“You’d better go to the library and read up on it, Al,” Dad said. “See how it’s done with small children. You’ve got to be prepared for things like that when you’re a sitter.”
I thought that would be the end of it, but when I went to the Bentons’ again, Mrs. Benton said, “Jimmy said he got a grape stuck in his throat last Tuesday, Alice. Did that really happen or is it just one of his stories?”
I could have told Mrs. Benton that Jimmy just made it up, and I suppose she might have believed me, but I didn’t want to start my first real job that way. I couldn’t stand there in front of Jimmy Benton and say that what had happened wasn’t true. My face got red and I swallowed a couple times, but finally I told Mrs. Benton the whole story. All except the French-kissing part.
She was really nice about it, although I could tell by her face that she was frightened. She said she was partly to blame for not spelling out all the rules of the house, so we went over the ones she had missed:
1. No foods for Jimmy except what Mrs. Benton says he can have. Little kids can choke on all kinds of things, she told me.
2. No friends in the house.
3. Watching Jimmy the whole time he’s awake, and every second he’s eating.
I used to think that when I grew up, there wouldn’t be so many rules. Back in elementary school there were rules about what entrance you used in the mornings, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the restroom, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess. And there was always somebody watching to make sure.
What I’m finding out about growing older is that there are just as many rules about lots of things, but there’s nobody watching. Elizabeth, for example, isn’t supposed to go with a boy till she’s in high school, but her mother doesn’t know. Pamela’s not supposed to kiss until she’s sixteen, but she does. Mrs. Benton doesn’t really know for sure what goes on when I’m taking care of Jimmy; she just has to trust me. I wanted her to know that she could.
That night, I lay on top of my sheets, enjoying the breeze from the fan in my window, and thought some more about French-kissing. I was really going to have to be careful what I ate from now on before I went out with Patrick. No more onions. No more cheese. No more garlic. How could I ever go to High’s anymore and eat ice cream? How would I eat potato chips? Patrick would be able to taste the salt on my teeth and tongue.
I curled up, my knees against my chest, and had a thought so scary that I hardly wanted to think about it. I felt like Elizabeth and the way she’s always saying, “Don’t talk about it! I won’t listen!”
But this thought wouldn’t go away. The more I tried not to think it, the more it was there: I wondered if maybe Patrick and I hadn’t had more fun back in sixth grade when we were just eating lunch together, horsing around together at recess, and sitting out on my porch talking. Before the kissing began.
10
THE SURF AND SPRAY HIDEAWAY
BY THE LAST WEEK OF AUGUST, I COULD see that the summer had had a certain rhythm to it. Patrick had called almost every morning and we’d decide what we were going to do that day, whether he was going to come over and play Monopoly on the porch or if we were just going to wait till after dinner and meet at the school with the others. On the days Patrick came over and I had work to do, he had always helped out. He scrubbed the front porch with me once. Patrick held the hose while I used the mop; every so often he’d spray me and I’d yell. He even helped Lester wash his car.
Sometimes the boys had gone bowling by themselves in the evening, or they’d ridden their bikes around the park, or somebody’s father had driven them to Baltimore to see an Orioles game. Then it had just been Pamela and Elizabeth and me, and I’d liked those evenings, too. I hadn’t had to worry about whether my shorts were too tight or my hair was too frizzy or if there was garlic on my breath. Sometimes we’d gotten up a girls’ baseball team or all three of us had gone to a movie, and we’d had a fine time without the boys.
And by the end of August I’d begun to wonder if this was the way I was supposed to feel when Patrick wasn’t there: relieved.
And then, that last week of August, I got a whole week of relief. Dad came home from work to say that Janice Sherman’s beach house at Ocean City was empty, unexpectedly, and that Janice had offered it to us. I wasn’t surprised because I think Janice is secretly in love with my father, and probably the only reason she didn’t invite Dad to spend the week with her alone in the beach house is that she’s the assistant manager at the Melody Inn, and she can’t take vacations at the same time Dad does.
