Fantasy Summer Page 5

  The girls cheerfully ignored his warning and took healthy forkfuls of food. Soon the three of them were choking and coughing and pouring water down their burning mouths.

  “The price of exotic,” Torey managed to choke out, and in spite of the burning pain Robin knew would never leave, she found herself laughing and eating and enjoying life in a way she’d never known she could before.

  5

  When the readers of Image fantasized about the exciting new adventures the interns were having that summer, they probably didn’t include train rides on the Long Island Rail Road, Robin reflected as she and Annie found seats in a no-smoking car. But as far as she could remember, this was her very first train trip ever. Cars, buses, and planes she’d done. Trains were a novelty.

  It wasn’t especially crowded, and the girls had no trouble finding seats together. They put their overnight bags on the floor and made themselves comfortable.

  “It isn’t that long a trip,” Annie said. “Forty-five minutes or so.”

  “I think it’s fun,” Robin said. “Much nicer than a bus.”

  Annie smiled. “It’s nice of you to come with me,” she said. “You really didn’t have to.”

  Of course she did, Robin thought. Her parents had given her a twenty-minute lecture about how she had to be nice to Annie’s grandmother and accept any and all invitations. Family was family, even if it was just family by marriage. “I’m glad to,” Robin replied. “I like your grandmother.”

  “She likes you too,” Annie said. “I’m glad it’s just the two of us, though. I really didn’t want to have to deal with Ashley and Torey this weekend.”

  Robin tried not to sigh. Torey and Ashley had declined the invitation in favor of a boat tour of Manhattan Saturday afternoon, followed by tickets to a big hit musical that night, and a baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. The weekend’s events would be duplicated for her and Annie later in the summer, but even so she had to choke down a little bit of envy. Visiting Annie’s widowed grandmother on Long Island just wasn’t comparable.

  The train started chugging slowly out of the tunnel. Robin eagerly awaited the time when there would be scenery to gaze at through the window.

  “So, have you been enjoying it?” Annie asked.

  “Absolutely,” Robin said. “Haven’t you?”

  “Well, it would be more fun if I could eat,” Annie replied. “I’ve lost three pounds already, though, so maybe this diet will be over with soon.”

  “I don’t understand about that,” Robin said. “You weigh what you always weigh. They must have known that from your photograph.”

  Annie sighed. “I had this boyfriend,” she said. “We were together for almost a year, and then all of a sudden he decided it was over between us. I could have died. Instead I got really depressed, and just stopped eating. My food kept getting soggy from tears anyway; it was easier just not to eat at all. And I lost about fifteen pounds just from misery.”

  “And that was when you had your picture taken,” Robin said.

  “Exactly,” Annie said. “I wouldn’t have even applied for the internship except that it got my mother off my back. She was sure I needed something new to worry about to get my mind off Ted. Only then I found out I was in the running, and that made me so nervous I started eating again. It’s amazing how fast you can put on fifteen pounds. I think it took me a day and a half.”

  Robin laughed. “So you got right back to normal,” she said.

  “I don’t even mind weighing this much,” Annie said. “Sure, I’d love to be skinny like Ashley, but I refuse to be obsessive about it. My mother goes crazy when she thinks she might weigh more than your mother. My mother is two inches taller; she should weigh more. But she doesn’t see it that way. It drives all of us crazy.”

  “I love my mother,” Robin declared. “And I love your mother. But the two of them are really crazy when it comes to each other.”

  “Are they ever,” Annie said.

  The cousins smiled at each other, and Robin realized she was also glad that Torey and Ashley weren’t with them. It was good to have someone she could talk family to, someone who understood automatically. Robin had spent that week making explanations. It felt good not to have to.

  “Did Caro apply for an internship?” Annie asked. “My mother couldn’t remember.”

  “She thought about it, but decided not to,” Robin replied.

  “That figures,” Annie said. “I couldn’t imagine them turning her down. This whole business, it just seems so natural for Caro.”

