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Meanwhile, the campers, eight boys, did plenty of splashing and colliding and smacking each other with their oars. They had a blast while Bridget and Eric were all business.
During the long hours of floating along the hot, quiet river, Bridget had lots of time to regret her last conversation with Eric. It had changed the mood between them. Of course it had. The ease had vanished. They were suddenly considerate and polite. She really hated that.
Tension of all sorts had risen. She felt self-conscious pulling her T-shirt up over her bikini when she got hot, even though everyone else was in bathing suits already. She averted her eyes from Eric’s bare chest, even though she’d seen him like that plenty of times before. While she braided her hair, she looked over to see him looking, and they both instantly cast their eyes down.
When the rain began soon after their dinner of bland, camping-style beans and rice, they both looked slightly stricken. There were three tents: two four-person tents for the campers. One two-person tent for the leaders. The two-person tent looked comically small to Bridget as she began to set it up.
She could guess that Eric had bargained on getting to sleep under the sky. So had she. That way, he could be on one side of the campsite and she on the other, and they could avoid this whole conundrum. The wind blew harder and pushed fat drops of rain down on them as if to make its point. They would all be sleeping in tents tonight.
Bridget was usually good at stomping out tension. It was a special talent of hers. She would march around boldly, crushing it underfoot, not paying it any mind. But this time, it was tricky. It wound its stalks around her ankles and held her fast.
She didn’t know where to go to change out of her bathing suit. She didn’t want him to see her brushing her teeth or her hair. Obviously she didn’t want him to spot her peeing in the woods. She didn’t want to walk into him wearing just his boxers, or worse. She felt nervous about the thought of him watching her climb into her sleeping bag in her nightshirt.
When she thought of her recklessness with him two summers before, she recoiled. How could she have done that? She didn’t even know him then.
Maybe that was exactly how she had done that.
Eric gave her a good long time by herself in the tent before he politely asked if he could come in. He was so polite, he was soaked.
Lying in her sleeping bag, her hair bundled under her neck, she turned her back to him, like she wasn’t noticing him getting into his own sleeping bag not two feet away. She wished they could laugh about this, but she couldn’t find a way.
There they were lying in a tiny orange tent, side by side. The rain beat down. She could smell his shampoo and his wet skin. It was awkward in a magical way.
She was too embarrassed to consider the tantalizing possibilities that lay before them if she were to let her mind go free. Really, what she most wanted to do was to reassure him. She didn’t pose a threat. She didn’t. She wanted to prove it to him.
She turned so she was lying on her back looking up. He did the same.
She cleared her throat. “Tell me about Kaya,” Bridget said. “What’s she like?”
Eric didn’t answer right away.
“I bet she’s beautiful.”
He let out a long breath. “Yeah. She is.” He sounded a little guarded. He was private about these kinds of things.
“Light hair or dark?”
“Dark. She’s actually half Mexican, too.”
“That’s cool.” Bridget, absurdly, wished she could find some way of being half Mexican. “Does she go to Columbia?”
“She just graduated.”
To Bridget, it sounded so old and sophisticated and totally winning to be half Mexican and have just graduated from Columbia. She felt herself developing an inferiority complex as she lay there stupidly in her sleeping bag, shrinking into her underage, non-Mexican skin. She didn’t even want to say anything else, for fear of measuring up even stupider and more juvenile next to his dazzling girlfriend.
Why had Bridget invited Eric’s girlfriend into their little orange tent?
He turned on his side, facing her, and propped his head on his hand. Talking a little, even about this, had made things easier between them. “Hey. I want to hear about your friends.”
This was bait she could not resist. And so she spent her nervousness on chirping and blabbing and yammering away, just as stupid and juvenile as could be.
Lena’s next hurdle was a big one. It was Valia. Lena had been avoiding her grandmother so scrupulously for so many months, it was almost terrifying to look right at her.
Lena half hoped Valia would refuse to pose, but she didn’t. She sat behind the desk in the den and looked at Lena straight on.
“You can work at the computer, if you want. I could draw you that way,” Lena offered.
Valia shrugged. “I am done vith the computer today.”
Lena calculated it was already late in Greece; that was probably the reason.
“You could watch TV, if that would be more comfortable.”
“No. I vill just sit here,” Valia said.
Lena had to stiffen her spine. She was looking for a way out, and Valia was looking right at her. Lena made herself be brave.
