Danielle Ganek

by The Summer We Read Gatsby (v5)

  “Do you want to use my bedroom?” I asked him. “I mean, to get dressed.”

  He nodded with solemn dignity. “That is a fabulous idea.”

  As he headed for the stairs, leaving the dropped shoe behind, Peck called after him. “Scotty is going to be very happy to hear about this.”

  He’d gone up the first two steps and he turned to us. “You’re not to say a word. He’s coming out on the Jitney any minute now. Please don’t tell him.”

  “You tell him,” I said. “Tell him how you feel.”

  “God, no.” He made a face. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m pretty sure he feels the same way,” I said, surprised that he could not know this about the tiny Scotsman who’d been mooning around with an infatuated glaze to his eyes every time we saw them together.

  Hamilton shook his head. “We’re friends. He wants to get married . Good God, he says he wants children. Can you think of anything more horrifying than having me for a father? I’d never do it.”

  “Just tell him,” Peck and I both said at the exact same time. “Jinx,” she added. “Buy me a root beer.”

  After he went upstairs Peck stared out the window in the direction of the garage. She looked slightly confused, as though she were trying to figure out what it was doing there. “It sure was nice having a butler,” she said, somewhat wistfully.

  “I don’t know how anyone lives without one,” I said.

  “Miles had a butler,” she said, still gazing out the window. “A rather surly Dutchman. But he fired him.”

  A few minutes later Hamilton came back downstairs with his hair combed. He was wearing one shoe and he calmly picked up the other one and sat on the sofa to put it on. “He’s been trying to sell it to a Russian,” he said, gesturing to the empty spot above the mantel where the missing painting had hung before Biggsy took it off the wall. “I’m not sure he believes it’s a Pollock. The fool, I mean. Not the Russian.”

  “Where is he keeping it?” I asked.

  Hamilton shook his head, slowly lacing his shoe. “For that information I would have had to shag the boy. And that I couldn’t do.”

  “So what’s next?” Peck wanted to know. “You can’t do anything until I get back from Paris.”

  “Our boy Biggsy, or Jonathan as he is apparently known in the art world, if he’s known at all, is spending the weekend on someone’s boat. So I arranged a meeting for next Tuesday. My house. He’s bringing the painting.”

  “We’ll be there,” Peck cried out. She’d opened the silver cocktail shaker on the bar cart and pulled out Lydia’s revolver. “And we’ll be loaded for bear.”

  “There are no bullets in that thing,” Hamilton said.

  “But Biggsy doesn’t know that,” I pointed out while Peck held the gun high. Peck had told him it was loaded. At the time I thought it was just her need to make every scene in her life more dramatic where possible, even to the point of total fabrication. But now I wondered if she hadn’t been planning ahead, anticipating a moment when the use of a gun thought to be filled with bullets might be necessary.

  “We’ll take the painting back and send the young man on his way. Making him leave Fool’s House is revenge enough for that poor fool. It should all be very simple. Let’s hope weapons won’t be necessary,” Hamilton said with a chuckle. “Although you do look rather fetching with a gun in your hand. Very Bonnie and Clyde on the lam.”

  “I’m not afraid to use this,” Peck exclaimed, swinging it in my direction. “And I may have to if you insist on selling this place to those dreadful people.”

  “They’re your boyfriend’s friends,” I reminded her, holding up my hands in protest.

  “Miles has terrible taste,” she said matter-of-factly. “Everybody knows that. In people and in everything. Just look at his house.”

  “When are you going to take me over there?” Hamilton wanted to know. “You’ve promised me a tour.”

  “You loved that place when we went there for the party,” I pointed out. “You thought it was the most fabulous house you’d ever seen.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s grown this summer,” she said. Her words reminded me of my mother, who always used to say I grew in the summer. It was a theory of hers that maturation was boosted when the sunshine and a change of scenery and routine led to more noticeable growth. I always thought this was just one of her wacky ideas, like making me take a spoonful of coconut oil with my cereal in the morning, but now her words rang in my ears. Peck had grown this summer and I had too.

