Perennials by Mandy Berman
She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.
—VIRGINIA WOOLF,
Mrs. Dalloway
1
Denise was supposed to drive Rachel to camp that morning, but she was hungover. Rachel had heard her come in late the night before, her heels clacking in the entryway of their apartment before she exhaled loudly and trod barefoot into the kitchen. Then came the slamming of cupboard doors and rustling through boxes; the crackling of plastic; the cereal tinkling into the bowl; the repetitive crunching. Denise had had a date with a tax lawyer who took her for French food in the Village. Most of her dates didn’t leave the Upper West Side on the weekends, and neither did she.
Rachel imagined the night went something like this: They split a bottle of expensive wine. Denise tried not to drink it too fast, but they were done with it before finishing their entrées, and she was relieved when he suggested another. She went home with him but didn’t sleep there; she sobered up enough to remember she needed to take Rachel to Connecticut early the next morning.
When Rachel went out into the living room at seven, Denise’s mouth was wide open like a cartoon fish’s. Dark purple eye shadow was smeared over her closed eyelids. She hadn’t bothered to pull out the couch. People always said Rachel and Denise looked alike; often it was a pickup line from a guy—that they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. But aside from the same dark, wavy hair, Rachel never saw the resemblance.
“Mom,” she whispered.
Denise swallowed, then sighed, like she was in the middle of a nice dream.
“Mom,” Rachel said again, stroking the top of her mother’s head. Denise groaned and put the pillow over her face.
On the ride there, with her Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee, Denise started to wake up. They sang Pat Benatar; Denise had one hand on the steering wheel, and the other dangled out the window, holding a cigarette. They didn’t need directions. This was Rachel’s fourth summer at camp, and they knew the route by heart now—a straight shot up the Taconic, a winding parkway that could be so unpredictable Rachel sometimes worried her mom wouldn’t make a turn in time and they’d end up smashed against a concrete boulder on the side of the road.
Rachel always got the feeling when they pulled into camp that time hadn’t moved since the previous summer. Everything was exactly the same: the wooden Camp Marigold sign with the fading painted orange flowers; the smells of the horse manure from the barn and cut grass from the athletic fields. In the months leading up to camp opening, she would think maybe the grass wouldn’t be as green. Maybe some building would be painted a different color. Maybe they’d fixed that one broken rail on the fence around the horse arena.
But none of that ever happened. Time didn’t touch Camp Marigold, and that was what was so perfect about it.
They pulled into the circle of platform tents in the girls’ Hemlock section, where the thirteen-year-olds stayed, and lugged Rachel’s trunk from the back of the rental car. Counselors were greeting parents, helping them carry trunks and shopping bags filled with magazines and snacks, and girls Rachel knew well, girls with whom she’d compared nipples in their tents and stolen ice cream from the dining hall in the middle of the night, were hugging each other, holding hands, and gleefully yelling her name.
Denise put her arm around Rachel. “Happy, baby?”
Fiona ran over and embraced Rachel. “I saved you a bunk!” she said. She led Rachel into tent three. Their bunks were always at the top, head-to-head—best for late-night whispers after lights-out.
Fiona Larkin, Rachel’s best friend at camp, was a nosy but brutally loyal girl from a big family in Westchester. It was Fiona’s fifth summer at Marigold. She had already unpacked her own things and was now helping Rachel to unpack hers, taking items out of her trunk and organizing her cubby in a way Rachel would never be able to maintain.
Fiona stood with one hand on her hip, a box of Tampax raised in the other, and a questioning expression on her face.
“What?” Rachel asked. “Isn’t it obvious?” She stood back and let Fiona appraise her. The changes were small, but there: slightly wider hips, and breasts in a real, underwire bra, size 34B.
“You need to tell me these things!” Fiona said.
“Sweetie”—Denise, who was tucking Rachel’s mosquito net into the bunk, was shaking her head at Fiona—“it’s nothing to be jealous about.”
A few months earlier, Rachel had been home alone, lying on the couch watching a movie and eating Chips Ahoy! cookies. At a commercial she had gone to the bathroom and been shocked to see brown in her underwear. For a minute, she thought it had something to do with the cookies, like she had somehow gotten the chocolate on herself. But then she realized. No one ever mentioned it could be brown.
The next morning, Denise kissed her on the forehead. “I’m glad we got you those pads.”
“I used one of your tampons.”
“Really?” She cocked her head to the side.
Rachel shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard.”
“You shouldn’t be going into my things, Rachel.”
“The pad was so bulky.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” her mom asked.
“You were on a date.”
“You can interrupt for something like this.”
Denise turned around to put on some coffee. As she was reaching for the ground coffee in the cabinet above her head, she paused with her hand there and turned to Rachel again.
“Are you having sex?”
“Mom. God.”
“It’s not impossible,” she said.
“There’s not even anyone I want to have sex with.”
“Want to? I don’t care if you want to or not. You’re thirteen fucking years old.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I don’t know how you figured out the tampon so easy.”
“There’s an instruction manual, Mom. I can read.”
“Don’t be smart.”
“I’m not.”
“You know you have to be careful about these things now.”
“I know what getting your period means.”
“Don’t be such a smartass, Rachel. I’m being serious.” She poured water into the coffeemaker. “And you might want to start watching what you eat. No more full boxes of Chips Ahoy! in one sitting.”
—