Barnegat Bay - 5. Chapter 5

Al didn’t talk much about his personal life, where with Mike and Larry, it was always public and good for a laugh. And Al didn’t try very hard to find women, because there was always a certain kind who wanted to be around him. They were smart and seemed to sense the same thing about him.

“But he’s not shy,” Larry said. And that was true. Most of the mornings that I was winding back to the boat with the sun coming up, it was Al and a woman who’d be sleeping on the beach. There wasn’t much privacy in their cottages.

“And you gotta have privacy,” Mike insisted, “even if you know you’ll never see a woman again. ‘Cause there’s no chance she’ll even look at you if everyone knows what you did.”

“Or didn’t do, in your case,” Larry poked.

Mike grinned. “Well, what we didn’t do, but I sure wish we might’ve.”

“Now how often has that come true?” Al contributed, maybe getting himself into dangerous comic territory. Spence and I simply stood by.

“You’ll never know unless you’re watching,” Mike teased Al.

“You don’t think I’ve got better things to do?”

“Sometimes, I’m not sure.”

And everyone cracked up.

The unofficial rule on my boat was whoever got there first could keep it for as long as he wanted. So if the guys used the boat at all, they must have worked out some kind of system. It wasn’t my business, and I told them that as long as my bed was empty when I wanted to sleep, everything was fine.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what anybody did during the week, when I was busy in the city. Their summer was three months long. Mine was a dozen weekends. Though Mike and Larry sometimes gave hints as to what I was missing.

“There was the sweetest girl here last week,” one would start.

“She was probably all of eighteen and still in high school. And everyone hoped she’d stay.”

“The guys did .”

“The girls probably wanted her out of here as soon as possible.”

“But she only stayed three days.”

“And whose chair do ya think she spread her blanket out next to every morning?”

“Who helped her unsnarl her little umbrella?”

“Who planted it in the sand?”

“And if that isn’t phallic, I don’t know what is.”

“Spence! Spence!”

“Lucky wishbone Spence.”

They both made rude gestures, though in opposite directions, and then quickly looked both ways on the beach to see if anyone had seen them.

Of course, it wasn’t like me to ever asked details, and even Mike – happily telling jokes on himself – wouldn’t go that far. But if someone was quietly keeping count, we knew who the other guys envied.

Though I’m not sure how much Spence really did what anyone thought. I suspect that – like me – he mainly flirted. We could all see that at Jenkinson’s, and even there, it may have been a way towards dancing. That’s what he really liked. And some kissing. We could see that at a distance on the beach. But Spence seemed more intelligent than he sometimes let people know. And he seemed careful.

The guys were all from CCNY – City College of New York – free to residents and initially used by people who couldn’t afford any better. Since the Crash, that included almost everyone. Even Larry, who started at Columbia before his dad lost his money, had to transfer.

“I had it so easy as a kid,” he explained. “And I didn’t even know it. Painting sounds like a crummy business, but it pays well – because no one wants it done badly. So I went to summer camp when the other guys were playing in the street. I had the best clothes – my mom and grandma picked them out for me, and everything matched. And maybe we didn’t have the fanciest address. But it was decent.”

“It was more than decent,” Mike admitted. “He had servants.”

“We had a cook – one halfway servant. And she only came in part-time.”

“Plus that maid.”

“Rosa helped my mother do the wash. One day a week – Mondays. And only the small things we didn’t send out.”

“My mom and sisters still wash everything themselves.”

“Rosa didn’t sleep in, either,” Larry went on. “Which was too bad. ‘Cause I always wanted to see her walking down the hall at night.”

“In a nightgown?”

“No – Army boots.”

“Your father would’ve killed you.”

“There you go again – with the list of things Dad’d murder me for.”

Mike just laughed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Larry finished. “‘Rosa’s married now – we all went to their wedding.”

“Did you throw bags of rice at the groom?”

Larry threw Mike a look.

Change was familiar after the Crash, but I was lucky. I pretty much grew up middle-class, and my parents kept slowly easing higher. And though maybe the northern third of the Upper West Side changed after the war, my family was already fairly well south – the wealthy parts were east and west. Still, unlike me, the guys never had a permanent place to go in the summer, and none of them had ever been to Barnegat. Al saw an ad for lifeguards in their school paper, and they all swam well enough to qualify. Once actually offered the jobs, they decided it was better to be outside, peeling in the sun, than indoors, trapped as waiters.

“We’ve already done that,” Mike told me. And they’d been delivery boys, run errands, sold almost anything, and worked in factories – some of the same part-time jobs I might have had, if it hadn’t been for my parents.

“You can work at the bakery in the summer,” my mother insisted. “But only if that’s what you really want.”

Since we could afford it, she placed my studying well above my earning spare change.

“Why can’t I deliver for the cleaner’s now?” I asked. “Mrs. Krakow really wants me to.”

I must have been all of twelve and was tired of doing household chores and errands for my parents and hunting down empty soda bottles for pennies.

