The chapters in a young person's life often open and close with little or no transition in-between. For Sharon and Linda, the summer of 1968 marked one of those leaps. On their last day of eighth grade, they stood in the bus line under the watchful eye of Mrs. Carew, Principal Martino's secretary, then the following day, they found themselves on the beach with no supervision. They were going into high school the following year, and with their educational promotion came a new status. Sharon and Linda were considered teenagers.
On the first morning of their teenage lives, the girls left Sharon's house early and rode to the beach. Sharon on a brand-new, white Schwinn 5-speed - a graduation present from her mother - and Linda on Sharon's bike from the year before. They parked in the lot behind the Fry Shack, which, even on the first day of summer, reeked of fermenting cornmeal and used fryer oil. Mr. Thompson had told them to come by as soon as school ended. Even though they weren't old enough to work officially, he offered them fifty cents an hour to help with prep work in the mornings. Linda thought it sounded great, Sharon not as much. She told Mr. Thompson they needed more, and after some hemming and hawing, he gave in, offering them seventy-five cents an hour plus free lunches throughout the summer. Sharon's bargaining wasn't for her benefit – her father had taken to leaving extra "allowance" on her dresser as he left her room at night. She wanted the extra pay for Linda. Even though their degree of "what's mine is yours" knew no bounds, Sharon knew Linda sometimes felt awkward.
After helping at the Fry Shack, Linda and Sharon scooted out the service windows onto the boardwalk, just like they'd watched the older kids who worked there doing for years. They went directly to the center section of the beach, an area generally the domain of teenagers. The night before, Mrs. MacCalaster had made them promise to use suntan lotion, at least at first, so they wouldn't peel. As they sat on a blanket slathering Coppertone on each other, Julia Cook and Abby Parker walked up; two of the girls who were so cruel to Linda at the beginning of school. Julia and Abby started tittering on about school finally ending, what fun the summer was going to be, and which boys they hoped would come to the beach – all while casually spreading out their towels next to the girl's shared blanket.
Throughout the year, the kids at school had grown to more than simply accept Linda. But, in many ways, they felt she and Sharon excluded them. From what remained a mystery, one that in years to come would be pondered by people in Metuchin ad nauseam. Quite unintentionally, Sharon's desire that she and Linda keep to themselves created the impression that they had a secret. In their junior high world, little else carried the same aura.
By the first day of summer, the kids who had forever shunned her acted as if sitting on the beach with Linda Stapelton was the most normal thing in the world. For them, the teasing and nasty comments were long forgotten. The pain they inflicted, no different than water poured onto the sand.
Sharon looked to Linda, an unnecessary affirmation. Linda had waited her whole life to be one of the teenagers on the beach. To be like the kids she'd watched while sitting making sandcastles in the wave break. To have this rite of passage progressing the way it did for others provided her immeasurable relief.
By noon, more than a dozen boys and girls from their school were sitting with them, listening to transistor radios, acting like the teenagers they idolized the summer before. They played, joked, and initiated the flirting rituals of summer. School may have been out, but for the youth of Metuchin, Connecticut, the beach had always provided a variety of educational opportunities.
The boys in the group desperately attempted to blend together. Some were bigger and others smaller. All, however, tried to achieve a general uniformity – while at the same time, desperately wanting to be noticed. Their general strategy involved emulating the most disreputable role model they could without bringing on a full-scale parental lecture. Each wore cut-off blue jeans, which they obsessively picked at, pulling out the white weft in an attempt to make fringe. They bore the pale, sinewy physique country kids have after a long, cold winter. Their hair had begun shagging over the tops of their ears – scruffy hair, like the fringe at the bottoms of their shorts, being an essential component in their minds to finding summer educational opportunities.
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?"
"Your Pinky?" Sharon snickered, the gentle quality of Robin's voice having immediately put her at ease.
