by Véronique Hyland

Sun., July 1-

She comes onto the beach with one child in her arms and another latched onto her leg. Struggling with the weight of both, she takes them down to the water's edge. The little girl, who must be five or six, plucks a flower from her hair and throws it into the swelling water. They all stare after it.

My mother, smelling obscenely of Bain de Soleil, says, "Those can't possibly be hers."

Tues., July 3 -

The children are not hers. She is only fourteen.

The children belong to a hirsute Italian, John Sciapullo. Thirtyish. Staying in his uncle's house for the summer.

The children's mother must be beautiful, for the children are. Tan and shockingly blond, they bear no resemblance to John. The children's mother, they say, is taking a few months off for her health.

John stands on the beach with a pale petite woman, talking impersonally. Later they swim together, their wrists interlocking.

Meanwhile, the girl sits with the children on an Op Art towel. Light wanders across her tortoise-shell sunglasses. She allows the little girl to paint her nails, an abstract splash of orange on each toe.

Weds., July 4 -

We are introduced. "This is Mrs. Ray," says my mother. Pale, petite.

"And her daughter. I didn't catch your name?"

"Luce."

She squints at me from above. Her gilded face. Her fluorescent hair.

The baby paws at the left triangle of her two-piece and gnaws at her exposed nipple. Mrs. Ray turns around. "Stop that," she says, exasperated.

Thurs., July 5 -

Mrs. Ray's husband is in New York having surgery. She swims again with John, whom she has taken to calling "my son."

I look for Luce, but she is not there. Later, as I pass the cottage, I hear strains of a record, Let it Bleed, from the window I have identified as hers. The shade is down.

Sat., July 7 -

She doesn't want to watch the children today, she says she wants to swim. Mrs. Ray gives her ten dollars and a pleading look. Later, as Luce sits with the children, Mrs. Ray tells my mother that the girl "needs structure." Emphatically, my mother agrees.

Sun., July 8 -

I greet Luce on the beach, but she doesn't recognize me. At high tide, she swims all the way out past the sandbar. She emerges from the water like a briny goddess, a curl of seaweed on her cheek.

She absentmindedly rubs sun lotion on the children's backs. It looks like she is humming a song in her head, from her expression of dreamy concentration.

Tues., July 10 -

Mr. Ray arrives, fresh from his surgery and groggy-looking. He refuses to wear a shirt, so you can see the blurred Korean War tattoo on his back. Luce hugs him around the waist and calls him Daddy.

She has taken up gardening. When I come to the cottage to return the sandals she's left on the beach, she is potting daylilies and singing a Joan Baez song my sister likes. So I leave the shoes on the porch rather than disturb her. They are purple size 6 sandals, and they bear the slight shadowy imprint of her feet.

Weds., July 11 -

Mr. Ray smokes cigars with my father. Mrs. Ray and my mother talk about getting rid of varicose veins, and how the Kennedys are ruining politics.

Thurs., July 12 -

Mr. Ray takes his daughter out shopping, at a boutique several miles from the cottage colony. They return with multicolored cotton dresses of various lengths and fabrics. Her favorite is a yellow peasant-style one with ruffles. It is slightly transparent.

Mrs. Ray says that tee shirts and dungarees are perfectly sufficient for a girl of fourteen.

Fri., July 13 -

By now Mr. Ray has left. The cottage colony is much quieter without him, but duller too.

I wait outside Mrs. Ray's house because Mrs. Ray is supposed to take us to the theater. When she answers the door, I see a gleaming blonde-wood guitar in the corner. It is decorated with stickers: a peace sign, butterflies.

"From her father," says Mrs. Ray, tight-lipped.

Sat., July 14 -

She is back to watching the children. I see her several times during the day: sculpting the walls of a sand fort and reinforcing them with wet sand, singing to the children, sunbathing, adjusting the top of her two-piece.

Mon., July 16 -

She starts telling the children a story, but the little girl covers her ears and refuses to hear it. The baby cuts his hand on a mussel shell. As she smooths on his Band-Aid, she keeps telling the story. It is called The Princess in the Tower. She is talking very loud.

