The Summer We Read Gatsby Part 5

Hamilton gazed around in comic distaste as we moved into what was presumably a family room, decorated in primary colors that made the room look like a nursery school cla.s.sroom.

"Unusual?" Bethany repeated sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Something strange happened in our house," Peck explained, deliberately sounding mysterious. "And we thought you might have seen something that would help us figure it out."

Bethany gave her a look. "Well, what what was it?" was it?"

"Something was stolen stolen," Peck intoned, cheerfully playing a role she'd seen on television. Bethany shook her head, the sheaves of hair hardly moving. She seemed unable to decide whether she wanted to be Peck's best friend or run in the other direction. Insecure people often had this reaction to my sister. "I went home early, remember?"

Peck, of course, wouldn't have willfully remembered anything about Bethany Samuels, but she nodded as though she had. "Maybe you saw something once you got home home? Through the window?" Bethany Samuels was hardly the type of woman she would aspire to befriend, and it was becoming clear that Bethany was starting to think the same of her.

"We don't don't. Look. Out. The window." Bethany seemed to resent the implication in Peck's words, but she sounded guilty. Peck was probably right about her spying down on us from the third floor.

We'd moved on to the kitchen, where the walls and backsplash were covered in patterned tile of yellow and blue and green. "Emmet has outdone himself," Hamilton said to Bethany.

"Oh, do you know know him?" she crowed, happy to ignore Peck, who was sounding more and more like an interrogator. "Isn't he genius?" him?" she crowed, happy to ignore Peck, who was sounding more and more like an interrogator. "Isn't he genius?"

Hamilton was nodding, wearing a baffled look. "He's genius, all right."

"What was stolen?" Bethany asked me. She'd clearly decided I was the good cop to Peck's bad.

"A painting," I explained. "About two by three feet, easy enough to slip under an arm."

"It was an abstract," Peck chimed in, as though she were in the habit of talking about art. "Modern."

Bethany Samuels made a face. "I know nothing about modern art," she stated with pride, as though she'd made a decision just then and there about Peck. Peck was what she might call "out there" or "artsy," as in "not the kind of person who could help me get into a country club."

"It was the one that was hanging above the mantel," I said. "In the living room."

"I've never gone gone into the living room," she said, in pointed fas.h.i.+on. "I've never even been inside the house." It was hard to tell if she was offended or hurt not to have received a more intimate invitation from either Lydia or us. into the living room," she said, in pointed fas.h.i.+on. "I've never even been inside the house." It was hard to tell if she was offended or hurt not to have received a more intimate invitation from either Lydia or us.

When we finished up the tour Bethany tried to interest us in some "cheap and cheerful" c.o.c.ktail rings before we said our good-byes and she moved on to a much more likely customer, a very tall, very pretty woman-"Now that's a trophy wife," Peck whispered to me-in white jeans, gazing adoringly at herself in the mirror as she a.s.sessed what looked like chandeliers hanging from her ears. According to Bethany, these too were "must-haves."

"Oh, look, there's Laurie Poplin," Hamilton cried out with enthusiasm as we walked back down the Samuels driveway. He waved his fan at a horse-faced woman in a minuscule tennis skirt that highlighted a G.o.d-given gift of impossibly long, shapely legs.

Laurie Poplin was a Rockette. Or had been. She was one of those tall-drink-of-water types who'd made a living off her legs. Now she was divorced and still using the legs, selling real estate, the kind of broker who advertises with photographs of their various listings in local magazines. Her ads included an image of herself, taken a good ten years ago, in a predictably tiny baby-doll dress. The headline on her double-page spread claimed LAURIE POPLIN IS THE HAMPTONS.

"This is the real estate broker," Hamilton said as she drew closer to us.

She looked both Peck and me up and down in a compet.i.tive manner and appeared to determine she came out favorably. This decision allowed her to be friendly, and she waved one well-tended hand in our direction. Her hair was dyed an ash-blonde that might have been called "champagne," and the tapered nails were painted solid pink to match her plastic-looking pink shoes. and the tapered nails were painted solid pink to match her plastic-looking pink shoes.

"Laurie Poplin is here to help," she exclaimed. We were to learn that she would often refer to herself in the third person with her full name. "If anyone can sell your place, Laurie Poplin can."

