Charlie, however, ate the swimming lessons up. Of course when he was really small the lessons weren’t much more than Alice or me holding him in the pool, but he loved even that and it made it a lot of fun for us to take him. He seemed to be constantly in the water in one way or another, and I really hope Shane never used the pool at Bette and Tina’s for her conquests after he’d been introduced to it, because he was in that pool all the time. Seriously, I don’t remember a time we were in the vicinity of it that he didn’t manage to beg his way into the thing. Every get together, cookout or party we had somehow involved Charlie in the pool, including his own birthday parties, at one of which Shane and Jenny announced that they were in an open relationship. Everyone took that news in and two seconds later were watching Charlie adorably dog paddle his way from one end of the pool to the other.

It was cute, though. I found it really endearing that all our friends used to come watch him when he was old enough to have some more advanced swimming lessons. Obviously they didn’t all show up every time, but someone from the group was usually there. Kit was one of the most common spectators, mostly because by that time she’d allocated a lot of the work at the Planet off to her staff ad had the majority of her days free. I feel bad describing it this way, but she seemed to fill a role somewhere between aunt and grandmother for Kallie and Charlie. Since Angelica was at boarding school the majority of the time, I guess she needed someone to dote on.

She came to the swimming lessons as well as Kallie’s academic stuff, usually spelling bees or elementary school mock debates that were a lot of fun to watch. We could tell from an early age that she was going to be a high achiever, and Alice used to joke that she spent too much time with Bette. She didn’t, of course, but Bette hated the implication and would grumble at Alice, which made Alice continue to say it every time we were in Bette’s presence.