After we get our chairs and towels set up, I grab the spray bottle of sunscreen from my tote bag. Enzo always refuses it, but I like to spray it on the kids and definitely on myself. I’m the only one who ever gets sunburned, but isn’t sunscreen supposed to prevent cancer or something like that? Anyway, the kids don’t have a choice.
“Oh, Millie,” Suzette gasps as she watches me spray down Ada. “You’re not actually spraying sunscreen on your children, are you?”
I obviously am. “Yes…”
“Well, you know the spray has all sorts of toxic chemicals in it,” she says. “And it’s all in the air now. We’re basically all inhaling sunscreen now.”
Should I be more bothered about the fact that I might be inhaling sunscreen? Somehow, I’m not. “Uh-huh…”
“Also,” she adds, “it’s flammable.”
Nico’s eyes widen. “You mean we could catch on fire?”
“You’re not going to catch on fire from your sunscreen,” I tell him.
He looks disappointed.
Suzette reaches into her own bag and pulls out a white tube. “This is the best sunscreen on the market. It’s all natural ingredients, and it has SPF 200! You can’t find SPF 200 anywhere.”
Why on earth would we need sunscreen that is SPF 200? Does she think we’re going to be running through a circle of fire to get to the water?
Enzo has taken off his T-shirt, and I can’t help but notice the way Suzette’s eyes bulge as she looks over his dark, sculpted chest. I love that I have a handsome, muscular husband. But also, sometimes I wish he would let himself get fat and out of shape.
“Enzo,” she says, “would you like to try my sunscreen?”
He laughs. “I do not need. I never get burns.”
“Yes, but this is good for you even if you don’t get burned,” she says. “It prevents skin cancer, you know.”
“Yeah?” Enzo says with interest, although I have been saying the exact same thing to him for the last decade.
“Yes, of course it does,” she says eagerly. “You should at least put it on your shoulders. Here, let me help you.”
My mouth falls open as Suzette squeezes some sunscreen onto her palm and then starts rubbing it onto my husband’s shoulders. Is she really doing this? Is she really rubbing sunscreen all over my husband? This seems wildly inappropriate.
I look over at Jonathan, expecting that he will seem as horrified as I feel. But he has his own tube of obscenely expensive sunscreen that is apparently made for people who will be vacationing on the sun, and he’s rubbing lotion onto his arms. Then he tries to get some on his back, but he can’t quite reach, and of course, his wife is busy rubbing her hands all over my husband.
“I am good,” Enzo says after this goes on for far too long. “I have enough. Will come off in the water anyway.”
“Oh no,” Suzette says, “this stuff is waterproof. You could swim all day, and you will still have SPF 200 protection.”
Enzo’s eyes widen. “Yeah?”
I am so sick of hearing about this stupid sunscreen.
“Ada,” Suzette says. “Would you like to try this sunscreen?”
Ada looks down at the tube but then shakes her head. I don’t blame her. She never burns, like Enzo, and I’m sure she doesn’t want to smear that white cream all over herself.
“Nico?” Suzette asks.
Nico just stares at Suzette. He doesn’t answer, but he gives her this really cold look. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him look at someone that way before, and the truth is, it sends a chill down my spine. But then he looks away, and I’m not sure if I imagined the whole thing.
The kids want to go in the water, and Enzo is happy to take them. I would have thought Suzette would be the kind of person who would want to sunbathe on the beach all afternoon, especially after the fuss she kicked up about where we were going to park ourselves. But as soon as Enzo says he wants to go in the water, she quickly agrees to follow.
“You want to come, Millie?” Enzo asked me.
I shake my head. “I’m just going to relax over here.”
Jonathan rubs at a glob of sunscreen that is still intact on the bridge of his nose. He starts to follow Suzette, but before he can take more than a couple of steps, she turns to look at him. “No,” she says. “You stay here. I’m going for a swim.”
He nods and, without question, turns around to go back to his beach chair. He settles down and picks up a paperback. I crane my neck to look at the title. Madame Bovary.
“You don’t want to go for a swim?” I ask him.
He waves a hand. “Not really.”
“Because it looked like you were going to go in the water before Suzette told you not to.”
“I don’t mind.”
Maybe he doesn’t mind, but I find Suzette’s bossiness infuriating, and before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “It just seems like it shouldn’t be Suzette’s decision whether you go swimming or not.”
Jonathan shrugs and smiles. “She likes to have her space sometimes. I don’t mind, like I said.”
I’ve asked around, and it turns out Suzette isn’t that successful as a real estate agent. Yet she has the biggest house by far in our cul-de-sac, in a town where housing prices are very high. Clearly, Jonathan is the one making all the money to support her lifestyle. Yet she’s the one who gets to boss him around. I mean, he isn’t even allowed to go in the water at the beach? That’s nuts.
“It’s a huge body of water,” I point out. “It’s the Atlantic Ocean. It seems like both of you could swim in it without bothering each other.”
