Summer Darlings Page 4

  “You hear that, girls? Philanthropy at its best. Give only if you can get,” Ted hollered.

  Jean-Rose flicked her head back, laughing, and Ted kissed her bow-like lips. The kids pretended to throw up.

  “What’s gotten into you today?” Jean-Rose raised an eyebrow.

  “A good morning at the Big Top,” Ted said, grabbing one of the sandwiches and tearing off a bite. It’s what he called his company, but Heddy knew from the manila envelopes delivered by water plane that morning that it was really called Sky Top Steel and Financial. “We’re about to swing high.”

  “Well, I can’t come to the lighthouse. Monday is market day, and Heddy and I need to pick up groceries. Then I promised I’d give her a quick tour of the island.”

  Heddy nearly said they could skip it, hoping to please Ted again, but she really wanted the tour. Since she arrived two days ago, she hadn’t seen much besides the house and the beach.

  Ted disappeared into his study, while Jean-Rose went into the kitchen pantry, holding a small notepad and pencil. “I swear we just bought a box of Frosted Flakes, and where is the macaroni?” She slammed the mauve-painted door.

  “Maybe Ted ate them?” Heddy didn’t want Jean-Rose to think she was hoarding a box in her room, perhaps because she’d been tempted. As a girl, she hid Sugar Daddy candies she took from a bowl in the school office under her bed, just in case of what Mama called “a lean week.”

  “Ted hates cornflakes.”

  “I told you, Mama—there are aliens on the island stealing stuff.” Anna pretended to fly her sandwich around the universe.

  Jean-Rose added cereal to her grocery list, then grabbed a mason jar from off the refrigerator, placing it in front of Heddy’s plate. “Have I told you about the fun fund yet?”

  Inside the jar was a tight swirl of twenty-dollar bills.

  Heddy shook her head. She couldn’t take her eyes off the money.

  “How did I forget to tell you? Say you want to take the children to the movies or for an ice cream after camp. It will always be full.” Jean-Rose tapped Ruth on the arm. “You can use it, too. For small stuff.”

  Heddy stared at the money, swallowing hard. She wondered what those twenties added up to, guessing there was several hundred dollars right there, enough to pay the rent on her and her mother’s Brooklyn apartment for the year. She needed two thousand for next year’s tuition, which seemed like an astronomical number, but there it was. A little less than half that in a glass jar set aside for entertaining the children.

  “I know, it looks like a lot,” Jean-Rose said, reading her expression, “but children are expensive.” She threw the keys against the jar. “You don’t mind driving to the market, do you?”

  Driving hadn’t been in Heddy’s job description. She didn’t think it would come up until she’d arrived and seen how large the island was. She watched Jean-Rose flip a page in her date book, the hum of the refrigerator kicking on.

  “Jean-Rose?” Heddy waited for her boss to look up.

  “What is it, Heddy? You sound panicked.”

  Heddy pushed the keys back across the table. “I never learned.”

  Jean-Rose looked at her in that tender way Heddy’s own mother had hundreds of times. “Oh dear, don’t worry, this is the summer you’ll learn. You’re hardly dropping an A-bomb.”

  “But I don’t have a license.”

  Jean-Rose clapped her hands twice. “C’mon, children. Let’s teach Heddy how to drive.” She grabbed her Hermès purse. “Don’t worry about being pulled over—all the cops here are college kids.”

  Heddy bit at her cuticles, then forced her fingers out of her mouth, remembering how her mother would grab her arm and hold it by her side whenever Heddy bit her nails.

  “If anyone stops us, we’ll remind them you’re our babysitter. The only reason this island functions like a first world country is because Ted pumps dollars into its measly economy.”

  On her way out the kitchen door, Ruth tapped her on the shoulder: “She’s set me up with so many duds, but you might actually like this guy.”

  Heddy spied her unfinished sandwich on the table, her stomach growling. “That doesn’t sound promising.”

  Ruth smiled. “You’ll see.”

  “Well, now you’re going, too, so at least I have an escape hatch.” With that, Heddy grabbed her sandwich, shoveling half in her mouth before letting the screen door slam behind her.