Hamilton invited Laurie to come back to Fool's House with us and take a look around, and she nodded vigorously. "I was just going to pop in here for a minute. And then I'm meeting Finn Killian. You know Finn, don't you? For tennis and then lunch."

A sudden wave of jealousy washed over me as she kept talking. What was Finn doing playing tennis and having lunch with such a woman, a woman with the plastic pink purse and shoes that matched her nail polish? "I can come back here later," she was saying, as I quickly dismissed any thoughts of Finn. I wasn't at all interested in him, I reminded myself. And even if I was, well, I wasn't. End of story.

Laurie chattered away about all the houses she'd sold recently in our neighborhood, including the one now belonging to the Samuelses, as we walked back to Fool's House, where Biggsy was diligently mopping the porch floor. Laurie extended her hand to him with a huge, ready smile that appeared to have many more large teeth than the average person's.

"Laura," Peck said, because she insisted on doing that, eliminating nicknames in an attempt to be charmingly old-fas.h.i.+oned. "This is Biggs. The current Fool-in-Residence."

The Rockette was grinning at Biggsy, still holding on to his hand. "It's Laurie Laurie, not Laura. Laura. And I've met And I've met you you before." She gave him an appraising look, like a cougar eyeing her prey. before." She gave him an appraising look, like a cougar eyeing her prey.

"Did we date?" He smiled charmingly back at her. He was kidding, of course, but she appeared to consider the possibility. One got the impression Laurie Poplin had been on a great many unsuccessful dates. There was something poignant about her eagerness and her plastic shoes and the truly spectacular legs, as though she thought that if only circ.u.mstances had been slightly slightly different, her life might have been a success. But she lived in Southampton because it was cheaper than Manhattan and there was a decent public school for her daughter, and not, as she would go on to claim repeatedly, because she different, her life might have been a success. But she lived in Southampton because it was cheaper than Manhattan and there was a decent public school for her daughter, and not, as she would go on to claim repeatedly, because she loved loved the beach. And etched on her face was the unfulfilled potential and the many small disappointments that had led her to this place where she was forced by virtue of her own personality to pretend it had all gone exactly according to plan. the beach. And etched on her face was the unfulfilled potential and the many small disappointments that had led her to this place where she was forced by virtue of her own personality to pretend it had all gone exactly according to plan.

"Biggsy is a piece of art," Peck called over her shoulder as she moved toward the front door ahead of the rest of us. "He's interactive interactive."

Laurie was looking understandably confused as Biggsy shook his head. "I'm just an artist." He'd told us he became an artist so he wouldn't become a criminal criminal. His work was about the search for ident.i.ty, he said, how we find a sense of self without the benefit of context. He was most well-known in the gallery world as a video artist, he told us, although I suspected he was well-known well-known in the same way that the previous inhabitants of the studio, d.i.c.k Montpelier and his unread novel and Rusty Cohen and his six nude masterpieces, were in the same way that the previous inhabitants of the studio, d.i.c.k Montpelier and his unread novel and Rusty Cohen and his six nude masterpieces, were famous famous.

Peck led all of us through the house, giving Laurie Poplin the tour, while the real estate broker took notes with a dubious pursing of her pink-glossed lips. Hamilton added in a few comments of his own.

"You can't sell this house to anyone who will tear it down," Biggsy said to her as we traipsed back down to the living room, where the hook above the mantel served as a reminder of the missing painting. "n.o.body appreciates architectural integrity any more."

"Lydia wanted the house sold," Hamilton added, repeating what he'd told us earlier. "She'd been wanting to sell it for the past two years."

Biggsy looked horrified. "That can't be true. She never said anything to me me."

Laurie Poplin gave a nervous giggle and then said she had a couple who were perfect candidates to buy the house. "Old money as opposed to new," she explained, seemingly enjoying her sense of herself as astute master of social nuances. "Old money likes a place with a sense of history. They don't want to spend too much and they can't buy new. It has to have a pedigree."

We started to talk about price, which made Biggsy roll his eyes in disgust and leave the room. "Pricing should be very aggressive," Laurie said. "That's the only option, if you absolutely have to sell."

"We don't absolutely have to sell," Peck said. "Who says we absolutely absolutely have to sell?" have to sell?"