Tues., July 17 -

She won't come out of her room, won't eat anything except a little cream cheese, won't see the children.

My mother and Mrs. Ray discuss her truancy on the front porch. Inside, she strums an E-minor chord over and over again.

Weds., July 18 -

She is "making friends with John," reports Mrs. Ray. John throws Luce off the float into the water. They swim together. Mrs. Ray yells at her to come back in, the little girl is being a she-devil, biting her leg.

Thurs., July 19 -

Mrs. Ray decides that her daughter needs an interest. She decides to "set her up" with Pete, an avid bicyclist who is going to Boston College in the fall.

I learn to watch for Pete's bright red cap, slightly askew, as he rounds the hill on his Schwinn. Sometimes he lets her ride on the handlebars, and when she does, you can see up her dress.

Fri., July 20 -

Pete is very helpful with the children. The children like him. They all have a picnic in the tall grass behind the shed. They eat olives and Pete feeds Luce cream cheese on a spoon. The children eat old zwieback crackers filched from the Ray pantry. Luce and the little girl start to sing "Mrs. Robinson," then remember that Pete doesn't like folk music. So they all lie down in the tall grass, the children sleeping, and Luce and Pete staying awake. Probably talking.

Sun., July 21 -

Pete contracts Lyme disease and is sent to a hospital in Boston. The children are made to wear long pants in the heat, and to look out vigilantly for ticks. A poster depicting the different stages of the tick life cycle is helpfully displayed in the Ray home. Pamphlets are deployed as a means of educating the rest of the colony.

Mon., July 22 -

Mrs. Ray is constantly afraid that there are ticks on her, but John reassures her that nothing is there. Mrs. Ray has picked up some coy Italian phrases, such as Andiamo tesoro and va bene. My mother reports that she is getting awfully stuck up.

Tues., July 23 -

Luce brings her guitar to the beach. The children gather around her, all of them singing. Not just the Sciapullos but some others from the cottage colony are there.

That night (according to the neighbors), there is a commotion in the Ray cottage. I miss it because I am sleeping over at Charley Watts'.

Weds., July 24 -

I am told to watch the Sciapullo children for the day. Their names are Elsa and Fredrick. Their mother got them from a Swedish opera. Elsa informs me, "My dad smashed the guitar on the concrete."

"Really?" says my mother sharply.

"He said it was too loud."

Thurs., July 25 -

When I see Luce on the beach again, I want to say something, but as usual, the combination of her beauty and my ineptitude silences me. John has bought her a used guitar, but the sound is muffled and the strings buzz. She doesn't play it that much, even when Elsa begs her to.

Fri., July 26 -

She arrives on the beach with the English boy from the grocery, Fran.

"Fran is a girl's name," sputters my mother, whose back is a crisscross of tan lines from her elaborate bikini. My father says she looks like a highway map. "Is Fran short for something?" But she thinks his accent is awfully cute.

Luce and Fran wade out past the waist-high limit set by Mrs. Ray and swim out over their heads. I think Fran is even older than Pete, nineteen, but he is shorter and looks boyish. His eyes protrude widely as he tells her some story or other. His chest and arms are markedly pale. They swim to the float and back. When they come out of the water, he has a few blonde hairs pasted to his shoulders.

John is awkwardly holding Fredrick. Elsa seems intent on burying herself in the sand. Only her head and shoulders peek out. Fran announces that they are going back to the house. Mrs. Ray either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

Sat., July 27 -

This morning, Luce is wading in the water with Fredrick. She holds his hand limply like it is a luggage handle. She looks up at the sky.

Mrs. Ray tells my mother that her daughter and the English boy took a bottle of her husband's best '57 vintage and went out in the tall grass behind the house, with a blatant disregard for the threats of Lyme disease. Mrs. Ray is thinking of sending Luce to a girls' boarding school in New Hampshire.

Sun., July 28 -

Fran hasn't come back. I see him at the grocery sometimes, humming Cat Stevens songs as he bags chickens and eggs. Sometimes the numbers on the old-fashioned cash register stick, and he punches them in frustration.

