It's Hot in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

  “As if they were mine.” She stared him down.

  Silence.

  And he walked out of the bathroom and charged out the front door. While Caroline helped Theo get dressed for his playdate and Gigi get ready to ride, Eddie was stewing in her Jeep Cherokee. He knew Caroline had picked the vinyl seats over leather just to piss him off. The fuckin’ car didn’t even have seat coolers. Women were impossible.

  And now, beside the ring, Caroline crossed and uncrossed her legs. Her heart raced. She remembered Ryan’s text:

  Your leg around mine: that did it all.

  She tried again to define exactly what Ryan meant by “it all.”

  How hard was it to get transcripts of texts? Eddie might know that possibly Verizon could do that. Maybe she could call now and ask. Parents must be able to get deleted texts if they are really worried about their kids. Everyone always says all texts live out there in cyberspace forever. Was that only for the FBI? What about account holders, or Eddie Clarkson on a family plan? Did he have access to deleted texts? Caroline hankered for the horse-and-buggy days, when affairs unfolded in cornfields or a blacksmithery, undetected by pixels and screens. Of course, back then, she’d also be burned at the stake for what she was doing.

  No doubt there was a little fuck-you to Eddie going on here. And that was part of the thrill, the butterflies. Her shrink could call it sadistic and try to get all into the base, sexual turn-on of hurting someone. But the motive was clear: to experience the easy liberation men do, the entitlement to wander.

  Arthur had gotten a robust hand job from Marjina (or more) in the adjacent dressing room, and curled into bed with Annabelle fifteen minutes later. Eddie had fucked someone, God knows who, when Caroline was pregnant with Gigi. Why couldn’t their women do the same?

  But the guilt rolled in with the certainty of the Atlantic tide. It hit her now, frothing up and bubbling all around her. She was drowning, and she didn’t entirely understand why she couldn’t breathe. She walked in circles again.

  What do I feel so bad about?

  He’s done it several times and did he feel this way!

  Caroline was parched. She sipped her cool water, wondering why Thierry had really brought it to her. Was he trying to curry her favor? Why? Once Eddie calmed down, she’d talk to him about how he treated this sweet man. She’d explain that Thierry was not just another employee, but also the uncle of Gigi’s best friend and, in effect, the girl’s only parent. Eddie’s tirades made Caroline uncomfortable, especially when she and Thierry would make plans for the girls, or talk about the girls’ riding as friendly parents do on the sidelines. Yes, she’d talk to Eddie and maybe he’d give up some clue—how he met Thierry, say—that would lead to why on earth he’d been paying him for ten years.

  She’d heard Eddie screaming at Thierry just that morning about the girls’ tack trunks. It seemed those trunks were always a source of conflict. Maybe she should go into each one? But there were security cameras. Was that what Marcus McCree was doing that day, by coming out here with a pretense of delivering Gigi’s jacket? Caroline didn’t know exactly the significance of the trunks, but suddenly they seemed like a bigger deal than her sleeping with some nice architect she’d known since high school.

  Chapter 37

  Constant Cajoling

  A week later, mid-August

  As Caroline slid her tray alongside the shrimp and lobster section of the Millshore Club’s buffet, Annabelle bumped up behind her and whispered, “You can’t say no.”

  “Jesus, what else are you making me do?” said Caroline, as Annabelle filled two glasses with Arnold Palmers. Two older women next to Caroline with bluish-gray hair and Lilly Pulitzer dresses shook their heads in disapproval: one did not talk so loudly at this club, and one did not hold other people up in line, especially while distracted by indiscreet conversation.

  Caroline said to the server behind the counter, “A half lobster, and two crab claws, some of the cold asparagus in vinaigrette, and the . . .”

  “I’m not making you do anything,” Annabelle said, placing the two drinks on her tray.

  “It is a miracle I survived that lunch. I’m not listening to you anymore,” Caroline said.

  “That crazy lunch at Duryea’s built character. Besides, nothing can ever be that bad again,” Annabelle said. Then she ordered. “Hello Scottie. I’ll have the usual chef salad, that small bowl is fine, don’t forget I like it light on the cheese, red wine vinegar only, please.”

