A Hundred Summers (14 page)

Graham plopped down between us on the blanket, keeping clear of Mrs. Hubert’s sleeping length. “I don’t know. She sounds like my kind of girl.”

“I like this fellow, Lily,” said Aunt Julie. “Ask him if he wants a cigarette.”

“Would you like a cigarette, Graham?”

He laughed. “Thanks, I’ve got my own. You don’t mind?”

“Go ahead.” I glanced over my shoulder, where Kiki directed Nick in the construction of a yawning moat around her castle. Budgie was reading a novel from behind a pair of large, round tinted glasses, apparently unaware of the gimlet eyes of the Seaview Association trained upon her. I turned back to the ocean and Graham Pendleton. “In fact, I think I’ll join you.”

He pulled out his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and handed me one and lit it for me, right between my lips, which I’d colored before we left with a brand-new tube of Dorothy Gray Daredevil. “Thanks,” I said, blowing out the smoke in a long and irregular curl.

“You’re welcome. I saw your mother in the clubhouse, playing bridge. I don’t think she recognized me.”

“Lily’s mother doesn’t recognize anybody when she’s playing bridge,” said Aunt Julie.

“Well, she told me where to find you, anyway. I can’t believe the old place still looks the same. Look, there. The exact same rocks on which I brought that old sailboat to a bad end.” He pointed out past the jetty to the rock outcropping that protected the Seaview sunbathers from the gazes of the vacationers on the public beach, farther up. “I was trying to impress my passenger and ended up weathering too close.”

“I remember. Budgie wasn’t so impressed.”

Graham laughed. “No, she wasn’t.”

“But I see there are no hard feelings.” I nod over my shoulder. “She’s even asked you back.”

“Oh, Budgie? No, I’m not staying with her. I’m with my cousins again. You know the Palmers, don’t you? Yes, of course you do. They heard I was laid up for a few months with this lousy old shoulder of mine and offered to put me up for a bit.” He reached back and rubbed his right shoulder.

“Oh, the Palmers! Of course. I simply assumed, because . . .”

Graham laughed again. “Well, it would be a little awkward, wouldn’t it? But I phoned up Nick and Budgie and warned them I’d be down. Be good to see what they’re up to these days, really. Both of them.” He stared out at the oily heave of the ocean. “That one set me back on my heels a bit, I’ll tell you. Nick and Budgie. Never would have put them together.”

“The heart has its reasons,” said Aunt Julie.

“They certainly seem very happy together,” I said. “But what’s all this about baseball? I’m sure I heard something, not that long ago. . . .”

“I’m relief pitching for the Yankees these days,” said Graham, brushing away a speck of sand from his flannels.

“The Yankees! That’s very good, isn’t it?”

“Very good,” said Aunt Julie. “How do you like it?”

“It’s all right,” said Graham. “My father’s come around, anyway. He belongs to the age of the gentleman sportsman, can’t quite wrap his mind around the idea of playing baseball for filthy lucre.” He knocked the ash from his cigarette. “But I told him I was a damned sight happier throwing baseballs all day than sitting around in an office, counting up columns in a ledger.”

“I suppose it helps that you’re so good at it,” said Aunt Julie.

“Is he really?” I looked at Graham. He’d always been a natural athlete, of course, but I’d never really followed sports at all, certainly not after college. I had no idea who was who, other than Babe Ruth, and that bad-mannered fellow Aunt Julie used to sneak around with, what was his name, somebody Cobb, or Cobb somebody.

“Well,” said Graham modestly.

“He’s the best relief pitcher in baseball,” said Aunt Julie. “A living legend. I understand you even have your own brand of cigarettes, don’t you, Mr. Pendleton?”

“Please, it’s Graham. Anyway, they’re lousy cigarettes. I don’t recommend you try them.”

“How exciting!” I said. “Tell me more. What’s a relief pitcher?”

“It means I come in to pitch after the starter’s done for the day.” He smiled at me indulgently.

“The starter?”

“The one who starts off the game, Lily. Pitches until he gets tired, or else lets us get too far behind.”

“Oh, really! So are you hoping to be made the starter one day?”

