The Nudists

A group of nudists were traveling to Simmons to be naked near Lake Ivan. Jerry read about it in the paper, or saw it on the news, and he was telling me about it as I tried to parallel park out front of our daughter’s school. We’d been called in because Brigid’s teacher wanted to speak with us. And the principal. And the school counselor.

Don’t tell me complicated things when I’m doing something else, I wanted to say, but didn’t. It seemed like all around me lately women were announcing their changes, noting publicly the sogged, flabby bit of aging women had to push through in order to emerge wizened sages who didn’t care about chin hair. Vaginal dryness. Hot flashes. Inexplicable rage. For me, it was a general fogginess of the mind. I needed to do one thing and one thing only. Otherwise I couldn’t follow, didn’t even try. I was in my forties, solidly in my mid-forties, even, and Jerry was always telling me things at the wrong times.

I turned to face him, my blinker still on, the rear camera showing that I was angled too severely at the curb.

“So many dangling balls,” I said, and he laughed, and this bought me time to correct, to snug our four-door into the spot. He kept talking as I rummaged for my purse, checked my teeth in the rearview mirror. My mother always had something in her teeth, flecks and seeds, and it was starting to happen to me. I picked at a lodged bit of spinach and Jerry was still telling me.

“They go to all the different lakes,” he was saying. “As many as they can in the nice weather.”

“Do they have jobs?” I asked. This part of me, the part that pointed out inequality, privilege, the part of me that made my mouth tense into a smirk which resembled an asshole, that part was winning these days. I could no longer help myself. Instead, I blurted these things out, and then I followed with: “Look at me, I’m so jealous.” I was a writer at a content firm and had been for a decade and a half. I’d been promised growth. Instead I had aged out of being promising.

“It’s a weekend thing,” Jerry said, messing with his phone. Before he could show me the article I pushed out of my door, pretended to be absorbed in looking for my lip balm. Jerry, bless him, always took the hint. He’d been meticulous about boundaries since the day we met. I could leave my open journal on his pillow with the words–well, it doesn’t matter what–and he’d calmly close it and put it back on my nightstand without reading it. I’d never had that–I’d never had someone in my life who wasn’t convinced there was another me hiding away, one that harbored kinks and secrets and transgressions–in other words, that I was hiding the good stuff.

Jerry liked whatever I had on offer. Spaghetti for dinner, then leftover spaghetti the next night? Perfect. Something else with noodles the night after that? Fine by him!

We approached the school in stride. Jerry pocketed his phone and I ran the pomegranate-flavored lip balm around my lips.

“I’m thinking of going,” Jerry said.

I rang the doorbell and smiled at the camera, my hand on the handle, waiting for the tiny click that indicated the door had been unlocked. It could be a complicated timing–the ringing, the smiling, the click. Wait too long and it locked again, and the bell would have to be rung once more.

“Mm?” I asked, angling my face more directly at the camera.

“To Lake Ivan,” he said. “To be with the nudists.”

There was the click! and I yanked the door open with all my might. In the vestibule it was already too warm, as though we’d entered a mouth. The floor was gritty under our shoes.

“Ha-ha,” I said. “Have a great time with the nudists.”

There was our daughter, Brigid, age six, on the bench outside the office, her small shoulders, her folded hands, the fingers still pudgy with baby fat at the knuckles. She swung her legs. Her dear, scrawny legs! The ever-present smudge of something on her cheek, around her mouth! The tangle of her yellow hair! My whole being wanted to hug her to me. But my arms remained at my sides.

“Sweet, let me wipe your mouth,” I said, and dug in my purse for a tissue.

“I’ll let you know,” Brigid said. Her voice, raspy and deep. She stopped swinging her legs and stood. The knee of her pants was torn, her knobby little knee peeking out, smudged with dirt. I reached out to wipe her mouth and she turned, faced the wall.

“Don’t worry about that rip,” I said to the nest, the absolute tumbleweed, that was the back of her head. “It’s an easy fix. We can even pick out a patch to put over it!” I looked at Jerry and winked, my gestures suddenly my mother’s.

“I did that on purpose,” Brigid said. She pivoted and walked into the office and we followed.

