The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (21 page)

There were thirty-two cookies in the pack. Four were missing when Jamie started. Four were suddenly left.

“I ate . . . ,” Jamie said aloud, “sixteen?” She was drunk from food. “No, twenty-four, right?”

“Right,” she answered, then turned her attention to her next prey.

There was a ceramic bowl of fruit on the counter. 
Beside it was a smaller bowl filled with almonds. A silver chevron nutcracker lay on top of the nuts. Jamie cracked open an almond, but the payoff didn’t seem worth the effort and she couldn’t get a quick enough rhythm for a pool-party count. Jamie picked up an apple, held it in her hand; it, too, seemed wrong. She returned to the freezer, took out a new box of peanut butter cups, pulled off the cardboard that separated the two layers of the box, and ate three from the second layer, allowing her to start the count. When she shuffled around the remaining peanut butter cups, enlarging the gaps between cups, it looked like none were missing. She retied the string around the box and returned it to the back of the freezer.

Was she done? It didn’t seem so; she needed one more perfect count. Jamie opened a box of Cheerios and shoveled handfuls into her mouth until she had completed a third exact count. She stumbled into the TV room, the top button of her Op shorts undone, her belly busting out firm and round like a baby’s. There was half a Snickers bar sitting on the coffee table. Renee had opened it the night before, eaten half and then set the rest down and forgotten about it. It didn’t strike Jamie as odd then, but as she picked up the bar and peeled off the remaining wrapper, the half-eatenness of it seemed absurd. Why not just take the three bites needed to finish it? Why leave anything behind? Who doesn’t have room for three inches of chocolate, nuts, and caramel? Jamie finished the Snickers and shoved the wrapper down her shorts’ pocket.

The television was on, but Jamie couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear. And she couldn’t feel anything other than a bursting forward, a swirling expansion in her belly. She imagined she had just gained the entire body weight of 
Terry Watson. Jamie felt suddenly deformed: a grotesque, plump dwarf. A day at the beach seemed like a fantasy.

The beach, Jamie thought, was a place where other people went, people who weren’t balancing the contents of their kitchen cupboards in their stomachs. People like Terry Watson, who was so thin there was no line between her ass and thigh. People like Tammy and Debbie who didn’t have naked parents jumping on trampolines, or dead babies floating in their swimming pools. People who were never left alone in a house with a kitchen and heartache as their only company.

Jamie wanted to move back to the kitchen and fetch more food but to push herself up off the couch seemed unfathomably difficult. So she counted instead. Before she finished the first count she was asleep, like a drunk with his head on the bar—gone beyond sense and reason, blissful in oblivion.

Ten days later Jamie was in the kitchen on the phone with Tammy.

“What are you eating?” Tammy made a light popping sound; Jamie knew she was exhaling her cigarette.

“Cap’n Crunch. I talked my mother into buying it.”

“She agreed? I thought she was Miss Carob Health Nut.”

“Yeah, but she’s also Miss Eat If It Makes You Happy. 
She doesn’t believe in overcontrolling food.”

“Can you stop with the Captain Crunch for a second? I can’t hear anything but you crunching.”

“Cap Nnnn Crunch. There’s no t on the box.”

“I can barely understand you with all that Cap Nnnn Crunch in your mouth.”

“Well, I can hear you smoking.”

“You cannot.” Tammy popped her smoke out again.

“This is my sixth bowl,” Jamie said. “The box is almost empty.”

“So, are you coming or not?” Tammy asked. She wanted Jamie to go camping on the beach with her, Debbie, Brett, Jimmy and a boy named Scooter Ray.

“Does Scooter Ray know you’re inviting me?”

“Yeah. He’s the one who told me to call you.” Jamie rolled her eyes and let her head drop back. She had spoken with Tammy and Debbie only three times in the three weeks since Flip broke up with her, and each time it had been she who had called them. The last time she had hung up with them she had dared herself not to call again, to simply wait for their call. And here it was, at the beck of Scooter Ray.

“Why doesn’t he just ask me out?” Jamie poured more cereal into the leftover orangey milk.

“He’s Scooter Ray. He doesn’t ask people out.”

“His boxers kinda creep me out.”

