Danielle Ganek

by The Summer We Read Gatsby (v5)

  “Why did you take it?” I asked him, still holding the gun.

  He shrugged. “I knew the way Lydia felt about that painting. When you said a thing of utmost value, I knew it had to be that.”

  “Did you think it was a Jackson Pollock?” Peck wanted to know.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t know what it was. But I figured it was something.” We all went quiet then, looking at the painting. It had seemed to have such power when we were trying to find it. Now it was once more just a canvas rather amateurishly covered with oil paint in abstract fashion. “I didn’t steal it,” he added, gazing at me with imploring eyes. “I never stole anything from you. I was just doing what Lydia had always wanted me to do. Entertain. And all I want now is to be able to stay here.”

  I still had the gun in one hand and I lifted it again. “Where’s my book?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he cried out, the picture of innocence. “Why would I take a book? I don’t even read.”

  “Go get your things,” I said, gesturing with the gun. “And get out.”

  “And if you ever come within fifteen feet of the two of them . . . or their shoes,” Miles added, “I’ll have you killed.”

  “He will too,” Peck chimed in. “He has a phone number in his wallet for just that purpose.”

  Peck took the canvas from me, shoved the chair over to the fireplace so she could stand on it, and placed the painting back on its hook above the mantel. Then we all followed Biggsy out to the garage and up the stairs to the studio. His camera equipment and a couple of packed bags were piled neatly by the door, and the mess of papers and other junk in the second room had been cleared out.

  “I thought you couldn’t leave Fool’s House,” I said. “But it seems like you got yourself ready to go after your supposed meeting with the art dealer who was going to broker a deal for the painting you claimed to have for sale.”

  He didn’t answer me as he lifted the camera and quickly switched it on before aiming the lens at the six of us crammed into the small space. “One more shot before I go?” he asked, but he was already filming.

  “That’s enough,” Finn said to him. “Get moving.”

  Biggsy didn’t listen to him. He kept the camera rolling as he approached Miles. “I’d still be interested in discussing my piece A Fool and His Money.”

  “Get. The fuck. Out of here,” Miles said. “Now. Or you’ll wish you’d taken the easy way.”

  Biggsy turned the camera on Peck, “You could be somebody,” he said, focusing a tight shot on her face.

  “Honey,” she said, mugging for the camera like an old-time movie queen, “I already am somebody.”

  I swung the gun into his line of vision and said, “Jonathan. It’s time to go.” He reluctantly switched the camera off. As he slung one of the bags over his shoulder something fell out of a side pocket and clattered loudly to the floor. It was Lydia’s copy of Gatsby.

  I reached down and picked it up. “I thought you said you never read.”

  He shrugged. “You said it was a first edition. It’s not, by the way. I had it checked out.”

  I thought for a moment before responding. “How did you know about that?”

  He shrugged. “As I always say, you have to pay attention.”

  “I’ve never heard you say that,” Peck cried out indignantly. “That’s my line.”

  We all started speaking at once then, insisting that he go. Finally he did, roaring off on his motorcycle, which was loaded down with all his belongings. We stood in the driveway to watch him leave.

  18

  With Biggsy gone, Fool’s House seemed a different place, airier and happier. It wasn’t so much to do with Biggsy, or even with the fact that the rooms themselves seemed lighter and larger once we removed all the paintings from the walls except the one above the mantel. I think it was just that I was so happy that the whole world seemed different, lit with a clear golden light.

  Even the brief period—it lasted all of an afternoon—when Peck was technically not speaking to me did not alter my feelings. Perhaps that was because she kept talking to me all through it. “I’m not speaking to you until you come to your senses,” she cried out, after arguing at length that we should still keep Fool’s House, even though we had not, in fact, inherited a Jackson Pollock worth millions of dollars. We were having this conversation on the porch and she kept stomping her foot to make her points. Each time she did the rotted slabs of wood would rattle loosely. I explained again, at length, that I too did not wish to sell the house we both loved.

