The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (29 page)

Tammy waved to her father as he walked out.

“See you, Mr. Hopkins!” Debbie called after him.

“My dad hates Democrats,” Tammy said. “He told me they’re ruining the country, giving away all the money to lazy people and stuff like that.” 

There was a wooden clanking as the Chumash man knocked his spoon against the side of his pot while watching Tammy as if she were a bobcat.

“Can we please call Jimmy and Brett and let them come to the party?” Debbie asked. “I mean, there are so many people here, no one would notice them.”

“No way,” Jamie said. “Mom said if we hang around we have to help, pass out food and stuff.” Betty had told Jamie that she’d have to help out, but Jamie knew she wouldn’t have minded having the boys around too. Jamie didn’t want them there because they would have wedged Tammy and Debbie even farther from her; Jamie would be left alone, knocking around the party like a single marble loosed from its bag.

“You girls ready to work?” Rosa pointed to three silver trays on the counter, each with a different appetizer.

“What are these?” Tammy sneered. “They look like slugs on crackers!”

“Go on!” Rosa clapped her hands to move the girls along.

Tammy and Debbie hovered in the vicinity of Veronica Hale. Jamie stood with her back to them, half-listening to an old man with a folded, melted face who talked to her with fishy breath.

Veronica said, “Girls, I won’t be having any appetizers at all this evening, so you can stop offering them to me.” Tammy and Debbie hurried off, giggling, to the other side of the pool. Jamie was embarrassed for them.

Betty stood with a cluster of women. Jamie came up behind her and tapped her mother’s back.

“What, sweetheart?”

“Anyone want some of these?”

“No, honey. Everyone’s had some. Take them over there.” Betty paused before turning away; she had just spied Allen talking to Veronica Hale. They were too far away to be heard, but Allen’s hands flapped enthusiastically as he gestured. Veronica seemed enraptured; she leaned back laughing, then put a hand on Allen’s upper arm as she replied.

“Tell your father he needs to man the bar,” Betty said.

“Jesus is at the bar,” Jamie said.

Betty looked toward the bar, where Jesus was pouring out cherry-colored margaritas into a row of tall, wide glasses.

“Well, tell him to check on the food.”

“I was just in there, everything’s fine. Rosa and the non-Chumash Mexican lady are talking to each other in really fast Spanish.”

“Christ, Jamie! Tell your father to mingle, tell him it’s a big party and he needs to acknowledge more than one guest!”

Jamie wondered what it would be like to love someone as long as her parents had loved each other—to want to be, after so many years, the world’s most beautiful woman in your husband’s eyes. She had been with Flip for less than a summer—not enough time to ever feel an ownership of his love. And Scooter Ray had lasted for, what, an hour? Not even long enough to develop a jealousy.

Jamie wandered to the far side of the pool where Tammy and Debbie nestled together, their empty trays hanging at their sides.

“Did you see him?” Tammy asked.

“Who?”

“The cute one,” Debbie said. “He is so, so, so cute.” 

“I tap-tapped him,” Tammy said.

“Yeah,” Debbie said, “can you believe she tap-tapped him, as if I’m going to try and compete with her.”

“What do you mean you tap-tapped him?”

“She dibsed him,” Debbie said.

“You put dibs on a man?”

“Yeah,” Tammy said, “or you or Debbie would try to get him first. Do you think your parents would mind if I smoked? I’m dying for a cig.”

“There’s no way a grown man would be interested in any of us,” Jamie said. “I mean, Veronica Hale’s here!”

“You don’t even know who we’re talking about.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jamie said. “There’s no one here who would want us. You don’t have to put dibs on some random cute man.”

“Of course he’d want us!” Debbie said. “We’re young and juicy!”

“God, if I don’t have a cigarette soon I’m going to explode. Seriously.”

“What about your boyfriends?” Jamie said. “You’re the one who’s always talking about morals. You’re the one who was mad at me for having sex with Scooter Ray!”

“Well, that was very un-Christian of you! You know that!” Tammy said.

“Oh my god, shut up, shut up, here he comes!” Debbie pulled her tray in front of her chest like a shield.