Not only did Dad say we’d use her beach house, but he told me I could invite Pamela and Elizabeth to come, too. And just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to go because I’d promised to babysit Jimmy Benton for the summer, Patrick volunteered to sit for me. And just when I thought Mrs. Benton would never agree to that, she said that if Patrick would come over and talk to her about it, she’d consider it. And just when I thought that something would happen to keep us from going, there we were—Pamela, Elizabeth, and I—in the backseat of Dad’s Honda, heading for Ocean City.
All three of us said that we were going to miss our boyfriends while we were gone. All three of them said they were going to miss us. Elizabeth even brought Tom’s ID bracelet along in her suitcase because she said it was important to wear it at the beach to show that she was “taken.” And I let Patrick French-kiss me once before we left I still couldn’t decide whether I liked it or not, but it was certainly different.
Lester said he couldn’t take off a week from work at the appliance store, but that he would be down for the weekend, so it was just the four of us there in the Honda. Dad told me later that driving to Ocean City with three girls in the backseat was like listening to a Mozart flute concerto on a fast speed.
We went by Annapolis and then we stopped at the toll booth at the Bay Bridge where Pamela told the attendant he was a “hunk.” Elizabeth and I dived down on the floor in embarrassment, and if Dad hadn’t been driving, he probably would have dived down, too. But then we were crossing the bridge and exclaiming over the sailboats below and begging Dad to turn up the volume on our favorite songs and asking Dad to stop at Stuckey’s for a pecan fudge roll. We talked about all the teachers we had ever had and all the boys in the sixth grade who were good-looking, and when we saw a sign that said LOPES, 2 FOR $1.50, we asked Dad what they were, and he said melons. And when we saw a sign that said FEMALES, THREE DOLLARS A BUSHEL, we asked him what in the world that meant, and he said crabs. And finally, when we heard Dad say, “Thank the Good Lord in Heaven,” we knew we were almost there.
It was a small beach house a block from the ocean with a wide front porch. Above the door was a piece of driftwood with the words SURF AND SPRAY HIDEAWAY painted on it. I wondered, when we walked inside, if Dad wasn’t wishing he had come here with a sweetheart instead of three twelve-year-old girls. Sometimes I wonder about my dad. I don’t think he’s had any girlfriends at all since Mama died. He and Janice go to concerts sometimes, but I can tell by the way he comes right home afterward that he doesn’t feel romantic toward her or anything.
Inside, there was a living room filled with wicker furniture and a kitchen in back, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. There was even a front porch upstairs, with rocking chairs on it, just like the one below. One of the bedrooms had two sets of bunk beds, and Dad said that was where we were supposed to sleep.
The first thing we did was decide which bed each of us was going to sleep in. The second thing we did was dump all our stuff on our beds, and the third thing was put on our swimsuits and run down to the beach with our towels. The first thing Dad did was to put a Bach CD on the stereo and go sit out on the porch. Now you can see why I worry about Dad.
We were in such a hurry to get to the beach that I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what Pamela and Elizabeth were wearing till we got there. Elizabeth had on a blue and white suit with stra
ps that crossed her back, and a little skirt in front. It looked something like a ballet costume, and on Elizabeth, it looked gorgeous.
Pamela had on a red and pink bikini and a little bra that had no straps.
“Pamela,” I said, staring first at her navel and then at her bra. “How on earth are you going to keep that on in the water?”
“It’s not for swimming, silly!” said Pamela.
“It’s not?” I stared some more. “What’s it for?”
“For the beach! For tanning!” Pamela told me.
“For boys to look at,” Elizabeth said, and we laughed.
I felt really dumb-looking. I found out later that as soon as I invited Elizabeth and Pamela to go to the ocean with us, their mothers took them right out and bought them new bathing suits. I just threw in my same old yellow suit I’d worn the last two summers. It was one piece, made of a sort-of stretchy material, and had a stain on the front where I’d dropped a chili dog. I could feel how tight it was across my thighs. The straps cut into my shoulders, and when I sat down on the sand, I felt as though it were going to cut me in half. I guess you could say it was too small. I think Aunt Sally sent it to me once, an old bathing suit of Carol’s. I didn’t even know how to buy a new one. I still wasn’t sure how to buy a bra. I’d only learned the past year to buy my own Levi’s, for heaven’s sake. Suddenly I wanted to be anywhere but on that beach, between beautiful Elizabeth and gorgeous Pamela. Boys were looking at them already.
