Endless Summer, page 28
“Why, yes!” Genevieve says in a surprisingly bright tone. “I’m the floor manager in women’s fashion at Murray’s Toggery. I won employee of the week for selling the most Pappagallo.”
Jessica blinks. “So you’re not working?”
“Grammy set me up with two interviews, one at the needlepoint shop and one at the watercolor gallery,” Genevieve says. She arches an eyebrow, also pierced. “I’m not working.”
“What about your boyfriend?” Jessie says. “Are you still with the drummer?”
They’re at the top of Main Street, and the Scout judders over the cobblestones in a way that feels violent.
“Mouth?” Genevieve says. “I’m not sure.”
Jessie clenches her jaw until they reach the smoother terrain of Madaket Road. A drummer named Mouth in a band called Fungus. It dawns on her that this is probably the meaning behind the toadstool tattoo. “What does that mean, you’re not sure?”
“Well,” Genevieve says. “He has a wife.”
Jessie waits a beat to see if Genevieve is joking about this the way she was joking about selling Pappagallo, but then Jessie notices Genevieve’s eyes filling with tears, and the Scout swerves over the center line. When Jessie instinctively reaches for the wheel, Genevieve yanks it away like it’s a toy Jessie is trying to steal. “Why don’t you pull over?” Jessie says. “I can drive.” Madaket Road famously has twenty-seven curves and they’re only at number one.
“I can drive!” Genevieve says, though mascara-darkened tears are streaking her whitish foundation.
“Gennie, please,” Jessie says. She points to the parking lot at Sanford Farm up ahead. With a huff, Genevieve smacks her hand down on the turn signal and whips them in.
After they switch places, Genevieve releases great, hiccupy sobs and Jessie reaches over to rub her niece’s shoulder. Jessie’s only thirteen years older than Genevieve, so she feels like she’s in a unique position to impart some wisdom. She has experienced her own heartbreak; the first time was with Pick the summer that Genevieve and George were born. Jessie fell for Pick the instant she laid eyes on him—he was making a BLT in their guest cottage, Little Fair—and later that summer, he had been her first kiss. But then Pick started dating a girl he worked with at the North Shore restaurant. Even now, after Jessie and Pick have been together for ten years—three dating, seven living together—Jessie can still recall the specific nature of that pain, so fresh and intense it was nearly beautiful.
Then, years later, as a student at NYU’s law school, Jessie had suffered through a breakup with Theo Feigelbaum, which left her more angry than sad.
“I know how you feel,” Jessie says.
Genevieve’s laugh is a single, startling gunshot. “You don’t.”
“Fair enough,” Jessie says. “But I can promise you, you won’t always feel this bad. You’ll meet someone else—”
“I don’t want anyone else!”
Jessie nods—she’s doing a terrible job here, throwing gasoline on the smoldering fire of Genevieve’s emotions with every word that comes out of her mouth. Let it go, she thinks. She doesn’t need to take on Genevieve’s drama; she’ll have enough on her hands when she tells her mother the news. But when Jessie turns the key in the ignition, she hears faint, familiar strains of a song she loves, and she turns it up. Then, as a symbolic gesture, she releases her hair from its tight professional bun and pulls out onto Madaket Road. She wants to create a cinematic moment—two young women driving along a curvy island road, wind in their hair, singing at the top of their lungs: She drives me crazy! And I can’t help myself!
But Jessie’s fantasy fizzles when Genevieve switches the radio off.
“I hate that song.”
Jessie tries not to take offense. Genevieve probably listens to bands Jessie has never heard of; she has a sense that in the world of punk, to be authentic is to be obscure. But in Genevieve’s determination to be disagreeable, Jessie hears a cry for help, and Jessie decides that, no matter what it takes, she will find a way to bond with her niece. She will forge a real connection this weekend. She will become Genevieve’s trusted person, a mentor, a life raft.
Genevieve says something Jessie doesn’t hear. “What’s that?” Jessie says. She slows the car a bit.
“I said, I wish Aunt Kirby had come. She’s so cool.”
