Chapter 17
THE THINGS THAT drew Anna to Hamilton were some of the things that she loathed about it.
She loved, for instance, the ambling green hills, property of the wealthy equestrian families, who lived gated lives, not behind privet like in the Hamptons, but just as reclusive, just as out of reach.
The houses were beautiful in every season: dappled with red-leafed sugar maples at the peak of October, iced like gingerbread houses in winter, and brought back to life in April and May with a yellow breath of forsythia, followed by plumes of lilac and pruned rhododendron.
Now, Anna drove by to see the staggering of allium globes and catmint and white hydrangea, a heady aroma hanging in the air, wealth personified: horse shit and flowers.
That was beautiful, of course, horse shit notwithstanding, even if you could never take a walk on the allée because every allée belonged to someone else.
She had chosen Hamilton because of its green spaces, anyway, and there was so much green, especially now.
But sometimes she missed growing up in a town, even a small one, where you could congregate and walk into stores and run into people you knew at any old time of day.
Hamilton had the coffee shop and a small main street—called Railroad Ave—with a dance school and a consignment shop and a pharmacy.
A few intersecting streets offered other small-town necessities: orthodontics, yoga, Pilates, a tavern, a nail salon, and the library, of course. Still, sometimes she wanted more.
She wasn’t unconvinced that she could find more here, in Hamilton, though.
Anna had let her Life Time membership lapse, but she had opted instead, in early July, for a membership at the Veterans Memorial Pool, a public pool for community members in Hamilton and the neighboring town of Wenham.
It was a modest alternative to Life Time, just over two hundred dollars for a family for the entire summer.
When she broached the topic of switching allegiances to Di, her oldest friend laughed.
“I love you, babe, but not enough to sit in a pool full of pee for the rest of my summer,” she said.
“It’s for the greater good,” Anna pleaded.
“I believe that you believe that. I really and truly do,” Di said.
And so, Anna joined alone.
She knew there was no danger of running into Mimi or Ellen or Karen at the Veterans Pool, which opened later, and which closed at even the slightest threat of rain or lightning.
It was a pool for the regular people of Hamilton, the moms, not the mommies, if such a distinction could be made.
The truth was, Anna sat somewhere in between these two categories.
She still got manicures at the same place where everyone else got their gels and dips done.
She wore a nice pair of VS2 2.5-carat diamond studs daily, only changing them when she was going out to dinner.
She had a Cartier love ring from the first Christmas that Denny’s business had done well.
She wasn’t struggling, and no one would have reasonably accused her of having to scrounge around for her next dime, either.
Upper middle class, but in Hamilton, that made you poor, practically, and even if you had a million-dollar house (check), it paled in comparison with the three-million-dollar equestrian estates.
Anna’s separation from the women at the top of Hamilton’s food chain was more academic.
The purity test of the town—that the acceptance of its children was predicated on the performative nature of wealth—was what rubbed her the wrong way.
Joining the Veterans Pool felt like solidarity, like a way to meet the exact kinds of people who had been cooled by Mimi’s shadow for far too long.
If Di didn’t want to come along for the ride, so be it.
There was, after all, more than one way to run a race.
Anna had always preferred the repetitive routes.
The trick of running was knowing what the course had in store for you.
What made this race any different than the scores that she had tackled on the actual road?
Ben and Louisa did not seem to notice the difference between Life Time and Veterans. Slipping green goggles over his freckled face, Ben kissed Anna on the cheek and went careening toward the pool, instantly recognizing friends from kindergarten.
“Andy!” he cried with glee, stomping into the water. Another childhood goal unlocked: a pool full of local kids, doing what they did best, communing via water.
Louisa, too, found a niche. A group of second graders had staked their claim on a series of dilapidated lounges near the shallow end.
They had created their own private coven, a circle of whispering girls, happy to be out in the sun, far enough from their meddling parents to dive into the juiciest matters of summer.
Anna shaded her eyes and watched them compare their Taylor Swift friendship bracelets, the color of their goggles—Louisa’s, a last-minute buy from , had a glittery band that commanded extra attention, a steal for eleven dollars—and their toenails, all painted in various shades of the rainbow.
Within, Anna could feel the tension release.
For once, she was in the company of people who would not set her on edge.
She chose a chair close enough to the kids where she could keep watch and they could feel her and far enough away where they could still enjoy a sense of privacy.
Louisa was always asking for space these days, and Anna could respect that, the need to be alone, that pulsing desire to have something that belonged only to you.
Next to her sat a woman wearing a white and brown flowered one-piece suit with a scoop neck.
She was tanned, brown hair grayed at the temples, which Anna could see even from beneath her baseball cap (Red Sox, of course, but navy, not pink).
Her nails were not painted, and Anna thought about how few women she knew who walked around without manicures. She could think of no one, in fact.
The woman had a book folded on one leg, Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen, one of those heist books for women that everyone seemed to be talking about.
“Is it good?” Anna asked. The book was oily around the edges, steeped in sunscreen.
The woman looked up. Maybe she had been napping.
She had thick-lidded, sleepy brown eyes.
“Not too complicated,” she said. “But who wants to read something hard in good weather, right?” She pulled off her hat and shook her hair and Anna could see now that the woman was actually a little on the younger side, maybe early thirties.
