A Hamptons Christmas

by James Brady

  My assignment was writing a cover story about a temperamental diva (echoes of Streisand, Madonna, and several others, but I prudently won’t say more) at her lavish estate atop one of the more elegantly pricey canyons, and I’d just about concluded the damned woman had it all: talent, wealth, fame, beauty, adulation, good health, and a robust sexuality, all of it luxuriously gift-wrapped in this glorious hilltop house with its extraordinary views of snowy peaks to the east and great Pacific rollers to the west. But when I said so, telling her how remarkably fortunate she was, the wretched woman burst into sobbing confession, startling me into handing her my own linen handkerchief, tugged impulsively from a trouser pocket and taken gratefully, as she owned up, amid the sobs, to being frustrated and lonely. How she missed New York, the downtown club scene, her second husband (“So he cheated on me; no one’s a saint”), Page Six in the Post, Mayor Giuliani, the Broadway stage, Elaine’s, the Knicks, Chinese takeout, the pool room of the Four Seasons, and Bergdorf Goodman. In no especial order.

  “Have everything? Have everything?” she demanded, pulling herself together and giving her nose a final, vigorous wipe with my hankie, “Sure, I got everything. Last Tuesday I go out for the morning papers and right there curled up on the front step next to Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, a goddamned rattler! This does not happen to me on Central Park West, I assure you. You go out your own front door to pick up the trades and rattlesnakes get you? A six-car garage, yeah, and in every corner a tarantula. Hairy-legged bastards, the size of your hand, you think that’s fun? In the pool, lizards. For all I know, Gila monsters, swimming laps. Black widow spiders? Don’t tell me about black widow spiders. You can’t keep a cat up here. The coyotes eat them. You hear their little bones being crunched in the night. Your heart goes out. Mountain lions. Not five miles from here, a mountain lion killed a jogger. The maids heard about it; didn’t show up for three days. Think of the dust; just imagine. I used to jog myself. No more. If I cross the front lawn these days I sing show tunes very loud and wave my arms about, trying to look large, which is supposed to give mountain lions pause. On my own front lawn I’m afraid. Then there’s the pool boy, resents Anglos and pees in my hot tub. It’s my fault, por favor, the Mexican problem? I killed “Viva Zapata”? Yet here’s this son of a bitch pissing. I don’t dare fire him; he’ll come back and vandalize.

  “The day the mudslide season ends, the brushfire season begins. The day the brushfire season ends … and don’t get me started on earthquakes. This is the good life?”

  There was more, and when I’d closed my notebook and driven off in the rented little Chrysler ragtop, I thought to myself I’d seen, if only briefly, the woman herself and not the carefully polished, honed and crafted superstar PR (via Pat Kingsley at PMK) image I’d come here expecting. But isn’t that what makes a good magazine piece? The unexpected?

  As I drove down the winding canyon road, slowed by shopping traffic along Rodeo Drive and its vanity fair of shops, en route to my hotel and then the flight back to New York, I remarked the incongruity of elaborate Christmas decorations and Salvation Army Santa Clauses (all ringing their bells in Spanish) set against the royal palms and classic open cars and bare shoulders of suntanned women in the baking late afternoon heat of a southern California December.

  I couldn’t wait to get back home, back East. Where Christmas really happens. Not out here. Not with palm trees and Mexican Santas and rattlesnakes curled up on your copy of Variety and Gila monsters in the pool. Of course at that point, I had no idea this was going to be one Christmas back East that wasn’t going to be quite Currier & Ives, but instead might have been choreographed by Bob Fosse and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. With Dennis Hopper the second unit director. I signed my bill at the Beverly Wilshire, overtipped everyone and happily got out of there, off to catch the red-eye for New York.

  Chapter Four

  Among Santa Claus’s “elves” were all those Spielberg children …

  Forty-eight hours later, I was back in East Hampton, where a gray sky and temperatures in the forties provided symmetry, made the decorations and the date seem precisely right. Christmas in the Hamptons? That’s how some of us define home. You know, sort of the way Digby, John, and Beau Geste thought of their Aunt Patricia’s warm and fuzzy Brandon Abbas, before bolting off to join the Legion and being seconded to the tender mercies of Colour Sergeant Lejaune and the siege of Fort Zinderneuf.

