Summer Darlings Read online

  Teddy appeared in the room. “She always hides in her closet when they fight.”

  Heddy lowered the girl into the clawfoot tub, kneeling at its side. “You don’t have to do that. I’m here with you.”

  Teddy was twirling his finger through the yellow curls of that ragged doll he slept with. “One night, she fell asleep in there, and we didn’t find her until the next morning. Mama was frantic.”

  Anna giggled at the memory, but Heddy wiped at her eyes before massaging shampoo into her hair. “Your mom and dad love you the most of anyone in the world. You know that, right?”

  He snorted, then inhaled into the doll’s ragged plaid dress; it was curious to see a boy so devoted to a doll.

  “Is Mommy going to be okay?” Anna sucked her finger, and Heddy plucked it out.

  “That’s a dumb question,” Teddy snapped.

  “No, it’s not, Teddy. Listen, all parents have disagreements sometimes, but they still love each other.” Disagreements, yes, but angry brawls and broken glass—even she wasn’t so sure.

  “Do your parents love each other?” Anna asked. She was genuinely curious, and for that, Heddy was touched.

  “I don’t have… Well, you see, I…” Heddy sighed, wiping her eyes. A white lie was worth telling in this case. “Yes, they do. My parents still love each other.” She’d never uttered the words before—“my parents”—and doing so now made her heart ache for Jean-Rose and Ted. A marriage had secrets, sometimes dark ones, just like she and her mother had secrets. And those secrets, happy or unhappy, could bubble up and make a mess out of things.

  Later, once the children were tucked into bed and she had changed into her nightgown, Heddy heard a racket downstairs. She checked the driveway to see if Ted had returned, but the driveway was empty, the only movement a tire swing gently swaying in the breeze. She tiptoed down to the kitchen, uncertain of what she’d find. Even so, she’d startled at the sight of Jean-Rose sitting with Ruth at the Formica table; the older woman slumped over, her cheek pressed against the tabletop, snoring. An empty highball glass at her shoulder.

  “I was trying to help her upstairs, and we fell.” Ruth was wearing her maid’s dress, but she’d taken off her apron, laying it across the back of the chair. Heddy smelled the vomit before she saw it. “She’s not a drinker.”

  “Have you been with her this whole time?” Heddy asked.

  “She was watching The Ed Sullivan Show. I figured I’d read in here until it got ugly.” One of Jean-Rose’s Life magazines was on the table, the one with Jackie Kennedy in a pillbox hat on the cover. Ruth must have pulled it from the stack on the bookshelf in the living room, where there were dozens of the red-spine readers.

  “We can’t leave her here.” Heddy slid into the seat across from Ruth.

  “If we prop her up, we might be able to help her onto the couch.”

  Heddy softly shook her boss’s shoulder. “Jean-Rose?”

  Drool dripped from her mouth. Ruth wedged her slim shoulder under Jean-Rose’s armpit, and Heddy followed suit. “On the count of three: one, two, three.” The two strained to lift their boss up, and the push made Jean-Rose’s head bob awake. A sweet smile drew across her lips.

  “Heddy?”

  She could smell the booze on her breath. “Jean-Rose, we’re going to get you upstairs.” Heddy buckled under the weight of her boss; Jean-Rose was slight, but so was Heddy, and she found herself growing breathless.

  “Such lovely girls. Good girls, but don’t let him see you weak. No, no.”

  “Do you think you can walk up the stairs?” Ruth’s voice was slow, like she was talking to someone whose first language wasn’t English.

  “Of course, I can—” Jean-Rose let go of them, marching like a soldier, but she stumbled forward. She made it into the living room and crawled onto the couch like a cat, her long, filmy nightdress falling to the floor.

  “This will do.” Ruth grabbed a throw off the wingback chair and spread it over Jean-Rose.

  Their boss’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m going to find you nice boys. Very nice boys like my Nelson. And handsome!”

  Ruth caught Heddy’s eye at the name, a brow raised. Heddy ran for a tissue, cleaning up her boss’s runny eye makeup, and rubbed Jean-Rose’s back until she began to softly snore. She and Ruth returned to the kitchen, cleaning up and then pulling out a package of strawberry wafer cookies.

