Postcards From Last Summer

by Roz Bailey

  “I still can’t believe you guys talked me into having a big wedding,” Tara said, sitting momentarily beside Maisy to slip off her satin pumps adorned with tiny beads—“magic slippers” Maisy called them when Darcy suggested she borrow them for the wedding. Now Tara was trying to avoid sitting for long, worried about putting a crease in her high-waisted gown, an elegant Vera Wang that they’d been able to buy off the rack since Tara was a size 8. But if she was going to stand, she’d have to keep her shoes off for now. “Steve and I are so low key, I worried this would be weird, but I’m liking it. Even my shoes look royal. And my feet!” She laughed as she wiggled her pedicured toes, frosted white polish with white gems on the toes. “I’ve never felt like a princess before, and oddly enough, I love it!”

  “No one deserves it more,” Mary Grace said. Lindsay’s mother seemed frail, almost childlike in the overstuffed chair, a pillow behind her head so that she could save her energy for the ceremony and reception. “Besides, every girl should feel like a princess on her wedding day.”

  “Pampered and lucky,” Tara said, lifting the skirt of her gown to flash Mary Grace a bit of leg adorned with a delicate blue lace garter her future mother-in-law had given her last week. Tara wasn’t going to wear stockings or panty hose—too hot—but she wore the blue garter for good luck, part of the “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” tradition. She had borrowed Darcy’s shoes, her gown was new, and, as Mary Grace had said, “The garter is blue and it’s certainly old—perhaps you can get a double whammy out of it.” Enclosed in a tiny panel of the garter was a shiny copper penny from 1955, the year Mary Grace wed Lindsay’s father, “My Tom,” Mary Grace had said as Tara examined the penny. “Back then we always believed that it was good luck for a stranger to give you a penny on your wedding day. I got mine from a tourist lady visiting the Hamptons for the first time. She must have been quite amused by me and my friend Glenda, strolling into town in our house coats and rollers the day of the wedding. I didn’t want to do it, but Glenda was convinced that we needed that penny, and I suspect she was right. It’s brought me such luck over all these years, so many blessings. And I wish more of the same for you and Steven, Tara.” They’d hugged, and despite the stiffness and pain pervading Mary Grace’s body, she gave Tara a mighty squeeze. “Wooh!” Tara gasped. “You still got it, Mrs. Mick.” And Steve’s mother had laughed. “Oh, I don’t know that I ever had it, dear.”

  When Tara showed Steve the garter, he was highly amused. “I remember my sisters taking it out of the box in Mom’s closet and fighting over who’d get to wear it first,” he said. “That thing was a valuable treasure in our house.”

  “The real treasure is your mother,” Tara told him. “She makes me feel so special. Like she couldn’t have dreamed up anyone better to be your wife.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s no stretch.” He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her back against him. “Besides, Ma has always won my friends over. I’d be seeing someone in high school, a girl who was a little lukewarm about me, and I’d bring her around to the house and—bam!—Ma would win her over. Worked every time.”

  Tara laughed. “And look at me, doubly motivated. All I have to do is marry you and I get Mary Grace for a mother and Lindsay for a sister. What’s not to like?”

  “It’s all part of the deluxe package I’m pleased to offer,” he’d said, kissing her neck.

  Looking from Mary Grace to her trio of friends primping in the mirror, Tara felt grateful that everything had come together so well, especially considering the lack of support from her own mother. Thank God for Lindsay, the wedding planner. Somehow she knew where to shop for gowns, flowers, caterers, and headpieces. Lindsay knew when to keep it simple and when to go for satin and beads. The woman had an instinct for weddings. “You are so good at this,” Tara kept telling her. “Maybe you’re next.” To which Lindsay had winced. “Noah and I? I don’t think so. Much as I love planning weddings, it’s not in the cards for me.” When Tara asked her why not, Lindsay couldn’t answer. “You know I love Noah, but can you picture him in a little house in the suburbs driving our kids to school? I don’t think so.”

  While Darcy searched her professional makeup kit for lip liner suitable for each woman’s skin tone, Tara set Darcy’s seed-pearled shoes on Lindsay’s old desk, noticing the bulletin board still covered with postcards Lindsay had collected over the years.

