Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) (4 page)

Susan refused. “Spend the day with my old science teacher? Ee-uw. 'Sides, I'd worry about calling him Farty Marty to his face.”

Ellen gasped. “You didn't call him that, did you?”

“Of course. Everyone did.”

Ellen called to invite Barry before I could tell her not to. I didn't want him to see me wretched, or retching.

He agreed instantly, of course. “Perfect day for a sail.”

A sailboat was ten times worse! They always rocked or got becalmed or heeled over or whatever you call the step before capsizing. “I need to work.”

“I thought you said we were going to the beach today.” Ellen started packing a bag with sunscreen, bottled water, and binoculars. “You weren't going to get a lot done anyway. The only difference is we'll be on the water instead of in it.”

I prayed we stayed that way.

Martin had a converted lobster boat, not a sail in sight but only a single sputtering engine. The boat's name, hand-painted on the back, was the
She Crab
. I wondered if that was the original name, or if Martin was a misogynist. The tub smelled like a dead fish anyway.

It was low and narrow, with a shallow draft, according to Martin's lecture about its history.
Her
history, he corrected me. The craft was a she. That's what he thought. No female would tolerate a boat without a bathroom, only a bucket. A
head
, he said. There was a tiny three-sided protected cabin for the driver.
The captain
, Martin preferred. And benches installed along the low sides.
Gunwales
. There was a tiny deck up front.
Fore
. Where Martin thought I should sit to be lookout.
Jackass.

The
She Crab
contained one other furnishing: a stained and scarred wooden table bolted to the deck. An old table, like my father warned me about. I eyed it warily.

Barry was so damn cheerful about leaving the dock I wanted to throw something at him, but I wasn't about to touch the bucket. Okay, so he wasn't a sensitive, but couldn't he see my hands shaking, my knees knocking? I was wearing shorts, for Pete's sake.

I relaxed some when we got underway with no problem. Barry went forward for a better view, so I took out my sketch pad to capture him looking heroic in a black T-shirt and surfer baggies with the sea and the sky as background. If I concentrated on him enough, I wouldn't notice the distance from shore, or the doom-laden table.

About twenty minutes later, Marty announced we had to collect water and seaweed samples and whatever else we found in the shallows, for his students' experiments. He turned the engine off, having more confidence than I did that it would start again. We were close enough to shore that I figured I could swim.

The boat drifted while he leaned over the side with a long net, directing a suddenly giggly Ellen to lean next to him with a pail.

Barry came back and started asking Martin about the shore and the village and the events of the summer.

“Can you point out where the drugs were stored? How many people came to watch? Where did that yacht blow up, and how did they rescue the kid?”

The
She Crab
was drifting sideways, rolling with the tide, roiling my stomach. Memories of those awful events weren't helping. Nor were Martin's answers. He wasn't there, wasn't a sensitive, wasn't aware of the otherworldly actions. What he was doing was feeding Barry's curiosity.

“Isn't it time for lunch?” I chirped, although food was the last thing I wanted. They ate the sandwiches Martin had packed. I ate some crackers. Then they went back to filling bottles and plastic bags for the science lab while I sketched some more.

“Hey, look at that,” Martin said, calling Ellen and Barry to where he leaned over the rail.

Three passengers on one side? Were they crazy or just plain stupid? I held onto that old table as if my life depended on it. Maybe it did. They caught an eel.

If there is anything in the world worse than a writhing snake with slime, it's knowing what Barry wanted to do with it.

“Why don't we skin it, then slice it up for sushi?” While it was alive.

I lost my lunch—and my hero. Barry Jensen looked a lot better on paper than he did in person.

Being sick excused me from cleaning the boat and going out for beers and burgers after. What I did instead was go home, get the dogs, and head for a secluded, residents-only beach. The rocky shoreline kept it pretty empty, the way I liked it. We walked some, the big dogs played in the warm shallow water for a while, and Little Red barked at the seagulls. Then I spread an old blanket, set up an umbrella so the dogs didn't get hot, and contemplated the waves and life.

That's what writers did: consider plots, characters, and the human condition.

That's what fearful introverted idiots did: retreat and worry. All my efforts led to one conclusion. Maybe I could never be as comfortable with any man as I was with my dogs.

I still had to get through all day Sunday and the fireworks after dark.

Barry moved in with his new best friend Martin, having found Aunt Jasmine and Uncle Roger not as welcoming as he wished, and not as forthcoming with information for his story. Martin had no problem telling everything he knew, which, as seemed usual, wasn't as much as he thought he knew. Ellen thought I was being overcritical and old-maidish. I thought she was too eager.

Either way, Barry learned more about Paumanok Harbor and me than was healthy. He tried to be attentive and caring, bringing coffee and buns for breakfast, telling me how amazing everyone thought I was, what joy he heard the town took in having a successful writer, a brave heroine as one of their own, how lucky he was to know me. What a great story he'd get out of this visit.

My eyes saw his wide smile. My head saw that wriggling eel on the old table. I told him I changed my mind. I didn't want that kind of publicity. Reviews of my books were one thing, excursions into my private life—and Paumanok Harbor's—were another. He wouldn't listen. Modesty, he told me, couldn't help anyone climb the ladder of fame. So I gave up a little privacy. Every celebrity did.

I replied that I had to help my grandmother at the farm.

No matter what anyone told him about me or Paumanok Harbor, they had to mention my grandmother and the genital warts. No one messed with Eve Garland.

