Summer Darlings Page 23

  “I don’t have that kind of time.” Heddy cleared her throat. “Sorry. There are some things I haven’t said. Important things.”

  Gigi reached for Heddy’s cheeks, cradling them in her palms, looking deep into her eyes, like she might kiss her. “I’ve been playing along with you, sugar pie, about this husband stuff. But listen to me: Discovering who you are isn’t about finding love. That’s about the only real truth I know in this wretched world, and I’m still trying to learn it.”

  The rims of Heddy’s eyes began to burn, and all she could imagine was her eyeliner. That it might run down her face, staining her cheeks with thick streaks of black. “But what if I…”

  Gigi used her hands to push Heddy’s bangs into place. “There, there, dear. All I’m saying is: Why not figure out what you want first? You don’t want to become one of these vacant-eyed housewives slow dancing with your vacuum every afternoon.” She motioned her hands around, disgusted with the sight of everyone before her, a queen shooing away peasants. “You could be more than this. You want to be a writer? Start writing, send me a script.”

  A song picked up, a fast-tempo jazz number, which made Heddy think of Sullivan. She fidgeted with the hem of her dress, wondering if he was here, worrying that he was. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

  Gigi kissed her cheek, and Heddy stood. “If only I had someone like me at your age,” Gigi said, swatting her away. “Go find him. And don’t forget our little trick.” Gigi shook her breasts, which seemed to excite the men waiting for her on the sidelines. They swooped in, angling for a spot next to the movie star. Gigi eased into them, gushing in their admiration.

  With sunset, the sky turned indigo, and all at once a dozen chandeliers illuminated over the patio, casting the party in an amber glow. Men in tuxedoes balancing shiny silver trays zigzagged through the guests while the swimming pool glowed with underwater lights. Heddy found Ash near the bar, arm in arm with Susanne, her husband holding a drink for a toast, all of them laughing.

  A freckled waiter sidestepped to face her, a large, pleasing smile on his face. “Triscuit with cream cheese, salmon, and pimento?” The waiter bowed, like the food was something prepared especially for her to consume. I’m being mistaken for someone with money. She’d approached the women at the country club when she used to cater like this, like they were a species that needed special attention. Heddy reached for a cocktail napkin and took one of the hors d’oeuvres.

  She made her way through the crowd to look for Jean-Rose, who was near a gazebo strung with lights, talking to two women.

  “There you are! Everyone has been asking about the mysterious woman in the red dress.” Jean-Rose opened her arms in an embrace. “Have you all met our superstar babysitter?”

  A woman with long dark waves pushed to one side with jeweled combs, offered a slender hand: “Abigail Rhodes.”

  Sullivan’s mother. The other, holding a notepad and pencil, looked Heddy up and down: “I’m Estelle Pintard. I write the Around the Town column for Abigail’s paper.” Then: “A babysitter wearing Oleg Cassini? Impressive.” She scribbled something. “Do you mind if I take a photo for the paper?”

  “That’s Jackie’s favorite designer.” Jean-Rose scoffed, running her hand along Heddy’s skirt, looking seduced by the feel of it. She put her arm around Heddy for the photograph.

  Estelle, whose nose was as pointed as her tone, dropped her gaze to Heddy’s shoes. “Where on earth did you get special-edition Chanel? Jean-Rose, you treat your help very well.”

  Heddy looked at Jean-Rose for assistance—should she say that it was all Gigi’s? No: Fake it till you make it, as Grandma said when she left for Wellesley.

  “Thank you, ma’am. I borrowed it all from a friend.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call her a friend.” Jean-Rose looked toward Gigi, and Estelle wrote something else in her notebook. Her wrinkled lips had flecks of dried mauve lipstick in the creases.

  The music stopped, and Gigi took the microphone. Her husky voice welcomed “the Vineyard’s most beautiful people to the season’s most beautiful party.”

  “She always sounds like there’s a frog in her throat,” Jean-Rose whispered to Abigail, who snickered.

  Abigail, a triple strand of diamonds hugging her neck, shared Sullivan’s baby face and turned to Heddy when Gigi’s speech was over. “Jean-Rose says you’re a Wellesley girl. I graduated in ’forty-one.”