  “Why are you so depressing?” She addressed these words to the sky, as though she might find an answer there. And then she declared again that she wasn’t speaking to me.

  “All evidence to the contrary,” I pointed out cheerfully. At this she pounded the porch floor once more and turned on her heel.

  I’d never had much patience with happy people. Positive thinking and idealism had never seemed as interesting as the darker view to me. But then I turned into one of them. The week that followed will always stand out in my memory as the most thrilling time in my relatively short and oddly complicated life. I experienced it as an adrenaline high, the kind of sky-diving buzz that comes from conquering a deeply held fear.

  Finn, like me, had never taken more than a couple of days off in years. He’d been so busy for so long, building a bustling multi-office business, that he was used to operating at full tilt at all times. Now he took a vacation, shocking everyone who worked with him.

  We did all the things visitors to the Hamptons do. We took long beach walks in the mornings and water-skied in the evenings. We biked to Montauk and rented a canoe and laughed ourselves silly trying to get the thing to move in a straight line. We played tennis and took afternoon naps in the hammock in the back yard. We went to Sag Harbor to wander through charming antique shops, and sailed to Shelter Island, where we had a late lunch at Sunset Beach drinking rosé for hours until the fat orange sun sank below the horizon with dramatic flair. We went to the farm stand near Finn’s house and made a picnic to take to the beach, where we met Cintra and Tony and their kids to ride the waves. Finn tried to teach me how to surf. We ate steaks at the Palm in East Hampton and drove to Briermere Farm in Riverhead to buy pies. He even helped Peck and me go through some of Lydia’s things, lending a hand as we organized boxes to give away, to keep, and to throw out, which was more fun than it sounds with the music cranked up loud and some great snacks. And the sex? Well, it’s best not to talk about such things; suffice it to say I never knew it could be that good.

  The afternoon when Peck did not speak to me ended when she walked into my room without knocking.

  “I don’t want to fight with you.” She was wearing nothing but a skimpy towel and her hair was wet. “Look at me,” she added. “I’m a wreck.”

  “I don’t want to fight either,” I said. “And you’re right. We should do whatever we can to keep this place.”

  She looked startled. “But you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I want to,” I said. “I just don’t have the money.”

  She sighed, perching on the end of my bed. She sat there for some time in silence and then stood, having made up her mind. “I don’t either. All I have is credit card debt. And we should do what Lydia told us to do.”

  By the time she rushed out of the room to “do something about this mop on my head,” we had agreed to accept the Bosleys’ offer on the house. She’d decided it would be too awkward to let Miles buy the place from us and would turn her efforts to attempting to rid his house of “every element of tackiness,” as she phrased it. “You know, he’s horribly vulgar.” It was her goal, she explained that evening, wrapped in her towel, to turn the enormous place into her version of Yaddo, where creative people could gather. “Stella!” she exclaimed. “You could come there next summer and write.”

  Perhaps I could. But now it was almost time for me to go back. My return airline ticket was waiting, mar
ked with the date that loomed as a deadline for the end of me and Finn. I was scheduled to fly home on Sunday, the day after our final Fool’s Farewell. And as we walked on the beach that morning under a deep blue sky, the sunlight glinting off the ocean, I made a decision that seemed altogether practical, although I was no longer sure how I felt about calling Switzerland my home.

  “When we say good-bye,” I told Finn that morning as we walked with Trimalchio on the beach, “let’s have it be for good.”

  He stopped walking. “What do you mean?”

  We’d been holding hands as we walked and now I turned and took his other one in mine as I faced him. “I can’t help thinking I’d rather keep the memory of this perfect stretch of bliss just as it is, as a beautiful little gem that could become a touchstone in later years, than let it fizzle out with dribs and drabs of resentment over time, the way long-distance relationships always seem to do.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not how it would work, not with us.”