"Yeah, Linny didn't tell you I call her Pinky?" Robin asked, pulling a chair up next to Sharon, "Oh, we're going to have lots to talk about. By the way, I'm Robin; I'm sure you figured that out though." Seeing Robin for the first time, no one thing stood out to Sharon; she looked quite average. Rather than an identifiable beauty, she radiated an aura of cleanliness. As if no experience on Earth or otherwise would dare sully her.
"Wow, no one other than her family calls her Linny and this Pinky thing... But whatever you want to call her, she's out there," Sharon said pointing, as Linda came up for air a couple of hundred yards off the beach, scuttled across the surface, then dove back under.
"Just look at her," Robin gasped. "Is it safe for her to swim out so far?"
"I guess. She says she likes to swim out there to play with the fish. I don't know if she really does, ya know, play games with the fish. But since we'd drown just getting out there, we kinda gotta believe her."
"I've never understood how she swims like that," Robin said, segueing into the story of taking Linda to swim therapy after her casts were removed – a tale she'd told monks and gurus in India. "Does she still just wiggle her way through the water instead of swimming?"
"Yeah, Lin says that's the way the Water wants her to swim. That she and the Water, ya know, sort of talk to each other. I don't really know how it works. But she can do all that stuff with numbers too, and I don't get how that works either." Sharon was hesitant to talk about Linda's abilities; even with someone she knew Linda held no secrets from. "She's kinda shy about her swimming sometimes. That's one reason we come down here. I guess that's how we met Titus."
The role models in Sharon's life – Perrin and Gloria, even Mrs. Kweller – lacked anything leading her to the conclusion women could be independent. Now, here sat a woman who had just spent four years traveling through exotic lands on her own. Sharon envisioned Robin as a warrior of sorts. A fearless woman who could and would defend herself, who under no circumstances would let anyone take advantage of her... Abuse her. The one other woman Sharon thought of as having an independent life was her grandmother. She'd traveled extensively after her husband died but always on tours with church groups led by men.
"I guess she's always been able to swim like that, though," Sharon continued. "Eliza says before her big operation when she still wore leg braces, Lin would swim circles around them, and no one could catch her, not even her dad."
Robin laughed, remembering a little girl bound in casts who somehow maintained a playful spirit. "Speaking of Eliza, how's the family doing?" she asked, bracing herself for an answer.
"Um, well, I guess they're okay. I mean, her mom's kinda, ya know, she's drunk and stuff." Sharon mumbled a little above a whisper, needlessly looking around, afraid of someone overhearing her.
"How's Linny dealing with it, with her mother's alcoholism?" Robin asked.
"We usually go to my house. It makes Lin kinda sad to be at her house sometimes. She doesn't really talk about it. I don't think anybody in the family does. Well, except Eliza. And that's all she talks about."
"I'm glad she has a friend like you, that you have each other," Robin said, looking out again as Linda appeared on the horizon. "Did you see that? She came almost all the way out of the water, like a dolphin."
"Well, she knows you're here, cuz now she's just showing off," Sharon said, a prideful beam crossing her face.
Whatever message Linda and the Water shared, it conveyed her sense of urgency, and she sped to shore bouncing along the surface like a ski-boat. Cooly catching a wave for the last bit, Linda tried waiting for it to ebb before standing, wanting to walk her best. Robin wasn't having any part of her perfect exit and ran into the wave-break screaming, soaking her dress to her waist.
After some initial hugging, Robin made Linda promenade up and down the beach, gushing over her walking and how much she'd grown. They sat together on a lounger, trying to compress four years of their lives into a few minutes. Titus had already told Robin most of Linda's story. The delight Linda showed telling her former tutor that she'd been moved ahead two grades, and was taking math classes at the high school, gave Robin a thrill all the same.
"But Robin," Linda asked, "what happened to you? I mean, you said you'd be home at the end of that summer, that you were going back to college. You promised your parents."
