My First Love and Other Disasters (9 page)

The Dunes is a big outdoor-indoor restaurant right on the beach. It's busy and there are a lot of people sitting around eating. There are some women and a few kids, but mostly there are men. I already know that Cherry Grove is a big gay hangout. These two guys, friends of my parents, have been coming out here every summer for years and my parents always spend a weekend with them. Naturally my folks are planning to come out this summer, and I'm not looking forward to that. I'm
sort of a different person out here already. It's like this is kind of my place and being somebody's little girl out here is going to bug me. I just know it. Well, I've got a good four weeks before my parents come to worry about it. Anyway, I look around but I don't see Jim, but of course he could be inside, so I tell the kids not to move and I go inside to see if I can find him. He's there. The first waiter I see.

I work my way around to his table and come up from behind and tap him on the shoulder.

“Hi,” I say, and I can't believe I'm doing it. I mean this is so unlike me. Mostly I plan things for a hundred years in advance, and then at the last minute I lose my courage and think of a million reasons why I can't do it.

“Hey,” he says, turning around. “How you doing?” And I can see he's surprised to see me. But he gives me such a nice smile that my knees begin to wobble.

“Okay. You working here?”

“Right, uh . . . er . . .”

“Victoria.” I don't know why I did that. I'm sure he knows my name.

“Sure, Victoria, I didn't forget.” See, I told you. “How's Barry?”

“Gee, I don't know. I haven't seen him in ages,” I lie.

“We played tennis this morning.”

“Yeah, he told me.” Oh damn. “ . . . Ages ago.”

Jim kind of chuckles and so do I, and then I ask him what's to do here and where do the kids hang out and he says mostly at night everyone goes to The Monkey, a disco.

I tell him that I have Monday nights off and maybe I'll drop by The Monkey. “Will you be there this Monday?” I ask as offhandedly as you can possibly be asking someone for a date.

“Probably,” he says, and I manage to say, “Maybe I'll see you there.” And then he says he has to go, and I say, “See you later,” and I'm so excited I almost walk into the wall.

I can't believe I did it. I actually did it. I got to see Jim and practically have a date with him. And I did it all by myself. He didn't even help.

I'm flying. The kids are outside, right where I left them, driving some old lady crazy. They're saying curse words back and forth to each other and going hysterical, and the lady keeps saying how that's not nice and nice children don't talk like that and on and on, and the more she tells them not to, the dirtier they talk, and it's so embarrassing I don't even want to go over and get them.

“DeeDee!” I call from a pretty safe distance. “David! C'mon.”

But they're having too good a time shocking the lady, so I have to go over and practically drag
them to the wagon. David is smart enough to keep his mouth shut, but DeeDee lets fly with one last zonker that nearly knocks the poor lady off her seat. It is a little too much for a five-year-old.

I pile them both in the wagon and zoom off along the beach. Now you have to appreciate something that I didn't understand until I got to Fire Island. You know, a lot of people don't wear bathing suits on the beach. But nobody told me, so here I am walking along the beach pulling these two deadweights and at first I'm not even looking around, I'm just pulling with my head down and my mind on Jim, then I catch a look at this guy and I'm past him before I realize he's naked and I stop dead (really cool, huh?) and slowly sneak a look. And my jaw drops. Almost everyone is naked, guys and girls, and because there's no one else there I have to say it to David and DeeDee. “Look at those people.”

And they look and then David says, “What about them?”

“Are you kidding? They're naked, that's what's about them.”

“Victoria?” Now David's going to ask me about them, and I don't know what to say. I hope he doesn't ask me something physical, because now that I'm looking around I don't think I want to go into the whole anatomy thing.

“Can we go swimming now?” Huh? Unbelievable!
He doesn't even care. It has to be because they've been coming out here all their lives and naked human beings are common sights to them. Completely natural Well, let me tell you,
I'm
freaking out. I'm trying to be cool, but, wow, will you look at all those penises! Crazy thought: Do my parents go naked when they come out here? I'm so busy watching and planning what I'm going to write to Steffi that I run us, the wagon and all, into the water four times.