  Heddy looked around the glowing pool for Sullivan—she hoped he wasn’t there tonight, that he hadn’t seen her with Ash.

  “I begin my senior year in the fall.” A blatant lie. What if she knew? What if she was on the Wellesley board and had a list of students who’d lost their scholarships?

  “Are you studying for a Mrs. degree?” Abigail snorted. The waves in her hair were a cascade of coiffed hills and valleys. “Peter and I married my junior year, and I was pregnant by graduation.”

  Heddy smiled. “I’m just trying to keep my nose in the books.”

  “I’m sure you are.” The woman grimaced, glancing at Estelle, but the reporter was impatient, tapping her foot.

  Estelle rolled the pencil between her fingers. “I thought you said Cary Grant was coming.”

  Jean-Rose pretended to look for him. “He’ll be here. Gigi said he was running late.”

  Heddy took in Jean-Rose’s blush-colored evening gown, a stunning, fanned bosom casting an accordion of delicate silk against her chest. Hanging from her wrist was a shimmering golden cuff.

  “You always manage to look perfect,” she told her boss, sad that she had to stand here and pretend the night before didn’t happen.

  Jean-Rose feigned modesty, pushing a bobby pin deeper into her braided bun. “Why thank you, Heddy. You look lovely yourself. I love your pearls.”

  “They were my grandmother’s.” Her buzz made her want to tell Jean-Rose more, like how her grandmother gave them to her on her sixteenth birthday, that they were the finest thing she owned, and how she’d put them on the day of her high school graduation and wouldn’t take them off until she graduated from Wellesley, a symbol of her perseverance. Even after reading her rejection letter earlier tonight, she’d left them on.

  The drummer used his sticks to bang out a finale, finishing big with a slam on the cymbals. Everyone clapped.

  “I hope I got the right drink, Mother.” It was a man’s voice, and Heddy recognized his uncertain tone straightaway. She raised her punch to her lips, hand trembling. Sullivan, underdressed in khakis and a navy sports coat, stepped beside her in the circle, so close their elbows grazed. She felt him notice her, his eyes lingering on her profile, but he didn’t say hello. She gave him a sideways smile, not sure if he was angry with her. Her breath quickened, heat gathering up the nape of her neck.

  Jean-Rose nudged Heddy, wrinkling her nose. “I think you two know each other.”

  Sullivan shifted from one foot to the other, holding up his drink in toast. He sputtered. “Mother, this is the girl I told you about.”

  Heddy grinned. Here she was chasing Ash, and Sullivan had told his mother about her.

  Abigail tilted her head forward, blue shadow coloring her eyes, pasty with foundation. “We were getting acquainted. Sullivan didn’t want to come tonight—he’s always late, this one. I’m starting to suspect on purpose. But he cleans up well, doesn’t he? My handsome boy.” She reached for his face, but he smacked his mother’s hand away. She turned to Heddy. “Who was your friend at the bar?”

  “Mother, please.”

  Heddy filled with dread, realizing Abigail was addressing her, asking about Ash. “A friend from the beach. He’s teaching Teddy to surf.”

  “You seem to have many friends, Heddy,” Abigail said, causing the muscles in Heddy’s cheeks to twitch.

  Jean-Rose cleared her throat. “What are you doing this summer, Sullivan?”

  “Waiting at the the Clamshell. But I’m also teaching baseball at the town camp.” His voice brightened, and he glanced at Heddy
. His mother was right: without his glasses, Heddy could see how handsome he really was—full, round lips; hazel eyes.

  “You didn’t tell me you did that, too,” Heddy said, and he smiled at her.

  His mother clicked her tongue. “So curious, this one. Curious about everything but the paper. We’re going to have to give him the science pages.” Everyone laughed, except for Sullivan, who mouthed to Heddy: “See?”

  His mother winced. “Where is Peg? I’m sure she’d love a dance.”

  Heddy’s lip twitched. Was Peg here?

  “Mother, Peg and I are over. Long over.” He gave Heddy a cursory glance. She stared into her martini.

  Abigail shoved him in the chest. “Oh, Sully, go find your future bride. She doesn’t have complications, like some girls do.” Her eyes narrowed on Heddy.