Scooter Ray, like all the boys at the beach, changed into his wetsuit right there, on the sand, in front of anyone who happened to be looking. His boxers were worn so thin there was nothing covering his ass. It was sheer cotton, like netting almost, with what appeared to be string around the leg holes. Sometimes he put a towel around his waist before slipping his boxers off and pulling on his wetsuit.

But often he just turned his back to wherever the crowd sat, as if he were aware that everyone had already seen his behind anyway.

“He’s totally hot,” Tammy said.

“He doesn’t speak.”

“He dated all these senior girls who are, like, so hot they could get anyone, and they went out with him.”

“But I don’t even know him. Are you sure he knows that I’m me? I mean, like, did he say my name and everything, or did he say ‘Call that girl you hang out with’?”

“He knows who you are!”

“Did he say my name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“So he could be thinking of someone else. Like, maybe if he just described me and said, that short girl with straight brown hair, you thought he was thinking of me, but really he was thinking of Amy Bell.”

“He meant you. Okay? So are you coming or not?”

“And do what? You guys will be going off in your sleeping bags and then Scooter Ray and I will be sitting there by the fire and, what? Make out? Have sex?” Every time Jamie thought of sex she thought of the explosion she had felt against the fence with Flip. And when she thought of the explosion she thought of Lacey. Sex thoughts had become a tautological tangle from which she couldn’t extract anything but the horrifying facts of that day.

“You could have sex,” Tammy said. “I’m sure he’d want to.”

“I think I’ve gained ten pounds,” Jamie said.

“I wouldn’t know, I haven’t seen you in, like, a month,” Tammy said.

“You wouldn’t recognize me. I’m fat now.”

“I want to have an ankle reduction.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, I want my ankles reduced.” Tammy’s legs were as skinny as most women’s forearms.

“Your ankles only look big because your legs are so skinny. If you put on weight they’d look smaller.”

“No way. I’m not gaining a pound. My goal is to go all the way through high school without ever passing a hundred pounds.”

“My goal is to not pass two hundred pounds.”

“I’m serious. I’m really gonna do it.”

“I gotta go.” Jamie propped the phone against her shoul
der and poured out more Cap’n Crunch.

“So are you coming camping with us or not?”

“If I can lose ten pounds by Friday I’ll come. But I’m not making out with some guy who wears boxers that look like my dad’s handkerchiefs and who doesn’t speak.”

“You’re so critical! He’s cute!”

Betty walked into the kitchen as Jamie was hanging up the phone. She wore a yellow skirt and blouse, orangey suntan-color stockings, and straw-colored pumps. She looked like she was in costume, playing the part of a secretary in the local dinner theater. Jamie ate her cereal and watched her mother put on mascara while looking at herself in a compact. Each time the mascara wand hit her eye, Betty’s mouth appeared to unhinge and drop, as if she were singing and holding a note.

“Where did you get those clothes?”

“Wouldn’t your sister be happy to see me dressed like this?” Betty put the mascara down and pulled a tube of lipstick out of her purse. She applied the lipstick, smacked her lips together, and made a pucker face into the mirror.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got a meeting with some priests. I’m going to try and get one of them to drive the bad spirits out of the pool.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but don’t tell your father. He’s against it.”

“He’s against getting rid of the bad spirits?”

“No. He doesn’t believe they’re there.”

“Do you?”

“Don’t you?” Betty tucked the compact into her purse and looked at Jamie

“I guess.” Jamie sprinkled out a fistful of Cap’n Crunch into the teaspoon of milk that remained in the bowl.

“That’s why Lois won’t come over here anymore,” Betty said.

“I thought she was mad at you.”

“She was, but now she’s just spooked by the bad spirits in the house.”

“I thought you said they were in the pool.”

“House and pool.” Betty brushed her hands along her skirt as if to smooth it, picked up her slouchy, leather purse, and slung it onto her shoulder.

“Can I go with you?” Jamie shoveled the last few bites of Cap’n Crunch into her mouth. She could feel cereal jammed like yellow putty into her gums and the cracks between her teeth.

“No. I can’t drag you around with me when I’m visiting priests.”

“But I don’t want to be home alone with the evil spirits.”

