Stephanie: I’m heading out to the pool.
Kathy: Does it hurt a lot, getting a tattoo?
Stephanie: Are you thinking about it?
Kathy: Sort of.
Stephanie: What would you get?
Kathy: I don’t know, something symbolic. What does yours symbolize?
Stephanie: Well, the image comes from a piece of Minoan pottery that was made on Crete during the Bronze Age. The Minoans had this beautiful way of representing sea life that I fell in love with in my college art history class, and I got the tattoo in my twenties when I first moved to New York, so probably what it symbolized most of all was a big fuck-you to my parents, who hated tattoos and were scandalized.
Long pause.
Kathy: Where did you go to college again?
Stephanie: U. of Illinois Champaign. You?
Kathy: Harvard. It’s kind of amazing we’re friends, isn’t it?
Stephanie: I’d say we’re doubles partners.
Kathy: Nice.
Stephanie: You can take it.
Kathy: You get the chairs, I’ll grab us a couple of iced teas.
They leave the Ladies Locker Room together and I sit there trying to understand what I just heard, whether Stephanie and Kathy are friends or not, and if they were joking or not, or whether that was a fight. Then I realize that while I was eavesdropping on those Tennis Moms I COMPLETELY FORGOT about Stella and Iona and I feel much better now, and since feeling strong is the best way to regain my advantage with Stella who also loves gossip about grown-ups, I rush out of the Ladies Locker Room and gallop over the stretch of grass to the Herb Garden all ready to sing out Hiya Folks! but THE HERB GARDEN IS EMPTY and I feel like a horse’s ass to use a phrase of Dad’s, so I lean down like I just sprinted over to smell the herbs in this Herb Garden which could not be more wrong, I don’t care about plants that is Mom’s domain although her garden now belongs to the Dunns who bought our old house but Mom calls them “Occupiers” and will not walk past it.
A row of Cypress Trees separates the Herb Garden from the Pool Area and I peek between those trees at the line of kids waiting for the High Dive. Even from the back I recognize Chris Salazar from his darker skin, his Dad is Hispanic which is unimportant of course but everyone knows it, Mr. Salazar is a music producer who discovered Dad’s favorite band the Conduits, and he and Stephanie Salazar are divorced. Tatum and Oriole and that group are by the pool but they aren’t my direct friends and I can’t join them without Stella, it would seem weird and they might be nice but they might also freeze me out the way Stella and I might freeze out one of them if she all of a sudden attached herself to us. So now I am alone and adrift having no idea where Stella and Iona have gone, and this gives me a fading feeling I get sometimes when I think Stella has forgotten me for good, like I’m a particle floating invisibly through space and I might float so far away that I stop existing even to myself. How will I get back? I need somewhere to be or someone to be WITH, but Hannah is at UC Berkeley and Brian is playing baseball and Mom used to come to the club Before, but now she says “That place is full of twits” and her Court Stenography classes take up all her time because she needs to start a Career now that she has been Discarded. So I am ALL ALONE and average-looking at best, I am not one of the dewy girls, I have faded blue eyes that hurt in the sun and my hair is thin and curly like a baby’s and I have very thick hair on my legs that is one step away from Tarzan according to Brian, but I do look better when I’m with Stella, that is an objective fact I can see in pictures, you would think I would disappear beside her but it’s the opposite, like some of her magic dust floats onto me and sticks.
I walk slowly back to the Snack Shack and get in line for food because it’s the only way I can think of to stop floating and attach myself somewhere that can’t be questioned or mocked. Kathy Bingham is near the front of the line radiating extreme impatience and crowding the one girl in front of her who looks around my age and somewhat familiar, she must be a Non-Member. This girl gets out of line like she forgot something and walks to the back of the line behind me, and I’m like, Did you get out of line because of that Lady behind you? and she’s like, Yeah she was stressing me out, and I’m like, Here, at least go in front of me, and she’s like, Thanks and I remember now that this girl went to my school a few years ago in the grade below me, and I’m like Do you live in Crandale? and she’s like No my Mom just dropped me off for the day, we’re friends of the Salazars, and I realize that she’s the girl who STAYED WITH THE SALAZARS when I was nine and she went to our school for three months because her MOM WAS IN PRISON and she HAS NO DAD, which are unheard-of Facts around here even separately, not to mention combined.