Often I wondered, did she have friends? Children who were awed by her, excited to see her, who ribbed her about little things, like the fact that she openly picked her nose and placed what she found on her tongue? I had brought it up with Jerry multiple times. “Of course she has friends,” he always said. Children make friends so easily. Jerry had no friends. But neither did I, not really.

The principal’s office was modern, outfitted with a glass-topped desk and framed, tasteful art. Green velvet arm chairs flanked the desk, and she sat in a swivel chair as large and imposing as a throne. I always felt implicated in these meetings, urged to prove that I was a good mother, that there were aspects of my child’s daily life that I truly considered, tried to anticipate. I wanted to show them the sliced cucumbers in my child’s lunchbox. The little compartment of hummus. The single Hershey’s kiss. “I am a parent who tries,” I wanted to say. To show. I thought if I tried, my child would be all right. I could hear the whine in my thoughts, the indignance, and I tossed my hair to rid myself of it. I sat in one of the chairs and for some reason, Jerry perched on the arm. Brigid sat in the other one.

“Sit in my lap, how about?” I said to her. I wanted the principal–and the teacher and counselor, when they showed–to know that we understood proper roles. That Brigid should not be entitled to her own chair when an adult did not have one. Little brats, my father’s voice brayed. Us in a semicircle, facing him. Hard to see because the sun was astride his shoulder, glaring at us. How’d I get such little brats? There had never been a Hershey’s kiss in my lunchbox, ho no there had not.

Jerry had pulled out his phone again. I tried to see what he could possibly be looking at without seeming like I was trying to see. I didn’t want the principal thinking I couldn’t just outright ask him, but I didn’t want to just outright ask Jerry, which might indicate some tension between us. I patted my lap, beckoned to my daughter. When she didn’t come I looked at the principal and smiled. “She’s got her own mind,” I said, my voice as bright as a grapefruit.

“Mrs. Langley,” the principal said, her own voice professional, cool, even.

“Pertico,” I corrected. “I did not take my husband’s last name.” I looked at her nameplate: Principal Sharon. Of course I already knew that, it was in her weekly email blasts. I hadn’t forgotten it; it had simply not been there when I tried to call it up. Principal Sharon, Sharon being her last name. Her first name was something fussy, overdone. Francesca, maybe. Something like that.

“Ms. Pertico,” the principal said. “Mr. Langley, thank you for coming in.” I met her eye; she, bless her, waited calmly until Jerry looked up from his phone and did the same. Brigid swung her legs again. One of her socks was bunched at her ankle. Sometimes she was like something dashed off, a sketch of a girl, the impression of motion. I could reach out and grab for her, but I’d miss, she’d already be somewhere else.

“And please,” the principal went on, “you can call me Megan.” Mee-gan. That was it. A Canadian sort of name.

“Megan,” Brigid said, her voice like a clump of tissues in a pocket, “my mom has a hard time with these kinds of things.”

I tried to appear relaxed with my daughter’s assessment of me, something I’d never heard her utter before. It was true that I sometimes held my head in my hands. It was true that I rarely cooked dinner anymore. I unpeeled a smile, fixed it under my nose. “I will have to think about that,” I said. I tapped the side of my head, then folded my hands at my knee. When I was a kid being called to the principal’s office meant you got paddled, then sent back to class with a red, tear-stained face.

“She’s got some vocabulary,” Jerry said. He pocketed his phone; I stopped myself from thanking him.

“I’d still like you to call me Principal Sharon,” Megan said to my daughter. There was no apology in it, no whine, no wheedling. Just a clear boundary. Brigid shrugged, began picking at a scab on her elbow.

In they walked, Brigid’s teacher, Mr. Rifkin, and someone who I presumed was the school counselor, a woman with a severe haircut and bracelets that clacked and who greeted Brigid with a familiarity that made me uncomfortable.

“Brigid,” she said, beaming her smile at my child. Brigid hopped off her chair.

“Saved you a seat,” my daughter said, then came to stand at my elbow. I almost felt like leaping up and offering my chair to her, so comfortable was she in this office, among these people. I laughed, but no one else seemed to think it was funny.

“This is Ms. Diamond,” Megan said. And now I understood. She had a name all children would love; she wore clothing and accessories that were bold and colorful, and her glasses sailed up to her hairline and glinted at the corners. She flickered like a gem; she shined. I made a note to wear dangly earrings, to let Brigid see me wearing them.

