* * *
The morning of the breakfast, I wore my hair loose, and though I wasn’t willing to alter my Ziploc-inside-cargos arrangement on my bottom half, I went fancier on top, with a light blue peasant blouse. It was the one nice shirt I owned that was sufficiently baggy.
Halfway across the lake I could see them waiting for me on their dock. Both of them short, with bare legs. Both with sun glinting off their red hair.
But as I got closer I could spot the differences between them. Casey’s hair was shoulder length and bone straight; her mother’s fell in spirals past the waist of her cutoffs. Casey was sturdy and slightly bowlegged, giving the impression that she was firmly planted on the ground. Her mother, though no taller, was fine-boned. All jumpy vertical lines. Alexandra was like Casey, made with more care. And though she was thirty-six, she could have passed for a college girl.
She reminded me of one of the redheads in my European art book, a full-page print I’d tried (unsuccessfully) to copy. Not the woozy Klimt lover, who looked like she’d been folded to pack in a trunk. I liked this painting better: a modern Russian oil of a young auburn-haired dancer surrounded by chaotic brushstrokes, her eyes defiant, her arms so fluttery they seemed to disturb her painted background. That’s what Alexandra was like.
“Need help?” Alexandra darted across the dock as I tied up. To Casey she asked, wringing her hands, “Does she need help?”
“She’s fine, Mom. Laura’s a pro.”
I climbed up the ladder, self-conscious under her steady gaze. When I tried to shake her hand she pulled me in for a hug, speaking close to my ear. “Alexandra Shepherd, but call me Alex, of course.”
My dad’s version of a hug was one palm rapping me on the back like I was choking on a chicken bone, and my mother limited her displays of affection to awkward shoulder pats.
This was a full-body squeeze, and the force of it, coming from someone so little, unnerved me. When she finally let go she didn’t really let go. She only leaned back, still so close I could count the freckles on her nose. She didn’t have as many as Casey.
“Laura,” she said, cupping my jaw in both warm hands.
“Mom.”
“Oh, I’m just excited. Your first friend in the new town. I’m sorry, Laura.”
“It’s okay.”
It wasn’t exactly okay, though. I didn’t know where to look. She still had both hands under my chin and her gray eyes were darting and circling, scanning my features.
“Careful, Laura, she wants you to sit for her. When she analyzes someone’s face like that, she’s making plans. And it sucks, believe me.”
“You caught me.” Alex dropped her hands and stepped back. “Laura, you’re welcome here anytime.”
Some people pronounced my name Low-ra, and some people said Laah-ra, and neither was correct. It was just Laura, standard pronunciation.
Alex said it like there were three syllables, not two, adding a breathy cascade within the vowel. Lau-aura. She said it like a declaration, like I couldn’t possibly be anyone else, and like meeting me confirmed that I was just as wonderful as Casey had said.
“I’m starved and you’re freaking out my friend.” Casey was already running to the back door. She was barefoot, wearing her purple bathing suit, but she’d pulled on cutoffs for the occasion.
Alex didn’t speak as we walked up the path together, and as she held open the screen door, she watched me closely again, her eyes monitoring my face for a response as I took in the fixed-up house.
She’d transformed it. Newly white walls brightened up the long room and set off the blue of the lake and the green of the pines coming through the small, high windows and screen door. There were the antiques I’d heard about—a circular wooden table and chairs near the tiny kitchen, a deep armchair on a braided oval rug next to the fireplace, and a low yellow daybed had replaced the futon in one corner. But she hadn’t sanded away the marks in the floor from the old bunk beds, I was relieved to see.
“Like it, Laura?” she said, fidgeting with the hem of her white eyelet tank top.
“It’s perfect.”
“You did a good job, Mom,” Casey said from the kitchen table, a croissant hanging from her mouth. “Now can you two please stop being so freaking polite so we can eat?”
* * *
When Alex was in the kitchen slicing an almond pastry, Casey whispered across the small table, “I’ve never seen her so quiet. She must really want to paint you. Watch out.”
“I don’t mind.”
* * *
Alex was more relaxed each time I came over. She stopped saying my name more than the standard amount, and began to match Casey’s description. She did talk too much. She did launch from one hobby to another so fast it was hard to keep up.
And she did want to paint me. I chalked up her odd behavior on that first morning to the overwhelming impression I’d made as a potential subject, and I was flattered.
By midsummer we’d settled into a routine. Mornings I sat for sketches on the back porch, muscles aching, but happy to let Alex and Casey entertain me.
One hot day in late July Alex had me in a stiff-backed dining room chair with my hair in a tight bun. She said she was trying to capture something in my eyes. That I was “an old soul but tried to hide it,” and she hadn’t managed to draw this to her satisfaction.
“You have a... What is it, Case? What’s in her eyes that’s so hard for me to get right? That bit of sadness mixed with... I don’t know what.”
“That’s a neck cramp mixed with the desperate need to pee. I know the feeling well.” Casey was sprawled in the sun by my feet, a paperback of Peyton Place tented above her face.
She read a section aloud: a couple writhing around, monitoring the status of the man’s erection, panting out a play-by-play of their lovemaking.
When Casey wasn’t acting out Peyton Place, making me laugh until I broke form, Alex would lecture us on her latest bird. Her birding mania had abruptly replaced a brief heirloom tomato kick. She’d even invested in binoculars and a leather journal for recording her sightings. Casey and I knew as much about the yellow-headed blackbird as the local Audubon Society.
“Their scientific name is Xanthocephalus,” Alex said from behind her easel. “And the Tahoe basin has lost hundreds in the last ten years, isn’t that awful? Their call is so unusual. Like...a rusty gate opening over and over, and—”
“Oh, my God, Mom. You’re a rusty gate opening over and over. Give it a rest.”
Alex popped her head above her easel. She had her curls piled on top of her head, and a double pine needle had fallen onto it like a hair ornament. “Laura’s interested. Aren’t you, Laura?”
“Definitely.”
“She’s just being polite. Laura doesn’t give a shit about the Xanadu birds anymore and neither do I.”
“Xanthocephalus,” I said, laughing.
“Kiss-up,” Casey said.
“Dang it all, Case, you made me mess up.” Alex had the same laugh as Casey, full-throated and coppery. “Naughty girl.”
A few days later, Peyton Place and the yellow-headed blackbird were replaced by My Sweet Audrina and the dark-eyed junco bird. The material varied, but the two-woman show did not. Alex the flighty. Casey the sarcastic.
And me. I was the audience. Sometimes the egger-on or the mediator. They each tried to get me on their side, and I loved every second of this gentle tug-of-war.
After