  Anderson had given me a month off after the diva assignment. I was to winnow down a collection of my magazine pieces for hardcover publication, and East Hampton seemed the perfect place to do it. While at the same time, visiting my father the Admiral and waiting for Her Ladyship to arrive. Alix had, somewhat reluctantly, bought into my argument that the Hamptons are even better without “the summer people” and, if we were ever to make our relationship more than deliciously episodic, she’d better get to know the place, hors de saison.

  Or so I’d attempted to convince her.

  The Admiral was a concern, entirely different, his wounds acting up. At his age, you don’t heal as quickly. I don’t know why he keeps taking on these risky assignments from Bill Cohen at the Pentagon. There are plenty of young officers eager to make their bones: the crazier Marines, paras from Fort Benning, Navy Seals, a few of the flyboys, Top Guns only need apply. But that’s the Admiral; that’s my Old Man. I don’t think that flag officers, at seventy, ought to be slipping in and out of North Korea by rubber boat, meeting with agents provocateurs, jousting in the Hindu Kush with Osama bin Laden and similar sportsmen, and getting shot at. To say nothing of having fingers cut off, with or without anesthetic, by the Dreaded Taliban, at their strongholds in Central Asia.

  Although when I got to the house on Further Lane, and his decidedly protective housekeeper, Inga, stepped back long enough to let me hug the Old Man and all that, he looked reasonably fit and grinned tolerantly at my concern, getting off a pretty good Jake Barnes line about how he’d gotten wounded.

  “ … and flying on a joke front like the Italian …”

  Inga got about the making of dinner in the industrial-strength country kitchen that graced the house and was clearly her domain, while, in deference to my father’s damaged fingers, I mixed the martinis (Absolut on the rocks with olives, no vermouth) and opened a pretty good Opus One to go with the rare rack of lamb. Over coffee I told the Old Man about Hollywood, and he filled me in on the Defense Department and his brief, not terribly productive few hours in North Korea, why Syria was so dicey, and what the Pentagon brass really thought was happening in Montenegro and Chechnya. Then I cut us a couple of Cohibas and we went into his den to smoke.

  “D’you see this out in California?” he asked, passing over a newspaper clipping. The headline spoke for itself: “HAMPTONS BURIAL/ THE PLOTS TO DIE FOR/ ARE FULLY BOOKED/ LAWSUIT THROWN OUT.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Not Marley again?”

  Another legal decision had gone against the majority of local people and in favor of one of the wealthier East Hampton grandees, the late Jacob Marley, whose estate was again being sued. At stake? The remaining hundred or so grave plots in an historic old local cemetery which had been bought up by Mr. Marley’s estate so that his, and his family’s, bodies might enjoy eternity undisturbed by lesser corpses. And so that no competing headstone might disturb the dead Marley’s water view. It was by now a familiar story, but one this recent litigation had revived as news. Hamptons families, original Bonackers, many of them here a century or more before the first Marley, were steamed that their dead had to be buried somewhere up-Island and not conveniently near hearth and home. The paper that published the story wasn’t our weekly East Hampton Star, either; it was the New York Times. I tossed the clipping down without finishing, shaking my head.

  “Yes, sir. Marley again,” said my father. “The Times put the story on page one. Below the fold but definitely on page one. Marley, even dead, is still news.”

  The story about Marley and the graves hadn’t run
in the national edition of the Times out on the Coast, so I’d missed it. The Admiral liked it when he’d caught something in the paper and I hadn’t, being that I was the professional journalist and he just a career sailor out of Annapolis.

  “So that’s the end of it. The Marleys keep the Old Churchyard.”

  “Not quite,” my father said. “The trustees could still change their minds about selling the graves. Sale isn’t final until the last day of the year. But it looks like the ruling will stand, which is what has local Baymen so sore. Feelings around here are running high. Do you know they even stole Jake’s body right out of the crypt? Kept it on ice for a day or so in the fish-cannery reefer out near Devon Yacht Club before putting it back?”

  Then we dropped the subject. I was still on California time, so I drank a bit to make up for it and slept well. Very well. Our house is four hundred yards from the ocean, and the sound of Atlantic surf is as good a soporific as we have. Maybe that anyone has without needing a prescription.

