Daisy had listened to adults ooh and aah over Poppy’s abilities her whole life. But there was only one thing Poppy did that impressed Daisy: her mastery of the DivaCup. When she got her period, she had bragged to them how she could put it in and take it out without spilling a drop, and Daisy and Lilah had watched as Poppy made the little rubber cup disappear inside her body as she squatted in the bathroom they all shared. An hour later, Poppy reversed this magic trick, pulling the cup out and dramatically splashing it into the toilet bowl. This, more than school awards and official certificates tacked on a bulletin board in their attic bedroom, mesmerized Daisy, because even Carna said the DivaCup was a trick she couldn’t manage unless she wanted to make the bathroom look like a slaughterhouse.
“I’d rather go through the hassle of a monthly extraction like in the old days than that goddamn DivaCup,” Carna said. “While vacuuming out your innards is not for the faint of heart, I still maintain that maneuvering that cup is a bigger pain in the ass.”
Lilah and Violet sewed their own flannel pads, not liking the waste and cost of menstrual products. Frustratingly, Daisy’s period had not come yet, so she couldn’t attempt this lone stunt of her cousin that she admired. Daisy liked to think she would be able to do it; she had always been more focused than Lilah, which was why Poppy preferred to teach her things. Poppy taught Daisy to read, to make oatmeal and grilled cheese sandwiches, to fold paper cranes for a mobile they’d given Violet for a birthday gift, to clip wet sheets to the laundry line so the wind billowed them like sails. And Poppy taught her to swim in this very duck pond; she held Daisy’s small belly under her palm while all the other kids urged her to paddle over to them. All the mothers had been off to the side—their hands like visors over their eyes, chatting, looking at the flowers, drinking Diet Cokes in big plastic tumblers—Mrs. Dunedin still smiling and years from divorcing Wade’s dad, Violet in her homemade sundress and muck boots, Evie Isherwood, tall and thin and alive, the diamond rings flickering in the sun as she gripped her drink. Even Carna, always so busy those days with her nursing boards, had been there when Daisy learned to dog paddle. Everyone cheered for her, and thinking of this, when the sun went behind a big continent of clouds, Daisy at last began to cry.
She had never been much of a crier. Even as a baby, Violet always marveled at Daisy’s silence, her eyes on everyone, watching and smiling. She hadn’t cried when she heard about Evie Isherwood’s accident, nor when the details came out about a body so destroyed that the sheriff had to identify her by the cards in her wallet, the jewelry on her fingers. She hadn’t cried when the family took her off life support, nor at the funeral, when Brian Isherwood read the lyrics of a song his mother used to sing him and Hugh at bedtime.
But the memory of the swimming lesson, how good and happy it was, that did it. She had to hold in sobs, so not to give away her hiding place. She tried to breathe, calm herself. The redhead boy floated on his back, his pale skin white against the greenish water. Hugh was talking to the dark-haired boy in a regular voice that didn’t carry. She swallowed tears, wished she could hear what he was saying. Was he talking about his mother? Even if he wasn’t talking about her, he had to be thinking about her.
Though she had come from a farming family, Evie Isherwood had never quite fit the type. She never acted weary with too much work like Carna did, nor was she grubby from too much practicality, as Violet tended to be; she was not an earth-mama type like both Whitsun women, who lacked the vanity and the cash to do anything but let their blond hair darken. Mrs. Isherwood’s hair gleamed a sunny blond; she always looked ready to be photographed, even when she was at the grocery store or weighing out berries for her pick-your-own customers. She liked tight, dramatic dresses with cinched waists and high heels, and she always sparkled with jewelry. Even one night when she saw her in her bathrobe, Daisy remembered Evie Isherwood wearing all of her jewelry. Diamonds from her husband, thin gold chains around her tan neck, one of those bracelets with the little individualized charms: a football for Hugh; a hockey stick for Brian; a pink breast-cancer ribbon for her sister who was in remission; a glittery red berry when she opened the pick-your-own patch.
How could he stand it, when everywhere you looked, there was something beautiful Hugh’s mother had made or done. Maybe that was why he was swimming naked in a duck pond right now. Daisy had always lived around women and girls, and in her life, people were always talking, all the time, about everything: feelings, memories, aches and pains, wins and losses, gripes and grudges. But she didn’t know how boys and men went through their lives when it came to their words; they were either mysterious or hostile or silent, their tracks unclear, crossed over, littered with distracting debris. Difficult to discern.
A streak of reddish brown leapt across the white gravel, barking a solid bass line: Rusty, the Isherwoods’ ancient Irish setter. Hugh called for him, and after some doubling back, Rusty jumped as he’d been taught from the dock into the water, all four legs boxed out into the air, the boys shouting approval. They shouted again when the dog’s skinny skull split the surface and started bobbing as he paddled among them. Daisy sat up straighter, wiped more tears. She had always wanted a dog, and she had always loved watching Rusty swim.
But the dog’s appearance signaled the end. The dark-haired boy hauled himself out, extending a hand to the redheaded one. Hugh ducked underwater and emerged a minute later, forearms on the dock, hollering toward Rusty, who swam through the cattails, disturbing a family of ducks, which squabbled and flew off over the thick green of the soybean fields. Hugh laughed, watching Rusty shake his dirty, wet fur next to the other boys.
Privately, she’d always thought Rusty was pretty homely. Snarly fur from life outside, livid sores on his forelegs that he constantly scratched and chewed. But she would have even taken an ugly dog. All of them had begged Carna and Violet for one, but their mothers were firm. She watched Rusty canter away; she would have petted him if he’d come to her all wet. Even if he was homely.
But Hugh, coming into full view, was anything but homely. He had always been good-looking, but now he was even more so. The way he stood, comfortable in his bare self, the lower half of him hidden behind the wheelbarrow Mrs. Isherwood had upturned and filled with petunias and some other tall blue bloom Daisy couldn’t make out. Bachelor buttons? She watched as he took the T-shirt hanging off the wheelbarrow handle and wrung it out. The two other boys dried off with a red towel that looked way too plush for outside use; they’d probably nicked it from the master bathroom. She watched as they shook out their hair like Rusty, further blocking her view of Hugh, tossing the towel back and forth as they redressed in their funeral clothes. Finally, Hugh swiped it from between them and wrapped it around his waist, and there was a shout from the patio: Wade, Lilah, and a few other girls from school, waving in their direction. Lilah had changed into her orange dress with the lemon-colored hem; it had always been too big for her, despite Poppy offering to take it in. One of the girls called out to Hugh to come over and Daisy figured he would. But he shook his head and waved them off, and Wade motioned them all to go toward the side yard, where they disappeared. It was unnerving for Daisy to imagine having that power. In a towel, in a school hallway, at his mother’s funeral party: what he agreed to was what happened. Stunned, she watched him gather his clothes over his forearm. Then he dropped his towel.