Heatwave in the Hamptons

Even a five-day heatwave couldn’t slow down the people in the Hamptons.

Being from Texas, August afternoons featuring a thermostat inching above the 100 degree mark wasn’t that surprising to me. But Mikey explained to me that August was the busiest month in those little towns way out east on Long Island -- the towns that make up the illusive Hamptons -- mostly because of the breezier days and cooler nights: “The guys want to golf in white pants during the day and then drink their wine in Vineyard Vine pullovers afterwards. You can’t do that shit in June but usually, in August, you can,” he explained to me. 

Mikey’s dad, Mike, ran a landscaping company that handled a lot of property in the area. “We’re the people who make the Hamptons the Hamptons,” he always said. And he was right: It’s not like the people buying the million dollar homes did anything to make them so stunning. 

Of course, our work didn’t stop because of the heat. If anything, there was more to do: flowerbeds needed more pruning, the grasses needed more watering (which meant more cutting), and so on. But I thought that, like in Texas, the hotter it got, the slower life would get, the slower people would move. I thought men would abandon their tee-times and women would forgo their morning jaunts and couples would skip their afternoon tennis matches. But I was wrong.

Before my summer working for Mike in the Hamptons, I had never even known where they were. I had heard of them -- the Hamptons -- of course, through pop culture references and movies and stuff like that, but I didn’t even know they were in New York. I guess I thought they were off the coast of Massachusetts. But, going to a school in New York surrounded by the East Coast’s Elite (or, I should say, the East Coast Elite’s Kids), I figured out that it was Nantucket that was off the coast of Mass, along with Martha’s Vineyard, and the Hamptons were all the way east on Long Island and the White Mountains were in New Hampshire and the Catskills were in Upstate New York and so on. Everyone seemed to go somewhere. And all of these destinations were foreign to me --  a first-generation poor kid on scholarship from Texas -- but even from the way my peers said the names of these places, I knew they meant money and exclusivity. 

But Mikey got it. He grew up on Long Island, somewhere between the city and the Hamptons, but he was first-gen, too, and seemed to have a similar upbringing to me in terms of wealth and experience and parents. Nothing says “fast friends” like being the poor kids on scholarship at a university that costs 70k a year in one of the most expensive cities in the world. 

When Mikey asked if I wanted to work for his dad that summer, I was quick to say yes: Texas was slow in the summer. And hot. And I wasn’t particularly drawn to the idea of waiting tables at the old restaurant down the street from my parent’s house or hanging out with my high school friends who all went to UT together and were still living the same lives they had a year ago.

But in those dog days of summer that August, the heatwave reminded me of home. The only problem is that “home” for the people visiting the Hamptons was far from Texas, and these people didn’t know how to slow down. 

Mikey and I shared a room in a small house that we stayed in with three girls: Mara and Jackie,  who were working as housekeepers for the summer, and Veronica, who was a waitress at a seafood place off the main street. 

“I guess I didn’t realize that filthy rich white women get boob sweat, too,” Mara said jokingly as we all sat around the living room in our underwear and gym clothes at the end of the first day of the heatwave. We didn’t have air conditioning. 

“Right? Mrs. Vanhermert filled an entire laundry hamper with clothes she sweat through today,” Jackie added. 

Mikey shook his head. “What’s the point of that?” 

“Of what?” Veronica asked as she reached for another beer from the cooler she had her feet propped up on. 

“Of changing your clothes so much during a heatwave. You’re gonna sweat through whatever you put on.”

“Lot’s of social appointments to be fresh for, Mikey boy,” Mara teased as she cracked open the beer whose condensation dripped onto her thigh. 

Mikey shrugged, sat back, and took a sip of his beer. “I guess.” 

“We saw that man who lives in the white house off Westwood golfing today in white pants with a sweater tied around his shoulders,” I told the room, laughing at the mental image from earlier.

“Oh yeah,” Mikey sat up from his relaxed position, excited to pick up the story. “Deadass. You could literally see his ass sweat.”

The girls groaned and laughed, a mixture of disgust and disbelief. 

This is how we ended most nights -- drinking, relaxing, making fun of the people who paid us to take care of them and their homes. 

But at the end of the fifth day of the heatwave, once we were all home and fed and ready to partake in our usual nightly ritual, I didn’t want to partake. I didn’t want to share what happened to me that day. 

I had been cutting hedges in the backyard of a light blue house with a long, skinny pool. A girl with short blonde hair watched me from a deck chair she had set up in the grass, in the shade of the house. She was probably around 10 or 11-years-old.

I hated when people watched me work. I never knew what to say. It didn’t happen often, though. The perpetrator was almost always a child or a very old person: the groups of society whom we forgive for breaking social codes such as “don’t pay attention to the help.” 

So, once it became apparent that this girl had no intention of ignoring me, I waved at her. 

She was eager to wave back. It reminded me of my four-year-old niece back home, the way she would stare at me and burst into an embarrassed smile when I finally shot her a wink. 

I continued with my work, my hat pulled low, trying not to think about my audience. But, like any kid eager for attention, she made that task difficult for me: She jumped into the pool. The sound of her body hitting the water startled me. I looked up immediately. I couldn’t find her at first, but then I saw her eyes bobbing above the water, squinted from the huge grin she was hiding just below the surface. I chuckled and shook my head. She got me. And she knew it. 

