The bicycle

I remember the dress, white piqu'e collar with a bunch of dime store violets at the angle of the vee. I am seventeen. My hair is short and full. My younger brother in white ducks and sneakers, a hand on his hip, poses against the clapboard of our rented house beside the bay. By forgetting there were twenty feet of water under me I swam between the small boats anchored there. The bicycle? I rode it on the highway to Jones Beach.