The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (23 page)

Jamie hung up the phone, then silently swore she would really, truly, never call back. Not for another exorcism or baptism or death even. She sat on a stool, reached for the bowl of nuts, then stopped herself as she tapped out with her fist on the kitchen counter another tally of the capable swimmers at the naked pool party. Jamie was so busy tapping that her mind quickly clogged up—a drain stopped with numbers.

* * *

Betty had picked up Renee from Lori’s house on her way back from driving the priest home. Renee was angry when she came home; stomping as she walked, squinting her eyes in a way that lifted her top lip into a snarl.

“How was the beach?” Jamie asked.

“Were you here when this happened?” Renee demanded.

Betty peeled off her wet clothes and let them drop to the kitchen floor. She walked naked into the dining room, then returned with a bottle of wine.

“You went to East Beach, right?” Jamie asked. “Or is Lori allowed to go to Butterfly now?”

“Mom,” Renee said. “Don’t ever come to Lori’s door in wet clothes again, okay? I mean, it was so weird, you might as well have been naked.”

“So next time I’ll come naked!” Betty laughed and poured a glass of wine.

“Farrah. Were you here?”

“Yeah. He baptized me.”

“He baptized you? I can’t believe it! Mom, you’re an atheist! How could you let him baptize her! I want to get baptized! I’m the only one in this family who deserves to be baptized!”

“You’re Jewish, Rifka; Jews don’t get baptized.” The sting from her conversation with Tammy hovered in a vague unfocused way, making Jamie feel mean, and so Jamie used the Jewish name, Rifka, which Allen had given Renee at birth, a name the family, at Renee’s request, had agreed never to utter.

“You’re Jewish too, Shayna Gittle, you dork!” Renee couldn’t successfully lacerate Jamie with Shayna Gittle, 
her Jewish name, as Jamie always found it more funny than humiliating.

“Well, now I’m Jewish and Greek Orthodox, so you can call me Shayna Gittle Stanaslopicus.” Jamie could hear her mother snickering as she rinsed the dishes in the sink.

“I’m the only one in this family who believes in God. 
I should be baptized! I can’t believe Farrah was baptized! 
That is so unfair!” Renee turned and marched out of the kitchen.

“Farrah Gittle Stanaslopicus!” Jamie shouted after Renee, who was stomping up the stairs.

Later that night, after Allen called from Los Angeles to say he was going to dinner with some friends and wouldn’t be home till midnight or so, Leon and Lois came over for a swim. Jamie followed them out to the pool, where Betty was floating on a raft, her fingertips dipped in the water as if she were tickling it.

“All clear?” Leon asked.

“All clear!” Betty said.

Leon dove in and swam to Betty. He hung onto the edge of her raft, hands near her falling breasts, and kicked her around the pool. Scrawny Lois watched as she took off her clothes. She stretched up toward the dimming sky, then dove into the pool and swam toward Betty and Leon, like a child trying to catch up to her parents.

“Oooooh yeah,” she said. “This is great, it’s totally different.”

Jamie felt certain Lois was trying to distract her husband and friend from each other.

“Can you feel it?” Betty asked.

“Absolutely. It’s beautiful. It’s like the difference between night and day.”

“Serenity,” Leon said, and he pulled himself out of the water and went to the diving board, bouncing up and down as if he were warming up for something.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Betty said.

“I can’t tell any difference.” Jamie couldn’t believe her mother had taken the bait, was entering this conversation that Lois had cranked up only in order to be seen.

“The air here,” Lois said, “was thick. It was rancid. It was just wrong.”

“As pure as new life now,” Betty said.

“Yes!” Lois smiled. “We’re free.”

“So,” Jamie said, from her perch on a boulder. “Do you think we don’t need the life jackets now that the evil spirits are gone?”

Betty rolled her eyes at her daughter.

Lois said, “What life jackets?”

“The ones Dad bought for anyone who’s at the house who can’t swim.”

“I don’t think you need them,” Lois said. “I mean, there’s nothing here to harm anyone.”

“But what about the fact that some people, small people, you know, kids, just can’t swim?” Jamie was surprised by how angry she suddenly felt toward Lois; as if Lacey’s death were her fault; as if there were something wrong with her that drove Leon to her mother; as if she were the reason Jamie was eating like she needed to store food for estivation.

“Yes, but there’s nothing here to harm them anymore.”

