A Hundred Summers (4 page)

“With this surf? I should think not. My hearing is not what it was.” Mrs. Hubert gave Kiki a last pat and rose up with all the grace of an arthritic giraffe. “But off you go. Oh, no. Wait a moment. I meant to ask you something.” She placed a hand on my elbow and drew me close, until I could smell the rose-petal perfume drifting from her skin, could see the faint white lines of rice powder settling into the crevasses of her face. “You’ve heard about Budgie Byrne, of course.”

“I’ve heard she’s opening up her parents’ old place for the summer,” I said coolly.

“What do you think of it?”

“I think it’s high time. It’s a lovely old house. A shame it sat empty so long.”

Mrs. Hubert’s eyes were china blue, and hadn’t lost a single candlepower since she first spanked my bottom for uprooting her impatiens to decorate my Fourth of July parade float when I was about Kiki’s age. She examined me now with those bright eyes, and though I knew better than to flinch, the effort nearly did me in. “I agree,” she said at last. “High time. I’ll see she doesn’t give you any trouble, Lily. That girl always did bring trouble trailing behind her like a lapdog.”

“Oh, I can handle Budgie. I’ll see you later, Mrs. Hubert. I’m taking Kiki for her ginger ale.”

“I’m getting ginger ale?” Kiki skipped along behind me to the bar.

“Tonight you are. Gin and tonic,” I told the bartender, “and a ginger ale for the young lady.”

“But which is which?” The bartender winked.

College boy.

He plopped a cherry in Kiki’s ginger ale, and I strolled out on the veranda with her pink palm in mine, waiting for Mother and Aunt Julie to join us.

The surf was high, crashing in ungentle rollers into the beach below us. When I set my drink on the railing and braced my hands against the weathered wood, the salt spray stung like needles against my bare arms and neck. The dress was Aunt Julie’s choice, a concession made necessary to avoid the threatened haircut, and though she’d clucked with dismay over the sturdy cotton and floral print, she accepted it as the best of a bad lot, and did her damnedest to yank the neckline down as far as physics allowed. “We’re going to throw out the whole kit tomorrow,” she’d said. “Burn it all. I don’t want to see a single flower on you, Lily, unless it’s a great big gerbera daisy, a scarlet one, pinned to your hair. Just above the ear, I think. Now,
that
would be splendid. That would out-Budgie goddamned Budgie herself.”

Kiki popped up between my arms and leaned back against the veranda railing, staring up at me, her hand tugging my dress. “Who is Budgie Byrne,” she asked, “and is she really as much trouble as Mrs. Hubert says?”

“You shouldn’t listen to grown-up conversations, sweetie.”

She sucked her ginger ale and made a show of looking around. “I don’t see any other children here, do I?”

She was right, of course. For whatever reason, my generation hadn’t taken up in our parents’ houses in Seaview, as had every generation past, filling the narrow lanes and tennis courts with screaming young children and moody teenagers, with sailboats racing across the cove and Fourth of July floats festooned in contraband impatiens. I could understand why. The things that attracted me back to Seaview every summer—its old-fashionedness, its never-changingness, its wicker furniture and the smell of salt water soaked into its upholstery—were the very things that turned away everyone else. You couldn’t satisfy your craving for slickness and glamour and high living here at the Seaview Club. During Prohibition, the liquor had been replaced by lemonade, and now that the gin and tonic were back in their rightful places, the young people had moved on.

Except me.

So Kiki was the youngest person at the club this evening, and I was the second-youngest, and the two of us stood there on the early-evening veranda, watching the surf come in, with nowhere else to go. I didn’t mind. There were worse places to spend your time. The veranda stretched the full length of the club and wrapped around the sides, with the long drive at one end and the rest of the Seaview Association on the other, cottage after cottage, porch lights winking out to sea. I knew this scene in my bones. It was safety. It was family. It was home.

Kiki was saying something else, and another wave thundered onto the beach below, but somehow through it all I heard, quite distinctly, the sound of a car engine making the final curve before its approach to the circular drive out front.

I couldn’t say, later, why the noise should have leaped out at me like that, out of all the cars making their way to the Seaview Club that evening. I didn’t believe in fate, didn’t hold any truck with foresight or even intuition. I called it coincidence alone that my ear followed the progress of that car around the corner of the club, picked out the low rumble as it idled outside the entrance, heard with startling precision the sound of Budgie Byrne’s voice, one week early, sliding into a high and tinkling laugh through the clear air, and a deep male voice answering her.