  * * *

  Heddy tried to seem upbeat as she opened the convertible’s driver’s side door with caution, as if the car might implode at her touch. Driving a car, let alone owning one, was so distant from her daily life, she’d never considered learning. She knew it took twelve minutes from Union Square to the Upper East Side, twenty-five from Atlantic Avenue to Grand Central. She’d been on a train when she first decided to apply to college. She’d been on a train when she got the courage to confront her mother about her father’s identity.

  With her thighs on the warm leather seat, Heddy gripped the steering wheel, which was skinnier and more slippery than she’d imagined. The kids settled into the back, and from the passenger seat, Jean-Rose slipped the key into the ignition and turned over the car.

  “Just remember three things: the brake is on the left, the gas is on the right, and the steering wheel is in front of you. Go ahead, give it some gas. You’re still in park.”

  Heddy looked down at the gearshift and pressed down on the gas pedal, listening as the engine responded with a loud rev. She rubbed her lips together. A bead of sweat dripped down her neck, and she wanted to rub it away but was too nervous to take her hands off the wheel.

  Jean-Rose eyed Heddy. “Ready?”

  “I’m not sure if this is a good idea, Jean-Rose.”

  Jean-Rose banged the side of the door like a drum. “Nonsense. Put the car in drive.”

  “I thought all grown-ups could drive,” Teddy said.

  “Not everyone in the city learns,” Jean-Rose told him. “Mr. Parker doesn’t know how.”

  “But Mr. Parker drives the bus,” Anna said.

  “No, dear—he rides the bus.”

  Heddy put the car in drive, waiting for the car to lurch forward, but it remained still.

  Jean-Rose leaned toward Heddy, whispering. “You have to lift your foot from the brake.”

  “Everyone knows that,” Teddy sassed. “Right, Mama?”

  “Right,” Heddy said. She glanced at the kids in the rearview mirror, then angled up her foot and the car began rolling forward, creeping right toward the rosebushes. Heddy turned the wheel to the left, then felt like the car might tip, and slammed her foot on the brake. In the back, the kids flew forward, slamming into the back of her seat, erupting into belly laughter.

  “Can Heddy drive every time?” Teddy snorted.

  Jean-Rose had her eyes on the driveway in front of her, lighting a cigarette. “The car wants to go, Heddy. It’s your job to control it. Keep the wheels straight, brake by pressing the pedal ever so gently. It needs a soft touch, not a swift one.”

  Heddy swallowed hard, lifting her foot from the brake once more. Pressing the gas, she felt the car go, allowing herself to steer it slowly down the driveway; it was going better this time.

  “Let’s pick up the pace.” Jean-Rose blew smoke into the open air. It filled Heddy’s nose as she stared hard at the road. She pushed on the gas some more, zipping the Bonneville down the street. They passed a biker who had sped by minutes before, causing Heddy to look at the speedometer: she was going twenty-five miles per hour. A car behind her beeped the horn, passing her on the left.

  “The speed limit is forty, lady,” the guy hollered. Jean-Rose grabbed on to the windshield and raised herself up, waving over the glass, like it was all a big joke.

  “It’s my babysitter, Hal. She’s learning.”

  “I thought you’d had one too many cocktails at the club.” He winked, zooming away.

  Jean-Rose popped a piece of gum, slumping back in her seat with a chuc
kle. “He and his wife are going through a nasty divorce. She doesn’t even come to the club anymore. God, I couldn’t bear it if Ted and I split. Sad how quickly you can fall off the list.” She spun the silver knob of the radio until the static turned into the clear voice of Chubby Checker: “Come on, baby, let’s do the twist.” Jean-Rose wiggled her hips in her high-waisted white shorts. She seemed her thirty years then; music had a way of dating people.

  “The list?” Heddy was fascinated by the ways the upper crust organized themselves. She’d seen it at school, how different degrees of wealth were delineated, resented, talked about. How people dropped hints by comparing where they liked to stay: Chicago’s Drake Hotel (Judy Garland’s favorite) or the Palmer House (which had gilded-peacock doors). Then there were small details, like the girl spotted wearing a skirt without a satin lining, or a girl whose boyfriend had to walk to a date instead of driving since he didn’t own a car. No one did it to Heddy, at least not in front of her. This kind of heckling was often reserved for girls with money, the unlucky ones the cooler, affluent girls had decided just had cheap tastes.