  That was Friday night.

  And on my first Saturday back, as if to welcome home the prodigal son, East Hampton staged its annual ragtag, irresistibly small-townish Santa Claus parade, which, with its sheer amateur quality, rather set the tone of an old-fashioned American village Christmas:

  The East Hampton high school band, a guy on a one-wheel bike not riding it very well, Hugh King togged out in a stovepipe hat as the town crier of a century ago, the Brownies in uniform, other little kids as elves, leashed dogs being walked by the Rotarians in the line of march, and just to balance out the pet category, there was Pat Lillis from Springs, who rescues stray cats and finds them homes and is the only woman I ever heard of who successfully domesticates feral cats. Next came the antiquetractor society, fire engines from this and neighboring towns with their sirens wailing, an inept juggler, the mayor waving from an open car, three old gaffers from the American Legion as a color guard, a man on stilts, a couple of yellow trucks from Whitmore Tree Nurseries, the Presbyterian choral society, a big haulseiner rowboat on wheels towed behind a pickup, the Village emergency ambulance, a papier-mâché whale, Santa on a flatbed truck, and free balloons being handed out to children on the sidewalk, some of whom burst into tears as soon as their balloons exploded or flew off unattended. As I say, very small-town stuff, even with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger there on the sidewalk among the crowd and even if the “elves” included some of the numerous Spielberg kids!

  The Santa Claus parade and Jake Marley’s posthumous takeover of the Old Churchyard were big local news. But there were other stories. For one, Reds Hucko was still missing.

  Reds was a local fisherman war hero-cum-town drunk. As a Marine in Vietnam he’d slaughtered VC by the hundreds (they said he drank to atone; others held that Reds drank because he liked the stuff). He had been working on draggers out of Montauk, and over Thanksgiving weekend he fell overboard in a half gale and was presumed dead. But you know how the currents are around here, especially late in the year with winter coming. And so the body hadn’t yet turned up. Which was a shame because Reds was a popular fellow (also because he owed a little money and the insurance couldn’t be paid out until the body washed up), and local folk were anxious to give him a proper planting.

  Jerry Seinfeld chose the dead of winter to offer $35 million to Billy Joel for his oceanfront place on Further Lane. There was talk that Hillary (yes! that Hillary) was shaking her begging bowl again and might include East Hampton on a fund-raiser. The mere possibility of which set members of the Maidstone Club to oaths and swearing not heard on Club property since FDR ran for a third term. Bunny Halsey, scion of one of the earliest Southampton families, was divorcing his fourth wife. An historic barn in Amagansett burned down. Thibaut de Saint Phalle had visited his place on Middle Lane from his place in Naples, Florida, a rare thing in winter. There was a continuing stink along Further Lane about developers being allowed to sell off five-million-dollar lots of the Rock Foundation Nature Preserve. And a right whale was seen cruising off Main Beach, not two hundred yards from shore.

  Sag Harbor’s Michael Thomas had read a brilliantly persuasive and richly footnoted paper to the Tuesday Forum at the Maidstone Club that had everyone talking, and for an expanded version of which, Vanity Fair and Tina Brown’s latest magazine were both said to be vigorously bidding. Mr. Thomas’s thesis? That the fatal lapses which led a savvy, cagey Nixon to disgrace and resignation derived from the fact that his three best friends were Bebe Rebozo, Elmer Bopst, and Robert Abplanalp. Wrote Mr. Thomas, “No man is entirely normal whose three best friends are named Bebe, Bopst, and Abplanalp. Nixon, clearly, was a whack-job.”

  Down the beach at Montauk, an exotic novelty one might have expected in southern California but not here: the establishment of an actual government-in-exile set up in the second-best suite at Gurney’s Inn (off-season rates applied). Professor Wamba-dia-Wamba, noted Congolese opposition leader and founder of the People’s Popular Front (the FPP), was in residence under tight security. There were concerns about assassination attempts and rumors an actual shot had been fired, but as an East Hampton cop explained following a cursory investigation, “These things happen out of season.” The FPP’s agenda, the professor explained to a reporter from Reuters, was one of nonalignment, universal suffrage, and deep-breathing exercises. The Hamptons had never had a government-in-exile before, and, except for the reported shooting, Wamba was locally quite a popular figure.

