The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (3 page)

“Who’s making brownies with me?” Debbie asked.

“Got any weed for them?” Bill said, and the boys laughed.

“I’ll make brownies,” Mike said. He walked behind the counter and stood beside Debbie. Jamie looked over at them and could barely breathe. Mike was holding up the box of brownie mix and reading the directions. Debbie was baking brownies with a sea-eyed college boy.

Tammy stepped just outside the French doors; Bill followed, while pulling his ripped T-shirt off over his head.

“Awesome boulders,” he said. “Do I have to wear a suit?”

“No way,” Tammy said. “This is a party house. Jamie’s parents don’t even own swimsuits!” Jamie was relieved that Bill seemed impressed by this fact.

“Where are your records?” Joseph asked. He stood so close to Jamie that his voice was like a whisper.

“I don’t have any records.”

“You don’t have any records?”

“No. My parents have records.”

“What do they have? Burt Bacharach? Barry Manilow?”

“They have Barry Manilow!”

“I was kidding.” Joseph smiled. His eyes alit on her the 
same way her parents did when she said something they found adorable. She hoped he couldn’t see how deeply she blushed.

“Show me their records,” Joseph said, and he put his man-sized hand on Jamie’s twiggish, near-hairless forearm.

Jamie took Joseph to the tiny, internal room off the living room, which was a walk-in closet when her parents bought the house but had been converted into the record room.

There was a multilayered black stereo system on one shelf.

The other shelves held records, perhaps a thousand, filed by category and then alphabetically. On the far wall was a panel with white circular knobs that sent music from the record player into various rooms, or the backyard. The single over-head dome light was dim and Joseph had shut the door. Jamie had the feeling she was in a taped-up cardboard box.

“This is so, way, totally, cool,” Joseph said.

He squinted and read the room names, which had been meticulously typed out on Allen’s plastic label maker and stuck below the corresponding knob.

“Rock and roll is over here.” Jamie waved her hand up and down a wall of records, then suddenly shoved it in her jeans pocket. It had looked floppy and strange to her—like someone else’s hand.

“Help me choose something,” Joseph said. He put his palm on the small of Jamie’s back and lead her over one step so that they were standing together in front of the floor-to-ceiling shelves of rock and roll.

“What do you like?” His voice was slow and hushed.

“I dunno,” she said. And she really didn’t know. Jamie’s parents chose the music; they chose what to play and when to play it. She had never thought to choose music for herself—as if she had no right to fill the air with something she 
in particular wanted to hear. And when Jamie’s friends were over, they chose the music.

“Tammy loves Frampton Comes Alive!,” Jamie said.

“Nah,” Joseph said, “you can’t understand a word he’s saying.”

“Debbie always puts on Jethro Tull, but I think it’s kinda boring.”

“How about Wild Cherry.” Joseph pulled the record off the shelf and smiled at the cover.

“Cool photo,” he said, and he looked at Jamie so she’d look down at the picture of glassy red lips holding a dripping cherry. The stem came out the corner of the mouth and made a line that ran off the edge of the album. Jamie felt a jolt of panic. She was reminded of the time a year ago when Tammy’s older brother had been packing to leave for college. He had called Jamie into his room as she was walking by to use the bathroom. Once she was standing near him at his desk, he had opened a drawer, pulled out a Playboy magazine, and unfurled the centerfold while staring intently at Jamie.

“What do you think?” Tammy’s brother had said, and Jamie had just shrugged her shoulders and hurried out of the room. She didn’t know what she thought, all she knew was that Tammy’s brother’s intentions were beyond her understanding—they took place in a world where she didn’t know how things operated or what the rules were. And now, Jamie was standing on the border of that world again, this time with Joseph, who was the cutest boy she’d ever seen in person, but who scared her nonetheless.

“I like maraschino cherries,” Jamie said, trying to rein the focus into her world, “but my mom won’t let me eat them because she says they cause cancer.” 

“One won’t kill you.” Joseph slipped the record out of its jacket and held it perpendicular to his flat palms.

“That’s how my dad holds the records,” Jamie said.

