The Summer We Read Gatsby (24 page)

“I’m writing a book,” Heather announced airily to nobody in particular. “
Houseguesting in the Hamptons
.”

Miles had helped himself to two of the canapés on a tray and held them out to us. He introduced us to a few of the others—Marni was apparently the very recent third wife, as he whispered bitchily to us, of an older man who grunted at us—but not to three women clustered off to one side in cocktail dresses and inordinately high heels who looked like they’d wandered in from another party. The woman who’d ridden the helicopter with Miles was not among them.

“They have four kids,” Miles said of the houseguesting couple, through a mouthful of caviar on a slice of potato. He accidentally dribbled some of the caviar onto his shirt and then scraped it up with his finger and popped it into his mouth, leaving a little grease spot. He tossed three more of them into his mouth in quick succession.

Ollie looked up from his BlackBerry. “Four kids, four dogs, four nannies.”

“Four is the new three,” his wife added.

“I thought everyone was having five now,” Peck tossed out, which didn’t seem to please Ollie’s wife at all. Clearly four children was an accomplishment. Having four children trumped couples with three or two and especially oddballs with just an “only.” Four was status. Or it was, until all those damn people started having five.

Marni chimed in with “I have two stepchildren,” but that didn’t seem to count to Heather Bosley, because she turned her back and didn’t respond.

“He’s a major art collector,” Miles informed us about Marni’s husband, Gordon, the grunter who had lifted a weak hand in greeting. One didn’t get the sense that charm was the reason Marni had married him. He appeared seasick, slumped in his seat with one hand on his stomach. Marriage obviously agreed with him.

“We’re the newlyweds,” Marni explained while her new husband, jowly with a beefy belly, rubbed his concave chest. He looked surprisingly morose for someone who’d just tied the knot and was, theoretically, still on his honeymoon.

“You should see his Pollocks,” Miles added.

“And books,” the older man said, shrugging his shoulders. “First editions.”

“I keep trying to tell him he should collect jewelry!” Marni tossed out, laughing at herself. She was the only one. “But he doesn’t listen to me. Is that my fate as a married woman? Everyone keeps telling me husbands don’t listen to their wives.”

Her husband ignored her. He seemed to be regretting the rash decision that had led him to leave his second wife—of fourteen years, I would later learn from Peck—for this much younger woman.

“Ask him about
your
painting,” Miles prompted Peck. “He knows a lot about Jackson Pollock. He’s the one who told me to buy mine.”

“Weren’t you looking to buy another one?” Gordon Little asked Miles. He spoke in a monotone. “I heard you’ve been sniffing around.”

Miles held up a finger to shush him. “Don’t say that in front of these two. They thought I stole one from them.”

Gordon stared at him as though he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to believe Miles wasn’t the thief. “We weren’t going to tell anyone about that,” Peck told him in a dramatic stage whisper that made Gordon perk up with interest.

“About what?” he asked Peck.

She sighed, as though her hand were being forced, and then went on to explain about the house we’d inherited and the now-missing painting inscribed “For L.M. From J.P.” on the back, leaving out the part where she had suspected Miles of taking it the night of the party.

“It’s unauthenticated?” Gordon asked, sounding slightly more interested. “Not signed, obviously?”

“Except for his initials on the back,” Peck was quick to add.

He pursed his lips together and looked at Miles. “You think it’s an early one? Like yours?”

“I never saw it,” Miles said, his interest picking up. “But it could be, couldn’t it?

“Do you have that picture with you?” Peck looked at me but I hadn’t brought the photo of Lydia and the painting with me. “The only image we have shows the painting in the background. It was there above the mantel for as long as I can remember.”

“You think your aunt
knew
Jackson Pollock?” Gordon asked us.

I shook my head. “That part doesn’t make sense. She would have been a child when he died.”

He went on to ask a lot of questions about Lydia and her art collection in his disgruntled fashion while the others gossiped and Ollie leaned over to engage me in our own conversation. He asked the question that always drove all the Europeans into fits. “What do you do?” That-Awful-Jean-Paul in particular always used to complain about it, perhaps because he’d never had a suitable answer.

