How the Other Half Hamptons

by Jasmin Rosemberg

  Like now.

  “You don’t have to stay, you know,” she said for, like, the zillionth time over.

  “I know,” he answered, focusing his enamored gaze on her. He was sitting pretty close to her now, and she instantly became conscious of this. “So, where’s your boyfriend?” he asked, the intent pause that followed belying any attempt to appear casual.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said, like it was a ridiculous claim that might never have been true, least of all this morning. She quickly changed the subject. “So what do you think we should do?” she asked, relieved to confide her worry in someone it wouldn’t serve to upset further.

  “Get comfortable.” Seeing that his joke didn’t help matters, he added, “No, seriously, any time you want to leave I’ll give you guys a ride.” As he said this, his gaze didn’t falter once, and if they were having a staring contest, he certainly would have won.

  “Thanks,” she said, averting her eyes and smiling tensely.

  “Relax,” Brian said, reaching forward to jokingly massage her shoulders—which actually inspired the opposite effect.

  And when Jamie and Rachel reappeared, Allison immediately sprang to action.

  “Anything?” she asked, gesturing hopefully to Jamie’s phone.

  Jamie shook her head. “I guess I have to call my mother and tell her what happened. She’s going to love that I left her car parked at a lot overnight.”

  The room hushed as Jamie made the call, though her mother’s yelling would’ve been perfectly audible even if they hadn’t lowered their voices. But eventually the yelling gave way to Jamie’s compliant stream of okays.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Jamie said, hanging up.

  They all simply stared at her, no one eager to elicit an additional surprise that day. “What?” Rachel finally asked, the word sounding as painful as the burn on her face.

  “My mom’s driving here.”

  “Where?” all three cried, in disharmonic pitch.

  “To the Hamptons.”

  “Your mom is driving to the Hamptons?” Rachel said, digesting the sheer absurdity of it all. And perhaps the reality that they’d have to wait it out until she arrived.

  “Yeah, she’s leaving this minute. But wow, is she pissed!” No one said anything for a moment, perhaps because no one knew what to make of the situation. It was undeniably a better resolution than returning the following day, but in a way it felt like all of their parents were coming here to call them out on their mistake. “Watch her take away my share house privileges!” Jamie exclaimed, not kidding in the least.

  Brian regarded this in a wholly different light. “Your mother,” he got out, between spurts of laughter, “is coming to this share house?” To someone with car keys this proved resoundingly amusing.

  “Stop laughing,” Jamie said, smacking him with a pillow.

  “It’s not funny. It’s just really...nice,” he said, swallowing his chuckle. It would be funny...just not until many months later.

  Jamie’s mother soon called again from her car for directions, and then at two-minute intervals for clarifications. In the meanwhile, they really had nothing to do but sit around and watch Anchorman—which was playing for like the fourth time that weekend, but no one cared enough at that moment to get up and change it. Once Craig was satisfied things were taken care of and he took off, they officially became the only people left in the share house (well, aside from the cleaning lady—whom they sheepishly watched undoing the mess it had taken three days and four dozen people to produce). To Allison it felt like the Twilight Zone. Lingering alone in this gargantuan, noiseless abode was like lingering in a nightclub after someone had turned off the music and emptied out the crowd. And while they’d been too preoccupied to notice before, they were now ravenously hungry.

  They made it through the remainder of the Rold Gold pretzels (now properly deemed “Hamptons pretzels,” and now the largest component of Allison’s weekend diet)—along with Klondike chocolates discovered in the cabinets, and two episodes of Entourage on HBO on Demand—when Mrs. Kessler finally called from Route 27. Running out to the porch, the group awaited her arrival as formally as that of the president.

  No less than twenty minutes later, Jamie’s mother pulled cautiously up to the share house (in Jamie’s father’s sports car rather than the SUV they’d abducted, and in that careful controlled manner characteristic of a mom). As she opened the door and placed her kitten heels on the dirt, this petite older woman (clad in neither beach gear nor club clothes) looked comically out of place. Sort of like when your parents visit your high school on open school night. Approaching the welcoming party with none of the screaming or chastising they’d feared, she politely greeted the group. However, her clamped jaw and tense body language revealed the fury inside.