“And you know Mr. Rifkin,” the principal finished. We adults all nodded at each other. Brigid was fidgety, one foot balanced on the other. Beside me, Jerry’s phone buzzed, then buzzed again.

“We called you here today,” said Megan, placing her elbows on her desk, “because Brigid has been asking her peers if they’d like to see her–well, if they’d like to view her privates.”

“Not just her peers,” Diamond said, wrinkling her eyes at my daughter as though they shared a delightful secret.

“All the kids do it,” Brigid said.

Rifkin shook his head. “Brigid, remember we talked about–”

“What’s real and what I want to be real,” Brigid recited, as though she’d done so a thousand times. I had never heard her say those words.

He nodded, pleased. Beside me, the buzzing started up again.

“Jerry, Jesus Christ,” I said, then laughed as though I were just ribbing him. Diamond looked at me now, cocking her head, really drinking me in. I put my hand on Jerry’s knee, something I hadn’t done in years. When his leg stiffened, I put my hand back in my lap.

Rifkin cleared his throat. “Brigid has, on occasion, asked me and some of the other male teachers if we’d like to see.” He kept his eyes on Megan, as though turning our way was a violation, or like he could catch something from us.

“You said always ask,” Brigid said to me, hatred in her eyes. It wasn’t something I’d ever gotten used to, the purity of emotion in my child’s face. It hadn’t yet been diluted by age, or disappointment, or doubt. Sometimes I envied her.

“We talk about asking in our household,” I said, every word feeling like a fart I’d failed to trap. Household was a word for someone who didn’t have spots on every mirror, whose oven wasn’t caked with grease. “Brigid knows about asking. About stopping,” I added.

“We talk about consent in school, as I’m sure you know,” Megan said. “We have a robust sexual health program, the materials for which can be found on your teacher’s website.” Jerry and I cut our eyes at each other. We’d heard about the teacher’s website, of course we had, but had never visited. Why would we? To learn Mr. Rifkin kept an ant farm as a child? That his favorite color was yellow?

“I’m not making sex with anyone,” Brigid announced, standing slightly in front of me now. I could see the force of what she said in her body, in the way the two halves of her bottom clenched.

“We know you’re not, darling,” Diamond said.

“I have never used that phrase in my life,” I said. “She must have learned it from someone here.” I looked at Rifkin but I lost my nerve, my eyes landing on his shoes, disturbed by the squared toes, the way they were brown but a little too yellow. He got those at Payless, a voice inside me said, a mean voice.

As a child I had walked in on my parents having sex, seen my father plunging into my mother, whose legs were spread but loose, flopping around as he thrust. That and the rhythmic noises she was making–oh, oh, oh–made it seem, in my young mind, that he had taken her by surprise, was doing something akin to tickling, and not doing it in the right spots. She wasn’t having the right reaction, I remember thinking. Her knees clashed inward, then one of her feet kicked out, bent over my father’s back. My father had a thick line of hair down his asscrack and he made no noises. I couldn’t have watched for more than a few seconds, I’m sure of it. My mother saw me and pushed him off and later came to me in her robe, handed me a glass of milk, and explained what they’d been doing. Making love, she called it, the hairs at her neck and temples curled, the way they were when she exercised to one of her aerobic tapes. She had a salinic smell, and her thumb when it gathered my milk mustache smelled like something else, something obscene. An earthen muskiness I associated with the hair in my father’s ass. My father never mentioned the incident to me at all.

Brigid had no opportunity to walk in on Jerry and me, that was for sure.

Payless was a store from my childhood. Did it still exist? I remembered rows of orange boxes containing shoes that were shiny when they should be matte and matte when they should be shiny. In high school, suddenly, all the girls were mad for perky little Mary Janes, matte red, twelve dollars at the Payless, drenched in the gleeful irony of buying shoes deemed affordable.

“Children say all sorts of things,” Diamond said, “when they’re trying to understand something larger than themselves.” She looked at me, and then Jerry, her eyes full of meaning.

“I imagine sex is baffling to lots of us,” Jerry said. His heel had started to come out of his shoe, revealing a small hole, damp pink flesh.

