Read Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir for Free Online

the talk to baseball—she let me sit by her side. She remembered that, when she had gone to the movies with Charlotte, she was forced to walk several paces behind Charlotte and sit by herself seven rows to the rear of Charlotte’s group. No exception was allowed, and Charlotte had warned her that if she told our mother about their arrangements she would be committing a mortal sin in the eyes of the church, called “tattletaling.” The routine continued until Jeanne, in preparation for her First Communion, went to First Confession. She told the priest of her temptation to tell her mother about her unhappiness, though she knew it was a mortal sin to tattle. The priest laughed, and told her she needn’t worry. Tattletaling was not a mortal sin. When Jeanne emerged from the confessional with a big smile on her face, Charlotte knew the jig was up. From that day forward, she had to let Jeanne walk beside her on the sidewalk and sit next to her at the movies.

    My favorite sight at Jones Beach was the Art Deco poolhouse (
above
), a veritable castle of red and tan brick that held the magnificent pool. I had been told the tower (
right
) was a prison where little kids were held if they did not obey their elders.

    Jeanne also let me accompany her when she and her friends went to Jones Beach, which remains the finest beach I have ever seen, finer than the exclusive resorts on the Caribbean, finer than the private beaches in Malibu. Jones Beach was not just sand and water but a world-class public resort, “a kind of people’s palace or people’s country club,” as critic Paul Goldberger once described it, “as careful and determined in its symbolism as a seat of government.” Completed in 1929 under the leadership of New York Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, it was unparalleled as a design for public space: six miles of perfectly kept snowy white sand, two giant bathhouses, two large, heated, saltwater pools for fifteen thousand swimmers, dressing rooms, lockers, beach shops, comfort stations, five cafeterias, and a marine dining room. A paradise for children and grown-ups alike, it contained two ice-cream parlors, a roller-skating rink, an outdoor dance floor, an Indian Village, and a mile-long boardwalk with a pitch-and-putt golf course, shuffleboard, Ping-Pong, handball, paddle tennis, and archery.
    Approaching the beach from the parkway, we knew we were drawing near as soon as we caught a glimpse of the giant red brick water tower that stood as the symbol of the park and could be seen for many miles on a clear day. I caught my breath in anticipation not unmarked by apprehension every time I saw the tower, which stood nearly two hundred feet high and resembled a Venetian campanile. Though the tower presaged our arrival at the beach, it also had an aura of menace: I had been told that this tower was in fact a prison where little kids were held if they didnot obey their elders at the beach. I could never figure out how the kids were lowered into the tower, or what they did once they were inside, but I did not pursue my curiosity, deciding it was better not to know too many details.
    Our parking lot was Number Four, connected to the beach and the bathhouses by an underground tunnel that formed an echo chamber if you shouted “helloooo,” as we invariably did. Emerging from the tunnel, we were greeted by a fabulous display of petunias and, if we were lucky, five or six cottontail bunnies scurrying amidst the flowers. My favorite sight was the Art Deco poolhouse, a veritable castle of red and tan brick that held the magnificent pools. My sister and her friends preferred the ocean beach. Radios settled carefully on the edge of their blankets, they lay for hours, securing their tans, flirting with boys, and reading love stories in
True Confessions
. Every now and then they would stir from their lethargy to add a layer of their favorite tanning concoction, a mixture of baby oil, iodine, and cocoa butter. When the heat of the sun