A Hundred Summers (15 page)

I took her cigarette, drew deep, and handed it back to her. “I can’t leave Kiki.”

“Oh yes you can. Your mother can watch her for once, or the housekeeper. I’ll send over Mrs. Ridge if I have to. Who’s watching her tonight?”

“Mother. She hates dancing.”

“Well, there you are. She’ll live until morning, you’ll see.” Budgie stubbed out the cigarette and tossed it off the veranda and into the sand. “Tell me, how did you like my little surprise this afternoon?”

“What surprise?”

She nudged me with her foot and leaned back against the railing. Her body stretched against its drapery of bloodred silk, matching her lips. “
Lily
. As if the entire Seaview Association didn’t see the two of you flirting together on your blanket.”

“
Graham?
But he said he was staying with the Palmers!”

“Of
course
he’s staying with the Palmers, darling. He can’t stay with us, when Nick’s gone all week in New York. What a scandal
that
would be.” She laughed and finished off her gin and tossed the glass over her shoulder into the sand to join her cigarette stub. “But who do you think called up Emily Palmer and told her to invite him?”

“You did?”

“Of course I did. She owed me a favor, from way back. Hasn’t he grown delicious? I want you two to have the
best
time this summer, and I want to hear every detail the next morning, do you hear me?” She turned around to face me and leaned into the railing, overlapping her sleek red body on mine. She said, into my ear: “
Every
detail. Now, don’t look, but he’s on his way. I’ll just slip away down the stairs and onto the beach, and leave you two crazy kids to have at it.”

Budgie kissed my cheek and left, and when she was gone in a shimmer of bloodredness, there was Graham Pendleton in his white dinner jacket and regulation red-white-and-blue bow tie, grinning at me like a dog to its master. He handed me a champagne cocktail. “You look like you could use a drink,” he said.

“Thanks.” I took the glass and clinked it against his. “Cheers.”

Graham took his handkerchief from his breast pocket. “Hold on. She’s left a bit of lipstick on you.”

He wiped away the lipstick while I drank from my glass. By the time he was finished, so was I. I set the glass on the railing, and he grinned at me again. “Slow down, champ. We’ve got all night. Cigarette?”

“One of your brand?”

“God, no.”

“Then yes.” I put the cigarette between my lips and let him light me. His broad knuckles tickled my chin. He lit his own and we turned away from the party and stood there, staring at the incessant roll of the ocean onto the beach. The tide was climbing, straining toward the line of seaweed and debris from the last high point. There was no sign of Budgie.

“Lovely dress,” said Graham.

“Thank you.”

He leaned forward on his elbows, letting the ash from his cigarette dangle and drop into the sand. “You know, you’re a funny one, Lily Dane. You go about your business, all serene and don’t-touch-me, and then once in a while you break out in a dress like that, looking like
that,
and I’ll be damned if we aren’t all sitting around scratching our heads, trying to figure you out.”

I laughed. “And how long has this been going on?”

“About five minutes, I’d say.”

I turned toward him, leaning my hip against the railing, blood racing pleasantly along my limbs. “Tell me something, Graham. What happened between you and Budgie all those years ago? We all thought it was love and marriage and the baby carriage.”

He shook his head. “What, marry Budgie? Never in the cards. We were having a little fun, that’s all.”

“It looked awfully serious from my end. The Grand Canyon, remember?”

“Everything looks serious from your end, Lily. It’s part of your charm.” Graham rose and turned to me and placed his hand against the railing, less than an inch from my hip. He stood so close I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes. A curl of smoke drifted past his face. “Yes, we talked about the future, but I’ll tell you how it works, sweet Lily, in case you didn’t know. When two carefree young unmarried people—say, Graham Pendleton and Budgie Byrne, to take an example—when they start engaging together in sexual intercourse, they talk about love, they talk about the future, sometimes seriously and sometimes not, because otherwise they’re disturbing the convenient little fiction that they aren’t just screwing in the backseat of an automobile for mutual satisfaction. Is that clear enough for you?”

He spoke in a low and convivial voice, set against the backdrop of lilting music and rolling waves. His eyes fixed on mine, examining my reaction, as if he weren’t absolutely certain I knew my birds from my bees.

