Chapter 19: The Diving Contest

"Thank you," I told them, opening my eyes.

There were a few last hugs and Susan smiled. "Actually, I came in to see what we were going to do for dinner. Can Jamie eat with us?"

"Jamie can eat with us," I agreed.

I looked at Carolyn, who was watching the three older girls. When was the last time you were hugged by your mom, Carolyn? Or vice versa? How much would that affect a person's worldview? And how?

I knew the perfect thing. "Do you cook, Carolyn?"

"We don't fix much. TV dinners. We have a lot of pizza."

Susan walked over and patted Carolyn on the shoulder. "Oh, you poor girl! You have just made Mom's day! Another person to teach the Laura Alban Hunt method of cooking to!"

Carolyn looked confused, but I turned to Susan. "I heard something about homework."

"Done," she said primly.

"Carolyn, do you have homework?" I asked.

She nodded. "A work sheet we got in class. But I did it already."

"Give it to Susan and Jamie; they will check it. You and I, Carolyn, will start work on dinner."

I thought it would be fun to show Carolyn how to cook; I never dreamed that it would cause the upheaval that it did. However, that's getting ahead of myself.

Carolyn listened; she did the things I asked her to do. Cooking for some of us is an exercise in multi-tasking. Some things take longer to do than others; some are predicated on the completion of others. I explained it all to Carolyn who did a lot of nodding, but she seemed to understand everything. It's not like it's very difficult, not really, and as long as you are careful, the worst that happens is things don't get down at the same time, which makes for an interesting meal.

After dinner I got out a batch of cake mix and Carolyn and I made cupcakes for everyone. I showed her how to mix the icing and how to get different colors using white icing and food colorings. By the time we finished icing the last one, Carolyn was decorating each cupcake with creditable flowers.

We took them out and they were an instant hit with the others. Sherrie looked at hers and sighed. "It's like taking a bite out of the Mona Lisa, you just hate to spoil it."

"It was no big deal," Carolyn said, far more confident now than she'd been to begin with. "It wasn't hard at all."

I ran Jamie home, Carolyn riding with me. She and Jamie sat in the back seat and did a little kissing on the trip there, and then Carolyn joined me in the front seat for the return trip.

"You have a lot of nice friends," Carolyn told me.

"That's something we all want. I've been lucky to meet some nice people since I moved here."

When we got home, Sherrie and Susan were in the pool, just sitting neck deep in the water, talking about school and life. Carolyn wanted to go in as well, so I joined them, not wanting to be a spoilsport.

It was a pleasant evening, not too warm, a light breeze that occasionally stirred the top of the water. We just talked quietly until ten, when it was time for the younger girls to go to bed. I took another shower with Carolyn, but it was a quick rinse to get rid of the chlorine from the pool. I went in to check on Susan and found her asleep already; when I got back to my room, Carolyn was asleep too.

I decided that she didn't need to be disturbed, so I went and read for a while. Sherrie had been doing homework, and she came and gave me a hug before going off to bed herself.

When I finally crawled into bed, Carolyn smiled at me. "When I grow up, I'm going to stay awake all night too!" But her eyes were closed almost at once again. I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder, just letting it rest there.

When I woke up, I could sense that Carolyn had rolled over and now had a hand laying on one of my breasts. I cracked an eyelid and saw that it was just starting to get light outside; before six, I thought. Carolyn's was gently exploring my breast; her index finger tracing lines around the curve of the fullness, coming back to touch the erect tip in the middle of the areola.

"I woke you up," Carolyn said, apologetic. I looked up and met her eyes.

"You don't have to apologize for a wake up as nice as this one," I told her.

"It's been a week, now," Carolyn told me. "I want to do sex things with you. I want you to do them with me. I want to make you come."

And I had decided that I was crazy to even think about making love to a twelve-year-old who was having problems at home with her mother.

That's what I'd decided in the hot light of day, but here in bed with Carolyn, with the hot surge of hormones there wasn't much left of my self-control. I wished Jamie or Susan were there, Gail maybe. Maybe not, someone like Carolyn didn't need to start out with someone like Gail.