  “Mom, you’re in the Hamptons!” Jamie shrieked, running forward to offer her a hug and simultaneously gauge the degree of her anger. “Do you want a tour?”

  “I want you to take me to my car,” she replied coldly, unreceptive to her daughter’s embrace. So, loading their luggage, to the car they went, finally leaving 1088 Montauk behind.

  Setting off down the road, they formed a slow-moving caravan led by Brian and the girls in his car, with Mrs. Kessler following behind (no one dared ride with Jamie’s furious mother, least of all Jamie herself). Jamie and Rachel had scrambled into the backseat, so Allison was forced to sit shotgun next to Brian. It took her aback at first; climbing in, she felt like she was joining her boyfriend. But perhaps her friends assumed she was the closest to him out of everybody. Or perhaps they could see something she was far too shy to admit.

  When they returned to Hampton Hall, the building looked exactly as uninviting and desolate as it had hours earlier. Which was probably just as well, because it would have been even more upsetting to arrive and discover someone sitting there with the keys.

  “Yay!” they all cheered when Jamie’s mother produced the prized object and easily unlocked the door. For a moment, even Mrs. Kessler looked relieved.

  “Thanks, Mom!” Jamie said, giving her a less unwelcome hug. She agreed to lead her mother back to Sunrise Highway and hurried to transfer her luggage from Brian’s trunk to hers. Rachel followed suit, but when Allison reached for her bags, Brian touched her arm.

  “Ride with me,” he said softly. And though she worried it might be awkward, and that she’d run out of things to say, she had to admit she’d seen it coming—and had wanted it to.

  As they took off from Hampton Hall with the speed he’d suppressed in the procession there, Allison’s stomach soared with excitement. Gliding swiftly onto the highway, she found herself strangely disappointed that there wasn’t a bit of traffic. True, she was worn out from the weekend, and hated to think about working summer school the following day, but at this moment she felt fully at ease. Maybe it was the fact that they’d resolved their car dilemma. Maybe it was relief from cutting Josh out of her life. Or maybe it was the comfort of having Brian beside her. Either way, there was no more sweating; there was no more noose. Josh had been abrasive (both on the road and off), but Brian had an easy laxness about him. You could see it in the way he drove with one arm draped leisurely around the wheel, the way he struck up conversations like he wasn’t under any pressure to, the way he conducted himself naturally in the company of girls (perhaps he’d had experience dealing with them in the seven years he had on her).

  Only before she knew it, the ride was over—at which point things happened very quickly. Or, more problematically, they didn’t happen. Much to her chagrin, when he braked abruptly in front of her building, he didn’t make a single advance. He didn’t ask her for her number; he didn’t attempt to see her again. Instead he merely handed over her luggage, gave her a timid peck on the cheek, and rejoined the sea of red lights blazing up along Third Avenue.

  Tossing in bed that night, Allison replayed it all in her head. Of course, there was little to hold against him, for he couldn’t
have been more of a gentleman. But was that it? Had she been foolish enough to mistake his kindness for romantic interest? She didn’t think so. Still, recalling their flirty exchanges, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

  Then, to her delight, an e-mail showed up in her inbox at school the very next day.

  Tuesday, May 31, 2008 10:44 am

  Hi there -

  I got your e-mail from Mark, hope you don’t mind. Don’t worry I have’t sold it to anyone just yet.

  Some weekend You guys didn’t by any chance find my hat or any one of the other thirty things I lost in the house this weekend did you?

  Also what are you up to this week?

  Brian

  Allison smiled. True, it was a bit of a delayed reaction. But the euphoria smacked her in the brain all at once.

  Chapter Ten

  After only one weekend in the Hamptons, Rachel had been burned—both inside and out.

  Of course her failure to meet a guy was far less evident than her failure to protect her face. And when she greeted her mother and sister outside Vera Wang that Tuesday, the pair promptly exploded.