“Many,” I said. The other adults looked at me, varying degrees of patience settled into their faces. “It’s many of us, not lots of us.” Jerry shifted, tried to cross one leg over the other.

“She does that a lot,” Brigid said. There was a quiet resignation in it, a tone I recognized having used on her many times. Lots of times. Tons of times. Daily. When she was away from me, at school or asleep in her bed, I was suddenly filled with a calm energy, a certitude that would allow me the space to sit with her, for as long as she wanted me to, playing games or building a city out of cardboard or drawing together. She asked me to do these things often. Daily. I would fill with cement, something located inside me pulling backward on my throat until a yawn bloomed and died behind my lips. I will, I would say, after I finish what I’m doing. There was something stopping me from engaging with her on her level; what was it? Why was I like this?

“Children learn how to speak from their parents first,” Megan said. There was nothing in her tone, no way to decipher what she meant, and for that I realized, for the first time, that she was human, a normal person likely creating a shopping list in her mind while we sat before her, that she had discovered what we all had: in any given moment, only about thirteen percent of one’s self was required.

“Too true,” Jerry murmured. He fished his phone out, tipped it toward his face, waited for it to recognize him and unlock.

“Brigid,” Diamond said, her voice intrigued and soft. She held her hand out, upon which was perched a ball of yarn the color of vodka sauce. She waited for Brigid to take it. My daughter knew, I saw, exactly what to do with it: mess with it, pluck it, toss it from hand to hand. We’d often been encouraged to provide these fidgets for her, but couldn’t anything be a fidget? Did I have to spend $24 for something I could find in my junk drawer?

“Do you have any questions you’ve been wanting to ask?” Diamond said, leaning so far forward her breasts rested on her knees.

Brigid held the yarn ball level with her eyes and blew it until it tumbled off, then caught it with her other hand. “Is my dad gay?” she asked.

Jerry made a sound, almost a bark, too loud, obnoxious and un-self-aware. I was half standing, reaching for Brigid. Rifkin had a hand over his mouth, worked his tie between the fingers of his other hand. I looked to Megan, to Diamond, waiting, I realized, for the real adults to intervene. My authority as mother felt nullified in this room of people who’d gone to school to understand children better. And also, due to my choice of husband, father to my child, who wore the socks he had in high school and cupped his phone protectively, like his balls.

“She doesn’t know what that is,” I said.

“I do too,” Brigid said. “It’s when boys want to be girlfriends with boys.”

That seemed problematic but mostly correct, and I was shocked. We had monitored her media intake, didn’t allow her to go off in the corner with a device. But it was in the air, absorbed into her via her pores, the same way she knew when our neighbor moved out it was because of a “uh-vorce,” a word we’d never uttered in her presence.

“He’s not gay,” I said, at the same moment Jerry said, “Sexuality is a spectrum, Brig.” I could see some of his phone screen, saw what looked like a closeup of someone’s hand, its nails polished different colors, and I realized just as he pocketed it that it was actually a group photo of people in swim caps and nothing else.

Not people. Men.

“Who cares?” I directed this to Diamond, my eyes held in hers. I felt strength rivering out from her corneal sockets, imagined it neon blue like the lasers the girl with the droid father shot from her fingertips in a show I watched as a child. Suddenly I could smell things, like the plaster chipping onto the carpet in the corner and the wet spot in the ceiling tile, the small bowl of potpourri, the color of guts coated in dust. All at once my face heated, like something–my real face–was trying to push through.

“As a gay man,” Rifkin said, and I didn’t hear the rest. I watched Brigid listening to him, her eyes fierce on the ball of yarn. I saw how Jerry wanted to unlock his phone again, his hand crabbed at his pocket. I wondered if he was aroused. Once, at a Christmas party at his office–tinsel tacked to the corners of the cubicles, a bowl of punch that, I was sure, was the reason I woke up with diarrhea, Jerry laughing with his coworkers in a way I’d never seen, his head thrown back, punch sloshing–his boss’s secretary approached me and told me Jerry had been caught many times adjusting his balls. She didn’t say balls. Jerry often fiddles–you know what I mean, she’d said, her eyes darting to my crotch. Perhaps a snugglier pair of underwear, the secretary said. She was old enough to be my mother, pity in her eyes, a sparkling wreath brooch pinned to her sweater, and I hated her.

