The Summer of Skinny Dipping, page 2
“Wow!” I forgot my iffy feelings as I entered my bedroom. I’d always loved this room—a big, airy corner room right above the back deck, with windows framing postcard views of dunes, scruffy with beach grass, and the wide blue band of ocean beyond. Aunt Kathleen had put a bunch of wild roses in a vase on my nightstand, and the whole room smelled of a Long Island summer.
“I’m so thrilled to see you again, honey,” Aunt Kathleen said warmly, taking my hand. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Ditto, Favorite Aunt.” I squeezed her thin, elegant hand, and she laughed.
“I’m your only aunt,” she said, fulfilling her part of the ritual we’d had going between us since I was a kid.
“But still my favorite.”
Aunt Kathleen is my mother’s older sister, and if Mom is beautiful, then Kathleen is exquisite. She has my mom’s same crystal-blue eyes, cheekbones so high they seem dangerous, and skin so smooth it looks like it’s been photoshopped. And Aunt Kathleen has such killer natural style. Like now, barefoot and beautiful in a simple cotton summer dress, a silver charm bracelet tinkling on her left wrist. She looked so youthful standing there in my bedroom. It was hard to believe she was actually older than Mom.
“All set up here?” Mom peeked into the doorway. She had a smile on her face, but I knew her too well and saw something pinching at the corners of her eyes. After Mom and Aunt Kathleen had left to see about dinner, I sent out positive vibes in the hopes that Mom would unwind soon. Beach. Ocean. Light breezes. This had to be the cure for anyone’s uptightness.
For as long as I can remember, Mom has been edgy. I cringe at restaurants when Mom uses the special snappy voice she reserves for waiters. I asked for my dressing on the side! Even shopping—her favorite occupation—is tinged with touchiness. Is there anyone in this department store who understands the concept of customer service? It has always embarrassed me to watch her frown and order around the sales staff at T.J.Maxx, like she’s in an upscale boutique instead of a discount department store.
And ever since the word recession hit the airwaves, things had been going especially badly between my parents. Often, late at night, I could hear Mom’s voice, sharp as cut glass, seeming to pierce through walls. “You should have sold when you had the chance, Chris! I told you, but God forbid you should listen to me!” In those moments, it was hard to remember that an angry voice is an invisible thing incapable of drawing blood.
Sometimes I think Mom still wishes she’d gone off to Hollywood and tried her luck, instead of marrying my gentle carpenter father right out of college. Mom met Dad when he made sets for a school production she’d starred in, but after they got married, they’d gone south so Dad could take over his family business.
I used to ask Mom about her acting ambitions. “Just pipe dreams,” she’d tell me, but I’m not so sure that somehow, somewhere, they weren’t still a real part of her she’d simply tucked away and tried to forget about, like a photograph of some lost love that it hurts to look at but you still can’t throw out.
I have a photo like that. It’s of Jake, his black hair flopping into his face, his slightly crooked teeth showing as he grins into the camera. I took the picture at a bowling alley. Jake is laughing at something I said. I no longer remember what he thought was so funny. I only remember how good it felt to have him look my way, and to capture the face of someone I loved and who loved me back. Or so I thought.
But the memory of that feeling still comes back to me when I think of that picture. When you know that feeling, it’s hard to say goodbye to it, to tear it up and toss it away. Even though I don’t look at it, that photo is in the drawer of my nightstand, hidden but still there. Maybe Mom’s dreams are like that, too, tucked away in a corner of her mind, never coming true but not forgotten, either.
As for Aunt Kathleen, she achieved her dreams, and then some. Mom and Kathleen were brought up in a wealthy New York family, but the family had lost its money shortly after Mom came out as a debutante. They’d been forced to sell off all of their assets, but Kathleen was already on track. Before long, she’d become a successful food and wine critic and married Uncle Rufus, who was practically brought up on Wall Street itself in a big New York banking family.
First came the penthouse in Manhattan; then they’d bought back Wind Song, Kathleen and Mom’s childhood vacation home in the Hamptons. It was supposed to be a triumph for everyone, but I knew that deep down, Mom resented it. She acted happy to be back for vacations, but I knew that secretly, in her heart, she was mad the house wasn’t hers.