The gray had arrived early, that’s all. Her skin was soft and peachy.
Her hat had left a crease in her forehead, but she was pretty, sweeping her hair up like that, the kind of pretty person who doesn’t stop to take stock of her looks.
“I’ll take an easy summer book on an easy summer day any day of the week,” Anna agreed.
“With this drought, there’s plenty of them,” the woman agreed.
Massachusetts hadn’t seen a good rain since early May.
The equestrian lawns in Hamilton were still mysteriously green, despite enforced water restrictions, but Anna’s own lawn had turned a dry and brittle brown, poky little spikes of dead grass replacing what was once a supple field.
“I’m Anna,” she said, introducing herself.
She was wearing a cover-up that Denny had bought her once he had started making money, a long caftan, white with brown stripes and tassels on the bottom.
It was faded now, with subtle tears along the seams. She had worn it relentlessly, watched it turn from stylish to tattered.
Here at Veterans, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t on display.
No one was wearing couture, she realized.
It felt a lot freer to be in the company of no one in particular.
“Hamilton,” she added, because that was a thing you said: “Hamilton” or “Wenham,” to specify which side of the line you landed on.
“Mary,” the woman said, turning to look at Anna, not appraisingly. Neutral. “Mary Langley. Also Hamilton. My kids are over there. I have a six-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter. Michael and Charlotte.”
“We’re new here,” Anna said. “Not to Hamilton. To the pool, I mean.”
“It’s an acceptable place to pass the time when it’s hot,” Mary said. She flipped the book up, dog-eared the page, and fanned her face. “And it’s hot.”
“Actually, we were Life Time members,” Anna said. “Defectors, I should say.”
“It’s a bit spendy over there,” Mary said, sourly, though not unkindly.
Well, she wasn’t wrong, at any rate. Money. Always off the table in these towns, no matter which way you came at it, so Anna changed the subject. “Your son,” Anna said. “He’s at Winthrop or Cutler?”
“Cutler,” the woman said, looking out over at the pool, scanning for her kids.
It was the lesser of the two schools, but still governed by the same PTO.
South Hamilton, the less affluent side of town, fed into Cutler, the school with diminished resources.
Mary didn’t seem to have any feelings about it.
Not like the way that the Hamilton mommies at Winthrop talked about Cutler, anyway, like the name was a disease.
“We’re over at Winthrop. I guess our kids don’t know each other. Well, not yet anyway,” Anna said. “Mine are Ben and Louisa. Five and seven. Green goggles, all the way over there, and the pink sparkly ones, immersed in the coven.”
“Ha. That’s what I call them, too. Probably a North Shore thing.”
“This is going to sound odd, since we only just met,” Anna said.
“I’m actually trying something new.” Mary was a complete stranger, Anna realized: this pretty young mom from South Hamilton.
But this was campaigning. This was how you got to know people, to win them over.
She was going to have to get used to broaching the topic, over and over again, if she was going to make any headway between now and the start of the year.
“I’m planning to run for president of the PTO, and I’m doing some initial outreach to see how the community reception is.”
Now Mary seemed interested. She dropped her ersatz fan back into her lap. “President? Isn’t that Mimi Mar’s, like, permanent gig or something?” she asked. She was careful. She didn’t seem like she had a horse in the race. She just seemed to understand the long game.
“Well, that’s sort of the point.” Anna looked out at the water.
Kids were everywhere, clearly violating the rules of etiquette when it came to the pool, jumping over lane lines, playing chicken, dunking one another.
The lifeguards didn’t seem to care. This would never pass muster at Life Time.
Also, she didn’t really care. There was a spirit of conviviality here at Veterans that was absent at the tonier pool: Di with her rosé, the Hamilton witches in their black robes, prancing around, half dressed for the crowd to watch and admire.
“It’s not a permanent gig at all. It’s up for whoever gets it. I’m not trying to take it away from anyone. I just have some ideas, and I want to discuss them and see if other people are interested in what I have to say,” Anna said.
“Well, I’m always interested in new blood,” Mary said.
“Or, barring that, a good old fight. Who in Hamilton doesn’t like to see a little blood drawn now and then?
” She laughed, a loud, broad laugh that made Anna think they could be friends, despite the fact that the woman was obviously younger, despite the fact that they didn’t know each other, despite the fact that they probably didn’t hang in the same circles at all.
“Cheers to that,” Anna said. She had nothing to toast except an insulated water bottle, which she retrieved from her beach bag.
Mary matched her with a peeling S’well bottle of her own.
“To summer,” she declared. “To winning over the snooty snoots of Hamilton, if that’s what it takes!
” Then she stopped and covered her mouth.
“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.
For all I know, you’re a snooty snoot! I shouldn’t have said that, either.
” She laughed again, another broad, likable laugh, and Anna knew that she had found a friend in a storm, a comrade in arms, at least one other member in her very small army, ready to fight for the presidency.
“Anna Plummer for president!” she said.
“Why not?” Mary said. “Started from the bottom, now we here.” Unexpectedly, she untwisted the cap of her bottle and poured its contents over her head and, shaking like a little wet lap dog, smiled in the hot sun, laughing as she did it.
She would make a fine new companion, Anna knew. They were a good team already.