“Mom is going to die!” Renee said. “He is totally busted!”
“Don’t tell your mother,” Allen said.
“Dad!” Renee said. “We have to tell her. She’s being duped!”
“Yeah, Dad. I mean, like, what if Flip wasn’t really a surfer dude, what if he was in the KGB or something? I’d expect you to tell me.”
“Don’t worry, Farrah,” Renee said. “You have to have intelligence to work in intelligence.” Renee avoided Flip when he was at the house and mentioned him only if she had a neat little quip to put him down.
Jamie had grown so used to Renee’s sharp tongue that she heard it as a distant murmur, the way a very old man hears his nagging old wife.
“Oh, when’s Dog Feather’s birthday?!” Jamie asked.
Allen read the license. “He’s twenty-three. Your mother said he was twenty-nine. At least that’s what he told her.”
“He is such a liar!” Renee said.
Allen handed the cards back to Jamie, who shoved them, along with the money, back into the pouch where she found them.
Then she unzipped the largest pocket, felt through some gritty clothes, and pulled out two magazines: Knockers and Penthouse.
“Gross!” She dropped the magazines on the floor.
Renee looked down at them with her head pulled back and her mouth half open.
“He’s a pervert too!” she said.
“He’s not a pervert.” Allen leaned down and picked up Knockers.
“Dad!” Renee said. “How can you touch those!” Allen flipped through the pages.
“Dad!” Renee’s voice was shrill. “Do not look at those! Do not look at those in front of us! That is wrong!”
Allen laughed. “I’m just glancing,” he said.
“That’s gross,” Jamie said.
Allen shoved the magazines back into the backpack, put one hand under Jamie’s arm, and led her out of the study.
“Don’t tell your mother any of this,” he said.
“But what are we going to do?” Renee followed them out. “I mean, he’s a liar. He’s probably already gotten into your checking account and stolen all our money and—”
“He’s probably convinced Mom that she needs to sign over the house to him. I mean, you know how she is about things—”
“Yeah,” Renee said. “Mom thinks things have no value, so she probably did give him the house—”
“Like your slippers, Dad, I mean, she already gave him your slippers!” Jamie said.
“Girls!” Allen said. “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.” Renee was usually the first person awake in the house, but the next morning, the day after they discovered that Dog Feather was Anthony Mirello, Jamie woke up earlier than her sister. She went downstairs, glancing at her father’s closed study door as she turned toward the kitchen. Betty was at the kitchen counter in her red kimono bathrobe, reading the paper.
“Good morning,” Jamie said.
Betty turned the page and sighed.
“Mom? Are you making anything good this morning? I’m dying for some waffles.”
“Huh?” Betty didn’t look up.
“Are you making breakfast?”
“No, no. You can cook if you want to.”
“But you’ve been making all these great things for Dog Feather and I haven’t been that hungry and now I’m really hungry and this is the day you’re not cooking?” Betty put the paper down and stared at her daughter.
“What are your plans for today?” she asked.
“I dunno. Go to the beach with Flip. Hang out with Tammy and Debbie maybe. What are you and Dog Feather doing?”
“He left.” Betty picked up the paper and scowled.
“Why’d he leave?”
“It’s the Indian way,” Betty said.
“Native American way,” Jamie said.
Betty rolled her eyes.
“He wasn’t a real Indian,” Jamie said.
Betty put down the paper and stared at Jamie.
“You’re such a skeptic. You get that from your father.” Jamie said nothing.
“Of course Dog Feather was an Indian.” Betty picked up the paper again.
“Dog Feather? Who would really name a child dog feather?”
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say, unless it’s something kind and generous. Just because someone is named something that you think is silly doesn’t mean he’s not a valuable person. All people are worth being nice to, whether they’re Native American or Jewish or Christian or Buddhist or—”
“What about the Jews for Jesus? Dad always says they’re morons.”
“You should be kind to morons too! Kindness is not something you should dole out according to whom you think is or isn’t worth it!”