On the other hand, I didn't think I could ask her to excuse me and then go fetch Susan to make love to Carolyn.

My young lover had been studying my breast closely, now she leaned close and kissed it, running her tongue over the nipple tip, then in a long lick, that crossed over and roused my other nipple to tautness. She wanted to make me come, I thought. And gosh, how I wanted to listen to her moan and watch her writhe with pleasure as I brought her to her first big orgasm with another woman!

Could it be as simple as I was a frustrated teenager who'd never gotten a chance to sexually play with my peers and was reliving those long-lost days?

Then the alarm clock went off.

Carolyn froze, and I smiled at her and rolled over to turn it off.

"I wanted to make you come," she said, a little frustrated.

I smiled at her. "You woke me up very much nicer than the alarm would have. And surprise! Today is Saturday; we don't have to get up right away!

"Come, Carolyn, scoot over here." I let her lie on top of me, and then I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her. I quickly learned that she really had been taking lessons!

I ran my hands down her back and cupped her bottom, pressing her down against my pubes. I lifted my hips and rubbed, and she realized what I wanted, and pressed down on her own and moved too.

Suddenly, Carolyn stopped, lifted up and looked down at my midsection. "You're bare down there!"

I nodded. Somehow, neither of us had remarked on it yesterday, but now she noticed.

"It makes what we were just doing feel so much better," I told her.

"Oh, that is so cool!" She slithered down my body, and looked at the results of Sherrie's handiwork from up close. After a minute, she lifted her head. "I'm still not sure if I want to kiss someone... there."

"Come back where you were and you won't have to," I told her. She came back, and we kissed again and began to move against each other. When Susan and I were like this, her breasts rubbed against mine, her clit met mine, and there were fireworks for both of us. With Carolyn, her mons pressed on my clit, which was good, but nothing else fit right.

It didn't take much, though, to bring me to a mild orgasm. Carolyn looked positively pleased with herself. We got up and showered, this time much more business-like. Susan and Sherrie had breakfast ready and we thanked them and complimented them on how yummy the sausage and eggs were.

Then the conversation turned to the pool party. I made a store run, early in the morning, to get drinks and munchies. Carolyn went with me, even if Susan begged off. That didn't do Susan much good though, because instead, she got to do the straightening and cleaning. Jamie showed up before I got going, and didn't seem to mind pitching in.

I made as quick a stop as you can make at Costco for juice and soda, then we went to the supermarket. Carolyn was happy and cheerful, chattering away about everything under the sun. About half the time she was asking questions, the rest of the time she was making comments about things she liked and didn't like.

I was patient; Susan had gone through a similar phase not just once, but at least three separate times. Roger had been good about answering questions, but now and then Susan had gotten on his nerves; it just never bothered me that much.

At the store, we passed the shelf with cake mixes and she asked which ones were as simple to make as the one we'd fixed the other night. I showed her the ones, and she picked one and put it in the basket, telling me she'd pay for it herself. I suggested she get some icing fixings too and some food coloring.

I recognized the look in her eye; I'd had the same thing when I was a girl, I'd seen it in Susan's eyes more than once. The I'm-going-to-do-this-and-don't-you-try-to-stop-me look. It was, I thought, a good thing. She was very good about separating her things from mine at the check register and paid for it all without hesitation.

A little before one in the afternoon, girls started arriving. Susan and Jamie were in their element, enjoying themselves. When June and the not-twins appeared, there was a pause in things, but it didn't last long.

I got hugs from Amy and Fred, who came together, and who then hurried out to be with the others.

I was in full Mom-mode, with Sherrie helping out. Linda appeared, and motioned that she wanted to talk.

"Thank you, Laura," Linda started.

"You don't have to thank me, I know it must have hurt."

She nodded. "I screwed up. I've screwed up before, I hope it's a long time before I screw up this bad again. The important thing is that Jamie's happy and that I didn't totally let down the cheerleaders."

