When she is older they go to a new summer pool where there is only one board and since Laura is bigger it is not so thrilling to see her jump, besides it is only three feet up. Mr. and Mrs. Cooley have moved away from Utica and lost touch--her mother's words--and at seventeen Laura can do a back dive if she wanted but is afraid her bikini bottoms might fall off so she walks instead to the snack bar in her clunky wooden sandals and orders a frozen Milky Way and signs for her parents' bill and sits by the side of the pool playing hearts with her friends who put suntan oil on the tops of their feet and all over the rest of them not thinking of going in while Laura keeps an eye on her brother.

It is Laura's job to watch her brother at the new pool and take him upstairs to the changing room toilet when he has to go. She takes him and then waits standing on the balcony between the ladies' room and the men's and she can hear the ladies' attendant who speaks with a German accent although she calls herself Swiss. She speaks the high German, Laura's grandmother says when she comes to visit with her crocodile-handled carpet bag and her old needing-water voice she reads aloud with, and she should know because her own mother was born in Berlin. She goes with Laura and her brother to the new pool while their father is on the golf course with a client and their mother drinks iced tea by the tennis courts, her mother sometimes playing the doubles she has taken up since the move to the new house with no fence and the new pool, and afterwards they all come together for dinner on the patio served by black men in white coats. The before-leaving ice cream treat from the old pool seemed more reward even though now Laura can order anything but the steak and for dessert there is make-your-own-sundaes. Laura makes one sundae for herself and another with no nuts for her brother. Their father is too tired to barbecue, he says.