The Summer We Read Gatsby (36 page)

The first strains of an amped-up version of the old classic “Love Is in the Air” were blasting as the Girls gathered around the two of us, pecking at us like friendly birds.

“Let me see you,” Lucy demanded, stepping back to admire my dress, the one we’d picked together. “You’re
fabulous
,” they decreed. “Isn’t she fabulous?”

“
Et moi?
” Peck wanted to know, never one to miss an opportunity to fish for a compliment or use her French. She was wearing a long turquoise halter dress that matched her eyes, and she’d never looked prettier. The Girls voiced their admiration at length until she exhorted them to get cocktails “before the mad rush begins.” The Girls tended to be obedient, especially when vodka was involved, and they moved toward the bar as the place quickly began to swarm with people.

I took a cocktail and wandered through the lawn, as evening fell, catching snippets of conversation. There seemed to be a reckless glamour to the people gathered under the lanterns among the trees and crowded together on the porch, as though anything could happen, anything at all. Or that may have just been my perspective as I catalogued the scene, committing it to memory. I stood out on the grass, looking up at the ramshackle house Lydia had loved for so many years, and I wondered how the Bosleys would fare there. Would they “get” the house as Peck and I did and fall in love with it? Would they make it their own, renaming it perhaps, and starting their own traditions? Or would the house “get” them, overwhelming them with responsibility and faulty plumbing and the desperate need for an expensive new roof and a dishwasher, at the very least, to update the kitchen?

As I gazed up at the house, I noticed Finn come through the door to the porch. I hadn’t seen him since that morning, when he’d gotten up early after a somewhat somber dinner at Hamilton’s. He’d stayed the night with me at Fool’s House, but neither of us had been able to sleep much, and by six he’d headed off, leaving me to finish packing and get organized for the night’s festivities. He was taller than almost everyone, so he was easy to spot, and my heart flipped over when I saw his head, wet hair gleaming.

What was I thinking? I realized with a jolt that I couldn’t possibly say good-bye to him. How had I not understood that this was bigger than both of us? We would have to work something out, a long-distance relationship, a bicontinental affair, until something more permanent could be decided on. But the idea of a final good-bye when I headed to the airport? That was impossible.

I moved toward the porch with the intent to tell him I’d changed my mind. I thought I’d seen him going toward the bar at the far end of the porch, and I tried to catch another glimpse of him as I moved through what was now a very crowded lawn. There were hundreds of people, it seemed, spilling over the grass, and a whole group of boldly earnest dancers bopped about on the creaking slats of the porch. Hamilton saw me and waved me over to where he and Scotty were watching the dancers. “If you’re looking for Finn, he left.”

My heart immediately sank.

“Don’t look so gloomy,” Hamilton snapped. “Scotty, look at poor Stella; she’s morose. She thinks he left her for good. No, no, my dear. He bought you a gift, he told us, but he forgot it. He’s gone home to fetch it and he’ll be right back.”

The relief that flooded over me—a gift? he bought me a
present
?—must have been comical, because they both burst out laughing. “Look how sweet,” Hamilton said, nudging Scotty. “Now she’s beaming. He bought her a going-away present. I wonder what it is.”

I was now so excited I could hardly stand still, a fact that Hamilton noticed. “You and Scotty should
dance
,” he suggested.

I’d never been someone who danced. But the fragile creature who’d washed up on this shore a month ago was gone, and I was now able to casually contemplate a little of what Peck had been calling “booty back and forth, booty back and forth.” I had Peck to thank for that, I suppose. I now grabbed Scotty by the hand to pull him into the middle of the sweating crowd hopping about vigorously on the old porch.

We danced for a while—the little Scotsman knew how to
move
—as the crowd around us grew louder and more raucous. Eventually there were so many people packed in on the porch between the deejay at one end and the tables and the bar at the other that we couldn’t move laterally, only hop up and down, like in a mosh pit.