  “Ohmigod her skin!” Dana shrieked, discerning the damage even as Rachel approached. Her sister had an irritating habit of referring to Rachel like she wasn’t in the room, and instead merely a wedding prop like the cake or the flowers.

  Rachel’s mother proved more sensitive, though equally horrified.

  “Sweetheart, what happened?” her mother exclaimed, anxiously inspecting her daughter’s face as if it were covered with incurable green dots. “What did you do to your skin?”

  “I guess I overdid it with the sun.” Rachel shrugged, saying hello to her aunt and the rest of Dana’s bridal party, who had gathered for the bridesmaids’ dress fitting. And wishing—however unsuccessfully—to curtail her family’s overreaction.

  “Susan, have you ever seen a burn like that? Do you think it will scar?” her mother asked, gripping her daughter’s face between her hands and presenting it to her aunt for a second opinion.

  Leaning over, her aunt brought her face just a bit closer to Rachel’s than was otherwise comfortable. “Does it hurt?” she asked, pressing a cautious finger to Rachel’s cheek and observing the color change, as if her face were one of those Hypercolor shirts everyone had in the 1980s.

  “Not really,” Rachel lied, glancing away.

  Dana, on the other hand, was practically having a heart attack, visibly assessing the implications of her sister’s sunburn on her life. “Why weren’t you more careful?” she cried, with a hand gesture she’d only begun to employ since its four-carat enhancement. “Do you realize how long it can take for sunburns to fade? We have wedding pictures in two months!” Why, the nerve of Rachel to invite this burn in the wake of impending wedding pictures!

  “I’m going to call Dr. Goldenberger,” her mother declared, unclasping her quilted Chanel tote.

  “Mom, I don’t need to see a dermatologist!” Rachel attested. This was worse than she’d expected. “It’s a sunburn. People get them all the time,” she said, repeating verbatim what Jamie had told her.

  Shaking her monthly blond dye job, her mother hardly looked convinced. “One week,” she decided, refastening her purse. “If it’s not significantly better in one week, you’ll come home for a visit.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes, and as they rode the elevator up to the designer’s showroom (complete with elegant, price-inflated dresses and the snooty Louis Vuitton set who inflated them), for once she was happy to let her sister resume the spotlight. After that, no one said another word about her tomato-red face, even though Rachel knew they were still thinking about it every time they looked at her. Instead, it became the elephant in the room.

  Rachel also felt like an elephant—the largest land mammal in existence—as she tried on her bridesmaid gown beside an abnormally size zero bridal party.

  Of course, Rachel knew she wasn’t fat, and God knows she certainly worked out enough (New York Sports Club was her second home a minimum of five mornings a week). But even though her size six figure would, by most standards, be considered exceptionally thin, it hardly looked that way alongside this unlikely cross section of teeny, little-girl-like bodies. Discovering she was the largest of all of them was like scoring a hard-earned B on an exam, only to discover the rest of the class had received A’s. And it certainly didn’t help matters that the dress they’d ordered months ago, tailored to their exact measurements, fit a bit too snugly in the bustline. Sucking in her stomach, Rachel imagined her new diet of alcohol, fast food, and Rold Gold pretzels might have had something to do with it.

  “You guys look so beautiful!” Dana squealed, happily making the rounds to examine her carefully selected bridal party, each member modeling the (even more carefully selected) black silk strapless gown. As she did, she exuded a pride that might not have been equaled if she’d mothered the girls herself. Until she got to Rachel.

  “Her boobs are popping out!” Dana exclaimed to their mother. This comment simultaneously alerted each of the size zeros swimming in gowns beside her, as well as every other nosy New York woman cohabiting the fitting room. Upon the upheaval, their Vera Wang seamstress instantly rushed over, asking Rachel to hop up on the central pedestal for assistance (that, and even more public perusal).