  “I can’t believe you still have these up, Linds,” Tara said.

  “I’ll never part with my postcards,” Lindsay responded, as if horrified at the thought. There were nearly a dozen postcards chronicling Hamptons lifeguards starting in the 1980s and boasting GREETINGS FROM SOUTHAMPTON. Tara skimmed past the series, each featuring that year’s fleet of muscled, tanned lifeguards, their buff torsos brimming over taut red swim trunks. Where were they now? Probably married with children. Writing software or selling cars. Everyone had to move on. Well, everyone except Serena Washington, who kept trying to recapture the days when she would snap and Tara would jump to follow her orders. Her mother refused to let go of her control over Tara, and as a result, Serena Washington now waited downstairs in the living room, one story apart from the loving atmosphere of wedding preparations, a world apart by choice.

  “And you saved these postcards I sent from family vacations . . .” Those slow-paced beach weeks in Jamaica and Cancun. “Not to be outdone by postcards from Elle. There must be thirty of them. Sydney, London, Thailand, Rio . . .”

  Elle and Maisy came over to check out the corkboard gallery.

  “I’ve got everything,” Lindsay said. “The ones Darcy sent from Europe. I never throw them away.”

  And there tucked between postcards from Jamaica and London was a photo of Tara, Lindsay, Steve, and his friend Skeeter, the four of them sitting around a Monopoly board, grinning as Skeeter tucked plastic red hotels into his nostrils. “Look at us . . . a bunch of goobers.”

  “That’s real attractive.” Elle pointed to Skeeter and shot a dubious look at Tara. “And you’re marrying the guy fanning himself with Monopoly money? Of the two, I’d say he’s the better choice.”

  79

  Darcy

  As Skeeter Fogarty toasted Tara and Steve, Darcy tried to keep her mind from wandering from the wedding festivities to the man seated across from her at the large round table for twelve.

  Noah Storm. Dammit, everywhere she turned, he was there, like the ubiquitous, omnipresent facilitator of her artistic expression.

  Not that she wasn’t grateful for the huge boost he’d given her career. Critics had raved about Darcy’s performance in Life After iPod, which had received an award at Sundance and was currently showing at the Tribeca Film Festival. They’d immediately shot a sequel with Bancroft, Alton, and Mouse. Noah had recently cast Darcy in an off-Broadway play that would begin rehearsing this month, and he’d hired Milo to do the set design—a huge opportunity for Milo, who’d been studying design at the New School for the past three years now. Noah Storm had been more than generous, and Darcy knew she had grown and prospered in the light of his capable talent. She hoped to continue working with him, learning from him.

  Thanks to Noah, she’d also become something of a minor celebrity. Shots of Maisy and her walking the red carpet at premieres had appeared on all the TV mags, and Darcy had been fielding so many requests for interviews that she’d actually had to hire a publicist to manage them. The fact that she was a single mom pursuing an acting career alone seemed to endear her to the public, bringing interest from magazines as varied as Ladies’ Home Journal, People, Glamour, Rolling Stone, and Working Mother. These days, whenever she and Maisy were waiting in line at the grocery store, her daughter would skip up to the checkout display to “find Mommy’s cover,” and inevitably, she did. Her friends were highly amused when they went to lunch and ladies stopped by the table to have their playbills autographed by Darcy. Sometimes, people would stare at her while she was walking down city streets or riding the
subway wearing big round sunglasses and a floppy hat, and every day when she picked up Maisy at school there was the cluster of giggling fan moms, who pumped her for information on her latest project, her crazy schedule, her take on Noah or Bancroft or Mouse.

  She owed Noah a huge debt. However, as she lifted her champagne flute, she wished for the millionth time that she didn’t have to see him socially, that he weren’t dating her best friend, that he didn’t attend every momentous social gathering in her family of friends. Toasting the happy couple, Darcy sent up a silent toast: And here’s to moving Noah Storm out of sight and out of mind.

