The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (15 page)

After a couple chapters of Fear of Flying, Jamie put down the book and stuck her head out the flap of the tent to see what was happening around the campfire. Dog Feather, still dancing, caught Jamie’s eye and winked. It was a wink that she would have read as friendly only a couple of months earlier. But after the loss of her virginity, and after having read half of Fear of Flying, everything in Jamie’s world seemed to have a slippery, horny undertone. The next morning they had to be out of the campsite by noon. Jamie was looking forward to it. Dog Feather would return to the stones he had slept on before and Jamie would never have to see his wolf face again.

Dog Feather spread his legs so wide that his knee knocked Jamie’s knee. Betty was turned around in her seat so she could talk to Dog Feather in the backseat. Allen drove silently and Jamie stared out the window. Betty had invited Dog Feather to stay with the family in Santa Barbara and he had accepted. In her excitement, Betty rambled a mono-logue that included the to-do list for when they returned, item seven being to change the sheets on the guest bed where Jan had slept and remake the bed for Dog Feather.

“I can’t sleep in a bed,” Dog Feather said. “I sleep only on dirt and rocks. . . . Although I have slept on wood floors as they’re almost as hard as rocks.”

“Amazing.” Betty smiled and shook her head.

The guest room was carpeted and there were rugs over most of the wood floors. The only clear, open, hard surfaces in the house were the wood floor in the kitchen and the wood floor in Allen’s study.

“You could sleep out by the pool,” Jamie said.

“Under the stars, what a beautiful idea,” Dog Feather said.

“I’m putting your backpack in my study,” Allen said. He was grumpy after the long drive and not nearly as excited as Betty about having Dog Feather in the house. Dog Feather followed Allen out of the kitchen toward the study off the living room. Jamie sat at the counter watching her mother whip eggs for late-night omelets.

“Don’t you want to go to bed?” Betty asked.

“But we never had dinner.”

“You said you don’t want an omelet.”

“I’ll have cereal.”

Betty handed Jamie a box of Cheerios, a spoon, a bowl, and a carton of milk.

“I bet he’ll sneak up onto the couch,” Jamie said.

“What?”

“I bet Dog Feather will end up sleeping on that leather couch in Dad’s study.”

“He’s an Indian, not a Labrador,” Betty said. “He chooses to sleep on the floor.”

“I don’t believe him.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Sugar.”

Betty passed the sugar bowl and Jamie spooned out three small piles onto her cereal.

Dog Feather and Allen returned to the kitchen. Allen sat on a stool; Dog Feather stood behind Jamie and began massaging her shoulders. Jamie froze, with a spoonful of Cheerios midair, and stared at her mother.

“You’re very tense,” Dog Feather said.

Jamie’s eyes darted from her mother to her father. Allen was half asleep, his head flopped into his wide hand, watch
ing the omelets cook. Betty was looking over her daughter’s head at Dog Feather’s head looming somewhere behind. A rope of anger wound around Jamie’s gut as she saw that her parents would not save her from Dog Feather’s blatant molestation.

“You think she’s tense, you should meet her sister,” Betty laughed.

“I’m going to bed now.” Jamie slipped out from beneath Dog Feather’s hands, picked up her cereal bowl, and dumped it in the sink with a violence no one seemed to notice.

Betty was driving, Allen was in the front seat, and Dog Feather and Jamie sat in the backseat again, like siblings.

They were on their way to the airport to pick up Renee, who was returning from Outward Bound. Flip was coming home from Hawaii that same day. Betty had asked Jamie to put off seeing Flip for a couple of days in order to let Renee get used to the idea that he was her boyfriend.

“Mom,” Jamie leaned up between the two front seats, 
“can I at least talk to him on the phone?”

“Not in front of your sister.”

“Well, why can’t I go to his house and see him? I’ll tell Renee that I’m going to Tammy’s or something.”

“Don’t you want to spend time with your sister?” Allen asked. “You haven’t seen her in six weeks.”

“But I haven’t seen Flip in two weeks! Two weeks is, like, torture—you don’t know how this feels!” Betty and Allen laughed.

“We know how it feels,” Allen said.

“It is good to honor your sister with your presence,” Dog 
Feather said. Allen and Jamie stared at him as if he had just told them he had soiled himself.

