The Summer We Read Gatsby (22 page)

“Well, how about tomorrow night then?” he asked. “A casual barbecue here, a few friends. Some of them I think you know.”

“Who?” she asked sharply. “Whom do I know?”

He smiled. “Marni and Gordon Little?”

“Marni Flock?” Peck looked incredulous. “I knew her back in the day. We used to see each other on auditions. She’s
married
?”

He looked pleased that he could offer enticement in the form of a mutual friend to get her to say yes. “She said she was excited to see you.”

Peck made a bitchy face. “I’ll bet she was, if she’s got a ring on her bony finger. She was always so competitive. Anyway, we’ve got a few things tomorrow night.” She looked over at me. “But maybe we can stop by.”

“Come early,” he said, smiling lazily at her. When he looked at her that way, I could see it, whatever it was that had grabbed hold of her so many years ago. “Before your other stuff,” he added as an afterthought, as though it didn’t matter whether the “things” she had were real or not, as though whatever they were, they weren’t nearly as sexy as what he was offering. “We’re going to catch the sunset.”

He walked us out to Lydia’s ancient station wagon. Just as Peck was about to get into the car, he pulled her toward him, put both hands on her face, and kissed her on the lips. I slid into the passenger seat to give them a little privacy.

The combination of the kiss and the notion that the missing painting might be the thing of utmost value Lydia mentioned in her will—a Jackson Pollock—launched Peck into a state of such overt excitement she could hardly drive. The transformation from her earlier haughtiness to this subsequent giddiness was almost alarming, and I offered to take the wheel. She couldn’t stop talking, interrupting herself with giggles as we sailed along the back roads, past the farm stands with their homemade pies and the neatly groomed horse farms.

“Biggsy must not have known at first,” I said, getting caught up in the excitement. “Or he probably would have taken it before we got here. It was only when we mentioned the thing of utmost value that he would have started trying to figure out what it was.”

“And that was right before the party,” Peck reminded me, almost bouncing in her seat.

“Once he figured it out, he must have planned to take it, knowing there’d be a hundred potential suspects in the house that night,” I said, thinking aloud. When we were standing in front of the Pollock at Miles’s house I hadn’t been immediately inclined to go along with Peck’s theory. It seemed so far-fetched. But she was one of the most persuasive people I’d ever met, and by the time we were almost home I was almost convinced we must have inherited a piece of American art history.

“And then I, idiotically, helped him out by assuming it was Miles,” Peck added, shaking her head. “All he had to do was suggest that I was right and off I went. He must have been
thrilled
.” She pulled into our street. “It’s not the money I’m thinking of,” she added in that grand manner people have of revealing exactly what they’re thinking by stating what it is that they are
not
thinking. “It’s the idea that this could be an undocumented Jackson Pollock. Think of what that would mean.”

When we pulled into our driveway, Biggsy’s motorcycle was not in its usual spot next to the garage. “Thank God,” Peck exclaimed. “I have no idea what to say to him.”

“Nothing for now,” I said. “Let’s find out more before we do or say anything. Let him think we’re still enamored of him.”

She’d stopped the car in front of the house and now she looked over at me. “You’re more sly than you let on.”

I grinned at her. “I suppose I am.”

She gestured with her chin through the windshield at the crooked little house, bathed in the purple-pinkish glow of the setting sun. In that light, the house was at its most fetching: the shabby could be seen as chic, and the peeling paint and the splintered wood were less evident. The hydrangeas were in full midsummer bloom, plump in their lavender and blue, and on the second floor one of the two small windows had its shade pulled, so it looked like the house was winking at us.

“I love this house so fucking much,” Peck said. It sounded like an accusation. “This is,
literally
, my favorite place on this earth. They’ll have to carry me out of here in a wooden box. Like they did Lydia.”

“Lydia died in Paris,” I reminded her as I got out of the car and swung the door shut behind me, leaving her there in the driver’s seat, gazing up at the house. In the morning Laurie Poplin was bringing her clients to look at the house, and I understood what Peck was trying to express. But selling Fool’s House was a decision about which we did not seem to have a choice. I didn’t want to sell it either. I was loving the feeling I had there of being connected to my aunt and, indirectly, to my father and the rest of the family Peck and I had never known. I loved the feeling of legacy and tradition, and I loved the light in the garden and the ocean air and reading on the porch. But we could not afford to keep the house. I hated being thrust in the role of the practical one.