Jessie blinks. Kirby, whom none of them have heard from in months and who didn’t bother returning the urgent message Jessie left on her answering machine, is cool?
Jessie takes the next curve so fast that Genevieve grabs the dashboard and Jessie thinks, Who’s cool now?
“Dude!” Genevieve cries out.
“There are still twenty-five curves left before home,” Jessie says. “Better buckle up.” Then she comes to her senses and eases off the gas. It’s amazing how quickly being with her family has turned Jessie back into a child.
2. LOVE SHACK
It’s nearly midnight when George and Sallie reach All’s Fair. The street is poorly lit, the neighbors’ windows are all dark, and when George lifts the welcome mat, he can’t find the key. His kingdom for a flashlight. The key must be there somewhere, but when George gets down on his knees and runs his hands over the damp wooden deck boards beneath the mat, he feels nothing but pill bugs, which make him snap back in a way that is seriously uncool, and he mustn’t appear uncool in any way in front of Sallie.
“I’m not sure what’s happening,” George says. “The key is always there. It’s been there for the past forty years.”
Sallie shifts the bag from Savenor’s in her arms—she insisted on bringing sun-dried tomatoes and the Iberian ham that she likes—and says, “Is there another way in?”
George now regrets stopping at the Club Car for martinis on their way from the ferry. He had three drinks to Sallie’s one, using the Kentucky driver’s license of an older clerk in Welby’s office. (The bartender had frowned at it and said, “Is this thing real?,” to which George responded in what he believed to be a convincing bourbon-and-racehorse drawl, “What do y’all think?”) When he ordered the third martini, Sallie put a maternal hand on his back and asked if he was nervous and he said, “Why would I be?” It had become a strategy of his to answer questions with questions; it threw people off, put them on the defensive, or so he liked to believe.
“You’re an adult, George,” Sallie said. She held up her empty glass to him. “Almost twenty years old.” Her eyes flicked to the bartender. “I mean, twenty-two, plenty old enough to bring a woman home for your family to meet.”
Plenty old enough has been a favorite phrase of Sallie’s since they secretly started seeing each other six weeks ago. George was interning for Congressman Welby in the offices on Sudbury Street. George’s buddy Raymond (whose ID George was using) had set him up on a blind date with his cousin Dana, an assistant to Governor Dukakis. George wasn’t sure how he felt about dating a Democrat, but in the snapshot Raymond showed him, Cousin Dana looked a little bit like Phoebe Cates, so George agreed to meet her at a bar behind the statehouse called the Twenty-First Amendment.
When George walked into the bar—not as confidently as he might have because it was his first time using the ID—he heard someone call his name.
“Is that George Whalen?”
The bar was crowded, dark, and smoky, and the clientele were dressed in a style George thought of as “state government,” which wasn’t as upscale as “federal government.” (George was the only person in the place wearing a bow tie and suspenders.) He glanced around, thinking the voice must belong to Cousin Dana, but his eyes landed on a very attractive redhead smoking a cigarette and drinking a martini.
George blinked. It was not just any attractive redhead, he realized. It was his mother’s best friend, Sallie Forrester—and George’s first instinct was to walk right out, because Sallie was only too aware that George was underage. Sallie must have read his mind, because she beckoned him forward with an elegantly manicured finger, and when he was within reach, she yanked one of his suspenders and murmured in his ear, “Don’t worry, Georgie, I won’t tell.” Instantly, George got an erection. This was Sallie, whom George had fantasized about all through puberty. He used to stroke himself upstairs as Sallie and his mother and Joey Whalen and whatever thug Sallie was dating—she had a penchant for thugs—sat downstairs drinking martinis and smoking. George used to imagine Sallie excusing herself for the ladies’ room, sneaking upstairs to George’s room, ducking her head under his covers, and pleasuring him with her mouth.
It was powerful stuff, and George found himself captive to his old horniness now. He should say goodbye and go find Cousin Dana. Better Phoebe Cates than Anne Bancroft.
“Sit down, George, you cutie,” Sallie said. “Let’s get you a drink.”