The other boys on the beach have become wary of the Ray girl. She still sits with the children. She cradles Fredrick and gives him his bottle, but she doesn't really talk. She slaps him if he starts to touch her breast.

Sometimes she talks to Carter, who is at Princeton. She talks to him a lot. "A slut. Just like her mother," my parents say. But Carter has a girlfriend at Princeton. A biology major. She is very cultured and smart and he talks about her a lot. Carter teaches Elsa how to make sand pyramids like the Egyptians'.

Weds., July 31 -

Mrs. Ray thinks Carter is very Ivy League. They swim together today. John pretends not to mind. He says the water is too cold for him, anyway. He is reading boarding school catalogs aloud. He and Mrs. Ray have decided on a very strict one in Canada.

Thurs., August 1 -

I see Luce on the porch of her cottage today. She is shaving her legs with her father's Gillette razor. I've never seen anyone do that in public. Every so often she rinses out the razor in the bucket Elsa uses to collect shells.

She is singing to herself, but so quietly I can't hear. Perhaps the song is from one of the underground bands Carter listens to. She has a wild look in her eyes, and her face and shoulders are brilliantly burned.

Fri., August 2 -

Elsa Sciapullo comes up to me on the beach today to tell me about her "secret boyfriend" Walty. Walty is short for Walter. He has pink hair and blue eyes. No, blue hair and pink eyes. He sounds very handsome.

"My sister has one too," she confides. "She talks to him when she thinks I'm not listening." I realize that she's been told to refer to the Rays as family members, for whatever reason, though when she calls Mrs. Ray "mother" it sounds strained.

"What's his name?" I ask.

"Oh, he's all different names. Sometimes he's Carter, sometimes he's Fran. Or Pete, even though Pete was kind of a drip. And sometimes,"-- the girl grins, "he's called John."

Sun. August 4 -

She starts talking to me. She wants to know where she can find a place to get her guitar tuned, and if I like the Stones, and if I've ever been to California. The conversation is somewhat awkward for me, because she is wearing her yellow peasant dress, and you can see her breasts and everything through it. Still I manage.

Her voice is stronger , deeper, louder than I've ever heard it before. She seems to be shouting over someone else who isn't there. I ask her where the children are. She shrugs and ambles back up the path to the colony.

I look out at the waves and I can see a pink spot almost a quarter of a mile out. A buoy or a lost raft, I think. Carter gets his binoculars and sees that it's an inner tube, a pink inner tube carried out by the current with two children on it. A girl and a baby.

The Coast Guard takes forever to get there, and the inner tube is losing air. When they finally arrive, it's already sunk. It's been underwater nearly five minutes. The Coast Guard is made of men with other jobs. They are carpenters, fishermen, or they work in the colony; they come out only for emergencies. They get a rowboat and paddle out. The black boat looks like a curl of licorice floating in the water.

Fredrick is carried in first, blue-ish. "Dead," Carter whispers, and I think he's right. Elsa, next, is breathing, and the Coast Guard men carry her loosely, as if afraid to touch too much of her. Some people are whispering that there was a puncture in the tube, done with a nail, but this is never confirmed. I watch two men, oiled up with sunscreen and sweat, load the stretchers into a Ford that serves as the colony's ambulance and police car. I've only seen it a few times before: when some old people died, and when the colony owner's son was arrested for fighting. Elsa's stretcher is blue. Her nails, I notice, and her little toes are painted Royal Red, an art she seems to have mastered lately: occasionally a drop is spilled over onto the cuticle, but all in all, a neat job. Crayon lines of sepia-toned Lip Smacker circle her lips.

"Are there any other victims?" one of the men asks me, and I shake my head no. Later on, when I walk past the Rays' cottage, I don't hear John's screams or Mrs. Ray's wails or even a hush of tragedy. Maybe they don't know yet. I work through the bushes a little, get closer.

From the blackened window, I hear the whirring sound of a record, the low crooning of a bass, the tribal vibrations of a drum kit, an electric guitar slowly screeching its unhinged melody.

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