The Clover Girls Read online

  “Mom? Who’s John Hughes?”

  I can hear the soundtrack from his movies echo in my head. My heart breaks.

  How do you explain old ghosts that continue to haunt you?

  “A guy who directed a bunch of very successful teen comedies when I was a kid,” I say.

  “What’s this about?”

  “A group of teenagers from different high school cliques who have to spend a Saturday together in detention.” I stop and look up at her. “They really get to know about each other and why they are the way they are because of their lives and their families. It’s about how we get stereotyped without people ever knowing us.”

  “Do they become friends?” she asks.

  I lift my shoulders. “For the day,” I say. “They understand one another. Then they go back to who they were.” I stop. “Like life.”

  I think of Rach, Em and Liz, and I will myself not to cry. I pat the couch. “Want to watch a little bit with me?”

  Ashley looks uncertain. “Okay,” she says.

  I move my legs, lift up the blanket, and she slides in beside me. This is not common in our home. Lying around watching TV. Slacking, as we used to call it in school. Our television is hidden in a den at the back of the house. Sliding frosted glass doors close off the space, which is filled with my favorite things: a TV, beloved books, a comfy couch, McCoy vases, candles that smell like pine and campfires, and one of my grandma’s old quilts. None of these things are midcentury modern. I take that back: I’m definitely midcentury these days. Just not so mod anymore.

  “Want a Little Debbie?” I ask.

  Ashley looks at me. “What?”

  I reach into the cushions and pull out a box of Swiss Rolls.

  “Mother!” she says. “You are a sneak.”

  I open a packet. “They are so good,” I say. “And, look, if you chew the chocolate just right on the bottom, you can unroll it and lick out all the crème filling.”

  My daughter stares at me.

  “Stop it,” I say. “Just try a bite.”

  She takes a Swiss Roll and has a teeny bite. And then a bigger one. She downs the Little Debbie in four bites.

  “Atta’girl!” I say, laughing.

  “What else do you have hidden around here?” she asks.

  A lot of secrets, I don’t say.

  We watch the movie, before my daughter suddenly sits up on the couch and exclaims, “Oh, my God, Mom! You look just like her!”

  She is pointing at the TV, her finger jabbing the air.

  “I know,” I say.

  “Who is that?”

  “Molly Ringwald,” I say. “She was the actress of the ’80s. The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink...”

  “Mom, no, this is, like, really weird. She looks just like you!”

  “Wanna hear a story?” I ask. Ashley nods. “I rarely tell anyone this, but it was hard for me in school.”

  “You? The model?”

  “I wasn’t always a model. I was once a red-haired girl with freckles who wasn’t blonde and pretty and hippie-chic like all the other girls. Everyone—and I mean everyone—thought I was ugly. They called me Carrot Top, Pippi Longstocking, Ember, Big Red, Gingersnap...” I stop, remembering a nasty nickname, my face flushing.

  “Are you okay? You can tell me.”

  “No, it’s too embarrassing. Let me just say boys said even cruder things to me.”

  Ashley puts her hand on my shoulder. “Mom,” she says softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “And then along came Molly Ringwald,” I say, nodding at her on TV. “She not only made redheads cool, she made them pretty. I went to summer camp not long after Sixteen Candles came out in theaters, and Molly was all the rage. And just because I looked like her, everyone at camp immediately thought I was beautiful. Girls were jealous of my looks. Boys liked me. Everyone wanted to be my friend.” I stop, thinking again of The Clover Girls. “It changed my life and gave me confidence. I realized that being different was cool.” The movie goes to commercial, and I reach for the remote and mute the TV. “I know I’ve told you some of this story before, but not everything. My last year at summer camp, I was a head counselor along with all my best friends from there. When we got to Birchwood our last summer, we learned that Life magazine was coming to do a photo essay on the fading appeal of girls’ sleepaway summer camps in America. I was chosen to be the face of our camp. When the article was published and I got home from camp, every major modeling agency in the US wanted to sign me. That launched my career. I worked very hard, but I know I was also lucky. And I know that my friends believed in me.”

  Liar! You still can’t tell the whole story. You still can’t be honest with yourself. You duped your best friend to get ahead.

  I take a breath and continue: “You know that letter I got the other day?”

  “The jump-in-the-pool letter? Yeah.” Pause. “You know, I was really worried about you.”

  “I know,” I say. I grab her hand. “I’m sorry.” I look toward the TV. “The letter was from Emily, my old summer camp friend. The one who stayed in touch with me over the years. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “She died of breast cancer.”

  “Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks, honey. I wasn’t such a good friend, though. I didn’t know she was sick. I wasn’t a very good friend to any of my friends actually.” My voice trails off. “We all lost touch with each other after camp.”

  “That happens, though, right? Everyone grows up and moves away.”

  “Yeah, it does,” I say. “But it shouldn’t. Especially not with these friends. In her letter, Emily had a final request for all of us: she wants us to reunite in Michigan and scatter her ashes at the camp.”

