Summer Darlings

by Brooke Lea Foster

  Heddy forgot how much she loved the creamy texture of a gin fizzy; she wondered why he’d brought her to his house. Is this where they were having dinner? “You were more subdued on stage tonight,” she said.

  He smiled sheepishly before slumping next to her on the couch. “You noticed,” he said.

  Barkley rested his head on her thigh, and she was about to push the dog away when Sullivan began to stroke his back.

  “I’m feeling less churned up, ever since that morning I called you.”

  He gazed at her, then tilted his chin down to reach her waiting mouth. She kissed him back because it felt rude not to—she didn’t want to embarrass him—but also, because she wanted to. She liked how tentative he was. They were such an unlikely pair—he had all the money in the world, the support of a traditional family and a trust fund—and yet they had the same problems. They were both searching for a way out of their pasts. She felt his hand go up the back of her blouse. He was more forward than she’d imagined; the shy Sullivan she’d met at the beginning of the summer nowhere to be found. When he fumbled with her bra, she wondered if he only wanted to sleep with her, and she pulled away from him.

  Perhaps I am a tart.

  Guilt washed over her. After the night with Ash, as fond as she was for Sullivan, it felt wrong to be necking with him. If she saw Ash with another woman, she’d be crushed and completely undone. And yet, here she was, like a little harlot, trying her darnedest to keep another man—one of the wealthiest, most well-connected men on the island—interested in her. Had she become so committed to landing a husband that she’d stopped considering other people’s feelings? Then again, she was mad at Sullivan. All that nonsense on the phone with him saying how much he loved to talk to her, that is what he’d said, and he’d taken her to his house so he could unsnap her bra? She wondered if he was trying to prove his feelings for her to himself, if he was using her to compare Peg against.

  Heddy folded her arms, turning her head away from him. “You’ve barely asked me how I am.”

  He buried his face in his hands, then peeked at her, trying to be charming. “I’m sorry, you’re right. You just look so you in that lilac blouse, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since I called you, and then you were here…”

  She stared at the navy crew neck of his white sweater, how tight the Shetland weave was, how he shared the same moneyed Ivy League style of the president. Sullivan’s baby face was sweet, and she liked him—she did—but he didn’t live by the same conventions that she did, that Ash did. If he acted badly one night, he could forget it the next day, because his money could erase uncomfortable situations. And he’d grown up with that reassurance. But more than that, the way he dove at her, he didn’t think, he simply acted. That he was so impulsive scared her. She preferred a boat with a steady course.

  “I thought you just wanted to talk.”

  He brushed a piece of hair off her face. “I did. No, I do.”

  At the tinny ring of some sort, not a telephone, Heddy jumped.

  “Sorry,” he said. Sullivan stood, pressing a button on a silver wall box and speaking into a tiny speaker: “Come on up, Roy.” Loud trudging footsteps sounded from the stairs, and three men in white coats, chef buttons across the front, carried in silver platters.

  Heddy uncurled her legs, putting her bare feet on the floor, then crossing her legs in an effort at decorum.

  “Mr. Rhodes, we’ll set up on the dining table,” the man said.

  “I’d like it in here,” Sullivan said, motioning to the pool table and moving textbooks out of the way.

  “As you wish, sir.” The men lifted the lids off the platters, fastidiously arranging two place settings, silverware wrapped in cloth napkins. She imagined medium filet mignon, perhaps sides of mashed potatoes and creamed spinach, since that’s what they served on special occasions at Wellesley. Sullivan thanked the staff.

  “Let’s eat.” He handed her a plate, and from the weight of it, she knew it was fine china. “There’s a story here.”

  She’d never seen this kind of food: black beans and rice, chicken thighs sprinkled with brown spices, whole chunks of garlic on top.

  “What are those?” she asked.

  “Cooked bananas. Plantains. And that’s roast pork with oranges. My favorite restaurant back home is this Cuban place run by two brothers up near Harlem. They serve it on paper plates. I asked Roy to learn how to cook it, and he did. Though, I told him to skip the paper plates.”

