A brunette in the spot to her right, wearing a shimmering bathing suit cover-up more appropriate for Kim Kardashian on her St. Tropez mega-yacht than a mom in a parking lot, darted out of her cherry-red Porsche 911 to fetch her child, a dash of madness in her eyes.
Katie heard the distant sound of the fire station’s nasal honk reverberating through the salty breeze. It went off every day at noon to test the system of the mostly volunteer force. She wondered if today the noon signal meant something serious, given the frenetic activity.
“Is everything okay?” Katie asked another mother dressed in black Stella McCartney workout gear. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I mean there’s so much honking in the lot, the parents are kind of sprinting around, I heard the sound of the fire siren, and I was wondering . . .”
The woman flapped her hand back at Katie, implying that a plain mother in cutoffs and a baseball hat (an outfit telegraphing not from here) couldn’t be expected to comprehend the stress this woman was under handling three vacation homes (Southampton, Casa de Campo, and Aspen). Not to mention all the effort she expended to make sure the staff performed crucial functions like folding origami fish on the end of the toilet paper rolls for easy pulling.
Even those staff people on this otherwise lovely Saturday morning were racing around, sweating in their ubiquitous uniforms of tan pants, white polo shirts (some with the name of the house like a yacht crew), and sensible white soft professional shoes. Katie watched a nanny make a child simultaneously rush to the car and hold his arms in the air so she could put his white tennis shirt on while hopping out of his thick, wet, sticky wetsuit. “Sorry, Jacob can’t do playdate,” the nanny yelled at Katie. “He has a lesson now . . .”
Katie hadn’t even asked for a playdate.
Through the sea of lunacy around her, Katie found her son, Huck, sitting on Luke’s shoulders. Another child hung onto Luke’s right arm and both boys laughed as Luke tickled them.
“Hey, honey, how was it?” she asked Huck, pulling him off Luke’s tall shoulders. Katie tried to act official and polite as she turned to Luke and said, “Is everyone okay? The people here seem kind of in a hurry.”
“All good,” he replied. “This is what they do. They act like the town is being invaded by the enemy.”
“But it’s Saturday . . .” Katie’s voice creaked, a grown woman of twenty-nine once again succumbing to middle-school nerves. She stood up straight and resolved to speak more firmly as she listened to his answer.
“I can only give this possible explanation,” Luke responded. “They’re like hamsters in a spinning wheel back in Manhattan, and they don’t hop off when they get here.”
“Okay . . . I guess that makes sense.” Her voice sounded more normal now.
“You’ll see, they’re not all like this. Some of the moms are fine. Some . . . not so much.” He smiled, staring into her eyes until the silence was palpable. “But . . . these kids had a great day, right, guys?” He blew out a breath loudly.
“I don’t know how you can count them all and keep them safe,” Katie answered. “I’m sure you do and you have systems, but I’m just grateful seeing Huck’s smile when he’s near the water. It’s so . . . empowering for him.” Empowering? She had never once used that word. Katie hated that word.
Now her eyes lingered on his too long. She forced herself to study the cracks in the pavement by her toes. She felt like a seventh grader with her first girl crush on a friend’s older brother. Or, far worse, like the neglected housewives around her. Speaking of, out of her sight, a wife in a Beyoncé caftan walked through head-high sea grass with Kona to his lair. The two of them resembled lions disappearing into the dense savannas of the Southern Sahara.
Huck tugged at her leg. “Mom, can I go home with Richie? He said he’s always allowed to have a playdate and he doesn’t have to check.”
Julia Chase strolled up to Luke, a bit more casually than the other moms and certainly with more of a friendly expression on her pretty, tanned face. She held out her hand to Katie. “Hi, I’m Julia, known around here as Richie’s mom. I see our kids have found the nicest guy in camp.” She pulled her Richie off Luke’s limbs. Her blond curls gracefully framed her face in the noontime sunlight.
“Can Huck come over?” Richie asked his mother as she looked everywhere for Kona. “His mom said okay I think.” Both boys, wide-eyed, placed their hands in prayer under their chins. “Is it okay, please?”
“Yeah, please, Mom, okay?” asked Huck.