Gammy was a pistol. She cheated viciously at rummy and drank a steady stream of daiquiris after 4:00 p.m. Many people say she’s where I get my special unladylike mastery of “bluer” language, which my Grandma Vernon never managed to cure. Gammy and Grandpa built the family cabin almost fifty years earlier, back when even the richest of the rich didn’t have air-conditioning. Going to the lake was the only escape from the sticky, humid heat. The whole house was decorated in early American Coca-Cola. Old signs, posters, glasses, plaques, everywhere you looked there were rosy-cheeked young citizens trying to sell you the most delicious caffeinated beverage known to man. It was either kitschy or within kissing distance of serial killer territory.
The closest thing to a town near Lake Lockwood was Buford, a tiny tourist trap that depended on summer traffic to keep
stores open during the year. As I drove my mom’s car through town, I had to dodge RVs and boat trailers as tourists with very little experience driving either negotiated the streets. We had a local woman, Mrs. Witter, who kept the place up for us. She came in once a month to check for storm or pest damage, gave it a good annual spring cleaning, and closed the place for the winter. It was obvious she’d given the place a thorough once over after I’d called her that afternoon. The floor was freshly scrubbed and the living room still smelled like lemon Pledge and Windex. As usual, she’d left a plate of her famous snickerdoodles for me on the table.
I carried in my suitcase, my laptop and a couple of bags of on the lam” groceries. Dropping it all on the kitchen counter, I stared at my new home. I’d never realized how small the cabin was. Or that it had a weird old refrigerator sort of smell. Or that the floor slanted slightly when you walked back toward the bedroom.
“Stop it,” I told myself sternly. “Stop it, right now. Stop finding fault and freaking out. It’s going to be -… Oh, for crap’s sake, I’ve been living alone for five minutes and I’m already talking to myself.”
Right now the only thing the cabin had going for it was that the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook. The reporters that had been calling, visiting, and just plain camping outside my parents’ house had proved themselves to be resourceful little buggers. My first order of business was to unplug the phone. I did, however, leave the cord in the outlet because I was going to need it for slower–than-Christmas dial-up internet access.
For an hour or so I managed to occupy myself with mundane little moving-in tasks, but you can only rearrange your toiletries so many times. I tucked my suitcase under the bed, threw the boxes in the burn barrel, and fixed a turkey sandwich, which I couldn’t eat. I just stared at the plate until the edges of the meat got sort of dry and crusty. I threw it out, dropped onto the couch, and rubbed at my chest, where my stomach acid rose with threatening velocity.
I had no idea what to do. Even when I “stayed at home” before, I had a daily to-do list. I had lists of lists. Grocery shopping. Committee meetings. Hair appointments. Yoga classes. Picking up dry cleaning. Planning dinners for friends. Waiting at home for the carpet shampooers, the exterminator. Writing endless thank-you notes to people I barely knew, waxing poetic about their participation in the Junior League Fall Festival or their donation to the Ladies Auxiliary Golf Tournament. My hand could practically write, “Thank you so much for your generous contribution” on autopilot.
What would I do all day? What would keep my racing mind occupied?
I didn’t even have cable. My only TV options were videotapes that had been at the cabin since my grandmother owned the place. She refused to watch movies made after 1950, so her collection was comprised of black-and-white movies featuring actresses she called “broads” in the fondest manner. When I was little, I would come up for special weekends and she would French braid my hair and lecture me about how Joan Crawford was considered a free-spirited flapper before she harnessed the power of her eyebrows. When I theorized that dear old Joan and Bette’s shoulder pads were like substitute testicles, she nearly wept with pride.
My grandmother would have been ashamed by what I’d become. If she were alive, she would have watched me cry for about two minutes, slapped some sense into me, and told me to show some backbone. I was a Muldoon, damn it. And Muldoons didn’t just roll over when someone kicked them. We stood our ground. We fought back. And we stole your good liquor on the way out the door.
Well, that was probably just Gammy.
