The Jameson Place

Fourteen years ago, when I was two, Mom let her cousin Reggie park his Vanagon on our property in return for building our house, while we lived in the Travelodge in the next town over. “It’s better to trust family,” she said. And Reggie trusted that she didn’t know the smell of pot. The result of his endeavor was a two bedroom, one bath cape with red shutters and a blue door. Mom called it her beach house, but it was two streets away from the actual sand. “It’ll be worth a gold mine someday,” she said as a constant reminder as to why we fought the New England winters with a wood stove and warm sweaters. Reggie continued to live in his van in the backyard.

Nate lived across the street and three houses down. Reggie also built his family’s house, and had planted the pot that grew under the front porch. We didn’t realize what it was until the first day of our sixteenth summer, when we saw his dad and Reggie roll it in paper and smoke it like a cigarette. From then on out we did the same every afternoon while our parents were at work. Sometimes we’d go into the back shed, him sitting on the lawnmower and I on a broken Adirondack chair that gave my thighs splinters. Sometimes we’d crawl under the porch and watch the cars go by. Sometimes we’d go to the beach, to this cove accessible only by water or a hike over slippery rocks or the Jameson stairs. We’d bring his dad’s gin and a pipe, and lose ourselves in the salt water. That was our place. He kissed me once there, but said it was an accident, he didn’t mean to, he was high and didn’t know what he was doing.

We only got caught once. Nate’s mom came home from work early with a headache and immediately smelled us out. She yelled at Nate’s dad until her headache became a migraine. From then on we were more careful about when and where to have our fun, if for no other reason than to preserve Nate’s parents’ marriage.

Mid-June, Reggie’s ex-wife died, and their daughter came to live in his van. Most nights, Leanna would sleep in my room. It had purple lace curtains, purple carpeting and a white trundle bed with purple linens. “I don’t think it’s right, a young woman sleeping in a van,” she said. “Plus, I don’t think he showers.”

She was wrong, though. Reggie showered when it rained. “It’s nature’s way of saying you smell bad,” he’d say while taking a towel from our linen closet. And then Mom would shut all the back window blinds.


Leanna and I got jobs working as ice cream scoopers at Shane’s Dairy. She recommended the malted vanilla, while I preferred the black cherry with hot white chocolate fudge. We both gained weight the first week, but by the second had lost the weight by a combination of our lactose-induced diarrhea and sticking fingers down our throats.

Nate didn’t work until the end of that summer. He was a regular at Shane’s, and eventually welcomed himself to a chair between the freezers. “So I can see my two favorite girls and eat my favorite food, all day long,” he said. He liked chocolate caramel ripple, ate about a quart a day, and never gained a pound.

I came back from the restroom once to see them making out, she sitting on the counter, her legs wrapped around his torso.

“What the hell?” I said, and whacked Nate with a towel. “Have you been smoking?”
“Maybe,” he said, and pinched my butt on his way out the door.


In July, Reggie built a treehouse for us. In his mind, Leanna and I were eleven years old and still playing with dolls. But it was well constructed, so we humored him and slept there when the heat made sleeping in the house unbearable. Nate would sneak out to join us after his parents were sleeping.

We didn’t take Leanna to the cove until then. The nearly empty gin bottle was right where we had buried it, with a rock shaped like New Hampshire marking the spot. We finished it off, stripped to our underwear, and ran straight into the waves.

“What’s that?” Leanna asked, pointing to a light on the other side of the cove.

“The Jameson place,” Nate said. “I’ve been there once, when I was younger. My dad fixed a faucet or something.”

“I want to live there,” she said.


That night in the treehouse, I awoke having to pee. Nate was curled up next to sleeping Leanna, his head nuzzled in her brown curly hair, a huge erection in his pants. I kneed his butt just enough to wake him without disturbing Leanna.

“Cut it out,” I said.

“Did you see her at the beach? Those breasts?” he asked. I punched his arm, and he rolled over and went back to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep, so I walked around the neighborhood. I found a dead squirrel on the law of Nate’s house, and went home to get a plastic bag. After double-checking that it was knotted tight, I flung it through his open bedroom window. He thanked me for it in the morning.


August was sweltering. On the first Sunday of the month, the old people at church said it was the hottest on the books, worse than that summer when they were sixteen. That night, we camped in the tree house, Leanna and I. We spread a sleeping bag on the uneven floorboards, and each clutched a flashlight.

I asked her if she liked Nate, and she said no, he’s too scrawny and she only likes guys who are at least six feet tall.