  Robin nodded. Caro had always known what to do with success.

  “I miss her a lot,” Annie said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a long time.”

  Robin looked at Annie. They had never really discussed Caro before, and she wasn’t all that sure she wanted to now.

  “Sometimes I think what it would have been like if it was my older brother who had died, and I just can’t,” Annie continued. “It’s like the pain overwhelms me. And I wonder if you can ever be really okay about it.”

  “No,” Robin said. “I don’t think you ever really can be.”

  Annie looked thoughtfully at Robin, who averted her gaze. There were some ugly old houses by the railroad tracks. It wasn’t much, but it provided a change of subject, so Robin grabbed onto it gratefully.

  “Wrong side of the tracks,” she declared. “Think we’ll see Torey’s house here?”

  Annie laughed. “I think we’re a little downstate for that,” she replied.

  “What’s it like rooming with her, anyway?” Robin asked. “Is she always perfect, or does she make disgusting noises at night when the two of you are alone?”

  “She cries sometimes,” Annie said. “She goes into the bathroom and tries to muffle the noise, but I can hear her.”

  “What’s she crying about?”

  “I think she’s homesick,” Annie replied. “She writes letters to her family every single day. And she gets back lots of letters from them too. She must get three or four letters a day from her family and friends.”

  “Incredible,” Robin said. “Oh, that reminds me. I have to call my parents tomorrow.”

  “Me too,” Annie said. “I’d rather get letters.”

  “You and me both,” Robin said. “It’s funny that Torey’s the one who’s homesick. She’s the one who’s closest to her own home.”

  “Only geographically,” Annie said. “She showed me pictures of her family and their home, and they’re really poor.”

  “Well, she doesn’t make any bones about that,” Robin said. “I don’t suppose she’s told you why they’re so poor?”

  “Yeah, she did, sort of,” Annie answered. “I don’t think they would have had a lot of money anyway, but there was some sort of accident a few years ago, and it really messed up her family. Her father was blinded, and her brother was severely brain damaged.”

  “That’s horrible,” Robin said.

  “They refuse to institutionalize the boy,” Annie continued. “He isn’t a vegetable, but he’s in really bad shape, but they refuse to let him go someplace where nobody will love him. And her father can’t take care of him by himself, so Torey’s mother can only work during non-school hours, when one of the other kids is home. And there aren’t that many night jobs available in Raymund, so they mostly live on welfare.”

  “Torey must hate that,” Robin said.

  “Not as much as you might think,” Annie said. “She seems more to accept it as a fact of life. In the summertime her mother works as a maid at the local motel. They need extra help in the summer. And Torey works after school as a cashier at the supermarket, and on Saturdays she works at the town’s weekly newspaper. She does some baby-sitting too.”

  “And gets straight A’s probably,” Robin said. “And wins internships and looks incredibly beautiful all the time. She really is perfect.”

  “Well, she’s a lot closer to it than I am,” Annie admitted. “What’s it like rooming with Ashley? I t
hink she’d exhaust me full-time.”

  “She’s better than you might think,” Robin replied. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t think she’s been homesick a single moment since she arrived.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m sitting down,” Annie said, and the two girls laughed. “So tell me about the editors you’ve been working with. How are they treating you.”

  The rest of the train trip was spent in sociable gossip. Robin couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so comfortable with Annie. Certainly not since Caro’s accident. By the end of the train trip, she was almost glad her parents had forced her into these weekend plans.

  Annie’s grandmother met them at the train station, and after many hugs, divided fairly equally between the two girls, drove them to her house. Robin knew Mrs. Powell from Annie’s brother’s bar mitzvah and other Powell family occasions her family had been invited to, but she’d never been to her house or spent time alone with her before. The Powells always seemed large and boisterous to Robin, and therefore slightly intimidating. But sitting in the car beside Annie’s white-haired grandmother, Robin felt comfortable and almost at home.

