Free The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg Page B

underhang of the table. Important not to show it. “Race you upstairs?” she asks Michael. He snorts, but it’s not derisive; it’s friendly.
    They go upstairs, Michael ahead of her, and he turns back to say, “I hear you won some awards for your artwork or something?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s good.”
     
    F u l l C o u n t
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    At the top of the stairs, he says, “See you.”
    Janey tiptoes into the girls’ room, but they are awake now. “Hi, Janey,” Vicky says. She sit up in bed, tosses her hair back over her shoulders. “You’re here again.”
    “Want to see my new doll?” Doreen asks. “She’s a fashion doll with blue eye shadow and she has lots and lots of clothes.”
    Janey will hurry with Doreen and Vicky; then she will go and find Michael, and she hopes they will wait outside together for Bampo, away from the others. She is glad she’ll not be seeing her parents all day, indeed not for three days, when they will have the family picnic; it was a long drive.
    The lake water is a deep green, and Janey can see the seaweed undulating beneath the surface. She doesn’t like seaweed, and she doesn’t like the rocks on the bottom of the lake, even when they are tiny. She has gotten used to swimming in the pool at the Army base, where the bottom is smooth and the water looks turquoise and the diving board sparkles with a rough white surface that looks like diamonds. Janey has learned to do a half gainer, but there are no diving boards here.
    She is wearing her swimsuit under her clothes, and the straps are cutting into her shoulders; she will need a new one before the season is out. But for now she is sitting with Bampo at a picnic table while all the others are in the water. He watches them, but he talks to her. She has told him about her favorite and least favorite teachers. She has told him about visiting the Alamo. He has asked if she’s famous yet for her art, if she has a boyfriend who drives a convertible and can crack his knuckles ( “No?” he said, when she laughed in response), if she has seen many 68
    t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d movies lately, he envies her the cheap cost of movies on the base. He has shown her a card trick using the miniature deck he always carries, and she has agreed with him that it will thrill the little ones.
    Janey feels mature, sitting at a picnic table with her hands clasped and talking this way with Bampo, and indeed he has been the first to comment on how she’s grown, calling her a real young lady now. She smiled when he told her this and did not blush, everything that comes from Bampo is easy to hear.
    She is about to ask him how his baseball team is doing when he sits back suddenly and says, “Here now, don’t you want to swim? Don’t you want to go into the water?”
    She shrugs. “I don’t like the seaweed.”
    “Well, I’m going in. It’s hotter than the devil’s pitch-fork. Come with me, why don’t you?”
    She might as well, what is the alternative but to sit alone and watch, something she is overly familiar with.
    She takes off her pedal pushers, her short-sleeved blouse and sandals; he takes off only his socks and shoes—for Bampo, swimming means rolling up his pants legs, wading into the water up to his knees, and then staring out at the horizon with his fists on his hips. She walks hand in hand with him to the shoreline, and then they separate.
    “Bampo!” Ben and Harry call out, and he waves at them.
    Doreen and Vicky are practicing mermaid dives, and they yell for Bampo to watch; Michael and Richie have swum out to the dock, and they too call out to their grandfather.
    Of all the people Janey has seen thus far, she thinks Richie has changed the least since she last saw him. Still on the short side, still innocent-looking, with his big blue eyes and rosy cheeks, still sporting a crew cut, and his voice is still that of a boy. Still giggles when he laughs. Not like F u l l C o u n t
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    Michael, to whom so much has