Of course, she wasn’t Budgie Byrne anymore, I reminded myself. It was all my numb mind could come up with.

I grabbed my drink, grabbed Kiki’s hand.

“Your hands are cold,” she exclaimed.

I strode toward the blue-painted steps leading down to the beach. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“But my ginger ale!”

“I’ll order you another.”

I swallowed the rest of my gin and tonic as we walked down the steps, holding up my long skirt so I wouldn’t trip. By the time we reached the bottom, the glass was empty, and I left it there, balanced near the edge, where no one would tread on it accidentally.

“Are the others coming, too?” Kiki accelerated into a skip by my side. Any break from routine made her giddy with excitement.

“No, no. Just a little walk, the two of us. I want . . .” I paused. The gin was rising to my head in a rush. “I want to see how the club lights look from the end of the beach.”

As an explanation, it suited her six-year-old imagination perfectly. “Tally-ho, then!” she said, swinging our joined hands. Her flat shoes skimmed along the sand, while my heeled sandals sank in at every stride. Within a hundred yards, I was gasping for breath.

“Let’s stop here,” I said.

She tugged at my hand. “But we’re not at the end of the beach yet!”

“We’re far enough. Besides, we’ve got to go back before Mother and Aunt Julie start looking for us.”

Kiki made an unsatisfied noise and plopped down in the sand, stretching her feet toward the water. “Oh, Lily,” she said, “look at this shell!” She held up a spiral conch, miraculously intact.

“Look at that! May’s a good time for beachcombing, isn’t it? Nothing’s been picked over yet. Make sure you save that one.” I reached down and took off my shoes, one by one, hopping on each foot. The sand pooled around my toes; the water foamed up with alluring proximity. The tide had nearly reached its peak. I watched it undulate, back and forth, until my breathing began to slow and my heart to steady itself. Something bitter rose in the back of my throat, and my brain, unleashed and candid with the gin, recognized the taste of shame.

So, there it was. I had imagined this encounter over and over, wondered what I should do. Had thought of the clever things I’d say, the way I’d hold my ground with an insouciant toss of my head. The way Aunt Julie would have done.

Instead, I had run away.

“Can I take off my shoes and look for more shells in the water?” asked Kiki.

I looked down. She had arranged a circle of small dark clamshells around the conch, like supplicants before a shrine.

“No, darling. We have to go back.”

“I thought we were going to look at the lights.”

“Well, look. There they are. Isn’t it pretty?”

She turned toward the clubhouse, which perched near the beach, lights all ablaze in preparation for sunset. The weathered gray shingles camouflaged it perfectly against the sand. Behind the rooftop, the sun was dipping down into the golden west.

“It’s beautiful. We’re so lucky to live here every summer, aren’t we?”

“Very lucky.” The voices carried across the beach, too far away to distinguish. I was unbearably conscious of my own cowardice. If Kiki knew, if she understood, she would be ashamed of me. Kiki never turned away from a challenge.

I took her hand. “Let’s go back.”

By the time we reached the veranda again, I had planned everything out. I would secure a table on this end, the far end, sheltered, tucked around the corner from view. I would send Kiki to find Mother and Aunt Julie, while I let the club manager know where we were eating tonight. The surf, I’d say, was too fierce for Mother.

After our meal, we’d pass through the rest of the veranda, greeting acquaintances, and when we reached her table I’d be composed, settled into the routine of shaking hands and expressing admiration for new hairstyles and new dresses, of lamenting the loss of elderly members during the past year, of celebrating the arrival of new grandchildren: the same conversation, the same pattern, evening after evening and summer after summer. I knew my lines by heart. A minute, perhaps two, and we’d be gone.

Kiki skipped up the steps ahead of me, and I leaned down to pick up my empty glass. My hair spilled away from Aunt Julie’s pristine chignon, loosened by the sea air and its own waywardness. I pushed it back over my ear. My cheeks tingled from the spraying surf and the brisk walk. Should I visit the powder room, return myself to orderliness, or was it too great a risk?

“Why, hello,” said Kiki, from the top of the stairs. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

I froze, bent over, my hand clutched around the smooth, round highball glass as if it were a life buoy.