"When we left, I did plan to come back in a couple of months. But, once I got to India, my feelings changed. It felt like there was more I was supposed to do." Robin began, explaining that what she planned as a vacation with Titus turned into a four-year spiritual expedition. She told the girls about traveling through India, Ceylon, Tibet, and Nepal. And how that led to her living and studying on an ashram. Now, she told them, she had come back home to share what she learned by opening a Yoga and meditation studio.
"I've been doing Yoga exercises from a book Titus gave me," Linda said, proudly holding herself the way she read – tall, spine-straight, and simultaneously, completely relaxed. "Dr. Colson says he's been trying to get me to do the same exercises for years. I think he's a little mad. He says I'm only doing them because of Titus."
"I'm sure Ben doesn't care why you're doing it, as long as it's helping," Robin said, picturing Linda working through Yoga postures in the Stapelton's house. A place she remembered as one of the Earth's spiritual dead zones.
"Did you read about meditation, Linny, or just the physical side of Yoga?" she asked, remembering Linda's stories about going to special places in her head.
"No, I just do the exercises," Linda said, "I read about the other stuff; I didn't really get it. Sometimes though, this strange thing happens. After I do the exercises, I sit there, and I guess I forget to think about anything, and then a bunch of time'II go by, like hours. I've even missed school cuz I did it in the morning and didn't come back till way after the bus came. And when I'm done, I feel weird.
"Weird in what way?"
"Like, you know when you sit funny reading a book, and you get pins and needles in your hand or foot."
Robin nodded.
"Well, it's the same, except it's inside my head. It's like I get pins and needles in what I'm thinking."
What Linda described sounded like she slipped into deep meditative states without knowing it. Could Linda enter a trance-state, Robin wondered, as easily as she processed the complexities of mathematics? Linda often drifted into her thoughts while studying on the Ashram. As did her stories Linda told of staying very still and seeing swirling clouds that she rode on and swam through. "It sounds like you are doing the meditative side of Yoga, Linny. Your mind is freeing itself from what ties it down in this world. And when your mind frees itself, anything becomes possible."
"Really. I don't try, it sorta, I don't know, just happens."
If Linda could switch her focus between this world and others with the ease of a camera refocusing from one point to the next, Robin desperately wanted to know what other secrets her mind might hold. She'd returned from India with a specific intention. Aside from wanting to be with Titus, Robin came home to open a Yoga studio and meditation center. During her last year in India, she developed a burning desire to pass along what she'd learned. And restarting her teaching with Linda felt wonderfully appropriate.
Robin and Titus originally intended to open a retreat on a parcel of land that Titus called The Campground. The property, more than 600 hundred wooded acres in the Berkshire foothills, had been in his family for generations. But, within a year of returning from England, Titus liquidated nearly all of his family's landholdings, keeping only the house in Metuchin and The Campground. He held onto the land in northern Connecticut, where he'd spent weekends camping and fishing with his father, partly for the sentimental attachment; also because he had an itching notion about his campground.
Titus had long believed something important would happen there, that Fate had a reservation for him there. Hoping to have unearthed the land's purpose, he and Robin spent several days hiking around and camping before returning to Metuchin. The property, undeveloped woodlands with several streams and a lake, offered a divinely peaceful serenity. However, the campground itself consisted of only a few raw, un-insulated cabins with no electricity or running water. In the end, they decided the location was too remote and that somewhere closer to Boston would better suit Robin's vision.
When Titus finally came down to the beach, Sharon immediately jumped up and gave him a big hug. The awkward display of affection, and the quizzical look it evoked from Robin, gave him a moment's pause. The way Sharon carried herself, her fourteen-going-on-twenty quality, had gone over Titus's head – not so Robin. For the first time, Sharon's actions set off alarm bells for him. He quickly stepped away, offering to get the three of them sodas. "Come sit with me, Titus," Robin said, nudging Linda off the lounger they were sharing, "Pink'II get 'em, I like to watch her strutting around."
Sharon and Titus looked at each other, laughing. "Where'd this Pinky thing come from?" Sharon asked.
