Carmilla

Chapter Two

I drink white wine with our moms on the patio at sunset. They're reminiscing about their university days and all of their ridiculous stories together.

"Setsuko, I've always wondered... are you named after anyone? Your name is beautiful." Alice asks, who finally got home from hanging out with the neighbour's son.

"My mother named me after the beautiful Setsuko Hara, a Japanese actress born in the twenties."

"Like Scarlet O'Hara?"

Setsuko laughs, "Sure, but call me Sukie if you like, my children's friends do."

Mom is a little wine drunk and starts listing all of their old favourite karaoke songs.

"Oh my God, remember that one time with Bruce?"

"Bruce! I completely forgot about Bruce."

"Alice, Carmilla... your mother was absolutely infatuated with this playboy named Bruce. All of the girls were, except for me, of course."

"Lies!" My mom retorts, laughing.

"Anyway, your mom decided that to get his attention, we would sing three ABBA songs in a row at campus karaoke night. You can imagine how well that went."

"It was dreadful, you know I can't sing," Mum interjects.

"But, thankfully... your mom drank so much that she fell off the stage."

"And who caught me?" Mum asks slyly.

"BRUCE! Can you believe it?" Setsuko laughs.

"NO!" Alice and I scream.

"It was a magical night or at least the moments I can remember..." Mom hides her face behind her wine glass.

"Mom, oh my god! I had no idea you were so wild."

"Oh my God, Carmilla... she was crazy! My mother was so disapproving of our friendship from the moment she met her on move-in day. When we walked into the room, she was making out with a boy in her bed! You can imagine my immigrant mother walking in and seeing that her seventeen-year-old daughter was about to move in with a little slut—that's what she called her," Setsuko is roaring.

"Setsuko was so innocent when she met me!"

"I was, I had never even kissed a boy before university. Thanks to your mum, I kissed an entire fraternity one night."

Alice and I are both gaping at her.

"Hi..." Ren says, slipping through the patio doors with Ian. He's in sweatpants and a hoodie with bedhead. "We both fell asleep unpacking."

"Come, kiss mama,"

"Uh-oh, did you give her white wine?" Ren asks, laughing, and coming to her mother for two cheek kisses.

"Oh, they've had wine," Alice says, still giggling.

Ren introduces Alice and Ian, and they disappear because Alice wants to show him something. Ren takes Alice's spot on the love seat, and her knee touches mine when she crosses her legs. She's got the cutest bob, and her hair is a gorgeous honey brown—it must be dyed, it's so much lighter than her eyebrows. She looks nothing like her mother, where Setsuko is slim everywhere with a long face, and black hair swept into a bun Ren has a sweet, heart-shaped face.

"What have you guys been talking about?" Ren asks after my mom passes her a glass of pinot grigio. Our mothers exchange sly glances, and Ren rolls her eyes, "Ah, mom's hoe days?"

"Can you believe this is the first time that I've heard about this?" I ask her, and she arches an eyebrow.

"So, your mom doesn't get wine tipsy every Friday night and say things that she shouldn't?"

"Evidently not!" Setsuko says, shaking her head. "What's happened to you, Florence?"

"Well, now that her divorce is finalized, maybe we can... 'hoe' out as you say, Ren."

"Jesus!" Alice yells from inside, and we all laugh.

"Want to take a walk on the beach, Carmilla?" Ren asks, downing almost her entire glass in one gulp.

"I don't even want to think about what they're going to do now that they're both single and back together," Ren says, shaking her head as we follow the path through the beach grass beyond the fence around the pool.

"God, I can picture them looking for singles at a dive bar..." I make a face, even less enthused about it than she is.

"What were your parents like when they were together?" Ren asks.

"Um...normal. I think they co-parent okay; my mom never talked shit about him like my friends' parents did about each other."

"Do you know what happened with mine?"

"No... what?"

"My dad cheated, it was like an explosion. It happened last year. It's taken almost a year for my mom to get almost back to normal, that's why we're here. Every summer, we would go to my dad's parent's house in Banff, and she couldn't figure out what to do now that it's... not a thing anymore."

"So they don't talk, I guess?"

"Barely. Only when it comes to Ian. He even went back to Japan—he's living there with his brother for the summer."

"Did he not grow up here?"

"No, he's first-gen. My mom is a second-generation immigrant, a very... white one. That was honestly a bit of a barrier for them, he always wanted her to be more traditional, conservative, just different."

"What does he do?"

"He's a CFO in Vancouver, working remotely right now. What does your dad do?"

"He's a career university president, he's starting a new term in Boston in September." For my entire life, he's been a University president, but apparently, before that, he was a commerce professor. "You just finished your first year of university, right?"

"Yeah, first-year Commerce. You?"

"First year of general science. I think I want to be a chiropractor."

"Ooh, can you crack backs already?"

"I'm actually weirdly skilled at that," I reply with a laugh.

"I need your hands on me, oh my God." She walks ahead of me to splash through the surf, and I'm left to gape at her. Okay. My friend Abby would say: is she...you know...

"Do you come here every summer?" She asks as we walk back.

"In the last few years. Honestly, more often since the divorce, my mom used her settlement to completely renovate it. It used to be her parent's beach house, and while it's always been big and nice on the outside, the inside was super ugly and outdated."

"The pool is sweet, do you swim much?"

"Yeah, but more for exercise than leisure."

"So do you, like, run 7 days a week, swim and also lift weights?"

"Ah, I run 5 days a week, swim three." I feel a little self-conscious.

"Do you have local friends here?"

"I have a couple, but I mostly keep to myself."

"I guess we'll just have to keep each other entertained!" She grins and knocks her shoulder into me. That sounds...dreamy.

"You live in Vancouver, right?"

"Yes, I love it there, I never want to leave. This is actually my first time in Maine."

"You know, I wasn't sure about it the first time we came, but I've really come around to it. We should drive to Old Orchard Beach sometime it's so nice, a little different than the private beach vibe we have here."

"I would love that! Please. I don't drive, though, so you'll have to."

"Sounds like a plan."