Diane phoned. “You free for a walk?”

            “Of course,” Judy replied. She was sure Diane meant ‘I need to talk.’ “Stone parking lot at ten?”

            Half an hour later, Diane could see Judy’s green Volvo in her rear-view mirror as she flashed her beach pass. Then she realized there was no one in the booth. So much for the 2002 beach pass. She tossed it onto the passenger seat. This was the sweet part of summer, a weekday morning in September with no crowds and the warmest water of the season. She parked her crimson Audi in the small lot enclosed by gray stone walls from the old estate that had become a town park.

            Judy pulled in next to her and popped out to give her a hug.

            “Full round?” Judy asked.

            Diane nodded and they headed along the road.

            “So, what is it?”

            “Chet.”

            “And?”

            “Well, what do you think about him?”

            “Specifically?” Judy was puzzled. She had known Diane’s son since his birth. What was she supposed to say?

            “His social life.”

            “Charming guy. Always surrounded by friends. The cute girls went for him, but he kept his options open.”

            Diane looked across the cove to the small island in the center and the stately homes along the far shore. “Yeah, options.” 

            Judy waited, knowing there must be something more.

            “When he was a little boy, I thought it was sweet how he liked to play with girls’ toys as well as boys’. Then he got big and strong and tried to be macho, as if he had to prove he was tough. That was all we got for a hint.”

            Judy waited again, watching her friend’s face grapple with some unknown beast.

            “I mean, I’m very liberal. I have nothing against it. I just never saw it coming.”

            And then Judy knew, or guessed, but she waited for Diane to say it. The pause was long. They kept walking along the road toward the little clubhouse and the steep beach where dinghies waited on racks for weekend sailors.

            “He told us last night…” Diane started, then failed. She stopped, faced Judy and tried again, blurting, “He’s gay.”

            Judy had guessed right, but now she had no idea what to say. The news was surprising, but it wasn’t actually bad, she thought. Chet was alive and well and felt close enough to his parents to tell them and believe they would still love him. Could she say that to Diane? Definitely not the right moment to say she had always thought Chet was a good name for a gay guy.

            Judy reached up to put a hand on Diane’s shoulder. Diane paused, then turned back along the road to continue the walk.

            “I mean, how am I, how are we, supposed to deal with that? It means we failed him all those years he was trying to figure himself out. I still love him. But do I even know him?”

            “He’s a wonderful guy,” Judy tried.

            “But what guy is he? The boy we thought we knew? The man he now feels he is?”

            “Can you get to know him again, the new him?”

            Diane went on with her train of thought. “It’s like he came in and tore up the photo albums and burned all the scrapbooks. Like we had a little stranger in the house and now we hear that he’s someone else entirely.”

            “But he’s not,” Judy asserted. “He’s discovered who he is. He loves you enough to count on you to still love him. He’s the same Chet.”

            “I know. Or I keep trying to tell myself that. I love him so much. And I’m scared for him. Will people accept him? What if he gets AIDS? What if he gets killed like Matthew Shepard? Can you imagine what it’s like?”

            Judy had some idea but did not say so.

            They walked in silence. No traffic on the narrow park road, just the threat from poison ivy along the edges.

            Diane had said her bit. That wasn’t going to change reality. She asked how things were with Judy.

            “Quite a weekend in our house, too.”

            Diane looked at her best friend.

            “You’ve met Belle’s boyfriend, Jesse, right?”
            Diane nodded.

            “What’d you think?”

            Diane hesitated. Never liked the guy, she thought. Do I say that? “Not my cup of tea,” she replied.

            “And I’m strictly a coffee girl.” Judy forced a laugh. “Well, Belle announced that they’re gonna get married.” She held up a hand to stop the automatic congratulations. “He is so bad for her, bad to her, gets her to be bad. Just awful.”
            “I’m so sorry.”

            “Yeah, me, too.” Judy thought about teasing that they should pair their kids up, solve both problems, but it didn’t seem funny.

            They paused as they reached the open lawns and the fieldstone chimney where a summer mansion had stood.

            “That bad?” Diane asked.

            “Afraid so. I wonder if she’s doing it to get back at me.”

            “For what?”

            “For talking to her last winter about how I didn’t think he was the right man for her.”

            “Hard to say something. Hard not to when you think they’re making a mistake.” How painful, Diane thought, to have a daughter so angry and acquire a son-in-law who promised trouble. Classic Judy to be blunt about it. “What’s Frank think?”

            Judy laughed. “She’s his darling daughter, so anything she does is fine with him.”

            “About Jesse?”

            “Oh, they get along great. They have deep, personal conversations about whether the Rangers are ever going to win the Stanley Cup again.”

            Diane burst out laughing. She thought of her husband trying not to cry as Chet talked to them the night before. It helped her that she and Max were on the same wavelength.

            Judy looked around the grounds. “Hey, remember our treasure hunts here?”
            “Clues hidden in the cracks of the chimney.”

            “Looking for sassafras leaves.”

            “Both kinds – a mitten and a three-fingered hand.”

            They started along the trail through the woods.

            “And the counselor who was so ashamed about her weight that she wore a girdle under her Bermuda shorts,” Judy reminded her.

            “When it was ninety degrees out.”

            “Really glad we missed that part of the fifties.” As they reached the rocky point, she added, “But we did get the bathing caps and rubber swimming shoes part.” She posed like a ‘40s bathing beauty, one hand on her hip, the other under her chin.

            “Made us swim here on the stony point instead of walking to the actual beach.”

            “That was the teen-agers’ beach, full of temptations.”

            “Transistor radios and rock’n’roll.”

            “Oooh,” Judy pretended to cringe at the thought of such sins.

            The path took them past the lagoon, edged by stone walls, and then around to the “teen-agers’ beach” with its open-air pavilion and its concession stand, now closed for the season. Sneakers in hand, Diane and Judy sprinted down to the smooth gray sand exposed by low tide.

            “I think there’s only one photo of us together at the beach as kids,” Diane said.

            “Really? You have one?”

            “My mom does. I’ll see if I can get copies made.”

            “You wore your suit, right?”

            “Always.”

            They piled their shirts, shorts and hats on the dry sand above the high tide line and spun around in a race to the water. They didn’t hesitate, as they had done as children with early morning swim lessons on chilly days, but dived right in.

            “All the way?” Judy challenged as they popped up at the same time.

            “Sure.” They took off to swim the length of the beach and back, each with a personal mix of crawl, breaststroke and backstroke, even sidestroke.

            Out of breath as they finished together near the westernmost swimming buoy, Diane noticed how the water equalized them: She looked no taller than Judy, and Judy’s wet blonde curls looked almost as dark and smooth as her own graying hair. Friends. She kept it simple: “Thanks.”

            “For…?”

            “Giving me some perspective.”

            “Think we both need distance. Like looking at it from another planet.”

            “Or upside down,” Diane proposed as she dived and went into a handstand under water, long legs flailing in the air.

            Judy copied her. They both came up laughing.

            “Can’t tell you when I last did that,” Judy admitted.

            “Just what we needed.”

            “Glad we got these little things ironed out.” Judy stuck out her tongue.

            “As always.”

            They waded ashore, gathered their things and walked back to their cars in the stone parking lot, dripping and drying in the air, since they hadn’t brought towels.

            “You’re the best,” they both said, pointing at each other in their signature sign-off.

            As they turned to go their own ways, Judy shot back a question: “You coming to the wedding?”

            “Are you?”

            Judy laughed. “As long as the champagne lasts.”

            “Well, I won’t have one to invite you to.”

            “You might. And I love Amsterdam.”