June 1980-Something
“Come on, they’re catching us,” I heard a girl’s voice say. The next thing I knew, her arm was looped into mine, and she was pulling me down Water Street. I found myself running to keep up with her, trying hard not to trip over my long sundress.
I had never met this girl, but I knew who she was. Pepper Toohey. How did I know? Everyone knew who the Tooheys were. That family was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, manufacturers of plumbing supplies in North America. If you are reading this on the toilet, stand up and look around. Chances are it says Toohey on the tank.
Living in Keech, Maine, it was impossible not to know who they were. My dad thought the Tooheys were God’s gift to the town. He loved telling Toohey stories. He loved hearing Toohey stories. Most people, however, thought they were just stuck-up snobs that clogged the best seats in the restaurants in the summer and hogged the best parts of the coast for themselves.
Pepper’s dad was the big boss at the toilet company, and she was the big boss of her cousins. We had both just graduated—her from some prep school in Massachusetts and me from Keech Town High. She was wearing crazy huge vintage sunglasses and a big floppy hat. Her blonde hair was pulled into two pigtails. I didn’t know anyone my age who still wore pigtails, but on Pepper, it somehow looked all right. The sunglasses called attention to the spray of large freckles that spanned the bridge of her nose. They were pronounced and spread apart, like she had been Raggedy Ann for Halloween and never washed off the face paint. Come to think about it, that’s how I recognized her.
I looked behind us, and a pack of her cousins were following us down Water Street past the dockside restaurants and souvenir shops. Pepper smacked her dime-store flip-flops as loud as she could as we rushed along the sidewalk speckled with gull poop. She was wearing a gray tank top, patched jeans, and a madras shirt, unbuttoned and untucked, as if thrown on as an afterthought. It fluttered behind her as she sped along.
She directed us into the Dock n’ Dine just as they were opening. The Dock n’ Dine was the town’s best restaurant, and it had the best summer jobs—boaters too drunk to sail, showing off for each other with outrageous tips. I had never worked there. Our housekeeper, Flo, told Dad the waitresses there get groped—and “those girls” encouraged it to get bigger tips. After that, the Dock n’ Dine was completely off-limits for me—even for dinner. And that was a bummer because it used to be our special occasion restaurant. The last time we came here, it was because I got a 1260 on my PSATs. And now, here I was with the Tooheys on some random Tuesday in June.
We were greeted with dirty looks from some of my classmates—well, they weren’t my classmates anymore. They were waitstaff now—maybe forever. Pepper moved the closed sign out of a section and commandeered a large dockside table. The rest of the family caught up and began to settle around the table. She quickly pushed me down into a chair next to the tallest—and cutest—boy in the group. I guessed he was her brother, Pike. She sat on the other side of me.
When everyone was finally seated, Pepper snapped her head around and looked at me.
“Wait a minute, who the hell are you?” she said.