Ed Rainey had five daughters. Of course, he’d always known they were something special, but lately he was alarmed to find that other people—boys and men to be exact—were beginning to think so too. Ed himself had grown up with three brothers, and when they were reaching the age when trouble beckons his mother defied the landlord to install a billiard table in the basement of the house. As she had intended, it soon became a gathering place where she could keep a watchful eye on all the young men in the neighborhood.
When Ed heard about the offer from Supreme Recreation to earn a 50% discount on a new in-ground swimming pool by selling ten others he remembered his mother’s strategy and decided he was going to make it happen. Friendly, honest, and quietly purposeful, Ed’s regular job since the war involved selling diamond tools to industrial manufacturers. Over the last twenty-odd years his sales commissions had enabled him to move his growing family from the cramped second-floor flat on the South Side, to the rented duplex near the bus station, to this new house in the suburbs. Selling pools, he felt, would be simple. When he got home from work, Ed put on a Hawaiian shirt, swabbed his forearms with coconut suntan lotion to evoke the scent of summer, and drove to the more affluent neighborhoods near the country club. Though it was a stubbornly cold April, he managed to clinch the deal in just a couple of weeks.
Mary suggested that Ed tell the girls the good news at dinner so he could catch them all together before they scattered for the evening. After the meatloaf and mashed potatoes were gone, Ed cleared his throat. Five pairs of eyes turned expectantly to him and Mary tried not to smile.
“I’ve got a surprise,” Ed said, pleased to see the girls’ eyes widen with anticipation. He waited for a long moment, teasing them, and then he said, “We’re getting an in-ground swimming pool. What do you think of that?”
Eileen, the eldest at twenty, and the very dignified possessor of a secretarial job, clapped her hands before she could catch herself. Seventeen-year old Angela, the one everyone called “the Queen” because her moods ruled the house, rewarded Ed with a bear hug from behind, rather frightening in its strength. Pretty, lively Brenda, fifteen, danced around the kitchen table to plant a kiss on his balding head, and Jeannie and Sally, much too big for it at nine and ten years old, climbed on to his lap and hung from his neck while he beamed across the table at Mary. The girls talked over one another with plans for pool parties, ideas about new patio furniture, and pleas for new swimwear called bikinis.
Jeannie and Sally were volunteering with their Girl Scout troop on the first Saturday in May when workers began to excavate the backyard, but the rest of the family and most of the kids on the block came to watch. Though it required some awkward maneuvering by the heavy machinery, Mary insisted that the workers not touch the sour cherry tree, its pale pink blossoms just starting to give way to bright new leaves. The foreman warned that they would be forever skimming cherries out of the water but Mary’s pies were worth it. Ed even paid extra to have a slide installed in that corner of the pool so they could climb the ladder to pick the cherries, and he congratulated himself on the economy of his idea.
Brenda nominated herself event planner for a Memorial Day party to be held after the pool was finished and she invited the whole neighborhood. The day was sunny but chilly and everyone pretended it was fifteen degrees warmer than it was. Ed grilled hot dogs and Mary baked brownies and put out potato chips and macaroni salad and orange Jell-O with carrot shavings suspended in it. Dads blew up rafts and wives sat on folding chairs with their pale winter faces tilted toward the sun. The teenagers segregated themselves by gender into opposite corners of the yard and watched each other, and the little kids went crazy in water so cold it turned their lips blue. The local newspaper featured the new pool on the front page the next day with a photo of Mary’s nephew Jerry executing a double flip off the diving board. Jerry was a bit of a show-off and the girls made fun of the photo. Ed said nothing because the kid had enlisted in the Navy and was off to Vietnam.
As Ed had hoped, the pool became a popular gathering place in constant use. On this hot July evening, the air was still and suffocating. It hadn’t rained in nearly three weeks and the lawn had gone brown and brittle despite the fact that Ed doggedly shuffled the sprinkler around every evening. He was at it again now while Jeannie and Sally did the dinner dishes and Mary rested upstairs in the stifling bedroom. There was going to be a bake sale at St. Christopher’s tomorrow after Sunday services and as chairwoman of the committee she had a late night ahead of her setting things up.
Ed took the opportunity to light a cigarette. He wasn’t allowed to smoke in the house, and he’d promised Mary he was quitting. He bent over to adjust the rusty dial on the sprinkler, which took some effort to unstick. When he finally got it loose it sprayed water on Donald, all dressed up for his date with Eileen. Donald yelped in surprise, and Ed suppressed a sigh. Eileen had told him that Donald thought Ed didn’t like him. Which was absurd. He didn’t dislike Donald. But he couldn’t say that he was sorry he’d doused his daughter’s suitor with cold water.
Looking very grown up and a little self-conscious in a new dress that seemed shorter than it needed to be, Eileen shot Ed a reproachful look as she came down the front steps and slid into the car. Ed noticed that Donald made sure she was safely tucked inside before he carefully shut her door.