So I finished up my work to the sounds of her splashing and swimming in the water, trying to get my attention. She moved along the length of the pool as I moved along the length of the hedge, away from the house. Every once in a while, I’d shoot her a glance like I would my niece, that furrowed-brow and pursed-lips look that adults give kids when they’re teasing them or trying to get them to smile. And every time, she’d giggle and dive underwater. 

It was cute. It made cutting hedges less mundane. It made me smile. I was excited to tell Mikey and Veronica and Mara and Jackie about the little girl who didn’t know any better than to not play games with the help. 

I thought of some of the girls I had met at school this year who talked about how close they were with their nannies or gardeners. I wondered if this girl would grow up one day and talk about me, her parent’s landscaper in the Hampton’s. 

And it’s when I was thinking of these things that I heard the girl splashing again. I shot her another glance to make her laugh, but her eyes weren’t above the water, and the splashing hadn’t stopped. She was flailing around in what I realized was the deep end of the pool. 

I realized what was happening almost immediately, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I froze for a full three or four seconds, my clippers hanging limply by my side, my jaw hanging open, my eyes, unblinking, watching this little blonde girl drown right in front of me. 

Of course, my senses came back to me and I jumped in, fully clothed. My feet easily reached the bottom of the pool where she was struggling. I grabbed her around her waist and her arms immediately clung around my neck. I didn’t realize I was saying “you’re okay” over and over again until her splashing had stopped.

She heaved deep, heavy coughs on me while I walked us back to the shallow end and out of the pool, the whole while still repeating “you’re okay,” to this little stranger who was shaking in my arms as I held her. 

Once we were out of the pool, I set her down on the chair in the shade that she had first been on when I started working in her backyard. She was rubbing her eyes, still coughing, but otherwise saying nothing. I stood in front of her, awkwardly, soaking wet, my polo clinging to my body, my hat missing from my head. 

“Are you okay?” I asked, unsure of what to say in a situation like this. 

“Yeah,” she responded quietly, not looking at me.  “I went too far. Sorry.” The giggling girl who reminded me of my niece was nowhere to be found.

“Hey, no worries!” I said, too brightly, trying to lighten the mood, “I was hoping I’d get a swim in today, anyways.” 

She offered me a slight grin and looked at the pool. “Your hat,” she said, pointing towards the deep end. 

I followed her point and saw my hat floating where I had jumped in. When I turned back around to look at her, though, I noticed a woman, presumably her mother, dressed in a white tank top and white tennis skirt, staring at me through a back window. The second our eyes met, she started moving towards the back door.

For the second time that afternoon, but for a different reason, I stood still, speechless, and awkward, not knowing what to do. Why was my first instinct to start running away? 

The woman opened the backdoor and shouted, sternly, flatly, “Daisy, come get ready for tennis. We’re going to be late.” 

The girl immediately shot up from the chair and started rushing towards her mother, who was holding open the door. Before she was out of earshot, though, I heard her murmur “sorry” again. 

The girl disappeared behind her mother, somewhere into the house. Her mother remained holding open the door, staring at me. I stared back stupidly, not sure if I should make a joke or not. I felt the urge to apologize for my wetness, for touching her daughter, for interacting with her, for disrupting her in some way. But I’m glad I didn’t. When I realized that saving her daughter’s life was nothing to apologize for, I closed my mouth, and all of a sudden, my stupid blank gaze became one of anger: Where had her mother been? How much had she seen? Why had she not thanked me? And who had taught this little girl how to apologize twice for almost drowning? 

But the woman didn’t say anything. She broke our impromptu staring contest and turned to go into the house, shutting the door behind her without looking back. 

So there I was, finally alone in the yard, my hat in the pool, my clothes dripping wet, the 100 degree sun beating down on me, perplexed by what had just happened. 

I got my hat and put it back on. I picked up my clippers and finished the job, even though I didn’t want to: Why should I do something for a woman who couldn’t thank me for jumping into the pool to save her daughter? If she actually didn’t see what had happened, why didn’t she at least ask me why I was wet? Did she just think I went for a swim? Did she think I was some sort of creep? Was she going to gossip to the other women at tennis about how her landscaper went swimming in her pool this afternoon? And who in their right minds would go run around that hot, green tennis court on the fifth day of a heatwave? Didn’t these women ever get tired? 

By the time I was done clipping and cleaning the hedges around the pool, my clothes were already dried. From the heat or my rage, I can’t be sure, but I was ready to get home, ready to tarnish this woman’s reputation before my like-minded roommates over our cold beers in our hot living room. 

But for some reason, I felt compelled to keep this story to myself. Because it made me want to cry. Because I was so tired of the women who made me feel like I had to apologize or run away. Because I wanted to rescue the little girl from becoming the type of young adult in their first year of college whom I found so egotistical, so unreachable, so alike their parents. Because I was jealous. Because I was proud. Because, at nineteen, I figured the only life I’ll ever know is the life of the help. Because I wished that more than just kids and old people noticed me on the eastern beaches of Long Island. Because of the heat. Because making the Hamptons, the Hamptons was complex, depressing work that no one -- not the woman in the white tennis shorts nor her landscaper -- knew how to talk about.