“But, you know, he’s here, might as well.” She shrugged.

I rolled over, facing the wooden wall.

In the morning, Reggie called into the tree house for us to come down.

Leanna fumbled for her glasses and checked her watch. “Reggie, it’s 7:30. Let us sleep some more,” she yelled.

“I got some good news!” he hollered back.

I looked over the spilt rail fence and saw him prancing around the tree without a shirt on and holding a water bottle filled with iced tea. “Do we really need to come down there?” I asked.
“Oh for the love of God, just humor him!” Mom was shaking a rug outside the window of her second story room.

Leanna mumbled something under her breath about being allergic to mornings, and I followed her down the tree trunk.

“I got a job,” he said as he threw his hands in the air, his body leaning slightly backwards as if to open himself to the morning sun.

“That’s all? I’m going back to bed.” Leanna started to make her way to the house.

“I’m building a new porch at the Jameson place. A wrap-around the north and east sides.”

Leanna stopped in her tracks and asked without turning around, “Isn’t that the house on that cove?”

“The same one.”

“Great news, Reggie.” She continued on her way.

“I’m proud of you,” I said. I hugged his shirtless torso and followed Leanna to my room.

I opened the door, and she was already under the covers.



Reggie started working on the porch, and then decided it was too much for one man to do alone. He hired Nate for next to nothing, and the two of them spent a week just cutting the timber and staging the porch. Leanna and I brought them lunch. I’d talk to the guys while trying to ignore their sweaty stench, and she’d wander around the house, looking in the windows at the furniture covered in linen.

“Reggie, can we go in? Did they give you a key or something?”

He said no, that if he needed to go in, he’d get the key from the woman who watches the place during the off-season.


That night, Leanna wanted to go to the cove and then up to the mansion. We made our way along the path, with overgrown grass and weeds tickling our legs. A seagull startled us, causing Nate to drop the booze, which slid down the slick rocks into a crevice, where the waves banged the bottle against the stone. It was decided that Leanna had the thinnest arms, so she laid on a boulder covered with bird droppings, her upper body reaching into the abyss and butt in the air. Nate’s eyes were glue to her rump. I shoved him. He lost and then quickly regained, his balance.

Above those same rocks, keeping guard over the cove as waves and storms and tides abuse her shores, sat the mansion. We hiked the stairs leading to a lawn, where carefully manicured trees line the path to the house. I held two bags, one of pot and the other of marshmallows, Leanna held the gin, and Nate held both our hands until we reached the porch. Nate took a ladder Reggie had left that afternoon and leaned it against the siding. He opened an unlocked window, and told us to wait. He let us in the front door, and using our flashlights we guided ourselves from the entry to a living room. White sheets covered the furniture, but there was fresh wood in the fireplace. We walked past the dining room on the right, a library on the left, and then followed Nate into the kitchen. We stood the three flashlights around the sink.

“We need a fire,” I said, and opened the marshmallows.

Nate pointed to the sink. “Let’s do it here so there’s no smoke from the chimney.” He took a gulp of gin, and then passed me the bottle. Leanna went to the fireplace to gather kindling.

I arranged the kindling in the deeper of the two sides of the white porcelain sink while Leanna took a shot and Nate filled his pipe. In a cabinet, Leanna found dishes in newspaper, and unwrapped a few sheets to stick in the flames. Forks from the fine china became skewers for the marshmallows.

We left the mess in the kitchen and went back to our treetop.

The next day, when we brought lunch to the guys, Reggie told us there had been a break-in at the mansion.

“They left this, can you believe it?” he asked, holding up a bag with the remains of the pot. “It’s local grown,” he said.

Leanna bent to tie her shoe, and I could see Nate’s eyes stroke the curvature of her body.

“Any idea who it was?” I asked.

“Probably some stupid kids,” he said.

Four weeks and no more trips to the Jameson place later, I scopped Reggie some chocolate ice cream from mom’s stash in the back of the fridge.

“I have to go to Portland tomorrow,” he said.

“What for?”

“Collect my money. Porch’s finished.”


The next day, I pressed Reggie’s one and only white shirt and church pants. He sat on a kitchen chair on the porch, and I could hear Leanna asking him when he last had a haircut as she ran the scissors through his curls. “Now go take a proper shower,” she said, and nudged him toward the house. He used my lavender shampoo and Nate commented that he smelled quite lovely. Reggie didn’t own a pair of dress shoes; he had always worn sneakers to church. Nate loaned him his old pair.

