The Pool Party (6 page)

When he came into the kitchen, where Mother was ironing his shirt, he said in a British accent, “Hello, dear mother. I must be off for the pool party.”

“Oh, you look so handsome,” she said. She pulled at his cheek and said,
“¡Qué bonito!”

“Mom, I’m ten years old. I’m not a baby.”

“You’re my baby.” She beamed. She had never seen her son so clean, and so dressed up. She sniffed the air. She studied her son with a little smile on her face.

“You smell nice, like your
papi,
” she said as she handed him the ironed shirt.

“Well”—he blushed—“I put on a little bit of his cologne.”

Mother smiled and asked, “You have a ride?”

“Simón,”
Rudy said, snapping his fingers. “I got my own wheels, Mom. My inner tube!”

Rudy’s ride was his inner tube—taller than his father and wide as Alex. He left the house and rolled it up the street, past the
neighbor kids who were once again in the sprinklers. Past his sister who was sitting on a car fender dreaming about boys. Past Louie the neighbor and his dog Charlie. Past other dogs and mothers and the lawns browning under the Fresno sun. A mile north, where the houses turned nice, he passed it all, including his father and El Shorty, whom he didn’t see. Their Oldsmobile was stalled. They had run over a board with a nail and now had a flat tire. He didn’t hear them scream, “Hey, Little Rudy, we need that inner tube!”

He had on his sunglasses, and his headset on his ears, listening to Kid Frost. Father and El Shorty called and shouted, “Little Rudy, come back!” But Rudy rolled his inner tube toward the pool party, rehearsing inside his head, “Hello, Mrs. Perez, I adore fried chicken.”

R
udy had rolled his inner tube two miles and now stood in front of a stately house. He took the invitation from his pocket and whispered to himself, “1334 The Bluffs. This must be it.” He stuffed the invitation back into his pocket like a Kleenex. “What a big house!” he said. While lugging his inner tube up the steps, it slipped from his fingers.
“Ay,”
he screamed at the inner tube rolling into the street, where it hit and
bounced off a Mercedes-Benz. The woman in the car made a face at Rudy. She rolled down her electric window and scolded, “Be careful. This is an expensive car, young man!”

“Sorry,” he said. He looked at the car. It seemed unhurt to him. But he added a second time, “Sorry,” as the car drove away.

Grunting, he lifted the inner tube and carefully climbed the steps of Tiffany’s house. He knocked on the door, then smoothed the front of his shirt. He wondered if his father’s cologne was still working.

Tiffany’s mother opened the door. She was wearing a fancy dress, and her earrings glittered like the surface of the sea. She greeted him. “Hello, you must be Rudy?”

“That’s me, and this is my inner tube,” he said happily. He thumped the inner tube with his fist. “My father got it for me when my first one got ripped.”

Tiffany’s mother gave a shocked look at the huge inner tube. “Why don’t you come in,” she started to say, then changed her mind. “Oh, Rudy, why don’t you take it around the back. The inner tube is rather large.”

“Good idea,” Rudy agreed. He didn’t want to knock over anything in her house. He started to roll the inner tube away, but then stopped and turned. He remembered his father’s advice about small talk. “Mrs. Perez, I understand that you adore turtle soup. What a coincidence. I adore turtle soup too.”

The mother looked at Rudy strangely. She closed the front door and Rudy rolled his inner tube to the backyard, which overlooked the bluffs, where a shallow river ran. Now that it was summer, its banks were dry and the water was no bigger than the flow from a garden hose running along a curb.

When Rudy and his inner tube came into view, the kids, who were huddled around the pool or splashing in it, looked up to the shadow of the inner tube. They were curious.

“What’s that?” asked one freckle-faced boy with a blown-up duck around his waist.

“Who’s that?” a girl snickered. She was hugging a whale and getting ready to dive into the pool.

“Tiffany invited
him
to the party?” another asked.

Mindy was scraping a cracker over a wheel of Brie. She was standing under the arbor and chatting with Eric Contrary Mendoza III. She looked up and moaned, “Oh, it’s Rudy Herrera. Look at that thing he’s brought!”

While all the kids had fancy pool toys, Rudy proudly rolled in his inner tube. He didn’t feel self-conscious. He was, as his father said,
real.
He sized up the pool while he rolled the inner tube toward Tiffany, who was wearing a green T-shirt over a pink swimsuit. She looked beautiful. She looked like her mother, only smaller.

Tiffany smiled at Rudy. “Thanks for coming, Rudy,” she greeted him. She
looked at the inner tube. She stroked it and stuttered, “Why—why … this is the biggest pool toy I’ve ever seen!”

“Do you like it?” Rudy asked.

“It’s smashing,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s smashing all right,” he agreed. “It just smashed into a Mercedes-Benz.”

The kids who first thought that the inner tube was weird began to mill around Rudy. They touched and poked at it, curious where Rudy had gotten it and if it was possible for them to get an inner tube too. The red-haired boy slipped the duck pool toy from his waist and asked, “Can we take it into the pool?”

“Simón,”
Rudy said. “That’s why I brought it.”

Rudy rolled the inner tube to the edge of the pool. He counted as he rocked the inner tube back and forth, “One, two, three …” On the count of ten, the inner tube rolled like a huge black shadow into the water and everyone, arms and legs flailing, jumped on it.