"Linda, I think you've done just fine," I reassured her. "Come, let's go sit down, out of sight of the girls and just relax."

She smiled. "Not that they'll let us rest long!"

"Probably not," I agreed.

We talked about cheerleading and I mentioned the summer camp that I'd talked to the head counselor about. Linda had heard of it, and when she heard I was thinking about Susan and me spending the summer there, she said she'd ask Jamie if she'd like to do it, too. I thought that was a little odd, when she'd been talking about how much financially withdrawing from the lawsuit had hurt, but a few minutes later she mentioned that her husband's parents had said they wanted Jamie to have a nice summer.

"My ex-, Clete, is HIV positive," she told me. I nodded, remembering she'd said that. "Currently it's in remission, but there's still no long-term prospect of survival. A year or so ago, he sold his life insurance policy; there's a market of ghouls who pay pennies on the dollar for them. But you get to spend the money now. He's practically destitute, but that's what you have to be to get any financial assistance."

I nodded. It must be a terrible thing, I thought.

"Anyway, his parents want to buy Jamie things or pay for things like summer camp, things we'll tell her Clete is paying for. So she can have good memories of him, after he's gone."

I wanted to shake the poor, sad, clueless woman. And if Jamie ever found out the true source of the "happiness" what would that do to her memories? On the other hand I'd been rough enough with Linda this week for a lifetime. I made a mental note to discuss the virtues of honesty with your children with her at some time in the future.

Susan and Jamie came in, bright-faced and breathless. "Mom, can we have a diving contest?"

I saw Linda shake her head, but I nodded mine. "You have to be careful, okay? Everyone will have to be careful."

"Sure, Mom!" Susan said. "We want you, Linda and Sherrie to be judges! Like at the Olympics! Please?"

I shrugged. "Sure, I suppose you want to start now?"

She nodded and Linda and I got up. I filled my tea glass before going outside; it was going to be another very warm day. Linda followed behind me as we went outside. Sherrie had been sitting at the table, acting as a lifeguard. Linda and I pulled up chairs next to her.

There were, I found, twenty-one girls present, and it turned out that every last one of them thought she was the best diver of the group.

"Any suggestions?" I said, asking Linda and Sherrie, "about how we should do this?"

June Wheeler spoke up. "We should all dive, one after another. You should pick the five worst after the first round and make them sit."

"I wanted to get a ten point zero," Carolyn interjected.

June smiled at her. "After the first round, we do two more dives, each one scored from one to ten. We cut the half with the worst scores. That will leave eight. Two more rounds of two dives, that leaves two. Then three dives for the last two. The winner is the one with the best score in the last set of dives."

That sounded fair to me. More important, I could see on their faces that they weren't just horsing around. They were serious. It was odd, up until that moment, I'd never associated cheerleading with competition. I knew about cheerleader competitions, I'd watched a movie a few years before with Susan with a cheerleading competition as the main plot point. And here was my daughter, her face serious and intent, obviously wanting to win.

It was one thing, I realized, to watch your daughter try to win at Parcheesi or Scrabble or any other board game. Susan was growing up...

They started diving, and the three of us started marking pieces of paper with numbers. Forty-two dives later, I was a little glazed, but I had, I thought, a fair idea of who should go. I also had, with a series of plusses, a fair idea of who the top competitors were going to be.

Jamie was one of the first six to go. June had been right about Carolyn, she was a very good diver. Most of the girls did simple jackknife dives, but June had done a dive where she'd spun around one and a half times before going headfirst into the water. Then she did it again, as perfectly as she'd done the first time.

Both Toni and Sylvia Courdes did very graceful swan dives. Then it was Carolyn's turn. Unlike the rest, she didn't walk out to the end of the board and stop, psyche herself up and dive. She just walked straight out to the end of the board, went up, then back down to get the bounce and jumped straight up.

I don't know how many times she spun around, going up. Three or four. When she finished, her feet were maybe eight or nine feet above the water. She folded in the middle, and went straight down like an arrow, leaving virtually no splash, just a rising circle of bubbles. Two seconds later she came shooting back out of the water, smack in the center of the bubbles, rising past her hips, before subsiding back into the pool.

