1. The Augusts
"Jules!" Tibby Quillis yelled from the kitchen, balancing her youngest daughter, 18-month-old Rebecca on her hip. The kitchen TV was turned to a film documentary, available on On-Demand. Ever since that one summer she had created the documentary with Bailey when she was 16, she had become crazy with documentaries. Go figure, it was about a friend's death. It would be depressing if Tibby had decided to sit down and watch it, but she was just to pre-occupied to pay attention. "Jules!" she yelled again, opening the fridge.
16-year-old Jules Quillis entered the kitchen, holding a video tape in her hands. It was labeled "B" in red ink. "Look what I found," she said. "What is this?" She indicated toward the tape.
"It was a tape I made when I was 16." Tibby slammed the fridge shut, and looked thoughtful. "Well, actually my 'assistant' Bailey made it."
"The girl who died of leukemia?" Jules asked, sitting down on a bar stool.
Tibby looked sad. "Yes." She grabbed the TV remote and turned off the documentary. Suddenly she wasn't interested.
"Can I watch it?" Her oldest daughter was looking up with her big brown eyes.
"Jules, you don't have to ask, I've told you. The tapes downstairs are for everyone's 'viewing pleasures'. It's probably broken or it skips an awful lot. Can you watch Rebecca while I run to Duncan's?" Duncan's was the local supermarket, kind of like Wallman's that Tibby worked at so long ago. "Natalie should be at the William's, and Hannah is at ballet."
"You sure do quote a lot."
"Watch Rebecca and I'll stop quoting." Tibby threw the remote on the counter and set Rebecca on a chair at the dining room table.
"Fine," Jules said groanfully, but took Rebecca anyway. "Be back soon, though."
"Why, you got a hot date?" Tibby asked, still searching for her purse.
"I wish." Jules bobbed Rebecca up and down on her knee slowly.
"Aha!" Tibby cried triumphantly when she found her cargo purse at the bottom of the shoe closet. "Found it! I'll be back soon. And this time, Jules, check her diaper." She kissed her daughter's cheek. "Bye."
"Bye, Mom." She watched her Mom walk out of the kitchen, heard her open and slam the front door, and a few seconds later, their silver SUV engine rev. "Come on, Becca. Let's see what fun there is in the living room."
Lena Paoli sketched quietly on the back patio, enjoying the sounds of the birds chirping. Her oldest daughter, Belinda, was asleep on the lawn, after reading The Complete Works of Shakespeare. She smiled at the thought of her child reading Shakespeare. After all, she was the one who started it. She pulled her dark, luscious brown hair into a ponytail to keep it from her eyes. She glanced down at her sketch of the apple tree in their backyard. Horrible, she commented to herself.
Her youngest daughter, Sophia, pulled back the screen door, wearing her bathing suit, hoping to go for a dive in the backyard built-in pool. Even at her old age, Lena envied her daughter's crisp tan and good body, but yet she wished Sophia would actually like her body. "So much for the quiet," Lena joked, smiling.
"It is so hot here," Sophia commented as she slipped into the pool, wetting her hair. "But this water feels nice. Come on, Mom, get in."
"I'm sketching," Lena excused herself, going back to her drawing. "Besides, my suit is inside and I don't want to go get it."
Sophia laughed. "Come on, Mom, have some fun. Jump in the pool with all your clothes on."
Lena looked at her daughter. "I just bought this shirt. I don't want to ruin it."
"Then why did you wear it. A hot Sunday afternoon, in the first week of summer?"
Lena sighed, and looked down at her white t-shirt with a floral print and the hems. Grinning, she stood up, pulled of her shirt and pants, revealing a matching bra-and-underwear set, and splashed into the pool. As she broke the surface of the water, she sighed peacefully. The ninety degree weather had beaten the crap out of her, and the cool pool water refreshed her. She floated on her back, closed her eyes, floating on clouds…
Until a gigantic splash covered her and pushed her underwater. She spun, eyes wide open but couldn't see anything. A pair of arms wrapped around her, and she was pulled to the surface. When Lena sputtered water out of her mouth and opened her eyes, she was in the arms of her Italian husband, Fabrizio. He was grinning like a little boy. His handsome face shown in the sun, his eyes the color of the deepest blue.
"Fabri, don't do that!" Lena cried, slapping him on the arm, but she was still smiling. "You scared me!"
"I'm sorry," Fabrizio apologized, in his all-too-familiar accent to Lena. He kissed her warmly. "I was just having fun."
