It Happens in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

  “You’re right. I should take blame here, too. It was fun with all the people eating lunch and you, well, driving me . . . you’re just so unbelievably sexual in the way you . . . I’m just concerned about the social media aspect, it’s not wise.”

  “Are you doing other girls in Cabana Number Thirty-Two, too? Maybe she posted it? Maybe it’s not wise to do several girls in the same cabana. Ever think of that?”

  “Stop. You are the only one who I was with in number thirty-two. The Instagram photograph clearly showed the club, the number. It was a reckless move on my part to take you in there, I am now seeing. Your level of discretion, frankly, is not exceptional and I’d like to have you . . .”

  “Isn’t that, like, what that book Lolita is all about? My friend read it. Some old man, like, kidnaps some young girl and fucks her all the time. Maybe that’s like you. Some super demented part of you.”

  “I’m simply saying perhaps the Seabrook pool boys will be blamed, someone will lose a job, some married man here will be accused. People talk and you’re simply giving them dynamite with this Instagram business.”

  “I don’t appreciate being told what to do like I’m your daughter. It’s, like a total turnoff, and makes you no fun and like, really old.”

  “Oh, no I’m not.” Bucky looked left and right. No one on the sidewalk, no cars getting parked. The guards down the way were facing the other direction. He grabbed Alexa’s big bulbous butt with both hands and pulled her into him. He scooped between her legs, almost lifting her body up.

  “Got him,” said Jake, clenching his fists, rage running through his body. It took everything in his power not to get out of his car, grab a nine iron from the trunk, march across the street, and tee off on Bucky’s fuckin’ face.

  And up at camp headquarters, on top of the lot, in front of the porta-potty, Evan actually fist-bumped both Kona and Luke and had the class (a completely, newfound, virgin character trait), to say to both of them, “I was so wrong, totally wrong, you bros are awesome!”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The Socialite Scene

  Saturday, August 26

  Katie arrived at the library parking lot the morning of the Patio Party: 10:00 a.m. sharp, as regimented by Topper Tobin. She paused and faced the late summer sun, burning bright above her. The air was warm but not baking hot, a slight breeze heralding the September winds. During the party, that sun would wane in that lovely late August way, as the earth’s axis tilted toward a new season.

  Her marching orders from the Seabrook planning committee were to be seven hours early just in case.

  On this beautiful Saturday, when she would have rather been at the beach making up with Luke (who still hadn’t texted after seven days), or out in Napeague Harbor windsurfing, Katie took a box out of the back of her car. Inside: mini hurricane lamps made of mason jars filled with sand and sea shells and dried driftwood and seaweed tied in a wreath with long strings of beach grass. She walked under a small rose-covered trellis to the entrance of the Southampton library garden. In the back area, enclosed with a quaint picket fence, a flurry of women rushed around like little mice stuck in a shoebox, bossing around Latino workmen from the party rental company. Katie placed her arts and crafts artfully on a small cocktail table and waited for the planning committee judgment.

  “It’s just so clever,” Bitsy Fainwright said of the six mason jars, wrapped in a coil of rope at the bottom, half filled with sand, shells, and nautical trinkets like mini compasses strewn around. She pushed the sea grass wreath over an inch, and then back this way, that way, and then back to where it was, but, then, better, two inches to the left. “My God, you have a real talent, Katie. Is it your education training that helped you have that chic little . . .” Her voice turned all staccato . . . “Je. Ne. Sais. Quoi!?”

  That last little line in French came off so shrill and inauthentic that Katie almost told Bitsy to cut the bullshit compliments. Known now on both the East and West Coast for her cool, calm, and measured demeanor, Katie was feeling mildly homicidal only ten minutes into the party prep. The rental company men, possessing stratospheric patience, had already shifted the tables forty-seven times.