“So you don’t think a pool that they can’t swim in is harmful?” Jamie asked.

“No,” Lois said, and she flipped onto her back and floated.

Betty turned to Jamie, her eyes narrowed, and said, 
“Why don’t you go visit your friends?”

“They’re busy,” Jamie said.

“Then go get your suit on,” Betty said.

“But I don’t want to swim.”

“Well, don’t spoil our fun. We’re happy the evil sprits are gone, okay?”

“I’m just saying that I think a baby who can’t swim might drown in a pool whether there are evil spirits or not.” Jamie wished Renee were there. Surely she’d take Jamie’s side in this matter. She wouldn’t believe in evil spirits; she didn’t even believe in karma!

“That’s not true,” Betty snapped. “It takes evil to kill a baby.”

“Whatever,” Jamie said.

Betty rolled off the raft and swam underwater. Leon jumped off the diving board and landed inches from Betty.

Jamie imagined his body slithering against Betty’s as he went down, then sliding across her again as he popped up for air.

There was an ashy stain from the Ouija board and tarot cards on the boulder next to the one on which Jamie sat.

Long, black, sooty marks, the shape of a Jester’s collar, licked over the edges of the boulder. Jamie stared at the blackened rock and wondered how that burned mess, the smoky smell that lingered in the house, and the water up her nose at the hand of a trollish Greek man could possibly change anything.

A few days later, while her head was floating from a binge of leftover lasagna, cinnamon toast, and peanut butter cups, Jamie’s loneliness overtook her resolve and she called Tammy once again.

“Do you and Debbie want to come over and hang out tonight?” Jamie asked. “My parents are at some big party in Los Angeles and they said they’d either be home really late, like four, or they’d spend the night and be home in the morning.”

“Sorry,” Tammy sighed, “we’ve got plans.”

“Oh. Okay.” Jamie stretched the kitchen phone cord and tried to get to the pantry, but it was too far.

“You can come if you want. But, like, it’s the kind of thing you never seem to want to do anymore.”

“What is it?” Jamie opened the freezer. There was no ice cream. She slammed the door shut and slumped onto the kitchen floor.

“A party,” Tammy said.

“Where?”

“Henry’s Beach. Near the caves.”

“Are Flip and Terry going to be there?”

“Probably. See, I told you you wouldn’t want to come.”

“No, I’ll come.”

“Really?” Tammy hissed into the phone as she exhaled cigarette smoke.

“I thought Brett wanted you to quit smoking,” Jamie said.

“He did. But he just took it up instead, so now it’s fine.”

“Cool.”

“So are you really going to come with us?”

“Yeah. Who’s driving?”

“I dunno. Jimmy or Brett. I guess you could sit in the back of Brett’s truck.”

“Whatever. What are you wearing?”

“I got a bunch of cute new clothes yesterday at La Cumbre Plaza.”

“I haven’t gotten any new clothes all summer.”

“I know. You’ve been, like, wearing those same Op shorts all summer long.”

Jamie looked down at her Op shorts. They were comfortable, stretched out; they adapted easily to the various expansions and contractions of her stomach.

“What’s Debbie wearing?” Jamie asked.

“She got a bunch of new stuff too.”

“So where should we meet up? Your house or Debbie’s?”

“Come to my house.” Tammy spoke in the singsong of boredom. “You can borrow something of mine to wear. 
Maybe it will snap you out of your depression.”

“I’m not depressed.” No matter how isolated and sad she felt, Jamie would never have characterized herself as depressed. Renee was the depressive, the one her parents had to worry over and tend to.

“Whatever,” Tammy said. “Just come over here and we’ll get ready together.”

Renee!” Jamie yelled up the stairs toward her sister’s room. 
“Renee! I’m going to Tammy’s and then we’re going to a party at Henry’s Beach.”

There was no answer.

“RENEE! I’M GOING TO TAMMY’S!”

Renee’s bedroom door swung open. Renee came out and stood at the top of the stairs.

“You’re sleeping at Tammy’s?”

“I’m not sure. Probably not, but you might be alone tonight. Is that okay?” For a sliver of a moment Jamie hoped Renee would ask her to stay home. They could play board games, watch television, or even play the imagination games they had made up as children: Ballerina and Little Girl, Indian and Little Girl, Mermaid and Little Girl. Jamie had always been the Little Girl while Renee got to wear the costumes and dictated what exciting figure she’d be each game.