“Sorry about that.” Ed waved his hand toward the sprinkler. In the other hand he held the cigarette behind his back. Eileen didn’t need to see it.
“That’s alright, Sir, it sure felt good,” Donald said gamely.
Ed almost smiled and then couldn’t stop himself from saying sternly, “Get her home by eleven.”
“Yes, Sir!” Donald nodded vigorously and climbed into the driver’s seat. He backed slowly down the driveway with practically his entire torso sticking out of the car window.
Despite his care, Donald almost hit Angela on her bike as she swerved into the driveway. She pulled up in front of Ed to dismount and he dropped the cigarette on the wet grass behind him and ground it under his heel.
“Dad! You won’t believe this! I had a guy in my section who ate his entire steak—the whole thing—and then complained that it was well-done when he asked for medium-rare and refused to pay for it!”
Angela went on, regaling Ed with the details of her principled battle with the customer and her manager’s craven surrender. She did not seem to see Paul O’Connor from next door sidle up to the edge of the yard, waiting for her to notice him. The girls referred to Paul’s chronic condition as “Angelitis,” contracted the day the Rainey’s moved in five years ago. Back then, Paul had set up a “telephone”—two Campbell’s soup cans joined by a clothesline—connecting their rooms, but Angela had quickly outgrown that, along with Paul.
“And he didn’t leave me a penny for a tip!” Angela indignantly wound up her story. “After he got his meal for free! That wasn’t fair, was it, Dad?”
“No, that doesn’t seem fair,” Ed agreed.
Angela nodded decisively and wheeled her bike into the carport. Ed was sure she hadn’t noticed Paul, who turned slowly around and moped back into his house. A moment later Ed saw him sitting at his bedroom window, chin propped in his hands, staring moonily into the girls’ room across the driveway. Ed hoped Angela would remember to draw the blinds when she changed out of her uniform. Come to think of it, he might move her to the other side of the house. She could swap rooms with Jeannie and Sally.
A few minutes later a big green Country Squire station wagon with faux wood panels rocketed into the driveway, piloted by Brenda’s friend Joanne, who liked to be called Jo-Jo. Most of Brenda’s friends were sixteen and had their drivers’ licenses, which churned up Ed’s heartburn whenever he thought about it. Nine girls spilled out of the car. They carried pillows and overnight bags overflowing with pajamas and fashion magazines and hair curlers.
The girls often traveled in a moiling pack that reminded Ed of a litter of puppies. He knew most people could hardly tell them apart, especially when they were all dressed in identical plaid skirts and green blazers during the school term. It didn’t help that in Brenda’s regular group of twelve there were two Mary Katherines and two Ann Maries. But Ed knew them all and never minded when they came over. They were good girls without a mean bone between them and he was sure they weren’t into drugs like so many kids these days.
A few years ago, Ed had overheard Brenda telling her girlfriends about how he’d lost his twin sister during the Great Depression when they were only seventeen. While he was away building roads in Idaho for FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corp, Ed had gotten the telegram summoning him home along with wired funds for a train ticket that must have cost the family dear. He hadn’t made it in time to see Edna before she died. His soul-deep grief was compounded by the guilt he felt that he had somehow wasted the cost of the ticket. Brenda hadn’t gotten all the details quite right, but a few of the girls were sniffing when she finished her story and ever since then Ed felt they treated him with particular regard.
“Hi Mr. Rainey,” said Mary Kate as she climbed out of the car, sticking out her lower lip and blowing air up under her bangs. “It’s so hot!”
Jo-Jo slammed the car door and winked at him. “Gotta smoke on you, Mr. Rainey?” She had a bit of a mouth that was always getting her into trouble with the sisters at St. Agnes’, but Ed knew she got pushed around at home when her father drank and so he cut her a lot of slack.
Ed asked Patty about her mother, who was being treated for cancer. He had seen the same hollow-eyed, haunted look on guys injured during the war, and he wasn’t sure the doctors were right that Mrs. Harris would make it. And he made a point to say hello to Meg, a shy girl with glasses, who Ed thought always seemed a little lost and often couldn’t make the girls’ activities. The eldest of seven children, she worked all hours for Father Tom at the rectory to earn money to help out at home. The other girls teased that she must have a crush on the priest, and Meg’s face flushed red whenever his name was mentioned.
Mary came out the side door when Ed was still greeting the girls and rolled her eyes at the station wagon, which was taking up more than half the driveway. She rooted distractedly around in her handbag for her keys while she told Brenda about the ham and cheese sandwiches and Cokes in the frig that she could give her friends.
After Mary had backed out of the carport and driven up on the lawn to get around the station wagon and the girls had carried their things into the house, Ed sauntered along the side of the garage. He surveyed the six small rose bushes he’d planted when they moved in—one for each of the girls and Mary—to see if they needed more water or fertilizer or something, but mostly as an excuse to enjoy an uninterrupted cigarette.
