The Girls of August (12 page)

I turned around. Whom was she talking to?

“Mothers!” Barbara’s eyes flashed wide as she watched Baby spin.

 “Yes! Mother, mother, mother!” She pointed to each one of us on
mother
, saving me for last.

Rachel shot us a look that clearly said,
What the fuck
?

I shrugged. No use even trying to figure out this child. “OK, you want pancakes. Who
else?”

Barbara and Rachel raised their hands.

“Pancakes! Yay!” Baby shrilled and she jumped up and down three times. I thought
suddenly that she must be ADD. That, or she was on drugs. Dear God.

“Don’t forget the bacon. In fact, I can make it.” Barbara, I noticed, had turned a
soft shade of amber under all this sun.

“No you won’t. Too many cooks in the kitchen.”

“Great! Then I’ll make the mimosas.” Barbara headed to the fridge, retrieved two
bottles of champagne and a carton of orange juice, closed the door with a bump of
her hip, and then said, “Shoot!”

“What is it, Mother?” Baby hung a casual arm around Barbara’s shoulder.

Barbara flinched and moved out of range. “I forgot to bring the champagne flutes
I bought for us. They’re the cutest things. The stems look like palm trees. They’re
cut crystal and everything.”

“Palm trees!” Baby carolled. “How cool is that! I’ve never seen anything like that.
But no problem, Mother.” She shot into the pantry and yelled, “We keep a stash of
champagne glasses in here. They’re not fancy, but who cares!”

“What is wrong with her?” Rachel whispered.

“I don’t know.” I grabbed a paring knife, plucked an apple from the fruit bowl, and
started to peel.

“She’s plumb out of her mind,” Barbara said, tapping her temple.

“Hey, Baby,” Rachel called, “while you’re in there, see if you can find your stash
of Ritalin.”

“Riddle what?” Baby appeared at the doorway of the pantry, holding four cobalt-blue
champagne stems. I realized that I had mistaken her hot-pink, spaghetti-strap sundress
for a T-shirt.

I stared down at the honeyed skin, and silently lectured myself that young women
were different these days. They flaunted their bodies. And maybe that was OK. But
if she had been my daughter…

“Never mind,” Rachel said. “Just fix me a goddamned mimosa and hold the OJ.”

“Yes, ma’am, Mother!” Her voice spiraled and I felt my hand tighten on the knife.
As she prattled about how drunk she and Teddy had gotten on their wedding night,
I closed my eyes. Apple pancakes. Not murder. Apple pancakes. Not murder. Apple pancakes…

Baby prattled nonstop through breakfast, hopping through subjects like a jackrabbit
on speed.
And then when I was seven my parents sent me to a private school. I do not know
what the big deal is about Kim Kardashian and her fake butt. Once you start faking
things, you should not be allowed on the news. Teddy says that if he can get away
over Christmas, we’re going to go to Montserrat, wherever that is, but I think I’d
just like to come here. Mothers, do you think I ought to have a baby now or wait
a couple of years
?

“What is it with this ‘mother’ shit?” Rachel snapped, tossing down her napkin as though
she were getting ready to rumble.

Baby, who was licking syrup off her fingers, paused and said brightly, “Because
you all are mothers. And you are all old enough to be mine!” She belly-laughed and
slapped the table. Again, the question hung in the air: What in the hell was wrong
with her?

“Well, Baby,” I said, my voice rising an octave even though I was working hard at
holding myself together. “I’m not.”

“Sure you are,” Baby said, continuing to lick her fingers. “Wait! Oh, I get it.” Her
eyes gleamed with newfound knowledge. “
You
mean you don’t have any kids. But you’re still old enough to be my mama!” She jumped
to her feet and started spinning again, showing her thong underwear the full 360.

“Baby!” Rachel snapped.

“Yes, Mother?”

“Enough with the mother stuff. Make yourself useful and clear this table and then
help Barbara and me clean the kitchen.”

Baby snapped to attention, clicking her heels, and saluted—stiff, tall, chest out.
“Yes, Mother. Right away, Mother.” And then she giggled again.

Barbara closed her eyes and shook her head. Baby didn’t seem to care or notice. She
stacked the dishes, jabbering away about an old boyfriend who’d had a nervous condition
that got so bad he lost all his hair.

“How the hell old was
he
?” Rachel asked.

