“So,” Redhead says, “have you guys decided on a date yet?”
While the girls talk—Brunette and Redhead already confirmed as bridesmaids—I glance out toward the shallow pool the toddlers now splash around in. In this kind of community, even a pool this size has a professional lifeguard on duty, so we tireless nannies can take an hour break and lounge in the shade of oak trees while one of those nannies works out her wedding plans with her nanny friends.
These girls, they’re serious about the work. They’ve taken classes, have attended seminars, and Redhead has ambitions of one day opening her own agency. I mean, they’re nice and everything, they have a lot going for them, but I can’t imagine what happened when they were growing up that made them one day decide they wanted to watch other people’s children for a living. Then again, I can’t imagine what makes other people want to sit behind a desk for eight hours a day, or stand behind a fast-food counter, or wash dishes, or whatever else.
The girls talk and talk and I keep watching the toddler pool. Less than fifty feet away, I can see Casey standing in her bright pink bathing suit, the water wings on her arms. She’s in the shallowest part, just a foot. David is with his friends on the other end, what is maybe three feet deep. They’re laughing as they throw a beach ball back and forth.
Farther past the shallow pool is the real pool. Nearly one hundred people are either in it or walking around it, kids and adults sharing a leisurely afternoon. The male lifeguards are tan and well built, and even though they’re not as hot as the ones you’d find at the beach, the girls still like to ogle them. Normally that’s how we pass the time in the shade of this oak tree, picking out which lifeguard is the cutest and daring each other to go talk to him, while the kids we watch tire themselves out in the water.
Earlier today I took the kids to the Smithsonian. For some reason they absolutely love the place. David especially loves the dinosaur display, while Casey likes walking through the butterfly exhibit. So that was our morning, amid hundreds of other children, me trying to keep an eye on both of them while also keeping my eye out for any danger.
“What do you think, Holly?” Brunette asks.
I look back at them. “About what?”
Redhead sighs. “What’s with you today?” She asks this in a genuine way, yet I sense a hint of exasperation behind it.
“What do you mean?”
“You just seem”—Redhead shrugs—“distracted.”
“My boyfriend and I had a fight over the weekend.”
“Is that how you got … you know?” Brunette asks in a low voice, touching her cheek.
I shake my head. “Like I told you, that was just an accident.”
“Still”—Blondie reaches out, pats me on the knee—“why didn’t you say something before?”
“I didn’t want to spoil the mood.”
The girls delicately back away from my suffering and return to Blondie’s wedding plans. I hear a shout amid the rest of the shouts and recognize it as Casey’s. I glance over to see her holding her hands up in front of her face while two kids maybe a year older than her splash her with water. There’s no splashing allowed in the toddler pool, but the lifeguard’s distracted by a large-breasted woman flirting with him.
I stand up, excuse myself from the girls, and hurry over to the pool.
By the time I get there David has already intervened. Despite the fact he can be a brat sometimes, he always stands up for his little sister when kids are picking on her.
“Knock it off,” he says, stepping between the two kids and Casey.
The kids just laugh, start splashing him.
“Knock it off!” he shouts, and this catches the attention of the lifeguard, who has to take his eyes off those massive (and fake, I’m sure) breasts.
“No splashing!” he calls, his voice automatic like a robot’s, and the two brats look at him, look back at each other, before stomping away through the water.
David waits a moment to makes sure the threat is gone before turning back to his sister. “Are you okay?”
Casey pouts her bottom lip. She nods.
I’m wearing sandals for the occasion and I slip them off so I can dip my feet into the cool water. I bend down, place a hand on David’s shoulder, and say, “Good job.”
He looks at me, sort of blushes, then turns and hurries back to his friends.
“I hate the water,” Casey says. Her bottom lip is still pouted and it looks like she might cry.
“Do you want to come hang out with me?”
She nods and so I pick her up out of the water and carry her back to the shade of the oak tree where I left my bag and the towels. I give Casey her Hanna Montana towel and dry her off while kids shout around us, music plays from those massive speakers, and the girls keep going on and on about how Blondie’s life is going to change now because she’s getting married.
Redhead says, “I mean, once you get married, you guys are going to stop having sex regularly. You know that’s a fact, don’t you?”
I clear my throat, just loud enough so the girls glance in my direction and see we have virgin ears in our midst.
They lower their voices.
“Holly?” Casey says. We’re sitting on the grass now, Casey leaning back on my stomach.
“Yeah, babe?”
“Why do they have to be so mean all the time?”
“I don’t know.”
The girls start laughing at something and then Brunette says, “Might as well keep your vibrator,” and I clear my throat again, really loud this time, but the damage has already been done.
Casey tilts her head back to look up at me.
“Holly, what’s a vibrator?”
Eighteen
After my sister takes a sip of her coffee, she says, “So tell me again what happened to your cheek.”
One thing about Tina
