28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “Are you sure you want to run for senator?” Jake says.

  “Yes,” Ursula says. “Good night.”

  How are things going for Jake at work? Well, that’s the good news: He loves his job. Jake is executive vice president of development for the Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation, which means he asks individuals and companies for money. Some people—most people, in fact—hate the mere idea of asking for money, but it turns out, Jake has a knack for it. It helps that he’s passionate about the cause, that he can make statistics sound anecdotal, and that he understands the medical advances in CF research. If the medicine of 2006 had been available back in 1980, Jessica could have lived an extra decade, maybe even two.

  Jake doesn’t say this, however. He has refrained from marching out his dead sister in order to pry donations out of people. The closest he comes to mentioning her is this: When people ask why he’s so passionate about research for cystic fibrosis—not cancer, not ALS, not heart disease—he says he lost someone close to him to CF and leaves it at that.

  Jake doesn’t attend every CFRF fund-raiser across the country—that would be impossible—but he does appear at the major ones, such as the benefit held in Phoenix in May. The philanthropic set don their tuxes and gowns, drink a few flutes of champagne, eat canapés, find their place cards, admire the tablescapes, listen to an inspiring speaker, eat some kind of sauced chicken, and raise their paddles.

  The Phoenix event, held at the JW Marriott in Desert Ridge, has one thousand forty-four attractive and well-dressed people attending. The chairwoman’s name is Carla Frick. Jake has met a lot of chairpeople and Carla is the best. She organizes everything down to the minute, she’s prepared for any one of a hundred snafus, and she has put together a committee of sixteen women who are just as unflappable, detail-oriented, and gracious as Carla is.

  When Jake sees these women in action in Phoenix, he wonders how it is that men have historically been in charge of the world. Women should be running everything everywhere—and Jake’s not just saying that because he’s married to Ursula de Gournsey.

  Jake is talking to Dave Van Andel from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who came to Phoenix specifically for this event (and to drive his Porsche 911 on the flat, straight desert roads) when Carla appears at Jake’s elbow. They are still in the cocktails-and-canapés portion of the evening. There’s a big band with a Frank Sinatra look-alike crooning standards. The affair is elegant; the drinks are strong; the bite-size arepas with hot-pepper jelly are delicious. Phoenix does things right. Why doesn’t everyone live in Phoenix?

  Carla smiles at Dave. “I need to borrow Jake for a minute.”

  Carla leads Jake out of the ballroom and into the hallway. She’s wearing a black jumpsuit with rhinestone straps and a diamond cross around her neck. When she fingers the cross, Jake sees something new in Carla: a crack in her façade.

  “Sydney has been taken to Banner,” she says.

  “What?” Jake says. Banner is the Phoenix hospital and Sydney Speer is a twenty-nine-year-old local news anchor from Scottsdale who has CF. She’s one of the best ambassadors Jake has. The foundation has flown Sydney all over the country—to Dallas, to Miami, to Kansas City—because when people hear the daunting odds Sydney overcame to appear on television each night, they double whatever amount they had planned to donate. “What happened?”

  “She has an infection,” Carla says. “Her oxygen level dropped dangerously low and Rick didn’t want to mess around. Sydney wanted to do her talk first, then go.” Carla’s eyes brighten with tears. “Because that’s the kind of warrior Syd is.” A single silver tear rolls through Carla’s perfect makeup. “Plus, you know, she loves this party.”

  Jake pulls his phone out and texts Sydney’s husband, Rick. Sending you guys my love. Keep us posted. Then it’s on to a much smaller problem but a problem nonetheless. “Who’s going to speak?”

  Carla says, “I have contingencies for every emergency but I don’t have a backup speaker. I didn’t think we’d need one. I saw Sydney on Sunday at the PCC playing golf.” Carla scans the ballroom. “The Gwinnetts lost their son, they have firsthand experience with the disease and I know Joanne is comfortable talking about it, but I’m not going to throw her up in front of a thousand people without any warning.”

  “Obviously not,” Jake says. He sighs. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll ask Joanne?” Carla says.

  “No,” Jake says. “I’ll be the one to speak.” He clears his throat. “I lost my twin sister to CF when we were thirteen.”