  Across the bar, Topper poured the pink lemonade into large glass punch bowls with spigots she’d found at Pottery Barn Kids. Cookies and cupcakes were set out on bright Lucite trays that one of the resourceful Wharton School M.B.A.s had found at Pier One Imports for eleven dollars. Each treat boasted a letter from the alphabet written in frosting and typewriter font. This clever touch came courtesy of Cricket Fitzgerald. She, by 11:00 a.m., was so sloshed she was now salsa dirty dancing with one of the Latino workers because she was feeling “so crazy!”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Demands on the Docks

  That Saturday, out near the docks to Peconic Bay, Kona asked Kenny, “Bucky did what? You’re kidding.”

  “He’s screwing with us for sure,” argued Kenny. “I mean, he just told me he wants to rent a Jet Ski. I won’t take him out. No way in hell.”

  Kenny slammed the boat ropes down on the dock and placed his hands on his broad hips. Looking up toward Bucky and Huck strolling down the dock, Kenny’s nostrils flared, and his right lip twitched upward in the same way it did when someone provoked him into a fist fight.

  “Hey, guys,” Bucky said when he’d reached them. “I have a day with my favorite little buddy here; his mom is busy with a party. I promised him as a treat that I’d take him on a Jet Ski.”

  Kona walked in front of Kenny to keep him from pushing Bucky to the ground again. He looked around everywhere suspiciously, but didn’t see the bay constable.

  “Bucky,” Kona stated clearly. “So nice of you to come across a dusty parking lot, venture over a hundred yards away from the safety of your club.” They’d already pinned him with the video, but Kona had to bite his lip not to say anything.

  “We’re ready.” Bucky smiled, now picking up Huck like he was his own child.

  “Well,” Kona explained, “there’s a rule that says you’ve got to be sixteen years old to ride a Jet Ski in Peconic Bay. There have been accidents and problems so the town board, as I’m sure you know, doesn’t allow it.”

  Huck looked up at Luke and Kona with pleading eyes. “My mom is busy all day with that stupid party. He promised. He really did. I swear he did.”

  Luke knelt down. “You know, we could get in huge trouble.” Luke tried to focus on Huck, avoiding his desire to hold Bucky underwater until the bubbles stopped coming up.

  “So, let’s get this straight, Bucky—you’re going to pay for a private instructor to take you on two Jet Skis,” Kona asked, grabbing the keys of two Jet Skis out of the metal box that was nailed to a deck pole. He swung two keys in front of him.

  “Yes,” Bucky answered. “Yes. That’s right. Of course I’ll pay. I want a tour of the bay.”

  And so it was that the guys relented; Jake had told them to act as normal as possible around Bucky until he made his moves with the damning reverse camera video.

  For good measure, they took Huck, now with crocodile tears in his eyes, in a little ten-minute loop on the boat around the bay, even letting him sit on Luke’s lap in front of the steering wheel. This was never allowed in camp. And, in turn, Kona gave Bucky a short lesson in Jet Ski safety near the docks, explaining where shallow sandbars rose, how to avoid the jetty boulders underneath the surface, and respect buoy codes. He even took him out in the open water for about ten minutes, until Bucky suddenly wanted to get back.

  During this short lesson, Bucky carefully studied Kona’s and Luke’s every move. He watched Kona, while explaining the safety rules, kneel down on the dock and lift a small piece of plank out of a section of it. Inside, Bucky watched Kona grab a small key. With that key, Kona had walked to the metal box that was nailed to the dock pole, and then opened it to reveal two boat keys and six Jet Ski keys inside.

  Now Bucky could drive the idiots’ boats and Jet Skis any damn time he wanted. And they’d ne
ver know.

  Or, they’d know all too well.

  Chapter Fifty

  Planning Perfection

  By 5:00 p.m., an army of preppies, freshly showered from a day at the beach or golf course, paraded through the rose trellis of the Patio Party. They pushed up against each other, more roughly than their grandmothers taught them, overdue for their afternoon cocktail. The women looked like they were attending a Lilly Pulitzer sales convention. The men, presumably hardworking professionals who expected to be taken seriously, wore hot-pink pants with green boats or shellfish on them, and bright linen button-downs. To any passerby, these people looked like circus clowns.

  Poppy Porter, wearing a pink hat, flowered green pants, and a white starched shirt in a show of Protestant restraint, walked up to Katie and said, irritated, “Bucky left little Huck with the lifeguard at the club. I hear he took Huck to the water sports dock, on a boat, then brought him back to the club.”

