Chapter Seventeen
“Okay. So we have nine lobsters, six pounds of crayfish, fresh Adams Farm tomatoes for the salad. How many of those?”
Lydia, the Meyer family’s Filipina cook-cum-housekeeper, held up an enormous, groaning burlap sack. “Plenty. Enough to feed an army, Mrs. Lucy.”
“Good. Because we’re going to be an army. Now what else? Beef?”
“Already in the oven, slow-cooking.”
“Fresh bread?”
“Got it.”
“Strawberries? Tonic water for Teddy’s G-and-T? Oh, darn it.” Lucy Meyer clapped a hand dripping in diamonds to her fevered brow. “We’re totally out of gin. I’ll send Arnie into town to get some. Do you think the A&P’s still open?”
“At one o’clock in the afternoon? Yes, Mrs. Lucy. Definitely.” The housekeeper put a reassuring hand on her boss’s arm. Lydia liked working for Mrs. Meyer. “Try to relax. The dinner’s going to be just perfect.”
Lucy Meyer hoped so. She liked things to be perfect, from her dinner parties, to the just-so caramel highlights in her hair, to the updated-every-season soft furnishings of her Martha’s Vineyard summer home. During her childhood, Lucy’s family summered on nearby Nantucket. She remembered her mother’s picnics from those vacations as things of exquisite beauty, from the colorful salads and fresh seafood to the chicly mismatched French chinaware and the crisp white linen cloths thrown over the picnic blankets. As for evening dinners, those were nothing short of spectacular. Lucy remembered long, antique tables, sparkling with cut crystal and the finest silverware. Back then the men all wore tuxes to dinner and the ladies dazzled in chiffon and sequin and silk and lace and jewels. Lucy and her little brother would watch the preparations in awe, before being hustled upstairs to the nursery by their nanny.
Of course, things had changed since the sixties. As an adult, Lucy preferred Martha’s Vineyard over Nantucket, partly because it had more life to it and felt less starched. Everything on the Vineyard was about cookouts and pool parties and sustainable, locally caught seafood. But that didn’t mean an effort shouldn’t be made, especially for Alexia and Teddy’s welcome-back dinner.
Wandering into her huge, vaulted drawing room, Lucy replumped the already perfect cushions on her Ralph Lauren couches and tried to take her housekeeper’s advice.
Relax. It’s just a party. Everything’ll be fine.
How on earth her friend Alexia De Vere coped with the stresses of running a country, Lucy Meyer had no idea. She found running a home quite exhausting enough.
Alexia De Vere’s world was as far removed from Lucy Meyer’s as it was possible to be. But what made the friendship work was that neither woman would have traded her life for the other’s. Lucy loved being a homemaker and a hostess every bit as much as Alexia loved politics and the trappings of power. Both women excelled at what they did. And despite their different lives, they did have some things in common. Both were married to wonderful, supportive husbands who worked in the finance industry. Teddy De Vere was a hedge fund manager, with a niche but lucrative European business. Arnie Meyer was a venture capitalist with stakes in funds across the continental United States as well as in Asia and now the growing Middle Eastern market. The two men had never worked together directly, but they understood each other’s business. From day one they had gotten along like a house on fire.
It was hard to believe that more than twenty years had passed since Arnie Meyer sold the De Veres their summer home. The Gables was a comfortable, midsize property on the edge of the Meyer’s Pilgrim Farm estate, with a pool, a small guesthouse, and an attractive backyard filled with clematis and roses and towering hollyhocks. Arnie and Lucy lived in the much grander “big house,” a spectacular eighteenth-century farm with high ceilings, original wide oak floorboards, and vast, airy rooms filled with light. Alexia and Lucy had both been young mothers when they met, the summer that Teddy bought the Gables. Lucy remembered her first meeting with Alexia as if it were yesterday. Already a British MP, she was clearly extremely ambitious even then. But no one, least of all Lucy Meyer, imagined that her new neighbor would one day reach the dizzying heights of power that she now occupied.
My friend the British home secretary.
Lucy quite literally never got tired of saying it.