  (Carla Frick feels her mouth drop open in a way she is sure is unattractive. She scrambles for something to say. “Did I know this, Jake? I didn’t know this.” Carla is halfway madly in love with Jake McCloud. He’s so handsome, so upright, so good…and so unavailable, married to a stylish congresswoman back in Indiana. Carla has recently gotten divorced from a man who, although handsome, is not upright and not good, and Carla has vowed that the next man she becomes involved with will be like Jake. This news about his sister, while unexpected and out of the blue, explains a lot. Jake is outstanding at his job, vested beyond just showing up to work, and now Carla knows why. She didn’t think her feelings for him could get any more intense, but they just have.)

  “I don’t tell very many people,” Jake says. He lays a hand on Carla’s forearm, then quickly lifts it. Carla is newly divorced and they’ve been out in the hallway for too long, probably. He’s sure that people in Phoenix gossip just like they do everywhere else. “I’ll speak.”

  Jake is good with people—but his strength is one-on-one or small-group conversations. His strength is not public speaking.

  He jots down a couple of notes on a cocktail napkin, but they’re disjointed, so he throws the napkin away. He’s seen enough speakers at enough benefit dinners to know that all he needs to do is tell his story.

  Still, his stomach churns and he feels uncomfortably warm and prickly in his tuxedo. He can’t eat anything, and he certainly can’t drink anything; even with half a Jim Beam and Coke in him, he’s worried he’s going to make a complete idiot of himself. What is he doing?

  The lights go down and people find their tables, which are now bathed in candlelight with the salad course plated. They pass rolls, then scalloped pats of butter. They pour wine. The lights go up on the stage, the band plays some background music, and Carla strides over to the podium, the pants of her jumpsuit billowing, and takes the microphone. There’s cheering. This crowd is friendly, Jake thinks. They’ll forgive him if he’s awful.

  “I’ve spoken to Rick Speer and told him we are all sending Sydney our prayers tonight,” Carla says after explaining the situation. “And I’m happy to tell you that in Sydney’s absence, Jake McCloud, executive vice president of the Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation, has bravely agreed to share his own story publicly for the very first time. So please, ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a warm Phoenix welcome to Jake McCloud.”

  Applause. Jake can’t tell if it’s half-hearted—these people paid to hear Sydney—because of the blood rushing in his ears. Imagining them in their underwear isn’t going to work. Jake is nervous—not about the speaking itself but about what he’s about to say. He has told the story of Jessica to so few people. Who? He didn’t have to tell Ursula because Ursula lived through it with him. Bess is still too young to understand. He’ll tell her when she gets older.

  Mallory, Jake thinks.

  He told the story to Mallory.

  So when Jake replaces Carla at the podium, he isn’t looking out at one thousand forty-four people. Instead, he’s looking at one person: Mallory. It’s 1993; she’s twenty-four years old. She’s lying on the old blanket on the beach in her T-shirt and her cutoffs; her hair is spread out behind her as she gazes up at the night sky. When Jake starts to tell her about Jessica, she rolls onto her side, props herself up on her elbow. Her eyes are green tonight and they’re fastened on him.

  She’s listening.

  “When does memory start?”
Jake says. “Age four? Age five? Sometime within that year, a child’s synapses connect, creating lasting memory. And it was at around this age that I realized there was something different about my twin sister, Jessica—coughing fits, hospital visits.” Jake pauses. “It was probably a year or two later that my parents explained that she had cystic fibrosis.” The room is absolutely silent. “And, yes, I did say my twin sister. We were—obviously—fraternal twins, though people would ask once in a while if we were identical.” There are a few laughs, probably from parents of twins or people who were twins themselves. “Because we were fraternal twins, our DNA was only as similar as any other two siblings’. In our case, Jessica had the CF genes and I didn’t.” Jake pauses again. “You can probably all imagine how that made me feel. If I had been able, I would have…happily, gratefully…taken the burden of the disease from her and carried it myself.” Jake’s eyes fill; the audience is blurry, but he’s in control. “That wasn’t possible, of course. But that’s why I have worked for the past seven years raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation. I do it so no other children like me have to lose a sibling at the age of thirteen and so no other parents like my parents—who I think felt all the more helpless because they are both doctors—have to lose a child.” Jake stops to take a breath. “I’m standing before you asking for your support because my twin sister can’t.”