When George ordered a Sam Adams, his voice cracked—he had unwittingly reverted right back to his fifteen-year-old self—but the bartender didn’t notice or didn’t care. He probably thought Sallie was George’s mother or aunt. He set a sweating bottle of beer in front of George and said, “Buck fifty.”
“Put it on my tab, Matthew,” Sallie said. “And bring him something stronger. Shot of Wild Turkey.”
It had been the most transformative night of George’s life. At first, George figured Sallie was plying him with alcohol so that he would talk about his family. She asked him what he “really” thought of Joey Whalen. (Sallie thought he was a snake. “He made a habit of pinching my behind when Blair wasn’t looking. It came as no surprise he was keeping a piece of French toast up in Montreal.”) The shot of whiskey had loosened George; if Sallie wanted confidences, he was happy to oblige. There was a way, George told her, in which Joey’s presence in their lives had always felt temporary. He traveled a lot for work in his position with Nestlé—he had done such a good job with Stouffer’s that they’d put him in charge of the national accounts for Hot Pockets, hoping he would work the same magic—so Joey’s presence at home always felt like a special occasion. Joey took George to car shows, where he routinely chatted up the foxy women showcasing the Shelby Cobras, and Patriots games, where he “rated” the cheerleaders. George understood all this as part of Joey’s persona—that he was more than a salesman; he was a connoisseur of the finer things.
George had no lasting beef with his uncle (he could never quite bring himself to use the term stepfather). Besides, Blair had changed in the years since she’d been married to Joey—hadn’t Sallie noticed? She’d become “career-driven.” She was determined to get her doctorate, to publish papers, to get tenure!
“Yes,” Sallie said, exhaling a stream of smoke sideways from her strawberry-red lips. “I’ve been a good influence on her.”
Right—Sallie was a Working Girl. She was a vice president at Fidelity and had her own secretary, a man. She’d conceived her son, Michael, by using a sperm donor, and she was raising him alone; he was now freshman-class president and captain of the JV basketball team at Buckingham Browne and Nichols. Sallie had courtside Celtics tickets—she handled investments for Larry Bird—and she drove an Aston Martin that had a phone in it.
Next, Sallie asked George about Genevieve. “What is going on with her, exactly? Please don’t mince words.”
Don’t mince words? George thought. Okay, she’s a screwup. Their mother liked to say that the Challenger explosion had messed with Genevieve’s head, but really, George knew, the problem lay deeper than that. Their parents’ divorce, their brief move to Houston—where the fourth-grade girls had teased Genevieve mercilessly about her “accent” and then crucified her further when she tried to speak like them—and their mother’s marriage to their uncle had all taken a bite out of Genevieve’s self-esteem, and now it resembled a moth-eaten rag. She was far smarter than George—he was the first to admit that—but she was fragile, whereas George was sturdy. If he’d been bitter about not being admitted to a single Ivy, while Genevieve was accepted at three, this feeling quickly dissipated when he realized that, although he might not have as much elite intelligence, he had the people skills he needed to be successful.
But was he charming enough to seduce his mother’s best friend?
Apparently so. The evening at the Twenty-First Amendment ended with Sallie inviting George back to her apartment on Stuart Street for a nightcap (Michael was sleeping at a friend’s house out in Sherborn). As soon as they walked in the door, Sallie removed George’s jacket, slipped off his suspenders… and the rest of the night was plucked straight from his fifteen-year-old self’s fantasies. When he woke up the next morning, Sallie was wearing only his bow tie.
Their union was scandalous. They acknowledged this fact the next morning over tiny cups of espresso Sallie made in an Italian machine that sounded like a Lamborghini. Their hookup would have been outrageous even if Sallie hadn’t been Blair’s best friend. George was only nineteen! He was only six years older than Sallie’s son!
“But men do this,” Sallie said. “All the time. A forty-three-year-old dude and a nineteen-year-old chick—does anyone bat an eye?”
“You’re right,” George said. He’d assumed this was a crazy one-night stand, but what Sallie seemed to be indicating was that it could be something more. George wanted it to be so much more! He was gobsmacked not only by Sallie’s beauty but by her sophistication, her wit, her intellect, her success, her self-confidence. Girls like Cousin Dana were… well, girls. Sallie was a paragon of womanhood. She could easily grace the cover of Redbook.
