The Paper Palace(93)

Four weeks ago. July 4, Wellfleet, Massachusetts.


We hear about the dead child at the Fourth of July parade. A five-year-old girl, buried alive this morning when a dune collapsed on her at Higgins Hollow. Her mother was out on a sandbar doing yoga. When she turned to check on her daughter, all she could see was her daughter’s pink bucket, which at first appeared to be floating four inches above the ground.

“I will never get that image out of my head. That little hand sticking up out of the sand.” I’m standing with Jonas and his mother under the shade of a towering maple, watching the parade. Gina, Maddy, and Finn have waded into the crowd hoping to get a front-row view.

“What did I always say to you kids about climbing on the dunes?” Jonas’s mother says now, with a tone of smug “I told you so” satisfaction. “See?”

Jonas looks at me in amazement and bursts out laughing.

“That’s extremely insensitive of you,” his mother says, and turns her back to us. “You’re disgraceful.”

I’ve been trying my best to keep a straight face. But I can’t help it. I feel like I’m fourteen again, standing in Jonas’s living room being chided by her for ever having liked an overtly racist television program like Little House on the Prairie. Or the time she preached at Anna on the beach about the evils of wearing a bikini. “You’re allowing yourself to be objectified by men.” Anna had pulled off her bikini top and shimmied at her like a stripper, before walking down to the water topless. Once, Jonas’s mother made the grave mistake of chastising my mother for bringing a bag of charcoal briquettes to a bonfire. “Charcoal, Wallace? There’s barely a tree left in the Congo. You might as well go to Virunga and shoot the mountain gorillas yourself.”

“I would, but the airfare is extravagant,” Mum had said.

Then she’d dumped the entire bag of charcoal onto the bonfire, which rose in a glorious blaze. “You’re disgraceful,” Jonas’s mother had spat. Jonas and I had stood there, jaws dropped, thrilled by the sight of our mothers doing battle, before running away down the beach, laughing and shouting, “You’re disgraceful!” at each other.

Jonas grins at me. “You’re disgraceful,” he mouths.

“You’re disgraceful,” I mouth back.

A float of teenage girls in lobster suits drives by. They wave and smile, throw candy corn into the crowds. Behind them, the local middle school marching band plays an off-key version of “Eye of the Tiger.” Gina approaches us with Maddy and Finn in tow. All three of them are waving plastic American flags stapled to balsa sticks. Maddy is wearing a candy necklace.

“What’s so funny?” Gina puts her arm through Jonas’s.

“Look!” Finn waves his flag at me. “Gina bought us flags.”

“You shouldn’t have,” I say to Gina. “Those things are a waste of money.”

“It’s for the war veterans,” Gina says in a tone that makes it clear I’ve offended her.

“Of course,” I say quickly. “It was very generous of you.”

“It was three dollars.”

“I just meant: look how happy you made them.” Maddy and Finn have run back down the hill and are waving their flags excitedly at four weather-worn old men in a brown Oldsmobile holding up a Rotary Club banner.

Jonas puts his hand on my arm. Points to the Oldsmobile. “I could swear those are the same old geezers we used to wave at.”

“I’m pretty sure they swap them out every ten or twenty years. Remember the guy in the Uncle Sam hat who screamed at me for wearing a Walter Mondale T-shirt and chased us down the street?”

Jonas laughs.

“So,” Gina says, pushing back into the conversation. “What was so funny?”

Jonas’s mother turns, purse-lipped. “A small child died on the beach earlier today. Your husband and Elle seemed to think it a cause for merriment. Anyway, I’m leaving. It’s like an oven here. I’d appreciate it if you could stop at the store on your way home and pick up rice cakes and Clamato juice. And we need paprika.” She stalks off without saying goodbye.

“Whoa,” Gina says. “What’s up with that?”

“She’s in a huff because we were laughing at her,” Jonas says.

“About a child dying?”

“Of course not. She was being tone-deaf.”

“So . . . what?” Gina presses.

“Something she used to say when we were kids,” Jonas says. “It wouldn’t translate.”

“I’m sure I can keep up.” Gina bristles. “Whatever. You two can keep your secret code.”

Jonas takes an irritated breath. “She called us disgraceful.”

“She’s right,” Gina snaps.

I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face. I look over at Jonas for an explanation, but he is intent on Gina, his eyes a slow burn.

“Sorry,” Gina says quickly, backpedaling. “I have no idea why I said that. It’s hot and I barely slept.”

“It’s fine,” I say. But it isn’t. Her hostility, her insecurity makes no sense. Gina has always had an unquestioning self-confidence, a complete lack of superego. She likes herself. When Gina and Jonas were first together, I knew she felt threatened by me. Not because she had any idea how much Jonas had once loved me, he has never told her. What made her jealous back then were the ancient roots of our friendship—a shared history that would always exclude her. But that was a hundred years ago. We’ve all made our own history together. We’ve grown older together. As couples. As friends. Yet it feels as if just now, for a quick second, she lost control and revealed her true feelings, a jealousy and deep resentment of me that she has kept hidden all these years. Then, realizing what had escaped, tried to put it back in the bottle. Something must have triggered this. It’s about more than lack of sleep, the heat. Something is going on between them, some strain that Jonas hasn’t acknowledged to me.