  Jake McCloud receives a standing ovation. The CFRF dinner in Phoenix raises one and a half million dollars—over four hundred thousand dollars more than the year before.

  Jake is through security at the Phoenix airport the next day when his boss, Starr Andrews, calls. Starr is seventy years old; she has been heading up the CFRF since its inception and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. She’s the best boss Jake could ask for, primarily because she gives him autonomy and lets him do his thing.

  “I heard you talked about Jessica last night,” she says.

  “I did,” Jake says. Another person Jake told about Jessica was Starr Andrews—at his initial interview, when he explained why he wanted the job. He’d also told Starr he would prefer to keep his personal history with the disease private. He wonders if Starr is calling to remind him of this.

  “I’m proud of you,” Starr says. “You stepped out of your comfort zone. You opened up to strangers about something very personal. And you made a hell of a lot of money. So here’s my question: Would you be willing to do it again?”

  Jake speaks in Cleveland and Raleigh in May. He speaks in Minneapolis and Omaha in June. He speaks in La Jolla, Jackson Hole, and Easthampton in July.

  Event-based donations to CFRF are up more than 30 percent.

  Does Jake brag about this to Ursula? Yes, a little bit. She’s the superstar of the couple, no one is disputing that. But Jake has come a long way from watching Montel Williams in his boxer shorts.

  Before Congress adjourns for the summer, Ursula and Vincent Stengel get their welfare-reform bill passed in the House and in the Senate, a tremendous coup. The bill is a brilliant one. It manages to empower single working mothers while also saving the government a hundred and sixty million dollars.

  Ursula is riding high. She and Jake rent a house on Lake Michigan, and Ursula relaxes a little. They grill on the sand; they take Bess on the dune buggies and to the water park; they attend the blueberry festival in South Haven and eat ice cream at Sherman’s.

  In the middle of August, Ursula gets a phone call from Vincent Stengel. He invites her and Jake to Newport over Labor Day weekend. There’s a potential donor, a major donor, who would write checks not only to Vincent but to Ursula as well. This guy—Bayer Burkhart is his name—liked what he saw with the welfare-reform bill. He sees potential for an emerging centrist position, a perfect cocktail of the Left and the Right that he wants to foster. He wants to have a conversation, or a series of conversations, over the course of the long weekend. And in addition to all this, he has a 110-foot yacht with three staterooms, a pool, a gym, and a movie theater.

  “This could be big for me,” Ursula says. “Plus it seems like fun, right? A long weekend away? You like New England.”

  Jake knows he should only be surprised this hasn’t happened earlier. “Sounds great,” he says, thinking, Keep it light! Keep it light! “But Labor Day weekend doesn’t work for me.”

  “Tell the CFRF to find someone else to speak, Jake, please,” Ursula says. She gives him an imploring look. “I know you’re good at it and I’m proud of you. But take a pass this once, for me?”

  She thinks his conflict is work. He has been going to Nantucket every year for thirteen years and Ursula never remembers. Jake knows he should be grateful it’s not on her emotional calendar. Could he get away with telling Ursula that it is a work thing? No—he’ll be caught. “It’s not work,” he says. “It’s my trip to Nantucket.”

  “Nantucket?” Ursula says. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You can skip Nantucket, Jake, come on.”

  “Sorry, darling,” Jake says. “Any other weekend works, just not that one.”

  “We were the ones who were invited, Jake,” Ursula says. “With Vince, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where I would eventually like to earn a seat. This guy Burkhart has billions. I need to cultivate him.”

  “No one is stopping you from cultivating him,” Jake says. “But I can’t go.”

  “You’re being unreasonable,” Ursula says. “Why don’t you ask Coop to switch weekends?”

  “I don’t want to ask Coop,” Jake says. “I want to go to Nantucket like I always do.”

  “What if I call Coop?” Ursula says.