As I walked slowly toward the house, lost in thought, I tripped and fell backward, my feet pulled completely out from under me. I landed awkwardly, smacking my wrist to the gravel, and then the back of my head. The wind was knocked out of me and I lay there as pain shot up my arm. I noticed a few swift-moving clouds passing as I looked up, stunned.

Then Biggsy was above me. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how that happened. I just—” I caught the slightest note of insincerity in his voice but I couldn’t breathe, let alone formulate a response. “Are you okay?” he was saying, doing a very good imitation of looking worried, when I got some air into my lungs and could sit up slightly.

Peck ran from the car doing her best Brando. “STELLAAAH!”

“Can you hear me?” Biggsy kept saying, but I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t talk, although I was able to take another shallow breath. I smelled his patchouli scent.

“What did you do to her?” Peck roared at him, fierce as a mother lion. It made me smile, and they both noticed. “Oh, look, she’s fine,” she said, kneeling down next to me. “You’re
fine
, right, Stella?”

“You’re okay?” Biggsy said, his voice dripping with concern. He had on long board shorts with a buttoned-up dress shirt and the top hat he liked to wear, but from my point of view, on the ground in pain, he’d lost the quirkiness that had made him likeable and easy to envision inviting into one’s home. Now I was certain he’d stolen the painting. And I suspected he’d tripped me on purpose.

“I’m really sorry,” he said, as though I’d spoken my thoughts. “It was this cable.” He held up the cord that had pulled my feet out from under me as I walked. “I’m shooting some footage for a piece. I was plugged into the garage and I pulled the camera out into the lawn.”

His eyes darted nervously in my direction, his amiable façade starting to crack, as though something rotten inside were going to begin oozing out.

“I don’t believe you,” I said to him. “I don’t think we can believe anything you say.”

He looked shocked, and there was an undertone of anger in his voice when he spoke. “What are you talking about? I would never hurt you guys. You’re like my family.”

I took the advice I’d given Peck earlier not to say anything further just then, and I assured them both I was fine as they helped me up onto the porch.

10

 

 

 

 

M
y second Saturday at Fool’s House brought an East End morning so crisp it could wipe your brain clean. My wrist was still sore and there was a bump on the back of my head, but Peck was right about ocean air curing what ails. Only a few tiny puffs of cloud danced across the blue sky as I took Trimalchio past the tall privet hedges and down to the most gorgeously wide-open stretch of pale sand that was usually unpopulated in the earlier hours of the day. We went for a long walk and by the end of it I felt completely fine. When we returned to Fool’s House, Peck was sitting on the front steps with three of the Girls, Lucy, Betts, and the one whose name was not Sandra but Sasha. They were waiting for me.

“It’s an intervention,” Peck called out, waving as we came up the driveway. “The Fashioninas are here.” The three of them had the manners to look slightly sheepish as my sister explained that they were there to help with the
situation.
The situation, apparently, was me.

“It’s a
fashion
intervention,” Lucy offered with an apologetic shrug, as though the circumstances needed clarification. Lucy is one of those women who are always wearing
exactly
what you wished you were wearing, if only you owned it. Today it was a perfect little dress, just simple white cotton, but she’d paired it with a chunky beaded necklace and great shoes, and she looked fantastic. “Not an intervention, just . . . we want to help. Helpful suggestions. Don’t call it an intervention, Peck. It sounds so drastic.”

“It
is
drastic,” Peck said with a laugh.

“We’re here to take you shopping,” Betts added. She was more casually dressed, in long white shorts and a tank top but with cool sandals and a delicate gold chain around her neck. Her clothes flattered her muscled body and she also looked exactly how you might hope to look on a beautiful summer day. Sasha too, in fitted white jeans and a sleeveless navy top that highlighted slim arms, was chic and simply right. “And to lunch,” she added softly. “It’s just meant to be fun.”

