Chapter Six. Rose
CHAPTER SIX
ROSE
“What are you girls doing tonight?” Grace asks.
She’s floating on an inner tube, the Seventeen she borrowed from Ella propped on her stomach. Her father forbids those kinds of magazines, but he’s driven up to the Poconos to visit one of our other hotels.
The twins seem glad of the reprieve.
It’s a week into our stay, and I’ve nearly managed to put that awful, screaming face out of my mind.
Nearly. I wouldn’t say I feel comfortable at the hotel, exactly, but my sisters and I have settled into a routine.
I’m woken by Lou jumping onto my bed at an ungodly hour.
That’s followed by breakfast on the terrace, “school” for Lou, a bit of reading or writing in my diary till I get roped into whatever game she’s playing, lunch, tennis with Ella while Lou naps, and then a midafternoon swim.
But Lou begged to come to the pool early today.
A storm is brewing. The sun is shining, but the air feels close. Thick. Thick as pea soup.
“Auntie is going to Annapolis for a fundraiser. She won’t catch the ferry back till morning,” Ella says sleepily from her sun-drenched chaise.
It strikes me again how isolated this place is. In order to get to Annapolis or back to Washington, one has to drive up to the tip of the Bay, around Baltimore, and down to the city—or take the ferry from Kent Island across the Chesapeake, which only runs at certain hours.
“So I s’pose we’ll listen to the radio and babysit Lou,” Ella says.
“I’m not a baby!” Lou shrieks.
“Course you aren’t.” I grin at her from my spot in the shade, kicking my feet in the pool and coddling the sunburn I got yesterday. “Babies can’t write their names, can they?”
“No!” Lou shouts, mollified. I’ve taken up where Nanny left off teaching her the alphabet.
Yesterday she wrote LOUISA in big wobbly letters, and I felt fiercely proud, even if the S was backward.
I hope her mother has to scrimp and save and eat nothing but borscht at every meal.
Lulu’s better off without her. I’ll make sure she never wants for anything.
Who needs a mother, anyhow?
“It would be the perfect time to have a little P-A-R-T-Y. If only we knew more people.” Ella sighs plaintively. “Who wants to stay at home on a Friday night?”
I expect some withering remark from Grace, but she holds her tongue. If I were the one complaining, she wouldn’t. I’m sorry we aren’t providing you with adequate entertainment, or I know we country bumpkins must seem terribly dull after the vaunted Miss Parker’s.
I look at my sister, slathered in suntan oil, stretched out on the chaise in her pink bikini.
If we were back in Washington, she’d be sunning herself with a passel of girlfriends from our lower school days.
She’s made no bones about being bored here.
Yesterday she complained that playing me at tennis is no fun; she can beat me too easily.
She wasn’t wrong—but I did not respond graciously after chasing that stupid ball back and forth for a whole hour.
“We really ought to meet some people,” I agree, entirely for her sake.
I doubt the Harrows could introduce us around at the yacht club.
And Auntie is preoccupied with the hotel.
She takes breakfast with us—coffee and grapefruit for her and me, cornflakes with sliced peaches for Ella and Lou—and then dinner promptly at seven.
In between, we’re left to our own devices.
“We can introduce you around.” Cooper is as sweet as his sister is sour. “Can’t we, Grace?”
“What if you invited some kids over to the hotel? We have loads of records. And we could borrow a few bottles from Father’s store in the basement. No one would miss them,” Ella says.
I stare at her, shocked. She’s not quite a stranger, but not my little sister, either.
“I could invite a few fellas from the football team. Nice guys,” Coop offers.
“Wizard!” Ella claps. “Grace, you’ll come, too, won’t you? Could you invite a few girls?”
“Grace probably has a date with Stan.” Coop’s giving her an out, I think.
“You can bring Stan. Unless—is he too old for high school parties?” Ella frowns.
“Oh, no, Stan loves a party.” Grace’s face is inscrutable, but there’s something resigned in her voice. “We’ll come. He’ll bring beer.”
“This is going to be swell,” Ella declares. “Won’t it, Rosie?”
“Swell.” I don’t care for beer, and I don’t think I care for Stanley, either.
He’s been affable enough when he’s joined us by the pool, but his eyes are always on Ella’s legs or Maggie’s breasts, and his hands are all over Grace.
If she doesn’t mind, I suppose I shouldn’t, either. But he seems like a real wolf to me.
Honestly, I’d be happy to curl up with a book after I tuck Lou in. I’m working my way through a stack of Mrs. Christie’s mysteries.
“Maybe Rose would prefer a dance at the yacht club,” Grace says. “Champagne.”
You’re a snob, she means. You won’t fit in here.