I lifted the cigarette to my lips and held his gaze. “So that’s it. You were just screwing in the backseat of Budgie’s car?”

“She was happy with it. I was for goddamned sure happy about it. Look, do you want to hear the lurid details? We hit it off over the summer, hit it off even better over the fall. Fun all around, no harm done. About Christmas or so, she suddenly starts talking about getting married, and not just joking, like we did before. Out of the blue, she wants a ring and a spring wedding.” He stopped to smoke, picked a fleck of tobacco from his lower lip. “Then I hear through the grapevine that her father’s in trouble, going down the old drain like everyone else. I told her I knew what she was up to. We parted ways.”

“That’s the short story.”

“All you need to know. But she landed on her feet, as you can see.” He nodded into the crowd. I followed the direction of his gesture, and there was Budgie, magically reappeared, dancing in a snug clinch with her husband, a fresh highball glass balanced in her left hand. The other dancers gave them a wide berth. Nick’s curling brown hair and white back turned toward me, and I could just see the upper half of Budgie’s round eyes around his shoulder. She winked at me and tilted her head for a drink. Her ring caught the light in a dazzling optical explosion.

I turned back to Graham. He was staring down at me with a curious expression, mouth half raised in a quizzical smile. “Does it bother you?” he asked.

“Not at all. At least they’re not just screwing in the backseat of the car.”

He flicked his spent cigarette over the side. “Greenwald’s car doesn’t have a backseat.”

“Does yours?”

Graham took the cigarette from my fingers and stubbed it out. He picked up my empty hand and kissed the palm with his warm lips. “It does, as a matter of fact. Wide seat, springy cushion, very comfortable. But you’re not the kind of girl a man takes into his backseat, are you?”

The sun was beginning to drop, and Graham’s eyes were more gray than blue, enveloping me with a seriousness I’d never seen in them before. The champagne cocktail tingled merrily in my brain.

“Oh, I’m not, am I? And what exactly does that mean?”

Graham brushed back my hair around my ear and gave the lobe a little tug. “I don’t know what it means. I’m a little off my head at the moment. But I do know one thing: if a fellow can’t at least get a dance out of you, he’ll be howling at the moon by the end of the night.”

I lifted myself away from the railing, right up next to his chest. “We can’t have that.”

Graham led me into the dance, past Aunt Julie with her second cocktail, past winking Budgie with her third or fourth; past the narrowed gaze of Nick Greenwald, whose large hand wrapped around his wife’s red silk waist, and whose mouth bore the traces of her red silk lipstick.

9.

725 PARK AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY

December 1931

T
o my relief, Daddy is having one of his good days. He’s already up and eating breakfast in the dining room when I stumble through on Sunday morning, still in my dressing gown, bleary-eyed from some distressing half-remembered dream.

“Good morning, poppet,” he says, looking up with a smile, and I press a kiss on his fading hair.

“Good morning, Daddy.” I lay my arm around his shoulders. “I wanted to say hello when I came in last night, but it was so late. You and Mother were already in bed. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“You can wake me up anytime,” he says, squeezing my hand. “Sit down. Have some breakfast.”

I drop into the chair to his right. The watery winter sunlight floods the windows, drenching the table, which is already laid out for three with butter and jam in abundance and a pitcher of juice in the middle, glowing with the preternaturally bright orange of an egg yolk. “Where’s Mother?” I ask.

“Oh, still in bed. I’m the early riser this morning. How was your drive from college?”

“Perilous. You know Budgie.” The door from the kitchen swings open, and Marelda, our housekeeper, enters with a large pot of coffee. The pristine white of her apron catches the sun with such force, it hurts my eyes. “Good morning, Marelda. Oh, holy blessed coffee. Thank you.”

She pours. “Good morning, Miss Lily. How was college?”

“College was wonderful, Marelda. Wonderful.”

“Any young men?” She winks.

I glance at Daddy, who has returned his attention to the towering sheets of
The New York Times
, and wink back. “Maybe. You never know.”

“That’s good, Miss Lily. That’s good.”