  Heddy smiled as he spooned her a heaping of rice and beans. He was going on about the food, but she’d stopped listening. Sullivan said he didn’t want to live this fancy. He resented the money and the social stature it gave him; he hated the desires his parents had for him. And yet, in his world, it was perfectly normal to ask a personal chef to make him a recipe from his favorite restaurant.

  Heddy told him a while ago that she understood why he wanted to escape these golden handcuffs, but she didn’t. She’d never understand. And the truth was, she wasn’t sure he got the implications of what he was doing, either. Once you lived this well, how did you inhabit an apartment like her and her mother’s, where the window didn’t close all the way and snow sometimes flurried in? Would you crumble if you were too low on cash to afford your favorite Cuban restaurant?

  “I don’t believe you could live without this,” she blurted. The way she saw him had shifted, emboldened her to challenge his notions.

  “That’s why I had them make it.” He grinned, adding drips of hot sauce.

  “No, without money. The house and the pool table and the chefs and the fancy car.”

  He stiffened. “But that stuff isn’t me.”

  “Maybe you don’t need all that, but it’s harder to live without than you realize. Making it on your own—it’s tough.” She thought of how often the apartment lights had been turned off and she’d had to sit in the hallway to do her math homework by dim light bulbs. She thought of Wellesley and how she couldn’t afford to return.

  “I won’t be on my own. I’ll have you,” he said.

  She shifted on the pool table, looking out onto the ocean. Sullivan was a dreamer. People like him could be turned upside down in the real world, when the trappings of their upbringing faded away.

  “You have to make peace with who you are, Sully. There’s gotta be a way to live the life you want and still please your mother.”

  He rubbed her cheek with his hand. “You worry too much.”

  “You sound like Ruth,” she laughed. She liked the sting of the chicken on her tongue, but she needed water, downing a glass.

  “I have a plan.” Sullivan refilled her glass from the faucet. “It’s not like I’m going to be peddling for change. I’ll have some money saved.”

  “Does your mom still want you to marry Peg?”

  “Stop with all this. Let’s talk about us.” His voice was low.

  “Just answer me.” Perhaps there was a part of her that wondered if they could make it, if she could get lost in those daydreams of his.

  “We don’t need them, Heddy. We’ll do what we want.”

  “But it matters to me.”

  He pushed beans around his plate. “Mother thinks she can set a date for an engagement, and that I’ll simply show up, like a caterer or the band.”

  She gulped down her water. He liked her, she could tell, but he’d never win this battle with his mother. No matter what he said, she knew what he’d choose in the end: whatever his mother insisted on. And it wasn’t going to be Heddy.

  “It’s a ridiculous plan,” he said. “Her family owns the other New York paper, another in Boston. Our parents want a merger. They want an empire.”

  “You should consider it.” She hated Peg, and she wanted him to prove that he did, too.

  “Are you crazy? Peg wouldn’t touch this food or anything I care about. She’s only interested in the Society Pages.” He was next to her again, sitting cross-legged, their knees touching. “Besides, I’m hung up
on someone else.”

  “I wonder who,” Heddy said. Could she love him someday? He was intoxicating, and yet, something about how he lived, without strings, frightened her. She wiped a spot of sour cream off the corner of his mouth, and he kissed her on the cheek.

  Later, when they finished, he led her into his bedroom. At first, she resisted; she imagined him throwing her down on the bed, trying to run his fingers under her bra, and she cringed.

  “I promise, nothing funny,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. He led her by the hand to an octagonal window in his bedroom. Her eye went to a shoebox on his dresser, piles of twenty-dollar bills lying flat inside. She was tempted to make a joke, ask him if he believed in using a bank, but she liked that he kept his savings in a shoebox.

  “Look,” he said, opening the window. He pointed up at the eaves, where a single baby bird poked its face out of a nest, two little eyes peering over the edge. “The mother abandoned it.” Sullivan reached for a bowl on his dresser filled with tiny seeds. “I’ve been feeding it.”

  “Do you think it’s going to make it?” she said.

  Sullivan dropped a few specks of food into the nest, and the bird pecked.

