In fact, I had spent the last three summers doing the exact same thing, but during those trips Melissa's mom had come with us. This was the first trip without her and I felt her absence immediately. For starters, Rod wasn't big on rules. Like staying sober. Or feeding us. He was big, however, on his new girlfriend, Toots. That was her name. We even stole her wallet late one night and checked her driver's license. Toots, it read. She arrived the day after we did, wearing a see-throughish orange sundress and you could glimpse her lacy black bra underneath. She was exotic and terrifying.
The Tofino house was enormous and sat on a huge piece of land in front of the ocean. Toots wandered around the house picking up the knick knacks and candlesticks Melissa's mom had lovingly arranged in previous summers, as if she were taking inventory.
Toots and Rod required a lot of privacy which left Melissa and I with time on our hands. This can be an exciting thing to a nine year old. We felt like short adults. In the morning we'd find the handfuls of crumpled twenties Rod had left us on the kitchen counter. We'd eat cold pop tarts in the back yard and then wander into town where we bought People magazines and postcards that I'd send home to Seattle, scribbling notes about the fine time I was having.
Rod always smelled of scotch and expensive cologne. He had thick wavy black hair and an elegant gold watch and looked the way I imagined a jet setter would. He was the first man I'd ever seen who actually had a money clip which made it seem like his money was worth more. Rod normally wore tailored suits, but here in Tofino he favored linen pants and pastel colored shirts. He roared around town with Toots in a red convertible. And then a white one after he crashed the red one. Both at home and in Tofino Rod remained remote, like he was watching Melissa and I from another room. He always seemed just out of our reach.
A couple of weeks into summer there was no pretense left of Toots and Rod looking after us. The two of them slept late into the afternoons on the days they were home. Even at nine I knew it was sad for us to be left so alone. My parents knew my every move, my every friend, my every grade. Melissa could go missing for a couple of days before a red flag would be raised.
About this time we started spending long afternoons at sea. A little fishing boat sat at their pier and we'd start up the engine and head out. We took these trips seriously, packing food, rods, reels, bait and a stack of our People's.
We were living a life that was filled with freedom and fear. We were nine and it's really dark at night. We had to learn how to do our own laundry and make our own dinner. We made a pact with each other to not let our hair get too dirty. Of course there were many nights that we cranked up the Grease soundtrack, singing loud and bad while layering on Toots' makeup, telling each other ghost stories and secrets, but the plain fact is, nine year olds need to feel somewhat supervised.
Toward the very end of that summer we were out on the boat when a storm came. Our heads were buried deep in the People's and we didn't see it coming. By the time we did it was a little too late. Something like this was bound to happen. The long and short of it is that the boat was smashed to bits and local fishermen plucked us from the water and took us home. If Rod were there, they would have beat him up. Since he wasn't, they called their wives who dried our clothes, gave us baths and made us hot soup. Melissa and I laid awake all night, holding hands while we waited for Rod and morning to come.
That was the last summer I went to Tofino. Melissa and I saw less and less of each other as the years went on. She began to become what girls will sometimes become when they aren't parented all that much. In high school she acted tough and dated hard characters trying to hide it all away. But from time to time, whenever we ran into each other, we'd catch eyes and smile. We knew each other in a way that no one else ever will. We knew each other in the way that only nine year old girls who've been caught in a wild storm can know each other.
My fine, brave friend, Melissa.
No comments:
Post a Comment