  “Oooh. That sounds creepy.”

  “I know, but it’s not. It’s where she says she was the happiest. It’s where she went to spend some of her last good days, to be surrounded by happy memories.” I stop. “To be surrounded by her friends.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I don’t know yet. I need to talk with your dad, and see if he thinks it’s a good idea. You and Tyler will be away at camp, so the timing is good.”

  The Breakfast Club comes back on, and I turn the volume back up. As the movie continues, I watch Ash settle into the couch. Her eyes are riveted on the TV, and we watch it until the very end. Ash tears up when the letter the teens have written in detention—about conforming and how society stereotypes us before we’ve even discovered who we are—is read.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say as the credits roll.

  “Depends,” Ash says with a laugh.

  “Do your father and I put too much pressure on you? I mean, that’s a lot of what this movie is about.”

  “Truth?”

  I nod.

  “Sometimes,” she says, shifting her weight and sitting up on the couch. “I’m still figuring things out. So’s Ty. Sometimes, we feel like we’re already adults, competing, running full sprint to get ahead. You know what I mean? But sometimes we just want to be kids still. Blow off a day, have fun...” She stops. “Like we’re doing right now.” She stops again. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Do you feel like Dad puts too much pressure on you?”

  I inhale sharply. My child is very perceptive and empathetic.

  “Sometimes,” I say. “Sometimes I think he wants me to be as perfect as his designs or as perfect as this house. I spent my career trying to be perfect. And there’s no such thing.” I stop. “He has very high expectations because he’s been so successful, and that can be a good thing. It can also be a bad thing.”

  There is silence for a while as Simple Minds sing and the credits continue to roll.

  “I think you’re perfect, Mom,” Ash finally says
.

  My heart leaps.

  “Thank you, honey,” I say. “But, believe me, I’m not.”

  “You’re you, and that’s cool,” she says. “And you’ve been a great mom. I mean, for us to move so many times for Dad’s career, for you to sacrifice your own career and make me and Ty always feel safe, is pretty amazing.” She stops. “You need to know that.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “And you want to know something else, Mom? You’re really lucky. To have friends like you did is special. I mean, I have friends, but they’re not ones who know everything about me, all my hopes and dreams and secrets. We’ve moved so much, I don’t know if I’ll ever have friends like that. And maybe you need them in your life right now. Maybe that’s what the universe is telling you.” She stops and laughs, before adding, “And The Breakfast Club, too.”

  Ash reaches over and hugs me, and then leaves me on the couch.

  I curl up in a little ball and remember Em at summer camp. The Clover Girls thought we would always be friends. We thought we would never die.

  Why did I walk away? Why didn’t I call?

  “Em,” I whisper, finally allowing myself to say her name. I take a deep breath and say the other names, too, for the first time in ages. “Rach. Liz. I’m so sorry.”

  * * *

  “Are you sick?”

  I wake with a start.

  My husband is standing over me, arms crossed, a look of disapproval covering his face.

  I sit up, panicked, feeling around my body for the Little Debbies.

  I’ve hidden them, thank goodness.

  “Not sick,” I say. “Just...sad.” I pat the couch and pull the blanket around me. He doesn’t sit. “One of my friends from camp died. Emily. Remember?”

  “The one who stayed in touch with all of... What was that nickname you had for each other?”

  “The Clover Girls.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “It had been forever since you talked to her, though, right?”

  I nod even though I want to shake my head at him. Typical David. He can box everything up neatly and put it away so it doesn’t clutter his mind or world. I mean, he’s the only man I know who can wear linen all day in the heat without it wrinkling.

  “It was my fault,” I say. “I was a bad friend to her. I was a bad friend to all my friends. I stopped trying.” I look at him. “Listen, I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Em sent a letter, and her final request was for the remaining Clover Girls to meet at our old summer camp in Michigan and scatter her ashes. I think I need to do it, David. Not just for her but for me.”

  “You need closure?” he asks. “You need to say goodbye?”

  “I need to say hello, too,” I tell him.

  David cocks his head at me, not understanding.

  “This is an insane time for me right now, V.”

  “It’s always an insane time for you, David.” My voice rises. I didn’t intend for it to do that. “I’m just asking for a few days. Maybe a week, okay?”

  “A week to scatter some ashes?” he asks.

  “Don’t do this, David. The kids will be gone. I don’t ask for much, David. You know that.”

  He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes as if he’s considering my request.

  “I’m not asking, David,” I say.

  “Then maybe you need this time.” There is a long, awkward pause. “Maybe we need this time. Apart.”

  The last word is riddled with nuance.

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Time will tell, won’t it?” he says, before taking the blanket from me, folding it perfectly and tossing it at an angle across the arm of the sofa, a soft but overt signal that my time doing nothing is officially over.

  Rachel

  I have the ’80s station on the satellite radio blasting, windows down.

