Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress Read Free Page A

child, most of the real children had lost interest. They’d wandered over to a grove of trees by the lake, where they invented a game in which one person farted into a bag, then everyone else took turns sniffing it. But I had no interest. I went off and sat on a rock by myself. The vague upset I’d felt at the beginning of the shoot had metastasized into a full-blown stomachache.
    “Sweetie, it’s just make-believe,” my mother said gently.
    “I don’t like it,” I said.
    “Why not?” she asked. “They’re just having fun. They’re playing—like you do.”
    For some reason, hearing this only bothered me more. Grown-ups weren’t supposed to play. They were supposed to be stodgy and boring. More importantly, they were supposed to be stodgy and boring while paying attention to
you
while
you
played. They weren’t supposed to be dancing the funky chicken while you went off and farted into a bag. It started to dawn on me then why hippies really frightened me: they were competition. Their face paint, their bubble-blowing, their naive and garish clothing—they wanted kids’ stuff for themselves. They wanted to be silly and irresponsible, twirling around in the grass. But then what did that leave for us real kids to do? And if grown-ups were busy being flower children, who’d be left to be the grown-ups?
    I made a great show of turning my back to my mother, though I was flooded with gratitude that she and my father had opted not to pop out of the VW themselves. “I just don’t like it,” I said. “That’s all.”
    Kneeling beside me, my mother gently brushed a piece of hair from my eyes. “Alice says she’s going to film you and Edward dancing together by the lake tomorrow.”
    This news had its desired effect. I was a sucker for vainglory. “Really? I’ll get to dance?” I said.
    Suddenly, I imagined Edwid in a sequined top hat and tails—not unlike his magician’s costume—twirling me around in the sand and lifting me gracefully in the air in a diaphanous gown. The hippies might “do their thing,” but Edwid and I would waltz along the water’s edge, looking preternaturally glamorous and beautiful.
    The next morning, my mother woke me up in the dark. “Okay, movie star, let’s get going,” she sighed. “Why Alice has to do this at sunrise is beyond me.”
    While it clearly wasn’t my mother’s idea of a good time, I liked being the first people awake in the colony. It felt to me like we’d won some sort of contest.
    I pulled on my tutu and skibbled out onto the patio as the first blush of sun seeped over the hills. Outside, it was chilly—colder than I’d imagined—but the sky was streaked with gold and shell pink, and the air was sweet with morning fog. I’d never seen a morning look so magical: no garbage trucks, no sirens, just wet leaves and a few ambivalent sparrows. When my mother and I arrived at the lake, Edwid’s mom, Carly, was already there. Carly must have been close to 250 pounds, yet her weight seemed a necessity given the size and volume of her personality. With her booming opinions and a laugh that could shake fruit off a tree, she was a one-woman piece of agitprop theater, a force of nature in plus-sized bell-bottoms and paisley caftans. She carried Edwid slung over her shoulder like a small bag of laundry; he was still in his Snoopy pajamas, wheezing, spittle-lipped, crusty-nosed, half-asleep.
    Before I could ask about his magician’s costume, a car pulled up, and Alice climbed out, followed by Clifford, who unloaded what seemed to be a great avalanche of equipment. Though it was five-thirty in the morning, I was impressed to see that Alice was already dressed in a lime green maxi-dress with a matching turban and full makeup. Her jaw was going frantically.
    “Okay, people,” she said, snapping her gum, “let’s set up down by the beach as quickly as possible. We’re racing the sun here. Saul? Where’s Saul?”
    Suddenly, I saw Saul Shapiro rounding the bend in