“I have my bathing suit under my clothes!” I yelled, jubilant.
My sister came primly down the walk in a yellow sundress, swinging her red suitcase, very ladylike. Her new hair was fixed perfectly. “Whoa!” Daddy said, putting me down. “Jean Seberg in Bonjour Tristesse! You look beautiful, darling.”
“I missed you, Daddy!” she said, reaching up for a hug and a kiss. She reeked of her Muguet des Bois cologne, the only kind Dimma let her wear.
“I missed you, too, sweetheart. It’s the one problem with living down at the beach—I can’t see you as often as I’d like to.” In reality, we had never seen him more than once a month even when he lived in town. It was tough for divorced fathers back then; they didn’t have many rights regarding their children. But who knows—maybe that was the way they liked it. I hopped into the small space behind the front seats while Daddy opened the door for Liz, as if she were a real lady. “Here we go!”
As Liz and I were settling in, an old Buick turned in to the lane, the driver looking from side to side until he pulled up behind the MG and got out. “Whew. Just in time. Mr. Mannix?”
“Yes,” Dad said, his happy expression changing.
The man drew a rolled-up sheaf of papers from his back pocket, cleared his throat, and said, “Sir, these are for you.” He looked slightly embarrassed, and quickly got into his car and drove off.
My dad examined the papers. “Goddamn it! I can’t believe this!”
Liz said, “What is it, Daddy? What’s wrong?”
He went around the MG to the driver’s side and got in, slamming the door hard. “Your mother’s what’s wrong,” he said. “She’s suing me!”
“Why would she do that?” Liz asked. I was scared that Daddy was so mad, and I didn’t understand what was happening. “Who was that man?”
“That’s a man who’s hired to ruin people’s lives.” He cranked the car and we rode off. He didn’t say anything else. We were down Connecticut past the basketball courts when Dad shouted over the noise of the wind and the engine, “I think your damn grandfather’s behind this ambush. He’d love to see me behind bars.” And then: “Never mind. You two forget about it.”
We were silent. Daddy didn’t look like he was going to forget about it, but at last he said, “Why don’t we pick up some burgers and fries at Hot Shoppes for the ride?”
Nobody said anything. The possibility of Dad “behind bars” for whatever those papers were about stuck miserably in my head. I hoped the weekend wasn’t going to be ruined now. It wasn’t until we’d stopped at Connecticut Shoppes, and then made our way through downtown to Upper Marlboro, where we turned off, before Daddy seemed to cheer up. We played some road games—Ghost, and License Plates—and listened to the radio. Dad turned the music up really loud and we sang along, into the wind, bellowing out “Bony Moronie” and “Bye Bye Love” as we flew by cornfields and old farmhouses steepled with lightning rods. Then we had to slow way down as we rolled through a few sleepy towns—Denton, Bridgeville—whose cops were notorious for giving speeding tickets to Washington vacationers in fancy cars. The unpainted shingled houses were so pretty, I thought, trimmed in white, yards frothy with blue Bethany Beach hydrangeas.
When we arrived at the weathered cottage on Stockley Street, Liz and I went to the attic to settle ourselves—kids were always relegated to attics in those days. I tore off my clothes, ready for the beach, but waited for Liz because I wanted to interrogate her.
“Why is Mama suing Daddy? What is ‘suing’?”
Liz was pulling on her bathing suit under her sundress, her back turned to me. “It means he did something wrong. I think it’s about child support—you know—giving Mama money to help take care of us. I guess Brickie is trying to make him do it, since Mama’s…sick.”
“Well, why doesn’t he do it?”
“He doesn’t have a job right now, dummy. He can’t pay it.” She pulled the dress over her head, struggling so I couldn’t peek, and hung it on a nail in the wall. The attic was spartan—there weren’t any closets or furniture up there, only beds with naked striped-ticking mattresses.
Brickie was strict about things, but he wasn’t mean. “Why doesn’t Brickie like Dad anymore? Is Dad going to jail?”
“I don’t know. Stop asking me so many questions. Why don’t you ask your stupid Magic 8-Ball?” She grabbed our towels and started down the stairs. “Come on, John. And don’t say anything about all that to anybody.” People were always telling me things and then telling me not to think or talk about them.
We spent what was left of the afternoon on the beach, swimming and surf-riding with Dad and a few of his friends. It was a glorious day, brilliantly sunny and breezy—such a relief from the relentless heat and mugginess of the city. I was happy. I was with my father on a summer day at the beach. All was well. I buried the morning’s unpleasantness as if it were a seashell in the sand.
That evening I sat on the cottage steps, waiting for dinner and for the sun to go down. I had a splinter in my foot from the unfinished floorboards in the attic but I wasn’t telling because then Dad’s girlfriend would root around with a needle and tweezers and alcohol and it would hurt worse than a shot. Dad was just inside on the screen porch, reading the paper and drinking a National Bohemian. His buddies were making a beer run to the Bottle & Cork at Dewey, the next town south. Dad’s latest girlfriend, Carline, was in the kitchen with the other girlfriends making something for dinner, and Liz was helping. We liked Carline okay; she was nice and pretty—they were all pretty—but she couldn’t hold a candle to my mother. And certainly not to Allison Hayes, who was Miss Washington, DC, when Daddy was engaged to her before he met my mom. She dumped him and went to Hollywood to become the 50 Foot Woman.
There I was, sandy and sunburned. My back and shoulders stung, but not too badly because Carline had put Noxzema on them, and Daddy had given me a National Bohemian with a few inches left in the bottom, which also helped. I could hear the rattling of Dad’s Evening Star as he turned the pages.
“Dad!” I called through the screen. “Why aren’t there any spiders here?”
“Don’t know, pal. They’re apparently only up in the city.”
“Do you think that’s because spies put them there?”
He laughed. “Where do you get this stuff? Your grandfather?”
“He said that Russians are good poisoners. There was a brown recluse in his office.”
“I wish I’d thought of that!” he said—kidding, I chose to assume. “There are worse things to worry about with the Russians than spiders.”
“I know! They have A-bombs, and Khrushchev said they’re going to bury us. I get really scared whenever I hear a siren.”
Daddy looked at me sympathetically and said, “I know, pal. We all do. But you’re too young to be worrying about that crap—leave it to President Eisenhower; he’s had lots of experience with Russians. Let’s head up to the boardwalk later and play some Skee-Ball.”
“Okay!” I said. I loved Skee-Ball, but you didn’t win any money like you did playing slot machines. Maybe a useless stuffed animal. “Can we turn on the mosquito-zapper thing when it gets dark?”
“Sure, pal.” Then he said, “Here’s something that will interest you.” He began reading an article in The Star about two very rare, scorpion-like creatures that had just been found at the Tune Inn on Capitol Hill. “They’re called pirate vinegaroons and they’re only supposed to live in the Southwest, and they’re poisonous. They’ve taken them to the National Museum so they can study them.”