The Color of Water in July (5 page)

“I wonder if Jeb and Allison Cartwright are looking to buy,” Toni went on, acting as though she hadn’t heard anything Russ had just said. “Lovely couple. Jeb’s in securities.”

“If there is someone who is willing to come in with a good offer and accept the renovations sight unseen . . . we’d be willing to talk to them. We need to settle this as soon as possible and get back to New York.”

Jess was intrigued to see Russ, obviously so much in his element, dealing with the real-estate agent. He had taken on a vaguely proprietary air that she had never noticed before. She was exhausted and felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on. Russ had his arm around her and he kept saying “we.” It was such a relief not to have to deal with Toni Barnes. After a while, Jess picked up one of Russ’s magazines and went out on the porch. She let Russ do all the talking.

CHAPTER SEVEN

J
ESS
,
AGE SEVENTEEN

“The Millers are here,” Mamie said, not looking up from her mending. Her pale-blue glasses were perched on her nose. She was sitting on the porch swing, rocking slightly as she sat. “The
David
Millers.”

“Are they?” Jess said without much interest. This was a summer ritual, Mamie telling her the comings and goings of the cottagers. Few stayed all summer as they did. Most came for two or three weeks at a time and then left, replaced by another batch of cottagers, each group barely distinguishable from the last. “I thought the
Sam
Millers were still here,” Jess said, knowing as she said it that she had no idea who was in the Miller cottage.

“Left on Friday,” Mamie said.

Jess pulled the faded floral bolster under her head and flopped over in the hammock. She was starting to hate summer, even to miss her crazy mother with her oddball journalist friends. Before this, she had always loved Wequetona—the easy summer alliances, fast friendships that formed and faded just like summer tans, soon forgotten but leaving behind a reminder of the season’s warmth. But this summer was different. She kept running into people’s mothers who peppered her with news.
Oh, Kristen misses seeing you. She stayed home to work this summer. David’s not coming up this year. Summer school.
Jess was picking at the strings of the hammock where it was starting to fray. Staring out at the lake, feeling drowsy from boredom.

“The Miller girl. Isn’t she a friend of yours?” Mamie asked.

Jess rolled onto her back and closed her eyes.
The Miller girl?
There were five sons in the Miller family, all of whom shared the cottage. They had some complicated time-share system. Besides, they all kind of looked alike—angular, bucktoothed, and blond. Nobody could ever keep the Miller family straight.

“Do you think it’s
Toni
Miller?” Jess felt a little wave of dismay. They were around the same age, and people always expected them to be friends. They often ended up hanging around together, but they had never been close.

“Is that David Miller’s daughter? The pretty blond one?” Mamie said. “Yes, I think that’s the one.”

It was 5:30. Jess knew because her grandmother had gone into her dressing room to change for dinner. Mamie still dressed for dinner every night, even though now it was just the two of them sitting down to simple meals at the kitchen table in the add-on kitchen in the back. She never said anything to Jess, didn’t suggest that she change out of her jeans. The clubhouse had been closed for—oh, it must have been almost ten years, but Jess knew that Mamie still imagined that she heard the clubhouse bell, precisely at six, and could stroll down the walk like they used to. They gathered around the Tretheway table, in the drafty old wooden clubhouse with the linen-covered tables and worn wooden floors. The Club still held Vespers there on Sunday evenings; some of the older folk still went, including Mamie, of course. But for years it had been Mamie and Jess alone at the dinner table, Mamie dressed, with fresh makeup. Every night, they unfolded a fresh linen tablecloth and spread it out over the table, even though neither of them cooked much: they ate frozen dinners or canned chicken noodle soup.

“We didn’t even have a kitchen until after the war,” Mamie said to Jess more than once. “Most of the Indians were gone by then, and we couldn’t find staff for breakfast. I had it added on just for breakfast, you know. Never did I imagine . . . ” She spread her linen napkin in her lap, folding her hands on the table to say grace. “That we would dine here, Jess. Lord knows I never intended that.”

“Don’t you think you should stop by to see the Miller girl? Maybe you girls could spend some time together. Have a little fun.” Mamie was spooning cream of mushroom soup into her mouth, pausing between each mouthful to carefully dab at her lipsticked mouth with her napkin.

“Um, yeah, I guess so.”

“Don’t say yeah, Jess. Say yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am. I guess so.”

At a quarter to six the next evening, there was a knock on the cottage door. Toni Miller was standing on the porch, wearing Levi’s and a red stretch tube top, smelling strongly of Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil. Toni threw her arms around Jess, who could feel the slick sheen of tanning oil on Toni’s bare skin. It was a relief to see someone her own age, even if it was Toni Miller.

“A bunch of us are going to picnic on Hemingway Point tonight. We’re going in Phelps’s boat. You wanna come?”

“Phelps is here?”

“Got in last night.”

Jess hadn’t seen Phelps around for several summers. He was a couple of years older, already a student at Yale. She remembered him well though. He had always been a leader at Wequetona, team captain for the relays, winner of the sailing cup, a little too arrogant for her taste. Besides, his mother, Mrs. Whitmire, had always struck her as kind of judgmental.
How’s that mother of yours?
she used to say. Even as a small child, Jess had understood that Mrs. Whitmire was not asking because she wanted to know the answer.