Betty stared at Jamie to drive in her point, then handed her a receipt for $3.99 for a keychain purchased in the Yosemite Valley Country Store.
“You spent three ninety-nine on a keychain?!”
Betty grabbed the receipt, turned it over, and handed it back to Jamie. “It’s Dog Feather’s receipt,” Betty said. “He wrote a note on the back.”
“Why didn’t he just use a piece of paper?”
“I’m sure he was trying to save trees by using a receipt instead of fresh paper. We should all follow his example.”
“I’m not going to write letters on the backs of receipts!”
“Jamie, just read the note.”
“My Friends,” Jamie read aloud, “The winds have changed, the time has come, and this feather must blow on to another journey. Thank you for you kindness and hospitality. The sunshine of your generosity will carry me far in this journey. Peace, Dog Feather.” Betty looked at her daughter, waiting for a response.
“Mom,” Jamie said, “I know you don’t like it when I’m critical, but even you have to admit that Jan could write a better note than this.”
“What’s wrong with that note?”
“The winds have changed?! The sunshine of your generosity? That’s so corny. And he uses the word journey twice. I mean, journey? Does he think he’s Christopher Columbus or something?”
“For godsakes, he’s a Native American! Give the guy a break!”
Betty’s eyes welled and glassed, and suddenly Jamie understood that it wasn’t Dog Feather who needed a break, but her mother. And she gave it to her.
10
Renee was angry because her mother wouldn’t take the film from the pictures she had taken at Outward Bound to the Quik-Photo drive-thru booth where they’d be developed in a few hours. She had been home twelve days and still had no photos to prove what she had gone though.
The reason Betty wouldn’t take Renee’s film to the drive-thru booth was that they were having a party and she was wholly focused on that.
“Honey, this party’s for you, in part,” Betty told Renee.
Betty talked to her daughters as she passed by them. She had been walking through the kitchen to the backyard and into the kitchen again in an endless loop. Each time she swooped by there was something different in her hands.
Candles on her way out, wet towels on her way in, aluminum tubs that would be filled with ice and drinks on her way out, two pairs of Jamie’s flip-flops on the way in.
“Naked Leon and Lois and all your other naked friends are not my idea of a party for me,” Renee said.
“There’ll be other kids too,” Betty said “The same kids who were at most of our parties last summer, and all the kids who were at the last party. Those cute boys who are around your age, Mitch and Paul, they’ll be here. And the pretty Layman twins.”
“Flip will be here,” Jamie said.
“Flip should be named Flip-Flop,” Renee said, “because he has the brains of one.”
Jamie started to tell her sister that flip-flops were Flip’s favorite type of shoe and that Flip had once told her (in a drunken slur) that anyone who wore flip-flops was in a way advertising their love for him, Flip, without the flop; but she realized the story would no
t work in Flip’s favor.
Besides, there was no point in trying to proselytize Renee into worshipping the greatness of Flip. She was as stuck on hating him as Jamie was on loving him.
Allen came into the kitchen through the garage; he was smiling, excited.
“I got it!” he said. “They’re setting it up right now.” Betty walked to the back yard and peered out. Jamie and Renee hopped off the kitchen stools and followed their mother. There were three men walking down the hill carrying a box almost as long and wide as the pool.
“What is it?”
“You’ll see,” Allen said. “It’s a present for you kids.”
“We’re too old for a swing set, Dad,” Renee said.
“I know,” Allen said.
“We’re too old for a geodesic dome too,” Jamie said.
That year, geodesic domes had been erected all around town. There was one at the elementary school, one at the East Beach playground, one at the drive-in movie theater where the family often went on Sundays for the Swap Meet. There was also a giant one built as a house near Isla Vista Beach with triangular windows seemingly scattered at random, and a front door that contained the only right angle on the house.
“It’s better than a geodesic dome,” Allen said.