  As Annabelle gave the cashier her club number, Caroline studied both trays, hers overloaded with shellfish and fattening sauces, her friend’s with starvation-level mini-portions.

  While writing her membership account number on the check, Annabelle turned to Caroline and said, “What I’m asking you to do has nothing to do with getting laid.”

  One of the old ladies next to Caroline huffed out loud. This younger generation of club members was so sickeningly confessional. Why, in her day, you kept your business to yourself. She would complain to the executive committee and ask that bylaws be added prohibiting loud conversation at the food counters.

  “You have to come to Linda Cockburn’s for her belt and sandal trunk show I’m co-hosting on Thursday,” Annabelle said, motioning for Caroline to follow her onto the club’s ocean-side deck. “I know you hate her, but you can’t just RSVP no like you did. You’re my best friend.”

  “I don’t hate her, just like I don’t hate the WASPs at this club of yours. Linda’s house for a lady’s day sale is not my scene,” Caroline said, dipping a piece of lobster tail into the bland, Protestant, mayonnaise sauce. “Has Arthur still not brought up Philippe?”

  “Nope. And I’ve never come so close to puking my guts out on a dining table as I was at Duryea’s. But no, we still haven’t discussed it. That’s just not our way,” Annabelle said.

  “And Philippe? Still nothing?”

  “Not a word. Drama is not his style. I told you he’s discreet.”

  “That’s so goddamn weird,” Caroline said, taking a gulp of her iced tea and lemonade, as she checked out some of the club goers: wet kids in their bright Vineyard Vines suits running from pool to ocean and back, parents who’d met at Andover mingling with other parents who’d met at Groton, older Protestants getting hammered on the club’s signature Southsides (it was already one in the afternoon for heaven’s sakes), and munching on peanuts or Ritz crackers and cheddar spread from a crock. “How could Philippe see what your husband was doing and not comment on that? What about seating you between them? Nothing?”

  “Nope. And Eddie?”

  “I’m convinced Eddie had no idea what he was doing by bringing Ryan to the table. He’s such an extrovert, he wouldn’t be able to keep it in.”

  Annabelle smiled at a family at the next table upon seeing their four-year-old girl dressed in the same lime-green Roberta Roller Rabbit cover-up with little seahorses on it, and the same lime-green and white Jack Rogers sandals as her mother. She said to them, “Dying on the outfits!” She then turned to Caroline and said, “Well, it’s better if he’s clueless. Let’s work on developing your extrovert side, which barely exists: come to the sale. The Marvelous Mykonos sandals are really original. You’ll love them. Just buy one pair.”

  Just then, towheaded twin boys in hot pink Vilebrequin bathing suits ran by, knocking Annabelle’s tote off the back of her chair. Their father (in the grown-up version of the same Vilebrequin suit), horrified at his hooligans, lassoed them and forced them to “apologize to Mrs. von Tattenbach” as if they’d bruised the Queen of England.

  Caroline leaned into her friend and said, “You do know every single child here has white hair and blue eyes.” She looked around. “I haven’t been here for two summers, I’d forgotten how preppy preppy can be.” She crunched on a taro chip. “These chips are positively daring.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Annabelle asked. “I grew up here, literally eating this bad chef salad in this blue wooden seat, lost my virginity on
the grass courts here, Arthur likes the golf. People here like routine . . . like the underseasoned food.”

  “You mean unseasoned food,” said Caroline.

  Annabelle waved to a woman in a tragically out-of-date pink-and-orange Tory Burch caftan and a sun hat the size of a flying saucer. “See you at the beach later!” She then said to Caroline, “You have to understand, Linda and all those women don’t mind you being there, they just look down on you.”

  “Lovely distinction, you’re right,” Caroline said, laughing.

  “Has their mean-girl bullshit ever really gotten to you? C’mon!”

  “I think it has,” Caroline replied, remembering that, besides Annabelle, her life in Manhattan was pretty much friendless. If Caroline had a few more women around her, her city “experiment” might have been different. “Why don’t you just write a check for twenty thousand dollars for the charity? You know that’s a lot more than the sale will bring in.”

  “The stuff is kinda nice, kinda . . .”