The man was cute in the same way a Ken doll is cute. He had eyelashes like a woman: long, dark, and thick. There were white marks, like a drawing of sun rays, darting out from around his eyes; it seemed he’d been tanned while squinting. He was tall with a flat, broad body, younger-looking than Jamie’s parents. And he was staring at Jamie.

“Mmm, can I have one of those?”

Jamie pushed her tray toward him. Tammy and Debbie were silent, watching. Tammy was breathing with her mouth hanging open in a wide O; Jamie looked at her, waiting for her to speak, as she had always been the one who was bold enough to talk to boys and men.

“That’s good,” he said. “Did you make these?”

“No. Chumash people made them.” Jamie shot her eyes toward Tammy, begging her to start talking so Jamie wouldn’t have to.

“Chumash, huh.”

“Her parents always hire Chumash Indians to cater their parties,” Tammy finally blurted.

“Oooh,” he said, still staring at Jamie, “you’re Allen and Betty’s daughter. Are you Renee?”

“I’m Jamie.” She wanted him to stop staring. His gaze made her skin prickle, like he was shooting hot sparks from his eyes.

“Are you the older one or the younger one?”

“The younger one, I guess,” Jamie said.

“You guess?” he said. “You don’t know how old you are?”

“No,” Jamie panted. Tammy and Debbie laughed with goofy little hiccups. “I’m definitely younger than my sister.” Jamie looked toward Tammy again.

“She’s younger,” Tammy said. “I can confirm that. By the way, do you have an extra cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke,” the man said, “and you shouldn’t either.”

“I do a lot of things I shouldn’t do,” Tammy said, and she and Debbie cackled and fell against each other.

“Well, Jamie, we’ll have to talk again later.” The man 
winked at Jamie, then walked away, skimming through the crowd like a shark in shallow water.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Tammy said.

“Did what?” Jamie asked.

“I tap-tapped him. I put dibs on him. And then you snake him out from underneath me!”

“I passed some food to him! I didn’t want to talk to him!”

“She did tap-tap him,” Debbie said, “and you can’t say you didn’t know that.”

“I’m not interested in that guy. He’s gross. He’s a perv.” Jamie felt her throat quivering. Then, like in the opening credits of Get Smart, Jamie imagined a wall sliding shut between herself and Debbie.

“Oh, right, so since I like him he’s a perv?” Tammy faced Jamie, her hands on either hip, the empty tray dangling from one fist.

Jamie felt another wall slide shut in front Tammy.

“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” she said. 
“That guy came over here and ate something off my tray. 
He knows my parents, he asked about me. I’m not about to go off and sleep with him.”

“You say that as if you’ve never gone off and just slept with some guy.”

An imaginary ceiling panel slid above Jamie’s head.

“You told us yourself about Scooter Ray,” Debbie said.

A third wall came down with a thud.

“I was drunk! I honestly forgot about Kim, okay?!” Jamie felt she had to raise her voice for them to hear through the walls.

“You know, ever since that baby died, you’ve changed,” 
Tammy said. “And Debbie and I wanted to, like, forgive you, you know, let it go because we were hoping you’d come back to normal, you know, but you just haven’t. You’re a different person. You think you’re a Christian but you clearly aren’t—”

And the fourth wall closed in. Jamie felt boxed away from them, in a different orbit.

“I don’t think I’m a Christian,” she said.

“It’s not even the Christian thing,” Debbie said, and she tried to smile. “It’s just that you used to be so much fun. I mean, like, we had fun together and now it’s like you don’t even know how to have fun anymore. You’re so serious all the time.”

“And you’re not interested in the same things,” Tammy said. “I mean you used to want to hang out with the surfers, you wanted to relax on the beach and have fun, and now . . .
I mean, you show up at the beach one night and you sleep with Scooter Ray? Like, what were you thinking?” Their voices sounded tinny and hollow, like they were yammering through aluminum pipes.

“Kim found out,” Debbie said. “And Tammy and I promised her we’d never talk to you again, you know, out of loyalty to her—”

“Loyalty to her?” Jamie said, her voice echoing in her head.

“Listen, you haven’t been around!” Tammy said. “Kim is one of our best friends, I mean, we can’t even tell her that we’re here tonight, it will break her heart.”

“How did she find out about me and Scooter Ray?” Jamie asked. It was her final question, the last thing she’d push through the walls to them.

