by Cathy Holton
“They usually keep the chlorine levels pretty high,” Annie said.
“Well, I don’t care how high the chlorine levels are, I’m not getting in the water.” Mel took her cover-up off and leaned back against the lounger. Her figure was good but her skin was pale. She didn’t get a whole lot of sun in New York.
“Look at you in your white bikini,” Sara said flatly.
“It matches my skin.”
“I haven’t worn a bikini since college,” Annie said wistfully. “Not since Carleton was born.”
“I have a couple but I don’t wear them in public,” Lola said. “Only on the boat.”
“Why not?” Mel said, flipping her sunglasses up on her head and looking around at her friends. “You look great. All of you look great.”
Annie shook her head slowly and patted her stomach. “Stretch marks,” she said.
“Oh, who cares?”
“It just doesn’t seem right wearing a bikini,” Sara said, putting her knees up. She kept her towel bunched around her waist to hide her post-pregnancy bump. She’d always been self-conscious about her figure, even when she was twenty-two and it was perfect. “It seems kind of pathetic, like you’re trying too hard to hang on to your youth. You hit forty and there are some things you should just automatically put away. Things like black eyeliner, belly-button rings, and bikinis.”
“Okay, Hester Prynne, you’ve made your point. I don’t agree with you, of course, but I get it.”
Sara tossed a flip-flop at Mel.
“Besides,” Mel said. “Who among us has a belly-button ring?”
Annie and Sara looked sharply at Lola. She giggled and raised the top of her tankini to reveal a gleaming metal ring lying against her taut belly.
“Lola, you slut!” Mel leaned over to get a better look. “What happened to our demure little governor’s daughter? What happened to our sweet little homecoming queen?”
“She grew up,” Lola said.
The music playing on the PA system was a slow repetitive jazz number, like a tamped-down Chuck Mangione, as staid and innocuous as elevator music. After about twenty minutes, Mel had had all she could take.
“For crying out loud, play some real music,” she said loudly. She sat up and adjusted the back of her lounger, looking around. “This shit is putting me to sleep. What do you think, Lola? Led Zeppelin? Steppenwolf?”
“Free Bird,” Lola shouted.
A group of young mothers sitting to their right stopped talking to stare at them.
Mel raised her hand for the cocktail waitress and ordered a round of espresso martinis.
“I can’t drink caffeine after twelve o’clock or I’ll be up all night,” Sara said.
“That’s the idea,” Mel said.
“Caffeine gives me the shakes,” Annie said.
“The vodka offsets the caffeine. Trust me.”
Lola pulled her tankini down over her belly-button ring. “I’ll drink it,” she said.
Chapter 5
er mother always said Lola was a good little girl. Maureen liked to forget about Lola’s little mistakes and, later on, her one Big Mistake, as if they never really happened at all.
“She’s an angel,” Maureen told her cronies in the Junior League. “Why, if she was a boy I’d have to call her Little Jesus,” she bragged to her fellow members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy at their annual Mother-Daughter Tea.
Lola was four at the time. She smiled prettily and stuck two plump fingers into her mouth. She sucked steadily and smiled whenever anyone looked her way. She was dressed in a pink raw silk dress with lace ballerina sleeves and a pink satin sash tied around her waist. She sat on a high-backed chair with her chubby legs stuck straight out in front of her, both tiny feet covered in white anklet socks and a pair of shiny white patent-leather Mary Janes.
“If the good Lord saw fit to bless us with only one child,” her mother said, sighing, “thank goodness it was a sweet one.”
“An absolute angel,” Mrs. Logsdon cooed, leaning over to touch one of Lola’s bright curls. Maureen made the curls herself, brushing and coaxing each one around her fingertip while Savannah stood in the background of the mirror and watched. Savannah used to brush Lola’s hair before her mother decided it was a job only she could handle. Lola loved Savannah. She loved her wide soft lap and the cut-onion smell of her underarms and her warm gentle hands. On days when Lola wasn’t shopping or attending Mother-Daughter Teas with Maureen, she was following Savannah around the house like a little puppy. Lola’s daddy was gone most of the time, “traveling” her mother always said with a strange look on her face, and it was just the three of them rattling around in the big old house with the wide sloping lawn and the swimming pool out back shaped like a teardrop.
