The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (13 page)

Tammy flicked the tab of the joint into the bushes, stepped out of the puddle of Jan’s pants around her ankles, peeled off her tank top and bra in one swift motion, slid out of her underpants, and dove, naked, into the water. Jan watched her the way people watch fireworks.

“Can anyone see back here?” Debbie asked.

“No way,” Jamie said. “The whole layout of the pool was planned around—” Her mind had ended.

“What?” Debbie laughed.

Jan watched Tammy swim laps, rolling from her belly to her back to her side.

“I dunno,” Jamie said.

“No one can see, right?”

“My parents swim naked all the time.” 

“But they don’t care if people see them. That’s what their style is.”

“Style?” Jamie smiled.

“Can people see us?” Debbie was still laughing.

“No. It was plotted that way. The place. The place of the pool is the place where no one sees.” Jamie looked at Debbie and erupted in laughter.

Debbie stripped down and Jamie followed. They jumped into the pool, one after the other. Jan had not moved.

Swimming naked felt better than Jamie had imagined.

The water was alive; it swam against her, tickled, tingled. 
It was nothing like a bath—it was not passive, or restful, or soft. Swimming naked was motion, action, sensation.

Tammy and Debbie were noise and movement. They were a kaleidoscope that sings.

Jan was mute.

Jan stared.

Jan breathed through her mouth.

Every couple of minutes Jamie forgot that Jan was there.

On the rock.

In her clothes.

Every couple of minutes Jamie saw Jan and remembered that she was there.

On the rock.

In her clothes.

It was as if Jan were a thought too ill-fitting for Jamie’s long-term memory.

Debbie was hungry. She pushed herself out of the water like a mermaid emerging from the sea. Sheets of wetness glided down her back, off her thick black hair, tailed off the crack of her butt. She left a wet trail as she walked naked into the house. Jan was still looking at the French 
doors when Debbie emerged from them several minutes later.

“There’s nothing good to eat in this house,” she said. 
“Let’s go out.”

They all wore shorts and tank tops, except Jan, who had on dungarees and a brown T-shirt. The sidewalk wasn’t wide enough for the four girls, so Jan fell behind. When the sidewalk narrowed further, from a bush, or bulging-rooted tree, one of the girls stepped ahead so that they formed a diamond. They walked to the Fig Tree, a restaurant built around a giant fig tree, on which lived two wallabies. There were interior glass walls forming a cage, and a net that en-closed the top of the massive tree. The wallabies looked like miniature kangaroos. They were the size of small monkeys and hard to find. If you didn’t know they were there you could have an entire meal without ever noticing them.

The girls were seated at a table whose end abutted the glass wall. Jamie sat closest to the wall, Jan was across from her, Debbie was beside Jamie and Tammy was across from Debbie.

“I’m having French dip,” Debbie said to the waiter, who was college-aged, thick-haired, smiley.

“Me, too,” Jamie said.

“French dip and fries,” Tammy said.

“You don’t have to say fries,” Jamie said. “It automatically comes with them.”

“But you don’t have to have the fries,” the waiter said.

No one asked Jan what she was having.

“Three French dips with fries,” Tammy said, and she handed him all four menus.

“Three for the four of you?” he asked.

“No, for the three of us.” Tammy pointed at herself, Debbie, Jamie.

“Anything for you?” The waiter stared at Jan, who was looking out the glass wall.

“Jan, do you want a French dip?” Jamie asked.

Jan looked at her and nodded.

“Four French dips,” Jamie said.

Jamie, Debbie, and Tammy began laughing when the waiter walked away. Jan had yet to turn away from the glass wall.

Then, suddenly, she yelped and pushed her chair back. 
“There’s something hell’a big in that tree!” she said.

The other three couldn’t stop laughing.

Jan had brought her wallet—a red plastic square with a yellow plastic apple on the front—but had forgotten to put money in it (her cash was hidden in the lining of her suitcase). Jamie had three dollars that she took from the cookie jar where her mother kept grocery money—the French dip was only $1.75, but she threw all three in. Debbie didn’t have any money with her, so Tammy, whose father handed her a twenty-dollar bill every time she walked out the door, paid the rest of the tab.

“I’ll pay you back,” Jan said to Tammy.

“I don’t care,” Tammy said. “Easy come, easy go.” Just as the girls approached the door, their waiter dashed up.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Tammy said.