  The wind is blowing my hair around my head, I am nearly makeup-free—so not TV-ready today—and I’m singing at the top of my lungs.

  I am heading north, and that is the ideal direction to head in summer in Michigan. But the irony and tragedy involved with this sudden road trip—and the fact that the timing couldn’t be worse with midterm elections right around the corner—makes me feel as though I should turn the car around.

  I already know they hate me. And they know I hate them. Our glue is gone. There is no reason to make amends after what they did to me.

  I slow the car.

  And then I think of Em.

  Do it for her. Only her.

  There’s something I have to tell you, Rachel, I can still hear Em say our last summer together. Just promise that you won’t let it destroy everything.

  Just north of Manistee, there is a discernible change in the scenery as well as the temperature. Dense pines fill the countryside, and the forests darken. Rivers and little lakes dot the hills, and paper birch stand at their shorelines drenched in sunlight, their beautiful white bark peeling as if they just experienced a bad sunburn. When my parents would drive me to camp, my mom would make my dad stop nearly every time she saw a stand of birch so she could gather the bark for DIY projects. She made birch bark lamps, candle holders and coffee tables.

  “Your mother would wrap me in birch if she could,” my father would joke, our trunk filled with white bark.

  “Just your mouth, Harold,” my mom would reply.

  The sight of birch nearly makes me cry. My heart aches, and I can’t make it stop hurting, so I turn up the music even louder.

  How long has it been? I think.

  My dad was a Detroit auto executive, a union man who started on the assembly line and worked his way up. My mom campaigned for JFK. My father was my hero.

  What would he think of me now?

  I know what my family thinks: to see consistently blue Michigan turn red—and to realize that I had a lot to do with that—was a divide most could no longer bridge. In fact, it was as if the Mackinac Bridge had collapsed, and I was the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and my family was the Lower Peninsula.

  Politics has not only divided families into different camps, it has also driven a wedge between the entire country. And I’ve made a living—a good living—exploiting that divide. It used to be that the two parties could come together in the best interests of the country, but today’s political system is like The Hunger Games.

  My car continues to head north, and it chugs up a hill. As I near the top, Walloon Lake—where Ernest Hemingway spent his boyhood summers—stretches out beneath me. It is a deep, glacier-formed lake that is ringed with historic cottages, eventually flowing into Lake Michigan. I inhale the air on this perfect summer day, where the sky is so blue it seems as if God has Photoshopped it Himself. I think of Hemingway. He once wrote of this area, “It’s great northern air. Absolute freedom.”

  I know, because I’ve used his words—and his alpha male persona—to promote many candidates in these northern Michigan districts.

  “Why no women, Rachel?” my mom asked me a few years ago when we were still talking. “Maybe that’s something you ought to ask yourself. Why aren’t you out there seeking and nurturing women if you actually care about changing the world?”

  I shake my head and realize I’m in need of junk food. It’s not a road trip if there’s no junk food. Twizzlers. Combos. Funyuns. That’s my dirty travel secret.

  “Fuel?” I ask my car.

  “The distance to your destination is ninety-two miles. You can drive seventy-four miles with your current fuel.”

  “Thank you,” I say to my car for some reason.

  I think of driving up to summer camp as a teenager. I used to put in five bucks of gas and see how far it would get me in my big tank of a car. There were summers when gas was eighty-some cents a gallon. Back then, my gas gauge was like a
spastic butterfly, the needle flittering back and forth from empty to a quarter of a tank, me praying I could make it to the next station to put in another couple of bucks and buy some Hot Fries.

  I pull over at a rural gas station. Junk food hasn’t changed. Like gas, it’s only gotten more expensive.

  I fill up my tank and then head inside to stock up on sugar and carbs.

  A pack of girls in still-wet swimsuits race around the store. They have Drumsticks and bottles of Vernors, Michigan’s favorite soda, the gingeriest-ginger pop that tickles your tongue.

  Pure Michigan, I think. Hemingway knew. It was magic to be a kid in Michigan during the summer.

  For a moment, I am lost in memories. I think of all the times The Clover Girls would sneak away from camp in the middle of the night. Sometimes, when we were still girls, we would inch our way out of our bunks and tiptoe to the kitchen, where we’d steal Lucky Charms and Count Chocula and shove them into our mouths as if it were our last meal. When we got older and became counselors, we’d sneak out after all the campers had gone to bed and bike to the party store a couple of miles away in the woods—the ones hunters went to—and beg strangers to buy us beer.

  V would always ask why they called it a “party store” in Michigan and not a “liquor store.”

  Party stores are where you buy party supplies, like for Halloween, Mardi Gras and birthdays, she’d argue. Liquor stores are where you buy, you know, liquor.

  Welcome to Michigan. We’d laugh. We party. But it’s a secret.

  Michigan “secrets.”

  I gather my supplies and head to the counter.

  “Oh, my gosh, I just love you on TV.”