"You explain it," Linda huffed at Robin, "cuz I don't know how I became Pinky, when the Pinky started out as a dress you made me."
"Suit yourself ... Pinky," Robin said, smirking, giving Linda a little goose as she went to get sodas. "When I tutored Linny, she didn't have much to wear other than shirts because of her cast. So, I made a jumper with snaps around the legs. I made the first one out of a big pink sundress, and we called it the pinky. And we; well, I started calling her Pinky."
"And until now, no one else knew about it," Linda said, looking at the Cheshire grin on Sharon's face. Then, realizing Linda was semi-serious, Sharon giggled and mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key.
After the girls left, Titus and Robin stayed on the beach, watching the day turn to dusk from the porch swing on the front of the cabana. Nightfall along the Connecticut shoreline lacks the finality of the sun setting into the ocean. Instead, the slow fade of the gleaming sand and ocean's radiance is like a dimmer switch, closing out the day.
"She's come a long way from the little girl you tutored."
"Well, none of it would have happened without everything you've done," Robin said, tucking her legs under her hip and resting her head on Titus's shoulder. "I hate to even think where she'd be with her parents making the decisions."
"I really didn't do anything; it was all Ben and the other doctors. And, a case can be made that I caused her accident." Titus claimed. "You know I don't feel any guilt. But my actions initiated it."
"No. Her drunken mother's self-absorbed delusions caused the accident... If you can even call it an accident," Robin said, bolting upright in anger. "Gloria no more deserves that angel than LBJ deserves a place in Heaven."
"Wow, what happened to my tranquil, spiritual, little being," Titus laughed.
"I know we can't change what happened to Linda... but you should've seen her the joy drain out of her face when I asked about her family."
"Robin," Titus said in a calming tone. "If Linda's paying a Karmic debt, or making a deposit on a glorious future, is way beyond our understanding. But her family is her family, and nothing can change that. She's living the life she's supposed to live. It's the hand she's been dealt."
Late the next night, Robin and Titus were in his kitchen. The windows were open, with breaking waves providing their soundscape. On most summer nights, the smells of the beach hung in the air, not on this one. Robin was cooking a midnight snack, and the aroma of curry overwhelmed the room.
As Robin cooked, Titus stared down at several maps he'd spread out on the kitchen table. Like many veterans, especially those involved in transport, Titus brought an obsession with maps back from the war. Holding a cup of tea, he was plotting out a trip. A group of Robin's friends had opened a meditation center in Los Angeles. The vision for what she wanted to start was similar to what they'd created, and Titus thought it would be a good idea to go for a visit.
They initially planned to fly out west after his Fourth of July party, but Titus wanted to leave earlier and drive. With friends scattered across the country, driving allowed them to make stops along the way and generally spend the summer wandering. The trip meant they would be gone until August. Fine in every way, except Robin's leaving after only a couple of weeks would disappoint Linda.
"She'll be fine. You can see her every day until we leave, and you're not going to be away for years this time." Titus said when Robin started fretting about how Linda might feel. "Besides, she has Sharon."
Thinking about Sharon crinkled Robin's nose. "What do we know about Sharon?" she asked. "There's something about her I can't put my finger on. Like the way she hung on you, it didn't seem right."
"Is this a woman's jealousy thing?" Titus asked. "Because my cradle robbing begins and ends with you."
"Don't be silly, she's a child, and that's my point. It's like she's pushing her way out of childhood, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as she isn't being pulled out of it."
"Oh, I'm sure it's probably nothing more than overactive puberty."
Robin knew Titus would be little or no help. How a man with a Ph.D. in psychology could be clueless to fifty percent of the human race amazed her; although, she found his naiveté simultaneously excusable and endearing. "You should've seen the way she changed when you came down to the beach yesterday." Then, seeing that Titus had returned to looking at his maps, she dropped the issue. Either he didn't grasp what she saw or chose not to; she assumed it was a little of each.