I told him I was writing a novel—there was no need to mention that I’d been starting this book since I finished college and it currently existed only in the notes I’d been jotting down that summer—and he went on to reveal, eagerly and apropos of nothing, that he’d gone to Harvard.

The three women off to the side never sat with us or greeted us as the sun set. They stood together as the rest of us chatted, and then, as if on cue, they all filed up and kissed Miles on each cheek, one after the other, saying good-bye. “Behave,” he yelled after them as they clomped down the steps in their very high statement shoes.

Peck was still talking about Jackson Pollock and our missing painting with Gordon Little. “I’ll check in with some dealers too,” he offered as his wife listened carefully, eyes darting between Peck and her husband, who seemed to be directing his words at Peck’s
twins
. “If there’s a possible Jackson Pollock out there, I’m sure someone will know about it.”

Ollie said, for my ears only, “I studied art history at Harvard.”

Marni did not seem at all pleased that her husband was expressing so much interest in our painting, but it was time to eat and Miles and the unpleasant blond butler ushered us down the two flights of stairs. Dinner was served by a whole slew of black-clad waiters—all men, all very young and all very, very good-looking, as though a casting agent had been involved. “Eye candy,” Marni declared them as we made our way onto the wide patio at the back of the house. “Like you, honey,” she said to her portly husband. You’re
my
eye candy.” He seemed to believe that she found him pleasing to the eye as he nodded in agreement.

We were warmed by four standing heaters, the kind I’d only ever seen at outdoor restaurants, and we were individually offered cashmere blankets in assorted colors that hung over the back of our chairs to fight the slight summer chill.

Peck, whether because she was simply doing what came naturally to her, or because she sensed she was
auditioning
, took on the role of the cohost, helping Miles direct his guests to their seats, making sure that the wine was served, and suggesting the good-looking men offer the choice of both flat and sparkling water. She encouraged Miles to dim the two enormous lanterns filled with lightbulbs that hung off the back of the house and cast the terrace in too-bright near-daylight and asked the blond butler to bring out more candles.

Miles looked enthralled by her involvement. “I told you, lots and lots of candles,” he called out after the man hurrying into the house.

We were all sitting by then, and we pulled the blankets around our shoulders and started the first course, smoked salmon with caviar and sour cream on potato pancake as big as Frisbees.

Heather, mother of four, an identity she continually tossed into the conversation, much the way her husband seemed fond of adding a dash of
Harvard
, was suddenly chatty. She used the word
heinous
often, and incorrectly, about a dress on someone named Serena, about the breath on a bond salesman she’d been forced to talk to, and about the night of sleep she’d gotten without the benefit of the white noise machine she relied on. She was an expert on everything, it seemed. Most especially she was a parenting know-it-all. As none of the rest of us except Gordon and his grown-up kids had any children, it seemed an odd conversational tack. And yet on she went, offering her opinion about bedtimes, mealtimes, and naptimes and getting into the best nursery schools. “It was brutal this year, especially for boys,” she informed us, as though we’d been requesting the inside scoop. In particular she was fanatical, she said, about
reading
. “You have to read to them from the instant they come out of the womb. And then you have to continue to do it every night.”

On this, I agreed. But nobody else could get in a word. Miles ignored her, carrying on his own conversation with Gordon, while the rest of us learned about something called Ferberizing, which seemed to involve letting a baby cry him- or herself to sleep or something equally depressing.

Gordon was sitting next to me, glumly picking at a hard roll. “So, what kind of books do you collect?” I asked him when Miles turned his attention back to Peck, and Marni was telling the others they were shopping for a new house. Gordon had seemed to droop visibly at the idea of spending money—“I mean, has anyone
looked
at the Dow lately?” I heard someone saying—but as I expected, the question about the books invigorated him noticeably. He tilted his head, as though he were about to tell me something in confidence. “Mostly I buy first editions of novels I’ve enjoyed reading.” He spoke softly so I had to lean in to hear him. “I have a first edition of
To Kill a Mockingbird
: that’s probably my most valuable piece. I have an inscribed
Catch-22
. A whole series of Agatha Christies. I like detective novels—those are fun to own.”