 

Explaining the fireworks was safe. Ragging on East Hampton Village was always fun for those of us who belonged to East Hampton Township but couldn't use the village beaches, although they could use ours. We also had to pay sky-high school taxes to the village for our high schoolers, without any say in how our kids were educated. And their tourists were snobs, their main street stores were snooty. So we were glad when their Fourth of July celebration got screwed up.

In what might be its most ordinary ritual, Paumanok Harbor always held its festivities on the Fourth, whatever day of the week it happened to be. We had a concert on the village green, then fireworks over the bay beaches. The weather always cooperated. With our resident weather dowsers, it had no choice.

As for our other near neighbors? Southampton had a big parade on the Fourth. Sag Harbor's fire department ran a carnival and a light show for three nights on the nearest weekend. Montauk, as ornery as a wild Western steer, to use my Texan friend Ty Farraday's expression, had to postpone their fireworks two years in a row due to rain, wind, or fog. So they moved July Fourth to Columbus Day weekend when the weather was still more uncertain and a lot colder, but the fireworks companies charged less. And their Chamber of Commerce, we all figured, decided the last town on the South Fork had enough tourists in early July, but not enough in mid-October. The Montauk Library did hold a huge book fair in the center of town on the Saturday of the long Independence weekend, which clogged up the roads back to Amagansett.

But East Hampton, that beautiful elm-shaded village with its swan pond and windmills and proud colonial history, could not hold a traditional holiday celebration until Labor Day. A certain shore bird nested on the only beach deemed suitable, big enough for the masses of viewers, far enough away from the mansions. Any crowds at Main Beach could step on the hatchling piping plovers; the noise could frighten the parents into abandoning the chicks. And the endangered species regulations forbade endangering the small gray sandpipers until they were hatched, fledged, and on their way.

It wasn't the Boston Pops or a Macy's Manhattan extravaganza, but East Hampton usually put on a nice show for the end of summer if you liked firecrackers, smoky beach fires, burned marshmallows, and parking miles away.

On our way there, stuck in traffic, Barry wanted to chat about this summer's horse show at the school's playing field. Paumanok Harbor had hosted Ty Farraday, his Lipizzaner mare, and some other entertainers in a huge fund-raiser to purchase an abandoned ranch.

“Martin said it was spectacular, but he couldn't remember how it ended.”

The equestrian show had ended with the mayor telling the audience of thousands to forget they'd seen a prancing line of riderless, iridescent white horses rise up in majestic synchronicity, then disappear into the night sky. It was awesome. And impossible.

Mayor Applebaum often forgot to attend the board meetings and his lunch and his trousers, but when he ordered ordinary, un-para people to forget, a haze settled over their memories. The mayor's real job was keeping Paumanok Harbor out of the news and off the Close Encounter radar.

“The last act was classic dressage from the Spanish Riding School ending in Airs above the Ground,” I told Barry and Ellen.

Martin nodded. He remembered that much. “It was amazing. But what about after?”

“Afterward, the mayor asked everyone to leave quickly but in an orderly fashion because an electric storm threatened.”

Martin said he didn't remember Mayor Applebaum's speech or the storm either.

“I don't think it ever materialized, but the police didn't want to take a chance, not with such a big crowd and so many cars on the narrow roads.”

Barry seemed to accept the explanation. Then he asked, “What about you and the rodeo rider?”

I gave Martin a dirty look for gossiping about me. Then I gave Barry a dirty look for prying. “We're friends, and it's none of your—”

“Oh, look.” Ellen tapped me on the shoulder. “There's a parking space.”

CHAPTER 4

M
Y COUSIN HAD TO WORK at the restaurant.

My grandmother said she'd seen enough fireworks to last through the winter.

I'd rather have more company, but we were on our own. I drove Mom's Outback because it could hold the most.

Ellen and I brought a blanket, two low beach chairs, sweaters, and a bag of Oreos.

Barry brought a bottle of wine and four plastic glasses.

Martin brought a large cooler, a shovel, one of those little shrink-wrapped bundles of firewood and kindling, a plastic garbage bag and a metal bucket for water to douse the fire and then carry home the hot embers. No absentminded professor, Mr. Armbruster. No muscle man either. By the time we got all his stuff from the car to the beach, he was breathing so hard Ellen made him sit in her chair while she fussed about unpacking the heavy cooler. Barry spread the blanket and made a big show of opening the wine bottle.

So it had a cork. Big deal. I didn't drink wine; it gave me a headache whether it cost five dollars or fifty. I started digging the hole for the fire, figuring one of the men would relieve me shortly.

“Deeper,” Martin ordered.

Barry was going from group to group nearest us in the sand. He needed to borrow a corkscrew because the cheap one from the liquor store broke.

I kept digging.

Ellen cooed over the food she unpacked, enough for all the families Barry was chatting up. You'd think we'd skipped dinner a couple of hours ago the way she was exclaiming over hot dogs and potato salad and cheese and crackers and—

If there was sushi in that ice chest, I was going home.

Martin recovered his wind in time to stand over me and direct the placing of each freaking split log. He used a battery-operated lighter to catch the newspapers he wadded up. No super firepower for him, either.

My chair, naturally, was downwind of our blaze so I couldn't see anything past the tears in my eyes. If I moved across the pit I'd dug, my back would be to the fireworks, which was what I came to see. Not a cloud of smoke or a shrimp on a skewer.

I moved to sit sideways on the blanket. Barry took my chair.

Someone had a boom box going loud with patriotic tunes, so it almost felt like July Fourth, right down to the whiny “When is it going to start?” from a little boy on a nearby blanket.