“You don’t want to get grease or fingerprints on it,” Joseph said. “Oh, get that House of Honey record, too.” Jamie pulled House of Honey out of the jacket and handed it to Joseph, who sandwiched it between his hands with Wild Cherry. He slowly lowered the records, piercing the tiny eyeholes with the silver prong that stood up from the center of the turntable. When he turned on the power, House of Honey dropped down, leaving Wild Cherry hovering above like a spaceship. The music started and in her head Jamie heard her mother singing along as she always did.

She was a sweet, sweet lady with big blue eyes . . .

“Now, who should we let listen?” Joseph asked, and he turned to face the panel of knobs.

“Pool,” Jamie said.

“Pool,” Joseph said, turning the knob.

“Kitchen,” Jamie said.

“Kitchen.”

“Living room?”

“Okay, living room.”

“Uh . . . I guess that’s it.”

“What about the bedrooms?”

“No one’s in the bedrooms.”

“Let’s put the music on in your room.” Joseph turned the knob that rested above the piece of red plastic tape with JAMIE BED popping out in white.

“Jamie bed,” Joseph said. The word bed seemed porno-graphic when Joseph said it. Jamie felt as if he were talking about her sexual anatomy rather than simply the place where she slept.

“It’s my bedroom,” Jamie said. “Not my bed. I think Dad just got tired of turning that dial and punching.”

“Take me to your bedroom,” Joseph said. “I want to see if this system really works.”

“Uh, okay.” Obedience had always been a problem for Jamie. She didn’t know how to not do what she’d been told.

And with Joseph, whose very presence dulled her intellect into a warm ball of Play-Doh, Jamie didn’t even think to not do what he had asked.

Upon entering the bedroom, Joseph walked straight to Jamie’s bed and flung himself across it, facedown. Jamie couldn’t see him at first, as all she could focus on was the white bra and rejected T-shirts that lay in a heap on her floor.

“Where are the speakers?” Joseph asked.

Jamie kicked the pile of clothes under her bed.

“Up there and there,” she said, pointing to the black boot-box-sized cubes hanging from the corners of the ceiling.

Joseph rolled onto his back and patted the bed beside him.

“Come here,” he said. “Let’s lie together and listen.” Jamie stared at her unmade bed, the pink, chenille bedspread bunched in a corner at Joseph’s feet. He was wearing flip-flops that had a layer of hardened beach tar on the soles. His feet were bony—cadaverous looking—anachronistic on his solid body. Jamie moved to the edge of the bed, put her hands on the brass foot rail, and looked at Joseph. There was a clicking in her brain, like a playing card clicking in a bike tire. This clicking told her what hadn’t yet occurred to her: Joseph might try something. What he’d try, she wasn’t 
sure, but she knew it would be something she’d never done before, as thus far Jamie had kissed only three boys and had yet to be touched anywhere on her body by any boy.

Jamie exhaled and laughed because she didn’t know what to do or say.

“Come on the bed with me,” Joseph said again. “I won’t hurt you. I swear.”

It was a promise Jamie didn’t doubt, and so she did as she had been asked. So, for the first time in her life, Jamie was on her bed listening to House of Honey with a boy. A post-college boy. A post-college boy who had the dazzling looks of a Tiger Beat cover.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Joseph asked.

“No.” Jamie snorted and laughed and didn’t even think to ask him if he had a girlfriend.

Joseph rolled to his side, head propped on the triangle of his right arm. With his left hand he traced his fingers up and down Jamie’s out-turned forearm.

“You have beautiful, soft skin,” he whispered.

She didn’t answer. The song ended. For a second all was silent and still.

Jamie looked at the ceiling, afraid to turn toward Joseph, whose face was inches from hers, and whom she sensed was staring at her.

“You know,” Joseph said, continuing to stroke her arm, 
“when a man touches a woman it’s a beautiful thing. A beautiful, wonderful thing.”

“Oh yeah?” Jamie looked at him quickly, then turned away.

Joseph shifted Jamie’s T-shirt up toward her rib cage. She tensed up momentarily, and then tensed up in a different, less fearful way as he stroked her belly. A tingling began to 
run through Jamie—an internal telephone line, calling up all her bits and parts. Somewhere in her mind was the unfocused idea of pressing her body against Joseph’s.

“You’re very beautiful,” Joseph said, and he swirled his long, dark finger into the whorl of Jamie’s belly button. The telephone ringing echoed in a hollow Jamie never knew she had—she found the sensation captivating and disturbing.

