“Well, there’s a mother-child center, way off,” Bitsy Fainwright finally piped in. “I’ve been there, beyond the train tracks. It’s a shelter of some kind. I hear some of the mothers, who are cleaning ladies, have kids in the public schools. They don’t have husbands. A few of them have cancer and need some kind of medical help. I just know the extra help with their children and reading is life-altering for them.”
“Enough with all this depressing talk!” Cricket Fitzgerald yelled way too loudly, waving her arm in the air, the sagging chicken skin underneath the bone wagging as she did.
Topper quickly moved the Chardonnay bottle on the floor, and added, “Let’s talk about what we are doing. Katie, you’ve had your assignment to decorate the table . . . we could guide you, of course? The Patio Party, as we call it, is so alliterative, we just love the name! Just think: beach extravaganza!”
“So it’s beach themed.” Katie struggled to comprehend. “But on a patio or on the sand?”
“On the patio at the library!”
“But you said beach.”
“Well, beachy feel is what I mean. We have a great guy with ducks and bunnies and a petting zoo for the kids, a few authors read their children’s books to our young children, who just looooove it. The dads have a grand time, debating golf and grilling techniques.”
“I’d love to help,” Katie offered, trying to hide that she didn’t mean that at all.
“The tables are sooo fun? Each table is themed!” said Cricket. “Of course no one is sitting at them. It’s all about how they look, how they add to the atmosphere, how they help give the party a little boost of patio pomp.”
Poppy was way cooler and more on the ball than any of these women, and Katie bet, so were her generation of bridge-playing girlfriends. She felt they could share a little giggle about the seriousness with which Topper took the table décor.
“You know, I know this woman who has great taste,” added Katie, thinking of Julia, just to test her insistence that they’d never accept her kind. Clearing her throat, she said, “She isn’t a member of the club, but Poppy had said a few others can buy tickets, and I know she’s very generous. Her clothing is gorgeous, I bet she could help us.”
The three women at the table rolled their lips inwards, in deep distrust, and looked at each other. Cricket listed sideways and closed her eyes for a minute, while Bitsy sensibly rammed a pillow between the iron grate chair and her elbow, propping her up a bit.
Katie went on, “She has a really spectacular home on the ocean.”
“Oh, soooo great?” offered Topper. “Where on the ocean?”
“Middle of Beachwood Lane,” answered Katie, knowing Topper was trying to make some kind of social totem pole calculation.
“Which house exactly?” Bitsy squinted her eyes at Katie, leaning in and grabbing the edges of her chair with her porky hands. Bitsy hoped to avoid an uncomfortable moment with George Porter’s latest, sweet, but, out-of-it, Pacific-bred frontier girl. She hoped the woman’s house was traditional and old, preferably with an ownership deed passed on by a great-great nana.
“I don’t know the street number,” Katie responded to the pit bull clothed in a pink polo to her left.
Cricket put her hands on her knobby knees and leaned in for the inquisition, taking her eightieth gulp of wine. “Okay, well let me ask this, is it old or new construction? Meaning is the house modern with glass like a, say, really goddamn tacky Saudi shopping mall?”
“Cricket, please!” said Bitsy. “Don’t swear like that!”
Cricket grabbed the bottle of wine under the chair, almost tipping over her own, filled her glass beyond the brim so it overflowed a bit, took three huge gulps and continued, “Or is it kind of cute and shingled and gray with white trim on the windows? Maybe some sweet window planters like . . .”
Katie knew exactly what this gauntlet was getting at. Anyone with a hint of trendiness wouldn’t be wanted in their ossified world of conventions.
“It’s a new home,” Katie admitted boldly.
The three women gasped as if they’d just sniffed a pile of fresh, steaming cow dung.
“Her name is Julia Chase. I think she’d love to help out.”
“Nope?” answered and asked Topper matter-of-factly. “We know of her. She’s just lovely as can be, but the committee is full?”
When Katie had walked into this stifling, decrepit back patio, hadn’t this very same Topper Tobin said they were soooo desperate for volunteers?
