Once Around the Carousel

Chapter Thirteen

The girls in the group all looked entirely different, with Sharon and Linda acting as the bookends. Sharon had already developed hips and breasts that grown men consistently treated themselves to a second gawk at, with a waist that had shed its baby fat over the winter. She'd matured during the winter in other ways too. Her hair had drifted the color of coffee ice cream, and her eyes to those of a young adult.

That summer, she nearly always wore the same bright orange bikini. It washed out to a pale hue as the weeks ticked away. And magically, as her bikini wore, its effect on the boys intensified. Sharon certainly didn't possess the grace of a ballerina; like most familial resources, her parents' allocated their athleticism to her brothers. Nevertheless, her juvenile movements had aged themselves out; and she carried herself with a comfort the other girls had yet to achieve.

On the other end of the spectrum sat Linda, the youngest by more than two years. She wasn't going to draw the boys' attention the way Sharon and some of the other girls did. (Her scars kept her from feeling comfortable in a bikini, so she wore one of Sharon's older one-pieces covered up with a pair of purple shorts.) Still, they all wanted to be her friend. The kids laughed in amazement as she added their Rummy scores with a glance, keeping track in her head of their endless games that spanned into weeks. And she knew who sang every song on the radio, committing the lyrics to memory after a single play – which if prodded, she would sing in her tender, pitch-perfect timbre. It was more than counting tricks and remembering songs that drew the kids to Linda, though. She possessed an inner compassion none of the kids understood yet always felt. And now that the stigma she'd grown up under had lifted, she kept pace by simply being Linda Stapelton, which proved to be more than enough.

Thrilled as Linda was with the change in her social status, she and Sharon had planned to check on Titus's return. By early afternoon, she'd become antsy. When Sharon saw Linda wasn't going to be able to stand it any longer, she gave her a little nudge and got up.

"Lin and I gotta go do something, but we'll see you guys tomorrow," Sharon said, her vagueness inadvertently keeping up the facade that their lives had hidden layers.

They rode their bikes along Old Shore Road and down Titus's long driveway, disappointingly finding no sign of his return. Titus had told them he'd be returning with Robin in a couple of weeks. Now three had gone by and still no sign.

After a week of the same routine, signs of Titus's return appeared. Riding down his driveway, they saw curtains were flapping out the upstairs windows, and under the massive oak tree in the driveway's roundabout, they saw his fancy Mercedes Benz. Linda hadn't seen Robin for nearly four years, and nervous butterflies began fluttering in her belly. But then, they realized Titus's pickup truck was gone.

They tried knocking on both the front and back doors to no avail, then went down to wait on the beach. Finally, after swimming together for a while, Sharon got out, allowing Linda to be alone with the Water.

The girls had fun swimming together, and Linda always remained thoughtful not to let Sharon feel she was missing out on anything. Still, as Sharon understood more about Linda's feelings for the Water, she felt a small degree of being the third wheel when they swam and made a point of being sure to leave Linda with the Water so the two of them could be together.

Sharon pulled one of the comfy padded loungers out onto the beach from the pavilion. She was happily daydreaming figures into the clouds that rolled by when a woman in a white linen dress came down to the walkway to the beach. Sharon recognized Robin from the photos she saw in Titus's house; and one that Linda cherished of the two of them in front of the rare books library on the Yale campus.

Moving with the grace of a classically trained dancer, Robin's svelte frame projected a musculature bordering on feline. "You must be Sharon," Robin said as she approached, "but where's my Pinky?"