“Oh gosh, haven’t you seen the preparations already taking place?” Maureen asked. “How can you miss it? They remove the benches from the sidewalks to accommodate the crowds. It’s a madhouse.”
Milly felt embarrassed, as if she’d been so wrapped up in her own little world that she hadn’t noticed any of this going on around her.
“Bal Week,” Sylvia said. “Short for Balboa Week. Every year just before Easter, high school and college kids descend on the island and the peninsula for spring break. They rent out rooms, houses, guest cottages. They go to the Rendezvous Ballroom every night for live music and dancing, and they take over the beaches and the Fun Zone. The men, or rather the boys, cruise up and down the streets in their cars eyeing the girls in their swimsuits. It’s a little annoying for those of us who live here, but the amount of money it brings in to the area is immense. It’s a shotin the arm for the local businesses, so we all try to help out, open up our homes, and suffer through it.”
“Sounds fun… and hectic,” Milly said.
“You might want to let your husband know,” Sadie said from the other end of the table. “Most husbands can’t stand it and want to stay away.”
“And others want to stay and ogle the goods for themselves,” Maureen said, and everyone, except for Milly, laughed.
“So true,” Sadie said. “Funny how all the husbands come back in time to watch the Bathing Beauty Contest at the end of the week.”
“I heard Delores Mason is entering this year, Maggie’s daughter,” Maureen said, then she turned to Milly. “Maggie and her husband own the pharmacy. Her daughter’s been dying to enter for years—such a pretty girl—and she’s finally old enough.”
“Goodness,” Sylvia said. “I just know my Judith will want to enter once she turns sixteen. Already she and her friends want be part of all the fun, so I’m going to have to keep an eye on her.”
“Oh, Sylvia, I’ve been dying to ask,” Faye said, leaning in. “What are you doing with your house? I walked in on Teddy and Walter discussing it quite seriously.” Faye turned to Milly. “My husband Teddy works in real estate.” Then she turned back to Sylvia. “At first I thought they were talking about putting it up for sale.” She laughed. “And then I thought, goodness no, not Sylvia’s house! Where would we all play bridge? Are you considering renting it out for Bal Week?”
Milly noticed a look of confusion on her new friend’s face and a flush of color rise in her cheeks, but then Sylvia swatted the comment away. “No, you’re mistaken; I would never allow my Walter to rent out our house for Bal Week. Besides, we have to stick around to put on the Bathing Beauty Contest.” She smiled a little too enthusiastically, then she stood and waved down the waiter. “Ready for lunch, ladies?”
As the afternoon rolled on, the children played together in the pool, the older ones helping the little ones, taking a short break for hot dogs from the snack bar, then jumping back in again, while the adults ate seafood salad and sipped iced tea. Milly could already sense how she mightreally enjoy it here, having a group of female friends. It was something she missed from her college days, which she hadn’t really cultivated since she’d married. At Sylvia’s suggestion the ladies skipped dessert and opted for a round of Tom Collinses. They were just being delivered on a large silver tray when one of the kids from the pool screamed at the top of her lungs. Milly leapt from her seat and was poolside in seconds, setting her eyes on Debbie and Jack, then counting the other children, eight of them, all hugging the edge of the pool. The red-suited “lifeguard” was up by the snack bar, beside a young man and dangling a french fry above her mouth.
“What’s the problem?” Maureen asked as others from the table joined them at the kiddie pool.
“Somebody did a boom-boom,” a little girl screeched.
“What?” Milly asked.
“A poop,” the girl said, pointing to the center of the pool that was filled with pink-and-blue-striped inflatable toys, and, sure enough, a small brown lump was floating on the surface of the water.
“Eww, a poo-poo,” another little boy chimed in.
“For goodness’ sake,” Sylvia snapped. She was standing at Milly’s side now and sounded furious. This was her husband’s pool, after all. “Emily!” she called toward the snack bar. “Get over here!” But the girl seemed in no rush to help out. “Who did this?”
When all eyes turned to Jack, and Milly saw him sink his chin to his chest and start to cry, she thought she might begin to cry herself. Of all the things that she imagined might go wrong that afternoon, she hadn’t dreamed it would be something as awful as this.
“Jack, Debbie, out right now,” Milly said as she searched the area for something she could use to get the offending thing out of the water. She reached down and grabbed the end of a pool toy that she thought she might be able to use to get the thing to float toward her, but it was no good. She might actually have to get into the pool to retrieve the thing herself.
“Oh, just leave it,” Sylvia sighed, turning and walking back to thetable. “The party’s over, anyway.” But Milly couldn’t leave her son’s feces floating in the swimming pool, with the kids traumatized and those “fabulous” women, especially that snippy one, Maureen, sitting there sipping their Tom Collinses, staring at it. She spotted a rectangular skimming net with a long metal pole hanging on the side of the wall just beyond the pool, near Jack and Debbie, who stood wet and shivering, huddled together away from the others.
She marched toward them. “Debbie, I need you to take my bag and walk Jack to the car. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“He ruined the pool party!” Debbie cried.
“We all make mistakes,” Milly mumbled, but she resisted the urge to comfort her little boy beyond a pat on his head, with Sylvia and her friends watching. Then she retrieved the net off the wall, skimmed the poop out of the pool, and carried it away to the bathroom, where she flushed the damned thing down the toilet.
It wasn’t until she pulled up and parked on their street, rushed the kids inside the house, and locked the door behind them that she was able to even speak.
“What were you thinking?” she said as Jack cowered into his sister’s side. “Why would you do something like that and not just get out and go to the bathroom like every other child?”
Jack started crying again, then Debbie joined in.
“Why?” Milly asked, as if it made any difference now.
“We were having too much fun,” Jack whimpered.
“You could have had more fun if you’d used the bathroom or called to me. Now head upstairs and change into dry clothes.” She hesitated, but couldn’t help herself from going on about it some more. “You can’t just poop in a pool. You embarrassed me.” She didn’t want to look at their sad faces. “Think about that in your rooms for a while.” They thumped up the stairs as fast as they could, likely relieved to get away from her.
