She finally looks at me through the driver’s-side window and nods back stoically. It’s when I go around the back of the car that she makes the sound. It’s something that comes through her two front teeth, vicious and devoted, a sound that’s been trapped inside her since the Carter administration, older than Tickle Me Elmo and Snapple iced tea. I climb in next to her, crying because one of my greatest fears in life was that she might never be free of it, and now she is and and in my own way, so am I.
RUTH
Issaquah
July 14, 1974
Seattle’s evening news anchors had placed a bet live on air about the size of the crowds expected at Lake Sammamish on Sunday. The woman with the dyed red hair said no way they’d top thirty thousand, and as I coasted past the park’s painted wood sign, I thought about how she would have to pay up on Monday.
Cars were parked so close together that whole families had to exit the vehicles through the hatchbacks. There was a banner welcoming the Seattle Police Department to its annual summer picnic, another advertising twenty-five-cent pints from a local brewery, live music, free ice cream. Dogs chased flying Frisbees; in the distance, sailboats lazily punctured the horizon. Tina could be anywhere, but I decided to start with Tibbetts Beach, by the softball field. It tended to be quieter over there, drawing groups of high school burnouts and, by extension, fewer children, but on that day, there was no logic to the crowd. The burnouts were passing joints next to toddlers playing with their buckets and pails. No one complained and no one threatened to call the police; everyone was just happy to have found a spot.
At Sunset Beach, I was so hot and uncomfortable I couldn’t take it anymore. I dropped my bike and stripped off the navy shift dress; underneath I wore Tina’s black bikini. A group of teenage girls agreed to watch my things while I took a dip.
The lake was warm and oily with tanning lotion, but I walked out deeper and deeper, until the moss-green water disguised my own limbs from me, and then I held my nose and dunked my head. Underwater, I laughed in wonder. There is nothing in the world like knowing you did exactly the right thing. I would reenact it all for Tina when I found her. How I finally stood up to my mother and, in doing so, had honored my father’s memory more than I ever could have sitting silent and sweating in his memorial garden while people got up and lied about who he was. Tina would hang on every word, and she might even beg me to tell it again.
I returned to the shore, wringing out my long hair, and the high school girls offered me a towel when they saw me drying off with Tina’s shift dress. I felt them staring at my body the way I used to stare at beautiful women when I was a little girl, wondering if I would ever grow up to look like that.
I thanked them and spread the towel on the grass, lying on my back, letting the sun decide what to do with me for once. I was twenty-five and had rarely spent time in a bathing suit. Bathing suits were for pools and beaches, and pools and beaches were for women who didn’t need makeup. And yet somehow I was one of those women now! I traced my fingers in the grass, imagining how Tina would look at my tawny thighs later.
A cold shadow fell over me. “Pardon me, miss?”
I opened my eyes, expecting to see someone much older. No one my age used the expression pardon me without rolling their eyes at themselves. But the guy seemed around my age, dressed in an all-white tennis outfit that set off his nice tan. His hair was neatly combed to the side, and his left arm was cradled close to his body in a sling. He wasn’t half bad-looking.
“Could I ask your help with something?” He smiled a little sheepishly.
I sat up on command.
“I’m supposed to be meeting some friends here to help me load my sailboat onto my car, but I can’t find them anywhere.” The man squinted into the swarm of people, one last attempt to pick them out. “I’d do it myself, but…” He smiled down at his bum arm.
Next to me, the chatter had died down. I could sense the high school girls leaning in, listening for their entertainment but also curious about how men and women met in the real world. Something like amused solidarity emanated from a housewife on my right, both of us old enough to recognize the line for what it was.
I patted my towel. “Why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk about it a moment. Where’s the boat?”
The man crouched carefully, flinching as he rested his injured arm on his knee. “It’s right here in Issaquah at my parents’ house. Not far at all.”
“I know. I grew up in Issaquah.”
“Whereabouts?”