The closer you get to Ocean Beach the more crowded the beach gets and the fewer naked people you see, and by the time we're into the middle of Ocean Beach there's only one or two and they're girls and only topless. I wish Steffi was here.

We swim for a while and get back to the house by four. Cynthia is out on the deck sunning herself. I guess she's feeling better.

I get up to my room and it's boiling hot. I think DeeDee must be wrong, that it would be too hot for a closet. I guess it's terrific in the winter. There's a whole pile of DeeDee's dresses and a couple of David's things on my bed with a note from Cynthia that says if I wouldn't mind pressing these clothes when I got a chance she'd really appreciate it.

I roll up the laundry because I'm just too exhausted to do it today, but it's a problem finding
a space to store it. I told you it's a very cozy room and there's not a whole lot of extra space. I end up putting it on the corner of my bed with my tennis racket and my blow dryer.

Dinner is super. Cynthia is a fantastic cook. She does something to the hamburgers with Worcestershire sauce and butter and herbs that's the best I ever had. She says it's from Craig Claiborne or somebody. She's sort of a gourmet cook. I'm really lucky because I love the way she cooks.

“Listen, Victoria,” she says to me over dinner, “please don't rush with that ironing. It doesn't all have to be done tonight. Just do as much as you feel like and you can finish the rest at your leisure.” Then Cynthia says she has to go get dressed. She's a little excited because she has a date with this man she met last night at The Dunes.

“That's all right,” I say. “I don't mind ironing. Besides, I hate to just sit and watch TV. I like to be doing something.” That's not exactly true, but I want her to see that I'm not lazy like last year's mother's helper, who, she keeps telling me, was practically comatose.

I'm a lousy ironer, so it takes me until almost one o'clock in the morning to finish all the stuff, and I'm dripping wet when I do so I take a shower and practically fall into bed.

Then I remember that I absolutely have to write to Steffi tonight if I want her to get the letter before she leaves for her camping trip. Besides, I have a million crucial things to tell her, except that when I actually write the letter it takes me two full pages of really tiny writing just to get through the part about work. I just stuff what I wrote into an envelope, turn out the light, and dive into the bed.

Suddenly I'm wide awake. What if what Gloria said was right? Is this a terrible job? Is Cynthia taking advantage? But she's not. I just know it. Cynthia's very nice in a lot of ways, even though I can't think of exactly what ones they are this very minute. Maybe this is what it's really like being a mother's helper. Not that I do all that much. Still, it's sort of more than I expected—maybe because it's new and I don't have the hang of it yet.

Boy, if my mother knew all the work I was doing, she'd faint.

It can't be morning yet.
It can't be. But it is because DeeDee is climbing all over me, pulling at the covers and telling me she's hungry. I try to tell her that she's big enough to get a glass of juice for herself and watch TV until I get downstairs. But she says she can't squeeze the juice herself and I remember that Cynthia likes to have freshly squeezed orange juice in the morning.

“How about a glass of milk instead?” I ask her.

“You said juice.”

“Milk's better.”

“I want juice.”

There's no way. Once DeeDee makes up her mind, that's it. So I drag myself out of bed and go downstairs to fix her breakfast, which she leaves
over half of, anyway. I turn on the TV and curl up on the couch and try to sleep a little more. No luck. David's heard us, and now he wants his breakfast too. I think maybe these kids could do a little more for themselves, but I guess that's up to the mother.

There's the cutest note from Cynthia that says how she had a great time and she got in late so we should go to the beach without her. It's written like a please-excuse-Cynthia note from school. See, that's one of the nice things about her—she's got a terrific sense of humor.

We do the beach bit again, and today there are a few more people on the beach. I guess it's beginning to fill up for the Fourth of July weekend. There are some other mother's helpers with kids, and we all kind of sit close by and the kids begin to play together, and then we start to talk and a couple of them are kind of nice girls and we'll probably get friendly.