  “Please. Linda Cockburn pretends to source cashmere from some rare goat in Tashkent and that other woman, Tina what’s-her-face, who lives at these trunk shows, says she sources her crocodile hides from an undiscovered swamp in the rain forest.”

  “It’s not a swamp, it’s the Amazon,” Annabelle said, not knowing why she felt the need to defend any of these women. “You just don’t like her because she’s so into her Park Avenue life.”

  “No, Annabelle, I’m not judgmental that way,” Caroline reminded her, polishing off her last crab claw. “You, with your warehouse of Tiffany china that you switch for the seasons: pinecones for Christmas, Easter eggs in the spring, pumpkins for fall, what’s summer again?”

  “There’s like five summer patterns, mostly shells or fish. And summer is not for Tiffany, too delicate, Italian ceramics from Positano are what I have out now,” Annabelle said, dousing her bland iceberg lettuce with pepper.

  “And I still love you because you’re a ballsy, hilarious bitch. But those other women are so 1950s, parking their brains once they marry Mr. Richie Rich, or,” she looked around her, “one of these genetically interbred, blond Millshore men.”

  “You think?” Annabelle joked.

  “I don’t think, I know, and like them: you went to prep school at Exeter—or ‘prepped’ at Exeter, as your mother says—before Dartmouth. But you’re an SAT tutor for the scholarship kids at four inner-city schools. Why? Because you yourself said they can’t afford the tutors the rich kids can. You use your education. What are those other women doing besides hosting high-end Tupperware parties?”

  “I agree with you,” Annabelle said. “And it’s not like I’m scared to tell them so. I warn Linda all the time: go do something serious so that when you’re fifty-five years old, an empty nester, and your Henry falls for the yoga teacher, you can go get hired somewhere. But they don’t listen to me. Come because you set an example: you kept your job, even when you didn’t need to.”

  “Who says I don’t need to? My anxieties come in handy sometimes, because I don’t trust Eddie to support us forever. I love design, but I’m also being prudent. Everything could go down the tank,” she pointed out. “If I leave, yeah, I’ll have some of his money, but what if he’s hiding it all in some tax haven in Bermuda? What if he loses it all in some scheme? At least my design jobs will support me and, presumably, Eddie would have saved enough to support the kids.”

  “Okay, so then Linda’s house is like eighteen thousand square feet, go get some inspiration for your other clients, keep your skills honed,” Annabelle said. “These women are into interior design porn, you are too, I know. Check out how much the owners spent on this room or that, have some rosé, shop a little, do some good. All the money goes to the Bridgehampton Child Care Center, many of those moms are infirm somehow, part of the year-round population who need our support . . . it’s a thing, a little to-do for Linda’s company.”

  “I like that Bridgehampton Center, my mom used to work there,” Caroline added. “And when is this to-do again?”

  “This Thursday at four. You’re a sport. And I admit it, when Linda calls Marvelous Mykonos her ‘company,’ it drives me crazy,” Annabelle said. “It just isn’t a company: Linda bought twenty thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise on her last boozy trip to Mykonos with the girls, of course, NetJetting everyone there, and now she’s just reselling it and acting as if she somehow curated a floor at the Athens pop-up of Bergdorf Goodman.”

  Just then, an officious-looking man in horn-rimmed glasses, a bow tie, and a blue blazer walked up to the table. “Mrs. von Tattenbach, sorry to interrupt, but the deadline is today at five in the afternoon,” he said. “I have you and Mrs. Wentworth as the member-guest team for this weekend’s championship. And your girls are partnered up, I assume?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Bancroft, you’ll have those names by then. You know how difficult four girls can be to nail down,” Annabelle said. After Mr. Bancroft spirited away to check on more of these absent-minded members, Annabelle asked Caroline, “You’ve been so skittish about Eddie and his business recently. What are you so worried about?” As the same two older ladies in the Lilly Pulitzers walked by, Annabelle said, “Your husband is loaded, and as far as Arthur and I can tell, more loaded all the time. You’re fine!” The two older women shook their heads, once again lamenting the manners of the new generation.

  “I haven’t wanted to tell the whole deal until I understood it more, but I ran across more papers at the barn,” Caroline said.