"Darling," Hamilton intoned. "You do have to sell this house. It's all right."

Laurie Poplin was used to this kind of reaction. "It's going to have to be a rock-bottom, too-good-to-be-true estate-sale price to get any action."

This prompted Peck to cry out, "What am I, an aging hooker, that I need action action?"

"I was under the impression . . ." Laurie said, drawing on her reserves of patience. This is why estate sales were such a pain in the a.s.s, she seemed to be thinking. "Just to clarify? That we were trying to get this done as quickly as possible. That's usually how it is when it's a question of settling an estate."

"We are," I told her. "Thank you very much."

She turned to me. "Well, this couple I have in mind, they know what they want. They're in a position to move quickly. They love the location already. Location. Location. Loca-"

"Bring them by any time," I said, interrupting her.

"Not any any time," Peck quickly protested. "What if we're sleeping? What if we're entertaining? What if we have time," Peck quickly protested. "What if we're sleeping? What if we're entertaining? What if we have gentlemen callers gentlemen callers?"

"They'll be out here all week," Laurie exclaimed with the glee normally a.s.sociated with an Oscar nomination. There were quite a lot of teeth involved. "They're houseguesting houseguesting."

"Everyone has houseguests," Peck complained to me. "We should have houseguests." should have houseguests."

When I didn't respond she told me what my problem was. She was fond of telling me what my problem was. "You're a terrible sn.o.b," she would say. Inevitably Trimalchio would look up at me, as he did now, as if to say, "Me too, I'm a terrible sn.o.b. Although I prefer discerning. discerning."

Now, apparently, my problem was that I was immature. "Literally," she cried out. "You're a fetus fetus."

"Oh, just the opposite," Hamilton told her, coming to my defense. "Your sister is old beyond her years."

"I'm not saying it like it's a bad thing. She's charmingly naive," Peck explained while they all listened. "But she lives in her own lala land in her head. Look at her, all curled up inside herself like a pill bug."

"I'm right here," I reminded them.

"Well, it's true," Peck said to me. "It's time for you to grow up. You have to shed that protective layer and come out into the world. That's the only way you'll learn how it really really works." works."

The Rockette must have decided she'd heard enough, for she headed off, giving us a jaunty wave-"Laurie Poplin will get it done!"-as she let the screen door slam shut behind her. Thwap. Thwap.

5.

Two days pa.s.sed before Finn dropped by to play backgammon, not that I was counting. Not at all. Peck and I were busy. We spent those days arguing about what to do with the things Lydia left behind as we tried to sort through them. And I'd written a long e-mail to my editor outlining in comic detail my first few days in ze Hamptons. "Send more," he'd commanded. "This may be a column. 'My Summer Vacation.' " The locksmith we'd brought in to open the safe didn't seem like he could crack even a barn door, let alone an industrial-strength safe, but he handed us a bill anyway. Miles n.o.ble, according to the a.s.sistant who answered his phone when Peck called him, was "unavailable," and would "return" when he was back in the country. And we'd found no clues that might explain why he or anyone else might have walked off with Lydia's brown-and-white painting.

When I came across the backgammon board tucked onto the bookshelf, Peck and I agreed to take a break from our ineffectual organization of Lydia's many belongings and play a few rounds. "I'll bring out the iced tea," she said. "You set up the board."

I'd set up the game on the table on the porch and was waiting for her with Lydia's hardcover Gatsby Gatsby in my lap when the Fool-in-Residence appeared from across the driveway. He had a piece of paper in his hand. in my lap when the Fool-in-Residence appeared from across the driveway. He had a piece of paper in his hand.

"What are you reading?" he asked, in a congenial tone. I held up the book so he could see the t.i.tle.

"The. Great. Gatsby?" He read the words as if he'd never heard the t.i.tle before, as if this were just a book, and not required reading. "Any good?"

I nodded. "Some people say it's the great American novel."

He shrugged his shoulders, indicating that what some people some people say about books didn't interest him one iota. As if books were one of those things, like buggy whips, for example, that are no longer relevant to modern living. "Don't tell me what happens at the end," he said. "I hate when people tell me what happens at the end of a book." say about books didn't interest him one iota. As if books were one of those things, like buggy whips, for example, that are no longer relevant to modern living. "Don't tell me what happens at the end," he said. "I hate when people tell me what happens at the end of a book."