Chapter Thirty-Two
Home Is What You Make It
Friday, July 7
“Honey, I’ll pull the chair up to the sink. You can’t reach like that from the floor,” Katie told Huck that Friday night as he stood on his tiptoes trying to wash just-pulled-from-the-earth lettuce.
As he did with most nights, Huck wandered into the kitchen around 6:00 p.m. when he first heard his mother searching for oils, sauces, and spices, the cupboards opening and shutting. The two were used to this nightly ritual of Huck working alongside her on setting the table, putting water in glasses, and finding the salt and pepper shakers. His daily obsession with building Legos translated into a love not for clean order, but for the order of things; and he was drawn to the step-by-step process of preparing a meal.
Like her son, this night, Katie also yearned to understand the order of things and the reasons behind them. Namely, why George couldn’t confirm if he’d be there for dinner when he’d said all week he was looking forward to time with them. Or, more disturbingly, why she’d landed on the farthest tip on the East Coast having lived and planned her entire life out West.
Katie checked her phone for the nineteenth time since 4:00 p.m. when it started to seem like George might not show. He’d texted:
Trying to get there in time, something came up at work and also at the club, just need to check on a few things . . .
Did that mean, there was a chance he wouldn’t come at all? Or, that he’d be late? Katie had asked that very question directly in a text two minutes later. It was now six forty-five, and there was no answer. Maybe he was still in Manhattan working, or was he already playing golf? If he were at the club talking to people (where rules prohibited cell phone use), that would mean he hadn’t looked at his.
Flustered at no reply when she’d added four simple, slightly pushy question marks on the text reply again to George at 6:48 p.m.:
Any time frame for your arrival????
Katie slammed the lamb roast onto the wooden cutting board and stormed out of the kitchen.
She started to open all the windows all over the cottage as if to blow some fresh insight into her life. The air conditioners banging in both rooms had kept her awake all night, wondering and wanting a plan that felt more solid. As she turned off the cold air and slammed open several rickety windows, Huck asked from the kitchen sink, “What’s the matter, Mom, are you mad at me?”
“No, honey, it’s just the dust; it’s cooler out than I thought and the fresh air is so nice. I just want to let a lot in and if I open both sides of the house’s windows, then it will blow through better.”
“But why are you doing that all so fast like you’re mad at someone?”
“Honey. I’m not.” Slam, slam, slam.
“You are, but whatever,” Huck answered.
As she shook the white curtains out a bit at each window, her anger at George’s inconsiderate behavior swelled inside. Where was he? How long does it take to text? Who doesn’t check their phone in three hours? Well, that cute Luke Forrester wouldn’t do this, for sure. Why hadn’t . . .
“Honey, can I just wash the vegetables tonight?” Katie asked, as she entered the kitchen again. The setting sun now illuminated the room with a sideways orange glow. “This lettuce is different from back home; it’s from local farms and really dirty. Just, George is coming soon, I’m so late because of my tutoring . . . can I just wash it, please?”
Katie felt the heat of tears in her eyes, but willed them to cool and dry
. She blinked a dozen times, cracked her neck left and right, and rolled her shoulders. In a trance, she stared at the yellow tiled linoleum floor with her hands on her hips, then shook her head a bit to disperse her foul mood. She would not cry, not now. Maybe in the bath later, but not in front of Huck, not with George (maybe) on the way. The cold water in the pot before her waited to be boiled for fresh summer peas. The ruby lamb begged for rosemary and garlic marinade she hadn’t had time to prepare.
Katie knew dinner would have been better with marinade soaked on the meat hours ago, but the tutoring hours had stacked up last minute. Splashing it on now would coat it a little, but no flavor would sink in. This whole meal was feeling a little like her relationship with George: the flavor fresh and powerful, but the foundation rushed.
“Why?” Huck persisted. “I want to wash it, put it in that dryer thing, then I want to push the button to make the lettuce dryer go round.”
