Night Mares in the Hamptons (7 page)

“Mom.”

She wasn't finished yelling. “Of course I am not surprised you've made a mess of this, too. You'd do anything to ruin my plans, wouldn't you? I had a lovely wedding all figured out. The Pom could have the ring tied to his collar. How cute is that?”

A three-legged furball lurching down the aisle? Not very. I knew better than to interrupt her mid-rant, so I just kept quiet.

“And you're not getting any younger, you know. I don't care what they say about fertility clinics. Between you and your father . . .”

When she went off on my father, I had to stop her or I'd be on the phone for another hour. “Mom, I did not make a mess of anything. Grant was not going to make me happy. You always told me I deserved happiness.”

She sniffed again. “Every woman does. I suppose if he isn't there when you need him, you don't need him.”

Damn, there were the tears again, not that I was a crybaby or anything. “Something like that.” Now I had to sniff. “And I didn't want to commute between here and England or travel the globe looking for danger or have my husband gone half the time. I do not want to need him, or any man. All I need is for you to come talk to the horses.”

“You need a psychiatrist.”

Susan had said the same thing. “You, too?”

“No, I don't need one. I'm fine, no matter what your father says. I told you, I don't do horses. They're too big and unpredictable.”

“You're not afraid of them, are you?” I didn't think there was anything on this earth or the next that frightened my mother. I felt a lot better knowing she was human after all.

She snorted this time. “I am not afraid of them simply because I don't relate to creatures who eat hay. It's just that your father's been muttering about horses. I thought he meant I should go to the racetrack instead of the dogs.”

“Has Dad mentioned any other forebodings?”

“Your father couldn't predict an earthquake if the ground was shaking.”

My father's precognition was admittedly a vague talent. He'd know if something bad was going to happen, or maybe could happen to people he loved, but he seldom knew any helpful details. Typical of my mother, she believed he could be a bigger help if only he tried harder. She must have inherited her attitude from her own mother, Grandma Eve, who believed Dad could have cured his heart condition with her herbs. Then again, my father's mother—I barely remembered her—heard voices that no one else heard. And spoke back to them.

Vague or not, my father's warnings were sometimes useful, if overprotective out of his affection for me. I needed whatever help I could get . . . and some of his ever-loyal support.

“Are you at his apartment?” I'd called on her cell. “Is he there? Can you put him on?”

“He'll be back from playing bridge at the clubhouse any minute. Bridge, when he could be out doing something important.”

Like raiding puppy mills.

“I'll tell him to call you.”

“I'll be out most of the day hanging posters and looking for hidden stables.”

“What kind of posters?”

So I told her about the one with the missing horse. She, predictably, told me I was doing it wrong.

“You never mention a reward. You'll only get cranks and fakes, and encourage other criminals to steal more dogs. Er, horses. Besides, if the horse thief is holding the animal for ransom, he'll name his own price. There's some cash in the bottom of my sock drawer, but if your horses are what I think they are, get the Royce Institute people to pay the ransom. They can afford it.”

“Thanks, Mom. That'll be a help.”

“And I'll ask around about someone good with horses.”

“I'd appreciate that. Grant's looking, too, but we need someone quickly. Give my love to Dad.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. He was going to call you tonight to warn you to look out for caves and alligators. Can you believe that? There aren't any caves in Paumanok Harbor, and I ought to know since I was born there. There sure as hell aren't any alligators on Long Island, unless someone has one in a fish tank. He's spent too much time on the golf course down here, where you have to be careful retrieving lost balls from the lagoons. How ridiculous is that, even if he was right about boats being dangerous last time? I told him not to bother you with that nonsense, but he'll want to tell you anyway, just to make you more anxious than you are now. You see how useless he is? All men are, I suppose. Maybe you're right about Grant. I wouldn't want my grandchildren living in Britain.”

She obviously didn't give a rat's ass where I lived. I wrote down horses, caves, and alligators on the pad I always had nearby. “Okay, Mom, I better get to putting up my signs.”

“You know, if you're out hanging posters, maybe you could make up one or two about adopting a greyhound?”

“Gotta go, Mom. Miles to cover.”

“Think about the psychiatrist, dear. You can use one.”

Didn't she know they always blamed a patient's problems on his or her mother? That worked for me.

 

Despite what I said about hurrying, I knew most of the businesses on Main Street wouldn't be open yet, so I went to see Grandma Eve at her house up the dirt road.

She was in the front yard, watering plants. She listened to me while she went from tub to tub of young greenery, with nasturtiums and marigolds mixed in to keep the insects away. I did not recognize half the herbs she was growing, despite backbreaking, boring summers of weeding and repotting and selling the plants from hell at the family's farm stand. Grandma kept adding more exotic species, with help from fellow herbalists and a blind eye from the FDA.

When I finished my story about horses, nightmares, and Grant—which I was getting sick of repeating—Grandma put down the hose. She pursed her lips, crossed her arms over her bony chest, then tucked a stray gray strand of hair back under her baseball cap. The Yankees. She stared at me for long enough to make my knees tremble while I tried not to think of Hansel and Gretel. Then she nodded, as if concluding that I was worth the interruption of her day. She said she'd fetch me something that might help and went inside the house.

I hoped for more strawberry jam, since I was feeding two now, but I figured she'd bring me a new concoction in a tea bag so I could sleep better. Instead, she came back out with a piece of paper with The Garland Farm logo on the top. Dr. Lassiter, it said, with a phone number.

