IT WAS too early for the municipal beach to be crowded. A few mothers with aluminum folding chairs sat on the strip of yellow sand that the township had dumped over the dark clay beach. Their feet were mired in shopping bags full of towels, yarn, and toys. Some small children squatted in the shallows, and a young couple was spreading a beach towel which looked like a giant dollar bill a few yards away.
Above the concession stand with its Pepsi-Cola sign hovered a blue haze from the grill. Behind the stand were two rows of wooden cubicles where people could change their clothes. The public telephones stood in their plastic bubbles next to the path leading to the parking lot.
“Do I look okay?” the girl asked again, pulling at the bottom of her sweat shirt.
“Sure you look okay. You look great.”
She made a face so he wouldn’t think she believed him, and they came down out of the trees and started to cross the bumpy lawn to the telephones. They had to watch their step because of the little metal tabs torn from the tops of beer and soft-drink cans that glittered in the grass.
The boy sat down on one of the railroad ties that held back the gravel of the parking lot. He put his hands under his legs to keep his pants closed, and watched the girl as she pushed a quarter into a telephone.
Mrs. Pritzer stuck her head into Maddy Golden’s office.
“It’s Laura.” She kept her face carefully blank, to show that it wasn’t her place to express an opinion. “Line 5.”
What now, Maddy asked herself, reaching for the phone on her desk. Mrs. Pritzer was still standing in the open doorway. Maddy looked at her, raising her eyebrows in inquiry.
“It was a collect call, Mrs. Golden. I hope I was right to accept the charges. I thought it might be important, even if it is a personal call.”
“Yes. Yes, it’s all right, Mrs. Pritzer.”
The older woman withdrew, some obscure accounting of her own satisfied.
“Hello, Laura? Honey? Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” There was a long pause. “Mom?”
Maddy tried to keep her voice bright, confiding. “Yes? What is it, honey? You know you shouldn’t call me at the office unless it is really important. I mean an emergency or something.”
“Yeah, Mom. Mom? I’ve got to come home.”
Why? Why couldn’t Laura adjust to camp? Why did her life have to be so tangled, so difficult? The questions remained unasked, clenched down in Maddy’s throat.
“Listen, Laura,” she said carefully, “we talked about this before, and we decided we’d give it another chance. Do you remember? I thought you’d made some friends. You did tell me that, you know.”
“I know, but you’ve got to come get me, Mom.”
“Don’t start crying! You’re not a baby anymore! Now tell me what’s wrong. Can you do that? Are you having trouble with the other kids?”
“Yeah.”
“Well? What kind of trouble?”
There was another long pause.
“I don’t know. They’re all really despicable. They’re all hypocrites.”
Maddy sighed. Laura’s favorite words. What had she done to raise a child so stiff and unbending? She was a little prude, that was part of the problem. No wonder the other kids gave her a rough time.
“Listen, Laura, I don’t think that’s a real reason. I
mean, I know that some people aren’t very nice, but you have to learn to deal with them, not just at camp, but everywhere. I mean, I have to deal with people who aren’t very nice, too, you know.”
“I’ve got to come home, Mom. Now.” She was wailing. Literally wailing. Maddy wondered if Mrs. Pritzer was listening on the extension, twisting things around in that dried-up brain of hers.
“Laura. You are not listening.”
“It’s really important, Mom!”
“Okay, okay.” Maddy put her hand over the receiver and sat back, closing her eyes, trying to stay calm.
“Okay,” she began again. “There’s a Parents’ Weekend coming up, isn’t there?”
“Saturday. But you said you weren’t coming.”
“Well, I am coming. I mean, if you’re having problems, I’ve got to, haven’t I? We’ll talk about it then. Okay?”
“I don’t know, Mom. I really …”
“Laura, I don’t know what else I can do. I’m trying to earn a living. For both of us. You can really help me if you try to manage things by yourself for a change. Talk to Miss Cutter if you want. You said she was very nice, didn’t you?”
“She’s okay, but …”
“But nothing. This is very important, Laura. It’s just two days. I really want you to show me that you can handle these problems by yourself, at least for two days. Okay?”
There was silence.
“I said okay, Laura?”
“Okay, Mom.”
“All right, then. I’ll see you Saturday about lunchtime. Now I want you to have a good time. Try to do something different. Are you having your period?”
The question had popped out before she could stop it. She could hear in it the fond, prying note that she had so hated in her own mother’s voice.
“No.” Laura swallowed the word, shutting Maddy away.
“I’m sorry, honey, I know you don’t like to talk about it, but sometimes when a girl gets her period, she feels depressed. It’s just a fact of life.”
There was another silence and then the receiver buzzed in her ear. Laura hadn’t even said goodbye. Didn’t she realize how upsetting that was? Maddy had always had this dread of not saying goodbye properly. Of course Laura knew it. She was very good at picking out little ways to punish her mother.