When Ed went into the house he found that Brenda and her crowd had commandeered the entire downstairs. Two of them were spreading out blankets and sleeping bags on the living room carpet, which ruled out watching the Yankees on the television. Jo-Jo and Patty were making sandwiches in the kitchen, singing and swaying along with some rock song on the radio. The two Ann Marie’s were leafing through Vogue magazines at the dining room table, and the remaining three girls were crowded into the downstairs bathroom doing something that involved a lot of hushed consultation. Seconds later Ed was horrified to see Jeannie and Sally emerge with their soft little-girls’ hair tortured into curlers and makeup painted on their innocent faces.
“How do we look, Dad?” Jeannie asked. She and Sally grinned at him, eyes bright under metallic blue eye shadow and heavy mascara. He knew they were waiting for him to tell them they looked beautiful like he did when Mary made herself up to go out.
Ed mustered a weak smile and croaked, “Lovely, girls.”
He escaped to the screen porch off the dining room only to find Angela hunched on the edge of the rattan couch painting her toenails a shocking shade of pink. She’d changed out of her waitress uniform, and she had the kitchen phone, which had a twelve-foot cord, tucked under her chin. It was apparent that she was talking to her current boyfriend, Danny Ryan, who she’d met at some ill-conceived dance that mixed the girls from St. Agnes’ with the boys from St. Sebastian’s. Danny was skinny, smart, a bit hyperactive, and never without a wide, toothy grin that made Ed uneasy. The last day of the Easter break, Danny and Angela had managed to get left behind when the zoo closed for the evening. Ed wondered darkly what had gone on there that night when the two of them were all alone among the wild animals.
“Yesss… I guess, maybe…” Angela said and giggled. And, a moment later, “No! I did not!” and another giggle.
Ed shook his head, wondering what was happening to his imperious daughter. When he walked past her and slid open the screen door to the backyard she didn’t even bother covering the mouthpiece or cutting her eyes at him. He realized that he vastly preferred being treated like an annoying blockage in the passage of her love life rather than the nonentity he had clearly become.
Outside, the sun was setting on the rough meadow beyond the new chain link fence, but the air was still heavy with humidity, reminding him of the suffocating nights in the South Pacific. Ed flicked on the pool lights and they glowed under the water, transforming the pool into something exotic, like the magical undersea world he’d seen while snorkeling on his honeymoon in Florida. He and Mary had married just after he’d been discharged from the Marines at the end of the war—when those God-awful bombs turned Japan into hell on earth. Floating above the beautiful fish serenely going about their business and clearly not seeing him as a threat, he'd felt so grateful he wanted to cry.
Ed got the long-handled pool skimmer from the garage and dragged the net through the water, capturing a few bugs and sodden brown leaves. Reaching up to knock the basket on top of the fence to empty out the net, he spotted Paul sitting in the dilapidated tree house in the O’Connor’s yard. Ed watched him out of the corner of his eye and when Angela laughed in the screen porch, Paul’s head jerked, as if in pain.
“Get down from there, Paul,” Ed said firmly, just loud enough for the boy to hear. Paul didn’t say a word. Just climbed silently down the slats nailed into the willow tree’s sturdy trunk and disappeared into the shadows. Ed decided he would talk to Bill O’Connor about his son tomorrow after church.
Ed put away the skimmer and stretched out on one of the turquoise and coral aluminum chaises that Mary and the girls had bought. The plastic webbing left pimply imprints on the backs of his thighs but it was more comfortable than it looked, and he sometimes fell asleep without intending to. He opened the paper and saw that things had calmed down on the West Side. The mayor had promised to set up temporary swimming pools and sent the National Guard home. Ed didn’t think it was right that they’d sent in the guardsmen because kids had broken open a fire hydrant to cool off.
Twenty minutes later, Ed woke gently from a refreshing little nap. The moon was just rising above the trees, half of a white pie. He yawned and stretched and lit another cigarette, but even as he did so he heard the radio abruptly cut off and voices headed his way. With a sigh, he ground out the cigarette on the concrete patio just as Brenda and her friends burst through the screen door.
“Dad!” Brenda called, “We’re going to skinny-dip in the pool! Can you be the guard? Make sure no one sees us?”
Ed hauled himself awkwardly out of the chair and frowned. “What?”
“Jo-Jo dared Mary Kate, but it’s so hot we thought we’d all do it.” Brenda yanked the front of her blouse away from her chest and flapped it like a small, pink and white sail. “Please, Dad, it’s sooo hot!”
“Where are Jeannie and Sally?” Ed asked, buying time. He wasn’t sure Mary would approve of Brenda’s proposed escapade.
“They’re watching ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ on TV. They won’t come out.”