If only everyone would leave me alone, I often found myself thinking. Just leave it–whatever it was. This phase of Brigid’s. Jerry’s balls. Whatever Rifkin was saying to me now, his eyes resting on my forehead.

“Mmm,” I said.

“Brigid,” Diamond said. She was on her knees now, walked to my child on them, her breasts swinging. Leave the breasts! “It’s okay to have questions. It’s okay to wonder about things.”

“That’s the ticket,” Jerry said. He hunched toward them, his elbows on his thighs. “The world is baffling, honey.”

“Baffling?” I said. The word rang out as though I’d shouted it, and maybe I had. Brigid looked at me, her eyes bright. Interested. “You keep saying that word.”

“Well, yes,” said Jerry. “I’m baffled all the time. Confused,” he added, after I didn’t reply.

I stood. I was in danger of–what? I felt the same stifled yawn, only it was located somewhere else inside me. It traveled, searing a path up my throat and lodging, again, behind my face.

“If there’s nothing else,” I said, only it was my father’s voice choking it out. I touched my neck to see if I had on the gray turtlenecks he favored, feeling for the folded collar, my fingers grazing my bare neck.

“Hot flash?” Diamond said.

“Oh, shut up,” I said. Diamond flinched. “Stop trying so hard to understand.” I laughed, and it eased the heat in my face a little. I held my hand out for my daughter, delighting in her calloused, clammy paw. I took the ball of yarn and tossed it in Rifkin’s direction. It bounced off his shoulder and landed under his chair; he hadn’t even tried to catch it. Brigid laughed. She really was a great kid, all mine.

“She is,” Jerry said. He straightened in his chair, his hand palming his phone again. “Going through the change.” His thumb swiped the black screen rhythmically. He was soothing himself, something he did now rather than prod and shift his testicles. People can see you, I’d told him in the car after the Christmas party. My voice was too high, out of control, shrill. It’s pathetic, I’d said, streetlights washing through the car.

It’s natural, honey, he’d said, his voice quiet. Unashamed.

“You’re all obsessed with bodies,” I said. The room was quiet. I could feel air leaking out, none to spare. No spare air. I felt for the turtleneck again, and this time my fingers brushed soft polyester; I smelled my father’s heavy cologne. He had thick fingers and a silver crown that only appeared when he shouted. It felt good, and right, to be looking out at them as my father, the only adult in the room. “Touching, and grasping and–closeness,” I spat. “You should be ashamed.” Brigid’s hand in mine pulsed, as though she were trying to tell me something. I would explain my new appearance to her later. Children just accepted things. My father had been dead for years, his ashes in a prim urn on the mantel.

“My daughter is a child,” I said. I realized I was speaking about both Brigid and myself. My cheeks bloomed, releasing. I felt for my father’s heavy glasses and there they were, just a brief plasticky presence, my sinuses weighed down by the nose pieces.

“A child,” I repeated. I thought I saw understanding dawn on their faces. There was a definite softening, concern gathered at the corners of Diamond’s eyes. There could be a lot to get wrong, as a child. Who could blame a child for anything?

“No one is blaming you,” Diamond said, her voice both precious and clutched, a fistful of damp pennies. I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud. I felt for the glasses, the turtleneck, felt only the mole on my jaw, the naked bridge of my nose. My thin collarbones, my little teardrop breasts.

“Thank you,” Jerry said. “I keep trying to tell her.”

Empathy flooded their eyes; I watched it overcome them one by one, like they’d each been bonked on the head with a rubber mallet. I looked at him, my husband, Brigid trying to pull me toward the door. He had wide shoulders that he folded inward; his pants cuffs were frayed. Always, when I looked at him, I felt a rising urgency, something I was supposed to do. But I’d done it all. Married him, had his child, laughed at his jokes. He asked almost nothing of me. Many times in our lives together I watched people assess him kindly, give him a pass. I keep trying to tell her. I remembered no such conversation. He’d said it more to his phone than to the room, and still it had worked on them, cast a spell, convinced him he had thoughts he thought, feelings he felt. I knew otherwise.