  Hamilton left to pick up Scotty at the Jitney and Peck and I decided to take Trimalchio for a walk on the beach before she went off to Paris for the weekend.

  “You going to miss me?” she asked as we trudged through the soft sand.

  “Not at all,” I teased. “I need to rest. It’s exhausting living with a glamorous diva.”

  She looked pleased at the use of the word diva and then she said, “I don’t just mean this weekend. I’m talking about after the end of this month. Are you really going to just disappear back into the wilderness?”

  I shook my head. “No, of course not. We’ll visit each other.” “Literally,” she said, taking my arm. “This is a tease. We’re sisters. I can’t go back to a few phone calls every once in a while.”

  “We’ll have money,” I reminded her. “We’ll be able to travel.”

  “Ah yes,” she said, shifting tone again. “That does change things a bit, doesn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that. Well, I’m coming to Switzerland for Columbus Day weekend. And of course, we’ll have Thanksgiving in New York. You’ve never seen the Macy’s parade.”

  “I’m not really a parade person,” I said. “But I like the idea of Thanksgiving in New York, especially if you’ll cook.”

  “Of course I’ll cook.” I could see her already starting to think of a menu, decor, and what she was going to wear.

  “What about Christmas?” I asked.

  “Switzerland, naturally,” she said. “But in the mountains. A family ski vacation with our little family. No Mum. She can stay in Palm Springs. She doesn’t like the cold. But I’m thinking Saint Moritz. Or Gstaad. Or what’s that other one? Verbier. I’ve always wanted to pull off vintage ski pants, the stretchy kind, with a chunky sweater and a faux fur hat.”

  “We’ll eat fondue,” I added, lost in the reverie.

  “Finn’s a big skier,” she said. “He loves all that outdoor stuff. Just like you.”

  I looked over at her, startled. “Finn’s not going to be there.”

  “Of course he is. When I said family I meant the six of us. Miles and me, Hamilton and Scotty, you and Finn.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “You told me Finn should stick with Laurie Poplin. Didn’t you tell me that?”

  “Shut your piehole,” she said with a laugh “You’re in love with him. You just don’t know it.”

  I did know it, I realized as she spoke those words. I was in love with Finn.

  16

  As would probably always be the case, my glamorously eccentric sister and I were a study in contrasts that weekend. While Peck was eating foie gras “by the shovelful” and sipping champagne at the Ritz in Paris, I was at Yankee Stadium, my hair tucked under a cap in the steaming heat, happily eating hot dogs and drinking beer while Finn explained the subtleties of baseball to me. I surprised myself, and Finn, apparently, by enjoying the game, quickly learning the players and following the score intently. “You’re becoming quite the American,” Finn noted as I ordered a second hot dog.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said with a smile. He was talking about my taste in food, but there was a broader truth to his statement that I couldn’t help but acknowledge: I had grown louder and bolder and more assertive since I’d been in the States. As Peck had been exhorting me to do, I’d come out of my shell.

  Later in the weekend he took me to a clambake on the beach with his friends. Tony, the host, a big bear of a man, told
me he was a “real estate novelist, like the guy in the Billy Joel song.” His wife, Cintra, a British fashion stylist with a red bob, hugged me and told me she’d never seen Finn so happy. “We want to bottle you,” she said warmly, as though we were already friends. “You’re a tonic.” She paused and looked at me. “You know, we’ve always been mad for Finn, of course. He’s Tony’s best friend. But you seem to be very good for him.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” I said. “We’re just friends.” We hadn’t kissed again since that night by the car, though we did seem to find a way to touch each other often; he’d put an arm around my shoulder to direct my line of sight to something happening in the outfield, or tap my thigh to get my attention. We’d high-fived a couple of times when things in the game were going well, teasingly fake-punched each other in response to a comment, patted a forearm to make a point. He’d wiped mustard from my cheek and dabbed napkins at my shorts when he knocked a beer into my lap.