During sweltering summers in the city when he was a boy, Ed and his friends would take the streetcar to the last stop on the line and then hike a mile to the beach on Lake Michigan. They would build castles in the sand ringed by moats and pile rocks into forts that they defended vigorously with driftwood weapons. And when they got hot, they stripped down to their underwear and flung themselves into the vast, green waters that seemed as wide as an ocean, emerging clean and pure and somehow more than whole.
“Come on, Dad, please?”
Brenda’s trust, and that of the other girls, who were looking hopefully at him, touched Ed. He saw their absolute faith that he would shield them from prying eyes and that they knew, too, that he would sooner have his own eyes put out with a red-hot poker than sneak a peek himself.
“Ok.” Ed nodded. “I’ll turn off the pool lights.”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Brenda, and her friends echoed, “Thanks, Mr. Rainey.”
Ed flipped off the pool lights and behind him Jo-Jo said, “Oh, come on, Meg, don’t be such a prude.” He heard the pad of bare feet over concrete and the bubble of toes swished through water. Then someone must have pushed someone because there was a slap of flesh on flesh, then a scream and a splash, and then more splashes and shrieks, and then the high, sweet laughter of girls at play.
Ed smiled to himself and began his patrol by the gate that opened into the carport. He passed by the screen porch where Angela was still on the phone.
"No, you can’t, I’m sorry…. Because Brenda’s friends are skinny-dipping.” There was a pause then, “What? Why?... Oh, ok… bye.” Angela heaved a dramatic sigh and hung up.
A minute later, while walking the perimeter by the side of the house Ed felt, rather than saw, that there was someone watching. He crouched and slid along the fence as swiftly and quietly as he could to peer up into the treehouse. Sure enough, moonlight glinted off glass—a pair of binoculars. Some part of Ed’s brain registered that the binoculars were aimed at the kitchen window, where he could see Angela hanging up the phone, and not at the pool, but with a primal instinct he could not control he threw himself at the fence and snarled into the tree, “Get the fuck down from there before I rip your fucking head off!”
Ed heard the frantic rustling of Paul’s retreat with satisfaction. Since his marriage he rarely swore, and he’d forgotten how satisfying profanity could be under the right circumstances. It had, for instance, served to perfectly express the horrors he and his fellow leathernecks heard, saw, and did throughout the war.
A bit of swagger in his step, Ed resumed his patrol and paused by the backyard fence. He was on the alert now, and he sensed that something was off as he slowly scanned the darkened field. Under the moonlight, some of the long grasses were bending and swaying though there was not a breath of a breeze. He knew there was somebody out there. Ed wondered if by some perverted sixth sense Burt Feeney, the neighborhood Peeping Tom, had caught wind of the skinny-dipping. Ed and Mary had drilled into the girls that they were never ever to go near the run-down eyesore of a house two blocks over where Burt lived with his invalid mother. And Ed knew he had made it very clear to Burt that he was not welcome near the Rainey’s house, but perhaps the temptation had been too much.
Well, no pervert was going to get past him, Ed vowed. He flicked his lighter and let the flame burn long before he lit a cigarette so that any intruder would see that he was on guard. Then he stood, burning cigarette clamped between his lips, legs spread wide, staring out at the wild field. After a moment, he was certain he could hear someone retreating through the dry grasses. He narrowed his eyes, straining to see in the dark. Beyond the meadow, tires squealed around a corner and an engine revved.
Moments later the squealing tires sounded so close Ed knew the car was actually in front of his house. He turned and sprinted at top speed toward the pool yelling just as the carport gate crashed open. A shadowy horde of howling figures swarmed through the gap and threw themselves with violent abandon into the pool. Ed caught a glimpse of Danny leading the charge before his wide, toothy grin disappeared beneath the water.
The naked girls screamed and flailed frantically away from the boys toward the deep end. Some scrambled up the ladder while others grasped the sides of the pool and hauled themselves out of the water, demonstrating unexpected upper-body strength. Even more surprising to Ed, Patty and one of the Ann Maries let loose a string of curses that would have done a sailor proud. Angela rushed toward the girls with an armful of towels that they quickly wrapped and tucked around themselves.
Ed thought all were safe when one of the boys flicked on the pool lights, trapping a girl alone in their revealing glare. Huddled in the water under the diving board, Meg tried to hold on to the edge of the pool and cover herself at the same time. She couldn’t do both and when she realized that the boys could see every inch of her naked body she screamed. And she screamed and she screamed and she screamed, as if she was out of her mind. Not since the war, not since they took Motobu in the battle for Okinawa, had Ed heard a woman make such a sound.
Swiftly, Brenda and her girls moved as one. Eight pairs of hands reached and grasped and lifted Meg out of the pool as if she weighed no more than a child. Eight pairs of hands swaddled her tightly in a towel, and eight bodies closed ranks around her. In the girls’ murmurs of comfort, Ed could hear their urgent desire to cleanse and purify, their hope that they could make whole, and the dawning knowledge that they could not.
