As Jake and I rejoined Esther and Oliver on the picnic quilt, I was unsatisfied, pissed off, and even more determined to make this thing happen.
Cold cuke soup, curry-fried chicken, potato chips, and freshly sliced tomatoes sprinkled with basil from Esther’s garden were set out in the center of the blanket. All my favorite foods. I reached for a slice of tomato, dripping red splotches of juice across my sneaker. I moved to rub off the stain with the heel of my hand just as Oliver poured a paper cup of lemonade. My elbow hit his hand and made him spill on his T-shirt, so he tossed the rest of the cup on me. At home, that would mean war, but that day I didn’t care, just mopped it up with the paper towel Esther handed me.
I tried to eat, but the celery stick and cream cheese gummed up my mouth. Dill and worry flavored the soup. If I stood up and turned around, I might be able to see the other side of the tree, where Emma was supposed to be sitting with her family. I didn’t look.
Jake handed me a bowl of cucumber soup for Esther.
“Cukes from your garden?” I asked her.
“We picked the first ones yesterday. Oliver helped me make the soup.”
Oliver grinned, opening his mouth to reveal a clump of half-chewed potato chips.
“Ugh. Where did you find him?”
Esther patted the blanket next to her and I scooted over. “Tell me about your bunk,” she said. “Your friends.”
“They’re great.” I rested my head against Esther’s shoulder and looked down at the quilt. I traced the sunburst pattern, my finger wandering from yellow to ochre to sienna to rust, silently echoing the names of the colors in the watercolor set Esther gave me for my tenth birthday. What if Esther was too sick to handle our plan?
Esther looked up from her soup. “What’s wrong, Mol?”
I wasn’t ready but I had to say something. So I said the first thing that popped into my head. “I discovered something about you this summer.”
Esther’s spoon froze midway between bowl and mouth. Her eyes were deep as midnight and I couldn’t read them.
“I learned that you’re an artist. That you designed the cranes. I love them and I’m so proud of you.”
Esther smiled and I relaxed. The chatter continued as we ate. Everyone had questions about camp, about friends, about swimming. Esther touched me a lot, patting my arm or lifting the damp hair off the back of my neck and blowing a soft wind onto my skin. I let her, even though I wanted to say, “Stop treating me like a baby.” Even though I wanted to blurt out the truth. When Oliver went to play soccer with some boys from the next blanket, I almost stopped him, so he could meet Rosa too. But I changed my mind and let him go.
When there was a lull in the conversation, I scooted up the hill between my family and Emma’s. I stood up and stretched against the tree trunk, pretending to do some oddball yoga pose but really spying on Emma’s family on the other side. It was pretty easy to figure out who was who. Emma was cuddled up next to a dark-skinned man whose frizzy hair seemed to meander off his head into his beard. That must be her father, Allen. Emma had never said he was black, but now her super-tan skin made sense. Her dad was talking and poking the air with his finger in a serious way. A woman with reddish curls—Red Rosa, of course—was mimicking his gesture and laughing, with her mouth open so you could see all her teeth.
Emma saw me and raised her eyebrows.
“I’m not sure about this.” I mouthed the words in exaggerated silent diction.
“What?” Emma mouthed back, her face scrunched up and perplexed.
I scooted closer and whispered, “I’m scared.”
At the sound, Rosa glanced up from her conversation. She looked at me, then at Emma. Squinted at me again for a long moment. I imagined she was trying to bring twelve years into focus. She turned to Emma, mouth open, wordless. Then back to me.
I crossed the pinky and ring fingers of my left hand in the secret ritual Rachel and I made up when we were little and trying to be brave. I kissed the tip of my pinky finger four times and blew the last kiss to the sky for good luck. I wanted to cry, or run away, but I didn’t. I stood up.
Rosa got up too. Her hair flared out, an explosion of rusty red. Behind her on the Heart, the cranes shimmered in the sunshine.
Rosa and I faced each other. I opened my arms to her.
“Hi, Aunt Rosa,” I said. “I’m Molly.”
It felt like a long time before she responded. Like a breath held underwater across the length of the pond and back. Then Rosa’s long legs covered the distance between us in two giant steps.
Rosa gathered a handful of my curls in each hand. “You’ve got my hair.”
“Yeah,” I said. I paused to gather my courage before continuing. “And Esther’s here. She’s sick.”
Rosa stood motionless, then turned to Esther, who stood behind me, one hand covering her mouth and the other braced against the tree trunk. The sisters stood motionless for a long moment, staring at each other, and then both held out their arms and embraced. Esther buried her face in Rosa’s hair. Rosa pushed back the bandana and touched Esther’s bare scalp. Allen and Jake shook hands and then they hugged too. The four of them stood together in a tight circle.
“I wrote you letters,” Esther said. “So many letters. I never mailed them.”
“Me too.” Rosa smiled. “I did the same thing.”
“I kept them in my pen pal box, hidden away.”
“I used to be so envious of that box.”
“I was so afraid I’d never see you again.”
“Same here.” Rosa brushed a tear from her cheek.
“I’ve gone over those days, over and over, in my head. Agonized about what was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have testified.”
Rosa nodded. “I’ve agonized too. I didn’t understand how torn you felt about Molly until after Emma was born.”
“I wanted to get in touch with you. But I felt so bad, so guilty. I couldn’t do anything.” Esther squeezed her eyes closed. “I was paralyzed.”
“But you did something about it. You sent Molly here.”
Esther nodded. “Jake didn’t want me to, and I was scared. But yes, I hoped.”
“I can’t believe it took a couple of kids . . .” Rosa buried the rest of her words in Esther’s neck.