“Dog Feather’s right,” Betty said. “You should honor your sister with your presence.”

“I’m not sure she’ll feel so honored,” Jamie said.

“Just visit with your sister for a couple days,” Allen said. 
“You can see Flip soon enough.”

Renee looked different: tanner, ropier. The muscles on her narrow, long arms had ridges and shadows. The top of each calf looked like it had a fist in it. Her black eyes were huge.

She sat in the kitchen eating everything that was placed before her and telling stories: rapelling down a cliff, the bear that ran by her when she was walking across a footbridge, the kid who had an asthma attack and had to be helicop-tered out, her five days alone with a compass and backpack, that she hadn’t had processed white sugar in sooo long and she couldn’t believe how good it tasted. Dog Feather asked as many questions as Betty. Renee startled every time he spoke, as if he were an apparition.

“So,” Renee finally spoke to Jamie. “What have you been doing, Farrah?”

“Farrah?” Dog Feather asked.

“She calls me Farrah,” Jamie explained.

“Something about her hair,” Allen said, “but I don’t really see it.”

“Still going to Slut Beach?”

“I thought you went to Butterfly Beach,” Allen said.

“That’s Slut Beach,” Renee said.

“Honey, do you want more syrup on your waffle?” Betty asked.

“I’ll have more!” Dog Feather held his plate up to Betty.

“So what’s the latest news of Slut Beach?” Renee asked.

“Why do you have to use that word?” Allen asked. 
“It’s such an undignified word. Slut. I mean, who uses that word?”

“My friends use it,” Jamie said.

“Her friends are it,” Renee said.

“Look how honored she is by my presence,” Jamie said to Dog Feather.

“She’s honored,” Betty said. “She just doesn’t know how to show it.”

“What do you mean I’m honored?” Renee said. “I’m not honored by Farrah!”

“Do you want to know what I did while you were gone?” Jamie said.

“Not really,” Renee said. “I was just asking to appear polite.”

“Girls,” Allen sighed.

“You know when I had you two so close together I thought you’d be built-in playmates for each other,” Betty said.

“I wore all your clothes while you were gone,” Jamie said.

“You did not. Mom! Did Jamie wear my clothes?!”

“No! Jamie, why are you telling her that? It’s not true.”

“But look how upset she is. Isn’t it sad that she’d be so upset if I just wore her clothes? I mean, who cares about clothes!”

“Clothes have no meaning,” Dog Feather said.

Allen sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms.

“That’s right,” Betty said. “I should send you two off to 
live with Dog Feather, that way you’d understand the real value of things.”

“Dog Feather seems to live here,” Jamie said. “And we’re already here.”

“No, I mean on the reservation!”

“Mom! I just came from six weeks of Outward Bound! 
You think I need to go live on an Indian reservation?! 
Please!”

“You should go live on an Indian reservation,” Jamie said. 
“You’re dark enough.”

“Jamie!” Betty said.

“What the hell does dark have to do with it?” Allen asked.

“She looks like an Indian.”

“Native American,” Dog Feather said.

“I can’t believe you’d think that saying that I look like an Indian is an insult. Mom, do you hear how prejudiced she is?”

“I didn’t say it was an insult. I just stated a fact.”

“Why did I ever come home? I can’t think of anything to make my summer more miserable than to come home to you, Farrah!” Renee’s voice trembled and her face twitched. Normally this would have softened Jamie, eased her, but something about Dog Feather’s presence in the room pushed her away from sympathy. Besides, it seemed entirely unfair that her reward for tending to Renee’s feelings by not seeing Flip was to sit and suffer Renee’s poison arrows.

“I’m leaving.” Jamie hopped off the stool. “I’ll be at Flip’s house if anyone needs me.”

“Flip who?” Renee looked around at the faces watching her: Betty, with her lips pursed, shaking her head; Allen, who was exhaustedly slouched onto his palms, elbows 
propped on the counter; and Dog Feather, whose mouth was cracking into a smile.

“Flip who?!”

“My boyfriend,” Jamie said. “Flip Jenkins.” Jamie walked out of the room, but she could hear Renee in the kitchen saying, “I don’t believe her.” And then Dog Feather said, “When a girl becomes sexually active, she never lies about who her lover is.” Jamie paused in the hallway waiting for the next breath, the next word. From anyone. When it didn’t come, she dashed out of the house and ran, in red and orange flip-flops, the two-mile distance to Flip’s rambling, woodsy house.