  Rachel felt herself blush, though—proving surprisingly useful—her sunburn covered it up nicely. What ensued was a blur of fabric tugging and alteration clipping and schizophrenic instructions to raise, then lower, her arms so many times Rachel could nearly have taken flight. And had she a magic feather (or exceedingly large ears), she most certainly would have. But after all the fussing, they were still faced with the inevitable reality that the one thing this wizard of a seamstress couldn’t do was snap her fingers and make more material appear.

  “It’s not that bad,” her mother commented, still noticeably perplexed at how the measurement taken just last fall could now be so off.

  “Not bad? I think Rachel looks stunning,” her aunt Susan intervened. Rachel flashed her a grateful smile in the gargantuan three-way mirror.

  “Are you kidding? That’s embarrassingly tight!” Dana complained, seething as if Rachel had purposely tried to foil her festivities. As Dana glanced frenziedly around the room, Rachel half expected her to pick another maid of honor on the spot.

  “I think she can definitely get away with it,” the Vera Wang girl added helpfully. “But if you want”—you being directed at Dana, her aunt, and her mother—“we can try to put in a rush order for a larger size. Although, two months is cutting it close...”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” her mother said. “It’s just water weight. She’ll drop that by August,” she declared, more a command than a statement. Once Rachel stepped down from the pedestal, her mother leaned in closely to her boob-popping, water-inflated, sunburn-scarred daughter. “Sweetheart,” she began in a poorly executed whisper, “are you getting your period?”

  She wasn’t, but now she was getting a complex.

  It was only exacerbated when they went to eat afterward at nearby Atlantic Grill, phase two of this “bridesmaids’ outing” that had warranted begging her boss for an extended lunch hour.

  To Rachel’s surprise, as soon as they were seated at a large round table right near the front of the colorful restaurant, the first question Dana directed to her had nothing to do with the wedding.

  “So how was your first weekend in the Hamptons?” Dana asked, opening her menu but locking eyes with Rachel.

  Rachel was shocked her sister had remembered, and even more shocked that she cared. Still, she would wholeheartedly welcome any reprieve from the incessant wedding talk, even if disclosing a piece of gossip to this table full of girls involved only slightly less exposure than publishing it in “Page Six.”

  “It was really fun,” Rachel said, scouring the menu. Or rather, scouring the salad listings. She tried to come up with a tidbit that would be adequate for Dana, settling on “The house is go
rgeous.”

  “That’s it?” her sister asked, far from satisfied. Looking up at her friends, she raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow suggestively. “She’s doing Mark’s house.”

  “Mark’s house?” Each of the five zeros (who lacked personality as well as body fat) let out an ear-piercing shriek.

  Then they all started talking at once.

  “How is Mark? That summer in Quogue was, like, the best time of my life!”

  “Do you remember our first night at Jet? That was the best night ever!”

  “It was the best weekend ever!”

  If there had been any doubt, it was now painfully obvious to all they had mastered the art of the superlative.

  “That’s the weekend I met Gregg,” her sister added, unconsciously fingering her engagement ring. Staring off into space, she brushed her long blond hair back with her hand. “Do you remember how he hit on me so hard-core at first, but I wouldn’t give him the time of day?”

  “You guys were totally getting together,” a zero claimed, a dreamy look in her eye.

  “I knew from the second you met,” another added. “Where was it again? By the pool?”

  Here we go, Rachel thought. Though, just as she was praying her sister wouldn’t launch into “the story” for the thousandth time, her mother cut in with an even more objectionable topic.

  “Honey, did you meet any boys?” she asked Rachel, looking up from her menu and intervening for the first time in this conversation. But not for the first time in Rachel’s love life.

  “Sure, I met a bunch,” Rachel said, opting not to elaborate on all the weekend’s near misses—which she was trying her hardest to move past.

  First there’d been Dan, the lawyer at Willkie who didn’t apply the same gravity to his social life as he did to his professional one. That’d been a shame. Though Rachel had been far more disappointed to discover that Brett, the trader whose office was within lunch-dating distance of hers, had a girlfriend. Rachel knew this because, well, she’d met her personally.