In the pool, the watching boys treaded water, uncertain of what they had done.
When Ed heard about the offer from Supreme Recreation to earn a 50% discount on a new in-ground swimming pool by selling ten others he remembered his mother’s strategy and decided he was going to make it happen. Friendly, honest, and quietly purposeful, Ed’s regular job since the war involved selling diamond tools to industrial manufacturers. Over the last twenty-odd years his sales commissions had enabled him to move his growing family from the cramped second-floor flat on the South Side, to the rented duplex near the bus station, to this new house in the suburbs. Selling pools, he felt, would be simple. When he got home from work, Ed put on a Hawaiian shirt, swabbed his forearms with coconut suntan lotion to evoke the scent of summer, and drove to the more affluent neighborhoods near the country club. Though it was a stubbornly cold April, he managed to clinch the deal in just a couple of weeks.
Mary suggested that Ed tell the girls the good news at dinner so he could catch them all together before they scattered for the evening. After the meatloaf and mashed potatoes were gone, Ed cleared his throat. Five pairs of eyes turned expectantly to him and Mary tried not to smile.
“I’ve got a surprise,” Ed said, pleased to see the girls’ eyes widen with anticipation. He waited for a long moment, teasing them, and then he said, “We’re getting an in-ground swimming pool. What do you think of that?”
Eileen, the eldest at twenty, and the very dignified possessor of a secretarial job, clapped her hands before she could catch herself. Seventeen-year old Angela, the one everyone called “the Queen” because her moods ruled the house, rewarded Ed with a bear hug from behind, rather frightening in its strength. Pretty, lively Brenda, fifteen, danced around the kitchen table to plant a kiss on his balding head, and Jeannie and Sally, much too big for it at nine and ten years old, climbed on to his lap and hung from his neck while he beamed across the table at Mary. The girls talked over one another with plans for pool parties, ideas about new patio furniture, and pleas for new swimwear called bikinis.
Jeannie and Sally were volunteering with their Girl Scout troop on the first Saturday in May when workers began to excavate the backyard, but the rest of the family and most of the kids on the block came to watch. Though it required some awkward maneuvering by the heavy machinery, Mary insisted that the workers not touch the sour cherry tree, its pale pink blossoms just starting to give way to bright new leaves. The foreman warned that they would be forever skimming cherries out of the water but Mary’s pies were worth it. Ed even paid extra to have a slide installed in that corner of the pool so they could climb the ladder to pick the cherries, and he congratulated himself on the economy of his idea.
Brenda nominated herself event planner for a Memorial Day party to be held after the pool was finished and she invited the whole neighborhood. The day was sunny but chilly and everyone pretended it was fifteen degrees warmer than it was. Ed grilled hot dogs and Mary baked brownies and put out potato chips and macaroni salad and orange Jell-O with carrot shavings suspended in it. Dads blew up rafts and wives sat on folding chairs with their pale winter faces tilted toward the sun. The teenagers segregated themselves by gender into opposite corners of the yard and watched each other, and the little kids went crazy in water so cold it turned their lips blue. The local newspaper featured the new pool on the front page the next day with a photo of Mary’s nephew Jerry executing a double flip off the diving board. Jerry was a bit of a show-off and the girls made fun of the photo. Ed said nothing because the kid had enlisted in the Navy and was off to Vietnam.
As Ed had hoped, the pool became a popular gathering place in constant use. On this hot July evening, the air was still and suffocating. It hadn’t rained in nearly three weeks and the lawn had gone brown and brittle despite the fact that Ed doggedly shuffled the sprinkler around every evening. He was at it again now while Jeannie and Sally did the dinner dishes and Mary rested upstairs in the stifling bedroom. There was going to be a bake sale at St. Christopher’s tomorrow after Sunday services and as chairwoman of the committee she had a late night ahead of her setting things up.
Ed took the opportunity to light a cigarette. He wasn’t allowed to smoke in the house, and he’d promised Mary he was quitting. He bent over to adjust the rusty dial on the sprinkler, which took some effort to unstick. When he finally got it loose it sprayed water on Donald, all dressed up for his date with Eileen. Donald yelped in surprise, and Ed suppressed a sigh. Eileen had told him that Donald thought Ed didn’t like him. Which was absurd. He didn’t dislike Donald. But he couldn’t say that he was sorry he’d doused his daughter’s suitor with cold water.
Looking very grown up and a little self-conscious in a new dress that seemed shorter than it needed to be, Eileen shot Ed a reproachful look as she came down the front steps and slid into the car. Ed noticed that Donald made sure she was safely tucked inside before he carefully shut her door.
“Sorry about that.” Ed waved his hand toward the sprinkler. In the other hand he held the cigarette behind his back. Eileen didn’t need to see it.
