The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

by Blau, Jessica Anya.

  Father Telamon snatched the game and cards from Betty and placed them on the boulder. He put his Bible and lantern on the ground, pulled a small silver vial from his pocket, and dumped the contents on the cards and game.

  Jamie never saw him light a match; it seemed as if the flames appeared by magic, licking the game and bending the loose cards into arcs that slowly dissolved to ash. Father Telamon’s lantern appeared lit suddenly too. It began to spew more smoke than the burning games. Father Telamon waved the smoking lantern over the flames and chanted in Greek.

  “Put your hands in the prayer position,” Betty said, and she nudged Jamie.

  Jamie placed her palms together and stared at the fire on the boulder. Father Telamon didn’t seem aware of Jamie or Betty; he chanted in a way that made Jamie think that perhaps his spirit had gone astray and this noise he was making was the elevator Muzak in his body. Jamie wanted to laugh, but her mother’s rigid face told her she wasn’t even allowed to smile.

  Just when Jamie felt as if her knees would buckle from standing still so long, Father Telamon waved the lantern back and forth and marched into the house, continuing his chants. Betty and Jamie followed him, their hands still folded in prayer, their eyes and heads darting around as they went from room to room accompanied by a trail of pungent, woodsy smoke. Father Telamon even went into the kitchen pantry, opening the boxes of cookies and crackers, and the lid to every spice jar, to smoke out the spirits hiding there. Jamie’s mouth dropped open, her body on the verge of cracking apart with laughter. Betty plunged the nib of her pump into the top of Jamie’s foot until Jamie’s face went still and somber.

  Eventually, they followed Father Telamon back out to the pool again, where the Ouija board and tarot cards were a smoldering gray pile, layered like feathery dead birds.

  Father Telamon walked down to the shallow end of the pool, Bible and smoking lantern in hand, and descended the steps in his robe. He walked until he was hip deep in water, the skirt of his robe swimming up around him like an oil spill. He placed the lantern on the side of the pool and turned to Betty and Jamie.

  “Come,” he said.

  “Should we change?” Betty pointed down at her skirt.

  “Ohkee!”

  “No need to yell.” Betty smiled as she spoke, then turned to Jamie and said, “Remember this for when you go backpacking abroad: the Greek word for no sounds like okay, and the Greek word for yes sounds like nah.”

  “Okay.” Jamie smirked, then took her mother’s hand as they walked down the steps into the pool—Betty in her yellow pumps and Jamie in flip-flops and shorts. They stopped and stood before Father Telamon. He wasn’t much taller than Betty, but somehow, to Jamie, he suddenly seemed huge.

  Father Telamon turned toward Jamie and made the sign of the cross on her face, shoulders, and chest with a corner of his Bible while continuing to chant in Greek. Without missing a note in his prayer he handed the Bible to Betty, grabbed Jamie by the shoulder and the top of the head, and flipped her, head back, into the water. Jamie gasped and snorted. The water burned her throat and sinuses. When her head popped up, seconds later, she was coughing and blowing water out her nose. Jamie shook her ears clear, then glared at her mother. Betty refused to meet her daughter’s stare; instead, she passed her the Bible and then gazed up at Father Telamon before submitting to him as he dunked her backward into the water. When she emerged, Betty was smiling.

  Betty threw rainbow-colored pool towels onto the kitchen floor to absorb the water dripping from Father Telamon’s robe, Jamie’s shorts, and her own secretary uniform.

  “Were we baptized?” Jamie asked.

  “We were baptized,” Betty said.

  “Dad’s gonna kill you.” Jamie finally let a laugh fly out, and she wondered who would find the baptism as funny as she? Certainly not Renee; Renee would be angry at having been excluded. (When Renee was feeling particularly penned-in by the oddity of the family she would threaten to become a born-again Christian.) Flip wouldn’t have found it funny—he loved Betty too much and thought everything she did was cool. But, Jamie reminded herself, Flip would never know since Jamie couldn’t imagine speaking to him for many, many years. And Tammy and Debbie? They probably wouldn’t laugh. When it came to God they were both as rigid as a cross.

  For a moment, while Jamie watched her mother bending over straight-legged, mopping up a trail of water, as the priest sat on the kitchen stool and fiddled with the chain on his lantern, Jamie felt completely alone—stranded in her own, small life like an undiscovered island.

  “Don’t tell your father we did this.” Betty scooped up some wet towels, threw them into a corner and took her place behind the kitchen counter.

  “I’ve barely seen Dad lately,” Jamie said.

  “I hope you like omelets,” Betty said to the priest. Jamie had the feeling that her mother never felt properly connected with anyone unless they ate together. If her mother could cook for the world, there would be no wars.