“I’d like to know what sort of solution you propose,” I said. I wanted to leave the room and drive home. At the very least I wanted to smell the hallway outside the office–sneakers and paste and floor polish.

“A solution,” Diamond said, as though she’d never heard the word before. Rifkin made a small noise, maybe a laugh, but when I looked he was looking solemnly at his own crossed legs. “In these kinds of situations,” Megan began, gathering papers and straightening them, “it’s less of a solution and more of an ongoing monitoring type thing.”

Again I wanted to laugh. “Why call us in at all?” Brigid’s hand went limp in mine; I wished for something between our palms, a wadded tissue, or a folded paper towel. “Why not a simple email?” I looked at each of them. I saw how they, too, longed for the hallway.

“You wanted to shame us,” I said. I dropped my daughter’s hand so I could point at them.

“Stop,” Jerry said. His phone toppled to the floor and he made no move to fetch it. Instead, he stood, and shucked off first his jacket and then his shoes. He began peeling down his socks, the room filling with a warm chicken smell.

“Mr. Langley,” Megan said. She half stood, the papers still in her hand.

Next came his belt; I watched him pull it smoothly from his pant loops. He dropped it in a coil at his feet. I was shocked, and something else–something like relieved. I felt he had taken over from me, was doing something, and I could let go.

“No,” Megan said. Brigid’s hand found mine again and I remembered myself, remembered I was supposed to do something.

“Jerry,” I said, summoning my father’s voice, but it was only mine.

“Our daughter is curious about the naked form,” Jerry said, his voice rushed and breathless as he struggled with his shirt buttons. “And there is nothing wrong with that.” He stopped and knelt before Brigid. “Nothing,” he said.

She nodded. I nodded. My mother in her robe, my father’s pumping ass. These things had never left me. Jerry emerged from his shirt, his pale skin nearly blue under the harsh fluorescents in Megan’s office. His nipples were pebbled and the hair on his shoulders stood up, as though it had just been awakened. Jerry hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers. Behind him, Diamond was backing toward the door, and Megan had started dialing the phone on her desk. She murmured something into the receiver, rotating her chair so it faced the wall. Jerry’s chest heaved, his shoulders straightened, his toes gripped the thin stained carpet.

“You don’t have to–” I began. My voice caught and I discovered I was moved. Jerry had a look on his face like he was about to run into a burning house to save a family. “You don’t have to,” I repeated.

“Jerry,” Rifkin said. He stood, putting a hand on my husband’s arm. Jerry had only just begun tugging his underwear down. Rifkin bent and retrieved the shirt, then draped it over my husband’s furry shoulders. Now I could only see the back of Rifkin’s head, but I could see Jerry’s face. Something passed between them, a word or two that I couldn’t hear, and then Jerry began redressing himself. The men, I understood, knew each other.

Years later, after Brigid was off to college, I got a letter from Jerry. We’d been divorced for years by then and according to Brigid he was getting sober. On the inside of a cheap birthday card he’d written, I’m sorry I wasn’t myself with you. The first thing I thought of was his face, looking at Rifkin that day in the principal’s office.

Often, when Brigid was a baby, and then a small child, I’d get what I started thinking of as a visitation. The spirit of an older woman would suddenly be there, in the room, hovering, drinking my child in, and I’d weep grateful tears. The spirit was me of course, the me in the future that wanted to go back to those days when my child still needed me. That’s the best way I can describe what it was like seeing Jerry as he stood in his boxers in that room. The spirit of the real Jerry had entered the room. What crossed his face was shame. I recognized it immediately.

I did go with him, in case you’re wondering. To Lake Ivan to meet the nudists. A windy, bright day, the air just on the other side of chilly. I kept my swimsuit on and watched Jerry approach the group. Men and women, their sagging breasts and penises and puffs of body hair. I hid my embarrassment behind a cough. Together they waded into the water until only their heads could be seen. I stayed on the sand, the cold and damp seeping into my ass. We hadn’t discussed Jerry disrobing in the principal’s office; we’d only started talking about a different kind of school for our daughter. It was so bright that day at the lake. I had forgotten my sunglasses and had to squint, shielding my eyes with my hand. For a long time, I couldn’t tell which one was Jerry, and eventually I stopped looking.