  “The list—” Jean-Rose said as the car bounced over the dips in the road. “It consists of people you like, people you pretend to like because you have to, and people you make plain you don’t like. It’s all about invitations. Who is inviting who? And it changes every summer.”

  “How do you make the list?” Her mother would have told her this kind of thing reeked of rotten cabbage, but Heddy wasn’t so sure. She was convinced wealthy women were different from her mother and her friends, and knowing how—really understanding their manners and mannerisms—might help catapult her into their carefree lives.

  “The question is: What kicks you off the list? A divorce is never good. Susanne and I hate those new-money girls who come in with the gaudy jewelry piled around their necks, but we often have to make exceptions, especially if, you know, our husbands are connected in business.”

  “It sounds stressful.” In the rearview mirror, she could see Teddy and Anna wrestling in the back seat.

  “It is stressful. Obviously, you can’t get invited to everything, even though Susanne and I always do.” She chuckled. “But we figure out who should sit next to who, and everyone is always calling one of us to say: ‘If so-and-so comes, then do I have to ask so-and-so?’ I mean, who wants to ruin their summer with the omission of one person?”

  Heddy slowed, a milk truck in front of them, heading back to the dairy with the morning’s empty bottles.

  “This summer, Ash made it. On his name alone. Who wouldn’t want to fraternize with Harrison Porter’s great-grandson.”

  The surfer. Why hadn’t Jean-Rose set her up with him? She was about to ask who Harrison Porter was, when Jean-Rose’s face lit up like there was a string of bulbs around her neck. “You do know Ash, from when you lost the children the other day?”

  Heddy’s cheeks burned like one thousand stinging bees. She was going to kill that boy. “I’m sorry, but I had no idea they would wander up there. It was just minutes.”

  “It’s okay, dear. Anyway, we all love Ash. He’s really something, isn’t he?”

  Heddy stared at the black pavement, wanting to steer the conversation away from her mistake with the children, even though she was dying to know who Harrison Porter was.

  “Let’s go back to the list,” Heddy said. “So if I was a Mellon or a Carnegie, I’d make it, even if I smelled like mothballs and painted dreadful artwork.” Heddy imagined her mother sitting in the back seat, rolling her eyes at this conversation, calling Jean-Rose “Lady Muck,” which is what she and her Irish immigrant friends called the rich and pretentious.

  Jean-Rose yelled at the children to sit with their backs against the seat, then ran her tongue along her teeth. “You have so much to learn, dear girl. You must think about the friends you keep and what they can do for you. Powerful people weave complicated webs, but if you can make yourself useful to them, they may weave you right in.”

  Heddy steered the car past a farm stand selling strawberries and geraniums, excitement building inside her, like she was standing in an airport with a plane ticket to anywhere in the world. Jean-Rose had passed her a hint, a secret she could have scribbled on lined paper and passed in class. Make yourself extra useful, and you’ll be rewarded. Heddy’s eyes crinkled, even as Teddy kicked his feet into her seat. If she made herself indispensable to Jean-Rose, if she took care of the children better than previous babysitters who were there just to collect a paycheck, maybe she’d be invited to be part of the family. Jean-Rose had already set Heddy up. Perhaps she’d offer to write a scholarship appeal for Heddy, or, in a few weeks, Heddy could ask Ted for a loan to return to school.

  Heddy marveled at the woman beside her: “Jean-Rose, you’re a true doyenne.”

  Her boss opened her compact, checked her lipstick in the circular mirror. “It’s just experience. My mother used to organize these morning teas at her house in Darien, inviting women over after they dropped their kids at school. I thought it was so boring, but my mother taught me how to separate the shiny apples from the bruised ones.”

  Darien. Heddy had a friend at school from Darien. The girl wore these large diamond studs in her ears every day, and Heddy thought they must be fake until she heard her complaining to Beryl that her father refused to buy her a full carat until she was twenty-one. “Then he’ll make your husband buy them,” Beryl deadpanned, and the girl pouted: “You’re so, so right.”

  Jean-Rose was still talking. “On my wedding day, she told me marrying Ted was the best thing that ever happened to me, but now I had three jobs: keep a fine house, organize an enviable social calendar, and be a tiger in the bedroom.”