Before George left Sallie’s apartment, she kissed him and said, “Let’s see what happens, shall we? But for now, not a word to anyone.”
Not a word to anyone. Let’s see what happens. George’s elation quickly fermented. He understood he couldn’t contact Sallie first; he would have to wait for her to reach out. One day passed, two days, three days. Had the night even happened? Raymond was pissed that George stood up Cousin Dana and demanded his license back, forcing George to lie and say he’d lost it (because what if Sallie did call and George needed to meet her at a bar?). Day four passed—the image of George’s mouth on Sallie’s milky-white breast was fading, and doubt crept in. Had his lovemaking been subpar? (He’d had sex with only two other girls: his high-school sweetheart, Bethany, and some chick from Pine Manor named Caroline when they were both very drunk.) Sallie had dated all kinds of men, and the ones George remembered were giants—tall, broad, muscle-bound (and, he assumed, well-endowed). How could George compare?
Day five. A call came into George’s work phone just as George was about to leave for the day and take his frustrations out by playing rugby against some of the Harvard guys who worked for Tip O’Neill. It was Sallie, calling from her car. Michael had successfully finished his year at BB&N and she’d just put him on a bus to Camp Winona in Bridgton, Maine, for the summer.
“I’m a free woman,” Sallie said. “Want to get a pizza?”
In the six weeks that followed, there was pizza, sex, drinks at the Copley Plaza, a Red Sox game, sex, a matinée of Dead Poets Society sneaked in during lunchtime on a workday, sex, canoeing on Walden Pond, a tour of Louisa May Alcott’s house, sex, a trip to the top of the Pru, sex, a wine-soaked dinner at Biba, sex, the Degas exhibit at the MFA, a ride on the Swan Boats in the Public Garden, sex—and a (by then) nostalgic visit to the Twenty-First Amendment, where George told Sallie he would be celebrating his twentieth birthday on Nantucket with his family.
“But not your mother,” Sallie said. “She’s in Paris.”
“Right. It’ll be my sister, Aunt Jessie, Uncle Tiger and Aunt Magee and their kids, and my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother has always liked me,” Sallie said. She eased an olive off the toothpick with her lips in a mesmerizing way. “I should come with you.”
George thought she was kidding. Their affair was completely secret, and now Sallie was talking about telling his family? Preposterous. But she brought it up again that night in bed, saying that it was the perfect opportunity to bring the relationship out into the light.
“It’ll be better without Blair around,” Sallie said. “Better for her to hear about it after the rest of your family has accepted it.”
George laughed. The rest of his family wasn’t going to accept it. His aunt and uncle might be okay with it, but his sister, no. His grandmother, no.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” George said.
“Of course it’s a good idea,” Sallie said in a way that let George know the decision had been made. “You’re plenty old enough.”
Is there another way into All’s Fair? George wonders now.
“I’ll try the back door,” he says with more confidence than he feels. He can’t believe the key isn’t under the mat; in his mind, that key was as constant and unmovable as the Civil War monument at the top of Main Street. “You stay here.” He heads down the block and around the corner, past the guest cottage, Little Fair, and through the gate into the backyard. This would be so much easier with a flashlight. He presses the button on his digital watch and the face glows a ghostly green that provides just enough light to lead him first to the front door of Little Fair (locked) and then across the lawn and brick patio to the back door of All’s Fair (also locked).
George wants to scream. This is so humiliating! He can’t get into his own house!
Well, it’s not exactly “his” house, nor is it the house where he’s expected. He’s expected at a house six miles west on Red Barn Road. All’s Fair is the family’s “in-town residence,” and ever since the caretaker, Mr. Crimmins, died a few years earlier, it has been used for overflow family, which normally meant Blair, Joey Whalen, and the twins. (George’s grandmother Kate didn’t quite approve of Blair’s marriage to Joey, and sticking her in the fusty old Fair Street house was one way of showing it.)
George knows that his grandmother has made up a room for him at the big beach house, but he made a decision on the ferry to stay at All’s Fair instead. He told his grandmother only that he’s bringing “a new girlfriend.” She has no idea it’s Sallie Forrester.
