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REUNION/Susan Terris Yesterday, my sister, her voice crackling across 2000 miles, phoned to say the counselors of our old summer camp have invited us to a reunion tea. Frosty, she told me, will be there. Huck and Nan. Also Sparky, Jo, and CG. Math may not be my strong suit, but even I can compute the counselors we last saw 40 years ago are filing Medicare forms, collecting Social Security. These women who loved other women passionately and young girls with chaste restraint, discarding guitars, Levis worn beltless on their hips, and Pendletons with Camels in their pockets, will be crooking handbags and patting wiry curls. is Marge coming? I asked and what would we all discuss as we crumbled macaroons? Our husbands, their partners? Our children, their pets? Our Milosz, their Kahlil Gibran? Even as my sister and I jammed the line with jests, I felt shamed and ashamed by my condescension. So I said I was cooking supper and hung up. Then, chopping leeks, I wept knowing I'd loved these women because they gazed past 12, past 14, past 16. Yet, still, I can't forgive them for striding from old photos to reandrogynize me, so I rang my sister back and said I couldn't afford to come. 112 · The Missouri Review TWELVE: ROUGHAND UNSUGARED/ Susan Terris River time was the only time as we relished what was stolen, what was borrowed and the pleasure in each. Past sandbanks on the Flambeau, adrenaline high, we whitewatered in canvas canoes, buoyed by the weightlessness of youth where risks were taken, not subjects to debate. At night, the campfire flared and, with our counselor, we bellied between furrows, stole armfuls of corn to roast for supper. But we'd forgotten to portage salt, so we scrubbed our faces, tucked shirttails, hiked to the farmhouse by the field where we—well-mannered thieves— asked to borrow, even dug in pockets and offered to pay. Later, squatting by flames to fend off mosquito and bear, we roasted our booty, lavished charred grains with pinches of salt, knowing it was horse corn— feed for stock, rough and unsugared. But we filled our stomachs, picked our teeth, smelled wet cobs, our gamy, high-breasted bodies dimly aware, as we listened to fugue of guitar and wave, how the river had spun us free, and what was stolen had sweetness too complex for the tongue. The Missouri Review · 113 THIRTEEN: THE IRON HANDLE OF INNISFREE /Susan Terris Innisfree: not the bee-wattled glade of Yeats but Wisconsin by fast-moving water. Our tents were up. Dinner was squaw corn and Ritz apple pie from the campfire oven. And that night, before the bear came, my counselor—careful not to touch her body to mine—leaned toward me under inked pines and kissed me full on the lips. Later, after the bear, after morning coffee with eggshells, we swam the white river across from Innisfree; and as we—naiads on boulders ringed by water—lounged, I found the handle, a heavy iron oval, its shaft sunk deep into rock. Open sesame, I told myself. With a twist, hidden places might be revealed. As my counselor eyed me in my two-piece cotton suit, I took hold of the handle and slipped into the river, held fast and twisting, tethered yet free. Then, without looking back, I uncurled my fingers and let the current fly me downstream away from rock, iron, flesh: elements that beggared revelation. 114 · The Missouri Review FOURTEEN: BEDTIME STORY/Susan Terris My last year as a camper, last trip on the Flowage. After weeks of rain, mosquitoes smudging the air in pewter clouds, we fled to our tents after dinner. A terrible end for a terrible day: we'd dinged a canoe, forgotten coffee, and my cabinmates were furious I'd been chosen. Next summer, I'd be staff— a JC—while they were still campers. Taunting, they made me tent with our counselor Marge, said I was in love with her. To escape girls and mosquitoes, Marge and I zippered in. It was hot and sunset, through netting, a Crosshatch of amber as we stripped to underwear, lay on...

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