You can’t really blame her. It’s a beautiful house, the kind of house that could inspire a streak of possessiveness in anyone. Wind Song is a typical East Coast “summer cottage.” It’s built in the traditional style, with wood shingles, a gabled roof, and huge, old, paned-glass windows. The house is as much a natural part of the landscape as the dunes, the wetlands, and the beach spilling out wide and white like a giant’s apron.
So much of the Hamptons has been destroyed by ugly mansions, but Wind Song is a pocket of heaven, an unpretentious rambling home with an ocean-facing back deck that stretches out across a piece of prime beach sheltered by dunes. The kind of place where summer lasts forever.
“You got the best room!” Corinne grinned from the doorway, and, looking at her, I felt stupid and childish for imagining some big void between us when I hadn’t even given her a chance.
“I’m so happy to be here!” I sank back on my bed and kicked my legs up into the air. Suddenly I was full of energy. “I need a swim!”
“I need a drink,” Corinne said, turning moody. She crossed the floor, showing off her long-backed ballet posture, and leaned her long slim arms out of the window. “I’m just so damn bored here.”
“Bored?” I blinked, confused. Corinne had always loved the beach. From childhood, she’d been like a seal in the water.
“My boyfriend, Alessandro, and his family go to the Italian coast every summer,” she explained, doing a plié at the window, her long limbs sweeping out wide before she pushed up onto her toes and balanced. “I wanted to go, but Mom wouldn’t let me. She wanted me to stay here in this wasteland.”
“Wasteland?” I couldn’t believe Corinne was talking like this about our favorite place in the world.
“Hello, hedge-fund scandal? Crashed economy? The whole of New York is flipping out. This place is a ghost town. There are even yachts abandoned in the reeds of the bay. Can you believe that? People are dumping their yachts because they can’t afford to dock them. It’s depressing.” Corinne’s beautiful face crumpled into a frown.
And then she recovered her smile and directed it at me. “But you’re here. I’m really glad to see you.” Corinne spun into a pirouette, twirled over to my bed, crossed her legs, and grinned, displaying her teeth, white as Tic Tacs. Corinne had gotten even prettier. She was still very thin, but then she was a ballet dancer, and it suited her long frame anyway.
“How’s ballet?” I asked. Corinne’s been a dancer all of her life and was training to be a professional at the prestigious New York City Ballet young dancers’ program. Once, I’d gotten to see her dancing in The Nutcracker at the Lincoln Center. She’d beaten out hundreds of other little girls for the part of Clara, and it had been easy to see why: Corinne’s jumps were high and silent, her pirouettes ferociously fast and perfect, and even when she wasn’t dancing, she glowed from across the stage. You could feel that there was nowhere else she wanted to be.
“Don’t say the b-word,” Corinne said. “I was meant to join the Company this year, but I failed the audition.” She shrugged. “Mom’s practically suicidal over it, but whatever.” Corinne tossed her hair, looking unperturbed. “I’m not even doing any training this summer. I’m just so over that scene right now.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, searching Corinne’s face for signs of disappointment, but if she felt it, she hid it well.
Instead, she leapt up and leaned out the window again. “Want a cig?” she asked, whipping a pack of Marlboros out of her pants pocket.
“Your mom could come back in here any minute!” I didn’t add that I didn’t smoke. Somehow I knew it was obvious to Corinne.
“Chill,” she replied, lighting up and exhaling a stream of smoke out the window. “They’ve gone to the fish market. Anyway, Mom knows, and she so does not care, trust me.”
Aunt Kathleen not care? That didn’t sound right. Aunt Kathleen was the world’s most caring mother. I’d often secretly wished that she’d been my mom. She was always so funny and kind; she adored her husband and daughters and took such an interest in everything the girls did. Unlike my mom, who constantly ragged on my dad and was never much one for turning up to swimming meets or science fairs. Not that these were exactly Aunt Kathleen’s scene, either, but I knew if Kathleen was my mother, she’d put a spin on my admittedly less-than-glam talents. She’d be proud of me.
