidity. I couldn’t do this job without them, so now we all get to schvitz together in the mountains,” Abby said.
“Also, our next meeting with Jack was perfectly normal. He drove to meet us at our home and was very convincing and nice,” Roger said.
“He never brought it up, so we didn’t either.
He acted like it was the first time he ever laid eyes on us.
He even said, ‘I can’t wait for you to meet my wife, Marilyn.
’ I was tempted to ask him if he enjoyed the coffee cake. ”
“Your turn. How did you get suckered into working at Woodlands?” Roger asked.
Even though I could already tell these were my kind of people, I wasn’t ready to share the intimate details of my life.
“I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but my original summer plan was celebrating my fifteenth anniversary in Greece drinking their strong boiled espresso, and somehow ended up sitting here with you.
” I held up my cup. “Sipping dirty-water coffee.”
Maggie raised her mug. “Let’s drink to whatever circuitous route got us here and to new experiences.” She looked at me. “And to new friends.”
Maybe this could be a good summer.