Mrs. Pritzer stuck her head in the door again. She didn’t like to use the intercom. She liked to be able to see Maddy’s face if she thought the call might be interesting.
“It’s a Mr. Wells.”
“Who is he? What does he want?”
“He’s the director. At Laura’s camp,” said Mrs. Pritzer. She beamed in bland triumph. “Line 3.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Pritzer.”
I could kill her, thought Maddy, hardly knowing
whom she meant. I could really kill her. She pushed the button on the phone angrily.
“She can’t come,” the girl said. “Not until Saturday.”
He wasn’t surprised. He had seen her crying. Her cheeks were still wet with tears. She had let them run down into the corners of her mouth.
“Saturday,” he said. “What are we supposed to do until Saturday?”
“I don’t know. Go back to camp, I guess.”
The boy looked down to the beach, where some children were running back and forth over the sand. The sun was high enough so that the glare hurt his eyes.
“I really really don’t want to do that,” he said.
“Me neither. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Did you tell her? About us being the goats?”
The girl shook her head. She sat up and straightened her shoulders. “My mother and I don’t communicate very well,” she said.
The boy nodded. They watched a man with a little girl and boy trying to set up a volleyball net. The little girl was waving one of the poles around, like a flagpole without a flag.
“Don’t do that, Tracy,” the man said. He made his voice sound very patient, warning his daughter that in a minute he was going to get mad.
“How much money have we got left?” asked the boy. “I’m starving.”
“Still a dollar forty. The operator gave me my quarter back because it was a collect call.”
“Let’s get a hot dog or something.” They got up and walked toward the concession stand, trying to look casual.
The man behind the counter was big, with damp pink hands.
“What do you want?” he said.
There was a chalkboard propped up over the grill listing what the man sold and how much it was. The boy studied it carefully. Hot dogs were seventy-five cents. They didn’t have enough for two. They could buy a hot dog and a Coke or a Mars bar.
“I don’t know. You want to split a hot dog and a Coke?” he asked the girl.
“Let’s get potato chips.”
“Okay. A hot dog and a bag of potato chips, please.”
“What do you want on the hot dog?”
The man and the boy both looked at the girl. She wrinkled her nose so that her glasses would slide back up.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You mean raw?” asked the boy.
She looked at him indignantly. “It’s not raw. It’s just plain.”
“Not even catsup or something?”
The man threw down the dish towel he had been wiping the counter with and walked away.
“Hey,” said the boy, but the man ignored him. He
walked around a tall rack of open shelves that extended from the floor to the ceiling. It was partially filled with wire baskets of people’s clothes.
There was another counter in the wall of the concession stand facing the back row of the changing cubicles. An old man and a woman were standing there in their bathing suits. The man threw the wire baskets with their clothes on the rack of shelves. He gave them each a safety pin with a little brass tag on it. The boy and girl watched silently until the man came back.
“A plain hot dog and a bag of potato chips,” said the boy.
They carried the food to the row of railroad ties by the parking lot. They didn’t want to sit by the people on the beach. They took bites from the hot dog, each biting from an opposite end. It didn’t taste very good.
“There’s one bite left,” said the girl. “You can have it.”
He didn’t say anything. He was watching a boy and a girl at the back of the concession stand waiting for someone to take their clothes. They were both very tan and had long blond hair. They didn’t mind waiting. The girl leaned on the counter, and her boyfriend let his hand slide down over the seat of her swimsuit. She slapped his hand away and then leaned over again.
“Do you want to get some clothes? I mean, some real clothes? If we’re going to walk back to camp we need some shoes.”
“How do we do that?” she asked, putting down the bit of hot dog carefully on the railroad tie so that it wouldn’t roll. She tore the corner off the potato-chip bag with her teeth.
“There’s only that one guy at the hot-dog stand. He has to sell stuff and take people’s clothes by himself. If you kept him busy I could grab a couple of baskets.”
She thought of them running across the lawn carrying the baskets, the fat pink man screaming at them.
“That’s crazy.”
“No, it isn’t. I could do it.”
The girl saw that he was still watching the couple waiting to check their clothes. They looked like an advertisement for shampoo or sugarless gum.
“All right,” she said, her eyes going narrow. “What’ll I do?”
“How much money have we got?”
She counted their change. “Sixteen cents.”
“Is that all? I thought we’d have enough for you to buy something else.”
“There was the tax.”
“Well, couldn’t you pretend to buy something?”
“I don’t know. Wait a sec.” She picked up a bit of cinder and the last bite of hot dog. She rubbed the cinder into the pink meat. “Okay,” she said. “Where shall we meet afterward?” She was holding the bit of hot dog in the flat palm of her hand, as if it were not quite clean, and frowning at him seriously.
“Behind the changing places.”
“Okay.”