“I just wouldn’t know what to do if I had a big old nasty boy,” Maureen said to Celia Shanks, the mother of four strapping sons. “Boy children are always so much trouble.”
“Well, the only thing that can make a man is a boy,” Celia cooed in response.
“As if making a man is a good thing,” Maureen snapped.
Lola sucked her fingers and smiled so deeply her dimples showed. She had learned long ago that if she smiled and acted sweet and obedient she could do pretty much whatever she wanted to do. Other children might gnash their teeth and kick their feet and throw temper tantrums to get what they wanted, but Lola knew this behavior only tended to aggravate adults. She had learned this not long after she first learned to wear big girl panties, but Charlotte Hampton had never learned it at all.
Charlotte was stout and had red hair and freckles. She was an only child, like Lola. Their mothers had gone to school together at Agnes Scott in Atlanta, and they were always giggling and calling each other “Scotties.” Mrs. Hampton was a small, frail woman with faded blue eyes and an expression of permanent bewilderment. She idolized her daughter but seemed incapable of handling her. When Charlotte didn’t get what she wanted she would roll around on the floor flailing her chubby arms and legs and screaming in a shrill, piercing voice. If this didn’t work she would hold her breath until her face turned purple and Mrs. Hampton would scream for the nanny or Mr. Hampton and plead with her recumbent child to “please take a breath for Mommy’s sake, darling.”
Lola was terrified of Charlotte, who would often pinch her or slap her when they were alone. Maureen and Mrs. Hampton were constantly arranging play dates for the two girls. Lola would cry and cling to Savannah and beg not to be sent to Charlotte’s house, but Maureen would have none of that. She was determined that Lola and Charlotte would grow up to be good, good friends just like she and Mrs. Hampton. Once a Scottie, always a Scottie.
On a dreary February morning not long after the Mother-Daughter Tea, Mrs. Hampton sent a car to pick Lola up. Savannah bundled the sniffling child into her Rothschild coat and placed her into the backseat of the long black Lincoln Continental. Maureen stood at the front door with a serene expression on her face, her hands clasped in front of her.
As she leaned over to kiss Lola good-bye, Savannah pressed a small bag of candy into her tiny hand. “Offer that stout chile some of this candy and maybe she won’t be so mean to you, baby,” she said.
Charlotte was waiting for her upstairs in her bedroom when she arrived. Lola allowed Mrs. Hampton to take off her coat and then followed her up the winding staircase like a condemned felon on her way to the gallows.
Mrs. Hampton stopped at Charlotte’s door and knocked timidly. “Precious? Your little friend is here.” There was no answer so she swung the door open and stepped inside.
Charlotte was sitting cross-legged on the bed, roughly combing one of her dolls’ hair with long violent strokes. The doll seemed to look at Lola with an expression of abject misery on her shiny plastic face. Help me, she seemed to plead silently. Lola, trembling, stepped behind Mrs. Hampton and wrapped her fingers in the woman’s skirt.
“I want cake,” Charlotte said. She sat with her neck thrust forward and her shoulders rou
nded up under her ears, glaring at her mother and Lola.
Mrs. Hampton laughed nervously. “Now, darling, you know what the doctor said about sweets.” She unwrapped Lola’s fingers from her skirt and gave her a gentle push into the room.
Charlotte stopped brushing. She squinted her eyes and pushed out her lower lip. “I want cake.”
Mrs. Hampton’s little hands fluttered around her face like a flock of panicked starlings. “Oh, look, sweetness, at the lovely dress Lola has on! Would you like me to take you shopping later? Would you like mommy to buy you a pretty new dress just like the one your little friend has on?”
“Cake,” Charlotte said.
“Let me check with Beatrice and see what she has in the kitchen,” Mrs. Hampton said brightly. She went out, swiftly closing the door behind her. Lola would have followed her but Charlotte’s eyes had shifted to her now and held her, spellbound, like a mouse hypnotized by a snake.
“Sit over there,” she said pointing with the brush and indicating a small wooden chair in the corner, “until I finish with Esmerelda’s hair.”
“Okay,” Lola said, sitting down.