  Jake takes a breath. Is she bluffing? “Go ahead,” Jake says. “Please be the one to explain that your political career takes precedence over a tradition that I’ve maintained for thirteen years. You show Coop just how compromise in a marriage works.”

  “You going to Nantucket a different weekend is a compromise,” Ursula says. “What you’re offering is…nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, Ursula,” Jake says. They lock eyes and he feels certain the truth is there, written on his face: there’s another woman.

  “I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Ursula says. “Robbing me of this opportunity. Robbing me of the money that could launch me to certain victory.”

  “It might be better if you went alone,” Jake says. “Maybe this Bayer Burkhart is single with a penchant for powerful women.”

  “He’s happily married,” Ursula says. “To a woman named Dee Dee, whose father was the political mastermind behind Buddy…” Jake tunes her out. He doesn’t care how rich and connected these people are. “Anyway,” she finishes, “I won’t go alone.”

  But you will, Jake thinks.

  And she does.

  Summer #15: 2007

  What are we talking about in 2007? The iPhone; Nancy Pelosi; Halo 3; Oprah’s school for girls in South Africa; Barry Bonds; Juno; Paris Hilton; the Burj Dubai, Lindsay Lohan; Whoopi on The View; Gordon Brown; Virginia Tech; McLovin; acai bowls; Anna Nicole Smith; Don Imus; Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf; “If you ain’t got no money, take yo’ broke ass home.”

  Cooper is getting married again and this time, he’s doing it right. Tish—Letitia Morgan—comes from an old Philadelphia family. She grew up in Radnor on the Main Line, went to Agnes Irwin and then Vassar, where she majored in art history, and now serves as the director of the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle. Cooper noticed Tish at the Metro stop—once, then twice. He decided that if their paths crossed again he would ask her out. He had to wait a long time, so long that he feared she’d taken a different job or maybe left DC altogether. But then, one Friday morning, there she was. She was carrying an armful of cut flowers wrapped in brown paper in addition to her leather bucket purse and a tray of something that appeared to be artichoke bruschetta. As she ascended the escalator at the Dupont Circle stop with Cooper in hot pursuit, something shifted in her balance, and when she stepped off the escalator, her purse overturned and everything in it
dumped to the ground.

  This was bad news for Tish (the station floor was filthy) but good news for Cooper, who was able to come to her rescue and help pick up everything—her wallet, her cell phone, pens, loose change, a packet of tissues, a trial-size bottle of skin lotion, a cherry ChapStick, her checkbook, a few loose shopping lists and receipts, and a flat disk that Cooper held in his hands probably a second or two longer than he should have because he was trying to figure out what it was.

  “My birth control pills,” she said. “Thank you.” And, as Tish said later, Cooper looked so mortified that she had burst out laughing.

  They’d been inseparable ever since.

  The ceremony is held at St. David’s in Wayne, Pennsylvania, with a reception following at the General Warren Inne in Malvern. It’s Cooper’s third big wedding. He wanted something more intimate, but this is Tish’s first go-round and her parents are paying, so they have groomsmen and bridesmaids, a twelve-piece orchestra, Jordan almonds. There are one hundred and thirty people in attendance but only two dozen or so from Cooper’s side—his parents and sister, obviously, and Fray and his longtime girlfriend, Anna, and Jake and Ursula (who is running for senator, so Cooper figured Jake would come alone, but no, Ursula is here), plus a selection of people from Brookings including Brian Novak, who is now divorced and has asked Coop no fewer than three times if Mallory is still single.

  Yes, Cooper said. He’s not sure Brian is good enough for Mallory. She deserves a prince, someone like Tish’s family friend Fred, though Fred lives in San Francisco and is therefore geographically undesirable.

  Cooper’s favorite part of his previous two weddings was the cocktail hour that falls after pictures (which he suffers through) and before the whole rigmarole of dinner. His third is no exception. He has a cold gin and tonic and the guests are in the garden behind the inn, which is lush with flowers and shaded from the early August sun by stately two-hundred-year-old oaks. A server comes by with flaky triangles of spanakopita and lemony crab salad on cucumber coins, and Cooper wishes he could just stay in this moment forever instead of dealing with the tricky business of being married.