  Heddy whispered: “They seemed so… without problems compared to the people back home.”

  “Guess it depends on how you define problems.” Freckles ran across Ruth’s nose like an open fan. She poured Heddy a tumbler of something. “Here, this will cheer you up.”

  “Do you think it’s okay?” But Heddy gulped it back without waiting for the answer, repelled instantly by the flavor, stinging where it mixed with the sugary wafer on her tongue. Gin?

  Ruth chuckled. “First rule of service: don’t get mixed up in their life.”

  “How can we help it? I live here, and you practically do, too.”

  Ruth looked in on Jean-Rose, then came back. “I feel sorry for her,” she whispered.

  Strange, Heddy thought, to pity a wealthy steel magnate’s wife. “Where does he go? You know, when he leaves.”

  Ruth took another sip, then rinsed the glass in the sink. “Somewhere he’s not supposed to.” She gathered her tote bag, flinging it over her shoulder. There was a sloshing in the bag, the sound of liquid splashing up against glass, and as the bag settled against Ruth’s slight frame, some of what was inside pushed out of the top. Heddy recognized a box of Frosted Flakes, a short-necked bottle of rust-colored liquor. She could make out the shapes of something else, too: bananas, perhaps? Ruth sensed Heddy staring, so she shifted. The box, and the liquor, slipped down into the bag.

  Ruth looked at her guilty but defiant. “They have so much,” Ruth continued to the door.

  Heddy popped the last of the strawberry wafers into her mouth. She was a bit surprised by how brazen the girl was. Heddy felt funny helping herself to food in their fridge, and she slept there. Still, it wasn’t like Ruth was taking diamond earrings.

  Heddy pretended to zip her lips. “I didn’t see a thing.”

  Ruth visibly relaxed. “It’s going to be a busy week, but our date is this Friday. I’ll pick you up at six forty-five.”

  “I’m nervous. I’ve never been on a blind date.”

  Ruth smiled. “It will be great.”

  “Tell me what you know about him.” Heddy followed Ruth out into the humid night, fireflies illuminating the rose bushes.

  “Stop worrying and let yourself be surprised.” Ruth walked one of the extra bikes out of the garage. The bike chain caught with a pop and a click, the squeak of a seat and the spin of the pedals as Ruth pushed through the pebbly drive. Heddy leaned into the screen door and watched wet air blowing in from the ocean as Ruth took off pedaling into the night.

  SIX

  No one could say Gigi McCabe didn’t have curves. Her hourglass figure oozed so much sex appeal she stoked fires in men’s hearts in just a pair of black pedal pushers and a white blouse, though, now that Heddy thought about it, the blouse did always seem unbuttoned a twee too far.

  It wasn’t just her cleavage that got people’s attention, though, Heddy could see that now. Stretched out on a lounger beside Gigi’s crystalline limestone pool, the children splashing in the shallow end, she realized Gigi was what her mother would have called a “substantial woman.” Her legs were longer than Heddy’s, and she had meaty shoulders with smooth rounded edges, yet a tummy so flat you could set a plate on it. Even her arms looked strong, and Heddy imagined Gigi sword fighting in an epic film set in ancient Rome.

  Earlier, when Gigi answered the front door, Heddy had been starstruck all over again. Seeing a movie star in real life was surreal—the actress looked funny to Heddy, like a puppet talking, rather than a real-life person. Gigi was holding her purse and keys, clearly she’d altogether forgotten their meeting. Heddy couldn’t stop a
pologizing and delivered an awkward hug, and then, if she remembered correctly, and she had to admit details were a bit fuzzy due to her dizzying state, Gigi had smacked her on the back. Smacked her hard, too.

  “I’m just a hot-blooded woman, sugar pie. Now calm yourself, and come in.” They’d gone straight out to the pool, where Gigi told them to wait while she changed. When she came out, her housekeeper followed holding a gold-trimmed telephone and dragging a long snaking cord, so Gigi could make a phone call. “I just need to rearrange some things,” she’d said.

  Now, as Heddy sipped the citrusy cocktail Gigi handed her, she thought it silly she’d been intimidated at all. Gigi was down-to-earth and easy to talk to—not at all what she expected.

  The smell of coconut oil hung in the air, since Gigi had spent ten minutes lathering herself with it. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about her. I know you’re curious. Shoot.”

