28 Summers

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “Hugo is overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed, we were at each other’s throats even before we got this news because of the wedding and his family and, okay, yes, my family too. But this changes things.”

  “What things?” Mallory asks. She’s worried again. Are Apple and Hugo going to split? “What things does it change, honey?”

  “We’re at Logan Airport right now,” Apple says. “We’re flying to Bermuda tonight. We’re eloping, Mal. The wedding is off. I’m so sorry.”

  Mallory wedges the phone between her ear and shoulder and scoops Link up before he wanders away. She bumps into an older gentleman in Nantucket Reds who says, “Watch where you’re going, missy.”

  Mallory dislikes being called missy, but she’s so happy, she could kiss the man. Apple is eloping! She’s eloping! The wedding is off!

  “Don’t apologize to me,” Mallory says to Apple, her person, her best person. “I’m so happy for you, honey. Go marry the greatest guy in the world. Congratulations!”

  Summer #13: 2005

  What are we talking about in 2005? Hurricane Katrina; Brad and Jen; YouTube; Terri Schiavo; John Roberts; the White Sox; Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame; Alinea; Xbox 360; Carrie Underwood; Marilynne Robinson; Russell Crowe; Jude Law; the New Orleans Saints; Avon Barksdale, Stringer Bell, McNulty, and Bunk; “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

  Leland Gladstone and Fiella Roget have been together for ten years. They’re a fixture in the New York literary scene and get invited to twenty events per week: gallery openings, readings, author luncheons, secret high-stakes poker games, and midnight raves at the hottest clubs on Twelfth Avenue. They are their generation’s Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, only biracial and far, far better dressed.

  Fifi is a professor in the MFA program at Columbia, a job that requires her to teach one workshop per semester in exchange for a generous salary. This leaves her long stretches to work on her new novel, which she’s having a hard time birthing. Her first two novels dealt with her childhood and adolescence in Haiti, and now Fifi is writing a novel set in the United States, but it feels wobbly and predictable. She tries not to let the novel shackle her. The inspiration comes when it comes, and her editor understands this; Fifi just wishes people would stop asking her when they can expect it. Leland knows enough not to mention the novel at all, though Fifi recently overheard Leland telling the cleaning ladies not to bother with Fifi’s office. She hasn’t been in there in weeks.

  Fifi is invited to do paid speaking events across the country, and in the spring of 2005, she accepts an offer from the department of women’s studies at Harvard. Fifi decides to make a trip of it—maybe two nights, maybe three. She likes Boston. It’s charming and old-fashioned with its proper Puritan aesthetic. Boston doesn’t have a dirty mind the way New York does.

  “I can maybe do two nights,” Leland says when Fifi shares her plans. “But I definitely cannot swing three.”

  “I think I’d like to go alone,” Fifi says. “We each could probably use some space.”

  Fifi can see Leland wavering between a bitter response and an offended one. Fifi finds both tiresome. She believes every relationship needs a little air, but Leland sees things differently. Over the past few years, she has developed the tendency to smother. She likes to travel everywhere with Fifi and make connections for Bard and Scribe, where she is now editor in chief and which is now failing because everyone is on the internet. Fifi used to be fine with Leland’s constant companionship, but now the phrase riding her coattails comes to mind.

  If Fifi was second-guessing her decision to go alone, she stops doing so the instant she checks into Fifteen Beacon, orders up some room service, and draws herself a bath. Because she grew up with so little, five-star hotel rooms still strike her as an unfathomable luxury—the delicious linens, the fine, heavy pens and creamy stationery, the waffled robes hanging in the closet. Here at Fifteen Beacon, Fifi’s room has a gas fireplace and two deep leather chairs. Someone has sent up a fruit and cheese plate—the front-desk clerk, Pamela, it turns out! She’s a big fan of Shimmy Shimmy.

  The greatest luxury of the room is the solitude. Fifi pulls out her manuscript and starts revising. She works until five minutes before she has to leave, at which point she slips her dress over her head and goes down to the lobby. A car is waiting to take her to the Brattle Theatre.

  Long relationships have peaks and valleys, and Fifi has every right to some time to herself. What happens next, however, is more difficult to explain.

