The girls become seals in their wetsuits in the ocean off of Peter’s Pond Lane where I’m paid to drive their mother’s car down the dirt path. The fields are purpling all over, there are ticks in the phlox and insect eggs like spit in the center of the bloom. Phoebe wants to wear her cashmere sweater to surf camp in the morning chill. But the sunscreen, I remind her, and Ainsley says Don’t, it cost like $300. Paige says Stop talking about money. What she means is, don’t talk about it in front of me; she’s careful like that. Remember Alice Notley says
To complain of money will ruin your conversation; if you do not Complain of money there is probably something wrong with your life.
At the neighbor’s vineyard grapes are plump in their rows, the rosé almost spent. There’s a teepee stark naked in the backyard. It looks wholesome as cornsilk but the fourteen-year-old tells me there are wild parties inside. People did lines of coke off a severed pig’s head in that teepee. Why. After a pig roast, Ainsley clarifies. The children are delivered to the sea. I turn to leave, then remember I need to pee, so I walk right into the ocean.
Laura Cresté is a writer from Rutherford, NJ. She holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU and a BA from Bennington College. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox, Powder Keg, Phantom, and Bodega. She is a book reviewer at Full Stop and blogs monthly at Ploughshares.