It was rough at first. Lena had been avoiding Valia’s obvious pain, and her own associated troubles. Seeing Valia’s face, she couldn’t ignore that pain. Drawing Valia meant not only seeing it but going in after it. Lena felt that her only hope was to try in stages.
How much her grandma had aged in the past year. Valia’s skin was so wrinkled it looked like it might fall off her bones. Her once-dark eyes were watery and faded, with a bluish tinge around the irises. They looked out from the folds of skin as if from inside two grottos.
Bapi had loved Valia. Lena imagined that even when they were old, Bapi had seen Valia as the young, beautiful woman she had been. Now there was no one to see her that way, and as a consequence, she had shriveled up.
Lena suddenly grasped her challenge. She was going to try to see that Valia—Bapi’s Valia—in this face, if she could. She wouldn’t just find the sorrow, plentiful though it was. She would be like an archaeologist. She would unearth the former Valia; she would rediscover her in the midst of all the ravages.
Now Lena was really looking, and Valia stood up to it. She looked right back. Lena had never done a drawing with her subject gazing directly into her eyes. It was like a staring contest fought to a stalemate.
Lena the archaeologist saw clues in the shape of Valia’s eyebrows. She borrowed a little from Effie, who some people thought resembled Valia. She saw her father in Valia’s mouth and chin. Lena was drawing what she saw, but she was allowing the past to inform the way she interpreted it, if that was possible. She could see the beauty if she really tried.
Valia’s usual aggressive frown was slowly sifting out of her features. The parts and places that made up her face took on new, more natural shapes. Lena realized that Valia liked being looked at. And that made Lena consider, sadly, how little anybody had looked at her. They were all afraid of her. They kept their eyes averted from her. Who needed another tragedy in their day? They politely ignored or submitted to her complaints just to make them go away. They all basically wished she would go away. Or at least, they wished her anger, her suffering, her loneliness, her discontent, and all of her complaining would go away. The rest they would be okay with.
It was no wonder Valia was angry. Her son had brought her here by near force and now spent the entire time wishing she weren’t here. And Valia really wanted to go away, that was the thing. They wanted her gone; she wanted herself gone. What a mess.
Lena drew and drew. Valia was an exceptional model. Far better than the professionals at school, who got p
aid fifteen bucks an hour. For seventy minutes, Valia stood stock-still without a single sigh or moan or wriggle.
After a while, Lena felt tears in her eyes, but she didn’t stop for them. How lonely Valia was! How much she loved being seen, finally. What a tragedy for all of them that they had starved her so.
When Lena finished, she got up and kissed Valia on the head. They hadn’t touched each other in months. Valia seemed shaken by it.
Shyly Lena offered Valia the picture. I’ve seen you. I think I finally have, Lena said silently.
Valia looked at it for a long time. She didn’t say anything. She nodded brusquely, but Lena believed that on this strange Saturday afternoon, they had seen each other.
The next morning at breakfast, Valia was back to her usual tricks.
“Who made this coffee?” she demanded, acting as though she might very well spit it on the table.
“I did,” Lena shot back. “Don’t you like it?”
“It’s the vorst,” Valia said heartily.
Lena clapped her eyes on Valia’s and wouldn’t let them go. “So don’t drink it, then.”
Her entire family stared at her in astonishment, and Lena felt quite pleased with herself.
“Hi, Carmen? I hope this is the right Carmen. If this is the right Carmen, then this is Win. If not, it’s…it’s still Win and sorry to bother you. Even if this is the right Carmen, I might be bothering you and I’m sorry if I am. I found your number on the…well, never mind. I’m not like a stalker or anything. I swear to God. I’ve never called somebody up out of the blue like this. But I have to admit I’ve been thinking about you, and…” Beeeeeeep.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, Bridget felt a tiny tickle of hair against her arm. She opened her eyes without moving a single other muscle. In sleep, Eric had rolled toward her. His head had come so close as to graze her shoulder. She felt breathless. Their bodies were curled in the same direction, hers distantly cupping his. The bottoms of their sleeping bags almost touched.
What little sleep she had had that night was light and full of surface dreams. She couldn’t go under any deeper, being this close to him. She wondered if he noticed at all how close their bodies were, how their breath mixed. Or was his sleep innocent and sound?