Tonight was an extra-special occasion. Not only because Alexia and Teddy were back on the island for the summer after Alexia’s triumphant appointment. But because Michael, their ridiculously good-looking son, was joining them for the first time in many years. Roxie always came out for the summers. Poor girl, she had nothing else to do, and of course, since the accident, she and her father had become pretty much inseparable. But Michael De Vere hadn’t been to the Vineyard since his teens. Lucy Meyer couldn’t help but think how wonderful it would be, how darling and perfect and just wonderful, if Michael De Vere were to fall in love with her daughter, Summer. Then we could all be one, big, happy family.
Lucy’s twenty-two-year-old daughter had recently broken up with her college boyfriend, the dreadful, pompous Chad Bates. (Chad. I mean, really. Who has a perfect little newborn baby boy and calls him Chad?) In Lucy’s book, this meant that Summer was ripe for a new romance. And just imagine if Summer and Michael got married and had babies! Lucy and Alexia could be the doting grannies together.
It could happen. Lucy Meyer could make it happen.
And it all starts tonight.
Michael De Vere sat in the back pew of Grace Church on Woodlawn Avenue, snoring loudly while the congregation sang “Bind Us Together.”
“Wake up!” His sister, Roxie, nudged him in the ribs. “People are staring.”
Michael jerked awake. Immediately a wave of nausea hit him like a punch in the gut. What the hell was he doing here? What madness had possessed him to come, not just to this church full of uptight Episcopalian Americans, but to this island?
He knew the answer, of course. He was here in an effort to appease his father. Teddy had been so furious about Michael dropping out of Oxford that he’d threatened to disinherit him.
“I’ll leave every penny to your sister! Don’t think I won’t!”
But Michael had stood his ground, pressing ahead with his plans for Kingsmere Events and renting office space in Oxford with his friend Tommy. By an incredible stroke of luck they’d immediately landed a huge gig in the Hamptons, organizing a sixtieth birthday party for a billionaire real estate developer on his new Oceano superyacht. Just forty-eight hours ago, Michael had been lying back in a luxury tender with a supermodel under each arm, gazing up at a hundred grand’s worth of fireworks exploding across the East Hampton sky and mentally calculating his profit. (Okay, so perhaps “supermodel” was pushing it. The girls were actually high-class Russian hookers, but they charged like supermodels and looked like goddesses, so who was counting?) The last thing on earth Michael wanted to do the next morning was catch a plane over to sleepy Martha’s Vineyard, the island with the world’s biggest stick up its ass. But Teddy had insisted. “It would mean a lot to your mother if you came out this year.”
For all his apparent independence of spirit, Michael De Vere was devoted to his mother, and to his inheritance. He had no intention of losing either. So here he was, hopelessly hungover, trussed up like a Christmas turkey in a jacket and tie, trying not to puke during the Lord’s Prayer.
At long last the service was over. Michael pushed Roxie’s wheelchair out into the bright sunshine, wincing in pain behind his Ray-Bans.
Alexia slipped a slender arm around his waist. “Are you all right, darling?” she asked. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine, Mummy, thanks.”
“He’s hungover,” growled Teddy.
“Lovely service.” Michael forced a pious smile, but Teddy wasn’t buying it.
“Please. Pull the other one. I can smell the booze on your breath from here.”
In his regulation corduroy trousers, sport jacket, and brogues—Teddy De Vere wore the same clothes to church ev
ery Sunday of the year, and saw no reason to change because he happened to be in America, or because the temperature was nudging well into the nineties—Michael’s father was like Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey, as English as PG Tips tea and cucumber sandwiches. If Disneyland had an England theme park, Teddy De Vere could have been one of the characters.
Alexia winked at Michael. “Hungover or not, we’re glad you made it, darling. Aren’t we, Teddy?”
“Humph.”
“Now we must go and say hello to Father Timothy. We’ll see you two at dinner tonight.”
“Dinner?” Michael frowned.
“At the Meyers’,” said Alexia, kissing him on the cheek and wiping off a lipstick mark with her handkerchief. “Drinks are at six.”
“No kiss for me?” Roxie said sarcastically.
Alexia yawned. “Do change the record, Roxanne. I wonder sometimes if you have any idea how boring you can be.”
“Bitch,” muttered Roxie under her breath as her mother walked away.