I decided to go back to the beach house and change into shorts. I’d wear shorts the whole week. I’d even go in the water wearing shorts if I had to.
“I’ll be back,” I told the girls, and made my way across the hot sand and down the block to the cottage.
Dad was still sitting on the porch.
“Back so soon?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I think I’ll put on shorts.” I stopped and rinsed off my feet at the faucet by the steps.
“Where are the girls?” Dad asked.
“Down on the beach looking gorgeous,” I said. I didn’t really mean for it to sound so sour, but it did.
I started up the steps, but just as I reached the top, Dad said, “Al, isn’t that the same bathing suit you were wearing last year?”
“And the year before that,” I told him.
Dad put down his wineglass and stood up. “Put on your shorts,” he said. “We’re going shopping.”
I just stared at him. Dad told me once he would rather go through a hurricane on crutches than go shopping, and here he was, suggesting it himself. I was back downstairs in three minutes flat, and five minutes later, we walked in the first shop we came to on the boardwalk.
“Yes, sir?” said a clerk, coming over.
“I want my daughter to have the most beautiful bathing suit you have, and I want it fitted properly,” Dad told her.
I could hardly believe my ears. I didn’t even know Dad knew how to talk to a salesclerk. He just smiled at me, and sat down on a chair to wait.
The clerk showed me a whole rack of suits my size. I picked six of them that I really liked, and when I tried them on, she showed me how they should fit, how they should feel, where there were wrinkles that shouldn’t be.
A half hour later I left the shop wearing the most beautiful two-piece bathing suit I’d ever seen. It was sort of a shiny green and it had a bow in front between the breasts, and a bow on each side where the leg was cut high. I didn’t even look like the same girl. I had gorgeous long legs and a nice bosom, and I just hugged Dad when I came out and kept saying, “Thank you, thank you.” I’ll bet the salesclerk thought I was a little orphan girl he’d found under the boardwalk or something.
Dad took my other clothes on back to the cottage and I ran down to the water. Pamela and Elizabeth were lying on their backs with their eyes closed.
“No one was there,” Pamela was saying. “I wonder where she went.” She opened her eyes when she realized someone was standing there blocking the sun, and then she saw me.
“Alice?” she said, sitting up. “Where were you?”
Elizabeth opened her eyes and sat up too.
“Alice!” Elizabeth said. “It’s gorgeous! Where did you get it?”
“Dad just bought it for me,” I said. “My other swimsuit was too small.”
“Turn around,” said Pamela.
I turned. Slowly. I saw some boys watching me. I blushed. Pamela whistled.
“I never saw someone change so much just because of a bathing suit!” Elizabeth said. I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, but I didn’t care. It was one of the most wonderful afternoons of my life.
It was sort of weird being at the ocean with my dad and Pamela and Elizabeth. Dad and I are early risers, and sometimes we’d get up and go walking along the beach looking for shells before breakfast. Elizabeth usually got up around nine, and Pamela didn’t get up at all unless we made her. It was Pamela, though, who wanted to stay up all night. I’d be half dead for sleep, and Pamela would decide she wanted to walk to the end of the boardwalk and back. Dad finally said we had to be in every night by eleven. Pamela wasn’t too happy about it, but she was, after all, a guest.
By the fourth day, Elizabeth was getting a little annoyed at Pamela. Once, when a boy asked Pamela to go up on the boardwalk and have a Coke with him and she went, Elizabeth said, “I think it’s awful the way she flirts with other boys when she’s supposed to be going with Mark Stedmeister. There he is, pining away back home, and she’s off drinking Cokes with some guy.”