Peck came out to the porch with a pitcher of iced tea. "What's that?" She pointed at the piece of paper in Biggsy's hand.

He held up what looked to be a letter from Lydia, a sheet of her distinctive stationery covered, front and back, in her flowing cursive. "The nuns used to beat it into us," Lydia would tell us. "Penmans.h.i.+p is important."

"I thought you might want to see this," he said, holding it out.

Peck took the letter from him and started to read it aloud. " 'Dearest,' " she read. " 'I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed our weeks together. You are family to me, only better, for our friends.h.i.+p is unenc.u.mbered by the emotional baggage between blood relatives.' "

Here Biggsy interjected. "She kept talking about wanting to introduce me to you two, her nieces."

The language was unmistakably Lydia's. She mentioned a mille-feuille they must have shared somewhere and a debut novel she'd enjoyed while on the train from Hamburg. She was curious, she wrote, to know how the piece he'd shown her was received at the Basel Art Fair.

" 'They say you can't choose your family but I say you can. You find family in the people who fill your world and bring you joy,' " Peck read aloud. " 'We must redefine the word to allow our gay and lesbian friends (I'm thinking of Hamilton as I write this) to marry, and we must allow it to include the close friends who, in the absence of a traditional romantic relations.h.i.+p, or perhaps in addition to it, are our loved ones.' " She turned the page. "She goes on to some details about a party she was giving and she signs it, 'With fondest love, Lydia.' "

It certainly sounded exactly like Lydia. I'd received many such letters from her myself and had saved every one, often rereading them. She'd written in such a vein about Hamilton and about Finn, and also about a few of the women who had been such close friends they'd become family, but I'd never heard her speak that way about anybody by the name of Biggsy. Usually the person occupying the s.p.a.ce above the garage only stayed for a summer and, with the exception of Finn, the son of her good friend, they were a transient bunch.

Peck and I had been the only people actually related to Lydia left in the world for the last twenty-five years. Her parents, my grandparents, were both only children. Her mother had died very young, when Lydia was twelve and her much younger brother, my father, was only a baby. Their father had done what he could to raise them, but he succ.u.mbed to lung cancer before my dad was out of college. There were no cousins, no elderly aunts or uncles, unless there were some Moriarty relatives still in Ireland.

So it had always made sense when Lydia would speak of family this way. I'd taken her advice, drawing around me a small band of female friends whom I adored at home in Lausanne. There was Kelly, the wittiest one, a half Irish and half Lebanese chef married to an American man who wanted to move back to Philadelphia. And Patrizia, my university roommate, had published several books about her family that became bestsellers in Europe, and had helped get me my job at the magazine. Tessa and Julie were both from New Zealand and had gone to hotel school. These were the women who helped me through my mother's death and my breakup with That-Awful-Jean-Paul. I missed them suddenly, with a pang, especially Kelly. She would have had something funny to say about the absurdly good-looking young artist in our midst.

Biggsy folded the letter carefully and tucked it into the side pocket of the swim trunks he was wearing. He moved deliberately, like an actor trying to get the blocking right, with the grace of someone trained to use his body expressively. "Don't you get it?"

Peck was shaking out one of her American Spirits from the pack and she lit it with a dramatic flick of a lighter shaped like a pig. She squinted at him, inhaling deeply before she asked, through the exhale, "Get what what?"

Biggsy tilted his head in a c.o.c.ky manner, holding up both arms to gesture at himself, and grinned at us the way he had after the vomit prank. "I think I'm I'm the thing of value." the thing of value."

We must have both worn similar dubious looks because he added, "Think about it," in the huffy manner of a person handing over an untruth. "What did Lydia value more than anything? She was always talking about wanting to introduce us and-"

"She and I were like this." Peck held up two fingers to show how close she was to our aunt. "We spoke on the phone at least twice a week, we wrote letters. She even had a Facebook page. And I didn't even know you were living here. In the past all the fools stayed only in the summer. Lydia wasn't here herself all winter. There's no heat heat."

He shrugged, modest pride on his face. "I made do."

