The Grown Ups Read online

  Since I was desperately searching for a way not to be me, studying Miriam became my secret hobby. As soon as I saw her leaning against the newel post in my front hall I’d wished I’d been born a mysterious European. I was tired of being the smart, creative, yet totally nondescript Amy. I was tired of those trite adjectives, period. The night before Miriam arrived, George and I held a bonfire fueled by the journals of my adolescent longings. I’d burned everything because I was sure this would be my last summer at home and I didn’t want to take a chance that one of my siblings would take them and use them as fodder for yet another familial drama.

  My guidance counselor had assured me I was smart enough to get into college and probably would get a scholarship to pay for some of it. I think he took pity on me—he had seen all of my siblings through this school, guided them all to college despite the apathy my parents displayed. I mean it was seriously all they could do to sign off on the applications. The guy deserved a medal. Before college I planned to spend my last summer traveling—even if I had to earn the money by working the arts-and-crafts table at the after-school camp for overindulged five-year-olds again all year long.

  George fought with me over burning my journals—said one day I might want to write a book about our family. He was joking, I could tell. George was just a packrat. Burning the journals didn’t bother me. If an occasion ever arose for me to pen my memoirs I was positive my childhood would never, ever leave me.

  My summer job consisted of scooping ice cream and making milkshakes at the dairy shack late afternoons and evenings. Usually I spent the time before work sleeping, then fooling around with some fabric or paint, maybe a book (George and I had just gone to the library and the pile between us included: American Psycho, Shampoo Planet, The Kitchen God’s Wife, and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent), but this August was different. Now in the mornings I led Miriam to the swimming hole at the very back edge of our property. It was actually more than a hole, but that’s how our father always referred to it back when he enjoyed playing the role of country dad. Going swimming meant a hike through waist-high weeds and prickly vines all the while swatting away mosquitoes and no-see-ums, but Miriam seemed to take it in stride. The yard and surrounding property, like the house and its inhabitants, were simply worn-out from years of neglect. I liked to imagine that when my parents had purchased this odd crooked house twenty-five years ago they had the best intentions for their young family—when in truth its purchase had been a recommendation from an accountant during a particularly flush period for my father.

  Once we got to the water, Miriam stripped down to her underwear and sunbathed topless. Her breasts were small although almost completely overtaken by large brown nipples. Under her arms were thick tufts of dark hair—at odds, it seemed, with her pale pink skin. On the middle toe of her left foot she wore a silver ring. I tried to look sophisticated in my one-piece black Speedo as I spread out on the blanket next to Miriam—but I failed miserably and ended up spending most of the time picking at the suit and redistributing the spandex around my midsection. All I could think was that facing my senior year of high school with Miriam, who was so comfortable in her skin, could only mean I had less of a chance with guys than I currently had.

  On the days George joined us I expected Miriam to attempt to cover up, but she barely paid any attention to him except for when he dove into the water. George had been on the swim team all four years of high school. He was tall and thin with broad shoulders and a flat stomach and, with the exception of his time spent in the water, was extremely clumsy. Actually, much to the disdain of my parents, who had assumed their children, like them, would have a penchant for the arts (my collages and fabric creatures were not exactly the Great White Artistic Hope my parents might have dreamed about), all of my siblings excelled in one sport or another. Besides swimming for George, there was crew and lacrosse for Finn. Like my sister, Kate, I was a runner, although I only ran when I was feeling puffy and I exhibited no extraordinary athletic prowess and refused to join the track team as Kate had. I’d say my parents got exactly what they deserved by choosing to live in a small town that, despite its “artsy” reputation and access to New York City, was just like any other cookie-cutter suburb across the country.

  When George climbed up to the highest ledge and performed an elegant swan dive—his body sluicing into the water like a knife, barely disturbing the surface—Miriam propped herself up on her elbows and nodded approvingly. “Beautiful,” she whispered under her breath. “The boy can fly.”

  I nodded and was horrified to find water leaking from my eyes down onto my cheeks. George would be leaving for college in New Hampshire at the end of the month and I didn’t know what I was going to do without him. There wasn’t a moment of my life that I had ever been without George. As family lore goes, my first steps were not to my mother or father but to George. From the ages of three to five I slept curled against him in his twin bed because I was afraid of the monster in my closet. I would have stayed there forever had George not convinced me that he had erected a supersecret monster-detection system in my room that would keep me safe at all times. Miriam reached over and patted me on the thigh—an odd grandmotherly gesture—but she didn’t say anything; she was still concentrating on watching George dive.

  I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun; the dried tears left my skin with a tight feeling high across the cheekbones by the time George got out of the water and came over to us, shaking off like a wet dog.