She resumed her terrible grooming of the doll, tearing out great clumps of silky hair that clung to the bristles of the brush like the fur of slaughtered animals. The sound was not unlike that of a plant having its roots ripped from heavy soil. Lola could feel each stroke in the pit of her stomach. Charlotte stuck the tip of her pink tongue between her large teeth as she worked. After a minute she stopped and looked slyly at Lola. “You wanna see something?” she asked and before Lola could answer she had pushed Esmerelda facedown in her lap and pulled down her panties. Several small black craters speckled the doll’s glistening buttocks.
“She’s been very naughty,” Charlotte said. “She had to be punished.”
“Here,” Lola said, pulling the bag of candy from her pocket and holding it out to Charlotte.
Without a word the girl slid down from the bed and crossed the room. She snatched the bag from Lola and ripped it open, pouring a handful of jelly beans into her sweaty palm and then tossing them one by one into her mouth. She chewed slowly, her eyes narrowed and her cheeks plumped. “Next time bring chocolate,” she said.
“Okay,” Lola said.
Charlotte poked through the bag with a chubby finger, pulling out the black jelly beans. She closed them up in a tight fist and then held her hand out to Lola, opening the fingers slowly to reveal a black mass like a lump of coal in the palm of her hand.
“Eat this,” Charlotte said.
“No, thank you,” Lola said politely. “I don’t like licorice.”
“Eat it.”
“Okay,” Lola said.
Later they played Bad Barbie, and when Charlotte had tired of this they went on to Mean Librarian, Bad Orphanage, Evil Schoolteacher, and Queen and Slave. In all the games Charlotte was the stern authority figure and Lola her willing minion. During Queen and Slave Charlotte tied Lola’s hands together with a belt and led her around the sprawling room, stopping finally at a small half-door under the eaves. The door had a sliding bolt and led to a long dark crawl space filled with discarded toys and doll furniture. Lola knew it well because the last time she had come to play, Charlotte had locked her inside the claustrophobic space for nearly an hour.
“Okay, slave,” Charlotte said, sliding the bolt back so that the door swung open on creaky hinges. “Time for you to go to the dungeon.”
Lola took a step back. “No,” she said.
Charlotte gave the belt a little jerk. “Bad slaves go to the dungeon,” she said.
“No.” Lola’s heart leapt up into her throat. She could feel it beating there, flittering around in circles like a bird with a broken wing.
“Get in, slave.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Now.”
“What’s that?” Lola said, pointing with her chin.
Charlotte leaned over with her pudgy hands resting on her dimpled knees, and stared into the darkness. “What?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”
Lola shoved her into the space and slammed the door, holding it closed with her shoulder until she had managed to free her hands and slide the bolt into place.
When Mrs. Hampton came up later carrying two slices of cake on a little silver tray, Lola was sitting on the bed softly crooning to Esmerelda. She had bathed her and dressed her and gently smoothed her torn hair off her face.
“Where’s Charlotte?” Mrs. Hampton said vaguely, looking around the airy room.
The racket from the crawl space, which had long ago ceased, began again with a furious staccato of hands and feet, followed by a loud, piercing wail.
“Oh, my God,” Mrs. Hampton cried, dropping the tray. “My poor baby!”
All the way home Lola sat with her face pressed against the car window. Rain fell in sheets, drumming against the roof of the car and filling the streets with a rushing torrent of gray water. They passed through Hueytown, past rows and rows of little cookie-cutter houses with the lights just coming on and families sitting down to dinner. They passed a house where an old woman in an apron stood looking out at the rain and another where a large family, illuminated behind a plate-glass window like actors on a movie screen, gathered around a long table. The father sat at one end, the mother at the other, and the children were lined up in between. They seemed happy and complete behind their illuminated window, and Lola wondered what it would be like to grow up in a little house no larger than a stable with a father at one end of the table and a mother at the other. If she had been older, she would have told the driver to stop. But she was still a child, vacuous and ignorant, so she said nothing, watching the family until they were nothing more than a twinkling in the darkness behind a curtain of steadily falling rain.