  “Piss off, Mother.” Sullivan stormed off, his head low, and Heddy dashed after him. He ran up the steps into Gigi’s house, and she followed him until she felt a tap on her back. The smell of vanilla and citrus. She spun to find Ash, the crest of his chest leaning into her. The last few minutes washed away like the receding tide. She felt something close to awe. He’d come for her.

  A tickle of warm breath in her ear. “You’re a hard woman to track down. You think you’d be easy to spot in that red dress.”

  “Ash.” She wanted to hug him, to follow him to the dance floor and do the twist. Watch the fireworks from the gazebo on Gigi’s lawn. But Sullivan’s mother. She’d said those things, about Heddy being “complicated,” and Peg was here somewhere—his future bride—and Heddy felt ridiculous. “I have to go. This night. It’s been…”

  She wasn’t going to be someone’s punching bag. She didn’t need to take this assault on her character. She knew she didn’t belong here. Why did everyone else seem so intent on reminding her?

  Ash whispered in her ear: “I have to hang around for a half hour. I’ll meet you on the beach, near the path to my cottage.”

  A part of her wondered why he couldn’t leave now, why he wasn’t as lost in her as she was in him. But she supposed she was willing to wait thirty minutes if it meant spending more time with him, especially since the eye makeup, fancy red dress, and studied sex appeal had been for him. Sullivan was nowhere to be found, and she certainly wasn’t driving the island to hunt him down.

  “Okay,” she said, watching him disappear into a circle of tuxedoed men.

  * * *

  Heddy sat on a large piece of driftwood under a near full moon, listening for his footsteps down the beach for close to an hour. Had she misunderstood? Perhaps he meant they’d meet at his cottage—or maybe he changed his mind. The party was still going, the music sounding distant and faraway from here. She stared across a smooth plane of dark sea, watching lights flickering on the mainland.

  She heard footsteps and saw his form ambling toward her.

  “That took longer than expected,” Ash said, dropping his dress shoes in the sand; she’d already kicked off her heels.

  “I almost gave up on you,” she said. More than once.

  Ash skipped a stone into the sea. “The party took a turn. Susanne changed into her bikini and nearly lost it in a dive. Sally and Judy jumped in in their evening gowns, and Gigi made them do handstands for prizes. ‘Utter trash,’ one lady told me.” Ash was laughing. “They haven’t a care, these people, do they?”

  He put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

  “You were busy,” Heddy said. The truth was she was disappointed. No, she was mad. Why was he always with women like Jean-Rose and Susanne? She found a flat gray rock, throwing it like a discus, so it would skip over the surface of the sea, but it dropped into the deep after one bounce.

  “I’m sorry, kitty kit. I had to close a few deals. And it’s happening. Jean-Rose is signing on. She handed me the contract tonight. We got them, Heddy. That means we’ll get more.”

  We? Was she part of this?

  She hugged him, her frustration waning. Perhaps, someday they could be a team. “Congratulations. You did it.”

  “I’m going to get the money I need.” He picked up a flat rock and handed it to her. “This is how you skip a rock.” With Heddy gripping the stone, he pulled back her wrist and let her fling it. The press of his chest on her back made her breath slip. Her feet pivoted, and she spun in his embrace to face him, tilting her head up to meet his gaze. She noticed a small scar just above his lip, the tiny pores where he’d shaved.

  “What I need is a lesson in money,” she said, covering her eyes with her fingers. Ash gently moved her hands away, and she batted her lashes just once, a coy invitation that beckoned him to come closer. She imagined that her winged eye makeup was as sexy as Elizabeth Taylor’s in Cleopatra. That he might see her that way.

  “How can I help?” He ran his fingertip along the edges of her lips, parting her mouth. A buoy bell rocked with the waves. His nose brushed against the bridge of hers. She desperately wanted to kiss him. “People do crazy things to get money,” he said.

  She wondered what he’d say if he knew she needed more of it. But then she felt his lips press into hers, and she yielded, melting into him, tasting peppermint and molasses, perhaps from the whiskey. He dug his fingers into her hair, pulling her deeper toward him, and she shivered, from the inside out.