  Not that they’d had a disagreement or argument. On the contrary, they connected well artistically. Of all the directors Darcy had worked with, Noah was the best at communicating what he was looking for in a scene, the nuance of a scrap of dialogue or a single look. On set or in a rehearsal studio, they connected in a very personal, visceral way.

  And that was the crux of the problem. Darcy’s connection with him made it hard for her to retract, difficult to step back and remind herself that she was not entitled to a greater piece of Noah’s life, that it would be wrong to reach for his hand or enjoy his embrace too much. Doubly wrong, because he was romantically involved with her best friend.

  “Mommy, can we dance now?” Maisy held her hands high, ready for Darcy’s embrace.

  “Sure.” Seeing the chance to escape Noah’s entourage, Darcy lifted the light of her life off her feet and swirled her away from the table, toward the dance floor. Maisy was her date for the wedding, which was fine by Darcy, who’d drifted away from her public relationship with Bancroft Hughes after they’d finished filming the iPod sequel. Ban moved on to a pretty aspiring redheaded pop singer/actress and Darcy devoted the extra time to Maisy, taking her for walks in the park, watching her do her homework, baking cookies together, and reading her stories. Although Elle kept reminding her that the “girls of Bikini Beach” were pushing thirty, Darcy didn’t feel the need to have a man in her life now. Between her work, which brought her juicy camaraderie and laughter, and her daughter, whose demands and capacity for love seemed endless, her days and her heart were full. When Mary Grace was diagnosed in February, Darcy was relieved to be available to both her daughter and Mary Grace, whose back pain had been slowing her down significantly.

  “You can put me down,” Maisy said, giggling. “Really, I’m not a baby anymore.”

  But still so light, so fragile. Darcy lowered Maisy to her feet and took her chubby hands. “Who gets to lead?”

  “I do,” Maisy said imperiously. “And please, don’t step on my toes. I want this pedicure to last.”

  Darcy bit her lower lip. Like mother, like daughter.

  80

  Lindsay

  As the band played the final song of the evening and Tara and Steve took their last turn on the dance floor, I felt the weight of disappointment pull me down onto a low retaining wall bordering the garden. I sat behind a potted palm wanting to cry for no reason in particular, just the vague letdown of having all the positive things in my life culminate in this evening. The wedding had provided so many juicy distractions. Deciding between roses and gardenias in Tara’s headpiece had been a joyous task, though it had ended way too quickly, leaving me to face the train wreck that was my life.

  Dealing with Noah and our lackluster relationship. Saying good-bye to Tara and Steve, who’d be too far for even a phone call at a reasonable time of day. And being there for Ma . . . I bit my lip to hold back the tears, not wanting to think about it.

  Focus on Noah, and how to fix things with him. Hard to believe we’d been seeing each other for almost two years now and he still seemed to be a stranger at times, aloof and distracted and far more interested in scripts and films and rehearsals than he would ever be in me. It seemed that I’d suffered a thousand little heartbreaks, every time he missed a dinner date or cancelled plans because of work commitments—a last-minute rehearsal, a glitch in editing, a premiere he’d forgotten about. He’d missed my birthday gathering at Tavern on the Green and sent me off to the Island Books Christmas party without an escort. Mortifying. Upsetting.

  But every time I planned my breakup speech, he’d boomerang back, taking me for a latte in a quiet café to discuss story problems in a script or stopping by my apartment with a bottle of wine and gourmet takeout from Dean and DeLuca. In those moments, when he actually looked across the table and seemed to see me, I felt short bursts of hope that it might all work out, that I might weave a relationship, albeit unconventional, with this man. Like brief epiphanies, those moments seemed to light the way to our future together . . . only to dim when Noah inevitably pulled away and left me stranded once again.

  What to do?

  Ending the relationship was an obvious choice. But I did care for him, very much, and I had to admit, the status of being Noah Storm’s girlfriend gave me a lift. It would be hard to let go. I was rolling the Noah dilemma around in my mind for the thousandth time when my brother shouted for me.

  “Okay, Linds, this is it.” Steve bounded over, the stiff collar of his tux popped open, his black tie dangling. “Tara and I head back to the city tomorrow, then the flight to Tokyo, so we figured we’d better say good-bye now.”