“When it comes to substance abuse, my mom doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Corinne said, staring with flat, unimpressed eyes at the view out of the window, her fingers playing with a slim, gold snake bangle in the crease of her elbow. “She’s drinking like a fish.”
“Really?” I was starting to not believe Corinne. She’d always been dramatic and loved telling stories. Maybe this was all just a performance for my benefit, to shock me or test me or something.
“Hey!” Corinne spun back toward me, her eyes lighting up. She looked so suddenly like the old sparkly Corinne that I was beginning to feel seasick from all the back-and-forth. “We’re going to have a kick-ass party here this weekend after my bud Genevieve comes. She’s staying for three weeks, maybe more. Her family has a house here, too, but they just rebuilt and her mom is getting it all feng shui’d…”
“Wow,” I said, trying to look enthusiastic as Corinne gabbed on about Genevieve, who attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan with Corinne, where kids’ school schedules were built around their lives as performers. Apparently Genevieve was pursuing an acting career, which was “pretty much in the bag” since her mother was a French model and her father was “Stanley Chu, the Internet bajillionaire.”
“Gen’s a riot,” Corinne babbled. “She’s a year ahead of me, and she’s unreal. She set her own hair on fire as a Truth or Dare! Isn’t that wild?”
“Wild,” I repeated, while the other half of my brain tried to evaluate this new schizo Corinne.
“Gen’s like a GPS for hot guys. Turn left, hot guy.” Corinne added, mimicking a computer voice. “She knows everyone out here.”
“People from other schools?” I tried to follow along as I began to unpack my things, but I felt disoriented.
“No, Mimi!” Corinne opened her eyes really wide and then shook her head as if I’d said something endearingly backward and amusing. “College guys. And guys with their own software companies. But who aren’t all dorked out,” she added quickly, expelling smoke forcefully from her nostrils. “She also knows a lot of fashion people through her mom. She even knows Aram Amiri Jr., do you freaking believe that?”
I always hate it when people pretend to know a word or a fact they’ve never heard of, so I just told Corinne the truth: “I don’t know who that is.”
“You’ve never heard of Aram Amiri?” Corinne looked like she might faint from disbelief.
I shook my head.
“The designer?”
“Maybe. I mean, I guess so,” I lied, loathing myself for doing it but somehow unable to resist this time.
“He’s only the most famous ready-to-wear name on the planet!” Corinne exclaimed. “This is one of his tops,” she added, turning like a model to display the lemon-yellow, snug cotton T-shirt she was wearing. It had a slash just below the bustline and would have looked trashy on anyone with breasts, like me, but on Corinne it looked elegant, straight out of Vogue.
“Anyway,” she continued, stubbing out her cigarette. “Aram Jr. is ridiculously gorgeous. He’s going to be my project.” Her eyes glinted as she ran a manicured hand through her thick, sun-tipped blond hair. “He dates Ivory. That girl who won America’s Next Top Model last season. So I’m going to need my most hard-core strategies to get him.” She widened her eyes in anticipation. “Fun.”
“But what about Alessandro?” Maybe it was “dorked out” to bring up Corinne’s boyfriend. But she’d begged the question, and I was having a very hard time keeping up with her.
“Alessandro.” A faint smile crossed Corinne’s lips as she turned to me, her eyes glassy and faraway. Either she missed him or she couldn’t remember who he was. Then she seemed to snap back into the moment, flashing a wide grin. “He’s not here, is he?” she said wickedly. “And even if he was,” she added with a shrug, “he doesn’t own me. He can’t even get ahold of me unless he calls the landline!”
Weird. I couldn’t tell if Corinne’s “whatever,” jaded attitude toward her boyfriend was for real or just an act to make her come off all sophisticated. And if it was for real…? What did it mean to go out with someone you weren’t into? As I unpacked a stack of T-shirts, I felt something I’d never imagined I’d feel: thrown off by Corinne. I couldn’t put my finger on her. She seemed to be one thing one minute and another thing the next, a walking magic trick.
Whatever it was, it was happening too fast for me. Put it down to being from Athens, Georgia. Not exactly Manhattan.
And I got the unpleasant feeling that, for the first time in our lives, Corinne was trying to remind me of that fact.