“Let me guess. He's a shrink.”

She nodded again. “A world-renowned therapist and an old friend. He retired after his wife died and he had a stroke. He's on Shelter Island. Call him.”

I would, right after I started seeing alligators and caves.

P
AUMANOK HARBOR WAS NOT LIKE the other villages that made up East Hampton Township on Long Island's East End. In fact, none of the neighboring villages looked much like each other, or felt like each other either.

East Hampton Village was all glitz and glamour, Tiffany's and Ralph Lauren, with celebrity watching its tourists' favorite pastime. Old money, new money, big money, money-envy.

Montauk was a working man's two-week vacation: beach and bars, fishing and surfing. Downtown was full of T-shirt shops and souvenir stores, with rows of motels that sat right on the beach. Until the next hurricane.

Amagansett couldn't decide if it was chic or cozy, with galleries and gourmet farmers' markets and antique stores.

Springs had no central business district, just a strip mall and a scattering of necessities, like a liquor store and a pizza parlor.

Sag Harbor was almost a restoration village, with tiny shops and houses dating from its old whaling days.

Of course those are all short subjective opinions, without going into the natural beauty of each place or its cultural offerings or its family neighborhoods. I had friends in all of them and appreciated what they had to offer. None of them looked or felt like home. New York City still had my heart—and my legal voting address, resident taxes, and rent-controlled apartment—but little Paumanok Harbor had grown on me. Like a jack-and-the-beanstalk vine, giants and all. Fee-fi-fo-fum.

Paumanok Harbor wasn't on the ocean, wasn't on the tourist route, didn't have a lot of motels or summer homes. Too much of the Harbor was unbuildable wetlands or town-owned preserves to be part of the Hamptons land rush and building boom of the last couple of decades. There were some new McMansions, but the monstrous eyesores were mostly scattered up wooded drives or on five-acre lots. The majority of houses and land and small farms like my grandmother's were still in the hands of the descendants of the early English settlers. Witches and warlocks all, it was rumored, fleeing oppression everywhere else.

They built up their new settlement like many New England towns, with a grassy commons in the middle, houses close together facing the center square, with a school at one end and a church at the other. Unlike other communities, the church was an afterthought, more for effect and public opinion than praying. These immigrants had way different beliefs, but they needed to conform to the neighboring towns.

Now stores and offices had replaced many of the old houses facing the square, and a much larger school had been built two blocks north. The library was in the old school building, refurbished, of course, and the handsome new community center and art building extended the central business district by another block east past the commons. The town offices, firehouse, and police station were on the next street, between the school's playing fields and the parking lots. The one gas station and the bowling alley popped up one block south of the village square.

Restaurants and bars and bait shops were strewn here and there throughout the village borders, but most of the necessities were right here on Main Street. The bare necessities, that was, for mail, groceries, coffee, house paint and Band-Aids. Some were located in the front rooms or lower levels of private houses, like Janie's Beauty Parlor and Martha's real estate office. Others were in a hodgepodge of styles, old wood, brick, stone, shingles, modern glass. Town planning hadn't been a big thing until it was too late, but at least the business area hadn't sprouted golden arches or luxury latte shops. Not yet, anyway.

Paumanok Harbor had incorporated decades ago, freeing it from East Hampton Township rules, but forcing it to keep its own police department and zoning board and bookkeepers. Taxes were high; independence was priceless, especially for the odd ducks in this particular pond.

When I had to spend summers here with my family, I thought the place was a boring backwater blight with ingrown, insular, ill-adjusted residents. The Harbor seemed stuck in the past, with no interest in improving or attracting more business or entertaining the people it already had. After the city, where we really lived, it was deader than a graveyard.

Now I appreciated how the pace wasn't as fast and the faces in the shops were familiar and usually friendly. Paumanok Harbor had Character, as well as characters.

I drove my mother's Outback into the school parking lot. She'd left the car at the airport, but one of her friends drove it back for me. Susan's mother was the vice principal and ran the summer school enrichment program there. She'd let us use the school's laminating machine on the posters meant for the mares. I didn't need to hear Aunt Jasmine lecture me about seeing the school's counselor, so I dropped Susan and a stack of posters off and drove to Town Hall. I wanted to tell Uncle Henry, Chief of Police Haversmith, what I was doing, but he was out on business. The cop at the desk was a guy named Barry who stank of fish, which was why I refused my uncle-by-affection's efforts to fix me up with him, and why I stayed as close to the door as possible. Barry said the chief had to go to Riverhead, the Suffolk County seat. The DA there wanted to know why the Harbor suddenly had so much crime, and if we needed a drug squad or a hate crimes unit.

Yeah, suddenly everyone hated everyone else. It had nothing to do with the Hispanic work crews or controlled substances. No one was controlling their tempers, because the mares were ruining their sleep. I'd love to hear Uncle Henry explain that to the DA.

“I'm working on it,” I told Barry. I handed him one of the pictures of the young horse and asked him to post it, and think positive thoughts while he did.

I believe he mumbled something about how he'd like to think of me in my underwear, but I chose not to hear it. He might be the town's best surfcaster, always knowing which beach the blues or stripers would hit, but he still smelled.

 

I walked next door to the village office, where you could get a permit for the dump or complain about your neighbor's loud parties. Mrs. Ralston ran the place. I think her title was Village Clerk. Just looking at her in her beige pant suit and tidy bun, you knew she was efficient and perfect for the job. You could even forget she was one of the village loonies until she spoke.