“They have no arch support. How the hell am I supposed to walk my way to Portland with no arch support?”

“You’re not walking. That’s too far,” said Leanna.

Reggie said he wasn’t really going to walk the whole distance, he’d get rides along the way from passers-by. Nate called him crazy and said he’d take him, since he wanted to check on a guitar anyway. Leanna and I had to work, otherwise we would have gone with them.


Nate came back without a guitar and Reggie with a new bottle of vodka. He wanted to take us to dinner to celebrate a hefty bonus. Mom told him to save his money, but he wouldn’t listen. So she told him to change, he wouldn’t want the towns’ folk to wonder why he was all dressed up on a Wednesday. And this time he did listen.

He took off his shirt and handed it to Leanna, who examined the thin worn weave. I handed him a glass of iced tea.

Leanna turned to me and whispered. “We need to go back tonight, to the Jameson place.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s our last chance.”


We left at 10:30 for the mansion. Nate was high already and Leanna was drunk after three quick shots on an empty stomach. Neither could walk a straight line, so we took the road rather than the coast. The house was dark, and two of the three flashlights were out of batteries. I took the one good light, and we linked arms. We brought hotdogs this time, and roasted them over the sink fire until their casings turned black and cracked. We each ate two, and left the other two on the window ledge to appease the spirits of the house. We took the sheets off the living room furniture, plugged in the television, and sprawled on the leather sofas. Leanna fell asleep while Nate and I watched the last half hour of Stagecoach. He came over and sat on the edge of the couch.

“Did you know John Wayne’s real name was Marion?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He lay next to me. “Do you love me?”

“Maybe.”

The movie finished, and the lack of noise from the TV woke up Leanna. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I want to sleep in a four post bed.”

We took the gin and pot up the grand staircase and opened all the bedroom doors until we found the master bedroom. Behind the curtains, a wall of windows framed the ocean angered by wind. Nate stood on the dresser and unhooked one side of the curtain rod from the wall. Leanna and I removed the curtain and placed in on the naked bed as our blanket. We finished the gin and fell asleep.

I awoke having to pee and looked over at Nate and Leanna. They were sleeping naked, covered in their mixed sweat, his hand on her breast. I stared at the perfect curvature of her form and the way his lips, slightly open, drew in wisps of hair with every breath.

I went down the stairs and into the kitchen. I ate one of the hotdogs from the window ledge, cold and speckled with dirt and dust. Barefoot, I went back up the mahogany staircase.

I paused in front of the open door and stripped off my clothing. As I neared the bed, I stopped, calculating the most precise, most perfect way to position myself on the other side of Nate. I snuggled next to him, smelling the warmth from his chest, and fell asleep.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Nate sat up startled. “Do you hear that?” he asked. I did. There was the distinct sound of a car on the rock driveway. I looked out the window, and there was the caretaker’s car making its way toward the mansion. We woke Leanna, grabbed our clothes, and dressed as we ran down the stairs. We raced out of the house, across the lawn, and down the steps into the cove. We fell back on the hard, wet sand and lay there until we caught our breath.

After an hour, or maybe it was two, we walked home, and got there just as Reggie handed a key over to a cop, who then appeared to scold him.

After the cop left, Reggie sat on the front steps. When he saw us approaching, he told Leanna to pack her things; they would leave before lunch. I asked what had happened, and he shrugged me off. Nate went home.

I went inside the house, where my mom was sitting in the living room next to an open window. She said the caretaker of the Jameson place reported to the police that the house was a broken into and that she found a bag of pot. The cop traced it to Reggie, since he had a key to the house and had been warned about his pot garden in the past. And then she asked if I knew anything about it, and by the way, where had I been that morning?

I told her Leanna and I had stayed at Nate’s last night, and I no clue he had brought pot to the Jameson place.

True to his word, Reggie and Leanna left before lunch. I packed them a few sandwiches and a thermos of iced tea. I told Leanna to tell Reggie it was us, and that I would tell my mom and she would straighten things out, and that they didn’t have to leave like this. But she told me it was too late; there was nothing we could do now. Reggie had made up his mind, and they were leaving.

Nate came over to see them off. He kissed Leanna like he meant it, like he had never kissed me. After they left, he told me he didn’t feel like hanging out so much anymore. I didn’t see him the rest of that summer, except for that one time he came to ask for Leanna’s new address. He had a postcard to send her, and I told him I didn’t know where she was, although only the day before she called to say they were in Florida.