  Mrs. Powell made a point of asking after every member in Robin’s family, and Robin answered all her questions as thoroughly as she could. Then it was Annie’s turn, and she too submitted to her grandmother’s questioning. Then the girls were asked about their jobs and what the summer had been like thus far. By the time they were finished with that set of questions, they had arrived at Annie’s grandmother’s house.

  “This is really nice,” Robin said as Mrs. Powell showed her to her bedroom. “Thank you for having me, Mrs. Powell.”

  “You can’t call me Mrs. Powell all weekend long,” Annie’s grandmother said. “I’d go crazy.”

  “What should I call you, then?” Robin asked.

  “Annie calls me Nana,” Mrs. Powell replied. “But you probably already have grandmothers.”

  “Two of them,” Robin said. “Neither one a ‘nana,’ though.”

  I don’t really think of myself as being one either,” Mrs. Powell replied. “It was Annie’s mother’s idea. How about if you call me Sylvia? That is my name, after all.”

  Robin thought about it for a moment as she put her overnight bag on the bed. A week ago it would have been impossible for her to call someone’s grandmother by her first name. But for a week she’d been calling all sorts of grown-ups by their first names, and it was always possible one of them was somebody’s grandmother. “I’d like that, Sylvia,” Robin said. “Just as long as you promise to call me Robin.”

  “I think I can manage that,” Sylvia said, “Now, why don’t you rest for a little bit before lunch, and I’ll call you downstairs around twelve. How does that sound?”

  “Wonderful,” Robin said, surprised at how wonderful some time alone in a real bedroom sounded. She watched as Sylvia left the room, and then stretched out on the bed. In five minutes’ time she was sound asleep.

  “I took the liberty of inviting a few people over for after lunch,” Sylvia informed the girls as they cleared the lunch plates off the table on the patio.

  “Oh, Nana, you didn’t,” Annie said.

  “Of course I did,” Sylvia replied. “Listen to this girl, Robin. She gets upset because I invited one or two of my dearest friends to swim in the pool.”

  “And to show off your granddaughter to,” Annie said.

  “I should hope so,” Sylvia said. “Someday you’ll have a granddaughter, and you’ll show her off too. If she’s half as perfect as you are, you will.”

  “Nana, I don’t feel like being perfect this weekend,” Annie said. “I’ve had to be perfect all week long. I was really looking forward to spending a weekend just being normal.”

  “Normal for you is perfect,” Sylvia said, and gave her granddaughter a hug. “But if you want, you can just sulk around and I’ll show Robin off instead.”

  “No fair,” Robin said. “I’ve been perfect all week long also.”

  “Oh, dear,” Sylvia said. “I don’t mind calling up my friends and cancelling out, because they’ll understand, I’m sure. They have grandchildren too, all of whom, I feel obliged to tell you, are perfect also. But what about all the boys I invited?”

  “Boys?” Annie asked. Robin put the dirty dishes down in the sink and turned to face Sylvia.

  “Boys,” Sylvia replied. “You know, those funny-looking creatures who turn into men all too soon. I figured at a magazine like Image there probably aren’t too many boys around, and since you go to coed high schools, I thought you might be missing them. Unless they’ve integrated the Abigail Adams Hotel for Women.”

  “Not hardly,” Annie said. “How many boys,” Nana?”

  “Four,” Sylvia said. “One for each one of you. Only, just two of you came, so I guess that’s two for each one of you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I think I can learn to live with that,” Robin said. “Who are these boys, anyway?”

  “They’re nice young men,” Sylvia replied. “Neighborhood boys. Sons of friends. Each with a pedigree. I promised them beautiful young ladies and an afternoon in the pool. They should be here any minute now.”

  “Nana, you can’t do this to us,” Annie said. “You didn’t give us any warning.”

  “So what would you do with warning?” her grandmother asked. “Go, leave the dishes, change into your bathing suits and have a good time. I insist.”