  Heddy swerved, the car nearly taking out a white fence. Jean-Rose cackled, throwing her head back. “I’m just joking, dear. I love keeping you Wellesley girls on your toes.”

  Shingled houses with charming gardens and picket fences lined Main Street, and Heddy made a note to include details about them in her journal entry tonight. It was all so curious to her. She and her mother had taken the bus to City Island in the Bronx once to eat fried clams, passing high-rise buildings on the parkway, then emerging over the small drawbridge to the island’s busy sidewalks. But Martha’s Vineyard was different. There were pristine pine forests, unspoiled craggy cliffs, grassy meadows rolling into dunes, tidy clapboard houses with shutters. Last night in bed, she waited for the wind, so the buoy would rock in Vineyard Sound, chiming, and she watched as the sky faded to pink, the water shimmering. She couldn’t have imagined any of this a few weeks ago, and Heddy relished the mental image of herself driving this car. Sunglasses on, the convertible blowing wisps of hair about her temples.

  “See, you’re a natural at driving. You know, I bet you’re capable of so much more than you think. More than your mother even knows.” Jean-Rose reached over to squeeze Heddy’s forearm, but she flinched, making the moment awkward rather than tender. She didn’t like what Jean-Rose had said about her mother. Heddy’s mother knew exactly what Heddy was capable of; she’d been the one to encourage her, helping her study vocabulary and math, even if she didn’t know the answers herself.

  More than your mother even knows. When you grew up with a parent short on rent most months, when a budget taped to the fridge accounted for every penny of your mother’s income, you knew what you were capable of because you had to decide early on if you were going to fight against the tide pushing you downstream or simply let yourself sink. You knew that when your mother collapsed from exhaustion on the subway steps after working nineteen hours straight, that she was the definition of the word “tenacious.” Or when she fell into a funk and cried for hours on the couch, the shades drawn and dinner hardly a thought, then you believed your grandmother when she told you, “Times are hard, but this, too, will pass.” You believed it because you had to. It wasn’t whether you were capable in life that mattered, it was whether you got a chance, and her mother’s lies about Heddy’s father had
given Heddy a legitimate chance.

  Heddy sucked in a deep breath, pushing her shoulders against the warm seat leather. She had to relax. Jean-Rose didn’t mean any harm by what she’d said. Besides, Heddy would have to swallow her pride a bit to keep this job. Everyone in service had to.

  * * *

  With its robin’s-egg blue clapboard siding and neat maroon awnings, Cronig’s Market occupied a double-door building on Main Street in Vineyard Haven, near a women’s department store, a candy shop, and an electronics store selling portable radios with large handles and televisions set into shiny mahogany cabinets standing on four legs. The ferry down the hill had just let out, and people were coming up every street from the water. After circling for a parking spot, they lucked into one next to a bright aquamarine Thunderbird, the white steering wheel wrapped in a panel of turquoise leather, a pair of driving gloves on the dash.

  Jean-Rose clicked her tongue. “My, my. Look who’s here.” She pushed open her car door and went to peer inside the aqua car. “How ridiculous—who needs air-conditioning in a car?”

  Heddy had never seen a car with a cooling system. She felt like those sliding chrome knobs were as high-tech as the inside of the Apollo spacecraft. “I wonder if you need a sweater when you turn it on.…”

  Jean-Rose reached for a metal shopping cart in front of Cronig’s, motioning to Heddy to follow her. “Ted asked me if I wanted it in the Bonneville, but I like fresh summer air.”

  Heddy wiped sweat from her brow. On a day like this, it might feel as refreshing as ice-cold lemonade, she thought. Anna and Teddy headed to a toy section at the front of the store, while Jean-Rose examined netted bags of oranges. Apparently, shopping was something she considered her job as head of the house, like meal planning, even though she hadn’t prepared breakfast, lunch, or dinner since Heddy arrived. The market was filled with other women like Jean-Rose, some in kitten heels and pencil skirts, others in sundresses or scallop-hem shorts. Jean-Rose knew them all. “How are the kids doing in swimming, Muffy?” “Susan, are we still on for bridge?”