“That’s alright, Sir, it sure felt good,” Donald said gamely.
Ed almost smiled and then couldn’t stop himself from saying sternly, “Get her home by eleven.”
“Yes, Sir!” Donald nodded vigorously and climbed into the driver’s seat. He backed slowly down the driveway with practically his entire torso sticking out of the car window.
Despite his care, Donald almost hit Angela on her bike as she swerved into the driveway. She pulled up in front of Ed to dismount and he dropped the cigarette on the wet grass behind him and ground it under his heel.
“Dad! You won’t believe this! I had a guy in my section who ate his entire steak—the whole thing—and then complained that it was well-done when he asked for medium-rare and refused to pay for it!”
Angela went on, regaling Ed with the details of her principled battle with the customer and her manager’s craven surrender. She did not seem to see Paul O’Connor from next door sidle up to the edge of the yard, waiting for her to notice him. The girls referred to Paul’s chronic condition as “Angelitis,” contracted the day the Rainey’s moved in five years ago. Back then, Paul had set up a “telephone”—two Campbell’s soup cans joined by a clothesline—connecting their rooms, but Angela had quickly outgrown that, along with Paul.
“And he didn’t leave me a penny for a tip!” Angela indignantly wound up her story. “After he got his meal for free! That wasn’t fair, was it, Dad?”
“No, that doesn’t seem fair,” Ed agreed.
Angela nodded decisively and wheeled her bike into the carport. Ed was sure she hadn’t noticed Paul, who turned slowly around and moped back into his house. A moment later Ed saw him sitting at his bedroom window, chin propped in his hands, staring moonily into the girls’ room across the driveway. Ed hoped Angela would remember to draw the blinds when she changed out of her uniform. Come to think of it, he might move her to the other side of the house. She could swap rooms with Jeannie and Sally.
A few minutes later a big green Country Squire station wagon with faux wood panels rocketed into the driveway, piloted by Brenda’s friend Joanne, who liked to be called Jo-Jo. Most of Brenda’s friends were sixteen and had their drivers’ licenses, which churned up Ed’s heartburn whenever he thought about it. Nine girls spilled out of the car. They carried pillows and overnight bags overflowing with pajamas and fashion magazines and hair curlers.
The girls often traveled in a moiling pack that reminded Ed of a litter of puppies. He knew most people could hardly tell them apart, especially when they were all dressed in identical plaid skirts and green blazers during the school term. It didn’t help that in Brenda’s regular group of twelve there were two Mary Katherines and two Ann Maries. But Ed knew them all and never minded when they came over. They were good girls without a mean bone between them and he was sure they weren’t into drugs like so many kids these days.
A few years ago, Ed had overheard Brenda telling her girlfriends about how he’d lost his twin sister during the Great Depression when they were only seventeen. While he was away building roads in Idaho for FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corp, Ed had gotten the telegram summoning him home along with wired funds for a train ticket that must have cost the family dear. He hadn’t made it in time to see Edna before she died. His soul-deep grief was compounded by the guilt he felt that he had somehow wasted the cost of the ticket. Brenda hadn’t gotten all the details quite right, but a few of the girls were sniffing when she finished her story and ever since then Ed felt they treated him with particular regard.
“Hi Mr. Rainey,” said Mary Kate as she climbed out of the car, sticking out her lower lip and blowing air up under her bangs. “It’s so hot!”
Jo-Jo slammed the car door and winked at him. “Gotta smoke on you, Mr. Rainey?” She had a bit of a mouth that was always getting her into trouble with the sisters at St. Agnes’, but Ed knew she got pushed around at home when her father drank and so he cut her a lot of slack.
Ed asked Patty about her mother, who was being treated for cancer. He had seen the same hollow-eyed, haunted look on guys injured during the war, and he wasn’t sure the doctors were right that Mrs. Harris would make it. And he made a point to say hello to Meg, a shy girl with glasses, who Ed thought always seemed a little lost and often couldn’t make the girls’ activities. The eldest of seven children, she worked all hours for Father Tom at the rectory to earn money to help out at home. The other girls teased that she must have a crush on the priest, and Meg’s face flushed red whenever his name was mentioned.
Mary came out the side door when Ed was still greeting the girls and rolled her eyes at the station wagon, which was taking up more than half the driveway. She rooted distractedly around in her handbag for her keys while she told Brenda about the ham and cheese sandwiches and Cokes in the frig that she could give her friends.
After Mary had backed out of the carport and driven up on the lawn to get around the station wagon and the girls had carried their things into the house, Ed sauntered along the side of the garage. He surveyed the six small rose bushes he’d planted when they moved in—one for each of the girls and Mary—to see if they needed more water or fertilizer or something, but mostly as an excuse to enjoy an uninterrupted cigarette.