  Heddy didn’t want to gossip about her boss. That morning, Jean-Rose didn’t come out of her room for breakfast, while Ted, well, she wasn’t sure he’d ever come home. She had questions about Jean-Rose’s marriage, but she couldn’t ask Gigi those. “I don’t know. Was she popular?”

  “Of course. All the mean ones are.”

  Gigi slapped Heddy on the leg with a tabloid magazine. “Don’t be shy. Jean-Rose and I went to the same Catholic school in Darien. I was happy if my mother rifled around in the fridge each morning to scrape me together a lunch sack. Ms. Perfect? She has no idea what it means to make a dollar.”

  Heddy stared at Gigi’s toes, painted fire-engine red. She was more curious about the actress, but it seemed Gigi wanted to talk about Jean-Rose. “What was Jean-Rose like back then?”

  “The same as now. Self-absorbed, and oh, her family wasn’t used to having money when we were little, and then they came into some, so they liked to flaunt it. New money. Of course, I didn’t know that back then. I only knew my best friend was suddenly too good for me. You know Susanne, her friend here—the one who thinks she’s the mayor of Martha’s Vineyard. They’ve spent their whole life trying to keep up with each other.”

  Heddy knew Susanne. She’d sat next to Ash at the luncheon. She was tall, angular, a long, patrician nose. She and Jean-Rose had been gossiping about Gigi the day before on the phone. “Posing like that got her the most coveted roles in Hollywood,” Jean-Rose had said, then wickedly, “I’m sorry, but I can’t pretend I don’t know.”

  Heddy smelled the salt air blowing in from the sea, nodding. “I think they’re in the same bridge group.”

  “Bridge. Ha! As if I would go spend an afternoon playing bridge with those women. It’s like they want to be as boring as their mothers.”

  “Have you ever played?”

  “I don’t play anyone’s games, especially hers. She’s the kind of person who will come see your first show on Broadway, only to be so jealous she leaves at intermission because, and this is a good one, she ‘tripped on ice on the way there and bruised her elbow.’ ” Gigi hissed. “It’s utter nonsense. She’s never been able to handle anyone being better at anything.”

  “Maybe there is a story here,” Heddy joked, clawing to sound natural in Gigi’s orbit.

  “Oh, there’s a story here.” Gigi closed her eyes to the sun. “Anyway, it must have been hard on her, too, since my career took off. What can I say? They opened doors for me.” Gigi pointed to the oversize bosom stuffed into a black bikini top, so snug Heddy worried the closure might give. She didn’t mention what Heddy already knew: every inch of Gigi’s form had been featured in a Playboy a few summers before. Rumor had it that the “unauthorized” sale of the photos bought the actress’s Vineyard home.

  The kids played Marco Polo in the pool, neither one begging Heddy to come in. A miracle.

  “It must be fun to have people want to photograph you all the time.”

  Gigi smiled. “Well, sometimes you just want to run to the store in slippers.”

  “Did you grow up coming here as a child?”

  “Not really—it’s a long story,” Gigi said. Ted and Jean-Rose had purchased Elysian Fields as newlyweds from one of the Rockefellers. (Heddy had looked up the name—it meant “final resting place of the souls of those who are virtuous.”) When Gigi built her estate a few years later in the off-season so as not to disrupt everyone’s summer on the island, she had no idea they owned the house next door. One day Gigi got a call from her builder—she was on the set of Egyptian Affair at a studio in Los Angeles—that one of her neighbors had a problem with them paving the driveway. Someone named Jean-Rose Williams was complaining. He listed off the woman’s phone number in New York.

  “Imagine the surprise when she picked up and heard my voice—it was quite the conversation.” Gigi sipped her Tom Collins, then put down the glass and lit a cigarette, blowing rings into the cloudless sky. “Of course, she acted thrilled to hear from me. But that’s not why she bugs me. It’s because Jean-Rose is like every other useless woman on this island. She spends someone else’s money for a living.”

  Gigi ashed, then handed Heddy the bottle of coconut oil. “Would you mind rubbing some on my back? I need to flip.” Heddy massaged the slick lotion onto the movie star’s curvy back, and when she was done, Gigi squeezed a drop into Heddy’s hand.