“So are you coming?” Toni asked.

“Of course.”

“We’re meeting at the dock at eight.”

After Toni had left, Mamie emerged from her bedroom, dressed for dinner in a blue ultrasuede suit. Her feet were shod in slingbacks of precisely the same shade of blue, and there was a small sapphire nestled at her neckline.

“Who was that, dear?”

“Toni Miller. She invited me to go to a picnic on Hemingway Point.”

Her grandmother paled slightly.

“At night? Hemingway Point?”

“Toni said that Phelps is going to take us, in his boat.”

“Is that Phelps Whitmire? That good-looking Whitmire boy?” Jess could hear that plummy tone in her grandmother’s voice, the one she saved for
certain
Wequetona people.

“Yeah, I guess that’s the one.”

“Well, all right then. If the Whitmire boy is going.”

Toni was leaning out over the bow of the Whitmires’ red Chris-Craft wearing a pink bikini that had a thick white-plastic ring holding the two triangular pieces of the bra top together. She was still fragrant with the coconut scent of tanning oil. Jess was sitting in a vinyl-cushioned seat alongside the inboard’s housing, holding on tight to a grip handle, wishing Phelps Whitmire would slow down. Phelps was standing at the rudder, one hand clapped to his head to keep his Yale lacrosse cap on. Even though it was approaching dusk, he was still wearing his Ray-Bans. There was a bottle of Wild Turkey in a brown paper bag braced between his feet. He was pushing down hard on the throttle, cutting the turns sharply to make the boat crash over its own wake.

Jess gripped the side rail tightly. She hated the way the boat skidded across the water, skid, bang, bang, skid, bang, bang, bang. The sound of the motor was deafening, and the stench was unbearable, old canvas, dead fish, and diesel fumes. Despite a lifetime of lakeside summers, Jess had never really learned to like boats. Hemingway Point was close, so close some people could swim to it. It couldn’t possibly be taking this long. Phelps reached down to pick up the Wild Turkey, wrenching the boat hard to the left as he did.

He turned around to look at her.

“Wild Turkey?”

Jess stood up a little to grab the bottle from him, falling back onto the cushioned seat as the boat whacked the water.

“Why not,” she said, tipping up the bottle and downing some of the fiery liquid. She sloshed a little as the boat hit another wake. She felt the cold liquid dribble down her chin.

About two hundred yards offshore, Phelps cut the motor and idled.

“I’m gonna swim in,” Toni said, already shimmying her jeans over her hips. She stepped out of them, leaving them in the bottom of the boat, the legs crinkled up like two empty sausage casings. She had long, slender feet with frosted pink polish on the toenails, covered with a faint dusting of sand. Without waiting for a response, Toni stepped up onto the boat’s gunwale and dove cleanly into the lake, making the boat sway in the quiet water. Jess froze for a second. The shore still appeared far away to her. She was ashamed to admit it, but she was afraid to swim. Mamie’s sister had drowned in the lake, years ago, and Mamie had never really let Jess learn. While the other children were swimming and boating, Mamie had always flooded her with streams of cautions: be careful, watch out for the drop-off, stay near shore—not an approach that led Jess to feel confident in the water.

“Come on,” Phelps said. “I can pull up at Lauder’s dock. No need to get wet.” Standing with his hand on the throttle, brown-bagged whiskey bottle now braced between his feet, he put the boat into forward and they chugged slowly down to the little dock.

The narrow strip of beach that ran along the edge of the woods was studded with sharp rocks. As they rounded the curve of the shoreline, the beach widened slightly into a ribbon of white sand. From there, Jess had a clear view across the cove. First, she noticed the woods that were adjacent to Wequetona, with their uncommonly tall trees. She could make out Journey’s End, though it was too far away to see clearly. Then, along the crest of the hill, like pearls on a knotted strand, the other Wequetona cottages lined up. They looked like dressed-up ladies, their paint making bright splashes against the dark green of the surrounding woods. She could see the Wequetona dock, the brightly colored cabanas on the beach, the moored sailboats and motorboats. The kind of place you might look across at, from somewhere on the lake, and think:
Aren’t they the lucky ones?
Dusk was falling, and the water had taken on a purplish hue.

Turning back toward the beach, she made her way over to the bonfire where some of the kids had gathered. Toni was already there. On the other side of the fire, Jess saw a solitary figure, only his silhouette visible through the flames. Mostly what Jess saw was the graceful curve of a solid shoulder, and the hair, longish, framing his invisible face. Jess recognized the boy from the canoe.

Though by now it was very cold except right next to the fire, Jess could see that Toni had not put a shirt on over her bikini top, and her lean brown arms were glowing a bit—the tanning oil had lent them a perpetual shine. Toni was talking to the boy from the canoe, leaning so that her long feathered hair kept falling forward, each time just brushing the boy’s forehead before she flipped it back behind her shoulder again. Their words were not audible, but Jess could hear the low rumble of the boy’s voice as he spoke. He seemed pleased by whatever Toni was telling him—Jess couldn’t help but notice his easy smile.