When Ed went into the house he found that Brenda and her crowd had commandeered the entire downstairs. Two of them were spreading out blankets and sleeping bags on the living room carpet, which ruled out watching the Yankees on the television. Jo-Jo and Patty were making sandwiches in the kitchen, singing and swaying along with some rock song on the radio. The two Ann Marie’s were leafing through Vogue magazines at the dining room table, and the remaining three girls were crowded into the downstairs bathroom doing something that involved a lot of hushed consultation. Seconds later Ed was horrified to see Jeannie and Sally emerge with their soft little-girls’ hair tortured into curlers and makeup painted on their innocent faces.
“How do we look, Dad?” Jeannie asked. She and Sally grinned at him, eyes bright under metallic blue eye shadow and heavy mascara. He knew they were waiting for him to tell them they looked beautiful like he did when Mary made herself up to go out.
Ed mustered a weak smile and croaked, “Lovely, girls.”
He escaped to the screen porch off the dining room only to find Angela hunched on the edge of the rattan couch painting her toenails a shocking shade of pink. She’d changed out of her waitress uniform, and she had the kitchen phone, which had a twelve-foot cord, tucked under her chin. It was apparent that she was talking to her current boyfriend, Danny Ryan, who she’d met at some ill-conceived dance that mixed the girls from St. Agnes’ with the boys from St. Sebastian’s. Danny was skinny, smart, a bit hyperactive, and never without a wide, toothy grin that made Ed uneasy. The last day of the Easter break, Danny and Angela had managed to get left behind when the zoo closed for the evening. Ed wondered darkly what had gone on there that night when the two of them were all alone among the wild animals.
“Yesss… I guess, maybe…” Angela said and giggled. And, a moment later, “No! I did not!” and another giggle.
Ed shook his head, wondering what was happening to his imperious daughter. When he walked past her and slid open the screen door to the backyard she didn’t even bother covering the mouthpiece or cutting her eyes at him. He realized that he vastly preferred being treated like an annoying blockage in the passage of her love life rather than the nonentity he had clearly become.
Outside, the sun was setting on the rough meadow beyond the new chain link fence, but the air was still heavy with humidity, reminding him of the suffocating nights in the South Pacific. Ed flicked on the pool lights and they glowed under the water, transforming the pool into something exotic, like the magical undersea world he’d seen while snorkeling on his honeymoon in Florida. He and Mary had married just after he’d been discharged from the Marines at the end of the war—when those God-awful bombs turned Japan into hell on earth. Floating above the beautiful fish serenely going about their business and clearly not seeing him as a threat, he'd felt so grateful he wanted to cry.
Ed got the long-handled pool skimmer from the garage and dragged the net through the water, capturing a few bugs and sodden brown leaves. Reaching up to knock the basket on top of the fence to empty out the net, he spotted Paul sitting in the dilapidated tree house in the O’Connor’s yard. Ed watched him out of the corner of his eye and when Angela laughed in the screen porch, Paul’s head jerked, as if in pain.
“Get down from there, Paul,” Ed said firmly, just loud enough for the boy to hear. Paul didn’t say a word. Just climbed silently down the slats nailed into the willow tree’s sturdy trunk and disappeared into the shadows. Ed decided he would talk to Bill O’Connor about his son tomorrow after church.
Ed put away the skimmer and stretched out on one of the turquoise and coral aluminum chaises that Mary and the girls had bought. The plastic webbing left pimply imprints on the backs of his thighs but it was more comfortable than it looked, and he sometimes fell asleep without intending to. He opened the paper and saw that things had calmed down on the West Side. The mayor had promised to set up temporary swimming pools and sent the National Guard home. Ed didn’t think it was right that they’d sent in the guardsmen because kids had broken open a fire hydrant to cool off.
Twenty minutes later, Ed woke gently from a refreshing little nap. The moon was just rising above the trees, half of a white pie. He yawned and stretched and lit another cigarette, but even as he did so he heard the radio abruptly cut off and voices headed his way. With a sigh, he ground out the cigarette on the concrete patio just as Brenda and her friends burst through the screen door.
“Dad!” Brenda called, “We’re going to skinny-dip in the pool! Can you be the guard? Make sure no one sees us?”
Ed hauled himself awkwardly out of the chair and frowned. “What?”
“Jo-Jo dared Mary Kate, but it’s so hot we thought we’d all do it.” Brenda yanked the front of her blouse away from her chest and flapped it like a small, pink and white sail. “Please, Dad, it’s sooo hot!”
“Where are Jeannie and Sally?” Ed asked, buying time. He wasn’t sure Mary would approve of Brenda’s proposed escapade.
“They’re watching ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ on TV. They won’t come out.”
During sweltering summers in the city when he was a boy, Ed and his friends would take the streetcar to the last stop on the line and then hike a mile to the beach on Lake Michigan. They would build castles in the sand ringed by moats and pile rocks into forts that they defended vigorously with driftwood weapons. And when they got hot, they stripped down to their underwear and flung themselves into the vast, green waters that seemed as wide as an ocean, emerging clean and pure and somehow more than whole.