Her mother was standing on the portico when the car pulled up in the circular drive. The headlights illuminated her grim face and the dazzling whiteness of the large columns she stood between. Savannah hurried down the steps beneath an umbrella and opened the door for her, saying nothing but taking Lola’s hand and giving her a little squeeze of encouragement. They went up the wide steps together and followed Maureen into the house.
Maureen switched on a table lamp. A circle of light sprang up around her, glistening on the dark wood floors. She thought of her friends in the UDC and the Junior League snickering behind their hands when they heard what Lola had done to Charlotte Hampton. She thought of Amanda Logsdon and Celia Shanks giggling and rolling their eyes. She leaned over and struck Lola twice on the back of her thighs with an open hand. The child made no sound but Savannah moaned deep in her throat as if Maureen had struck her instead.
“Go to your room,” Maureen said. “There’ll be no supper for you. You’ve misbehaved in a home where you were a guest, and I’m very, very disappointed in you.”
Later, fearing she had been too hard on the child, Maureen climbed the stairs with a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk on a tray. Savannah had bathed Lola and dressed her in a clean nightgown, and the two were snuggled on Lola’s bed, reading Winnie-the-Pooh. The rain had stopped but an occasional rumble of thunder rattled the windows. Maureen set the tray down on a bedside table. “I’ll finish the story,” she said to Savannah.
The child sat stiffly beside her while she read, slowly chewing her sandwich. When Maureen had finished, she stroked Lola’s cheek softly and said, “Do you understand why Mommy was so angry earlier?” When she didn’t answer, Maureen laid her down on the bed and pulled the covers to her chin. “I’ll expect you to call Mrs. Hampton and Charlotte in the morning and apologize for your behavior,” she said. “Do you understand? Is there something you have to say?”
Her mother’s face was soft in the lamplight. Her voice was gentle. Lola thought of the family in the little house shut up behind their plate-glass window and she began to talk, slowly at first, hesitantly, but then with more conviction. She told her mother of the things Charlotte had done to her, of the slaps, bites, bru
ises she had suffered at Charlotte’s hands, of the Indian burns the girl had given her whenever her mother was out of the room.
When she was finished Maureen stared at her for several minutes. Then she rose, vigorously smoothing the covers and fluffing the pillow behind her daughter’s head. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, leaning to turn off the lamp. “Louise Hampton is one of my oldest and dearest friends. She and I were Scotties together. You’ll call Charlotte tomorrow and apologize and then we’ll hear no more of this ridiculous nonsense.”
She turned, and without another word she went out, closing the door firmly behind her.
Chapter 6
y two-thirty the women had succumbed to the heat and gone in for a swim. A swollen orange sun hung from a colorless sky Cicadas sang in the trees. The heat was unusually oppressive for the middle of May. They swam slowly through the tepid water, making their way through the splashing, squirming toddlers, who bobbed across the surface of the water in their swim vests and water wings like so many brightly colored fishing buoys. Their mothers sat along the edges of the pool in twos and threes, dangling their lean brown legs in the water and keeping a wary eye on their undulating offspring.
It was less crowded in the deep end of the pool, although some of the more adventuresome children followed them there, kicking their legs and squirming their bodies like fat tadpoles.
“Jesus,” Mel said. “This is ridiculous.” They were huddled in a corner with their elbows resting behind them on the lip of the pool and their feet floating up in front of them.
“There’s so many of them,” Annie said.
“They’re all adorable,” Lola said.
“I think those floaty devices are the worst things that ever happened to kids,” Mel said. “I mean, think about it. When we were kids we knew not to go into the water until we could swim. We were afraid of it. We respected its dangers. Nowadays kids are strapped into those things before they’re even weaned and dropped into the water. They can’t swim. All they can do is bob around helplessly but they lose their fear of the water, and there’s the danger.” As if to prove her point, a naked baby staggered to the edge of the pool and, without slowing his pace, stepped off into the water. He sank like a stone. The frantic mother ran after him and jumped in, screaming, “Claiborne, Claiborne!” until the water closed over her head. The lifeguard stood up on his chair and blew his whistle sharply but he was unable to dive into the soup of floating toddlers for fear of injuring one. He scurried down the chair and ran to the edge of the pool but by then the mother had surfaced with the baby in her arms. The child seemed oblivious to his near-death encounter. He grinned and blew bubbles while water streamed down his face.