“Cross your arms over your stomach,” Betty said. “That will prevent them from harming you or entering your body.”

“Mom, are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious. You think I’d be looking for an exorcist if I weren’t serious?”

“No, I mean are you serious about the hands over the stomach?”

“Arms over your stomach, like this.” Betty stacked her arms under her breasts as she squinted down at Jamie’s stomach. She reached out, smiling, to pinch her daughter’s tiny roll. Jamie jumped back.

“Purse doesn’t match the outfit,” Jamie said.

“I’ll leave it in the car,” Betty said.

“What about God?” Jamie asked.

“What about God?” Betty pulled the purse off her shoul
der, dumped it back down on the counter, and dug through it like a burrowing guinea pig.

“How can there be evil spirits if there’s no God?” Jamie asked.

Betty pulled out a blue tampon box. She opened the box and retrieved a rolled joint and a pack of matches. She didn’t speak until she had taken a deep hit off the joint.

“Who said there’s no God?”

“You said that,” Jamie said. “You’ve always said that.”

“There’s no God the way most people think of God.” Betty took another hit before she continued. “But there are spirits. Good spirits and bad spirits. The good ones are godly in their power. And the bad ones are . . . well, bad.”

“So do you think there are any good spirits in the house?” Jamie asked.

“I’m sure there are. But there are bad ones too, and we have to get rid of them.”

“You think getting a priest in here will work?” Jamie asked.

“Of course!” Betty said. “Don’t go anywhere. I may need you to help with the exorcism when I return.” Betty dashed out the kitchen door. Jamie pulled the liner out of the empty Cap’n Crunch box and ate the stray squares that had escaped and lay stale at the bottom of the box. She wished, for a second, that her sister liked her so she could have gone to East Beach with her and Lori.

East Beach, where she didn’t know anyone. East Beach, where the waves weren’t big enough to surf. East Beach, where she’d never run into Flip or any of his friends. Or, she thought, if not East Beach with Renee, she’d like to be in Los Angeles for the day with her father. While Allen went to his acupuncturist and Dorey, the shrink he’d been seeing for as long as Jamie had conscious memory, Jamie could have sat in the lobby and read magazines. During his 
business meetings, she could have joined him at the conference table and silently colored on blank typing paper like she had on occasion when she was a little girl. She had loved those meetings, watching her father hand out mimeographed charts and papers, listening to him tell the Chiefs (as she and her dad called them then) how to make money.

It was a secret that Jamie went along with Allen, because he never took Renee. Renee was too fidgety, impatient, needy of things like bathrooms and glasses of water. But Jamie knew how to be invisible.

Jamie looked around to see if she sensed any spirits. The kitchen felt so empty that even she herself didn’t seem to exist in it.

The phone rang and Jamie yelped, quickly, sincerely. She answered it while pulling on the cord as far as it would go so she could reach the freezer. It was Tammy again.

“Scooter Ray wanted me to call you and beg.”

“Come over,” Jamie said. “There are bad spirits in this house and I don’t wanna be home alone with them.”

“What are you eating now?” Tammy asked.

“Butter pecan ice cream.”

“I thought you hated butter pecan.”

“I don’t hate it, I just don’t really like it. Are you coming over?”

“I’m meeting Debbie at the beach. Brett’s picking me up.”

“I’m not going camping with you guys.”

“I think you’re blowing it. I mean, if I weren’t with Brett I’d totally go for him.”

“You’re not married. Go for him.”

“Talk about loose morals!”

Tammy’s words sounded small and twittering, as if a mouse were shouting out from inside the phone. Jamie 
didn’t take note of the criticism—she was starting to tune out Tammy in the same way she tuned out Renee.

“My mother’s out looking for an exorcist.”

“No way.”

“I swear.”

“You know, I could sense some bad spirits last time we swam at your house.”

“No way.”

“I swear.”

“Well, they’ll be gone by this afternoon.”

“Is she getting an exorcist like in The Exorcist?” Jamie hadn’t seen The Exorcist, but Tammy had told her all about it. She had claimed that the girl sitting beside her in the theater had been so freaked out that she had dumped her popcorn on the ground and barfed in the bag.

“Yeah, like in The Exorcist,” Jamie said.

“Whoa.”

“I know.”