“It’s just—” Katie didn’t want to squash her son’s culinary talent, but she also didn’t want to serve a sandy salad to George. “It’s dirtier when we get it at a farm stand, filled with worms and bugs and dirt.” Her eyes heated up again; she blinked hard.
“No, I can . . .”
There was no appeasing this child when he wanted to do something, and she didn’t want to deny him his will to help. Katie’s own mother, now three months, three weeks and four days gone, often told her, “Do these two things every day for Huck: number one: make him feel good about himself, and, number two: allow him to figure out how to do things on his own. Those two simple steps. Every day. It’s all he needs to plow forward and grow into a strong, happy man. Single mothers, with far less than you, have had triumphant children. Children only need one good parent.”
All they need is one. But, Katie plus her mother equaled two adults in his life, not one. And both of them understood that reality as her mom started to fade in her last month on earth.
“All they need is one,” her mother had reassured her.
Katie had spent the final weeks asking her mother again and again to remind her of the steps for her son, knowing the steps would work on her, too.
Katie huffed loudly. She’d persist. She’d slam the dust out of the furniture fifty times a day if she had to. She’d get Luke’s fingerprints on that beach-ball Simone butt out of her head. Tonight, she’d direct her innate sensuality on that handsome George Porter, assuming he showed up.
“Okay, fine, honey. If you really like washing the lettuce on your own and you feel you can get the mud out,” Katie told Huck. “Then just do it. Wash it well. I don’t want to eat a worm!”
Huck laughed at the sink, washing it again. “I’ll do it, Mom. You think I’m such a baby.” And he tried his very best to rinse the leaves, then sat on the floor in a little puddle of just-washed lettuce water, pushing the knob up and down as the still-insect-filled lettuce spun round.
“How come you are dressed up, Mom?” Huck asked, his legs spread out around the salad dryer. “Is Luke coming, too?”
Katie wondered how kids felt the earth rumble before the rest of the world even perceived a stir.
“No, why Luke? That’s a strange thing to say. I mean, I get Luke, he’s great, honey, but dinner isn’t necessarily . . . well, he’s more someone we would see on the boat or beach. Dinner here at the house, George’s house, is not for Luke.”
Katie knelt down to Huck’s level on the floor to be absolutely positive he heard her. “Honey. George is coming. He’s a wonderfully kind man. This is his house. He’s not my boyfriend, as I said the other night when I put you to bed, but he might be at some point.”
“You kissed him.”
“I’m allowed to see if I like him, right? That’s what that kiss was for, honey, kind of to see how he feels as a boyfriend. That’s what grown-ups do, they . . .”
“Stop, Mom.”
“Okay, no more kissing talk. You’re the one who brought it up.” She stood and rubbed his white-blond hair. “Let’s just be really nice to George. And . . . let’s not . . . let’s not hurt his feelings by acting like we’d prefer Luke or anyone else.”
“But I’d like Luke to come, too. Can he? Can he and George come together? He’s been here, dropping me off.”
“Not together, honey. Luke stays at the beach and his house, and George, well, he works so hard in the city. He’s so nice to us. Remember that first day when we picked those cherries back home, remember how he helped you reach them and pick so many?” Katie pleaded. “Let’s focus on him, tonight. Just like you tell me to focus on you only, not my phone or my tutoring papers. Same for George, he was so nice that other afternoon, with the Lego destroyer wing, when you couldn’t find the piece, and I couldn’t, and then he got on his hands and knees for like ten minutes and found it beside the plant? You wouldn’t have ever finished that thing properly and he found it!” Katie added a little hysterically as if George had yanked Huck off a sinking boat. And then with more measure and calm, “Let’s just give him a chance.”
That advice was meant for everyone in the room.
Finally, as Huck finished setting the table, a text from George came through.
I’m so sorry, I’m delayed with a deal. Traffic to the Hamptons will be deadly. I’ll call in the morning.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Blue Video
With Huck long asleep, the lamb still marinating in the fridge, the unused, washed but wormy lettuce packed tightly in a Ziploc in the bottom fridge drawer, Katie now lay propped up on her bed. The television’s glare had turned the entire room a haunting blue tint. She felt lonely, and disturbed that George hadn’t shown. A man had to work; she had no choice but to understand. She’d texted him back that it was fine.