“Have you ever kissed a boy?” Joseph leaned in so close to Jamie’s face that she could feel his hot breath on her cheek.

“Yes,” she said.

“With tongues or without?”

“With.”

“Did he touch your breasts?”

The word breasts three inches from Jamie’s ear caused her to shudder.

“No.”

“Did he touch you between your legs?” Joseph’s hand paused just below her navel. Jamie felt a ghost sensation of him touching her lower, but she glanced down and saw that it wasn’t true.

“No,” she said.

“He didn’t touch you right there?” And then Joseph delicately placed his hand over the fly of Jamie’s jeans. A shooting heat ran up and down her body.

“No,” she whispered.

“You see, I love to make girls happy,” Joseph said. “And there’s nothing that makes a girl happier than when you touch her . . . right there.”

Jamie’s right leg kicked in a spasm as he pulsed his fingers against her. She looked at him, her mouth half open—hypnotized by this good, scary feeling. She was being fed something that, prior to that instant, she had never hungered for.

And now that the feeling was there, now that desire for a body other than her own had been pressed into her, she couldn’t remember not feeling it.

There was a clomping of fast feet coming up the steps.

Joseph pulled his hand away just as the bedroom door swung open and Debbie appeared, a giant red oven mitt on one hand.

“Brownies will be ready soon,” she said. “I’m borrowing one of your suits—Tammy’s swimming in her underwear!” Debbie flung open the top drawer of the white, painted dresser and pulled out a black crocheted bikini Betty had bought Jamie at Sabado y Domingo, the local arts and crafts show. She rushed into Jamie’s bathroom and pushed the door shut but not hard enough for it to fully close. Jamie hopped off the bed and stumbled toward the door. She turned and looked back at Joseph.

“Do you want brownies?” Her voice was paced with Debbie’s staccato.

Joseph rotated his legs off the bed and sat up slowly; he reminded Jamie of her father trying to rise on Sunday mornings.

“Okay!” Jamie chirped. “So I’ll see you down at the pool!”

Tammy sat on the shallow-end steps in her padded white nylon bra and blue cotton underwear, holding a fistful of gooey barely baked brownie. Her braces were spackled a tarry brown.

“Oh my god,” she said. “These are so, so good! Can you believe that Debbie could make such good brownies? I mean, they’re, like, raw!”

Bill was in his boxer shorts jumping on the diving board.

He jumped higher and higher, his arms whirling like rotors.

Finally he threw himself off the board, screaming a war cry that was silenced by the water. When he popped up for air there was a new explosion of sound as he belted along with the song that had just started. Bill swam to Tammy on the steps and took a bite of brownie straight from her fist.

Mike sauntered out from the kitchen wearing an oven mitt that matched the one Debbie had on. The pan of brownies was in his hand. He was picking at it with his finger, feeding himself frosting-soft balls.

“Want some?” he asked.

Jamie reached into the pan and pulled out a wad just as Joseph emerged from the house. As she was eating, standing beside Mike, Joseph quietly slipped off his jeans and T-shirt to reveal a pair of loose-hanging, faded yellow boxers.

“Pool heated?” he asked.

“Um,” Jamie had a wad of brownie in her mouth that stuck her teeth together, clogged her throat. “Uh huh,” she hummed.

Joseph looked back at Jamie with one long, cinematic gaze and she regretted that her finger was in her mouth loosening splotches of brownie from her gum line. He dove into the water and swam two fast laps: back and forth, back and forth. No one watched except Jamie, who felt like her body was operating on its own—she had no choice but to look at what every cell beneath her skin insisted she look at, pointing her to the place her body wanted her to be.

Debbie appeared in the black crocheted suit.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Do you love those brownies? 
Mike and I made them! Can you believe how good they are?!”

“They’re great,” Jamie said, although she was still trying to swallow. The mass of brownie was stuck like peanut butter; she could feel the forces of her body squeezing and undulating the lump down her throat.

Tammy’s favorite song, “Pick It Up,” came on. She screamed like she was at a concert, then climbed out of the pool to dance. Debbie clapped her hands and danced beside her, then Mike jumped in and did the bump between them. Bill raised his fist in the air, bouncing in the pool, singing along so loudly that they could hardly hear House of Honey.