His whole demeanor shifted when he talked about his books. I got the sense he enjoyed this version of himself, the sort of quirky intellectual who might troll antiquarian book fairs looking for treasures for his bookshelf, rather than the version Marni seemed interested in promoting, the rich man with his toys.

“Is there one book you wish you could own?” I asked him.

He nodded, accustomed to the question. “A first-edition
Great Gatsby
. Signed. With a dust jacket. That’s the holy grail of book collecting, in my mind.”

I thought of the hardcover I’d found at Fool’s House. It wasn’t signed but it had a dust jacket, and I’d wondered about it, having heard somewhere that such details were important to collectors of books. “Is that hard to find?”

“Almost impossible,” he said with a grin that indicated he knew the market for such things very well. “It would cost in the neighborhood of a hundred grand or more. That’s if you can get one. They just don’t come up.” He went on to tell me about the mistakes that would indicate a first-edition
Gatsby
to a rare books dealer or collector. “The mistakes get corrected in later editions. That’s why they’re important. And a dust jacket, that’s extremely rare. The first-edition game is all about the dust jackets.” He was getting himself all worked up, saliva gathering in the corners of his mouth. I wondered if he’d ever discussed
The Great Gatsby
with his new wife. “In 1925, when the book was published, dust jackets were simply wrapping paper. They were tossed in the garbage when the person received the book. There was a mistake on the original dust jacket, a lowercase
j
where it should have been uppercase. That’s one of the things that would mark something as a first edition.” I made a mental note to check Lydia’s copy of
Gatsby
I’d been reading.

The smoked salmon was followed by thick grilled steaks with vegetables and risotto with truffle oil and French fries. Even the competitively thin Marni, who apparently never ate—“I never eat!” she exclaimed more than once—popped a few fries in her mouth.

Peck ate as she always did, with gusto, and I followed her lead. That-Awful-Jean-Paul had turned out to be fussy about food, a bait and switch that took me entirely by surprise after a whirlwind courtship during which he professed to be a foodie and took me to some terrific restaurants. Then, after we were married, he allowed me to see the real him, a neurotic eater with incessant stomach ailments—ulcers, intestinal diseases, and fictional-sounding diagnoses that grew increasingly closer to cancer the more he repeated them—who hated to spend money on restaurant food.

Marni was on my other side, and when Gordon turned back to Miles I asked his new wife if they lived nearby. That seemed to be her cue to tell me all about her newly acquired stuff—the house “down the road” they were going to sell for a better house with water views, a place on the Intercoastal in Palm Beach, an apartment overlooking Central Park, the plane, a boat, even the new watch her husband had just bought her that afternoon, which she extended a skinny wrist to display.

I heard Finn Killian’s name from the other side of me, in a conversation between Miles and Ollie, and I strained to hear what they were saying about him. From what I could glean, Miles was advising Ollie, the Harvarditis victim, on how to deal with architects. “No architects,” Ollie kept repeating. “No work. If we buy anything, it will be ready to move into and cheap.”

“Don’t you say that word,” his wife teased. “Cheap is not in my vocabulary.”

“Oh God,” Marni squealed. She seemed to be getting drunk, although I hadn’t seen anything pass her lips other than the few French fries and a sip or two of water. “Me too. Don’t utter that word in my presence!”

“Just buy her a house,” Miles said to Heather’s husband. “Buy her anything she wants. It’s cheaper than divorce. Take your lessons from Gordon.”

Heather flashed him an uncertain smile and Marni made a face. It was hard to tell if Miles was kidding.

“I don’t want anything fancy,” Heather continued defensively. “A country house,” she clarified. As in “We desperately
need
a country house.” They wanted something with
charm
, she went on to explain, as if charm were a totally unique and esoteric thing to want, as if they were the only people ever to use that word, as if nobody out here knew what she knew about the subject. They wanted a place that would reflect who they were as a family. A farmhouse or something like that, she said. It didn’t have to be big; Heather didn’t want to lose her kids, as she apparently kept doing in Miles Noble’s palace. And no pool; she wanted to be able to sleep and not worry that one of them was going to drown. But it had to have
charm.
“I’m a deeply creative person,” she said earnestly. “I have to be inspired by my environment.”