  The day after she speaks at the Brattle is a beautiful spring day. Fifi can shop on Newbury Street, stroll through the Public Garden, even sit on the rooftop at Fifteen Beacon and continue her revisions. But instead, she calls the car service and asks to be delivered to the ferry dock in Hyannis. She’s going to Nantucket.

  She calls Mallory in advance (she’s impulsive but not rude) and catches her between her first and second classes.

  Thinking about coming to the island overnight; I can probably make it in time for your last class if you’d like me to stop in?

  Are you kidding me? Mallory says. My last class is my senior creative-writing seminar. We read Shimmy Shimmy last month. The kids devoured it. I told them we were friends but I don’t think they believed me.

  We’ll show them, Fifi says. I’m on my way.

  Fifi won’t tell Leland about her change of plans. She knows she should…but she doesn’t want to deal with the inevitable static. Mallory is my friend, not your friend. (Oh, but who is the person who insists they share everything—the apartment, the parking spot in the Bleecker Street garage, the Peugeot that occupies that parking spot? Yes, that’s right, Leland.) Fifi wants to go to Nantucket and see Mallory on her own terms. But why? Is she doing it to piss Leland off?

  That may be part of it.

  But there’s something else as well. Fifi likes Mallory. She’s smart and fun and…normal. She’s Leland minus the drama. She’s pleasant to look at, though her beauty is quiet, natural—the golden tan, the sun-bleached hair, the ocean-colored eyes. Fifi’s writerly instincts tell her that with Mallory, still waters run deep. Something is going on with her, maybe. Or maybe not.

  Fifi and Leland visited Mallory the summer before. They stayed at the Wauwinet Inn for the sake of everyone’s privacy but they had dinner at Mallory’s cottage. The little boy, her son, was spending time with his father in Vermont, so Mallory had the carefree attitude of a teenager whose parents were away. After dinner, Mallory took Fifi and Leland to the piano bar at the Club Car. It was a cramped, narrow, dimly lit space filled with joyful people singing their drunken little hearts out. Mallory knew Brian, the piano player; she sat down next to him on the bench and turned the pages of his sheet music while everyone gathered around to sing “Hotel California” and “Sweet Caroline,” then threw money into a glass jar. Leland had the nicest voice of the three of them but she was the one who had wanted to leave. It was as Fifi followed an impatient Leland out of the Club Car that she’d thought, This would be much more fun without her.

  So, now.

  Fifi spends less than twenty-four hours on Nantucket, but her time there is transformative for two reasons. The first is Mallory’s creative-writing seminar. Fifi and Mallory arrive at the door of the classroom seconds after the bell has rung; the twelve kids are already seated in a circle and have their notebooks out. Fifi peeks at them through the window.

  Mallory swings the door open and says, “You guys, I have a surprise. Fiella Roget has come by to say hello.”

  The kids’ heads snap up. Fifi enters the class with just a wave, and she can see the kids puzzling. Is it really her? Then: It’s really her. It’s really her! They start to clap and then one of them stands and then they’re all standing and clapping, a twelve-person standing ovation, and Fifi, who has been applauded and feted and praised all across the country, feels her eyes well up with tears.

  There are nine girls and three boys. It’s funny to Fifi how girls dominate creative-writing classes but men
dominate the bestseller lists…but don’t get her started. There are five people of color, which surprises Fifi. Nantucket Island; she would have thought that all the kids would be lily-white, privileged, and entitled. But Fifi learns that Nantucket has quite a diverse year-round population; the school’s e-mails, Mallory says, come out in six languages. The kids in Mallory’s class are growing up on an island, like Fifi did, some of them as eager to escape as Fifi was. It’s no wonder they liked Shimmy Shimmy.

  It’s obvious that the kids adore Mallory. They call her Miss Bless and they kid with her and tease her, though respectfully. She is that English teacher, the one Fifi wished she’d had in secondary school—the one who listens, the one who reads her students’ work carefully and asks questions without prying, the one who presses a novel into a student’s hands and says, I thought of you when I read this. Let me know if you like it.

  Fifi wishes Leland were with her just so she could see this. Fifi and Leland live in a rarefied literary stratosphere where they believe they’re creating culture and influencing public opinion, but the person who’s actually making a difference is Mallory.