“What are you girls doing later?”

“Why?” Tammy asked.

Debbie and Jamie were holding in laughter. Jan looked bewildered.

“Some friends and I are having a party at Devereux tonight.”

“Who’s Devereux?” Jan asked Jamie, her voice sounding as if it were dubbed in at the wrong speed.

“It’s a beach,” Debbie snapped, “not a person. A beach.”

“Kegger,” he said.

“What time?” Tammy said.

“Ten,” he said. “And bring any cute friends.”

“Cool,” Tammy said, and she sauntered toward the door.

“See ya tonight,” Debbie said.

“Yeah, see ya,” Jamie said, though she knew that even her parents wouldn’t drive them out to Devereux beach at ten o’clock at night, and there was no possibility of Brett and Jimmy driving them to a party hosted by college boys.

They paraded out the door, Tammy in front, Jan stumbling in back. Jamie was smiling, seeing herself from what she imagined was Jan’s perspective, thinking how cool they were, fourteen-year-olds who had been asked by a college boy to go to a kegger. Just when they reached the sidewalk, the waiter ran out behind them.

“Hey, one thing,” he said.

Like pigeons in a row, the girls cocked their heads toward him.

“Don’t bring the retard.” He jutted his chin toward Jan, turned, and walked back into the restaurant.

Debbie and Tammy each placed a hand over their mouths—
they were smiling in horror. Jamie’s stomach thumped like a giant heartbeat as she reached out and grabbed Jan’s forearm.

“We’re not going to that party anyway,” she said. “Tammy was just flirting.”

“Yeah,” Debbie said, half-smiling, “he’s the retard.”

“I don’t care.” Jan’s cheeks were bulging tomatoes, her eyes were wet, flashing butterflies. She turned and galumphed off in the direction of home.

Tammy exaggeratedly mouthed Oh My God. Debbie was still trying not to laugh. Jamie ran ahead and caught up to Jan. Jan shrugged Jamie’s hand off her shoulder.

“Hey,” Jamie said. “I’m just trying to walk with you.”

“Kay,” Jan said, and she slowed.

They walked side-by-side; Debbie and Tammy were two sidewalk squares behind them, whispering and giggling.

Jamie despised them both. And although it was the first time she had had such strong distaste for her friends, Jamie wasn’t surprised by how easily the feeling had come to her, as if it were something she had been working toward all along.

“When are your parents going to be home?” Debbie asked. They were at the turning point for Tammy’s house, paused on the corner.

“They’re probably home by now,” Jamie said. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“Later,” Debbie said, as she and Tammy turned the corner and walked away.

Jan remained silent for the rest of the march home. As Jamie expected, the car wasn’t in the driveway when they approached the house; Allen and Betty hadn’t planned on 
returning until late that night, after dinner at their favorite restaurant in Ojai.

“Do you know how to play Rummy 500?” Jan asked.

“Yeah,” Jamie said.

“Wanna play?”

“Yeah, sure.” She would have played anything her cousin wanted.

Jamie and Jan sat at the kitchen counter with a package of Oreos, a carton of butter pecan ice cream with two spoons, and a deck of cards. They played Rummy 500 until their bottoms were sore and their stomachs were churning from too much sugar.

“Let’s have popcorn and cocoa for dinner,” Jamie said.

“That’s so crazy,” Jan laughed.

Jamie made popcorn in a saucepan that sounded like it was screaming when she scraped it back and forth along the iron burner. Jan melted butter in another saucepan, then added parmesan cheese and garlic powder before pouring it over the popcorn. In a third saucepan, cocoa brewed. When everything was ready, they poured the popcorn into a bowl and took it with their mugs of cocoa into the TV room. Jan plopped down just beside Jamie on the couch, thigh to thigh. The Gong Show was on and they both laughed. Jan screamed each time a contestant was gonged. The first couple times, Jamie looked at her cousin and laughed at her lumbering figure: mouth open, hands pushing down on her thighs as if it would give more force to her scream. Then Jamie joined in, bellowing each time the gong sounded, releasing something inside her—the weight of too much air, it seemed, for she felt so much lighter after screaming. By the end of the show the girls were throwing popcorn at the TV following each gong. Jamie thought it was more fun than any beach party she’d ever been to.