• • •
That night we had a clambake on the beach. Corinne and Beth snuck off to smoke, but I was too busy enjoying the melt-in-your-mouth taste of shellfish baked in seaweed to feel left out. After dinner, Mom demanded that Eva perform like a seal, and being the kind of self-esteem-soaked kid she is, Eva enthusiastically broke the calm of Southampton with a song so loud and nauseating it could have caused a ship to wreck.
“My hand, your hand, four footprints in the sand,” Eva warbled like she was auditioning for American Idol, which she and Mom both believe she will win someday. When she placed her palm across her chest like a pop diva, I took it as my cue and split the scene, heading down toward the water. But not before catching a glimpse of my mother, smiling indulgently, the way she’d looked at my sister since birth. Eva’s surprise arrival seven years after me had given Mom a new lease on life. But even Eva couldn’t compete with the ocean.
As I walked the tide line, the pounding of the surf drowned out my sister and lulled me into calm. I looked around for Corinne and Beth, but when I couldn’t see them, it didn’t bother me. I felt happy. Peaceful. Sure, I wanted to be close with Corinne again, but if I couldn’t? I could amuse myself. Maybe it would even be better that way. After what happened with Jake, the last thing I needed was to be around my guy-obsessed cousin and her scene.
The water shone, flecked with sunset-orange light. My feet were cool on the hard-soft sand at the tide line. I crouched down and picked up a small, pink spiral shell. It wouldn’t be a lonely summer. I’d have the ocean for company. There would be long bright days, warm nights, and long walks looking for any kind of treasure the sea might throw up, from shells to souvenirs from old shipwrecks…
Okay, I hadn’t found much real treasure before, but it never hurt to keep looking. That way if something was out there, I wouldn’t miss it.
• • •
“Tanning’s so boring, but swimming is worse,” Corinne announced as we headed down a wooden walkway from the public-beach parking lot. I’d only had a quick dip after arriving the day before, but now I was about to have a real day at the beach, with Corinne.
Except that Corinne was less than thrilled about the idea of swimming. “The water is so polluted!” she said as we walked beyond the property line and continued up-shore, past dunes and houses, until we came to the public beach of Southampton. “Do you know that Long Island is one of the most cancer-ridden places in the world?” she added, lighting up a cigarette. “It’s a toxic hazard, and frankly”—she blew a plume of smoke for emphasis—“I feel ill just being here.”
I had to laugh.
Once we came to the public beach, we prowled around for the perfect spot, or at least that’s what it looked like we were doing. Really, we were looking for Aram Hip Designer’s son. I’d have preferred to stay on the slice of sand in front of Wind Song, but Corinne was convinced she could spy Aram Junior if we came to the main beach of Southampton. Apparently, he liked to “hang with the plebes”—this is what she actually said. We spread our towels on the sand. “I bet there are syringes in there,” Corinne said, looking out to the surf.
“There are not. Come on! That water is perfect.” I didn’t believe for a second that the water was polluted; nor, it seemed, did anyone else. Mothers and babies were splashing around; boys with bodyboards were riding the small waves; and the deep, deep blue of the Atlantic sparkled and shifted, changing color as small clouds skated across the sun.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Corinne replied, but I ignored her. No amount of pollution, no number of hoity-toity Manhattanites building large new houses out of pink cement and chrome and turning all the local restaurants into glitzy hot spots—none of that can ruin the Hamptons. Because nothing can spoil the color of the Atlantic Ocean right there on that shore: it goes from navy to slate, from green into blue. It’s all of those colors, and then sometimes it’s almost colorless, see-through. And for a whole summer, it was mine again.
“Okay, so I’m here then,” a high-pitched, wounded-sounding voice piped up behind us as we arranged our lotions and books and snacks. “Nothing else to do.”
“Bethy!” Corinne seemed excited even though, as far as I could tell in a day, Beth was still a wet blanket, not a shot in the arm. She seemed to look down her ski-jump nose at everything. Her voice had gotten higher and breathier over the years, and she appeared to have as much substance as a feather. From what I could see, she just went wherever the wind took her. Yet she always looked like she wanted to be somewhere else.