  The second thing that blows Fifi away is Mallory’s son, Link. He’s four years old, a towhead, a beautiful child with sweet, smooth cheeks and Mallory’s eyes—are they blue? Are they green? Fifi’s experience with children this age is nonexistent; she might as well be meeting a lemur. Link studies Fifi’s face, touches the skin on the back of her hand. He likes her name, Fifi; it makes him laugh. He says it over and over again in his high, clear little voice.

  Mallory says, “Your auntie Fifi is a writer. She writes books.”

  She tries to write books, Fifi thinks.

  Link hears books and brings a stack over to the sofa for Fifi to read to him. How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? Bear Snores On. Toot and Puddle. Link points to the pictures he likes and explains them—Toot isn’t wearing pants but that’s okay because he’s a pig—and in some places, he reads along. He’s smart—indeed precocious!

  Mallory feeds him small bowls of pasta and edamame, then she gives him a bath; Fifi can hear him splashing and laughing. He comes out to the living room in blue pajamas printed with trains. His blond hair is wet and combed and he smells like toothpaste.

  He takes Fifi’s hand and tugs. Mallory pokes her head out of the bedroom. “He wants you to tuck him in,” she says.

  This feels like a greater honor than winning the Pulitzer Prize. “Of course,” Fifi says. She hears her cell phone buzzing—Leland—and she thinks about answering it and stepping outside to confess her treachery. I’m on Nantucket with Mallory. But instead, she turns her phone off. She has more important things to do.

  Link climbs into his little bed. Fifi smooths his hair and kisses his forehead. There’s a night-light in the corner, an impressive number of books on the bookshelf, a four-foot giraffe, a photograph of a couple that Fifi guesses is his father and his father’s girlfriend. It’s Leland’s old beau, Frazier. Even a few months ago—hell, even a week ago—Fifi would have studied the picture, interested to see the kind of man who had so enraptured Leland in her youth.

  But now, it’s irrelevant.

  “Good night, sweet prince,” Fifi says. “Sleep tight.”

  Fifi and Mallory settle at the harvest table, which is lit by one votive candle. Mallory pours them each a glass of wine. She has, amazingly, pulled together dinner: pan-roasted chicken in a mustard cream sauce and a green salad with cornbread croutons that she made herself.

  Mallory raises her glass. “Honestly, I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe Lee let you come alone.”

  Fifi smiles. They touch glasses, drink.

  “I’m leaving Leland,” Fifi says.

  “What?” Mallory says. “Why?”

  Why does anyone leave anyone? The love has run out, or it has changed. It’s probably the latter for Fifi. Despite all the pushier emotions Leland inspires—annoyance chief among them—Fifi knows she will always love her. Leland is family; she’s a sister. But Fifi doesn’t want to live with a sister or make love to a sister.

  There’s something else too, a secret. Fifi recently bumped into a writer she’d met back in 1995 at Bread Loaf. Her name was Pilar Rosario, she was Dominican, and when they’d met, it was immediately clear that Fifi and Pilar were attracted to each other. But Fifi had been in the first thrill of her relationship with Leland at that time, so her attraction to Pilar went unexplored.

  Then a month or so ago, after a reading Fifi gave at the Ninety-Second Street Y, Pilar appeared—conveniently while Leland was sucking up to The New Yorker’s fiction editor—and slipped Fifi her card.

  “Call me,” she said. “I’d love to catch up.”

  Fifi nearly threw the card away—meeting Pilar would be a betrayal of Leland—but she changed her mind, deciding one glass of wine couldn’t hurt.

  But, ah…it had hurt. Fifi found herself drawn to Pilar for many reasons, not least of which was that Pilar confessed she wanted a baby.

  Yes, Fifi had said, shocking herself. Me too. This was the real betrayal, because although Fifi hadn’t slept with Pilar or even seen her again, she had acknowledged this truth despite the fact that Fifi and Leland had vowed that theirs would be a blissfully childless existence. Leland felt fiercely about this—no children, no pets, not even a houseplant, nothing to care for except themselves.