  “He is taking Huck all day; he just texted me to say they were having fun. They should be arriving now, right?” Katie said.

  “Well,” Poppy answered. “Strange thing. He told everyone at the club he was going back to the docks again, something about a Jet Ski. Mrs. Calhoun, a mother I barely know, just called, and said she was bringing Huck now. She didn’t have your number. I assumed Bucky had left the club early to deal with the party or his town board speech, but why isn’t he here? And why on earth was he on a Jet Ski?”

  “He’s an ocean man, he’s always told me,” Katie said, keeping her cool. “And the men who teach on the bay . . .”

  “Oh, enough with the horse shit, Katie!” Poppy whispered with a clenched chin and neck. “Bucky can’t stand those men. Why on earth is he out with them now?”

  Katie stifled her worries. “I cannot answer that.”

  “I like to think you are loosening him up. But not this much, for Christ’s sake; he’s forty-five minutes late, usually he’s in the receiving line!”

  As Poppy stewed, Huck ran up to Katie. Lizzie Calhoun and her son Xander had brought him straight from the club’s pee-filled pool to the party. Huck was dressed in a swimsuit and wet T-shirt, along with his slip-on rubber sandals—the favorites with a big Power Ranger strap on the top.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Calhoun said. “I told Bucky we’d be fine swimming for an hour, and he said he’d be back around four-thirty. But I waited until about thirty minutes later, and he still didn’t show. I texted him a few times, called, no answer, and then figured we needed to be here for the beginning. I didn’t have a second set of clothes at the club for Huck and we were rushed, so I figured I’d just bring him to you.”

  Even Katie, coming from the foothills of a mountain range, didn’t want her son dressed like this in front of the club community. Katie put her tangerine-gin-punch (which tasted like cough medicine) down on a table of mismatched grapefruits and Birds of Paradise. She then pulled Huck over to two chairs near the bushes and quietly, but sternly asked, “Honey, where’s Bucky?”

  “He got Kona and Luke to take him on a Jet Ski.”

  “Are you sure?” She cracked her neck to release the tension just hearing this answer. Did Bucky know about Luke and her?

  “Yeah, and they said they couldn’t take me too, and he got them to let me ride on the boat. Luke told me not to tell the other kids. I only told Xander so far.”

  “Did Bucky ever get on a Jet Ski?”

  “Yes. But it was kind of like he just wanted to understand how they worked or where they were, or something like that. They weren’t out for long the first time. Then I guess he went back again.”

  “What do I do, Katie? He’s over an hour late!” Poppy’s first Pink Lady drink was not sitting well. She hated presenting awards, but she would have to make the formal declaration of service award to Mrs. Bishop, the librarian, on her own. And then punish Bucky later.

  As Poppy plotted to infantilize her forty-three-year-old son, Katie grabbed Huck as he was biting into a turquoise cupcake with a large “H” on it and pulled him away.

  “Honey,” Katie said, trying to remain calm, “do you want to stay here and play with Xander and his mommy, Mrs. Calhoun, and eat more cupcakes, or do you want to leave with me?”

  “If I stay can I have another?”

  “One more. Cupcake or cookie, but not both. But I need to leave. Right this minute.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Anxiety Alert

  In the car on the way to her cottage, Katie texted and called Luke and Bucky. Neither answered. Luke often left his phone for hours in a bag on the dock, so this was not unusual. She never understood how he could turn off the world for so long and manage his business with private lessons and a camp packed to capacity.

  Still, she was even more surprised when she arrived at the cottage and found Luke standing on the porch.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him. “Why haven’t you picked up or texted?”

  “I haven’t been able to deal with all the reasons why you’re with Bucky. And now I’m forced to, I don’t have a choice.”

  “What do you mean, forced?”

  Luke stood looking into her sparkling green eyes, deciding it was inconvenient that he’d fallen so hard for her. “I’ve been pissed you didn’t explain who he was. Let’s start with that, what the hell, why didn’t you inform me that your George . . .”