  Less dramatically, Julian Schnabel, the famous artist who smashed dinner plates and then cleverly glued them up in attractive collages, was preparing a new gallery showing of his work; Uma Thurman had been seen jogging prettily behind her baby’s sleek perambulator with its outsized racing wheels; the wine critics were all talking up this latest vintage from the Channing Daughters’ Vineyard in Bridgehampton; Tom and Daisy Buchanan had closed their big place on Gin Lane and gone South, but Demaine the oil man was in residence on Georgica Pond and was giving a white-tie dinner for sixty at his home in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Prince Charles’s paramour (“mistress!” the more literal insisted), Camilla Parker Bowles, visited friends in Shinnecock Hills. Sybil Burton, who used to be married to Richard before Miss Taylor happened along, was staging a new revue at the Long Wharf theater in Sag Harbor. The sale of Tommy Mottola’s house was final (eight million plus, it was said). George Plimpton was working on a new book, an oral history of his entire graduating class at Harvard. Tony Duke scored an extraordinary late-season hole-in-one at the Maidstone and cheerfully stood a round of drinks. The new Kmart opened in Bridgehampton just in time for Christmas. In Springs, Madame Rand assured friends that architect Howard Roark was over his flu and taking nourishment. The North Haven Bridge was again closed amid fears of structural collapse. A Hamptons Coach driver went missing with the cab and the money. And local Indians gathered at the Thunder Bird Coffee Shop to protest development along St. Andrews Road, which they claimed infringed on ancient Shinnecock land, culture, and heritage. When troopers arrested five Shinnecocks, a tribal spokesman issued a stirring and eloquent objection. “This,” he said, “is literally the last buffalo.”

  People who don’t know the Hamptons imagine it’s dull out here in winter. Not hardly.

  Chapter Five

  Outside, a light snow fell, the first of the season …

  That afternoon, after a day at my computer editing the book, I drove into the village to stroll down the alley past Ralph Lauren’s boutique for a Pacifico beer at the Blue Parrot Tex-Mex joint (California-Mex, they insisted). It was staying open only through the Christmas holidays and then the boys – Lee, the majority owner, and Roland, the right-hand man—would be off surfing. This year, to Bali.

  Even out of season, a few of the regulars were already on station, occupying barstools, munching tortilla chips, and knocking back the cerveza and the margaritas, chatting with Kelly the barmaid who was so young she still had braces on her teeth (everyone chatted with Kelly the barmaid; it was required).
I got a stool and a Pacifico with a chunk of lime jammed into the bottle and checked out Kelly’s braces.

  “They okay?”

  “Fine,” Kelly said. “Another few months.”

  Then she nodded toward a table against the wall near a gaudy bullfight poster promising Miura bulls (no shaved horns on those babies!) and several world-famous matadors no one ever heard of. Under the poster, at the little table, was someone who had caught Kelly’s eye and was not at all a regular. Only person in the bar who was younger than the barmaid.

  She was a skinny little girl in shades (the sort they sell at an airport gift shop to travelers who want to look sophisticated), sitting alone at a good table (“good” tables at the Blue Parrot were in the eye of the beholder), paging through an LIRR timetable while noshing on quesadillas and sipping a Schweppes tonic water in a wide-brimmed, stemmed dry martini glass (her request, according to Kelly, being so much “neater” than an ordinary water tumbler). She was wearing a schoolgirl’s kilted skirt, a classic, shapeless Shetland sweater, knee socks, and Gucci loafers. Her matching Vuitton luggage consisted of a roomy but decidedly chic backpack, a midsized duffle, and a tote. Her parka (anorak, really, if like me you prefer the European term) was by Bogner (she would later inform us there was considerable brand-name loyalty at her school, where one of the late Willi Bogner’s grandchildren was enrolled). Kelly the barmaid brought me another Pacifico and some fresh tortillas and filled me in, superficially, on the kid. As the cerveza went down, I entertained myself by trying to read off the titles of a stack of paperbacks she’d arranged on the table for meal-time browsing: The Sun Also Rises, Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Gatsby, and Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge. Next to them, a slim IBM laptop and a beat-up old Christmas issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, set close at hand for easy reference.