  Cintra arched one eyebrow dubiously. “All I know is he was very keen to tell us all about you before you arrived. And since then? The chap’s been downright giddy. We finally insisted he bring you ’round.”

  A swirl of people of all ages was gathered on the beach that evening, standing and sitting around a blazing bonfire, with torches for light and to keep the bugs away. The ocean was calm and the sky was pink and blue, and children and dogs were running everywhere. It was quite a scene.

  “Ignore the beasts,” Tony said to me, as a small boy came too close, wielding an enormous stick, on the end of which was a flaming marshmallow he was intending to make into something called a s’more.

  “It’s a melted marshmallow squashed between two graham cracker biscuits and a slab of chocolate, so called because apparently rude children are always asking for s’more,” Cintra explained. “It’s an American thing. I don’t pretend to understand.”

  She and Tony had met on an airplane, she told me. She thought he was the most annoying man she’d ever met. When they arrived in London, he asked for her number and she gave it to him with one digit off so he couldn’t reach her.

  “I’d had it up to here with American men by then,” she said. “I’d already had one—a first husband—under my belt. Not that the ones back home were any better, believe me. All those repressed schoolboys making shag jokes like they were still in boarding school—no thank you. I was fancying an Italian at that time. I wasn’t planning on marrying one, just a fancy, you know.”

  “I do know,” I said, immediately taken by her. “I’ve had a few fancies for Italians myself.”

  Cintra laughed in a conspiratorial way. “You can’t marry them, though. Can you? Americans, on the other hand? They make the best husbands.”

  The night she arrived in London, she went on to tell me, by coincidence, she headed down to her sister’s “local” and there was Tony, the bearish American from the plane. “He bought me a drink,” she was saying, as bunches of children weaved around us with their bamboo sticks for toasting marshmallows and the sea air filled with wood smoke. “Don’t mind them. It’s Lord of the Flies at these things. As long as none of them end up in the ocean or the fire pit, we should be okay.”

  “So what made you change your mind?” I asked. “About Tony? How did you know he was the one?”

  “Oh, I didn’t at all,” she said, laughing. “I had no idea. Still don’t. But he makes me laugh. And that’s all it took.”

  “I totally agree,” I said, catching a glimpse of Finn, who was helping the little boy blow out his flaming marshmallow.

  “Is that a reason to get married?” she asked with a laugh. “I dunno. To give up my job, my friends, my family. Well, the family, I was happy to give up, at least on a daily basis. But I moved across the pond for him. Didn’t know him very well at the time either.”

  “Did you date long-distance?” I asked as her husband came by with fresh beers and handed them to us without interrupting, except to say, “Don’t believe a word my wife tells you.”

  “We tried,” she said, giving me a knowing smile. “But that wears thin. And then, at some point, you just have to hold your nose and dive in, you know? You can’t be afraid to take that chance. You know what I mean?” She paused, as though she wanted to assess how her words were registering.

  I nodded as Finn appeared at my side with a paper bowl of clams to offer me. We ate corn on the cob and biscuits and lobster dunked in butter. Finn made sure I met a good number of his friends. They were New Yorkers, though most of them seemed to have landed there from somewhere else. Everyone was a character , as though it were a requirement to be unusual and have a particular accent and a style of dress and passions, and they all seemed to live big, ambitious lives, filled with yearnings and obligations and precocious children. I found myself enthralled and the evening took on a feeling of momentousness, like it would stand out in sharp relief later when I retrieved it from my memory bank.

  One of the Girls, Sasha, was there. I was mildly shocked to see her on her own. She had no context without Betts and Lucy and Peck and their collective opinion. It was like running into a teacher out of school. She greeted me with a shout and a warm hug and suddenly I felt that I had context, with a friend there of my own. She was with a date—a divorced dad with a four-year-old son who kept smearing chocolate all over himself—but he was busy keeping the boy from falling into the bonfire in his eagerness for more s’mores, so we hung out for a while and she filled me in on the backstories of the people she knew.