One girl, Dana, is tall, with a great figure and legs that look like they go on forever. She's got long hair, sort of light brown with blond streaks, and the nicest smile. I know I'm going to like her, and besides, she's new like me. She takes care of two kids too, but one is a two-year-old baby and the other is a five-year-old girl like DeeDee. In fact Leah—that's the kid's name—and DeeDee get along fine together.

The other mother's helper is from last year, and her name is Anita. She has reddish-brown hair so short and curly that it almost looks kinky, and she's so cute and little she could pass for fifteen but she's actually seventeen. She's got only one kid and he's almost eight, so she really has it easy, and besides, she says, they have other help in the house so she doesn't even have to do anything but take care of Scott. And she says she gets forty dollars a week. Even Dana gets more than me. Not that much—thirty dollars—but still . . . it's okay with me because I know Cynthia's not being cheap. Not deliberately, anyway. She just can't afford to pay anymore.

“I knew the girl who worked for the Landrys last year,” Anita says. “And she says Mr. Landry was always trying to flirt with her. Can you imagine trying to make out with your own mother's helper? Isn't that disgusting?”

Ugh, we all say. “I'm really glad he isn't around,” I tell them.

Anita goes on.

“And she said Mrs. Landry wasn't so great either. She didn't do a whole lot.”

“I heard about that girl last year,” I say. “Her name was Christie, right?”

“Yeah,” Anita says.

“Cynthia—that's Mrs. Landry,” I say, “she said
that Christie was really lazy with a capital L. All she wanted to do was sit around and polish her nails.”

“That's all I want to do too,” Dana says, and we all laugh because she's right.

Then we all compare our jobs, and it turns out that mine is the worst. Far and away. But I don't let them see how bad it really is because I'm sort of embarrassed. Besides, it's not as though Cynthia is mean or anything like that—in fact she's probably a lot nicer than the woman Anita works for, who sounds like a real bitch. The trouble with Cynthia is that she's used to having a housekeeper, so it's just natural for her to leave the work to someone else, and besides she's probably very depressed and not herself because of the divorce and all her troubles.

Then there's something else. I'm really sort of stuck. I don't want to just quit because then I'd have to leave Fire Island and Jim, and also it'd be like admitting to my parents that I just can't hack it. And of course I'd have to tell Cynthia, and I don't think I'd have the nerve unless she really did something awful to me. In the meantime I'm just going to let things go the way they are and keep my eyes open in case something else comes up. According to Anita, after two weeks all the mothers hate their helpers and all the helpers are ready to switch. I think I'll just wait and see.

“I don't care how much she makes me work, I
really like Cynthia,” I tell Anita and Dana, and I find myself feeling bad because I don't want people not to like the person I'm working for. It's just that she's having a hard time now, and I tell them what a pig Jed was.

“Cynthia's really pretty,” Anita says, and we decide that she's one of the best-looking mothers around. And I don't know why, but that makes me feel good. We're on the beach for three hours, and Dana and I sit there listening to the stories Anita tells us. She knows all the juice and there's enough dirt to bury the whole island. The stories are all about adultery. It's like nobody's happily married. Always when I hear all these stories I go home and worry about my own parents. Except that's impossible, I just can't picture my mother fooling around. And my father! I practically break up trying to picture that. Listen, I have enough trouble thinking about them doing it together.

We rotate lying in the sun. One of us watches the kids while the other two gets a tan. Dana is on watch now.

“Gorgeous!” Dana says. “Absolutely knockout stuff.” Anita and I pop right up. Gorgeous can only mean a guy.

“Where?” Anita says, grabbing for her sunglasses. They're prescription glasses and she's
practically blind without them. But she pretends they're only sunglasses.

“There,” Dana says, pointing to two surfers right in front of us in the water. It takes me two seconds to realize they're Jim and Barry.

“They're both cute,” Anita says, “but the blond is sensational.”