In the summer of 1977, my mother, Page, and her best friend, Lily, ventured to the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. They left the adults behind on the porch to drink wine, smoke cigarettes, and talk about politics. My grandmother, clad in chunky jewelry with a paisley scarf wrapped around her head, barely noticed her daughter’s departure. In those days, it was normal for two ten-year-olds to travel unaccompanied to an amusement park. And my grandmother, a francophile and professional artist, was particularly apt to adopt the ‘laissez faire’ parenting style. 

Mom, in her hand-me-down overalls and misshapen bangs, looked like Peppermint Patty from the Peanuts. She was the youngest of two brothers who often used her as their BB gun target, and it showed. Lily was whip-smart, with licorice dark hair and an insatiable hunger for games, adventure, and mischief–the very things Funland promised. 

With its coins clinking, buttons blooping, and neon lights flashing, the Funland arcade was a siren’s call. Its pinkish fluorescents glowed across the wood panels of the boardwalk–inviting you into a virtual reality while waves crashed in the distance. That night, Mom and Lily spent hours betting on slot machines, plunging for plush toys with a claw crane, and shooting skee-balls that made plastic horses advance in a Derby-style race. 

They had just run out of coins when a man in a white tee, mid 40s, approached them. Mom was busy scanning the room for other games they could afford, her ADD-brain feasting on the buffet of stimulation. In the corner, the man proceeded to talk to Lily as if he were an old friend. He said he had quarters in his car and could loan them a few. Mom declined the offer, but Lily insisted they get the change. Reluctantly, Mom agreed, and the three walked to the parking lot. But once at the car, he said the coins were at his house. 

“Come on, get in, Page,” Lily coaxed.

No, this is wrong, Mom thought. This feels wrong. But Lily persisted, calling shotgun and jumping in the passenger seat. Mom climbed in the back. His car reeked of body odor and cigars. She stared at his bulbous nose in the rear-view mirror as he opened his glove compartment and offered them hard candies.

“No thank you,” she said firmly. “We have to go home.” 

But Lily pressed on. 

“It’s ok, Page, I know him.” 

She kept saying ‘I know him.’ Lily took the candy. He had driven only a block, the drumming of the arcade still audible, before Mom ordered he stop the car. 

“Lily, we’re getting out,” she mustered in her sternest voice. 

The car slowed, but Lily remained at ease in the passenger seat. 

“Our parents are looking,” Mom said. “My dad is a congressman.” 

And that was true. Her father (my grandfather) was congressman of Delaware at the time and spent most weekends in Washington. 

“People will look for us,” she added. 

He unlocked the car. After the final, futile plea for Lily to join her, Mom jumped out and ran home without her friend.

By the time she returned to the house, a policeman was waiting on the porch with her parents. Mom told them Lily had not come with her. My grandmother called Lily’s mother, alerting her the police were looking for her daughter. About an hour later, Lily walked up to their porch. No one asked follow-up questions. The missing child was no longer missing. The policeman left. The search was over, case closed. When Mom saw Lily, she got angry. 

“Where were you?” Mom questioned. 

“We just went to his house and watched TV. He gave me candy,” Lily replied.

“I’m in so much trouble with my parents!” Mom screamed. “You got us in so much trouble.” 

That was the extent of the conversation. Lily was home. Mom was mad. They never talked about it again.

Mom was 30 and had just recently given birth to her first child, my older sister, when she got the news that Lily died of a heroin overdose. They had remained close over the years, continuing to play ding-dong ditch and throw eggs at cars. They called each other when home from boarding school and college. Lily graduated from Princeton, published scholarly journals on infectious disease, cut her hair short, moved to San Francisco, struggled with Schizophrenia and drugs. The last time they saw each other was when Lily stopped by to give Mom a hug and wish her luck on the morning of her wedding to my father. She couldn’t stay for the ceremony because she had a flight to catch. She was going to Africa to study bird blood. 

The funeral was held in Delaware. Mom returned to her provincial hometown to see all her childhood friends, friends’ parents, and parents’ friends, for the first time in 20 years. They grieved. At the service, Mom talked to Lily’s parents. Her dad didn’t seem as warm as usual. But it was a brief conversation in an abyss of others, muted by the cacophony of funeral pleasantries. 