I realized I was trembling. I grabbed Emma’s hand and squeezed so hard it must have hurt, but she squeezed back, just as hard. We couldn’t believe our crazy plan was working. We pulled Emma’s family blanket over the hill next to ours and gathered all the food in the middle. Emma and I sat close together at the edge of the blankets. I passed her some of Jake’s special chicken. “Taste this.”
Emma took a tiny bite and offered me a piece of bread stuffed with cheese. We grinned at each other, but neither of us could eat. We leaned against each other, our bare shoulders finally connecting our families.
“Great soup,” Rosa said to Esther.
“From my garden.”
Rosa shook her head. “I can’t believe you grow veggies.”
“I live in the country,” Esther said. “I can’t believe you live in New York.”
Jake sat next to Emma’s dad and pointed out Oliver running across the soccer field. “That’s my son,” Jake said. “Oliver.”
Allen smiled. “My nephew. He’s pretty fast.”
“We watched your release on television,” Esther said. “I hoped you’d contact me.”
“I was so disoriented,” Rosa said. “Nine years inside is a long time.”
Esther hugged her sister. “Oh, Rosa. Too long.”
“It gave me time to think about things.”
“You didn’t need that much time,” Allen said.
“Still,” Jake said, “I guess nine years isn’t too bad. Considering.”
“Considering?” Allen bristled. He looked like the porcupine that had chewed the rotting wood of our back porch until it sagged and buckled. “What does that mean?”
“You know, the bombing charges.” Jake moved closer to Esther on the blanket.
“Those charges were lies,” Allen said. “Rosa didn’t bomb anything.”
“We know that.” Esther touched Rosa’s arm.
“Why didn’t you defend yourself against them?” Jake asked.
Allen shook his head. “How do you defend yourself when the FBI manufactures evidence?”
Rosa’s neck turned red and blotchy. “My only choice would have been to betray my friends, the people who helped me. I couldn’t do that.” Allen moved close to her side.
Esther’s face collapsed. “Like I did, you mean?”
Jake put his arm around Esther’s shoulder and whispered into her bandana.
Rosa waved Allen back and took Esther’s face between her hands. “You know, you broke my heart.”
“If you had forgiven me, I wouldn’t have said that stuff at the second trial.” A tear snaked down Esther’s cheek, plummeting into a dark circle on her T-shirt.
Emma and I just sat there, next to each other, our arms pressed together. Watching and listening. Silent. Whatever made us think we could fix this adult-sized mess? I should have known better. My head and limbs and chest felt like stone, sinking in the thick mud at the edge of the pond, the quicksand of the grown-ups’ words. I wished I could turn into Sadie and soar into the sky and leave the sorrow below, but I had no wings.
Jake stepped between the sisters, facing Rosa. “You broke Esther’s heart, too, those things you said. And your choice—so principled— meant you went to prison and abandoned your daughter.”
“Finking on your sister is better?” Allen jabbed his finger at Jake.
“Allen’s right,” Rosa said quietly. “What kind of example does that set for your kids?” Rosa paused for a moment while she looked at me. “Or did you ever tell them?”
Esther stepped out from behind Jake. She was silent.
“I thought so,” Rosa said.
I couldn’t look at Emma. Couldn’t reach out to touch my mother. Couldn’t think about anything except the piece of cheese bread on the paper plate in front of me. Then Rosa and Allen pulled away their blanket, spilling the lemonade.
Emma got up then, ungluing her arm from mine. She helped pack up their picnic basket and the three of them walked toward the parking lot. Emma turned back once to look at me, her face frozen.
When they left, I suddenly became conscious of the hush around us, of all the stares of other campers and their families. My face burned with shame but my parents didn’t appear to notice. Esther’s head fell into her hands; she didn’t readjust the scarf that slipped off her naked scalp, even when it fell onto the grass. Jake snatched up the fabric, stuffed the picnic leftovers into the bag, and gathered Oliver from the soccer field. He kissed me goodbye and guided Esther with her bald head to the car.
Emma and I never performed our mirror movement skit.
The final week of camp went by in a slow, gray blur. We must have been kept busy with the Peace Olympics. No letters came from Esther that week but Jake wrote, telling me he’d pick me up at 10:00 a.m. sharp on Saturday morning. He didn’t mention visiting day. Neither Emma nor I knew how to act with each other. Emma decided to go home at the end of the week too, instead of staying for the second half of the summer.
As we packed up the last morning, I carefully wrote my phone number and address on the dachshund autograph hound Emma bought at the camp store, trying not to rip the muslin with my pen. When Emma and I hugged goodbye, our bodies rocked back and forth as we swayed from one foot to the other. I didn’t want to let go, but what could I say to her?
I didn’t see Emma get on the bus back to New York City, and she wasn’t around to say goodbye when Jake came to take me home.
During August, I often thought about Emma. I fantasized calling her on the pink princess phone Esther had installed in my bedroom as a welcome home present, but I never did. Before school started, I packed away the paper doll collection Esther had made, each figure individually wrapped in a tissue and entombed in a shoebox in the closet. By fall, I realized that some of my old dreams had slipped away too, of becoming a pediatrician like my father or an art teacher like my mother. I refused to sign up for more painting classes, even though Esther insisted I had talent. I started keeping a journal and thought maybe I’d be a writer instead. But I never wrote a single word about what happened at Loon Lake. By the time school started, life was back to normal. Esther’s chemo was over and she returned to her classroom too.
After Loon Lake, I stopped calling my mother by her first name. I knew it made her sad, but I didn’t care. Maybe that was the point. Sometimes I used Mama. Esther hated that—Mama was what she called her own mother. I called her Mother or Mom. Anything but Esther. Esther was a young woman who once, a long time ago, did something with her sister that I didn’t entirely understand and couldn’t quite forgive.