“Estelle, Adele, Joan, hi.” She waved and smiled in their direction, stealing a glance at Larry and seeing his eyes grow wide with approval.
Catching Larry’s interested look, the three women weakly returned her greeting.
My mother perched on a nearby bench to watch her new friends play, crossing her shapely legs and spreading the skirt of her dress demurely. And before you could say fifteen love, Larry was smitten. Given the competition at the Lakeside she needn’t have tried so hard, but my mother was a true competitor.
Word quickly spread that Rose and Larry were spending a lot of time together mid-week and everyone knew she didn’t play tennis. Packs of women whispered feverishly among themselves, then abruptly went silent when she walked by. But my mother didn’t care. She got what she wanted and had no use for women friends anyway. Between the time spent with Larry and the hours expended on beauty care, she didn’t have a minute to spare. Her only regret was that she couldn’t live like this year round. But in those moments before she fell off to sleep, interspersed with thoughts of what she would wear the next day, was the worry that my father might find out.
Maybe people were afraid to tell him, maybe he just didn’t want to know. Whatever the reason, my father didn’t find out about Larry and my mother until almost the end of July. And it was a good thing, too, because the screaming that ensued would have driven our constipated neighbors back home to Brooklyn had it lasted all four weeks.
“What the hell is going on here, Rose? You think I’m an idiot?”
“What are you talking about, Sid?”
“You’re screwing the tennis pro, what’s his name, Arnie?”
“His name is Larry, and you have some nerve to accuse me like this.”
“How’d you know his name? You don’t even know what a tennis racket looks like.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Lakeside’s a small place. Everyone knows everyone’s name.”
“Estelle told Mort, Rose. She told him she and Adele saw you and Arnie leaving his room together.”
The women got their revenge and my mother added “never trust another woman” to her list of rules to live by.
“She’s lying.”
“Why would she lie, Rose?”
“She’s jealous.”
“Of what?”
“I’m prettier than she is and ….”
My father interrupted: “Gimme a break, Rose, that’s no great feat. Estelle looks like a squirrel. And remember, no one here ever saw you without make-up. You’re just another woman from Bathgate Avenue when you wake up in the morning, Rosie.”
He was finally getting to her. Do what you will, but don’t pick on my mother’s looks. She wouldn’t back down, but was forced to take a different approach. “Shush,” she said, “you’re going to wake Francine.” This after both had been yelling as though the long shot they bet a bundle on was overtaking the favorite in the stretch. They would have woken someone in a coma.
My father looked in my direction, not a great distance as the room was twelve by fourteen. I stirred just enough in my lower bunk to give them both pause. He swiftly calculated how much one weekend at the Lakeside was costing him, then looked into her hazel eyes. “This is our last weekend here. I guess we shouldn’t waste it. Maybe you are telling the truth.”
“I swear, Sidney, we’re just friends.”
He hesitated. “Don’t do anything to make me look like a fool, Rose.”
She was all dressed up for the fathers’ Friday arrival, looking beautiful in a lemon yellow skirt and white halter top. “You have nothing to worry about, Sid. Let’s go to dinner.”
I lay between stark white, harshly laundered sheets, a captive audience. At the time I didn’t understand much of what I witnessed that sultry summer, although their angry words became embedded in memory. We never again returned to the mountains as a family, but it wasn’t until many years later that I connected the dots.
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