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Hearing about Franny’s sons gives me another uneasy jolt.
Theodore and Chester Harris-White. Such unbearably WASPish names. Like their mother, they prefer their nicknames—Theo and Chet. The youngest, Chet, is hazy in my memory. He was just a boy when I was at Camp Nightingale, no more than ten. The product of a surprise, late-in-life adoption. I can’t recall ever speaking to him, although I must have at some point. I simply remember getting occasional glimpses of him running barefoot down the Lodge’s sloped back lawn to the edge of the lake.
Theo was also adopted. Years before Chet.
I remember a lot about him. Maybe too much.
“How are they?” I ask, even though I have no right to know. I do it only because Franny gives me an expectant look, clearly waiting for me to inquire about them.
“They’re both well. Theo is spending the year in Africa, working with Doctors Without Borders. Chet will be getting his master’s from Yale in the spring. He’s engaged to a lovely girl.” She pauses, allowing the information to settle over me. The silence speaks volumes. It tells me that her family is thriving, in spite of what I did to them. “I thought you might already know all this. I’ve heard the Camp Nightingale grapevine is still fully intact.”
“I’m not really in touch with anyone from there anymore,” I admit.
Not that the girls I knew at camp didn’t try. When Facebook became the rage, I received friend requests from several former campers. I ignored them all, seeing no point in staying in touch. We had nothing in common other than spending two weeks in the same place at the same unfortunate time. That didn’t stop me from being included in a Facebook group of Camp Nightingale alumni. I muted all posts years ago.
“Perhaps we can change that,” Franny says.
“How?”
“I suppose it’s time I reveal why I’ve asked you here today,” she says, adding a tactful “Although I do enjoy your company very much.”
“I’ll admit I’m curious,” I say, which is the understatement of the year.
“I’m going to reopen Camp Nightingale,” Franny announces.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
The words tumble forth, unplanned. They contain a derisive edge. Cold and almost cruel.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That came out wrong.”
Franny reaches across the table, gives my hand a squeeze, and says, “Don’t feel bad at all. You’re not the first person to have that reaction. And even I can admit it’s not the most logical idea. But I feel like it’s the right time. The camp has been quiet long enough.”
Fifteen years. That’s how long it’s been. It feels like a lifetime ago. It also feels like yesterday.
The camp closed early that summer, shutting down after only two weeks and throwing lots of families’ schedules into chaos. It couldn’t be helped. Not after what happened. My parents vacillated between sympathy and annoyance after they picked me up a day later than everyone else. Last to arrive, last to leave. I remember sitting in our Volvo, staring out the back window as the camp receded. Even at thirteen, I knew it would never reopen.
A different camp could have survived the scrutiny. But Camp Nightingale wasn’t just any summer camp. It wasthesummer camp if you lived in Manhattan and had a bit of money. The place where generations of young women from well-to-do families spent their summers swimming, sailing, gossiping. My mother went there. So did my aunt. At my school, it was known as Camp Rich Bitch. We said it with scorn, trying to hide both our jealousy and our disappointment that our parents couldn’t quite afford to send us there. Except, in my case, for one summer.
The same summer that shattered the camp’s reputation.
The people involved were all notable enough to keep the story in the news for the rest of the summer and into the fall. Natalie, the daughter of the city’s top orthopedic surgeon. Allison, the child of a prominent Broadway actress. And Vivian, the senator’s daughter, whose name often appeared in the newspaper with the wordtroubledin close proximity.
The press mostly left me alone. Compared with the others, I was a nobody. Just the daughter of a neglectful investment banker father and a high-functioning alcoholic mother. A gangly thirteen-year-old whose grandmother had recently died, leaving her with enough money to spend six weeks at one of the nation’s most exclusive summer camps.
It was Franny who ultimately received the bulk of the media’s scorn. Francesca Harris-White, the rich girl who had always befuddled the society columns with her refusal to play the game. Marrying a contemporary of her father at twenty-one. Burying him before she turned thirty. Adopting a child at forty, then another at fifty.
The coverage was brutal. Articles about how Lake Midnight was an unsafe place for a summer camp, especially considering that her husband had drowned there the year before Camp Nightingale opened. Claims that the camp was understaffed and unsupervised. Think pieces blaming Franny for standing by her son when suspicion swirled around him. Some even insinuated there might besomething sinister about Camp Nightingale, about Franny, about her family.
I probably had something to do with that.
Scratch that. I know I did.
Yet Franny shows no ill will as she sits in her faux forest, outlining her vision for the new Camp Nightingale.
“It won’t be the same, of course,” she says. “It can’t be. Although fifteen years is a long enough time, what happened will always be like a shadow hanging over the camp. That’s why I’m going to do things differently this time. I’ve set up a charitable trust. No one will have to pay a penny to stay there. The camp will be completely free and merit-based, serving girls from around the tri-state area.”
“That’s very generous,” I say.