  I glanced up at him, my lips pressed together to keep from crying. “Good-bye?”

  His eyes narrowed as he took in my mood. “Hey, don’t cry.”

  Which brought on the tears, stinging my eyes. I swiped them away as he sat beside me, slinging an arm around my shoulders.

  “We’ll be back for Christmas. This is going to be a great adventure for us.” He patted my back. “I gotta thank you for all the wedding stuff you did. Tara is, like, head in the clouds, and it’s really because of you.”

  “No problem,” I said, my voice sounding as if I were swallowing gravel. “It was fun.”

  “And I want you to know what a big relief it is to know you’ll be staying with Ma now. I can’t tell you how much that eases my mind.”

  I nodded. As the only single McCorkle child, it had fallen on me to be our mother’s caretaker. A labor of love, despite the bleak outlook.

  “I think it’s going to help Ma, just having you around. She’s going to beat this thing.” Steve made a fist. “I have a good feeling about it.”

  “Steve, it’s stage four pancreatic cancer,” I said. What did he not get about the prognosis, which the family had discussed at length? It was the reason I was taking a leave of absence from Island Books. Ma wasn’t even receiving treatment anymore, beyond pain meds and the drugs she’d agreed to take for a clinical trial. Hiding under a palm frond, I thought of the many walks I’d taken on the beach in the past few weeks, arm in arm with Ma, talking about all those end-of-life things that were important to our mother—her children, her extended family, her home. Knowing that her time on the planet was ending, Ma was working hard to sort through some things for herself.

  Ma had even put a clause in her will about not selling the house on Rose Lane until at least a year after her death. “I’d like to keep the Hamptons house in the family,” Ma had told me. “I know it’s just a house, but so many wonderful things have happened there, and it’s such a perfect place for the grandchildren.”

  “Let’s not talk about the will, Ma,” I said.

  “But I want to get things in order.” My mother paused near the foaming surf and shook my arm gently, her dark eyes all business. “It’s my death, and I want to have a good one. Don’t deny me that, lovey.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” I said. “It hurts too much.”

  “Then just listen,” Ma told me. “Give an old lady her dying wish, and let me ramble on a bit.”

  So I understood Steve’s need for denial; I just didn’t have the luxury of hiding behind it anymore.

  “I know what the doctors say,” said Steve, “but I also know they’re not always right. And Ma has an iron will; when she sets her mind on something, there’s no stopping her.”

>   Death and taxes. The old joke popped into my mind unbidden: What are the two things no human can escape?

  I glanced at my brother, wondering if I should bring him back to earth with real information about Ma’s condition. But he was staring off across the lanai, color high on his cheeks and a glimmer in his eyes as he watched his bride talk with some of the departing guests. Steve didn’t want to hear the truth; he was in major denial. Right now, he viewed the world through the rosy tint of newlywed optimism.

  “And Ma’s taking that trial drug, right?” Steve reminded me, proving that he had been paying attention to some of the facts. “The derivative of the Asian shrub? What if that’s the miracle cure? Anything is possible, Linds.”

  “That’s true,” I said, leaving his hope intact.

  We stood up and I grabbed him tight in a killer hug. “I’m going to miss you guys,” I whispered, “but I’m so glad you found each other.” Maybe he was right to stay positive and expect miracles. Hope springs eternal.

  81

  Tara

  “Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the broomstick,” Steve said the morning after the wedding as Tara tossed small bottles of lotion and shampoo into her travel kit.

  “Yeah, I’m cranky.” She let out a small, strained laugh. “Not that it’s your fault, but why did you agree to brunch at my parents’ house the day after our wedding?”

  “They offered to drive us to the airport, and your father said he wanted a proper good-bye.” He balled up boxers and a T-shirt and tucked them into the corner of his duffel bag.

  “Ugh.” She zipped up her navy Louis Vuitton luggage and dropped it down from the bed with a thud. “I was hoping to get out of town without another confrontation.”

  “Out of town to Tokyo? Tara, we’re flying halfway around the world. It’s not like we can stop in next week for coffee. I think we can spare the ’rents a few minutes before we hightail it outta here.”