“Grandpappy old, most likely,” Barbara retorted. “Hell, Teddy is probably young enough
to be the old boyfriend’s grandbaby.”

“That’s not funny!” Baby said. After a couple of silent moments during which I thought
she might slide into a snit, she burst into a convulsive peal of laughter. “Oh, oh,
oh my gawd! Young enough to be Geoffrey’s grandbaby!” She slapped her leg and guffawed.
“That is soooooo funny!”

Barbara and Rachel both rolled their eyes and Rachel poured more champagne. Baby
snatched the plates off the table and headed to the sink, giggling all the way.

I left the kitchen and headed upstairs to change into my bathing suit and sit for
a few minutes in blessed silence. I hadn’t even gained the first riser when I heard
her say, “You know, Mothers, Geoffrey was only twenty-two when he went stark, raving
bald…”

When I finally ventured back downstairs, I found that the kitchen was spotless,
Barbara and Rachel were gathering drinks, towels, snacks, and sunscreen for what
promised to be a long day in the sun, and Baby was sitting at the kitchen table stacking
packets of Sweet’n Low into diminutive towers while singing a song in a foreign language
I couldn’t identify.

I caught Barbara’s eye and she mouthed, “Help me.”

Rachel looked over the top of her big Jackie O sunglasses and said, “Baby, this
is your mother talking. Stop playing around and go put on your damned bathing suit.”

“Huh?” Baby feigned surprise, slapped her hands on her hips. “Oh, Mother, must you
be such a bore!” And then she returned the sweetener packets to their container and
marched upstairs to her bedroom, singing all the while. When she came back down,
much to our relief, she was subdued.

But relief was destined not to last long. We could not have been seaside for more
than an hour when Baby jumped from her lounge chair like a bottle rocket. “Come on,
y’all,” she chirped. “This is perfect weather for birthday suits! Take ’em off. God
made your birthday suits. Now wear ’em! Let’s go skinny-dipping!”

“He made swimsuits too,” Barbara growled. She stood, her paperback fell onto the
sand, and she didn’t bother picking it up. “I’m going to go lie down. I feel one
of my migraines coming on.”

I watched Barbara make her way back to the house, staggering a little. I considered
going after her but decided I should just let her rest and get her bearings. Maybe
she’d fall asleep and sober up.

“For God’s sake, Baby,” Rachel snapped, “nobody is going skinny-dipping and don’t
you dare take off your swimsuit. I swear, you are behaving as if you are a hyperactive
six-year-old. How does Teddy stand it?”

Baby actually stomped her foot. “He stands it because we love each other. And yes,
I’m ADD. And yes, I misplaced my meds. But I’m still a good person,” she screamed.

“Sit!” Rachel ordered.

And Baby did. She pouted and fumed, but eventually she ran out of steam and fell asleep
under the hot, heavy sun.

“Zach behaved just like that when he was a toddler,” Rachel said, rummaging through
her beach tote. “But, of course, like most children, he grew out of it.”

“You asked the twenty-five-thousand-dollar question. How does Teddy stand it?” I
reached for my tumbler of ice water and realized that I almost felt sorry for him.

“You know what?” Rachel shook her head as she gazed at the ocean. “With the notable
exception of Melinda, all that man has ever really done is think about tail and chase
tail.”

“Well,” I said, pressing the cold, sweating tumbler to my cheek, “he didn’t get any
from me.”

“And look how long you lasted,” Rachel said.

I chuckled. She was right about that. And I was grateful that I’d never slept with
him. I’m not sure that we’d all be friends if things had gone that far with Teddy
and me.

“You know, I think I might go back to the house,” I said. “The sun is starting to
get to me.”

“Let’s go for a dip first. Sure cure for sunstroke.”

I almost said no, but then I looked at Rachel’s calm, open face—it still belied last
night’s terror—and I thought,
I want to spend every last second I can with you
.

Arm in arm, we waded into the water. “I love you, Madison McCauley. Don’t you ever
forget that,” Rachel said as a wave slapped our thighs.

“I love you too, Rachel Greene. You know what?”

“What?”

“We’re going to have to find her meds.”

“Yep.”

Rachel slipped away from me and dove below the surface. When she emerged, she was
on her back, gazing at the sky. “Ahhh,” she murmured, “what a beautiful day.”