“No, no.” Again, the indulgent smile. “I’m happy where I am, actually. I like the pressure. Do or die, hero of the day, white knight riding up on his charger and all that.”

I poked at the sand with my toe, trying to think of another question. “Do you still play any football?”

“I think Joe would kill me.”

“Joe?”

“McCarthy. Team manager. My boss.” Graham stubbed out his cigarette in the sand. “But enough about all that. Tell me about you, Lily. I always expected big things from that brain of yours.”

“I keep myself busy. There’s my sister to look after, for one thing.” I turned around to look for Kiki, but she and Nick were gone, leaving only Budgie and her novel, and her red toes digging into the sand just outside the shelter of her umbrella. “I think she’s gone off with Nick somewhere. Looking for shells, probably.”

“Ah, yes,” said Graham. “The famous Kiki.”

“Infamous,” said Aunt Julie.

“I’m sorry to say that she seems to be taking after her aunt,” I said. “Just a moment while I look for her.” I lurched to my feet and shaded my eyes to look up and down the beach. A trickle of sweat crept down my back, in the gap between the hollow of my spine and the pale cotton of my dress. No sign of them. I put the remains of my cigarette to my nervous lips.

Graham appeared at my elbow. “Do they run off like this often?”

“Yes. She’s got some sort of crush on him, I think, because he’s the only adult around here who takes her seriously, other than me.”

“And Budgie doesn’t mind?” asked Graham, in a quiet voice.

“No. I think she thinks it’s good practice for him.”

He seemed surprised. “What, she’s not expecting, is she?”

“Not yet. At least, she hasn’t told me so. But they’re desperate for children. It’s only a matter of time, isn’t it?”

Graham didn’t answer, only shook his head and lifted his hand to the brim of his hat. “Good old Nick,” he said, under his breath, and then: “Oh, look! There they are.”

I followed his gaze and saw them, far down the beach, dark heads bent downward at exactly the same angle. Nick looked especially tall next to her, almost gaunt, his long limbs reined in so Kiki could keep up. “Looking for shells again, I think. I hope she’s not imposing on him.”

“I don’t know. He looks happy enough to me,” said Graham. He let his hand drop, nearly brushing mine, and all at once I was conscious of how close he stood, how solid was the shoulder near my ear, dressed for the heat in a white shirt and no jacket, smelling of cigarettes and laundry starch and a faint trace of male sweat. The air around us sat motionless, turgid with July warmth.

“Now, now, my darlings,” said Aunt Julie, “you’re taking up all the sun.”

Graham laughed and turned and took off his hat with a flourish. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. van der Wahl.”

“My friends call me Julie.”

“You can call her
Aunt
Julie, if you like,” I said. “She loves that.”

Aunt Julie extended her leg until the toes teetered off the edge of the blanket and into the sand, just like Budgie’s. “Don’t you dare, Graham. You should see the carcass of the last man who tried that one.”

Graham saluted smartly. “Julie it is, ma’am.”

“No
ma’am,
either. And certainly not when you’re twinkling at me like that. I’m sure that sort of thing is against the Association bylaws.”

Graham turned the full force of his twinkle on me. “Lily, much as I’d prefer to stay, my cousin Emily will have my head if I’m not back for bridge in a moment. But you’re coming to the dance tonight, aren’t you?”

The cigarette burned out against my fingers. I dropped the stub in the sand and crossed my arms. “Yes, of course. We’ve been planning for weeks.”

“I’m sure you have.” He grinned, displaying a fine set of even white teeth, straight from a Pepsodent advertisement. His entire face, carved out in perfect symmetry, tanned from the hazy sun, seemed to radiate with good health and good spirits. “But your dance card isn’t full yet, is it? You’ll save one for your old pal Graham?”

“Of course I will.”

He leaned forward and kissed my cheek and replaced his hat on his head. “Good, then. I’ll be looking for you. Julie? A pleasure meeting you. I’ll be saving my
last
dance for you.” He winked his sky-blue eye and turned to walk back up the beach to the clubhouse, his muscles flexing with the effort of climbing through the soft upper dunes.

“Well, well,” said Aunt Julie, watching him go. The magazine slid unnoticed from her lap.