Renee walked out past the pool and gardens to get a better look, then ran back to tell Jamie they were assembling a trampoline.
“Why’d you tell her?!” Allen said. “I didn’t want Jamie to see it until it was completely set up.”
“What about me?” Renee asked. “You didn’t care if I saw it before it was set up?”
“You ran off before I could stop you,” Allen said. “Did you see how big it is? It’s industrial-sized, the kind of trampoline they have for circuses.”
“Let’s go!” Jamie said, and she ran to the trampoline with her parents and sister following. Betty climbed up with the girls and the three of them jumped while Allen signed papers on a clipboard, which had been handed to him by one of the workers.
When the men left, Allen climbed on and the family jumped together. Betty’s short hair flipped up and down like a darting bird. Renee smiled for what seemed like the first time since she’d been home from Outward Bound.
Allen took Betty’s hands and the two of them jumped together, laughing and hooting. And then Renee took Jamie’s hand and broke into Betty and Allen’s grip and suddenly they were all connected in a bouncing, grinning circle. Jamie thought it was a perfect moment; painful almost, in the realization of its perfection. Her sister was happy to be among them (sweetly holding Jamie’s hand like she had when they played twins), her parents were happy with each other, everyone had their clothes on, and no one was high. Jamie shut her eyes for a second and made a wish that the party would be canceled and they would spend the rest of the day, and even into the night, jumping. The trampoline was long and flat and seemed like a perfect place for a picnic dinner. And why not sleep on a trampoline, Jamie wondered, four in a row tucked into sleeping bags on the elastic platform, hovering over the biting, multilegged things that lurked in the grass.
The jump-party ended when Rosa (who cleaned the house on Wednesdays) and her husband, Jesus (who took care of the pool and gardens and whose name everyone except Betty pronounced Hey-soos), came out to the backyard. Betty had hired Rosa and Jesus to help serve food and clean up after the party. Rosa and Jesus were probably the same age as Betty and Allen, but they had a smiling, deferential manner that made them seem much younger.
And they dressed younger, too, Rosa in clothes from JC Penney that were always a season behind whatever was in fashion—all of it from the Juniors department, as nothing from the women’s department would have fit. Her hair fell to the top of her behind when it was out of a braid, which was rare. Jesus dressed like a surfer in ripped jeans, T-shirts, and shorts. That night he wore a clean, ironed, button-down shirt tucked into his jeans. Jamie imagined Rosa looking at him in their bedroom (a bedroom that she always thought would have a gilt-and-white bedroom set, like those she had seen in the windows of cheap furniture stores in Los Angeles) and telling him that he had to look nice for the party: no holes, nothing untucked, and no legs showing. Rosa spoke English and Jesus didn’t, so she did all the talking.
“Miss Betty,” Rosa said, “where do you want us to start?” For several seconds the family remained connected in the circle. Then Betty dropped her hands, Allen followed, and they both climbed down from the trampoline. Betty took Rosa and Jesus inside, while Allen went to the bar at the pool. Because of the shrubs that surrounded the pool area and the fact that the lawn was downhill from the pool, Jamie could only see her father when she jumped up. She and Renee watched him at the bar, setting up glasses and pitchers, slicing lemons and limes. It was like watching an old-fashioned movie; his movements seemed jerky from the missed beat of the down jump that put him out of sight.
About five minutes before the guests were scheduled to arrive, Flip phoned Jamie.
“Put your diaphragm in,” Flip said.
“But we’re having a party.” Jamie was in her father’s study, whispering into the phone. She looked down at the folders arranged in a fan on her father’s desk and read his block print on the tabs: MCMAHON FURNITURE, WILSON LEATHER AND FUR, CAL WORTHINGTON.
“We’ll totally sneak off,” Flip said. “I mean, shit, we’ve done it only three times since I’ve been home and I’m starting to get a little edgy, you know.” His words felt like a threat. The image of Flip with older, prettier, tanner girls clunked around Jamie’s brain like a stone in an empty soup can.
