Chapter Six Bailey
Six
Bailey
Loudmouth
Caroline Lash was always apologizing to Bailey. In the kitchen she would say, “Sorry, do you know where the forks are?” At the beach she would say, “Sorry, did you want a water?” In Augusta’s backyard she would wave away a bee on Bailey’s arm and say, “Sorry, it was a bee.”
Bailey and Augusta joked about it. “Sorry I got you a present.” “Sorry I saved you from the fire.” “Sorry I gave you a kidney.” Bailey knew what Caroline was really saying. With every little microapology she was really saying “Sorry I stole your boyfriend.”
It was the weekend, and they were on Loudmouth Beach, the part of Crane’s that looked across the water at the Neck.
The tide was draining out, leaving an enormous pool between the sandbar and the beach.
The sun had warmed the pool for hours and it was like a huge, deep bath, a good ten degrees warmer than the ocean.
Fran’s and Augusta’s kids were chasing minnows with buckets.
London was wearing goggles and acting as scout while Hale and Charlie dutifully followed his orders, jumping into the water whenever he saw a silver flicker of fish.
Everyone had brought coolers of hard seltzer and vodka soda and the guys stood chest-deep in the tide pool drinking out of cozies.
RJ had on a big straw lifeguarding hat and sunglasses and looked like a beachy version of Smokey the Bear, and Colin was wearing a long-sleeve rash guard and baseball cap, his neck slathered with whitish zinc.
They were the dads, and as Bailey watched them drinking and laughing, she couldn’t help but notice the difference between them and the guys without kids.
Vanny was shirtless and his body looked just like it had ten years ago, his stomach flat and his arms and chest muscled.
Eben and Max were both slim and fit, wearing shorts that showed their tanned thighs.
It was just true that once her friends had kids, they had less time to focus on caring slavishly for their own bodies—less time to go to the gym, less time to run for miles in the early morning hours.
But it was more than that, it was the way the parents always had slightly random sunburns because after chasing around their children with sticks and sprays they could barely remember to grease up their own skin, it was the way the parents were always a week or two behind on a haircut or a day late on a shave.
Bailey would never say something like that aloud, it sounded rude and judgmental, but she actually thought it was beautiful, that it was a sign of selflessness to have abandoned vanity for the sake of family.
Not that she planned to do it herself. Vanity was a character flaw she had no intention of correcting.
Augusta had a bag of fruit, peaches and plums, and she offered them around.
She looked adorable in a green one-piece, her strawberry-blond hair in a ponytail, a spray of freckles across her nose.
“No thanks, I’m trying to cut back on plums,” RJ said, patting his belly and taking a swig of vodka, and Colin cackled.
Caroline took a peach, and out of the corner of her eye Bailey watched her eat it neatly, carefully folding the pit into a paper towel instead of tossing it into the dunes.
Caroline was wearing a black bikini and a pair of small, oval sunglasses.
Her skin was starting to tan and her hair was in small clips.
Caroline was attractive, Bailey could admit it, but in an entirely different way than Bailey herself.
While Bailey and her sisters spent their teenage years getting approached by sketchy men at the mall who said they were “model scouts,” Caroline looked like she should be playing the violin or writing with a fountain pen.
She didn’t blow-dry or curl her brown hair, she wore glasses most of the time, but she had nice, delicate features, eyebrows she had clearly never overplucked, and small, perky boobs.
Bailey turned to look at Hale and London so she’d stop watching the girl like a creep.
“So, I asked RJ what he thought it would be like if we switched bodies for a day,” said Fran, wading over to where Bailey and Augusta stood watching the kids. Fran’s swimsuit was an old one, slightly stretched out and starting to curl along the straps.
“Oh yeah? Did he give you detailed instructions on his body brushing practice?” Bailey joked.
“Did he worry you’d wax all his chest hair and eyebrows?”
“Ha! No, he said that if he were in my body he’d spend the whole day masturbating,” said Fran, laughing gleefully.
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know about you, but Colin would be really disappointed if he tried that,” Augusta said.
“You don’t think he could make it work?” asked Bailey curiously.
“I mean, he’d get there, but I’m sure he’d just flop down on the bed and start stroking away and then realize that it’s actually a whole process,” Augusta said thoughtfully.