  With my eyes still closed, I lifted my leg to kick George away from me—the water in the pond was spring-fed and felt like pinpricks of ice. I always waited until the last minute to get wet; I had to be uncomfortably baked before I could be coaxed into the water. George laughed and then dropped down on the other side of Miriam. I knew this because she rolled closer to me to give him more room on the blanket. A few minutes passed in which I could only hear the sound of George’s huff-like breathing and Miriam swatting away flies; then Miriam broke the silence.

  “Teach me to do that, George?”

  “Huh?” It sounded like more of an exhale than George actually answering.

  “To dive,” Miriam explained. “To fly.”

  So far I had seen Miriam venture into the water only twice, and each time she did that tiptoe wading-in thing people do when the water is too cold. With her stomach sucked in and her nipples hard and pointy, she patted at the water with flat palms. I can’t even remember if she actually swam.

  George seemed to be reading my mind because he said, “Do you swim?”

  Miriam laughed. “Of course! Do you think I want to perish?” I was still mulling over her choice of the word perish for die when I heard George say, “Okay then—let’s go.”

  Miriam hopped up. I opened my eyes and looked at George. He was scrutinizing Miriam and scratching his head. I could tell he knew I was looking at him and that he was purposely avoiding my glare. I never jumped off the ledge. When George first joined the diving team, I couldn’t even look at him up there on the board. My palms went sweaty and I felt lightheaded. It had taken years for me to get used to watching George bouncing up and down on the edge of a thirty-foot-high rectangle. Now Miriam was diving? We—I—didn’t even know the details of Miriam’s exchange. Like who to call in case of an emergency. I only knew how she liked her coffee and what she ate.

  She scrambled ahead of George to the rocks and then waited for him to catch up. Along the way he stubbed his toe and skipped around as he cursed in pain. Miriam made appropriate murmuring sounds, a little cluck in the back of her throat. She looked down at his foot when he made it over to her but he shook his head and brushed her off although I could tell he was pleased. George could be a drama queen.

  George took the lead—only climbing to the lower ledge that was about four feet above the water. I couldn’t even describe this as safer. Miriam stood beside him, peering down into the water as George pointed out the flat sheaf of shale rock to the right that she would want to avoid
as she threw herself over the edge. That would be from experience. At one time or another that rock had sheared the skin of every one of my siblings, but not me. And that was not out of prowess—just avoidance. I never dove and in my seventeen years I have heard every word there is to describe my cowardice.

  Miriam placed her arms over her head with her palms together, like a beginner ballet student, except her legs were together and her feet pointed out. Without waiting for George to correct her she toddled toward the edge and jumped off. I winced as she hit the water belly-first.

  When she came up, she was laughing, although her chest and neck were red from either the cold or the impact or both. She looked at me and waved and I waved back, hoping the pain would dissuade her from any more diving. George stood with his hands on his slender hips—his bathing suit hung dangerously low—and shook his head from side to side.

  She yelled up from the water, “Show me, George.”

  And George, as effortlessly as breathing, made a graceful arc into the water. Miriam waited for him to surface and when he did, she held up her arms in the victory position.

  They continued like this for what must have been another hour because I dozed off and when I woke and checked my watch, I had less than thirty minutes to get to work. Before I left, Miriam insisted I watch her dive again. Her form had improved (or maybe changed was a better word) so that while she no longer looked like a demented ballerina, she now looked like someone with scoliosis.

  George and Miriam’s diving lessons continued for the rest of the week. The weather had turned oppressively hot, so much so that even the water felt tepid. When we weren’t in the water and I wasn’t working, we snuck into the movie theater in town. The back door faced an alley and a boy who had an unrequited crush on George propped open the door for us on the nights he worked. It didn’t matter what was playing, because the theater had air-conditioning. We’d eat cheese sandwiches on thick sourdough bread, which Miriam made us, washed down with a huge Coke and some rum that George always provided. For dessert I contributed broken pieces of chocolate-dipped waffle cone that were free for the taking from work.

  Sitting like that in the dark with George reminded me of all the hours we’d spent as kids in one theater after another while our parents rehearsed plays. Rehearsing really was a euphemism because in reality my parents spent more time fighting over lines, or fighting over actors or actresses that one accused the other of being attracted to. Not that we always understood it at the time—we only went to the theater when someone forgot to call the sitter and all of the older kids had plans.