  “I don’t know—I burn,” Heddy said.

  “Sugar pie, this is the only thing that will give you a little color.”

  Heddy’s shoulders were already pink, but there was glamour in Gigi’s glossy skin, so she rubbed it on her too-skinny arms, her willowy thighs. She stretched her shiny legs out, pointing her unpainted toes and crossing her ankles seductively.

  “What’s your story, anyway?” Gigi asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much of a story, Ms. McCabe.” Heddy pulled her knees to her chest, keeping her eyes on the children. Anna was in a pink tube kicking her legs, Teddy diving under.

  Gigi pushed herself up onto her elbows, her sunglasses falling down her nose. “Everyone has a story. That’s why I asked you here. Something’s up with you.”

  Heddy touched her grandmother’s pearls. “Is it that obvious?”

  Gigi cackled, pointing to a script on the table. “I’m studying for a role. Girl-meets-boy kind of thing. They date in London, get married, and when they get home to New York, it’s clear she grew up, well, without the finer things. But she’s sassy and smart. My kind of character.”

  The script lay on the table. An Afternoon in Central Park. Heddy wondered who else had held those pages. Had Cary Grant thumbed through the script? “Who is costarring?”

  “Marlon Brando. You’ve heard of him, right?” A sly look passed over Gigi’s face. “But you. I saw the safety pin in your sandal. Takes a certain kind of girl to walk around with a safety pin holding her shoe together.”

  “An industrious one.” Heddy glanced at the ballet flats she’d worn that morning, the ones Jean-Rose left her a few days ago, along with a blue halter bathing suit, smooth and stretchy Lycra like all the new bathing costumes were.

  Gigi’s eyes crinkled. “For those who must be.”

  Heddy reached for the floppy woven sunhat she’d brought, positioning it squarely on her head to block Gigi’s view of her face. She wanted to die. The actress had seen her for what she was: a bunny trying to run with the foxes. Gigi’s invitation today had been inspired by pity. All because of her shoe. Imagine if she knew the real details of her life? That Heddy’s mother had fallen for a man in a suit and fedora who would call her for a walk in the park, then a romp, then get on the train and go back to see his real family in their four-bedroom suburban house on Long Island.

  Heddy reached for the silver cigarette case on the table, Gigi’s initials engraved on it. “May I?”

  “Of course.” She felt Gigi watching her, and it was nerve-racking having a celebrity taking her in the way she’d taken Gigi in on the screen countless times.

  Heddy blew the smoke out hard, fanning it away from her face. She hated ciga
rettes. “If you know girls like me, then you’ll know how badly I want to go to your party.” Heddy wanted to prove, maybe even just to herself, she belonged at a party like that.

  Gigi giggled like she did in her films, like a man was watching her. “It’s why I offered a dress.”

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” Heddy said. “Please, don’t pity me.”

  “It’s not pity. You make me remember.” Gigi furrowed her well-shaped brows. “I was just like you once. Fighting for a place. On this island, I’m still doing that.” She lay back down on her stomach, her right cheek resting on the lounger.

  Heddy gave her a double take. “I hardly think that.…”

  “Don’t be fooled by all this polite bullshit. They treat me like a tramp.”

  Heddy bit at her nails. “But you’re—”

  “I don’t play bridge. To hell with them. But look at you. You have something they love: credentials.”

  Heddy gulped back her drink. All this pretending. When everyone found out about her scholarship, they’d see she was an imposter. Gigi might snatch the invitation to her party back. Heddy picked at the cushion on the red-striped lounger. She had an idea, maybe it was dumb, but she would blurt it out anyway. “Men. I want to know how to attract a man.”

  Gigi burst out laughing. “What on earth does this have to do with men?”

  Heddy closed her eyes, wishing she was not saying the words that were coming out of her mouth, and yet out they tumbled. “Not for a romp, either. For life. I need to know how to catch a husband.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you, sugar?” Gigi sat up, spun her legs around so her feet were on the pool deck. She pushed her glasses on top of her head.

  Thirty seconds passed, maybe a minute. Heddy felt like she was naked in Yankee Stadium. Then Gigi’s tone softened. “You don’t need to trap a man, sugar pie. Why would you want to be married anyway?”