Great

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  “Yes,” she said, her expression lightening. Nothing brightens my mother’s mood like flattery. It’s like lighting a candle flame in front of a moth: instant distraction.

  Her cell rang, and she checked the incoming number and snatched it up.

  “Hello, Merilee,” she sang sweetly. “How are you this morning? I’m. . . oh, Delilah. Hello, darling. You’d like to talk to Naomi?” Her eyes lit up with glee, and she snapped her fingers in front of my face, actually bouncing up and down a little with excitement. “Of course, dear, here she is.” She handed me the phone, mouthing unnecessarily, It’s Delilah! For you!

  While it’s true that this phone call from Delilah was an unprecedented development, my mother’s freak-out hardly seemed necessary. She stared at me expectantly, a dopey grin stretched across her face. I could tell she was going to hang on every word of this conversation.

  “Hey, Delilah,” I said, turning away from my mother the hyperactive puppy. “What’s up?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t have your number, so I just thought I’d call your mom. Teddy and Jeff and I want to go to the club to play tennis, and Jeff needs a partner. Want to come?”

  I am not athletic in the least, and while the prospect of seeing Jeff was kind of tantalizing (even though I wasn’t quite convinced he was the nicest guy), the surrounding circumstances would undoubtedly prove annoying and embarrassing. These kids came out of their mothers’ wombs wielding a tennis racket, and I’d only played once, when Skags decided we needed to get more physical activity (actually, she had noticed a hot girl at the public courts in our neighborhood and wanted an excuse to run into her).

  And besides, I’d planned to spend the day studying my SAT book and doing a practice test, which takes a few hours. I know that sounds incredibly lame, but (and this sounds even lamer) I’ve wanted to go to Harvard since I was a little kid and saw Legally Blonde, which is the sort of guilty-pleasure movie you wouldn’t think a nerd like me would like, except that it is perfect, and makes me wish the Beasts at our school were anywhere near as kind and awesome as Elle Woods. The unfortunate reality is that beautiful blond popular girls usually are superficial bitches, and not good-hearted humanitarians like Elle.

  “Thanks for asking, Delilah,” I said, “but I promised myself I’d study my SAT book today.” I could actually hear my mother go into a conniption behind me. She hurried around the side of the table to face me and glare.

  “I know that sounds completely dorky,” I added hastily, averting my eyes from my mother’s gaze, “but I’m trying to get into Harvard early action, so I have to take the SAT at the end of the summer.”

  What are you DOING? my mother mouthed. I turned away from her, back toward the backyard, and she let out an audible groan.

  “Is everything okay over there?” Delilah asked, sounding concerned.

  “Oh, that’s my mother,” I said. “Her cake just collapsed in the oven, and she’s mourning the loss.”

  “My cakes never collapse,” Mom hissed at me, plopping down in her chair and folding her arms in a huff.

  “Well, I totally understand about the SAT thing,” Delilah said. “You’re not a legacy, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “My dad went to the University of Wisconsin.” I didn’t add, “And my mother went to nowhere,” because she was already pissed about the cake crack.

  “Well, my father and grandfather and great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather all went to Harvard,” Delilah said. “And my father is on the alumni board. So if you need any help when it’s time to apply, just let me know. I’m applying, too.” She did not add, “And I will automatically get in,” although we both knew that was true.

  “That’s really nice of you,” I said. “I might actually take you up on it.” The thing with rich people is that they often offer to help you with a fancy connection, but you usually can’t tell if they genuinely mean it or if they just want to show off their fancy connections. But I wanted to go to Harvard so bad that in this case, I didn’t really care. It was worth a shot.

  “Please do,” said Delilah. “Well, I understand why you’re not coming, but Jeff’s going to be pretty disappointed.”

  I blushed. “Really?” I said in a squeaky voice. Then I blushed again, because a squeaky voice is like the number one sign you’re nervous about something, and being nervous about a guy means you’re into him, and I guess I kind of was.

  Delilah laughed. “We’ll all get together really soon,” she said. “Every day can’t be SAT day.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up. I looked at my mother.

