The Mailroom
Cigarettes, Klonopin, and lifeguards.
This story was originally printed in The Drunken Canal in July 2021.
I was confident that my plan was working when I heard soft cries and saw some commotion through the window of Bunk 4 just before the evening dinner bugle was called.
The water was still, the lawn was itchy and damp from the evening dew, and the air smelled of warm bread and butter to be served with piles of penne and pudding. Counselors stepped out of their bunks in soft half-zippered sweaters and knotty hair, a mix of horror and curiosity about the break in afternoon monotony.
I didn’t confess to them, but I’ll tell you: it was me who wrote the letter to Daisy saying I’d gotten stuck in the lawn mower at our house on Long Island. I told her I’d look different on visiting day, but not to worry, I’m still the same dad.
I also wrote the letter to Bunk 2’s Peter M. last Monday. I said: Mommy’s okay, I just lost a hand to a swordfish accident on Uncle Jimmy’s boat. We can still go looking for sea glass when you’re home in August.
I’ll take you back a few weeks to the first day of camp. Big black cars full of families in matching cardigans, and shiny leather suitcases full of more cardigans pulled into the beachside campground. They leaned down with their pale freckled children to snap photos of boney white smiles. They barely looked at the cabins where their own flesh and blood would be living for the next eight weeks, before carefully stepping through the grass so as not to turn their white sneakers green, and climbed back into their cars. Off they drove to the harbor, to the cape, to the country, to somewhere with more air conditioning and martinis than here. To somewhere they could be away from their children so they could act like children.
The counselors traded books and cigarettes and saliva with each other. Every morning they would lay out on the lawn, touching each other's bellies and braiding hair while their campers swam and spit water at each other and pulled splinters out of their feet. The counselors didn’t eat. The counselors did benzos in the dining hall bathroom. The counselors were bored and overpaid. I had to give them a reason to wake up a little. I’ve been working in this mailroom every summer since 1945. All these kids can use a little discomfort.
It started as a white lie. I watched Kate, one of the head counselors, send daily letters doused with perfume and oily lipstick kisses. In return, she got crisp, heavy envelopes on cream-colored stationery from a boyfriend in New York. One day I just… dropped his letter in the trash. Kate came into the mailroom four times that Friday. Her red nails tapped on the counter nervously, and her long blonde hair seemed to frizz for the first time in her life, sticking against her sweating forehead in annoying little strands. “I’m sorry Kate, there’s nothing for you today,” I told her.
Then I started shredding the newspapers, the only access to outside world events that this camp had. No movie schedules, no weather reports, no notice of swarms of bees that seemed to be unusually settling into Maine this summer.
But my plan dissolved. The entire camp soaked in the blankness that came with no news, and Kate started sleeping with Andrew the lifeguard.
One rainy morning, I watched as the grocery truck unpacked bags and bags of sugar and flour and bars of chocolate to be melted down and baked into the Visitor’s Day Cake. Visitor’s Day, the day halfway through the summer when all the parents of the campers pulled back into the beach parking lot, this time unloading gifts and bags of treats for their children for a few hours, before driving off again. Such a gluttonous day. I needed to act fast.
I mailed a letter to each camper’s home and summer home. I apologized profusely, and said there was no Visitor’s Day this year. That the campers would have to cancel Boat Day if we still had Visitor’s Day because of an error in the calendar. I said the children would be extra excited to see them in August on the last day of camp. Not one parent responded.
Come Visitor’s Day, the campers dressed up in their best. Pressed polos for the campers, short skirts begging for tips for the counselors. They filled the dining hall and awaited the sounds of Daddy’s Cadillac, but the only thing they could hear was the clanging of the flagpole and the clanking of the kitchen. Counselors covered the tables with Sweet n’ Low wrappers and wooden mixers for their coffee. Campers drank tiny packets of maple syrup. Noon, no parents. 3:37 PM, no parents. Suppertime, no parents, but plenty of lobster and chocolate cake. A cook slipped me some leftovers as I locked up the mailroom, said she’d never seen anything like it.
The next day everyone showed up to breakfast with swollen eyes and damp tissues. Tears on the pancakes, tears on the sleeves of their hoodies, soft cries behind every bathroom stall, but no noise. . No questions, no outrage, just tears. I wanted outrage.
The counselors didn’t even try to write letters to the parents to ask them why they didn’t show up, or express how upset the campers were about not getting any taffy. I was losing hope in these people, if that’s what they really were. I wanted them to question the world around them, the pause the diving contests, to smash the sand castles. Instead I got sulking.
August made everyone move even slower than the Klonopin was. Maybe it was seeping into the water. The whole camp moved at the pace of a melting creamsicle. Less mail in, less mail out. So I wrote the letter to Peter. And I wrote the letter to Daisy. And then I wrote the letter about the mushroom foraging disaster to little Louise, and then I wrote the letter about Spotty, our new puppy, to Frank Z. And then I wrote the letter to Andrew about how I knew he cheated on me with Kate. And then the summer ended.