“Okay, I’ll put it in,” she said.
Upstairs in the bathroom, with the diaphragm sliding out of her hand like an oiled rodent, Jamie wondered how she would feel about Flip if they were alone on an island. Would the thrill of being with him still shiver across her skin if no one else knew they were together—if there weren’t an entire society of teenage girls who envied her position? Would she love Flip if she didn’t know that her sister had once had a Tiger Beat–style crush on him—a crush that never even pretended to hold the expectation of reciprocity? Would she love him if she didn’t have the constant emotional cushion of Tammy and Debbie on the other side of her soiled sheets?
Her deflated, orgasmless sex with Flip had become a joke with the girls, a source of such great fits of laughter that Jamie often found herself wishing things were worse than they actually were just for the hysterics it would bring to her girlfriends. Jamie found she couldn’t separate the experience of Flip’s popularity from the experience of loving Flip. It was like falling in love with a billionaire—would he be the same man, the type of man you’d fall in love with, if he didn’t have his money?
The adults congregated at the shallow end of the pool, near the bar. The kids crammed around the table of food that had been set up near the deep end. It was so crowded that from the kitchen the pool was invisible; all one could see was bodies, many naked, some half-naked, and a few clothed. Renee took Paul and Mitch to the trampoline.
Flip and Jamie followed. Renee was far more bold than she had been the last time they had seen these boys, at the pool party that kicked off the bicentennial summer.
“You’re different,” Paul said, tilting his head and smiling at Renee.
“I went to Outward Bound,” Renee said, as if that were an answer everyone should have understood.
“She’s a mountain mama,” Flip said. Jamie cringed as she anticipated Renee’s knifed tongue working over that phrase as soon as Flip went home.
Eventually, most of the kids were on the trampoline.
Jamie felt carsick as she watched the near-collisions and the near-ejections off the trampoline. She was certain that someone would land headfirst on the ground and be killed, or worse, paralyzed. The previous summer, a boy at school had dove headfirst off the downtown pier; he hit an old pylon that had been burned to a stub in the pier fire two years earlier and was paralyzed from the neck down. Everyone who knew him well said he’
d be better off dead, and Jamie believed them.
“Renee!” Jamie stood on the ground, waiting to catch anyone who might fall. She reached up and tried to grab her sister’s ankle as Renee jumped face-to-face with Paul.
Renee kicked Jamie’s hand off.
“Renee,” Jamie said, “we’ve got to come up with some rules here or someone’s going to get killed.” Renee stopped jumping and looked down at Jamie. Her body bounced and rocked as if she were on a boat as everyone around her jumped.
“Why don’t we say only three people on the trampoline at once. I mean, there are . . .” Jamie counted, “eight kids on there now. That’s insane.”
Renee trained her eyes on her sister to tell her that she was ruining her good time. Paul was listening. He stopped jumping.
“She’s right,” he said. “It’d be more fun if there were fewer people because then we could do tricks, you know, flips and stuff like that.”
“Flips!” Flip said, leaping open-mouthed up in the air.
“Yeah,” Renee said. “Let’s say only three people at a time, so there’s room to flip.”
“Fliiiip!” Flip raised a fist in the air as he jumped.
“Cool,” Paul said.
For a second Jamie was disappointed that she wasn’t getting credit for the call for safety. Then she decided she didn’t care; she didn’t need credit, as long as there would be no death or paralysis.
“Well?” Jamie said.
“Well what?” Renee said.
“Tell everyone to get off and set up the three-person rule or something.”
Paul stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled the way men whistle for New York City cabs in movies. Everyone stopped talking, but no one stopped jumping.
“Only three on at a time!” he yelled.
“THREE AT A TIME!” Renee added.
Flip jumped off and stood beside Jamie.
“I wish Dog Feather were still here,” he said. “He was the coolest Indian dude ever. And he had way better doobage than your parents.”
The Summer of Naked Swim Parties Page 14