He watched her get up and start toward the concession stand. She was almost marching. He thought he should have picked somewhere else to meet in case they had to run, but it was too late now. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. They were wet and sticky.
There was a little boy ahead of her buying a popsicle, so she had to wait. The man frowned over the little boy’s head. He looked first at her and then at the piece of hot dog in her hand.
She couldn’t see what was going on at the other counter because the man was in the way, and she was afraid to try and look around him. She realized suddenly that she should have waited until the man had taken the wire baskets from the blond couple. The boy wouldn’t be able to grab anything if they were standing there. It was too late. The little boy in front of her moved away, pulling the sticky wrapper from his popsicle. The man didn’t ask what the girl wanted. He just looked at her.
“There was a rock in my hot dog,” she said. Her voice came out tight and squeaky.
“Sure. Beat it.” The man picked up a dirty wet cloth and started wiping the counter.
“There was.”
“Sure there was. And you want your money back.”
“No.”
The man looked up, faintly surprised.
“I want another hot dog. This one wasn’t any good.”
The blond couple came out from behind the concession stand. The boyfriend was trying to fasten a safety pin with a brass tag to the strap of the girl’s swimsuit. She was watching him look into her top and smiling.
“What is it with you guys that the bug is always in the last bite?” said the man, starting to turn away. He was bored. His look suggested that he had heard it all before.
“It was! And it wasn’t a bug. It was a rock!” She heard herself shouting, trying to hold his attention. “You give me another hot dog or I’ll call the cops.”
“Sure. You do that …” The man was looking at the blond couple, a puzzled look taking shape on his face. He was going to wonder in one second where they had got their brass tags.
“I want one!” she shouted, slapping the counter with her bare hand as hard as she could. It made a terrific noise, and her arm tingled. She and the man looked at each other, shocked.
“For Pete’s sake, give her another hot dog,” said someone behind her. It was the man who had been putting up the volleyball net. His kids were swinging on his hands, looking at her.
“That girl has on a funny swimsuit,” announced the little girl, who was short enough to see.
The counterman didn’t pay any attention. He was leaning past her, talking to the man. “Listen, bud. If you knew the grief these kids give me …”
The girl walked stiffly away. She knew she should
stay. She knew she hadn’t given him enough time. She knew it.
He was standing hunched over two baskets behind the changing stalls.
“What took you so long?” he asked, shoving a basket with a pink sweater on top into her hands.
“How did you get them? Weren’t those people there?”
“Yeah. I just went behind the counter and gave them some tags. They must have thought I worked there. That’s her stuff.” He pointed at the basket. “Hurry up and get changed.” He scuttled away, darting into an empty stall.
He dressed quickly and then waited with his door open a crack until he saw her come out of a stall down the row. She was wearing high tops, baggy designer jeans, and a pink sweater over a T-shirt that said Milk Bar. She stood very straight, and when she turned toward him, she smiled nervously.
They walked without speaking across the parking lot. His legs weren’t working too well. He wanted to break into a run, a screaming gallop into the trees. It wasn’t because he was afraid. He was almost rigid with pent-up excitement. It felt like joy.
She stopped and scooped up the bag of potato chips she had left by the railroad ties, and they walked together down the drive toward the highway, eating the chips one by one.
When they were out of sight of the concession stand, he went through his pockets. He found a quarter
and a small brown spiral notebook with the stub of a pencil stuck in the binding. Inside were some addresses. He tore these out because they made him feel uncomfortable, but he put the notebook back in his pocket.
“Did you find anything?” he asked.
She frowned. “There was her wallet and watch, but I left them in the basket.”
“That’s okay,” he said quickly. “We don’t need them or anything. We shouldn’t take stuff we don’t need.”
“Wait a sec,” she said, and pulled something from under her sweater and shoved it into the bushes. It was the underwear that she had made out of the old T-shirt at the cottage.
“I didn’t want anybody to find them,” she explained.
“Did you put on her underwear?” he asked.
“Sure, didn’t you?”
“No.” He had shoved the boyfriend’s jockey shorts under the seat in the changing stall. They had been warm, and he hadn’t even wanted to touch them. “I just didn’t want to.”
“Hers were clean and everything.” She walked beside him, smiling to herself. She wouldn’t look at him.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked.
She looked around. The road was empty. The sun was shining through the leaves overhead and lying in flat puzzle pieces in the dust. She unfastened her
jeans and pushed them down a little. She was wearing tiny bikini panties. They were pink and mostly lace.
“Hey, you dope! Pull your pants up!” he said, flapping his hands.
She didn’t mind. She fastened her jeans calmly, still smiling. As they walked, they bumped shoulders. He thought he would like to hold her hand, but he couldn’t because she would think he liked her in that way. So he bumped her shoulder again.
“Hey,” she said, bumping him back. They began to run down the road, careening off one another through the patches of shadow and sun.