  His eyes crinkled. “We’re all going to make it.”

  Just not together, she thought.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, after bringing the children to camp, she found another to-do list from Jean-Rose, each bullet point written in black magic marker. Even her handwriting felt abrasive: SIFT THROUGH CLOTHES, SORT OUT SIZES. PACK UP TOYS THEY DON’T PLAY WITH.

  Heddy went upstairs to shower, jotting a few thoughts down first.

  August 6, 1962

  I get the feeling that I did something deeply wrong in Jean-Rose’s eyes, something other than take a bracelet that I didn’t take. I’m dating the guy she wanted me to, I care for her children like they’re my own, and I’ve always been careful to respect her rules. It’s unfathomable that she’d be jealous of me—who am I to her but a puny, uneducated girl from Brooklyn?—and yet, I think she’s tiring of the sight of me.

  In the hall bath, Ruth was wiping spittle out of the sink.

  “Where’d they go?” Heddy asked.

  Ruth sprayed more solution. “Jean-Rose left in a tennis skirt. He drove.”

  “The club.”

  Ruth nodded. “Did you hear Anna ask Ted why Mommy is always crying?”

  She felt a pit in her stomach. “I’m starting to think them wretched people.”

  Ruth sprayed the wall tiles, the smell of ammonia burning her nose. “We all have our sad stories.”

  In Teddy’s room, Heddy emptied his dresser, refolding each shirt after checking the sizes. Most of them still fit, but she took out a few anyway, just in case Jean-Rose thumbed through. A yank on the hanging cord in his walk-in closet switched on the light, illuminating rows of pressed and hanging pint-size clothes. Heddy tucked the shirts in a box labeled appropriately, noticing another box—a rather large one at the back. She leaned over the side of it, discovering four small throw pillows surrounding a stepstool. Miss Pinkie sat at the head of the makeshift table, and she had three guests—three of Anna’s Barbies—each with a matching porcelain teacup and saucer.

  “Oh, Teddy.” Heddy put her hand on her chest. She had no idea when he even came in here. After she tucked him in at night, did he tiptoe inside his closet, turn on the light and play?

  Her eyes traveled around the pretend table. There was Barbie, wearing a strand of pearls, the necklace enormous and twice her size, and another Barbie with a teardrop earring clipped to her bathing suit. Something around Miss Pinkie’s head sparkled, and in the dim lighting, she’d assumed it was a crown until the beam of light found the gleam of jewels.

  Heddy snatched the eternity bracelet from Miss Pinkie’s head. The weight of the bracelet made her legs heavy. She was aware of every link, every diamond, pressing against her palm. She dangled it, examining it to make sure it was the one. It had to be. Just having the bracelet in hand felt illicit, like Jean-Rose was going to catch her.

  “Ruuuuth,” she screamed, causing Ruth to bound into the closet.

  “Jesus Christ. What is it?”

  Heddy dropped the bracelet in her hand. “I found it on the doll’s head. What do we do?”

  “Shit, shit, shit. This is not good.” Ruth tried to hand her back the bracelet, like they were playing a game of hot potato, but Heddy wouldn’t take it.

  “We’ll put it back on the doll,” Ruth said. “You have to show her. All of this.”

  Heddy bit her palm and paced. “I can’t do that to him.”

  “I won’t lose my job because some little rich kid likes to play dolls with Mommy’s jewelry.” It was the first time Heddy heard Ruth yell.

  “But she’ll take the doll. It will crush him.” Plus, she’d fire Heddy on the spot for giving him the doll back.

  “If you don’t tell her, I will.” Ruth stormed out of the closet; from the bathroom, Heddy could hear the scrubbing. Faster, harder, bristles dragging on tile.

  Heddy followed her. “Ruth, give me a few days to think of another way. I want to avoid hurting him.”

  Ruth rolled her eyes, scrubbing the urine ring out of the toilet with a brush. “You’ve got twenty-four hours before I rip the bracelet off that doll and give it to Jean-Rose myself.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The afternoon newspaper arrived later that day, and Jean-Rose, who had been reading a novel on the porch, came inside and smacked the front page on the kitchen counter. Heddy and the kids looked up from their coloring. “Did you hear about Marilyn?”