Lena looked over at Jules, who was laughing and hanging onto the diving board. "I give that an eight," she judged. Her dad smiled.
"Only an eight?" he questioned.
Lena's eyes widened. "You planned this!" she said.
Her husband gave her another grin, and she was positive if she was standing, her knees would give in. "So what if we were?"
It was her and the goal. The ball had to go in. Her dad stood in the way, but she was going to make it past. Carson Richman kicked the ball hard, and it soared between her father's hands and went straight into the corner of the orange goal.
She yelled in delight, and she and her mother, Bridget, ran the "airplane" over the field. "Amazing soccer player," Bridget congratulated her sixteen year old daughter. "But, of course, the goalie wasn't too hard to get passed…" Eric Richman, her husband who she had met at a soccer camp in Baja when she was sixteen, walked over and gave her a kiss.
"I'd like to see you in the goal with that thing," he joked, pointing to his daughter.
"Hey!" Carson cried, retying her long, thick, gorgeous blonde hair into a high ponytail at the top of her head.
"I never played goal," Bridget defended.
"Pity," Eric replied. "I don't think you could master it anyway."
Bridget sneered. "Funny."
Eric wiped sweat from his forehead. "I'm thirsty. Anybody want something to drink?"
"Water," Bridget said.
"Sprite," Carson replied, smiling. Her dad shook his head and disappeared into their beautiful house, two houses down from Tibby Quillis's.
Bridget rolled her eyes at her daughter, who looked so much like her. "I'm going to laugh my butt off when your teeth rot out," she said.
"I think I got my sweet tooth from your side of the family, thank you," Carson replied, lying down on the cool grass in the shade. Part of the reason her parents bough their house was because of their gigantic yard, complete with a swimming pool, and half of a soccer field, with a big net at the end. When she and her three best friends Sophia, Jules, and Ana, were toddlers, it was their ideal playpen. And it still was.
"No, it's hanging out with Tibby," Bridget answered. She sat next to her daughter, leaning against the goalpost. She sighed in the heat. "I declare tonight a Movie Night."
Carson smiled. Movie Nights were when Bridget's sisterhood, the mother's of her friends (Tibby, Lena, and Carmen), and her friends all got together at someone's house, with popcorn, sodas, and candy beyond candy. It was usually more than once a week. "Sounds good to me," Carson smiled. She looked over at her Mom. Their long blonde hair and bluish eyes were the same. She had inherited her father's nose and mouth.
"Yeah," Bridget agreed. "Does sound good."
Carmen groaned evilly at the pair of jeans that wouldn't fit her. They were perfect, bootleg, low-rise, but they just didn't fit. She quickly shredded them off and put on her own size ten jeans. She busted out of the dressing room to her beautiful Russian-Puerto Rican daughter, Tatiana, or Ana. She envied her daughter's figure—a size 4. Not fair. Well, she's 16, you're 43, a voice inside her head reasoned.
"What's wrong, they didn't fit?" Ana asked.
"I looked like a tramp," Carmen said huffily, throwing the jeans on a return rack. "They didn't fit."
"And they were perfect," Ana sighed, walking along the racks of clothes in Macy's at the mall.
"You not helping," Carmen said as they walked into the shoe section. She picked a size five pair of heels. If you could call that a heel. It looked more like a stick. "I hate my body," she moaned.
"Mom, you have a great body," Ana said. "Don't tell yourself you don't. And so what if you don't fit into those jeans? Screw the jeans."
"But they were pretty jeans."
"Stop sulking," Ana reasoned. "You'll only make yourself feel worse."
Carmen cast a glance at her daughter. "I hate it when you're right," she said.
"Then you are hateful all the time."
Carmen rolled her eyes. "Funny." Her cell phone buzzed in her purse. She zipped it open and pulled out her jewel-studded phone. "Hello? Yeah…Macy's…ok…but that's all the way at the other end of the mall…but—fine. I love you too." Carmen hung up the phone sulkily.
"What?" Ana asked, setting down a pair of size seven boots.
"Your dad wants us to pick out a tie for him for his business meeting tomorrow," Carmen said. "And he said there's a barbecue at the Quillis's. We better get going." Carmen looked at a pair of size five heels, did a double take, and snatched the pair off the rack.
"What are you doing?" Ana asked, following her mother to the register.
"Being spontaneous," she said dully.
"What?"
"I'm buying a pair of shoes."
Ana shook her head. "Mom, those are a size five."
"And your point is?"
"You're a size eight?"
Carmen threw the shoes on the register counter and pulled out her credit card. "I'll make them fit."