“No, this is aces,” I say. Do I fit in anywhere?
I wonder what Grace would think if I told her about the last time I drank champagne.
It was the end-of-term bonfire. Half my class and most of the graduating seniors had snuck down to the woods behind Parkhurst, the boys’ school.
I remember passing sticky champagne bottles around a roaring fire; woodsmoke curling through the crisp air; sparks scattering like fireflies in the night.
Being pressed up against a tree by Cecil Townsend.
Shoving his hand away as he tried repeatedly to inch it beneath my skirt.
The livid imprint of my palm on his whiskey-flushed cheek.
Stumbling back to school, my head spinning.
Then Thea, holding back my hair.
My stomach sinks as I remember. I ran into Thea outside Miss Parker’s.
She boosted me in the first-floor washroom window and helped me sneak back to my room.
When I ran to be sick, she followed and held back my hair.
She made toast in the dorm kitchen. We made fun of Cec and what a bad kisser he was, and then I fell asleep.
When I woke, the sun was creeping through the window and Thea was reading a novel on Clara’s bed.
I was mortified. Thea—perfect, tidy Thea—had seen me upchuck. My hair was a rat’s nest, and I had toast crumbs in my cleavage.
I sat up, and Thea grinned. “Well, hello, sleepyhead. How are you feeling?”
I had a dim memory of her handing me water and aspirin. “Not too bad, thanks to you.”
She plopped down at the end of my bed. “It was nothing.”
“It was not nothing,” I said. “You took care of me.”
I wasn’t used to that. Not from anyone who wasn’t paid to do it.
“You were a mess, Rosie.” She said it fondly, and then she reached out and tucked a curl behind my ear. “You’re adorable when you’re all rumpled, you know that?”
I flushed. “You didn’t have to stay. We’re not friends anymore.”
She took my hand. It felt impulsive, but Thea isn’t impulsive.
“Friends,” she said, her brown eyes on mine. “Is that what we were?”
She bit at her red-apple lips—sometime before I woke, she had reapplied her lipstick; the knowledge made me flush hotter—and leaned toward me. My breath caught.
Then Clara burst into the room with a face like a thundercloud. “How could you?”
Thea snatched her hand back. We tumbled apart.
Could Clara tell what she’d nearly interrupted?
“My brother will be here soon, and I’ve still got loads to pack.” Thea stood. “Hope you feel better, Rose! Write me this summer?”
“Of course,” I said.
Before the door closed, Clara whirled on me. “You backstabber! How could you? You know I’ve been crushing on Cec all year. You don’t even like him! You said he was full of himself and had ears like a teacup!”
I couldn’t help a tiny smile. Had I said that? It was very astute. He did have ears like a teacup.
Clara glowered. “It’s not funny!”
“I had too much champagne,” I muttered.
“I’m supposed to be your best friend.” The hurt in Clara’s voice made me ashamed. “What kind of girl goes off like that with a boy she doesn’t even fancy?”
Lots of girls did. The end-of-term bonfire was infamous for it.
Still.
“Were you trying to make someone jealous?” Clara asked. “Some other boy?”
“No. There’s no one special,” I said.
“Well, Cec was special to me.” She was yanking the hairpins from her braided crown. “And you knew it, and you went off with him anyhow! He told everyone you came on to him, but as soon as things started getting hot and heavy, you slapped him. He said you were a tease.”
That rat. “He asked me if I wanted to go for a walk, and I did need some air … I wasn’t thinking clearly. If it makes you feel better, he’s a terrible kisser. Very wet. And he tried to put his hand up my skirt! The front of my skirt. That’s why he got a slap. What kind of girl does he think I am?”
Clara seethed. “The kind who goes off to neck in the woods!”
At least she was calling me fast, not frigid.
“You’ve never done anything like this, even when you were foxed.” She stared at me in the mirror as she unbraided her caramel hair. “Were you trying to hurt me?”
“Of course not! I wasn’t thinking about you at all.” Tears glittered in Clara’s eyes, and I wished I could stuff the careless words back down my throat. I was a monster. “I don’t know why I did it. Just—to see if I could, I guess.”
It sounded horrible put so plainly, but that was the truth.
Half the girls in our year were mad for Cec, and on bonfire night he had turned the bright light of his attention on me.
In my champagne haze, I felt flattered. I thought: Why not let him kiss me?
If Cec didn’t rate, maybe the trouble was with me; maybe I didn’t like kissing boys.
“I don’t think I want to room together next year after all,” Clara said quietly.
“What?” She couldn’t mean it. She and I had roomed together for four years. I had made a mistake. A stupid, selfish error. But I could fix it. “No! I—I’ll make it up to you. I’m sorry, Clara, truly I am.”