  When he pulled back, his lips were swollen and red. He took her hands, pressing his thumbs softly into her palms. “You’re quivering.” He kissed her again, satin spreading across her mouth, then drank in the sight of her.

  “I better get back,” she said, because she knew she didn’t want to get back at all.

  “You won’t get away that easy.” Ash jumped in front of her, walking backward while she walked toward home. “Are you free one night next week?”

  “It depends,” she flirted.

  “On what?”

  She listened to their footsteps kicking up sand. “On whether Jean-Rose and Ted have plans. I have off Fridays, sometimes I can get Monday nights off.”

  “Then try for Monday. I want to take you out on the water.”

  “I thought we were having lobster rolls,” she laughed. If she began spending more time with him, she’d have to stop calling Sullivan.

  “That will be our next date.” Ash turned to face her, using his finger to trace a line down her neck, stopping at her clavicle and letting it linger. At night, the sweet lines of the Williams house’s gingerbread lattice looked ominous, haunted.

  “This is you,” he said.

  She pulled on the pocket square in his suit. “This is me.”

  Ash reached for her hand, and she held it up to him. He leaned down and kissed the top of it, just below her bent knuckles, leaving behind an imprint that felt as definitive as a signature.

  “Can I have this?” She pulled out the pocket square, dangling it in front of his face.

  “What for?”

  “To keep a piece of you.” She knew that all of this—tonight—was a fantasy, that someone like Ash Porter would feel faraway from her life next year.

  “If it means something to you.”

  “Good night, Mr. Porter.”

  “Good night, kitty kit.”

  He chuckled, a bit giddy himself, and walked off in bare feet, the moon reflecting in the shiny dress shoes he carried in his hand.

  NINETEEN

  Heddy woke the following morning to Ruth standing over her, already in her apron. “So?”

  Heddy reached for the alarm clock on her nightstand, knocking off a book. “Ruth, it’s six in the morning.” She rubbed sleep out of her eyes.

  “Sorry, I promised Jean-Rose I’d make the sand muffins.” Sand muffins, as the kids called them, were Ruth’s specialty, banana nut.

  Heddy rolled over, slamming a feather pillow over her head.

  “Come on. Spill,” Ruth said. “I zonked yesterday.”

  When Heddy peeled back the pillow, she saw the dark circles under Ruth’s eyes, the anxious way she licked her lips. She worried if
things were getting worse at home.

  “It was a disaster. Actually, it was amazing. There were endless platters of shrimp cocktail, colorful drinks with little umbrellas floating in them, and at least three Hollywood directors wearing those thick black glasses. But the best part, the only part that matters really, is that Ash asked me to dance, and he walked me home, but…”

  Ruth got back in bed next to her, her eyes crinkling. “But what?”

  “Sullivan was there.”

  “Oh cripes.”

  Heddy sat up, propping her elbows up against the pillows. “And so was Peg. But I didn’t see her.”

  “Little Miss Stuck-up,” Ruth huffed.

  “And his mother made plain I’m not good enough.” Heddy cringed thinking of how Abigail had referred to her many friends on the island.

  “Sullivan’s mother doesn’t decide who he dates.”

  “Or does she?” Heddy glanced out the window at Ash’s fishing cottage; the gleam of the rising sun reflected in the windows. She pushed the feelings of shame away. “Anyway, I’m not sure it matters.”

  Ruth thumped her with a pillow.

  Heddy giggled. “But Ash. He’s just so…”

  Ruth nodded. “He’s a man, not a boy.”

  She studied Ruth’s profile; her nose was small and buttonlike, a nose so cute Heddy wanted to pinch it. “It’s not that. He just makes me feel like we could read the dictionary together, and it would be fun.”

  “So that’s what falling in love feels like.” Ruth grimaced.

  Heddy had been in love once, although she wasn’t sure now that she would call it love. She walked the Brooklyn Bridge arm in arm with Mikey O’Shauney after school sometimes, liking his company more than she expected, particularly because he cracked jokes about everything—imagining ridiculous conversations between squirrels or saying his dad, an elevator repairman, was going nowhere but up. He made so many jokes it was hard to know what he was ever really thinking, but one day, on the Manhattan side of the bridge, he kissed her, and she told him she loved him, and he got all fidgety. After that, she didn’t hear from him.