Jessica blinks. “So you’re not working?”
“Grammy set me up with two interviews, one at the needlepoint shop and one at the watercolor gallery,” Genevieve says. She arches an eyebrow, also pierced. “I’m not working.”
“What about your boyfriend?” Jessie says. “Are you still with the drummer?”
They’re at the top of Main Street, and the Scout judders over the cobblestones in a way that feels violent.
“Mouth?” Genevieve says. “I’m not sure.”
Jessie clenches her jaw until they reach the smoother terrain of Madaket Road. A drummer named Mouth in a band called Fungus. It dawns on her that this is probably the meaning behind the toadstool tattoo. “What does that mean, you’re not sure?”
“Well,” Genevieve says. “He has a wife.”
Jessie waits a beat to see if Genevieve is joking about this the way she was joking about selling Pappagallo, but then Jessie notices Genevieve’s eyes filling with tears, and the Scout swerves over the center line. When Jessie instinctively reaches for the wheel, Genevieve yanks it away like it’s a toy Jessie is trying to steal. “Why don’t you pull over?” Jessie says. “I can drive.” Madaket Road famously has twenty-seven curves and they’re only at number one.
“I can drive!” Genevieve says, though mascara-darkened tears are streaking her whitish foundation.
“Gennie, please,” Jessie says. She points to the parking lot at Sanford Farm up ahead. With a huff, Genevieve smacks her hand down on the turn signal and whips them in.
After they switch places, Genevieve releases great, hiccupy sobs and Jessie reaches over to rub her niece’s shoulder. Jessie’s only thirteen years older than Genevieve, so she feels like she’s in a unique position to impart some wisdom. She has experienced her own heartbreak; the first time was with Pick the summer that Genevieve and George were born. Jessie fell for Pick the instant she laid eyes on him—he was making a BLT in their guest cottage, Little Fair—and later that summer, he had been her first kiss. But then Pick started dating a girl he worked with at the North Shore restaurant. Even now, after Jessie and Pick have been together for ten years—three dating, seven living together—Jessie can still recall the specific nature of that pain, so fresh and intense it was nearly beautiful.
Then, years later, as a student at NYU’s law school, Jessie had suffered through a breakup with Theo Feigelbaum, which left her more angry than sad.
“I know how you feel,” Jessie says.
Genevieve’s laugh is a single, startling gunshot. “You don’t.”
“Fair enough,” Jessie says. “But I can promise you, you won’t always feel this bad. You’ll meet someone else—”
“I don’t want anyone else!”
Jessie nods—she’s doing a terrible job here, throwing gasoline on the smoldering fire of Genevieve’s emotions with every word that comes out of her mouth. Let it go, she thinks. She doesn’t need to take on Genevieve’s drama; she’ll have enough on her hands when she tells her mother the news. But when Jessie turns the key in the ignition, she hears faint, familiar strains of a song she loves, and she turns it up. Then, as a symbolic gesture, she releases her hair from its tight professional bun and pulls out onto Madaket Road. She wants to create a cinematic moment—two young women driving along a curvy island road, wind in their hair, singing at the top of their lungs: She drives me crazy! And I can’t help myself!
But Jessie’s fantasy fizzles when Genevieve switches the radio off.
“I hate that song.”
Jessie tries not to take offense. Genevieve probably listens to bands Jessie has never heard of; she has a sense that in the world of punk, to be authentic is to be obscure. But in Genevieve’s determination to be disagreeable, Jessie hears a cry for help, and Jessie decides that, no matter what it takes, she will find a way to bond with her niece. She will forge a real connection this weekend. She will become Genevieve’s trusted person, a mentor, a life raft.
Genevieve says something Jessie doesn’t hear. “What’s that?” Jessie says. She slows the car a bit.
“I said, I wish Aunt Kirby had come. She’s so cool.”
Jessie blinks. Kirby, whom none of them have heard from in months and who didn’t bother returning the urgent message Jessie left on her answering machine, is cool?