  “A new role?” Heddy craned her neck to scan the story: Found dead in her Los Angeles home, bottle of pills, apparent suicide.

  “Messing around like that,” said Jean-Rose, pleased and sounding vindicated. “She was nothing short of a prostitute.”

  “What’s a pros-ta-toot, mommy?” Anna put down her crayon.

  “Never mind,” Heddy said, redirecting the child’s attention back to her half-colored unicorn. Marilyn Monroe. Dead? It wasn’t possible. “She was a sad person, really. Arthur Miller once said she was the saddest person he ever met.”

  “Sad? Is that what they called her?” Jean-Rose rolled her eyes, adjusting the glossy belt on her linen shorts. “Why are you crying?”

  Ruth turned around from chopping carrots for her roast, her eyes pooling with tears, her nose blotchy and red. “It’s just… she was so young. And so beautiful.”

  Heddy began crying, too, then, and the two of them embraced at the kitchen sink, which made Jean-Rose storm out with a disgusted sigh. “Get a grip, ladies,” she hollered on her way back to the porch. “You didn’t know her.”

  But it felt like they knew her. What woman didn’t wish they were even a sliver as sexy as she was when she sang to the president? What woman couldn’t relate to Marilyn’s longing to be accepted, to be loved?

  “I can’t believe it,” Heddy whispered, wiping her nose with her hand. “Why would anyone do that to themselves?”

  “So much of her life ahead of her.”

  “I’m hungry,” Teddy said without emotion, as if he had no idea that anyone was even upset. “Can I have some crackers?”

  Heddy filled a bowl with saltines, then moved to the transistor radio on the kitchen window ledge, tuning it for the news. She suddenly remembered an old Life magazine: Marilyn, wrapped in a blue robe pool-side, grinned from the cover with the headline “A Skinny Dip You’ll Never See on the Screen.” Heddy remembered the actress radiating joy. How her pain must have crept up on her when she was alone; she must have felt like no one really knew her at all.

  Heddy sighed, feeling a bit lonesome herself then, and that’s when she remembered: There still was the question of the tennis bracelet.

  * * *

  Ash’s crisp white shirt was tucked into linen trousers, a gelled wave in his hair. She’d called him that night, a Monday, in a panic, and he’d agreed to pick her up.


  “Thank you for taking me out on such short notice.” Once in his truck, she fiddled with her yellow skirt, prickling with nerves.

  “You kidding me? I’ve been trying to take you out for this lobster roll for weeks.” That he was being so nice made her more anxious.

  “Ash, we need to talk.”

  With one hand on the wheel, he rested the other on hers, probably to stop her fingers from thrumming against the fabric. “Everything okay? Terrible news about Marilyn Monroe.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about her. Ruth and I wonder if she really killed herself—what if someone framed her?” She frowned. “Someone in high places?”

  “Maybe committing suicide was the only way for her to feel in control. She was…” Then he shook his head. “Let’s not talk about this.” A beat, and she knew this was her chance to change the subject.

  “A piece of diamond jewelry went missing at the house,” Heddy started. “Jean-Rose not so subtly accused Ruth and me, but of course we didn’t take it.”

  For a second, he looked like he licked a lemon. “That’s insulting.”

  “I know, but I found it. In Teddy’s room. Problem is, it will get him in trouble if I tell.”

  “So how do you give it back without her knowing it’s you?” The truck whipped around the curves of State Road, Ash honking at another car for going too fast.

  “Exactly.”

  Ash ran his tongue over his teeth, thinking. “What if I bring it by? If you can get it out of the house and bring it to me, I’ll tell her I found it in the driveway.”

  She scrunched up her face. It couldn’t be that easy. “Do you think she’ll believe you?”

  “I’ll be sure of it.” He hummed, giving her a sideways glance, the greens of his eyes piercing her with brilliance. She let it sink in, that he was willing to help her this way, and she popped another kiss on his cheek.