  “She invited you out, and you said no,” she said flatly. “I put you in contact with these people and provide all these opportunities for you, and you just turn them down, time and time again.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You’re the only mother I know who would get pissed that her daughter would choose studying over playing tennis,” I said.

  “She invited you to tennis?” Mom moaned. “And you said no?”

  “I just don’t feel like engaging in any activity where balls fly at my nose,” I said, quoting Clueless, another favorite movie.

  “Well, you should!” my mother snapped, rising to her feet. “That’s how people make friends in this town!” I cracked up, and she stamped her foot in exasperation. She’s such a child.

  “I’m going to town,” she said. “To BookHampton, to sign some stock.” My mother loves doing that—popping into any bookshop in the world to see if they have her cookbook, and then magnanimously offering to sign any copies. I would love it if, just once, a bookshop owner said, “Nah, actually, we’re cool.” But they all flip out like she’s this big star, which I guess she actually is.

  “See ya,” I said, returning to my breakfast. She gave an exaggerated sigh and made her customary dramatic exit.

  I felt strangely drained as I tried to eat my popover and eggs. Well, I guess it’s not so strange—my mother is kind of an emotional vampire at times. I decided to revive myself with a phone call to Skags. Her real name is Tiffani Skagsgaard, but if you call her Tiffani, she will hunt you down and destroy you. It’s always hard for her the first day of school, when the teacher calls out “Tiffani Skagsgaard?” and is confronted with this very boyish-looking young lesbian furiously shouting, “It’s SKAGS!”

  She picked up the phone on the second ring. “S’up?” she grunted.

  “My mother is the most superficial person on the planet,” I said.

  “And water freezes at zero degrees Celsius. Tell me something everyone in the world doesn’t already know.”

  “That’s the thing, Skags—not everybody in the world knows it. In fact, I’d say most people in the world don’t know it. They think she’s this warm, loving culinary goddess who nurtures people with love and food.”

  “Hold up—I don’t think anyone would ever mistake your mother for warm. She’s not Paula Deen. She’s an ice-queen-prom-princess type. And I assume she’s already ruining your summer.”

  “Yeah, and get this—she made me take a helicopter from Manhattan to East Hampton just because she wanted to kiss up to Senator Fairweather’s wife. It was the Fairweathers’ helicopter, and I had to ride with Delilah and Teddy Barrington and this kid Jeff.”

  “The Teddy Barrington?” Skags shrieked in a high-pitched, girlish tone. “Dreams do come true!”

  I laughed a little. “He’s totally bizarre,” I said. I told Skags about the shoving incident I’d witnessed at Baxley’s.

  “Dude, that is seriously messed up,” she said. “Jesus. That poor waitress. She’s, like, the abused mistress. How’s Montauk Barbie this year? You think he hits her, too?”

  “No, I don’t think he does,” I said. “Delilah’s actually pretty good, I think. You know she’s always nice to me. I think she’s trying to hook me up with this Jeff kid.”

  “Is he hot?”

  “He’s not your type.”

  “Well, obviously not. Why do you think she wa
nts you to mate with one of the jet set?”

  “I don’t think it’s like this big plan, I just think she thinks we’d go well together. He’s cute enough”—I was downplaying the situation, obviously—“and he doesn’t seem like he’s a complete idiot. Kind of has an attitude, but whatever. Delilah called me this morning and asked me to go play tennis with her and Teddy and him today, but I said no because I’m doing my SAT book.”

  Skags groaned. “You and that freaking SAT book are like the lamest pair in history, you know that? You’ve been glued to it for months. Why don’t you just go out and play some tennis?”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “Gross! No, I don’t.”

  “Well, she was all pissed that I’m not going.”

  “That’s just because she’s obsessed with Montauk Barbie’s Republican robot mom. I’m the one with your best interests at heart here: some good old-fashioned physical activity, bonding with the local teen population, getting out of that stupid fancy house for a reason that doesn’t involve your mom dragging you to some dumb party. I don’t care if it means you have to hang out with some WASPY teen-dream hooker.”

  “She’s not a hooker. She’s just—she’s a nice girl who happens to come from a very stupid world. And I feel kind of bad for her about the cheating thing—Jeff said everybody in town knows.”