Daddy is studying the
Times
with his brow knit in concentration. He has a handsome profile, straight and firm, his collar crisp and white at his neck, and his blond hair is only just beginning to tarnish with gray at the temples. Looking at him this way, you would never know anything was wrong at all. You might perhaps notice the tiny shake of his hand, rattling the newspaper. If he turned his face, you might be distracted by the way his clear blue eyes keep shifting away from yours, as if he can’t quite bear to connect with you. But that’s all. Today is a good day, certainly.

“Daddy,” I say, “do you know the firm Greenwald and Company?”

“What’s that, poppet?” He turns.

“Greenwald and Company. Do you know it?”

“Of course I do. Good man, Greenwald. Corporate bonds, isn’t it? Done extremely well for himself, I understand.” He folds the newspaper with great attention to its original creases.

“Have they had any trouble recently, do you know?”

“Well, everyone’s had trouble, Lily.”

“I mean more than usual. They
are
a . . .” I search for the words. “A going concern, aren’t they?”

Daddy shrugs. His shoulders are still too thin under his jacket; all of him is still too thin, after last winter’s pneumonia. He’s had it twice before, and every time it gets worse. Though he never speaks of the war, I know from Peter van der Wahl that Daddy was gassed at Belleau Wood, that he hadn’t got his mask on in time, was too busy helping one of his men with a faulty strap, and of course your lungs are never the same after that. “I haven’t heard differently, poppet. Why do you ask?”

I open my mouth, close it, and drink my coffee in a hard swallow. “Oh, no reason.”

The telephone rings. Once, twice. Marelda’s voice murmurs through the walls.

I reach for the orange juice and pour myself a glass. The pitcher quivers in my hand.

The door opens from the living room. “Miss Lily, a telephone call for you. It’s . . .”

“Thank you, Marelda.” I rise swiftly. “I’m coming.”

Mother has a distaste for telephones, and ours is tucked away in a windowless nook between the living room and the study, with only an unforgiving wooden bench for comfort. It has the advantage of private acoustics, however, and for that I am grateful.

“Good morning, Lilybird,” says Nick, in a glowing voice, warm and eager, dissolving all my doubts.

“Good morning. Where are you?”

“At home. How was your drive?”

“Awful. Budgie nearly killed us at least three times.”

“That Budgie. I should have driven you myself. Are you all right?”

I lean back against the wall and close my eyes so I can concentrate on the sound of his voice. The plaster is hard beneath the knobs of my spine. “Yes, of course. I miss you.”

“And I’m desperate for you. I’m looking across the park right now, wondering if I can see your building.”

“You can’t. We’re in the middle of the block.”

“Let’s meet somewhere. Are you dressed?”

I look down at my robe. “Not yet. We’re having breakfast.”

“Well, hurry and clean yourself up. I’ll meet you halfway, all right? Near the boathouse, say?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. Perfect.”

“But hurry, all right? You don’t need to fix yourself up for me. Just come.”

I fix myself up anyway, just a little: a touch of lipstick, a dusting of powder, my best hat. I slip through the living room and out the door with a vague murmur about shopping. Outside, the fresh air strikes me in a welcome gust, rinsing me clean.

When Nick sees me coming, he opens his arms, and I hurl myself at him with such force that he staggers back, laughing, closing his arms around me as if we haven’t seen each other in months. “There’s my girl,” he says.

“In the flesh.”

He hugs me even harder and gives me a little spin. “This is so marvelous, seeing you here. I can’t believe we shared a city all these years without knowing it.”

“Well, we didn’t really, did we? I was away at school during the year, and at Seaview during the summer. Sometimes I feel like I hardly know Manhattan.” I haven’t lifted my head from his chest. I’m oddly afraid to meet his eyes.

“Me too, I guess. But here we are, anyway. Where should we go?”

We wander along the paths for a long time, walking slowly, staying within the boundaries of the park by unspoken consent. My arm loops snugly through his. At last I find the composure to look up at him, and he’s even better than I remember, his mouth smiling, his breath curling white in the frosty air. “New York suits you,” I tell him.

“
You
suit me. Listen, Lily, I have so much to tell you. My head’s been full of plans the last few days. That long drive down from New Hampshire, everything became clear. I’m determined this time.”