Here I interjected. "Did she even know you stayed here all winter? She told me when you moved in. And then she never mentioned you again." I'd been trying to recall my more recent phone conversations with my aunt, replaying her words in my mind. But I was pretty sure I was right when I said she'd never mentioned him after the first time. There'd been other things to talk about, a show at the Pompidou she was excited to see, rereading Edith Wharton, which she'd done all winter, and certain dishes she'd had in her favorite restaurants. She always wanted to know what I was reading, what I was writing, and, in the year after my divorce, naturally, what guy I was dating. On two of the three of these, my answers-nothing, n.o.body-usually disappointed, which often led her to say something along the lines of "You are the sole author of the story of your life, my dear. Make it a good one."

"I have no family of my own," Biggsy went on to say with a pleading look. "I was an orphan at a young age. Lydia was my family."

At the time, it did seem slightly odd that he brought out that letter when he did. We hadn't asked him to leave. Lydia was gone, and with her went the tradition of the Fool's House summer residency program, but all of it-her death, the inheritance of her house and her things, the talk of value, sharing a roof with a half sister-was new and overwhelming, and he seemed such a permanent part of the landscape, and so helpful and caring, that we didn't think to ask him to go. Free butler service is hard to turn down. And if we didn't exactly believe believe some of what he told us about his past and how he ended up there, we willingly suspended our disbelief. So his sudden presentation of this letter, after we'd been there almost a week, struck me as strange. some of what he told us about his past and how he ended up there, we willingly suspended our disbelief. So his sudden presentation of this letter, after we'd been there almost a week, struck me as strange.

He must have been able to read my mind. "I just found it," he said quickly. "I was going through my things and it was at the bottom of a box. She sent it in a Christmas card. I thought you might like to see it."

"You know," I said, as Peck sat down at the other side of the backgammon table, "you're going to have to find another place to live. You might want to start getting prepared."

He nodded. "I know. I will." He looked down at his feet. "But listen, can you spread the word, among your art-collector friends? I do commissions."

"I don't have any art-collector friends," I said.

Peck looked up at him sharply. "You're talking about Miles?"

"Can you introduce me? I have an idea for a piece called A Fool and His Money A Fool and His Money. The fool, that's me. Or is it? That's part of the piece, which one of us is actually the fool. We trade places. The collector, or the person who buys the piece, will switch places with me, for a set amount of time, a night, a week. They go to the studio and make art. And I go live in their house, the way I do here."

"It's brilliant," Peck a.s.sessed. "It's conceptual conceptual."

"I like the idea of trading ident.i.ty," he said, warming to his subject. "I'm very interested in the idea of appropriation."

"Appropriation?" Peck repeated with a laugh. "Isn't that just an art term for stealing?"

He pointed at her. "Bingo. I would film the whole thing, of course," he explained. "And that video becomes the piece they keep. And also any work they create on their own."

"Conceptual art is very popular these days," Peck proclaimed in that way she had of declaring things generally held to be common knowledge as though she had come up with a brilliant new idea. "And of course, Miles has very good taste. I'll see what I can do."

One of Pecksland Moriarty's great qualities was her enthusiasm. And when she fell in love-with anything, the onion rings at the Sip 'n Soda, the stray dog who became Trimalchio, the orange platform sandals in a store window-she fell instantly, and she fell hard, judgment and rational thought be d.a.m.ned. It was an aspect of her personality I admired, and often wished I could emulate, but one which was also cause for concern.

"Now go away and let me beat the pants off this sister of mine," she said, waving him off. Peck prided herself on her backgammon ability. My half sister was quite proud of many skills she did not actually possess. But either because of or in spite of Lydia, who was born with a talent for games such as bridge and backgammon and gin rummy, a talent she swore was hereditary and even more p.r.o.nounced in our father, Peck imagined she was so good at the game she could take her backgammon prowess to Monte Carlo, where the real money was.

"You can make a cool fifty grand in a few nights in that place," she was telling me as I beat her soundly in the first game and we repositioned the pieces for another round. I wondered if Finn would show up.

We played another game and then another as Peck kept screaming and cursing and standing up dramatically as though she was just going to walk away from the table in disgust. Evidently her losses gave her pause, because she reconsidered her desire to travel to Monte Carlo to make the money to keep Fool's House and devised another plan. "Am I too old to become a hooker?"