Michael winced. He hated the conflict between his mother and sister more than anything. Pushing Roxanne’s wheelchair across the street to the Even Keel coffee shop, a favorite hangout since their teens, he bought her a conciliatory frappucino.
“I suppose you’re going to defend her now, are you?” said Roxie.
“No. I’m going to keep out of it.”
“You and Dad are as bad as each other. You never stand up to her.”
“I seriously don’t know if I can make it to the Meyers’ drinks party this evening,” said Michael, adroitly changing the subject. “My head feels like someone dropped an anvil on it.”
“Yes, well, I’ll drop an anvil on it if you abandon me tonight. You can’t leave me to cringe through hours of Mummy’s boasting on my own: G7 Summit this, Ten Downing Street that. Lucy Meyer lapping it all up like a poodle. Blech.”
Michael frowned but said nothing.
“Summer’s flying in specially for it, you know,” Roxie teased. “I know you wouldn’t want to miss her.”
Michael rolled his eyes to heaven. Summer Meyer had been his and Roxie’s childhood playmate. She’d always had a quiet but burning crush on Michael. Shy even as a little girl, as a teenager poor Summer had gained a huge amount of weight. The last time Michael saw her, she must have been seventeen, weighed around a hundred and eighty pounds, and was so silent in his presence she was borderline autistic. The thought of sitting through a four-hour dinner trying to make polite conversation with a sweet but mute Rosie O’Donnell look-alike was stomach churning. And Michael De Vere’s stomach was already churning.
“If I come, will you make Dad put me back in the will?”
Roxie laughed. “No. But if you don’t come, when I have all the family money and you’re completely financially dependent on me, I’ll send you to the workhouse.”
“Fine. I’ll come. But I am not sitting next to Summer Meyer and that’s final.”
“Michael. You’re sitting there. Next to Summer. If she ever gets here.”
Lucy Meyer pointed to an empty chair on Michael’s right. Roxie De Vere collapsed into giggles, earning herself a death stare from Michael. Talk about the hot seat! On Michael’s left sat Vangie Braberman, the tone-deaf widow of Senator Braberman, who owned one of the smaller cottages on the Pilgrim Farm estate. Vangie was in her late seventies and had a complex series of ailments that provided her with inexhaustible conversational material. Michael De Vere had known her since his childhood, and at this point probably knew as much as Vangie Braberman’s doctor about the old lady’s irritable bowel syndrome, and certainly more than he wanted to. Vangie refused to wear a hearing aid, but carried an ear trumpet that had once belonged to her grandmother, which made her look like something out of a Victorian picture book. She was fond of hitting young people with it if they insisted on mumbling, something that, according to Vangie, Michael’s generation did “CONSTANTLY!”
On Michael’s right, an empty chair sat reserved for Summer Meyer. In the faintest wisp of a silver lining to the cloud currently looming over Michael’s head, Summer’s plane had been delayed out of Boston, so he’d be spared her shy, burning stares for the first course at least. But she was expected to arrive in time for dessert. If Michael’s memory served, no force on earth could keep Summer Meyer away from a good dessert. The prospect of Lucy’s tiramisu would be enough to have her swimming across the sound from Boston. The first whale sighted off the Vineyard this summer.
Meanwhile Summer’s mother, Lucy, trim and pretty in a plain white shirtwaist dress and raffia wedgies, was on her feet, relishing her role as hostess. Lucy Meyer had a motherly, nurturing way about her that Michael’s own mother had always lacked, but she also managed to keep herself in great shape. As a boy, Michael used to fancy Lucy Meyer as the ultimate yummy mummy. He was pleased to see that she hadn’t changed.
“Now, if we’re all seated, before we start I’d like to say a few words.” Lucy’s tinkling, feminine voice rang out around the room. “All of us here tonight have known one another a long time. Arnie and I like to think of this as the Pilgrim Farm family. Every one of you is dear to our hearts. But one member of our party deserves special mention tonight.”
All eyes turned to Alexia, who blushed becomingly at the chorus of “hear, hears.”
“Not content with going into the British Parliament, our very own Mrs. De Vere decided that she should run the whole darn country.”
“And who better?” Teddy chuckled, beaming with pride.