“I think I’ve had enough,” I shouted at Scotty when there was no more air to breathe on the porch. Finn had not yet reappeared; I kept checking the driveway every five seconds. But I could see Peck at the far end of the lawn, with just the glow of her cigarette for company as she gazed up at Fool’s House. She was standing in almost exactly the same position that I’d occupied a little earlier, and I thought I knew what was going through her mind. I kissed my dance partner on the cheek and headed down to find my sister.

It was unusual for her to be alone like this at a party, especially her own, and I expected her to be in a serious, reflective mood. But Peck didn’t much care for serious or reflective.

“There must be two hundred people on the porch!” She propped one elbow in the other hand and gestured elegantly with the cigarette toward the porch so I would look and admire the scene. I did. There was a kind of beautiful madness to the swirling frenzy, with all the flickering candles in the darkness. We stood side by side, smoking, watching the kaleidoscope of people and movement and light as the party built to its inevitable crescendo and the moment imprinted itself on my brain with the permanence of a black-and-white photograph.

Suddenly there was a loud cracking sound. It was followed by an ominous sort of groan, and then slowly, almost gracefully, the entire middle of the porch fell in on itself. The dancers disappeared right before our very eyes. The deejay and his mountain of heavy equipment slid from view, and the music scratched to an abrupt halt. At first it was quiet. Anyone who wasn’t on the porch was shocked and stunned silent in disbelief. We couldn’t possibly have witnessed what we just saw.

Then chaos erupted and there were screams and muffled yelling for help and people on top of one another and others emerging from inside the house, caught with one foot on the stable floor in the doorway and one foot now suspended in mid-air. Peck and I ran toward them, racing up what was left of the teetering steps to the sunken porch. We looked down into the gaping hole where the pieces of the porch and a number of our guests had fallen. There were people piled on the ground and jagged pieces of wood jutting dangerously. The deejay was still standing and he gave us a bewildered look from behind his equipment, which seemed to have landed upright as well, as though he could just go right on cranking the music from this new space underneath where the porch was meant to be.

Nobody appeared to be hurt. They started gingerly standing up, turning their wrists and stepping on their ankles to see if they’d damaged any parts, gazing up through the hole where the porch had pulled away from the house and fallen in on itself. And then the noise picked up again as people asked one another if they were okay and called out, “That was crazy!” Someone laughed.

And then there was another shout. “The candles!” At the far end of the gaping hole one of the ragged porch planks suddenly sparked where a candle had dumped its flame onto the old wood. And then another one. And another one. The planks sparked and snapped like kindling, and in what seemed like seconds, the flames were jumping, erupting into a full-blown fire before our eyes.

“Everybody out,” I yelled, as the fire seemed to engulf the porch instantly and then spread to the cedar shingles that covered the entire house. Immediately the people on what was left of the porch poured onto the lawn in a mad rush to escape, and Peck and I helped pull those who were caught in the hole in the middle to safety. The deejay was trying in vain to pull apart his equipment so he could get it out of the way.

“Leave it,” Peck shouted at him as the flames jumped to the second floor windows in a matter of seconds.

“Call 911,” I called to the crowd behind us on the lawn, watching as Peck and I made sure everyone was out of the way. I couldn’t believe how fast the fire moved to take over the house. It was like a tinderbox, igniting instantly. “Was anyone still inside?”

“Trimalchio!” Peck suddenly screamed, dashing down the steps of the porch and around to the back of the house.

I followed her. We had to elbow our way around some of the guests, who were all staring, dumbfounded, at the leaping flames quickly turning Fool’s House into an enormous bonfire. “Where would he be?”

“Check Lydia’s room,” she cried. “I’ll look in mine.”

We swung open the kitchen door and raced into the house. It was already thick with smoke and I quickly grabbed two dishtowels and ran them under the faucet. “Wait,” I called after Peck as she ran up the stairs, “put this over your nose and mouth.”

She didn’t listen to me. “Check the dining room first,” she called down. “Anyone in here?” We both shouted at the top of our lungs. I didn’t have to check the dining room. Trimalchio was at my feet already.