  “What were they?”

  “Eddie’s private files, much more than the ledgers I told you about.”

  “How did you see them?”

  “I have several keys to his office and cabinets,” Caroline said.

  “You’re going through Eddie’s locked files? First, his iPad and ledgers and now his keys? Were you looking for sexy letters?”

  “I wish,” Caroline said. “Women are the least of my concerns at this point.”

  “What is it?” Annabelle asked, crunching on a stale breadstick from the plastic basket on the table.

  “I don’t know yet, but it’s too many payments overseas, frankly too much money going in and out of weird code-worded entities that have nothing to do with horses and hay,” Caroline said. She was worried that Eddie was in legal trouble, and it frightened her. She turned to Annabelle and added, “I’m sorry. I’ll be at the sale. I know you’re right . . . the rosé and the tea sandwiches get those rich women all sauced up and primed to shop. Then they remember the Bridgehampton Center at Christmas and send another five grand, and it’s all smart marketing on your behalf . . . so yes, I will buy ugly sandals from Mykonos so that we can help other women who have bigger problems than which beads are on the tips of their shoes.”

  Chapter 38

  Trapped at a Trunk Show

  Thursday

  As Caroline got out of the car, the breezeless air stuck to her like cellophane.

  “Ahem. Your keys, ma’am?” the valet asked.

  “Oh, sorry,” Caroline said, handing him the keys. Linda Cockburn’s summer home was much bigger than Caroline realized. “How many women have arrived?” she asked.

  “Has to be a couple dozen.”

  That sounded like more than enough women to make the show successful. Caroline considered getting back into the Jeep but knew that would infuriate Annabelle.

  As an inside joke, Caroline had worn the Gucci hot pink satin slides that Annabelle had found for her. They were a special edition, with zebra skin as piping and on the inside sole. Gucci had made a teeny quantity, only a few pairs in each size for the Fifth Avenue store, sold out way before they even put a pair on a shelf. Annabelle had written on the gift card: Armor for those ladies’ events I make you go to. So you can outdo the women you so love to hate. They are going to PANIC when they see you in these.

  Caroline would walk in soon, but the many yapping women could wait a bit longer while she surveyed the five-acre property, ogling s
ome of that real estate porn Annabelle had promised. The land sprawled to her left and right, with abundant hydrangeas in bloom everywhere. She figured the landscaping bill alone had to be two hundred thousand dollars a year. She counted the windows and guessed there must be twenty rooms upstairs.

  The white stucco exterior, large porches, and enormous columns out front read more nouveau chateau than beach house, hardly inspiration for her own clients. The furniture on the deck, groupings of lounge chairs with golden legs and leopard-print cushions, made Caroline wonder what charlatan was responsible for the decor.

  Awestruck at the mini-golf course to her right and the weeping hemlock orchard to her left, Caroline figured if design didn’t work out, she could make a documentary film about Upper East Side ladies—the ones inside chomping on endive with tuna tartare. This bona fide tribe, their customs, and unique behavior was surely worthy of study. Her documentary, America’s Most Annoying Housewives, wouldn’t air on Bravo, but on the Discovery Channel, right after a show about killer bees or the headhunters of Papua New Guinea.

  Armed with her hot pink satin slides, Caroline steeled herself to face the creatures inside. But before she could knock, the door swung open and a blast of artificially cooled air hit her in the face. (It was like a meat locker inside, and in a sense, it was, of course, best if the surgically remastered tissues of the women in there were preserved in the cold.)

  One man was to open the door, another to stand sentry by the front entrance. He faced sideways, expressionless, like a Beefeater at Buckingham Palace. Each man had the house moniker, Ocean Spray, stitched on his white polo shirt. Linda and her husband, Henry, had given their home a title as if it were a Scottish manor, obviously missing the cranberry juice reference.

  In high school, Caroline used to drive by these estates with her girlfriends and wonder about the titles painted on wooden placards out front: Willow Manor, Whispering Meadows . . . The girls imagined fancy European counts lived inside. Now that she could actually enter these places (something she’d never imagined in her youth), she understood the naming trend was a pretentious play for social acceptance.