In the closet, undressing, she’d found the carved pinewood box with her mother’s remains. She hadn’t wanted to hold it much this summer, preferring instead to forge on on her own. Tonight, she needed her mother. She felt raw, uncared for, completely alone.
The summery, spaghetti-strap dress with the tight bodice and cascading silk skirt she’d saved for tonight’s dinner fell on her curves in a way that made her want to twirl. It was not meant to be worn in a dark cottage, alone with one’s child. She now hung it, wrinkled for no good reason, back in the closet. Everything was unappreciated this night, even the fireflies. While they’d waited for a text, the dinner prepped, Katie had suggested they play outside. Huck had caught nine fireflies for George and kept them in a mayonnaise jar. He’d had to let them go before bedtime.
On her bedside stood a three-quarter filled, very special Wölffer Estate Vineyard rosé wine that Katie opened for dinner with George. She wasn’t much of a drinker and had been in a rush to get home to Huck, but she’d tried a few varietals and bought this good bottle. Now she wished she’d saved it for Luke. She placed her fingers on her silk underwear, letting them softly caress the fabric until it moistened a little, wondering how Luke’s own fingers would do the same.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Midweek Mojo
Wednesday, July 19
In the heat of the July sun, a Filipina housekeeper in a starched white uniform raced down Beachwood Lane on a child’s bicycle, a tennis racket in the basket. The bike was so small she had to ride with her elbows bent upwards, her back hunched over. Her knees bounced up and down furiously as she pedaled.
“Look at that poor woman,” Luke said to Katie. “Imagine her boss: some horrible woman blaming her because her child forgot his racket at the club. The kid has probably never once done anything on his own.”
“I’m sure you’re right. That bike is so small, she looks like a circus clown,” agreed Katie. “I feel bad for her; she looks so sweaty and worried.” She thought about her first day when she was hopeful Southampton wouldn’t be that different from Hood River.
The shores of the bay were now peaceful, as if after a hurricane. After a beach walk to her favorite log, Katie had strolled up to camp to get her son. She and Luke were now sitting
on a bench at the end of the dock, all of the exhausted campers having left, while Huck rinsed off the life jackets. She wore her tank top wrapped around her neck, falling down the sides covering the front of her pink gingham bikini. Luke noticed Katie’s creamy skin glowing in the afternoon light and wondered if he’d ever touch her for real.
A silenced ensued. Finally, Luke dove in with something he’d wanted to say for a while.
“So I was thinking about the last time we were on this dock and Simone . . .”
“Not important.” Katie felt awkward, but intensely curious.
“It’s important to me. I just want you to know she’s an old girlfriend, or, really, a tormenter of men.”
“It’s fine, you can do whatever . . .”
“I know I can do whatever I want. So can you. I just want you to know it was a period in my life, that’s all. She’s not even a friend. I don’t want people thinking she’s my friend,” Luke said.
“Why?”
“Well, can’t you answer that, kind of?” Luke challenged.
Katie laughed, feeling the ice break loudly. “Yeah, I get it. She’s a lot to handle. Takes up a lot of space.”
“Like all these kids and parents at camp,” Luke agreed. “They all take up a lot of space. That’s the last thing I need in a partner. It’s so nice with them gone at the end of the day.”
“You know,” Katie went on, “you hear about everyone overscheduling their kids, people do that back home, but here it’s just another level. That poor nanny on the kid’s bike, in such a panic over his activity. I’ll always think about that image when I try to describe the Hamp . . . I mean Southampton.”
“There you go!” Luke answered. “Good job. Kona and I always say, ‘If you’re a rich kid in Southampton, the more lined up your schedule is, the less your parents love you.’”
“Why?” Katie smiled. She shielded the late day sun from her green eyes and turned to him.
It Happens in the Hamptons Page 19