  “You’ve always been a Delilah Fairweather apologist. Every summer you call me up and tell me the dumb stuff she does and says, and every summer I’m like, ‘This girl sounds like an empty shell of a human being,’ and you’re like, ‘No, she’s nice, it’s the other kids who suck.’ Someone has a girl crush.”

  “I’m not gay, Skags.”

  “A girl crush is different from being gay, dude. A girl crush is like when one girl is so into another girl that it’s almost sexual, but not quite. A girl crush is way creepier than being gay, which is not at all creepy and in fact is completely awesome, in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Have you ever seen The Roommate?”

  “No.”

  “Dude, it’s got Leighton Meester from Gossip Girl. Blair freaking Waldorf! It’s so much fun.” One thing you should know about Skags—despite the fact that she considers herself cooler than everyone else, including me, she is in love with Netflixing old episodes of Gossip Girl. She pretends it’s because she thinks Blake Lively and Leighton Meester are hot, but actually she gets really into the soapy storylines and has passionate opinions about whether Dan should be with this girl or that girl. She’s seen every single episode at least once.

  “I don’t have a girl crush on Delilah. I just appreciate the fact that she treats me like an actual person. None of the other kids around here have ever given me the time of day.”

  “Except for Jeffrey, the new love of your life.” Skags went into her impression of my mother. “And what do his parents do, Naomi, dear? Are they in plastics? Coal? Mass-produced sex toys?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re vibrator moguls.”

  “Oh, Naomi, darling, that is just delicious!” Skags cracked herself up and broke character. “Oh, dude! Change of topic, but such a good one. Guess who came into the DEBJ yesterday?” Skags works at a little café called That’s a Wrap, which we refer to as the De-Ethnicized Burrito Joint.

  “Who?”

  “La reina de las bestias. The queen of the Beasts!”

  “Jenny Carpenter?”

  “JCarpz herself. She rolled in alone, ordered a chicken wrap with extra guacamole, and then told me she’s been eating nonstop since she broke up with Taylor Cryan.”

  “Did she look fat?” I asked evilly.

  “Dude! No. I mean, her boobs looked big, but they always look big.”

  “Gross.”

  “Deal with it. Anyway, it was pretty obvious she wanted me to know she was single, because she’s completely into me.”

  “Double gross.”

  “Is this 1992, Naomi? Who says ‘double gross’? More like double hot. I’m gonna hit it by the end of the summer, I swear.”

  “You’re such a guy.”

  “No, Naomi, I’m a young woman who subverts the conventionally accepted gender paradigm because I refuse to conform.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.”

  Skags switched gears abruptly. “Listen, for real, you sound exhausted. I know your mom is sucking the life out of you. Why don’t you skip the SAT book and take a nap? You know you get sick when you don’t get enough rest.” There was a sudden note of concern in her voice that was kind of sweet. Sometimes I think Skags is more like a mom to me than my own mom is. Which is weird, because Skags is actually really similar to my dad, which maybe means I have two dads? I don’t know.

  Anyway, a nap sounded good to me, so I bid Skags farewell and brought the plates inside. I knew Mom’s weekly housekeeper was coming that day, but I still scraped and rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher myself. I’m aware this doesn’t make me some kind of heroine, but it’s behavior that my mother actively discourages, especially if other people are around.

  “Darling,” she once said at one of her beloved afternoon iced tea parties, emitting a peal of shrill laughter, “you don’t need to do that. Give the help something to do!” Then her assembled “friends,” all of them social climbers in their own right, laughed as well. It made me kind of hate her in that moment.

  I went upstairs to my bedroom, which Mom had done in this obnoxious boat theme: blue and white stripes everywhere, with antique ships in bottles and old framed maps. She dubbed it New Nautical Chic, and when Town and Country came to photograph the house, she made me wear the most heinous sailor dress and pose by the bed. I was twelve and sported those blond highlights her stylist, Jonathan, had put in, plus a bunch of makeup he piled on me. I looked like an overgrown version of one of those beauty pageant toddlers. Skags, who still went by Tiffani back then, taped a copy of the article to the front of my locker the first day of seventh grade. I didn’t talk to her for a week.