Tiffany and Rudy walked to the arbor, where a buffet of colorful food lay. Mindy tagged along reluctantly. “So, how’s your summer vacation?” Tiffany asked. She nibbled on a cracker.

“Pretty good. I’ve been helping my father cut lawns. We even did Mindy’s,” Rudy said. He bit into a carrot stick and nibbled it like a rabbit. “Right, Mindy?”

Mindy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you did ours.”

“My dad even let me use the edger,” Rudy continued.

“Can’t you change the subject?” Mindy suggested. She crossed her arms and looked impatient.

Rudy remembered his father’s advice—small talk. Rudy grabbed a handful of crackers and offered, “I like turtle soup, but I like
menudo
better. Don’t you, Mindy?”

“What?”

“Don’t you like
menudo?
” Rudy asked. He tossed a cracker into his mouth. The
edge of the cracker poked against the inside of his cheek.

Mindy walked away in a huff. Rudy turned to Tiffany and shrugged his shoulders. “I was just trying to make small talk.”

“That’s okay,” Tiffany said. “She’s stuck-up. Come on, let’s go swimming.” She took Rudy’s hand and led him to the pool. They swam and then hopped onto the edge of the inner tube. They were like the bride and groom on a wedding cake.

“It would be
bad
if you and me were in the ocean on an inner tube,” Rudy remarked dreamily. “One time I almost drowned, but this inner tube saved me.”

“Really?” Tiffany asked.

“Yeah, I was at Avocado Lake with Alex,” Rudy dreamed on. “You know Alex, don’t you?”

“I think so.” Tiffany splashed water on her hot face.

“I got a cramp in my leg, and Alex saved me. Well, actually, it was his dog—Poki. Poki pulled me to shore.”

“How exciting!”

Rudy felt good. He was making small talk. “And just a couple of days ago, me and Alex got lost on the inner tube.”

“Really?” Tiffany asked. Her eyebrows lifted in interest.

“You ever been to Francher’s Creek?”

“No,” Tiffany sighed. “My parents usually take us to Hawaii.” She splashed water on her thighs.

“Me and Alex were floating on the inner tube there, and we drifted so far we went all the way to Mendota.”

“That far?”

“Yeah, and we got in trouble because my dad had to come and get us.”

“How exciting! Interesting things seem to happen to you, Rudy.”

Rudy felt he was running out of things to say. What could he tell her next? he wondered. Without much thought, he plunged into the water. The inner tube lost its center of balance, and Tiffany toppled over. Underwater, they looked at each other.
They stared and laughed, bubbles large as Ping-Pong balls rising from their open mouths. They rose to the surface laughing. Rudy sneezed because water had gotten up his nose.

“I’m getting out,” Tiffany said.

“I’m going to swim for a while,” Rudy said. He paddled toward the deep end of the pool. He climbed out of the pool, took a deep breath, and jumped in with a splash. He wanted to see how long he could stay underwater. He counted on his fingers, from left hand to right, back and forth, until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He came up, gasping for air. He had stayed under for only fifty-four seconds.

Rudy swam over to a boy who was sitting in a lounge chair, rubbing lotion from a squeeze bottle. Curiously, Rudy watched the boy, then asked, “What are you putting on?”

“A sunscreen, so I don’t get dark,” he answered. His skin was glistening.

“But you’re already dark,” Rudy said. He
could see that the boy was Mexican-American. Rudy figured that he was ashamed of the color of his skin, and Rudy was surprised that the boy felt that way.

The boy sat up, shocked. “I beg your pardon!”

Sensing that he had said the wrong thing, Rudy lowered his head into the water and swam to the opposite side of the pool. He got out, toweled off, and joined Tiffany and her mother.

“Tiffany has told me so much about you,” her mother said.

“Really? Did she ever tell you I got a home run off Alonso Rodriguez?” Rudy asked. He had started putting food on his plate.

“No, she didn’t,” her mother said, a twinkle in her eye. She dipped a cookie into a sweet-looking concoction, savoring the taste. “Oh, I love what those caterers do with their ambrosia.”

Rudy looked at the food on the table. To him, everything was so small—the small
triangles of cheeses, the olives, the sausages, the crackers, and the plates of vegetables. He picked up a tiny cob of corn.

“It’s no bigger than my pinkie,” Rudy said. “How did they do that?”

“You mean, grow it?” Tiffany asked.

“Yeah. I’m going to tell my mom. She won’t believe me.”

“I don’t know,” Tiffany said. “But they’re cute, don’t you think?”

“Cute?” Rudy wondered. “Yeah, they’re kind of cute, all right.” He turned the corn cob over in his hands and was going to put it in his mouth like a cigar, letting it dangle from his lips. But he knew better. Instead, he nibbled it and remarked, “It’s a swell day for a swell pool party.”

Tiffany’s mother was called away. Rudy and Tiffany went to the gazebo, where a harpist was playing. He had never been up close to a harp, and now he was tapping his bare foot to the music. When she finished playing, he put down his plate of food and applauded. He asked, “Do you know ‘Louie Louie’?”

The harpist shook her head.

“Do you know ‘96 Tears’?”

Again the harpist shook her head.