Baby might have dozed off to sleep in a snit, but she woke up equable and sweet-tempered.
She seemed, I don’t know, almost mature. Her mood swings made me believe that in
addition to the ADD, her hormones were probably raging.

As we gathered our belongings before hiking back up to the house, I whispered to
Rachel, “You get her in a game of cards, and I’ll search her room.”

They sat at the kitchen table, arguing over whether to play gin rummy or poker. Baby
won. Gin rummy it was, and a sleepy-eyed but sober Barbara joined them.

I went upstairs and tiptoed into Baby’s room. I scanned quickly. Her pills were nowhere
in sight. I eased open her top dresser drawer. There, amid scant silk panties, were
two Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a plethora of scrunchies, and a worn-edged hot-pink
journal. Unable to squelch my nosiness, I pulled it out and scanned its pages.

Doodles were interspersed between inspirational sayings handwritten in loopy script.
“Don’t walk. Dance” was sandwiched between “It is in our darkest moments that we
must struggle to see the light—Aristotle (Onassis, the other Greek)” and “I can’t
change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination—Jimmy
Dean (sausage master and singer).” Two pages were filled with Arabic script; it looked
as if she’d been practicing penmanship. And then there was this, which made my heart
break: “Dear Mommy, I miss you more than life itself. I wish I had been a better
daughter. If I could do it all over again, maybe you’d still be alive. All my love,
Baby.”

What on earth? I closed the journal, returned it to its nest amid the panties and
candy, spied a prescription bottle on the floor—it had rolled under the bed—retrieved
it and set it on the dresser so that it was impossible to miss, and wondered what
had happened that made Baby think she’d been a bad daughter. Surely she wasn’t responsible
for her mother’s death. Or was she?

After dinner we sat around a beach fire Rachel and Barbara had made and talked about
this and that…old flames, old houses, old jobs, old and discarded dreams, old favored
books, long-loved movie stars. Baby stayed right there with us, bundled up in a too-big
sweater and too-tight jeans, turning her face to listen to each one of us as we spoke.
Saying little but apparently absorbing whatever we offered, she sometimes nodded,
as if agreeing with us. She was so still and silent that I knew for sure she had
found her meds. To be honest, I liked this quiet, more thoughtful Baby. And I hoped
she would stick around.

At one point, after the fire had taken on a steady life and the moon had sailed far
across the sky, the subject turned to movies in which the actresses so inhabited
their roles that we remembered them years after we’d seen the films.

“Meryl Streep in
The Deer Hunter
,” said Rachel, who, we were quite sure, had seen every movie ever made since the
advent of talkies. “I was a lanky teenager in braces. My parents took all of us,
which I think they ended up regretting. It was
not
a happy movie. But all I could think was Meryl, with that long, golden hair, was
the most beautiful person in the world. I wanted to look just like her. Me, the
dark-eyed Jew from Jersey!”

“Well, if you’re talking about faces,” Barbara chimed in, “what about Anjelica Huston
in that movie with Jack Nicholson. What was it called?”

“
Prizzi’s Honor
,” Rachel said. “I loved that movie.”

Barbara snapped her fingers. “Yep. That’s it. Not a pretty woman, but a handsome woman.
And I mean that in the best of ways.”

 “I just wish I had one ounce of Halle Berry’s good looks. She’s going to be hot when
she’s a hundred and five,” I said.

“You’ve got that right,” Barbara said. “I saw her on the cover of one of those supermarket
tabloids last week. In a bikini. And I mean H-O-T.”

We all nodded and in the light from the beach fire I thought we all looked beautiful
too.

Then Barbara, perhaps the kindest of us, looked across the fire at Baby and said,
“What about you? Who’s your candidate for a great actress? Or one who’s a major knockout?”

“Mmmmm, I’m not sure,” she said, staring into the flames. “But I think maybe”—she
tapped her chin with her fingers—“maybe Rooney Mara.”

We looked at each other.

“Who?” Rachel asked.

“Rooney Mara,” Baby repeated, looking at us as if she couldn’t believe how uninformed
we were. “She’s really good. She’s gonna be in that movie coming out about a dragon
tattoo. Teddy and I saw the previews. It looks awesome.”

“Never heard of her,” Barbara said.

“Nope. Me neither,” Rachel said. “
Rooney Mara
sounds like a man’s name.” And then, as if she had forgotten Baby was sitting there,
she murmured, “Too bad about young people…”