Jessie takes the next curve so fast that Genevieve grabs the dashboard and Jessie thinks, Who’s cool now?
“Dude!” Genevieve cries out.
“There are still twenty-five curves left before home,” Jessie says. “Better buckle up.” Then she comes to her senses and eases off the gas. It’s amazing how quickly being with her family has turned Jessie back into a child.
2. LOVE SHACK
It’s nearly midnight when George and Sallie reach All’s Fair. The street is poorly lit, the neighbors’ windows are all dark, and when George lifts the welcome mat, he can’t find the key. His kingdom for a flashlight. The key must be there somewhere, but when George gets down on his knees and runs his hands over the damp wooden deck boards beneath the mat, he feels nothing but pill bugs, which make him snap back in a way that is seriously uncool, and he mustn’t appear uncool in any way in front of Sallie.
“I’m not sure what’s happening,” George says. “The key is always there. It’s been there for the past forty years.”
Sallie shifts the bag from Savenor’s in her arms—she insisted on bringing sun-dried tomatoes and the Iberian ham that she likes—and says, “Is there another way in?”
George now regrets stopping at the Club Car for martinis on their way from the ferry. He had three drinks to Sallie’s one, using the Kentucky driver’s license of an older clerk in Welby’s office. (The bartender had frowned at it and said, “Is this thing real?,” to which George responded in what he believed to be a convincing bourbon-and-racehorse drawl, “What do y’all think?”) When he ordered the third martini, Sallie put a maternal hand on his back and asked if he was nervous and he said, “Why would I be?” It had become a strategy of his to answer questions with questions; it threw people off, put them on the defensive, or so he liked to believe.
“You’re an adult, George,” Sallie said. She held up her empty glass to him. “Almost twenty years old.” Her eyes flicked to the bartender. “I mean, twenty-two, plenty old enough to bring a woman home for your family to meet.”
Plenty old enough has been a favorite phrase of Sallie’s since they secretly started seeing each other six weeks ago. George was interning for Congressman Welby in the offices on Sudbury Street. George’s buddy Raymond (whose ID George was using) had set him up on a blind date with his cousin Dana, an assistant to Governor Dukakis. George wasn’t sure how he felt about dating a Democrat, but in the snapshot Raymond showed him, Cousin Dana looked a little bit like Phoebe Cates, so George agreed to meet her at a bar behind the statehouse called the Twenty-First Amendment.
When George walked into the bar—not as confidently as he might have because it was his first time using the ID—he heard someone call his name.
“Is that George Whalen?”
The bar was crowded, dark, and smoky, and the clientele were dressed in a style George thought of as “state government,” which wasn’t as upscale as “federal government.” (George was the only person in the place wearing a bow tie and suspenders.) He glanced around, thinking the voice must belong to Cousin Dana, but his eyes landed on a very attractive redhead smoking a cigarette and drinking a martini.
George blinked. It was not just any attractive redhead, he realized. It was his mother’s best friend, Sallie Forrester—and George’s first instinct was to walk right out, because Sallie was only too aware that George was underage. Sallie must have read his mind, because she beckoned him forward with an elegantly manicured finger, and when he was within reach, she yanked one of his suspenders and murmured in his ear, “Don’t worry, Georgie, I won’t tell.” Instantly, George got an erection. This was Sallie, whom George had fantasized about all through puberty. He used to stroke himself upstairs as Sallie and his mother and Joey Whalen and whatever thug Sallie was dating—she had a penchant for thugs—sat downstairs drinking martinis and smoking. George used to imagine Sallie excusing herself for the ladies’ room, sneaking upstairs to George’s room, ducking her head under his covers, and pleasuring him with her mouth.
It was powerful stuff, and George found himself captive to his old horniness now. He should say goodbye and go find Cousin Dana. Better Phoebe Cates than Anne Bancroft.
“Sit down, George, you cutie,” Sallie said. “Let’s get you a drink.”
When George ordered a Sam Adams, his voice cracked—he had unwittingly reverted right back to his fifteen-year-old self—but the bartender didn’t notice or didn’t care. He probably thought Sallie was George’s mother or aunt. He set a sweating bottle of beer in front of George and said, “Buck fifty.”