I didn’t think Pamela should be going off with boys either, but I wasn’t exactly sure about Mark pining away back home.
“Once you marry,” Elizabeth added, “you can’t even think about another man. In that way, I mean. It’s a sin.”
Elizabeth knew a lot more about religion than I did, but that really surprised me. “You can’t even think it?” I asked.
“Not in that way,” Elizabeth said again.
We took the inner tubes Dad had brought to the ocean and went out just beyond where the waves were breaking. Then we floated lazily around, paddling with our hands.
“Look at her!” Elizabeth said, pointing, when Pamela came back from having her Coke. Now there were two boys on the beach towel with her, and Pamela was laughing, her beautiful long yellow hair hanging down her back and touching the sand. “Pamela’s going to be married and divorced by the time she’s twenty,” Elizabeth predicted.
I began to feel a little responsible. Here I had invited Pamela to the ocean, and she just seemed to have forgotten all about Mark back home. I thought about that bathing suit she was wearing, and I knew her mother had gone with her to buy it. I wondered why a mother would buy such a suit for a daughter who wasn’t supposed to kiss until she was sixteen. Some parents don’t seem to have a bit of sense.
The boys must have been teasing Pamela because suddenly she got up and ran along the water, the boys after her, her long blond hair flying out behind. Pamela could have been wearing a bathing suit that reached from her neck to her ankles and boys would still stare because her hair was so beautiful.
One of the boys started splashing water on Pamela’s almost-bare body, and she squealed and covered her navel.
“That’s disgusting,” said Elizabeth.
Pamela ran up and down the beach, laughing. Then a third boy joined in, and Pamela, shrieking, turned and headed out into the water toward us, just as a huge breaker came rolling in.
Elizabeth and I couldn’t help but laugh when Pamela went under. It was the first time she’d gotten her suit wet since we arrived. We giggled out loud and waited for Pamela’s head to come back up. The two boys were looking for her, too, and finally I saw Pamela struggling to her feet, her long hair in strings down her back. She was gasping and coughing and trying to wipe the water out of her eyes. And suddenly Elizabeth and I rose half up on our inner tubes and stared because Pamela’s bikini top had slipped down around her waist, and she didn’t
even know it. We yelled at her, but she couldn’t hear us.
The boys were staring too. Two of them grinned and turned away, then they looked back and stared some more.
Pamela was still choking and sputtering, and not one of those boys did anything but stand there and look at her. And all at once I saw Pamela groping for her bra. She crossed her arms in front of her and sank down in the water, her face crimson. Then, with the boys laughing behind her, she dashed up out of the water, across the sand, and headed for the cottage.
Elizabeth and I were already paddling toward shore. We gathered up the towels and followed.
“Well, maybe now at least she’ll settle down and stay with us for a change!” Elizabeth said.
She was right. When we got back, Pamela was lying facedown on her bed, sobbing. She said she was going to stay right there for the rest of the week, that she wouldn’t set foot outside the cottage for anything.
“Those boys don’t even know you,” I said.
“They know I’m flat-chested,” she sobbed.
Dad invited us all to Phil’s Crab House for dinner, but Pamela wouldn’t go. We brought back a McDonald’s Big Mac for her.
“C’mon, Pamela,” I said the next day. “Let’s at least go down to the rides at the end of the boardwalk.”
“They’ll be there! I know it!” Pamela wailed.
What happened at last was that Pamela went in disguise. She piled her long blond hair on top of her head, fastened it with a comb, put on a straw hat to cover it up, sunglasses to cover her eyes, and a long-sleeved shirt of Dad’s that came down below her knees. Nobody looked at her twice, and that was just the way Pamela wanted it.
When we got home that day, Dad was sitting on the porch sipping wine with a woman. It turned out that she owned the cottage next door to the Surf and Spray Hideaway, and Dad had invited her over for a drink. We politely said hello, went on upstairs, and sat out on the second-floor porch, leaving the lower porch to them. It seemed sort of odd, staying out of Dad’s way so he could have a little romance in his life.