But Jamie hadn’t minded. She had loved hanging out with her sister; just being with Renee had made Jamie happy.

“I’ll be fine, Farrah. Have fun with your skinny little slut friends.” Renee returned to her bedroom and shut the door loudly.

Tammy’s mother stood at the front door without stepping aside, as if Jamie were selling cookies instead of coming over to hang out with her daughter.

“How are your parents since that ordeal?” Tammy’s mother asked. She wore an orange apron over a red dress, 
like Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, and her brownish-gray hair was stiff and pushed up, not unlike Lucy’s.

“They’re okay,” Jamie said.

“It must be hard for your mother without a church or synagogue to turn to.”

“She goes to synagogue with my dad,” Jamie lied.

“Oh?! The one up off San Marcos Pass?”

“Yeah.” Jamie had never been there and as far as she knew her father and mother had never been there either.

Tammy’s mother’s face expressed a painful, encompassing pity. She looked at Jamie as if she were about to pet her behind the ears.

“So is Tammy home?” The pity brought out a fierce irascibility in Jamie. She wanted to rage at Tammy’s mother, to rip off her own clothes in the spirit of her parents and run pell-mell through the house.

“That’s right!” Tammy’s mother said. “You girls are having a slumber party at your house tonight. Will your parents be home?”

“Yes. My mom’s writing on index cards right now so we can play charades. And my father’s planning a popcorn tasting—you know, garlic popcorn, parmesan popcorn, salted popcorn.”

“They’ve really settled down since that accident, haven’t they?”

Jamie saw herself tearing out into Tammy’s backyard, mounting the diving board, and doing a few spastic naked jumps before yodeling a war cry and flinging herself into the black-bottom pool.

“Absolutely,” Jamie said.

“This must be such a hard time for them. I bet they don’t have parties like that anymore.”

“Nope. My mom put her bathing suits away for the rest of the summer. She said she’s never going in the pool again.”

“You know, I’d probably do the same thing. Although I can’t imagine something like that ever happening here.” Tammy’s mother finally moved back and let Jamie pass into the house.

As she walked up the stairs to Tammy’s room, Jamie dragged her hand along the wall in just the way Tammy had shown her never to do. Tammy’s mother hated cleaning fingerprints off the paint.

Tammy and Debbie were listening to Janna Winter sing 
“Love Me, Love Me, Baby.” They were snaking around each other and writhing on Tammy’s lacy pink canopy bed as if they were having sex with ghosts. When Janna really started moaning, so did Tammy and Debbie: Yeeeees, love me, love me, baby! Sweet sugah, love me, love me, baby! Yeeeesss . . .

Jamie felt like her cousin Jan.

The song ended. Tammy hopped off the bed and put on a record Jamie had never heard.

“What’s this?” Jamie asked.

“Nazareth,” Debbie said.

“You don’t know Nazareth?” Tammy said.

“I guess not,” Jamie said.

“Where have you been?!” Tammy said.

“I dunno. What should I wear tonight?” Jamie wondered if she ran home and begged Renee to hang out with her, would Renee agree?

“You can wear my clothes if you want,” Debbie said.

“Where are you guys sleeping tonight?” Jamie asked.

“I dunno,” Debbie said, “probably on the beach.”

“We told our moms we’re sleeping at your house.” Tammy went to her window and slid the panel open. With her bony forearm she pushed everything on her pink dresser to one side so she could sit there, her head and hand out the window while she smoked a cigarette.

“Let me have one,” Debbie said.

“God, you’re smoking as much as Tammy now,” Jamie said.

“Yeah, once I started smoking pot, cigarettes seemed so . . .
so nothing, you know.”

“What, are you smoking pot all the time now?”

“You’re one to criticize pot smoking!” Tammy said. “Your parents are, like, total potheads!”

“They’re not potheads! They’re just people who smoke, like you two. And I’m not criticizing, I just didn’t know you did it so much.” How is it, Jamie thought, that Tammy could think that her mother, who monitored fingerprints, bowel movements, and milk consumption, was preferable to Jamie’s parents, who only wanted everyone to be happy?

“I guess Jimmy’s been a bad influence on me,” Debbie said, and she and Tammy laughed.

Jamie looked through their new clothes while they smoked cigarettes.