Years later, in 2003, Mom picked up my grandmother from one of her art shows. 

“Did you and Lily ever get in a car with someone?” my grandmother asked as they faced the windshield. She went on to explain that a mutual friend told her about a letter Lily wrote to her father just months before her overdose. It mentioned the summer of 1977, something about a man, something about Funland, something about a rape. An anchor plunged to the bottom of Mom’s stomach that would remain forever fastened. What happened that summer? Where did she get in the car? When did she get out? What happened to Lily after? She remembered the way she reacted that night, her childish anger in the wake of whatever Lily had just experienced. How could she’ve been so insensitive to her best friend? To think she could have exacerbated Lily’s trauma, caused more shame. Why had it happened to Lily and not her? Was that why Lily’s dad seemed cold? Did they blame her? As she drove on, guilt took the wheel. She was in the backseat again. 

Every summer since I can remember, my family took the trip from DC to Rehoboth. Mom would tell us to “look out, not down” as we crossed the Bay Bridge, the Chesapeake waters stretching below us. We’d drive through cornfields, stop at Royal Farms for the rare fountain soda, then arrive at my grandparents’ cottage, just blocks from the beach and boardwalk. My grandfather would ask about the traffic, to which Mom would reply she needed a glass of wine. We’d sit on that same wraparound porch that hosted their dinner parties in the 70s, swing in the mildewy hammock, hang sandy towels on the clothesline between trees in the yard, get ice cream in town, and of course, beg to go to Funland. 

Mom once loved taking my older sister there to ride the carousel, helicopters, and mini boats. She’d breathe in the salt-water taffy and Dolles’ caramel corn, relishing that it all still smelled the same. But after 2003, the memories were no longer fond. They felt fake. The smell of funnel cake was nauseating. The cotton candy looked poisonous, like it might expand in your throat and suffocate you.

I only remember my dad taking me to Funland in the days when my parents were married. We rode bumper cars and shot at targets with water guns while Mom stayed behind. “Too many germs,” she’d say, handing us wipes to sanitize the seats. Dad did not realize the way her childhood kingdom had crumbled, the magic perverted. The curtain was pulled back on life–backstage was a dark place where danger crept around every corner. 

A few years later I heard about Lily, in bits and pieces. First it was a stranger danger story–never follow someone, never get in a car, never accept something offered to you. Over time, the story deepened—Lily’s eccentricities, Lily’s sexuality, Lily’s relationship with her parents. What was that fight she overheard once, between Lily and her mom? Why was Lily so angry? What was that story about a stalker who called their landline? Is what she knows now distorting her memory of what she knew then? Is she projecting? The questions still circle like a carousel. 

Last summer, I brought my boyfriend to the cottage in Rehoboth, the first boy I’d ever brought there. He read the paper with my grandparents over stale blueberry muffins and bruised clementines. We swung on the moldy hammock. We said I love you for the first time on the porch. It was a weekend lifted from a teen romance novel, the kind you miss even before it’s passed. 

On our last night, we split a bottle of wine then walked to the boardwalk for ice cream. I took him to Funland. We drove the bumper cars, spun the Teacups, played the skee-ball racehorse game. As we rode the Paratrooper, pink and red lights swirling below us, we took in the fleeting view from the top–that stretch of boardwalk and the black ocean beyond it that you glimpse just before you drop. I sent Mom a picture of our dangling bare feet.

When we had exhausted our funds and ourselves, he slid a remaining worn paper ticket in his wallet as a memento from the evening. The act of preservation struck me. Funland would be a whimsical memory lane for us, but it would remain a dark alley for my mom. It was a romantic date and a house of horrors, an arcade with victories and losses, a ride both loved and feared. As Mom asked about my weekend, teasing that the picture I’d sent “just screamed you’re in love,” I felt a pang of guilt for the joy I held in a place that caused her pain.

“I want you to have happy memories from there,” she said. “Until I learned the truth, or what could be the truth, I had them too.”