I was suddenly conscious of what I’d thrown on for the walk—now-sweaty gym shorts and the old T-shirt that said MAJORCA across the front in faded letters. I’d never been all that interested in clothes, though I had moments like every woman when I hated everything in my closet. But I’d been so busy at work—we were a lean staff of expats, and we put in long hours at the magazine—and then taking a class in the evening and trying to make time to write on my own that I never really gave it much thought.

“It’s time, Stella. You’re a late bloomer, we know that, but you’ve done it. You’ve arrived. And . . .” Peck paused for dramatic effect, gesturing at her friends. “You need a new wardrobe.” She herself looked like a fifties housewife gone wild in a vintage floral-print dress she’d paired with boots, a denim vest, and dark glasses covering her eyes. Somehow it worked. She had that gift. “And it’s totally on me,” she added. “So don’t freak out. You already wore the only thing I own that would fit you and you can’t go to Miles Noble’s barbecue in that one old hippie dress you brought with you.”

“I wasn’t planning on going,” I said. “I don’t want to be the third wheel again.”

She glared at me. “You’re
going.
I need you to go with me. But not looking like that.”

“Why don’t we take a peek at your closet,” Lucy suggested, in the gentle tone of a legal mediator. She spoke like Peck, in the perfectly enunciated syllables of well-traveled American girls who spent semesters abroad. “That’s usually a good place to start.”

“I’m living out of a suitcase,” I protested. “It’s okay. Really. I appreciate the thought. But there’s no need—we’re showing the house today. And I don’t—”

“Come on,” Betts interjected in a soothing voice. “It’ll be fun. We can go to the Sip ’n Soda for a cheeseburger first.”

Peck stood and dusted off the back of her dress. “I won’t take no for an answer,” she told me. “Let’s buy at least one dress for you to wear tonight. Something very chic and beachy, nothing too-too.”

We all traipsed upstairs to the bedroom where the clothes I’d brought with me were hanging forlornly in the closet. “See,” Peck exclaimed, quickly rifling through the hangers. “Nothing.”

Lucy nodded her approval. “I have the perfect thing in mind,” she said. “Pale green chiffon, but not mother-of-the-bride. Just pretty and casual. It will go great with your eyes.”

They all murmured in assent. “Pale green is perfect for you,” Sasha said to me in an encouraging voice, as though pale green were something one needed to be smooth-talked into accepting.

“And shoes,” Peck added. “Shoes are key.”

It was decided that the Girls would go ahead to town and Peck and I would meet them once I’d had a chance to shower, leaving the house empty for Laurie to show. But I was still drying off when Peck came bounding back into my room without knocking. “There’s a bit of a
situation
,” she announced.

I assumed she was talking again about the old pair of brown wedge sandals I always wore with my Levi’s. Or maybe it was the Levi’s, faded over years of washing and sagging at the knees, but so comfortable. But she was referring to something going on outside and told me to get dressed quickly.

It was a
situation
all right. In our front yard was a presumably straight American man in his late fifties, with the requisite paunch and gray hair brushed conservatively over a balding spot, wearing a coral cashmere sweater and trousers the bright orange-pink color of a flamingo. His wife wore cashmere too. Hers was camel and it matched, exactly, her camel trousers. She had a blonde helmet, held firmly in place with at least a can of environmentally irresponsible hairspray and gold “daytime” earrings.

The cashmere couple was with Laurie Poplin on the muddy stretch of lawn that separated the tennis court from the driveway, and they all appeared to be yelling at Biggsy. The Fool-in-Residence had a rusty ball machine out on the far end of the court and it was now firing tennis balls at a mad rate in every direction, including at the visitors on the lawn. He was attempting to stop the machine by kicking it. His strategy was not working. But that didn’t keep him from continuing to pretend, gently pushing at the wayward appliance with his feet, encased in flimsy canvas sneakers. He had on a tennis sweater with navy and maroon stripes at the V-neck and the sort of white trousers Bill Tilden would have sported at Wimbledon. He looked to be trying to contain his laughter.

There were round patches of dirt on the knees of Mrs. Cashmere’s neatly pressed camel trousers and she did not look pleased. In fact, she looked like she wanted to smack someone.