I picked him up and yelled up to Peck, “I got him.” She didn’t answer me and I yelled again. “Peck, come on, I’ve got him. There’s nobody else in here.”

I ran the dog to the kitchen door and swung it open. “Go get help,” I told him. He gave me a worried look. “She’s going to be fine; go on.”

I let the door swing shut and raced back to the stairs. The living room curtains had gone up in flames and the fire was quickly moving into the house. I took the steps two at a time, still clutching the two wet dishtowels. I held them over my nose but I was also trying to yell for Peck. She wasn’t in Lydia’s room or in either of the other two bedrooms, or in the bathroom.

I moved the dishtowel and shouted, “Peck!”

By now the fire was already raging inside the house and I could hear loud cracks as beams snapped. I ran back down the stairs into a pool of flames, beating them off me with the damp towels. The kitchen was already burning and I couldn’t go back out that way. “Peck!” I screamed again, heading through the dining room toward a window that looked clear. I told myself I’d missed her. She must have gone out the front door while I took Trimalchio out the back. I pushed at the window, which probably hadn’t been opened since the seventies. It was stuck fast. I could feel the heat behind me as I pushed as hard as I could, still shouting for Peck. The smoke was thick in my lungs. Just when I thought I was going to have to find another way out, the window gave way slightly. I pushed it open enough to fit through the frame and punched and shimmied my way into the bushes on that side of the house.

As I lay there, almost unconscious from the smoke, I knew. Peck was dead. Hadn’t she predicted this very thing, at the beginning of the summer? She’d said they’d have to carry her out of there in a box.

The pain of grief overtook me and in that moment, just before it all went black, I understood what Lydia had meant when she wrote to us about what she hoped we would find in her house. It was us, Peck and me, the bond of sisterhood between us: that was the thing of utmost value Lydia wanted us to find.

I passed out.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Finn’s face looking worried. When he noticed I was coming around, he smiled. “Hey, kid.”

“Peck,” I tried to say. But all that came out was a croak.

“Shhhh,” he said in a soothing voice. There was no better sound in the world than his voice. “Don’t talk. I can hear the ambulance. You’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

I opened my mouth again to ask about Peck. But nothing came out. I started to cry. “It’s going to be okay,” he kept repeating in that voice of his, deep and raspy and comforting. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Behind us, the house was a bonfire. I could hear sirens and men shouting instructions and I pulled myself up onto my elbows to see what was going on. I needed to know about Peck.

“Don’t try to get up,” Finn said. “Here comes the ambulance.”

I tried again to ask about Peck, but then the medics were there and I had an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. I didn’t feel I even needed to ask. I knew she was gone. I felt it. I just sat crying, holding the oxygen over my mouth with one hand as Finn held the other.

Time seemed to stand still. The house burned on and I sat there watching and sobbing in utter sadness, mesmerized by the leaping flames. I don’t know how long we stayed there like that, but it seemed like hours.

Then there she was. Standing over me in her turquoise dress with a martini glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, looking no different than she had before the porch fell in. I gaped at her. For a second or two, I thought she was a ghost. “Peck,” I was finally able to say when I pulled aside the oxygen mask.

“Literally,” she declared. “You scared me half to
death
.”

“I thought—” I started to say, but I couldn’t finish. The words just wouldn’t come, so I pointed at her to indicate that she was the one I’d thought was missing, presumed dead.

“You thought
I
was dead? Me?” She gestured with her cigarette. “It’s going to take more than a fire for you to get rid of me.”

She stood back to look at me. “I like the charred look,” she said, referring to the black smudges on my face I wouldn’t see until later. “Very
Rescue Me
.” I must have looked confused because she explained, “It’s a TV show. About a hot mess of a fireman. Speaking of hot messes, I need to get back to Miles to tell him you’re okay. Finn, look after my sister for me.”

“Peck,” I managed to call after her as she picked her way through the grass in her high heels, holding out the martini glass so it wouldn’t spill on her. She turned and I said, “I love you, Peck.”

She waved to acknowledge my words, not ones I’d ever spoken to her before. “Love you too, Stella.”