“Who indeed? So as well as a welcome-home party, tonight we would like to say a belated congratulations to the lovely Alexia. You may be a rabid Republican—”
“Conservative,” Alexia corrected.
Lucy’s father had been a politician and her family were all staunch Democrats.
“—but we love you and we could not be more proud. To Alexia!”
“To Alexia!”
Fifteen glasses were raised, the antique crystal clinking and dazzling in the candlelight. During the melee Michael stole a glance at his sister. Roxie’s glass was also raised, but her once-soft face was set like flint. Michael thought sadly, You could strike a match off her rage. There’s murder in those eyes.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Everyone looked up. A tall, dark girl had walked into the room during the toast, dropping her backpack with a thud on the wooden floor. She wore a simple pair of faded Levi’s and a white T-shirt, the neck scooped low enough to show the tan lines from her bikini. Her long mane of chestnut hair was tied back in a ponytail and her makeup-free face glowed with health and youth, despite her obvious tiredness. She was, quite simply, stunning.
“Summer, darling!” Arnie Meyer stood up to hug his daughter.
“At last.” Lucy clapped her hands “Come and sit down, sweetheart, over here. You’re next to Michael.”
Summer blushed and shot her mother a look. Talk about mortifying! Lucy had all but patted the chair!
“Aren’t you going to say hello?”
“Hi.” Summer nodded awkwardly at Michael. “It’s been awhile.”
“Yes.”
He wanted to say something suave, but he was too busy picking his jaw up from the table. Bloody hell. If Arnie hadn’t said her name out loud, I wouldn’t even have recognized her.
“Are you on the island for long?” Summer asked Michael politely.
“Erm . . . I, erm . . .”
“Unfortunately not.” Alexia answered for him, telling the table at large: “Michael’s just founded a new business back in England. We feel lucky he was able to make it out at all, don’t we, Teddy?”
“Hmm.” Teddy grunted disapprovingly.
“He has to fly back in a couple of days.”
“Well, I . . . not necessarily,” Michael stammered. His eyes were fixed on Summer’s cheekbones and translucent, bronzed skin. And her lips, soft and the palest of pinks, parting invitingly as she took a sip of chilled white wine. Had she always had those lips? Why had he
never noticed them before? “I might be able to stay a bit longer. Tommy can hold the fort for a while. You know. If necessary.”
“Really?” Alexia brightened. Having Michael here made everything so much easier at home. “That’s wonderful. Are you sure you can spare the time?”
“Of course, Mum. Anything for you.”
Roxie De Vere wondered how her brother managed to keep a straight face.
Later, in the kitchen, Alexia helped Lucy prepare coffee.
“Dinner was a triumph, Luce. Thank you so much.”
“It was all Lydia’s doing. Anyway, dinner schminner,” said Lucy, setting rose-printed coffee cups carefully onto bone-china saucers. “Talk to me. What’s it like? I mean what’s it really like?”
“The job? It’s exciting.” Alexia smiled but there was a wariness in her eyes. She was holding something back.
“But?”
“No buts. It’s a great honor to have been appointed. And a huge challenge, of course.”
“Honey,” said Lucy kindly, “you’re not on Fox News now. You don’t need to give me the party line. Heck, I can’t even vote in Merry Olde England, so you may as well tell me the truth.”
Alexia smiled. “That’s true, I suppose. Well, the job’s terrific. But it’s been stressful. I’ve had one or two unpleasant incidents.”
“Which in English means . . . ?”
“Threats. There was a phone call, a few weeks before I got out here.” Alexia told her about the sinister, distorted voice and the fanatical, fire-and-brimstone cursing. “Something about shedding my blood in the dust. I don’t know.”
“My God,” Lucy gasped. “How terrifying.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But it bothered me that this wacko had my home number.”
“I’ll bet it did,” Lucy said quietly. “Does Teddy know?”
“He knows about that phone call.”
Lucy knew her friend well enough to read between the lines.
“But there’s more. Something that you haven’t told him.”
The understatement made Alexia smile. “There’s so much I haven’t told him, Luce! Believe me, you have no idea. There are things that, if he knew, he’d leave me in an instant.”
Sidney Sheldon's the Tides of Memory Page 14