Sighing, I picked up Gammy’s favorite, The Women. Somehow, it felt appropriate - a movie about infidelity, divorce, and vindication where not a single male character was shown. Perfectly in keeping with my new “no penis policy.” I pulled the worn purple quilt from the bed, snuggled up on the sofa, and let myself get swept away to a world where everybody is beautifully lit and has blistering retorts at the ready.
My movie marathon didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped. I forgot at the end of The Women, Mary throws away her pride and goes back to her husband. It didn’t exactly put me in a drowsy place. I ended up watching a few movies where Rex Harrison pretended to sing and John Barrymore pretended to be sober. I wrapped up with Rebecca, a movie about a first wife who was such a vicious bitch that her mere memory eventually drove everyone around her kind of nuts.
I found that message a little more cheerful, but I was still awake at 5:00 a.m. and not sleepy in the slightest.
I hadn’t been awake to see the sunrise in years, so I decided to go out to the front porch and enjoy it. I settled into an old cane rocker with some juice and propped my feet on the porch railing. I loved the quiet time at the lake in the mornings, before the birds started chirping or the boaters and the jet Skiers started their wake wars. The water reflected a bright coppery light that made you feel cleaner and somehow healthier and more virtuous just for being outside in it. Even the gentle lapping of the water seemed muted and kinder.
I might have worried about the fact that I was wearing just an old Wildcats T-shirt, panties, and a surprisingly chipper expression. But the only cabin within sight was the old McGee place, about fifty yards down the shore.
The McGees had been friends of my family for generations. They were sweet people who co-hosted decades of Fourth of July barbecues with my grandparents. But the tradition had died with Gammy Muldoon. My parents preferred entertaining at their house and I hadn’t quite graduated to hosting family holidays yet. I was still doing “hostess training wheel” events like baby showers and bridal teas. Besides, Harold McGee was getting older and no one had opened up the house for years. I thought so right up until the front door opened and my new neighbor stepped out onto his porch.
“Gah!” I yelped, tumbling off of the chair in a panty-baring heap. If there was one thing Mama drilled into my head, it’s that you never have a second chance to make a first impression. And I had just made a first impression on my new neighbor with my ass in the air. Lovely.
Maybe I could commando-crawl into the house without him realizing I was even there. I peeked over the porch railing to see him staring at me, openly smirking. “Morning.”
Maybe not.
“Morning.” I said, standing and trying to pull my shirt down as far as possible. I stood behind the rocker, hoping it at least would cover my bare legs.
My new neighbor, hoo boy. I will admit that the only reason I own the X-Men trilogy on DVD is that I have an unnatural fixation with Hugh Jackman. And here I was living next door to Wolverine personified. Old battered jeans, black T-shirt, bare feet, a lot of dark wayward hair and sideburns that desperately needed a trim. Sharp hazel eyes and sharper cheekbones, and a wide, generous mouth set in a grim line. He raised his coffee cup in mock salute and padded back into his house.
“I usually wear pants!” I called.
Later that afternoon I sat at the scarred maple breakfast table, my hands on my chin, staring at a Saran- wrapped Bundt cake. It was my special Ugly Cake recipe. Chocolate cake swirled with a cream cheese and dark chocolate filling. Once baked, it was about as attractive as homemade sin. But it was a really good ice-breaker, even if it was “Sorry you started off your day being confronted by my airborne ass” ice.
And yes, I do consider cake mix and cream cheese to be essentials when I stock up on survival groceries.
Normally, baked goods wouldn’t pose such a heated internal debate, but I was absolutely mortified by the whole pantybaring welcome. That whole incident had thrown me off-kilter. I came to the lake for solitude. I didn’t particularly want to be on friendly terms with my neighbor. But here I was, having lusty feelings for the Wolverine look alike, which could not be healthy in my present emotional state.
“Oh, screw it,” I muttered, scooping the cake off the table and bounding for the door. “It’s just cake.”