“Put it on my tab, Matthew,” Sallie said. “And bring him something stronger. Shot of Wild Turkey.”
It had been the most transformative night of George’s life. At first, George figured Sallie was plying him with alcohol so that he would talk about his family. She asked him what he “really” thought of Joey Whalen. (Sallie thought he was a snake. “He made a habit of pinching my behind when Blair wasn’t looking. It came as no surprise he was keeping a piece of French toast up in Montreal.”) The shot of whiskey had loosened George; if Sallie wanted confidences, he was happy to oblige. There was a way, George told her, in which Joey’s presence in their lives had always felt temporary. He traveled a lot for work in his position with Nestlé—he had done such a good job with Stouffer’s that they’d put him in charge of the national accounts for Hot Pockets, hoping he would work the same magic—so Joey’s presence at home always felt like a special occasion. Joey took George to car shows, where he routinely chatted up the foxy women showcasing the Shelby Cobras, and Patriots games, where he “rated” the cheerleaders. George understood all this as part of Joey’s persona—that he was more than a salesman; he was a connoisseur of the finer things.
George had no lasting beef with his uncle (he could never quite bring himself to use the term stepfather). Besides, Blair had changed in the years since she’d been married to Joey—hadn’t Sallie noticed? She’d become “career-driven.” She was determined to get her doctorate, to publish papers, to get tenure!
“Yes,” Sallie said, exhaling a stream of smoke sideways from her strawberry-red lips. “I’ve been a good influence on her.”
Right—Sallie was a Working Girl. She was a vice president at Fidelity and had her own secretary, a man. She’d conceived her son, Michael, by using a sperm donor, and she was raising him alone; he was now freshman-class president and captain of the JV basketball team at Buckingham Browne and Nichols. Sallie had courtside Celtics tickets—she handled investments for Larry Bird—and she drove an Aston Martin that had a phone in it.
Next, Sallie asked George about Genevieve. “What is going on with her, exactly? Please don’t mince words.”
Don’t mince words? George thought. Okay, she’s a screwup. Their mother liked to say that the Challenger explosion had messed with Genevieve’s head, but really, George knew, the problem lay deeper than that. Their parents’ divorce, their brief move to Houston—where the fourth-grade girls had teased Genevieve mercilessly about her “accent” and then crucified her further when she tried to speak like them—and their mother’s marriage to their uncle had all taken a bite out of Genevieve’s self-esteem, and now it resembled a moth-eaten rag. She was far smarter than George—he was the first to admit that—but she was fragile, whereas George was sturdy. If he’d been bitter about not being admitted to a single Ivy, while Genevieve was accepted at three, this feeling quickly dissipated when he realized that, although he might not have as much elite intelligence, he had the people skills he needed to be successful.
But was he charming enough to seduce his mother’s best friend?
Apparently so. The evening at the Twenty-First Amendment ended with Sallie inviting George back to her apartment on Stuart Street for a nightcap (Michael was sleeping at a friend’s house out in Sherborn). As soon as they walked in the door, Sallie removed George’s jacket, slipped off his suspenders… and the rest of the night was plucked straight from his fifteen-year-old self’s fantasies. When he woke up the next morning, Sallie was wearing only his bow tie.
Their union was scandalous. They acknowledged this fact the next morning over tiny cups of espresso Sallie made in an Italian machine that sounded like a Lamborghini. Their hookup would have been outrageous even if Sallie hadn’t been Blair’s best friend. George was only nineteen! He was only six years older than Sallie’s son!
“But men do this,” Sallie said. “All the time. A forty-three-year-old dude and a nineteen-year-old chick—does anyone bat an eye?”
“You’re right,” George said. He’d assumed this was a crazy one-night stand, but what Sallie seemed to be indicating was that it could be something more. George wanted it to be so much more! He was gobsmacked not only by Sallie’s beauty but by her sophistication, her wit, her intellect, her success, her self-confidence. Girls like Cousin Dana were… well, girls. Sallie was a paragon of womanhood. She could easily grace the cover of Redbook.