  The girls went upstairs to their rooms and emerged a few mintues later ready for a swim and boys. Robin reflected that after a week at an all-female hotel and a nearly all-female job, the very idea of boys was enough to make her salivate.

  “I hope you don’t mind Nana’s little tricks,” Annie said as the girls met in the hallway.

  “I forgive her,” Robin said. “Believe me, I forgive her.”

  “Four boys for the two of us,” Annie said. “I swear.”

  “Annie, it’s all right,” Robin said. “Actually it’s kind of great.”

  “Sure it’s all right for you,” Annie said. “But I’ve only lost three pounds.”

  “You look great,” Robin informed her. “You look … What’s the word? Curvaceous. Positively curvaceous.”

  “You mean hippy,” Annie said. “Oh well. Maybe I’ll dazzle them with my fabulous personality.”

  “Just leave me one,” Robin said. “Whoops. I think I see some of them already.”

  The girls paused in front of the window and looked outside at the arrival of a carful of boys. “It’s like Christmas,” Robin declared.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Annie said. “Come on, let’s meet our gentlemen callers.”

  Robin watched as Annie bounded out the back door and surrounded herself with a variety of boys and adults. Robin felt suddenly shy. She didn’t usually mind meeting grown-ups, and in her life, she had never objected to meeting boys. But this felt different. Maybe because it was Annie’s turf. If it was Robin’s grandmother making such a fuss, she’d probably feel more comfortable.

  “That’s quite a crowd out there.”

  Robin whirled around at the sound of a strange male voice. It seemed to come from a tall brown-haired boy dressed in a bathing suit and terry-cloth robe.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Robin.”

  “The granddaughter’s cousin, right,” the boy said. “Mrs. Powell was explaining all that to us out there.”

  “Right,” Robin said. “Only the granddaughter has a name. It’s Annie.”

  “Annie,” the boy said. “And you’re Robin, and you’re both interns at Image magazine. Do you like it?”

  “I like it a lot,” Robin replied. “Who are you?”

  The boy smiled. Robin’s knees came close to buckling. She didn’t know where Sylvia found them, but if this boy was a typical sample, she could go into business. “Tim,” he replied. “Timothy Alden.”

  “Robin Schyler,” Robin said, offering him her hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you.”
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  “Likewise,” Tim said with mock formality. “I hope I’m not keeping you from joining your friends out there.”

  “They’re not my friends,” Robin said. “I mean, I don’t know any of them except for the Powells, and I really wouldn’t mind letting the crowd thin down before making my entrance.”

  “Good,” Tim said. “I don’t mind waiting either. How about starting with your life story?”

  “It’s been a short life up until now,” Robin said. “I’m sixteen, I live in Ohio, and I’m spending the summer in New York. How about you?”

  “I’m seventeen, I live three houses down, and I’m spending the summer in New York also,” Tim said.

  “New York State, you mean,” Robin said.

  “No, the city,” Tim replied. “My parents are divorced. My mother gets me during the school year out here, and I’m Dad’s for the summer. When I want, I spend weekends here during the summer, but that’s my choice. I’m glad I chose to this weekend.”

  “I’m glad too,” Robin said. They didn’t make them like Tim in Elmsford, Ohio.

  “Let’s sit down,” Tim said. “We’re both dry. We can use the living room.”

  Robin followed Tim into the living room. It felt strange talking to a strange boy in a strange house when all they were wearing were bathing suits and robes. Strange, but not at all unpleasant.

  “Do you like New York?” Tim asked.

  “More and more,” Robin said. “And how about you? Do you like spending summers there?”

  “I didn’t used to,” Tim said. “But I think I’m going to a lot this year. Do they keep you very busy?”

  “They sure try to,” Robin said. “And we have curfews.”

  “We’ll just have to manage as best we can,” he declared. “Where’s your hotel?”

  “Seventy-fourth and Madison,” Robin replied.

  “That’s not bad,” Tim said. “My father’s apartment is on Seventy-sixth and West End. It’s just a cross-town bus trip away.”