When Flip opened the front door Jamie was flushed with the urge to cry. She didn’t know if she was overwhelmed by simply the sight of Flip, or if her anger at Dog Feather was floating to the top of her emotions, an oily scum shifting over her flooded heart. She remembered Flip’s description of his worst date: a crier who told him she loved him. And so she swallowed the walnut that pulsed in her throat, smiled, and hugged her boyfriend without a tear.

Flip drove Jamie home at ten o’clock. He wanted to pull over so they could have sex, since they had spent the evening at his house sitting in the family room with his parents looking at the photos of Hawaii that had been developed at the one-hour drive-through booth. To Jamie it seemed unnatural to see pictures so quickly after they were snapped—as if a decent amount of time should pass in order to officially make something a picture-worthy memory.

“Let’s go to the beach,” Flip said. “We can do it in the parking lot.”

Jamie looked at Flip, studied his face. So far they had had only boring sex—sex that left Jamie feeling hollow and cardboard—and yet she loved him. She still wanted to press her body against his so hard that she could imagine passing through bone and gristle and nestling somewhere deep below his skin. But she had a sudden pang of pain for Renee, guilt for leaving her sister so far behind while she, herself, sailed forward with Luscious Lester, the un-official captain of high school. It just didn’t seem right that she’d tell Renee about Flip and have sex with him all in the same night.

“I should get back.” Jamie hoped Flip would still love her even if she wouldn’t stop at the beach for sex. She hoped he would still love her even when he met Renee and found that she was more jagged than smooth. Jamie was afraid that she and Flip were peaking and she never wanted anything—her sister’s ill wishes, her guilt about maturing more quickly than Renee—to run across that peak, to break it off or dull it down into a nub.

“But no one even called for you,” Flip said. “You’d think if they wanted you back they’d call or something.”

“I hate Dog Feather,” Jamie said.

“I still don’t get it,” Flip said. “Is he a cousin or something?”

“No.” Jamie didn’t want to explain—the truth was like an embarrassing stain on the seat of one’s pants. “He knows a lot about pot.”

“Cool,” Flip said.

When they pulled up to the house, Flip turned off the engine and cranked up the emergency break. It was obvious to Jamie that Flip liked being at her house. He liked 
getting high with Betty and Allen. He liked Betty’s cooking. He liked the pool. He was so comfortable there that even if Jamie wasn’t home, if she was out grocery shopping with her mom or helping Allen pick out a birthday present for Betty, he would still hang around, eat, swim, watch TV. But with Renee home, Flip’s occupation of the house might create the tension of avoidance: Renee avoiding Flip, Jamie avoiding Renee’s glare, Allen and Betty avoiding the conflict altogether.

Jamie thought it was strange that she felt close enough to Flip to let him touch her body (all over) and to touch his body (all over), yet there was still an awkward formality between them. She had always thought that when people were in love everything was easy, normal, but happier. Like the way things often were when she was hanging out with Tammy and Debbie. But being in love wasn’t like that. Jamie often felt like she had to figure things out—how she should act or what she should say.

For example, she couldn’t find a way to explain to Flip her relationship with Renee and why his presence in the house just then might be somewhat like the presence of the stray dog Betty once brought home. Allen, Renee, and Jamie had taken circuitous routes around the house, cutting out into the backyard, or through the garage, in order to avoid running into the dog, which had a boxy, rock head, leonine body, and the glare of a mind reader.

(Allen finally insisted Betty return the dog to the pound when the dog eviscerated a seagull and presented it to Betty as a gift.) Her parents always seemed to be their normal selves together—talking to each other while one was on the toilet and the other was brushing his teeth, laughing at jokes only the two of them seemed to get.

But her parents didn’t seem in love the way she and Flip were; when her father went away for long business trips, Betty didn’t appear to miss him. Maybe, Jamie thought, you could relax into your complete self only when the crazy, buzzing, drunk love had faded. Maybe it was the love itself, its constant presence and intensity, which made things awkward in the first place.

“So, should I, like, pretend that I remember your sister from school?” Flip asked.