“You’ve gotta understand,” Debbie said. “Kim is with us at the beach, all day, every day. Our boyfriends are best friends. She’s part of our group! We can’t not tell her. I mean, when you were in our group you would have wanted us to tell you, right?”

Jamie could no longer speak, yet there was a way in which she felt powerful and strong. She sensed herself as supremely alone, like Veronica Hale on the trampoline.

“I think it’s just easier for all of us if we’re officially not friends anymore,” Tammy said, speaking more gently. “I mean, we’re not interested in any of the same things, our values don’t match.”

“It’s nothing against you,” Debbie said, and she put her hand on Jamie’s forearm.

“When school starts next week,” Tammy said, “let’s not pretend we’re all friends, ’cause we’re not, okay?”

“Do you know who you might hang out with instead?” Debbie seemed genuinely concerned.

Jamie shook her head.

“It’s not like we’re going to totally ignore you,” Tammy said. “I’m just saying let’s not act like we’re close when we’re not, you know?”

“I bet the stoners would want to hang out with you, like, if you told them about your mom’s pot and stuff.” Debbie said.

Jamie shook her head again, turned, and walked away.

She tried to remember the original point of connection with Tammy and Debbie—had it been the beach? Boys? Getting tan? Jamie could no longer see herself as someone who would want to be with them, someone whose world was ruled by tap-taps and loyalty based on proximity. Maybe 
her father had been right when he had said she should hang out with people who had more solid names: Ann or Carol or Leigh.

Jamie went to the empty trampoline, tossed her silver tray to the ground, and climbed up. She lay on her back and looked up, hoping to find a shooting star on which she could make a wish. The sky seemed still, solid, vast. Jamie imagined that a thick black blanket covered the sky and the pinpoints of light were actually holes in the blanket—holes illuminated from some other side of the universe. How odd, Jamie thought, billions of people on this side of the blanket, yet she was all alone.

Jamie had had so much pain this summer, she thought, that she could actually classify it. Feeling she was alone wasn’t as bad as Flip breaking up with her, and it certainly wasn’t as bad as Lacey’s death. It was worse than her sister calling her Farrah and ignoring her, but really, she was so accustomed to Renee hating her that that hardly registered as a hurt in the list of summer hurts. Jamie imagined herself at school in the coming month. She’d drift down the hallways against the throngs of people like a fish swimming in the wrong direction. And then what?

She’d come home from school to a house where her sister wouldn’t talk to her, her father was coiled around his work, and her mother was busy filling her days with the things she poured into her life as if she, herself, were a complicated dish that needed more ingredients: ghosts, auras, naked swimming, flirtations.

Jamie sat up as she heard someone approaching. Her mother was wandering toward her, margarita slush dancing from side to side in her glass.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” Betty asked.

“Just looking at the sky.”

Betty climbed onto the trampoline, holding her glass aloft as she hoisted herself up.

“This party is a bore.” Betty took a gulp of her drink, then did a bouncing step over to where Jamie lay. She sat cross-legged next to her daughter.

“Maybe you should get everyone to swim or dance or something.” Jamie lay back and folded her arms behind her head.

“Nah. Everyone’s interested in Veronica Hale. People can hardly talk because they’re constantly looking over your shoulder to see where Veronica is. And then, when she joins a conversation, everyone stops talking because they want to hear only what she has to say.”

“What about John?”

“John Krane?”

“Yeah, the person the party’s for?”

“Oh, he’s just a politician. People want to know him only so they can say they know him, you know, they want to be friends with a senator. But really, he’s pretty boring. Politics is boring.”

“Tammy and Debbie don’t want to be my friends anymore.”

“Really? Why?”

“They think I’m not interested in the same things they’re interested in. And they’re right.”

“Screw them. They’re sweet girls but they’ll probably grow up to be idiots just like their parents.” Jamie laughed and rolled in closer to her mother, her head at Betty’s knee. Betty dropped her hand and stroked her daughter’s hair.

There was a rustling sound and Renee appeared, marching toward the trampoline.

“Jamie?” she called.

“Here,” Jamie said.

“We’re here, sweetie,” Betty said.

Renee approached the trampoline. She looked at her mother and sister, tilted her head as if to ask something, then climbed up and sat on the other side of Jamie.