Next to her, the sleeping form of Mrs. Hubert gave a snort and a start. She raised her head and looked about in confusion. Her nose wrinkled. “Has someone been smoking?” she asked, a little querulous.

“All of us, I’m afraid.” I plopped down at the bottom of the blanket and began to put the picnic things away in the basket.

“Coffin nails,” said Mrs. Hubert. She stopped her head in mid-shake and peered at me closely, and then at Aunt Julie, and back at me. “All right, ladies. Did I miss something?”

Aunt Julie took another cigarette out of her pack and placed it between her lips.

“I’ll say.”

THE ORCHESTRA WAS ABYSMAL,
the singer even worse, but nobody at the Seaview Beach Club minded this time-honored tradition, since the alternative was to spend money on better musicians.

Nobody, that is, except Aunt Julie.

“What next? Jazz?” she said, tossing back her champagne cocktail in frustration. “Who can dance to this? Lily, you ought to have chosen a darker lipstick. What happened to the tube I sent you?”

“Kiki took it to make up her dolls.”

“That child. I’m going to find another drink. I’d ask if I could get you something else, but you’ve hardly wet your lips yet.” She left with breathtaking abruptness, leaving only a trace of Chanel behind her.

I sipped my cocktail and scanned the veranda. The sun hadn’t yet begun to set, and in the hazy late-afternoon glow everyone looked beautiful, even the old ladies, lines flattened and skin softened, dresses glittering subtly. The men were wearing white dinner jackets and matching crisp red-white-and-blue bow ties (dictated by Mrs. Hubert to support this year’s theme, “You’re a Grand Old Flag”) and the effect was rather dazzling, amid the swirl of Gershwin and the shine of hair pomade and the bubble of champagne cocktails. The Palmers had just arrived, with Graham Pendleton’s sun-streaked hair bobbing among them. His laugh reached across the room, above the buzz of conversation.

As if aware of my observation, Graham’s head turned, and I lost my nerve and bolted for the edge of the veranda, where I held my drink up to the horizon and stared through the glass at the ocean beyond. The sailboats wavered in a murky pattern behind the bubbles and sunshine of Seaview’s famous champagne cocktail, a secret recipe written down and locked in a bank safe-deposit box when Prohibition began. Luckily Mrs. Hubert still had the key when the amendment was repealed.

I returned the glass to my lips and finished it off. No sense wasting good fizz.

A pair of hands closed over my eyes, one holding a cigarette and the other an ice-cold highball glass. “Guess who?” whispered Budgie.

“Somebody smoking Parliaments and wearing far too much perfume.” I set down my empty glass on the railing. “It could only be Budgie Greenwald.”

“Oh, rats! You’re too clever.” She spun me around. “And look at you! Where on earth did you find that dress? It should be outlawed.”

“Aunt Julie took me shopping in Newport last week. Do you like it?”

“Like it? I adore it. I’d wear it myself if I had any tits.” Budgie’s breath smelled like a bathtub of gin, and her lips were painted precisely in shining blood red. “Will you look at these people? I haven’t seen so much gray hair since . . . ha, since this afternoon at the picnic, I guess! Oh, there’s that damned Mrs. Hubert, come to rescue you from my clutches. Quick.” She looped her arm through mine and dragged me into the jiggling crowd. The orchestra had switched to a lively fox-trot. Budgie grasped my hand and twirled me to face her. “Let’s dance, darling. That should shake them up a bit.”

I laughed and put my hand around her waist. We started dancing an awkward fox-trot, as Budgie’s cigarette burned between our clasped hands and her gin splashed over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s it!” she exclaimed. Her glossy dark curls bounced in perfect time, and her red lips parted. She leaned to my ear. “Everybody’s watching. Imagine their faces if I told them how I spent eight months in South America sleeping only with women.”

The fox-trot ended and smoothed out into a waltz, and Budgie waltzed me to the other side of the veranda, where we collapsed, panting and laughing, against the railing. “Oh, that was such fun. I haven’t had such fun in ages, Lily. Let’s go to Newport next week, or Providence, just the two of us, while the men are all gone. We’ll have such a good time. I know the naughtiest clubs around.”