That night, lying in Jamie’s bed together whispering, just as Betty had hoped they might do, just as they had done when they were younger, Jamie drifted easily off to sleep.

When she awoke the next morning, she didn’t mind that Jan was still beside her.

Holy moly does that girl eat,” Betty said.

“She’s not fat,” Jamie said.

They were driving away from the airport. Jan had just boarded her plane. Allen wanted to stay and watch the jet lift off but Betty insisted on leaving so she could go home and pack for their trip to Yosemite with Lois and Leon.

“She’s big,” Betty said, “and it’s a pain in the ass cooking for big people.”

“You didn’t have to cook,” Jamie said. “She would have had cookies and milk for dinner.”

“Since when did you become Jan’s ally?” Allen was driving; he eyed his daughter in the rearview mirror.

“I dunno. I’m just sick of people making fun of her. She’s nice. She’s a nice person and she’d never hurt anyone the way people hurt her.”

Allen and Betty looked at each other, half-smirking, the way parents in a sitcom might look at each other after a clever comment at the dinner table. Sometimes Jamie felt the 
imbalance of her sister’s absence. Without Renee the family was a wobbly tripod with Jamie as the shorter third leg.

Betty bought two books for Jamie for the camping trip: Love, Sex, and the Family: A Guide for Young Adults, and Our Bodies, Ourselves. Jamie sat calmly on the edge of her bed, slouched in the middle, knees knocking, feet out, when Betty handed her the books. But really she wanted to scream like she had at The Gong Show—to throw the books across the room like giant kernels of popcorn. Jamie was convinced that Betty had somehow sniffed out her loss of virginity and was trying to help her through it. Jamie liked when her mother showed an interest in her; she was always happy to find her sitting in the theater during plays at school; she loved when Betty asked about her friends—
who was hanging out with whom, who was popular, who had slipped away. But the attempted entrance into her body made Jamie shudder; if she’d had quills, she’d have raised them. Jamie left the books on her bed and packed Fear of Flying, which she had stolen from her mother’s room and which she didn’t want Betty to know she was reading for fear of having to discuss Isadora’s sex life in the book.

When they pulled up to their campsite along the Tuolumne River, they found Leon lying on his back across a rock, arms folded behind his head, a toothpick bobbing out of his mouth like a tiny baton conducting an orchestra. Lois was sweeping the dirt of the campsite with a stick that had wide, serrated leaves bound to it with a vine.

“Oh, you brought Jamie,” Lois said.

“She’s too afraid to stay home alone and her boyfriend’s in Hawaii,” Betty said as she unpacked the car.

Jamie walked to the river to pretend she wasn’t listening.

She wondered why Lois had to begrudge her mother the joy of having her children around. Was it because the only person Lois had was Leon, whom Jamie often imagined as some sort of stink bug, wafting his noxious smell wherever he went?

“Didn’t her friends want to stay with her?” Lois asked.

Jamie could still hear them.

“I think they’re drifting apart,” Betty said.

“We’re not drifting,” Jamie shouted from the riverbank.

“They’re busy with their boyfriends!” It was painful for Jamie to hear her life narrated by her mother—Betty was so matter-of-fact about everything: Jamie’s fears, her friends, her love life. It was as if these huge chunks of Jamie’s life, the stuff that defined her summer, were mere details to Betty, as insignificant as a pair of flip-flops discarded on the first of September. And it wasn’t that Betty had the facts wrong, perhaps she and Tammy and Debbie were drifting, but who knew how long the drift would last? Tammy and Debbie were her best friends, Jamie thought; they’d drift back together soon enough, like rafts floating down the same slow-moving river.

There are bears in Yosemite, and deadly stinging scorpions, and rattlesnakes, and of course Jamie imagined that the woods were filled with violent ax-wielding men and flashers who would specifically seek out girls sleeping alone in pup tents. So before dinner, Jamie dragged her sleeping bag from the pup tent that was set up for her to her parents’ 
tent, which had flaps that rolled up to reveal net windows and a roof the shape of a circus tent roof. Jamie put her bag next to her parents’, then pulled both bags as far back from the flap-door as possible. The inside of the tent smelled like the inside of a garage: moldy and dusty, with a hint of the stink of a freshly tarred road. There was a burning kerosene lamp hanging from a hook in the center of the tent.