“We don’t need the money,” Dad insisted, though only he was working full-time, and that was ten years before the booming twenties. But it was the comfortable twilight time before the war.

“And other families could use the advantage,” Mom went on – the familiar lie that justified our babysitter, Mrs. Tousak.

“What about developing responsibility?” I tried. They were always lecturing us on that. “Don’t I need to learn respect for work?”

“You’re responsible enough,” Mom suddenly reversed. “You always have been.”

To answer that, my sister stuck out her tongue – at me, for being such a teacher’s pet. Of course, Mom noticed and quickly added, “You’re all very responsible – even Ben.” She smiled at him, which opened the chance for my two-year-old brother to poke my sister and giggle.

Still, if you talked to the guys about work and responsibility, they shrugged it off.

“Next summer,” Larry insisted. “After we graduate. That’s when real work begins.”

“This is our present,” Mike agreed. “Sun, sand, and all the girls we can make laugh.”

“Something like that,” Al corrected.

“It’s amazing how many of them can’t swim,” Spence deflected – to quiet the laughter.

“Or so they tell you,” Mike joked.

That was good for another laugh.

“The tides here can be tricky,” I admitted, taking Spence’s side. “Though I’m sure you know that by now. And they’re even worse with the dredging.”

“Yeah – what’s that about?” Mike asked.

“Planning for our future,” I quoted, speaking deeply. “Or so our politicians say.” The engineers were improving and stabilizing the dunes and waterways.

“You believe them?” Larry questioned, and I shrugged.

“Enough to buy land if I could.”

Larry laughed at that. “Your boat’s not enough?”

“I can’t build on that. And – eventually – I’ve got to invest in something. It’s sure not going to be the market.”

“That’s for certain.”

Meanwhile, there were parties to find. On Fridays, when I was rarely ready for sleep after Jenkinson’s closed, I’d head to the boat to swap my dressier city clothes for older beach things. Then I’d start walking toward the loudest sound – or sometimes any noise. There were always other people awake. Some were local, but most were there with their families, for parts or all of the summer. Some even worked, but after dark, almost everyone was free. The lifeguards would be off duty, the shops would be closed, and though one or two of the restaurants stayed open later, the waiters and kitchen help would eventually join us. They didn’t have to be up till nine or ten.

“Worst thing a guy can do,” Al told us one Saturday night when he, Mike, and Larry were trailing me to a party because rain was almost guaranteed the next morning, “is drink, gamble, and mess with other guys’ wives.”

“Like we’re doing now?” Larry shot.

“Like we’re trying to do,” Mike lobbed back. “Though these girls aren’t married.”

“Better hope you don’t change that.”

“Not gonna happen. Not to me. Not this summer.”

“And we know why.”

Mike assumed boxer’s stance, but since Larry wouldn’t take his phony challenge, he quickly let it drop. “At least, we’re not gambling,” he told Al.

Al grinned and pointed at Larry. “Another thing his dad would kill him for.”

It was an easy laugh.

“And he wouldn’t hang me for having to get married?” Larry offered.

“Is there anything you’re allowed to do,” Al asked. “Anything that would let you live?”

“Probably not,” Larry admitted. Then he grinned. “But that’s only ‘cause I was brought up right.”

Even with the promise of a Sunday off, the guys couldn’t last as late as I did, probably because they’d had a longer day. But I honestly couldn’t count the weekend mornings that I didn’t watch the sun come up before I went to sleep. It was more often than not. The guys had to be more careful because weekends were their busiest times, while I was mainly being a bum. And the best thing about sleeping in my boat was nothing could wake me in the dark.

When I finally got up, it was first to swim and wash up. Then I’d nose around my relatives’ houses for something homemade to eat. That was also my way of catching up with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I rarely needed to say more than “hi” and listen to the latest family news. But weekends wouldn’t be the same without trying to see everyone.

For me, Saturday nights were the same as Fridays. Though Sunday nights – almost gratefully – I went back to the city. My promise – to myself, to my parents, and to my patients – was that as long as I was in bed by midnight on Sunday, I could get up by eight and safely begin the week. And it was always easy to fall asleep – I was already doing that on the train.

As for drinking – well, weekends, I didn’t really start till after Jenkinson’s. Even then, I was careful – because you never knew what was being put in your hand. It wasn’t just the terrible taste. It was facing the morning belly aches.

Still, bootleg was everywhere, and even in Jenkinson’s, there were pocket flasks in jackets and purses. You wouldn’t see the women drink as much, or in public, and normally not those like Claire and Mary – again, because the stuff was awful. It wasn’t even the sweet wine women sometimes sipped before the stupid laws. It was acid that would ruin your intestines, and most people drank just to get drunk. We all seemed unsure we could have fun without it.

At the house parties, there was music, and dancing, and constant friendly chatter, and late night swims. Couples were always be slipping away, supposedly to “go for a walk.” “There’s a full moon,” they’d say, all giggly and loose. And if you stumbled across them later, doing something different, you just grinned and looked away. Summers had always been like that, whether I was in my twenties or still a kid. Of course, I wasn’t able to drink back then.