  Father Telamon put down his lantern and smiled. He appeared to be a different man than the troll who had entered the house an hour earlier. This Father Telamon looked like he’d want to play Bingo and do the Hokey-Pokey. Jamie sat on the stool beside him, her legs sticky and wet, the crotch of her damp shorts feeling rashy already.

  “Do you mind if I change?” Jamie asked her mother.

  “Don’t change!” Betty moved in fast motion, whipping eggs, laying out bacon on the grill, buttering toast to be cooked in the broiler. She even pulled out the juicer and began slicing oranges in half, rather than simply pouring orange juice from the carton in the fridge.

  “Nothing better than breakfast foods for dinner,” Betty said.

  “It’s only four,” Jamie said.

  “Early dinner.”

  “Good,” Father Telamon said.

  “Why can’t I get changed?” Jamie worried about pimples blooming on her behind. Butt acne, Jamie thought, would change the baptism from funny to tragic.

  “If Father Telamon is wet, then we’ll be wet.” Betty trained her eyes on Jamie for an extra second before turning to grab a spatula.

  As soon as Betty picked up her keys to drive Father Telamon back to his church, Jamie ran upstairs and changed into dry clothes. The house felt the same as it had before the exorcism: same air, same sunlight, same quietness. She looked in the bathroom mirror and studied her face to see if the baptism had given her some glow that would radiate out her ears, nostrils, or eyes. As far as Jamie could tell, she was identical to the person she had been that morning.

  Jamie decided she would break her ban on calling Debbie and Tammy and went downstairs to the kitchen to phone them one last time. Maybe they’d be so curious about the exorcism and baptism that they’d paddle across the sea that seemed to separate them and dock on the island of Jamie.

  “Is Debbie home from the beach yet?” she asked Debbie’s mother.

  “She’s here,” her mother said. “They’ve been here all day.”

  Tammy answered Debbie’s phone, giggling.

  “Debbie’s busy,” she said. “I was sent in her place.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You’d have to be here,” Tammy said. “It’s too hard to explain.”

  “So the house was exorcised by this old Greek priest,” Jamie said.

  “Did your head spin around? Did you vomit pea soup?”

  “Is that what happens in the movie?”

  “Yeah. It was gross.”

  “No, he just walked around with stuff burning in this lantern and chanted a lot. But guess what.”

  “What?”

  “I was baptized.”

  “But you’re Jewish.”

  “Just my dad.”

  “I know, but I thought your mom was an atheist, so that meant that you’re Jewish.”

  “It means I’m half Jewish and half athiest.”

  “No. Because one plus zero equals one. So if your mom’s nothing, that’s zero, if your dad’s Jewish, that’s
one. So Jewish plus atheist equals Jewish.”

  “Religion isn’t math, Tammy. Besides, I think I’m technically Greek Orthodox now.”

  “That is so freaky.”

  “What exactly does it mean if you’re baptized? Does it mean bad spirits can’t enter your body or something?”

  “It means if you die you go to heaven.”

  “So if I hadn’t been baptized I’d go to hell?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You can’t say absolutely. I mean, we won’t know for sure until it’s too late to tell anyone else. I mean, how could anyone ever prove this?”

  “God knows. Jesus knows.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If you don’t believe in it just think of it as insurance, you know, just in case.”

  “But wait a minute. If it’s true, then when my mom and I die, we’re going to a different place than my dad and my sister.”

  “Would you really want to spend an eternity with your sister?”

  “No way.”

  “So you’re lucky then. And you’ll be with me and Debbie too!”

  “How come you guys didn’t go to the beach?”

  “I dunno. There were no waves today so everyone just wanted to hang out by the pool.”

  “Why is he called Scooter Ray? Why not just Scooter?”

  “I dunno. I gotta go.” Voices clacked in the background as if a mob had just entered the room.

  “Who else is there? Is that Flip?”

  “Yeah, I guess he’s here too.”

  “With Terry?”

  “I’m telling you, you’d like her if you knew her,” Tammy whispered. “Why don’t you just get over yourself and move on.”

  “Fine. I’ll go out with Scooter.”

  “Too late for that. He’s here with Kim Redson.” Tammy was still whispering.

  “What? He was available five hours ago.”

  “I know. They hooked up at the beach this morning, then they came over here and they’re, like, totally in love already.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Well, who knows if it will last through Friday.”

  “So, is she going camping with you now?”

  “Yeah. She said she is.”

  “Is Flip going?”

  Tammy sighed. Jamie thought she could feel the wind from Tammy’s breath through the phone lines—it pushed at her as if she’d been hit with a bag of laundry.

  “Can I talk to Debbie?” Jamie asked.

  “She’s busy, Jamie. We’re all busy. Why don’t you call back later, okay?”

  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 say
ing 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.

  14

  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.