  By the time I was born my father’s career had peaked. Years before he had written a play (about a large dysfunctional family, go figure) that had made it to Broadway and ran for nearly three years, winning several Tonys, including one for my dad, only to follow it up with four more plays that closed after five months, three months, six weeks, and the worst—opening night. That last, particularly painful failure happened the day of my fifth birthday. A day my father hasn’t commemorated in twelve years unless you count him locking himself in his study to drink an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  After that, the offers were few and far between and so he took to the road, where obscure small towns filled with would-be theater-goers afraid to venture to the big city were more receptive to his work, and he reveled in their attentions, reluctant to relinquish the spotlight.

  But an odd thing happened during that time. My mother’s career mysteriously revived after she took a role as a crazy innkeeper in one of those stupid teen slasher movies that (surprise, surprise) made millions of dollars and my mother a “cult” actress. She wasn’t quite in the John Waters league of quirky, but she was getting there. All of a sudden she was the one fielding offers and leaving for months at a time. And that was when my dad unexpectedly took a position as head of the theater department at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs—about three hours north of where we lived. It meant he was gone, living in some rented room four, usually five, out of the seven days of the week. We were never invited to visit and we never asked. In terms of parental guidance, George and I may as well have been raised by wolves.

  On Sunday evening, after we’d sat through a double creature feature of Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, it was close to midnight and still 95 degrees according to the digital time-and-temperature clock on the bank across the street from the theater on Main Street. George suggested swimming. Too lazy to go into the house, we cut through the now well-trodden path to the pond and stripped down to our underwear.

  Well, I did, anyway. George and Miriam pranced like naked toddlers to the water while I, despite my rum buzz, felt like their maiden aunt standing in my bra and panties.

  When George yelled, “Take it off, for Christ’s sakes, Amy, and get in,” I shivered but managed to undo my bra and toss it onto the ground along with my underpants as soon as they both disappeared underwater.

  The water over my bare skin was . . . indescribable. How could a barrier of Lycra make such a difference in how it felt to swim unencumbered? This was nearly as delicious as the technique I’d perfected in the bath (with the door double-locked) involving the faucets turned on full blast. Almost.

  I went under and opened my eyes. Through the cloudy haze of moonlight that spilled through the trees I could make out a flash of leg in front of me. I swam toward it only to have it disappear. When I popped up to the surface, it took me a moment to find George and Miriam. They were standing on the lower ledge, Miriam poised to dive first.

  I was sober enough to think “be careful” but not enough to yell out to her. I’d noticed the raw skin and accumulation of deep scratches along her arms and legs from the rock. I’d insisted she put salve on some of the worst and then I had to help her apply it because she couldn’t reach them. Her diving had not improved much in a week and so she hit the water with another grand belly flop. When she surfaced, she swam over to where I was treading water and we both turned to watch George dive.

  “Goddamn! I haven’t seen such a pathetic excuse for manhood in a long time!”

  I spun around. The voice came from the bank and belonged to our brother, Finn.

  George flipped him the bird and laughed as I called out, “Finn?”

  He didn’t answer. Just stripped off his clothes and climbed up to meet George. They fake-tussled for a moment—their strong limbs and smooth torsos entangled and made paler than they were by the moonlight—before they fell into the water still holding on to each other.

  I swam over to them and then was pulled underneath by a tug on my leg. I hadn’t had time to take a breath and I fought harder than usual, kicking someone in the groin; with my toes I felt the curl of pubic hair and tuberous flesh and I instantly recoiled. Growing up with brothers was like living inside a boys’ locker room and I was used to seeing (and smelling) a lot, but physical contact was another thing. It wasn’t until I came up gagging, my throat and nose burning from inhaled water, that I realized what I’d done.

  “Nice to see you too,” Finn said, although through his scowl I could tell he wasn’t that hurt.

  “What the hell are you doing home?” George asked as he filled his mouth with water and spit it at Finn, barely missing his left ear. “It’s not the end of August yet, is it?”

  Finn shook his head and said without explanation, “I felt like cutting it short.”

  “Did Dad come with you?” I asked.

  “Nope.” Finn looked past me to Miriam.

  I turned and motioned for her to join us. “Miriam, this is our brother Finn.”

  Miriam swam closer. “Finn,” she said demurely, “hello.”

  I turned to Finn, “Finn, Miriam.”

  He flicked water at George before he said, “I know who she is.” I looked at Finn and made a face like “don’t be a rude shit,” but he didn’t get it. He oozed charm without trying, even when he was being a jerk. In that instant it struck me that Finn reminded me a lot of our father. He continued to ignore m
y pointed stare. Instead he shouted to George, “Race you to the high ledge.” And they were off.

  “Weird,” I said out loud more to myself than Miriam. I had never known Finn to miss an opportunity to impress a girl. Or maybe this was all part of his game. Who knew?