  “What makes you so sure? The first few weeks of any relationship are always great.”

  “Not like this,” he interjected. “Nothing like this.”

  “True,” I said. “This was extraordinary. But in this setting . . .” I gestured at the powerful beauty of nature that surrounded us on the wide empty beach.

  “It has nothing to do with setting,” he said. “I’m willing to take a chance. I’ll visit. You’ll visit. We’ll make an effort.”

  I let go of one hand and started walking again. He fell into step next to me and Trimalchio trotted along at my other side, tilting his head up toward me as though trying to understand what was going on.

  “That’s just it,” I said. “Effort. It already sounds bad. And then it will get worse. At first we’ll approach it with enthusiasm and all sorts of plans. But over time, it will start to seem too hard. And neither one of us will want to compromise. And then one weekend you’ll cancel on me at the last minute. A flight won’t work out, there’ll be a hurricane that night or a work emergency and it will seem too difficult to come. And I’ll get resentful and we’ll both wonder who the other one is actually having dinner with . . .” My voice trailed off as he stopped and stared at me incredulously.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said with a laugh. “Have you done this before?”

  “No,” I said. “But I’ve seen friends try to have relationships with people from far-off countries and I’ve never seen it work.”

  “So we’re just to say good-bye at the airport, is that it? And never speak again?”

  “You’re going to take me to the airport?” I asked, surprised.

  “I was planning on it,” he said. “And then I thought I’d get on a plane myself the following week. I have a potential client to visit in Zurich and could easily stop in Lausanne for a few days afterward. And then you could come back here for Labor Day weekend.”

  “Labor Day is not a holiday in Switzerland.”

  “So I’ll go back there then,” he added. “It’s too soon to say good-bye for good. What if this is it? You’re not going to throw that away just because we haven’t lived in the same city until now.”

  “We haven’t even lived on the same continent,” I pointed out. “Ever.”

  In my younger and more vulnerable years, as Nick Carraway would say in the opening lines of Gatsby, my father was not around to give me advice. This was a defining theme, I believed, of the story of my life, and for years I told myself this was why I often made poor decisions. But now I believed I’d undertaken a rewrite. And I could no longer use the fact of my father’s early death to rationalize the choices that had later proved to be bad ones. My decision to end this seemingly idyllic relationship before it had time to begin was made, I fully believed, in the most rational and carefully considered manner.

  By the end of our walk, Finn agreed with me. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said, as we headed back on the path through the dunes that led to the parking lot. “It will be more sensible this way.

  We were quiet for the walk back to Fool’s House. I’d planned, even before the walk on the beach, to finish packing that afternoon while Finn paid a visit to one of the job sites from which he’d been getting increasingly frantic phone calls. That night, we were having paella for dinner with Peck, Miles, Hamilton, and Scotty over at Hamilton’s house. It was to be our own personal last supper, what Peck called “family night” before the increasingly large Fool’s Farewell, to which Peck had now invited more than three hundred people.

  “You don’t even know three hundred people,” I said to her as I made an initial stab at packing my suitcase in preparation to leave. Somehow, though, my clothes had multiplied like the bunnies that were hopping all over our lawn—how? I didn’t think I’d bought much, just the dresses and shoes the day I went shopping with Peck and the Girls, a couple of bathing suits, a T-shirt here and there—and I was never going to be able to fit it all into the one bag I’d brought with me.

  “Miles does,” Peck said with a proud nod. As I was trying to pack, she’d appeared in my room wearing a long white caftan with elaborate beading around the neck, and she leaned in the doorway elegantly smoking without offering to help. “He knows everybody.” Through Miles Peck had met all sorts of people, including but not limited to celebrities, fashion designers, and people who could get a table at a place called the Waverly Inn. They were all invited to the Fool’s Farewell.