  Talking with Pilar allowed Fifi to recognize the pressure building inside of her, her biology asserting itself to the point that Fifi can no longer ignore or deny it. She wants a baby.

  “That’s why I came to Nantucket,” Fifi tells Mallory. “I wanted you to be the first to know. Leland is going to need you.”

  Summer #14: 2006

  What are we talking about in 2006? TSA; Steve Irwin; “SexyBack”; the Duke lacrosse case; Dick Cheney’s shooting accident; Miranda Priestly; AIG and Tyco; the subprime-mortgage crisis; TRX; The Osbournes; Ben Bernanke; “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”; Suri Cruise; Tom DeLay; Eat Pray Love; Meredith Grey and Dr. McDreamy.

  The reality of serving in the House of Representatives is as follows: You spend one year getting things done and one year campaigning so you will be reelected so you can get more things done.

  Who originally came up with a two-year term? One of the Framers of the Constitution who was terrified of imperial rule, possibly someone with a personal vendetta against King George III. Jake understands protection from the power hungry, but he personally thinks a three-year term in the House would be more productive.

  Ursula is thinking more like a six-year term.

  After she finds out that she’s running unopposed in her second reelection bid, she tells Jake she wants to run for the Senate in 2008.

  “Tom’s term is up and he’s slipping in the polls,” she says. “Now is the time, I think. I know I’m still the new kid on the block, but…”

  But…have you seen the news? Ursula de Gournsey is a media darling. The Washington correspondent for Newsweek noted the monogram on her attaché case as she ascended the steps of the Capitol Building in her four-inch stilettos and started referring to her as UDG, a trend that quickly caught on. UDG has become a very hot commodity in American politics.

  First of all, she’s a young, beautiful, stylish woman. And how does Ursula handle being described as such? Jake only too vividly recalls their college days. Tell me I’m smart. Tell me I’m strong. Is it not insulting to have the press clamoring for the names of her designers, for the shade of her lipstick? (It’s Cherries in the Snow by Revlon, which she purchased for the first time at age fifteen from L. S. Ayres with money she made selling programs at Notre Dame games. True to her roots, she has stuck with the lipstick.) Jake would have said all the attention to Ursula’s physical traits rather than her intellectual gifts would have caused her to show her fangs, but he’s wrong. Ursula is happy to get attention any way she can. If it takes Cherries in the Snow to spotlight the welfare-reform bill that she wrote with Rhode Island senator Vincent Stenge
l, so be it. Ursula is style plus substance, as many people have pointed out. The complete package.

  Ursula was built for politics, but Jake has no stomach for it. He has firm views on the issues—and some of his views differ from Ursula’s—but he loathes the wheeling and dealing, the bargaining chips, the side deals. He tries to stay out of it; he appears only at wholesome family-friendly events—Toys for Tots drives at the Grape Street mall, polka dancing on Dyngus Day—and he always has Bess in tow. Bess is in kindergarten at McKinley Elementary. Jake walks her to school every morning and picks her up every afternoon. They still have their nanny, Prue, in Washington, but here in South Bend, Jake handles all things Bess-related, and if he’s traveling for work, then Ursula’s mother, Lynette, covers. Bess visits with Jake’s parents every Sunday. They are surprisingly hands-on, taking Bess to the Potawatomi Zoo or to the ice-skating rink, the same rink where Jake met Ursula so many years ago.

  They eat a lot of pizza from Barnaby’s.

  Jake would like a second child. He would like a third, a fourth, even a fifth. But Ursula barely sees Bess as it is now. She’s supposed to handle school pickup on Wednesdays and take Bess to her ballet class, but last Wednesday, Ursula had a meeting with workers from the ethanol plant and the week before she was at a first-responders event and when Jake asked her if she wanted to change “her” day, she snapped at him.

  I’m doing all this for her, Ursula said.

  She’s too young to understand that, Jake said. She needs her mother.

  You’re not too young to understand it, Ursula said. Bess is fine. I read to her at night. We cuddle. I took her to the library last week. The person who has a problem is you.

  Ursula is right; he does have a problem. He isn’t happy. Every day he thinks about asking for a divorce. He thinks about Mallory, about taking Bess and moving to Nantucket, about marrying Mallory and having a child of their own.