Before George left Sallie’s apartment, she kissed him and said, “Let’s see what happens, shall we? But for now, not a word to anyone.”
Not a word to anyone. Let’s see what happens. George’s elation quickly fermented. He understood he couldn’t contact Sallie first; he would have to wait for her to reach out. One day passed, two days, three days. Had the night even happened? Raymond was pissed that George stood up Cousin Dana and demanded his license back, forcing George to lie and say he’d lost it (because what if Sallie did call and George needed to meet her at a bar?). Day four passed—the image of George’s mouth on Sallie’s milky-white breast was fading, and doubt crept in. Had his lovemaking been subpar? (He’d had sex with only two other girls: his high-school sweetheart, Bethany, and some chick from Pine Manor named Caroline when they were both very drunk.) Sallie had dated all kinds of men, and the ones George remembered were giants—tall, broad, muscle-bound (and, he assumed, well-endowed). How could George compare?
Day five. A call came into George’s work phone just as George was about to leave for the day and take his frustrations out by playing rugby against some of the Harvard guys who worked for Tip O’Neill. It was Sallie, calling from her car. Michael had successfully finished his year at BB&N and she’d just put him on a bus to Camp Winona in Bridgton, Maine, for the summer.
“I’m a free woman,” Sallie said. “Want to get a pizza?”
In the six weeks that followed, there was pizza, sex, drinks at the Copley Plaza, a Red Sox game, sex, a matinée of Dead Poets Society sneaked in during lunchtime on a workday, sex, canoeing on Walden Pond, a tour of Louisa May Alcott’s house, sex, a trip to the top of the Pru, sex, a wine-soaked dinner at Biba, sex, the Degas exhibit at the MFA, a ride on the Swan Boats in the Public Garden, sex—and a (by then) nostalgic visit to the Twenty-First Amendment, where George told Sallie he would be celebrating his twentieth birthday on Nantucket with his family.
“But not your mother,” Sallie said. “She’s in Paris.”
“Right. It’ll be my sister, Aunt Jessie, Uncle Tiger and Aunt Magee and their kids, and my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother has always liked me,” Sallie said. She eased an olive off the toothpick with her lips in a mesmerizing way. “I should come with you.”
George thought she was kidding. Their affair was completely secret, and now Sallie was talking about telling his family? Preposterous. But she brought it up again that night in bed, saying that it was the perfect opportunity to bring the relationship out into the light.
“It’ll be better without Blair around,” Sallie said. “Better for her to hear about it after the rest of your family has accepted it.”
George laughed. The rest of his family wasn’t going to accept it. His aunt and uncle might be okay with it, but his sister, no. His grandmother, no.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” George said.
“Of course it’s a good idea,” Sallie said in a way that let George know the decision had been made. “You’re plenty old enough.”
Is there another way into All’s Fair? George wonders now.
“I’ll try the back door,” he says with more confidence than he feels. He can’t believe the key isn’t under the mat; in his mind, that key was as constant and unmovable as the Civil War monument at the top of Main Street. “You stay here.” He heads down the block and around the corner, past the guest cottage, Little Fair, and through the gate into the backyard. This would be so much easier with a flashlight. He presses the button on his digital watch and the face glows a ghostly green that provides just enough light to lead him first to the front door of Little Fair (locked) and then across the lawn and brick patio to the back door of All’s Fair (also locked).
George wants to scream. This is so humiliating! He can’t get into his own house!
Well, it’s not exactly “his” house, nor is it the house where he’s expected. He’s expected at a house six miles west on Red Barn Road. All’s Fair is the family’s “in-town residence,” and ever since the caretaker, Mr. Crimmins, died a few years earlier, it has been used for overflow family, which normally meant Blair, Joey Whalen, and the twins. (George’s grandmother Kate didn’t quite approve of Blair’s marriage to Joey, and sticking her in the fusty old Fair Street house was one way of showing it.)
George knows that his grandmother has made up a room for him at the big beach house, but he made a decision on the ferry to stay at All’s Fair instead. He told his grandmother only that he’s bringing “a new girlfriend.” She has no idea it’s Sallie Forrester.