  We were selling the house mostly furnished, although Peck was keeping the bar cart and its accessories and I’d planned to take a box of books, including Lydia’s copy of The Great Gatsby. We were each keeping one of our father’s paintings, already bubble-wrapped and placed in the garage with the rest of the paintings and the boxes. We agreed that the Pink Lady, who’d been in the house since before it was Lydia’s, should stay where she was. The Bosleys would have to decide about her when they moved in.

  I was feeling increasingly nostalgic that afternoon as we puttered around the house. I remember hearing the Coldplay song “Viva la Vida,” the summer’s anthem, for what seemed like the hundredth time, and Peck with her tin ear singing along at the top of her lungs, getting the words wrong.

  “I just remembered something,” she cried out suddenly as I decided not to even try to fit everything into the one suitcase. I would use one of the dusty old cases on the shelf in the garage.

  Peck flicked her ash in the direction of the small ashtray she clutched in the other hand and missed. “Back in a flash,” she cried out.

  I thought we’d finished organizing the contents of the house but Peck came back to my room a few seconds later holding a large wicker laundry basket in two hands, the cigarette and ashtray having been deposited somewhere. “Remember that day I dumped everything out of the desk drawer and then Finn called to invite you to the Four Seasons?” She held out the basket so I could see what was inside. “This is all the stuff that was in that drawer. I completely forgot about it.”

  “Is there anything in it?” I asked.

  “I have no earthly idea,” she exclaimed, turning the basket over so the contents, papers and business cards and clippings from magazines, rained down onto the wood floor.

  A slip of notepaper drifted to my feet and I picked it up. It had several holes at the top, as though it had once been pinned to a bulletin board. Across the top were four block letters that read SAFE and then underneath, in tiny handwriting that was still recognizably Lydia’s: “Scott’s birthday.” “Here it is,” I said, holding up the loose piece of paper. “If we’d found this right away, we would have been able to open the safe.”

  Peck glanced at the handwriting. “Scott,” she said with a laugh. “As though he were her boyfriend.”

  Another item in the pile at my feet caught my eye and I reached down to pick it up. It was a postcard, and it too was pricked with holes along the top where it must have been pinned up. The front of the postcard was an image that was unmistakably recognizable as the painting that we had erroneously believed to b
e a missing Jackson Pollock. On the back was an invitation to an opening at a gallery in East Hampton containing the following words: “The Woman as Muse. Oil on Canvas. New Works by Julian Powell.”

  I held it out so Peck could see it. “Julian Powell,” I read aloud. “How did we not make that connection?”

  She shrugged. “We weren’t looking for it.”

  “I’m glad we found it, though,” I said, waving the postcard in my hand. “That explains why the painting meant so much to her.”

  Lydia’s copy of The Great Gatsby, not a first edition but a version published later, was sitting on the bedside table where I’d left it when I reread the last few pages only that morning. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. I tucked the postcard inside the dust jacket flap and closed the book.

  19

  Traditionally, the Fool’s Farewell had always taken place during the day at the cracked and crumbling tennis court. The bar cart, holding champagne and strawberries—“Just like at Wimbledon,” explained Peck, who’d never been to the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships but was quite the expert on what one ate and drank and wore and did there—would be wheeled down the driveway and set up on the sidelines along with white folding chairs for the spectators. She may not have attended Wimbledon, but she had been to a few more Fool’s Farewells than I had, so she viewed herself as the keeper of the tradition. This year, however, we made the decision to break from tradition—or she made it and I went along with it—and hold the party in the evening, with a deejay for dancing rather than tennis as the entertainment. Our decision was made after a lengthy discussion with Hamilton, who “did so love the sight of men’s legs in tennis whites,” but also thought it would be fitting that this year’s event take on a different flavor, since it was the Final Farewell.

  It was a warm Saturday afternoon at the very beginning of August, but there was a gentle breeze, carrying the sweet smell of freshly mown grass and salt, to keep the sun, high in the cloudless blue, from beating down too relentlessly.