  “He’s a pretty special fellow,” she said of Finn, her soft Indian inflection turning the words evocatively.

  “So everyone keeps telling me,” I joked.

  She gestured at the firelit scene with the ocean and the vast sky. “Clever idea too, giving you a taste of what could be. This is quite a sales job.”

  “Don’t be silly. What would he be selling me?” Finn was on the other side of the bonfire talking to Tony, his hair thick and wild from the salty air. He caught my eye as I noticed him, and he smiled.

  “All of this,” she said softly. “It’s like a dream, isn’t it?”

  “Someone else’s,” I said. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t think it applied to me. “Not mine.”

  At the end of the evening Tony wagged a finger at me. “Did you fall in love with me yet?”

  “It’s your wife I’m in love with,” I told him as around us children were coming down from their sugar highs and the fire was getting low.

  He groaned. “So predictable. She’s the easy one to like. I’m the acquired taste.”

  “Was it a test?” I asked. “Or can I pick both of you?”

  “It was a test,” he said, reaching into the cooler to hand me another fresh beer. “But we were the ones being tested.”

  I took the beer and popped the cap while the parents with the younger children headed off, waving their good-byes. “So that explains why you’re all being so nice to me.”

  “No. It doesn’t explain anything,” Tony said with a laugh. He’d taken a beer for himself and he clinked it against mine. “We were planning to terrorize you. We thought we’d get rid of you the easy way.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but then Finn came up behind me and Tony was pulled away by people saying good-bye. “Let’s hang out for a bit,” he whispered, once they were out of earshot. The planes of his face caught the firelight and I almost couldn’t resist reaching out and touching his smooth skin. “This is skinny-dipping weather.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said, as I zipped up my sweater in response to the chill that grew more noticeable as the fire died down.

  “Look how calm the ocean is,” he said, pointing. “Don’t you want to be able to cross that one off the list?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not in a hurry,” I said as the breeze from the ocean picked up and it felt colder. “It’s getting arctic out here.”

  As Tony and Cintra gathered their belongings and their children and headed off, Finn set about building
up the fire, carefully piling several extra logs onto the coals.

  “You’re very resourceful,” I said as I sat on a blanket and watched the flames quickly grow high. There was something achingly beautiful about the fragrant air, and the rhythmic sound of the ocean and the flickering firelight giving the scene a seductive glow.

  “Didn’t you say I was dexterous too? Resourceful and dexterous. I must be quite a catch,” he said as he sat down next to me. We were alone on the beach now.

  We chatted for a while, gazing at the fire, rather than at each other, and in no time he had me laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. I made him laugh too, sharing more stories of my peripatetic life with my mother and the summers I’d spent at Fool’s House with Lydia in the company of a wacky half sister who wasn’t sure she wanted to be related to me. I’d gotten so comfortable with him in the time we’d spent together, and I enjoyed how liberating it felt to talk freely about my family and the inconsistencies in my mother’s stories. I even shared the anecdote about my name.

  “It could have been worse,” I said, repeating my mother’s line with the kind of aplomb I’d learned to copy from Peck. I was no longer the timid, sad creature who’d tiptoed up the porch steps at the beginning of July with my little wheely suitcase. I felt like something had awakened deep inside me, like a switch that had been suddenly turned on. “They could’ve played ‘Bertha.’ ”

  Finn let out a soft laugh. “You’re funny, kid.”

  “Glad you think so, Killian.”

  He leaned back on his elbow and turned his head toward me. “So, what do you think? Does the ocean beckon?”

  “I told you, I don’t skinny-dip.” I sounded like Peck again, I thought, as I made this declaration with Peck’s manner of emphasizing at least one word in every sentence.

  “Just like you don’t flirt?” His face glowed in the firelight as he grinned up at me. “Come on, we’ll make it quick. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. One two three, in and out.” I wondered how he could evoke a thrill of excitement and a feeling of total safety at the same time. “I promise, I won’t look.”