“Well, like I said before, Sara’s been very unhappy and upset lately and I’m sure it’s something to do with cheerleading. Sara left the game yesterday, she called me to pick her up, but she hasn’t told me why. I wonder if there was some teasing or something?”
“The boys on the team are always teasing us, that’s just what boys do,” said Renee, shrugging.
“How do they tease you?”
“Oh, you know, they think we’re silly. They make fun when we touch up our makeup, stuff like that.”
“I think it must be more than that,” insisted Lucy. “Do they make personal remarks about your appearance? Your figures?”
“Well, you know boys. It’s all about boobs to them.” Renee gave a world-weary sigh. “Americans are so silly about their bodies.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lucy in a small voice.
Renee took a drink of water. “I was in Europe this summer, you know…”
“So was my daughter Elizabeth,” said Lucy.
“Really? Then you know what I’m talking about.”
Lucy didn’t have a clue, but then Elizabeth had only been home for a few days and there really hadn’t been time for a heart-to-heart chat. Lucy was pretty sure she was going to find time now. “I didn’t really get a chance to hear about her trip,” she said.
“Too bad. I bet she had a great time. I sure did. I stayed with my cousins in France, and after a while there we all went hiking in Italy, in the Cinque Terre. It’s so beautiful there. Did Elizabeth go there?”
“I don’t really know,” said Lucy, feeling dumber by the minute.
“The point I’m trying to make is, well, people in France and Italy are a lot more comfortable about their bodies. My cousins never wore bikini tops for swimming, for example. On the beach, some do and some don’t and it’s perfectly okay.”
Lucy swallowed hard, wondering if Elizabeth had spent half the summer prancing about topless.
“I have this funny story,” said Renee, smiling and flapping her hand. “Like I said, we were hiking in the Cinque Terre. It’s really rough there, the trails are steep and rocky, but gorgeous, right along the sea. You can imagine: rocky like Maine but warm and the houses have those red tile roofs. So, after hours of hiking we finally came to this place where we could swim. It was a gorgeous little cove. Beautiful blue, blue water. So my cousins and I all stripped off our clothes and jumped in and we were floating around, just relaxing and cooling off, not really noticing anything, when we heard this awful voice. This woman, this American woman had come along the trail after us, with her kids, and when she saw us in the water she went crazy. She was yelling at the kids to cover their eyes, not to look. We were dying with laughter, we thought it was sooo funny.” Then Renee’s tone changed and became more serious. “But the weird thing was, even though I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong, that woman made me feel as if I was. As if swimming without a suit was somehow dirty or something. So I decided then and there that I wasn’t ever going to be ashamed of my body ever again. So that’s why when this whole boob thing started…”
Lucy interrupted. “I don’t understand. What boob thing?”
“Well, first they wanted to know if they were real…”
“Who wanted to know?”
“Well, Matt Engelhardt and his little sidekicks Justin and Will started it, but pretty soon the whole team was in on it. They wanted to check them out, you know, touch them. So after a while we got sick of that and told them they could touch but they had to close their eyes, you know, so they wouldn’t know who they were touching.”
“Sara? Sassie?”
“We all did it,” said Renee. “We were hoping that would be the end of it, that they’d leave us alone, but it wasn’t. Then they started wanting to see them.”
“You didn’t…” began Lucy.
“Oh, I did. I was just sick and tired of it, so I stood up and lifted my bra and flashed them. I mean, what’s the big deal? If they were in Italy or France, instead of the U.S., all they’d have to do is go to the beach and they could see all the boobs they wanted.”
“And where was the coach when this was going on?” demanded Lucy.
“Coach Buck usually sleeps on the bus trips,” said Renee, adding a wicked smile, “or pretends to.”
“You think he knows what’s going on?”
“He not only knows, he encourages a lot of stuff. It’s like he wants to be popular with the cool kids, at least that’s what I’ve heard.”
“From the players?”
“Not exactly. You know, I guess everybody knows that Preston and I are good friends.”
Now it was Lucy’s turn to smile. “I have heard something about it.”
Renee rolled her eyes. “Sassie’s mom gives him the evil eye every time he comes over.”
“She’s very protective,” said Lucy.
“Whatever,” said Renee, with a huge sigh. “Anyway, Preston isn’t on the team but his little brother, Tommy, is on the JV team. And Preston says Tommy tells him there’s all kinds of weird stuff going on, especially at that summer training camp they have.” She leaned closer to Lucy. “He makes them play Twister—naked!” She giggled. “I’m going to get the game and take it to France next summer. The cousines will adore it. But there’s other stuff, mean stuff. He says Tommy got pretty upset about it.”
A little idea popped up in Lucy’s brain. “Did you tell anybody about this?” she asked.
Renee shrugged. “Just my mom.” She waggled a finger at Lucy. “And that’s another thing that’s different in France. Girls are a lot closer to their mothers there, they tell them everything, and their mothers don’t give them a lot of grief like Sassie’s mom. She wants to keep Sassie a baby forever. Not like my Tante Marie. She accepts that her daughters are growing up and gives them helpful advice.” She paused. “And birth control pills.”
Just then the door flew open and Frankie marched in. “Can you believe it? After all that, the guy was a no-show!” She stamped her foot. “I hate it when that happens.”
“Well, Mom, you were late. Maybe you missed him.”
Lucy wondered who was the mother and who was the child in the LaChance household. Frankie soon set her straight.
“That’s enough from you, Miss Smarty-pants,” she snapped. Then her tone softened. “Were you able to help Mrs. Stone?”
“She was terrific,” said Lucy. “You should be very proud of her.”
“Oh, I am,” said Frankie, slipping an arm around her daughter’s waist and kissing her on each cheek.
Amazingly, Renee didn’t push her away but returned the gesture. Lucy was so impressed by the open and affectionate atmosphere between mother and daughter that she decided to throw caution to the wind.