  But just like she really knows her stuff when it comes to breakfast preparation, my mother is a genius when it comes to picking out bed linens. Still in the pajamas that had so horrified her, I slid between the 1,200-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and drifted off to sleep almost immediately. I have a dim recollection of noting the time on the antique wall-mounted clock in the corner (taken from an old lighthouse, natch)—11:07. I figured I’d get up at 1.

  When I woke up, the clock read 6 p.m. I’d slept for (as Skags would say) seven freaking hours. I don’t know what had me so tired, or why my body felt it needed to store up so much sleep. At least my mother wasn’t home—she really would’ve flipped if she found out I ditched a day of tennis with Fairweather and Barrington offspring in favor of just sleeping. I mean, my mom doesn’t even like it when I sleep more than seven hours a night. She regards sleep as a necessary evil, and essentially a waste of her time. She’d eliminate it from all our lives if she could.

  I wandered down to the kitchen to make myself an iced coffee. I swear I had all the best intentions of actually cracking open that SAT prep book, but when I looked out the window above the sink, I was astonished by what I saw.

  Something truly faaaaaabulous was happening at our next-door neighbor’s place. In all the years I’d been coming to stay with my mother in East Hampton, I’d never seen anything like it.

  Gleaming red-and-white striped tents lined the left and right borders of the backyard. The tent flaps were down on three sides, but the side facing the river pool was open. Some of the tents contained catering stations—I could see two Baxley’s vans parked in the driveway—while others displayed games you might see at a carnival. You know that one where you shoot a stream of water into a clown’s open mouth and fill a balloon that rises above his head? That was one of the games. There was also a game of Whack-a-Mole, one of those horrendous weight-guessing booths, a dart challenge where you had to try to pop a balloon to win the prize listed on its tag, a beanb
ag toss, a ring-the-bell competition with a big old-fashioned mallet, a miniature rifle range, and a bunch of other activities that would’ve seemed perfectly at home at the Jersey Shore but which seemed hilariously out of place in stuffy East Hampton.

  As two white-gloved cater waiters struggled to set up a giant tub of lobsters near a grill, I noticed with delight that Baxley’s was not the only food provider on-site. It seemed the hostess next door had seen fit to engage the services of a company that did carnival snacks like funnel cakes, grilled corn on the cob, cotton candy, roasted peanuts, ice cream, and (my absolute favorite) sno-cones! I don’t know what it is that I so love about pouring a bunch of artificially flavored and colored high-fructose corn syrup over ice, but I’m a big fan. Big.

  And to top it all off—and this was what I really couldn’t believe—there was a Ferris wheel! I mean, a pretty, romantic, old-fashioned, classic Ferris wheel. It wasn’t giant like an amusement park Ferris wheel, but it was pretty large! It even matched the rest of the décor, being red and white. They’d centered it in the backyard along the rear perimeter, practically in Georgica Pond, and it dominated the entire scene, dwarfing the tables and chairs that were set up around the U-shaped river pool. The footbridges that crossed the river pool here and there had been festooned with red and white balloons.

  As I watched a small army of workers rush around lighting the tiki torches that lined the river pool, I thought I heard a knock at the front door. I figured I was just hallucinating, so I stayed in the kitchen spying on the circus unfolding next door. It occurred to me that my mother would absolutely lose it when she saw that her peaceful evening of silent cupcake contemplation was going to be ruined by some kind of noisy party next door. I honestly would’ve assumed it was a party for little kids, except that one of the red-and-white striped tents was a fully stocked bar—manned, I noticed with some surprise, by Giovanni, the kid from Baxley’s. As I looked around at the other cater waiters, I recognized quite a few faces. I even saw Misti-with-an-i, straightening the spotless white tablecloths on the white circular tables and adjusting the perfect white cushions on the white folding chairs. Each table was anchored by an expensive-looking crystal bowl in which floated white candles and red roses. Misti yelled something at Giovanni, and he hurried over with a lighter and began attending to each candle. Even from my vantage point, I could see the look of scorn she shot him as she watched him work, her hands on her hips.