“Come on, Dad, please?”
Brenda’s trust, and that of the other girls, who were looking hopefully at him, touched Ed. He saw their absolute faith that he would shield them from prying eyes and that they knew, too, that he would sooner have his own eyes put out with a red-hot poker than sneak a peek himself.
“Ok.” Ed nodded. “I’ll turn off the pool lights.”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Brenda, and her friends echoed, “Thanks, Mr. Rainey.”
Ed flipped off the pool lights and behind him Jo-Jo said, “Oh, come on, Meg, don’t be such a prude.” He heard the pad of bare feet over concrete and the bubble of toes swished through water. Then someone must have pushed someone because there was a slap of flesh on flesh, then a scream and a splash, and then more splashes and shrieks, and then the high, sweet laughter of girls at play.
Ed smiled to himself and began his patrol by the gate that opened into the carport. He passed by the screen porch where Angela was still on the phone.
"No, you can’t, I’m sorry…. Because Brenda’s friends are skinny-dipping.” There was a pause then, “What? Why?... Oh, ok… bye.” Angela heaved a dramatic sigh and hung up.
A minute later, while walking the perimeter by the side of the house Ed felt, rather than saw, that there was someone watching. He crouched and slid along the fence as swiftly and quietly as he could to peer up into the treehouse. Sure enough, moonlight glinted off glass—a pair of binoculars. Some part of Ed’s brain registered that the binoculars were aimed at the kitchen window, where he could see Angela hanging up the phone, and not at the pool, but with a primal instinct he could not control he threw himself at the fence and snarled into the tree, “Get the fuck down from there before I rip your fucking head off!”
Ed heard the frantic rustling of Paul’s retreat with satisfaction. Since his marriage he rarely swore, and he’d forgotten how satisfying profanity could be under the right circumstances. It had, for instance, served to perfectly express the horrors he and his fellow leathernecks heard, saw, and did throughout the war.
A bit of swagger in his step, Ed resumed his patrol and paused by the backyard fence. He was on the alert now, and he sensed that something was off as he slowly scanned the darkened field. Under the moonlight, some of the long grasses were bending and swaying though there was not a breath of a breeze. He knew there was somebody out there. Ed wondered if by some perverted sixth sense Burt Feeney, the neighborhood Peeping Tom, had caught wind of the skinny-dipping. Ed and Mary had drilled into the girls that they were never ever to go near the run-down eyesore of a house two blocks over where Burt lived with his invalid mother. And Ed knew he had made it very clear to Burt that he was not welcome near the Rainey’s house, but perhaps the temptation had been too much.
Well, no pervert was going to get past him, Ed vowed. He flicked his lighter and let the flame burn long before he lit a cigarette so that any intruder would see that he was on guard. Then he stood, burning cigarette clamped between his lips, legs spread wide, staring out at the wild field. After a moment, he was certain he could hear someone retreating through the dry grasses. He narrowed his eyes, straining to see in the dark. Beyond the meadow, tires squealed around a corner and an engine revved.
Moments later the squealing tires sounded so close Ed knew the car was actually in front of his house. He turned and sprinted at top speed toward the pool yelling just as the carport gate crashed open. A shadowy horde of howling figures swarmed through the gap and threw themselves with violent abandon into the pool. Ed caught a glimpse of Danny leading the charge before his wide, toothy grin disappeared beneath the water.
The naked girls screamed and flailed frantically away from the boys toward the deep end. Some scrambled up the ladder while others grasped the sides of the pool and hauled themselves out of the water, demonstrating unexpected upper-body strength. Even more surprising to Ed, Patty and one of the Ann Maries let loose a string of curses that would have done a sailor proud. Angela rushed toward the girls with an armful of towels that they quickly wrapped and tucked around themselves.
Ed thought all were safe when one of the boys flicked on the pool lights, trapping a girl alone in their revealing glare. Huddled in the water under the diving board, Meg tried to hold on to the edge of the pool and cover herself at the same time. She couldn’t do both and when she realized that the boys could see every inch of her naked body she screamed. And she screamed and she screamed and she screamed, as if she was out of her mind. Not since the war, not since they took Motobu in the battle for Okinawa, had Ed heard a woman make such a sound.
Swiftly, Brenda and her girls moved as one. Eight pairs of hands reached and grasped and lifted Meg out of the pool as if she weighed no more than a child. Eight pairs of hands swaddled her tightly in a towel, and eight bodies closed ranks around her. In the girls’ murmurs of comfort, Ed could hear their urgent desire to cleanse and purify, their hope that they could make whole, and the dawning knowledge that they could not.
In the pool, the watching boys treaded water, uncertain of what they had done.