Carolyn's second dive was another leaper, but this time she didn't twist going up, just went up high. At the top, she rotated around the axis of her arms, now facing the diving board, instead of away from it. She kept her arms level for several fractions of a second, and then once again clove the water cleanly.

Susan did something like a swan dive and just barely managed to get lined up to enter the water; even so I bet her ankles stung from the sharp crack of sound they'd made when hitting the water. The second time she settled for a jackknife that she did okay.

Amy and Fred both made the first cut, but I didn't think they were going to be in the top eight.

With spectators, the contest took on a new dynamic. Some of the girls rated cheers and shouts of encouragement, others rated only silence. Susan was cheered, Amy was cheered, and so were some of the others. Not June or the Courdes girls, not Fred. Carolyn got quite a few.

One after another dove. Amy and Fred both went out, Susan went out, Sylvia Courdes went out and four other girls.

Now the cheering section was larger than the remaining divers and much noisier. Everyone got cheers.

The last four were Carolyn and June, Toni and another girl, Sarah Beach. They all had six dives by that point. June had two different dives she did, Toni had two, Sarah Beach had one and Carolyn had repeated herself only once.

Two more dives and it was June and Carolyn.

The final three dives were all perfect. June did her twist and a half dive twice, Carolyn did that one, her first up-twisting dive, her last was a swan dive where she seemed to hang suspended in the air forever, before going down to a clean entry.

I was surprised to see Nancy had arrived with another woman, pale, blonde and thin. With a certainty, I knew I was about to meet Carolyn's mother, Denise.

She walked right up to the water's edge and looked down at Carolyn. "What, are you fucking crazy? Get out of the water! I don't want to ever see you do something that fucking stupid again!"

My jaw dropped. Sure, I was a little prejudiced, but as far as I was concerned, Carolyn had won, going away.

Nancy grabbed the woman's hand and pulled her back, but she shook Nancy off, glaring at her daughter, and continuing a stream of invective that would have stripped the paint off a battleship.

I got up and moved forward. "Hi, you must be Denise, Carolyn's mother. I'm Laura Alban Hunt, the hostess."

I smiled at her. She looked at my proffered hand and ignored it.

"Go fuck yourself! What do you mean, letting kids do these dangerous stunts? What if someone had been hurt?"

I smiled pleasantly again. "I'm the hostess and one of the rules I enforce is language. Please clean yours up."

Carolyn hopped out of the pool and walked past her mother like she wasn't there and went into the house.

I was at a loss for what to do. Most girls simply need a little guidance and a firm hand to get them going the right direction. Denise needed a shrink. She had taken the moment of Carolyn's triumph and turned it into the bitterest of ashes. No one should ever be crushed like that, particularly by someone who purports to love her.

The woman made a gesture behind me, at the pool. "Why don't you just go back to all those tasty tidbits you have in the pool and let me take care of my own daughter my own way."

"If a six-year old had a temper outburst like you just had, she'd be standing in the corner taking a very long timeout. And if it was my daughter, she'd be standing tall, because her butt would hurt. You're not six, but then again, you are no longer welcome. Please leave. If you can ever figure out how to comport yourself like a civilized person, come back. Otherwise don't."

She started to open her mouth, and I cut her off. "And only the lowest pond-scum would take out her anger against me on her own daughter. Thank you and good day." I pointed. "There's the door, please leave."

I was proud of myself; I hadn't even raised my voice.

She stared at me, then turned and walked away, into the house.

Nancy looked at me. "Gosh, I'm so sorry, Laura! I never expected this, not at all. She was much calmer today! I thought she was past it."

I nodded. "I understand, Nancy. She's your friend, I'd like to think I'm to some degree a friend too." She nodded. "Then you need to suggest to her she seek professional help. She is a ticking bomb, Nancy. It's only a matter of time before she hurts herself or someone else."

"I know you don't like to hear the word 'sorry' but I don't know what else to say."