  “I did explain. I told you I was kind of seeing him.” She looked around to make sure no one was coming into the driveway.

  “Not that you were with him in general. The problem is I didn’t know George was Bucky Porter! He’s been awful to us. He’s a horrible person.”

  “Well, back in Hood River and in Portland, and, frankly, when I arrived, he seemed different, I told you that, too. And I don’t really owe you an explanation of where I was in my head back in April and how I decided to try with him. You can’t be judging other people’s choices.”

  “Whatever he seemed is not who he is,” Luke said firmly. “I know so much more than you, you have no idea. Can I come in?”

  “Yeah, sure,” answered Katie, looking over Luke’s shoulder again. “Sure, come in.”

  Luke stepped over the wooden door saddle of 37 Willow Lane. He then stood before the Americana red cupboard in the front hall and stared at dusty frames of Poppy Porter and her husband, George Herbert Bradford Porter Sr. “Both my parents said something went on here and I never knew,” he said. “There’s bad blood, way back.”

  “Your parents mentioned thirty-seven Willow Lane? And you never told me?”

  “I was only here twice to drop you or Huck off, and I didn’t want to . . . I don’t know, jinx anything between us.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Katie crossed her arms.

  Luke didn’t answer. The first time he was here, he’d seen these picture frames, but he’d been so rushed he hadn’t realized the young man, with darker, more youthful hair, was indeed Bucky Porter. He picked up a small frame encrusted with old shells. “These are Bucky’s parents?”

  “Yes, Poppy Porter and her husband, George Sr.” Katie answered quietly, getting nervous about what he was alluding to. The couple was standing in tennis whites next to a net about twenty years before.

  Luke grabbed another frame with Poppy alone, holding a young boy in her arms, about six or so, on a beach chair. “Mother and son?”

  “Yeah. Why . . .”

  He grabbed other photos of Bucky in his twenties with his father in a canoe on a lake, surrounded by pine trees in what looked like Maine. Katie pointed to it, saying, “That must have been around the time his Dad died—1996 or so, a few years after he got out of school.”

  Luke looked at Bucky’s father with a mixture of intrigue and fear. Frank had always brushed off the owner of the 37 Willow Lane cottage as a selfish man, who was not worth speaking about. The details were unclear, but Luke’s mother, Lynne, had been in the house several times as the gardener. Luke knew whatever happened back then, he wa
s dishonoring his parents’ wishes by being in here now.

  “Katie, let’s go out back on the deck. I don’t even want to be inside this house.”

  “Wait, just stop for a second and tell me what you are talking about. What do you mean, you know stuff, about bad blood? Like another woman with Bucky or some weird family thing? Or, like something bad?”

  “I came here to inform you that your George, our Bucky, is 180 degrees away from who you think he is.”

  Katie undid and redid her ponytail two times in a row. “I only need to know if you saw Bucky today on the docks. I’m getting worried about where he went afterwards.”

  “I did.” Luke grabbed her hand and walked through to the back of the cottage to two wicker chairs, where he fell into one and motioned her to sit in front of him. “I won’t ever let you near him again. That’s just all I can say right now.”

  A heavy silence churned between them on the porch, the pause in conversation so laden, they might as well have been screaming at each other.

  Luke stared at the cramped backyard, the unkempt hedges and bushes that outlined the lawn. How could Luke explain to her that they’d caught him grabbing the ass of a sixteen-year-old, sliding his fingers even under the back of her swimsuit—and his famous “beaver shots” at the club pool that even the guard out front knew about.

  He wanted an apology. Really? Bucky Porter? How could she let him seduce her with his vile ways?

  But, Luke had promised Jake he’d keep silent. Jake had placed his balding, sweaty face four inches in front of Luke’s and stared him down after the recording was complete. He said, “We got footage in hand of that pervert palming my daughter’s ass. And there’s more: Bucky takes a photo of women and girls sitting around the pool, and then a tight shot of their crotches. That genius Henry got Bucky’s photos off his iPhone and I got those now, too. You can’t say a word to anyone. It’s my daughter. You did your part, now know your role and walk away.”