“Like that the house has to be totally empty?”
“And you can’t be too hungry or too full.”
“And you have to clear your mind. No work or kids or anything stressful.”
“God, no. If it’s been a stressful day just forget about it.”
“This could actually be a really useful exercise,” mused Fran. “I mean, maybe if RJ spent a day trying and failing to get off, he would improve his whole foreplay routine.”
“Oh my God, he totally would!” said Augusta, her cheeks pink with amusement. “He would take the kids out for the entire day and leave you alone with a case of wine and a stack of those hockey romance novels.”
“I feel like I just learned a lot about you, babe,” said Bailey, and Augusta splashed her.
You weren’t allowed to take boats to the regular part of Crane’s, but this far down, around the point of Steep Hill, locals zipped back and forth between the beach and the Neck, dragging the little aluminum boats up on the sand, or anchoring fiberglass ones in the shallow water.
It was a festive, happy scene, with families wading up to the beach with coolers on their heads, Jet Skis zipping by, teenagers cannonballing from the far rocks.
Augusta fed the baby on a towel while her daughter Jane wove a bracelet out of tiny rubber bands and the little boys collected sticks up by the dunes to build a fort.
“I think that if I had to go on Survivor I’d bring those boys with me.” Caroline nodded at London, Hale, and Charlie.
“You can have them,” Fran joked.
“I saw them hunting fish earlier, now they’re building a shelter out of sticks. They would slay the whole thing,” Caroline mused.
“They’d probably love it,” agreed Augusta. “They wouldn’t have to shower or brush their teeth and they could pee outside all day.”
“Bad news, though,” Fran cut in. “They only eat chicken fingers and pizza, they need a nightlight and stuffed animal to sleep, and if you don’t have enough wine on the island, you’ll probably lose your mind by the third day.”
“Ah, fair.” Caroline grinned. “I actually knew a guy who was on Survivor. This actor with tribal tattoos. We went on a few dates, and he kept finding ways to bring up the show in every conversation.”
“Cringe.” Fran wrinkled her nose.
“I went to his apartment once and he casually had an old issue of Entertainment Weekly out on the coffee table with a picture of himself.”
“Red flag,” said Augusta.
“Gross,” agreed Bailey.
In the late afternoon Bailey moved her beach chair under an umbrella and opened a can of Diet Coke.
She watched as Caroline and Vanny took off on a walk together, Vanny pointing out at Plum Island, pointing up at the castle.
Bailey imagined he was telling her about the nesting habits of piping plovers or the history of New England fisheries.
Vanny was a hopeless nerd and Bailey smiled to herself.
Now that she was older, she was starting to realize that she’d been unfair to Van over the years.
She knew he felt more strongly about her than she felt about him, but instead of cutting him loose she always sort of kept him waiting in the wings, someone to fall back on between boyfriends, someone to give her an ego boost when she needed it.
It wasn’t that black-and-white, though. Sometimes she’d thought she might love him, or that she might grow to love him, or that they could have one of those deals where if they were both forty and single, they’d just go ahead and get married.
But instead, Van had found someone new, and Bailey realized she might have fucked it all up.
“Is it difficult to watch them together?” Max asked quietly. Bailey hadn’t realized she was being observed and she flushed.
“No, no, it’s not.” She shook her head.
“You don’t resent Caroline?” he asked. Max had been with Eben for years and Bailey had hung out with him at countless birthdays and barbecues, but he still sometimes surprised her.
He was French, and he was direct in a way that nobody else was.
She could feel her friends keeping an eye on her when Vanny and Caroline were around, but they went to great lengths to act like everything was normal.
It was like they were afraid that if they pushed too hard the careful bubble of their friendship group would pop.
She had thrown off the delicate balance with her pregnancy and it affected everyone.
Max was tangential to the group, he relied less on keeping it all intact, so he could afford to say the things nobody else would.
Or, maybe because he was French, he was just more comfortable with the shifting boundaries of romantic relationships.
Didn’t they all just have torrid affairs and then go home for elaborate dinners of leeks and snails with their wives?
“Max. I think Van and Caroline are cute together. I’m fine,” Bailey said firmly.
“This group is so incestuous,” Max said, and rolled his eyes. “So secretive and sneaky.”
“You love us,” Bailey teased.