An appalling silence stretched the seconds apart.

“Well, hello, yourself,” said a man’s voice, gently.

3.

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

October 1931

E
veryone at the Hanover Inn recognizes the man adorning our table. We perch on our oval-backed chairs, the three of us, eating steak and scalloped potatoes, and there isn’t a diner nearby who doesn’t crane his neck, elbow his neighbor, whisper, nod in our direction.

Budgie sits up straight as a stick, glowing with pleasure, and consumes her steak in minutely carved pieces. “I wish they would stop staring,” she says. “Do you ever get used to it?”

Graham Pendleton pauses with his knife and fork suspended in the air. He fills his chair, fills the entire room: all square shoulders and slick brown hair catching gold from the lights above us. Up close like this, he is absurdly handsome, every angle in perfect symmetry. “What, this?” he asks, tipping his knife at the table next to us. On cue, the awestruck occupants return to their conversation.

“Everyone.” She smiles. “Everyone.”

He shrugs and sets back to slicing his steak. “Aw, I don’t notice, really. Anyway, it’s only on Saturdays. Once the old boys leave town, I’m just another student. Could you pass the pepper, please, Miss . . . ?” The word drags out. He’s forgotten my name already.

I hand him the dainty cut-glass shaker of pepper. “Dane.”

“Miss Dane.” He smiles. The pepper shaker looks ridiculous in his thick hand. “Thank you.”

“Darling, you remember
Lily
,” says Budgie. “We spent the summer together, didn’t we? At Seaview.”

“Oh, right. I thought you looked familiar. You’ve changed your hair or something, haven’t you?” He puts down the pepper shaker and makes a motion near the side of his head.

“Not really.”

But Graham has already turned back to Budgie. “Anyway, Greenwald’s the real talent. These old-timers are just too stupid to realize it.” He fills his mouth with steak.

Budgie’s face assembles into a smiling mask. “What,
Nick
? But he’s the quarterback. He just
stands
there.”

Graham’s throat works, disposing of the meat. He reaches for his drink, a tall glass of milk, creaming at the top. “Didn’t you see his throw, in the second quarter? When he got hurt?”

“Of course it was exciting. But
you’re
the one running all day. Scoring touchdowns. You do all the
real
work.”

He shakes his head. “I just get all the attention, because I’m the fullback, and because Greenwald’s . . . well, you know.” He drinks his milk, flushing Nick Greenwald’s Jewishness from his mouth. “You’re going to see it more and more, the forward pass. Plays like that, they fill the stadium. You saw how excited everyone was. He’s all skill, Greenwald. He’s got a terrific arm, you saw
that
, and an ice-cold brain. He just looks down the field and takes it all in, knows where everyone is, like a chess player. Never seen him call a play wrong.”

“How is he?” I ask. The question nearly bursts from my lips. “His leg, I mean.”

“Oh, he’s all right. He telephoned from the hospital. Wasn’t as bad as they thought. Single fracture, hairline or something. I guess those solid old bones of his are hard to crack. They’re setting it now.” Graham flicks his watch free from his cuff and glances at it. “He said he’d meet us here when they’re done.”

“What,
here
?” I ask.

“He’ll be hungry.”

“He doesn’t want to go home and rest?”

A laugh. “No, not Nick. He won’t even go to bed when he’s got the flu. He’ll make a point of coming tonight, just to show what a big boy he is.”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Budgie. “And stupid. He’ll turn himself into a cripple.”

“He wanted to hop off the field by himself, the fool. I had to hold him down myself when they put him on the stretcher.”

“Stupid,” Budgie says again.

Her voice is distant, behind the persistent thud of my heartbeat in my ears. My hand is cold on my fork. I go through the pantomime of eating a piece of steak, drinking water, eating a piece of melting scalloped potato. “He’ll be all right, though, won’t he?” I ask, when I’m absolutely sure I’ve composed my voice.

Graham shrugs. “He’ll be fine. Well, he won’t play again, he’ll graduate in June, but it was a clean break, at least. Won’t give him any trouble. Lucky fellow. Now, last year, Gardiner broke his neck tackling someone at the Yale game. Went in headfirst, the idiot. Nearly died. He’ll be in a wheelchair all his life. Oh, look! Nick’s here.” He throws down his napkin and waves.