The Summer We Read Gatsby Part 20

Even the brief period-it lasted all of an afternoon-when Peck was technically not speaking to me did not alter my feelings. Perhaps that was because she kept talking to me all through it. "I'm not speaking to you until you come to your senses," she cried out, after arguing at length that we should still keep Fool's House, even though we had not, in fact, inherited a Jackson Pollock worth millions of dollars. We were having this conversation on the porch and she kept stomping her foot to make her points. Each time she did the rotted slabs of wood would rattle loosely. I explained again, at length, that I too did not wish to sell the house we both loved.

"Why are you so depressing?" She addressed these words to the sky, as though she might find an answer there. And then she declared again that she wasn't speaking to me.

"All evidence to the contrary," I pointed out cheerfully. At this she pounded the porch floor once more and turned on her heel.

I'd never had much patience with happy people. Positive thinking and idealism had never seemed as interesting as the darker view to me. But then I turned into one of them. The week that followed will always stand out in my memory as the most thrilling time in my relatively short and oddly complicated life. I experienced it as an adrenaline high, the kind of sky-diving buzz that comes from conquering a deeply held fear.

Finn, like me, had never taken more than a couple of days off in years. He'd been so busy for so long, building a bustling multi-office business, that he was used to operating at full tilt at all times. Now he took a vacation, shocking everyone who worked with him.

We did all the things visitors to the Hamptons do. We took long beach walks in the mornings and water-skied in the evenings. We biked to Montauk and rented a canoe and laughed ourselves silly trying to get the thing to move in a straight line. We played tennis and took afternoon naps in the hammock in the back yard. We went to Sag Harbor to wander through charming antique shops, and sailed to Shelter Island, where we had a late lunch at Sunset Beach drinking rose for hours until the fat orange sun sank below the horizon with dramatic flair. We went to the farm stand near Finn's house and made a picnic to take to the beach, where we met Cintra and Tony and their kids to ride the waves. Finn tried to teach me how to surf. We ate steaks at the Palm in East Hampton and drove to Briermere Farm in Riverhead to buy pies. He even helped Peck and me go through some of Lydia's things, lending a hand as we organized boxes to give away, to keep, and to throw out, which was more fun than it sounds with the music cranked up loud and some great snacks. And the s.e.x? Well, it's best not to talk about such things; suffice it to say I never knew it could be that good.

The afternoon when Peck did not speak to me ended when she walked into my room without knocking.

"I don't want to fight with you." She was wearing nothing but a skimpy towel and her hair was wet. "Look at me," she added. "I'm a wreck."

"I don't want to fight either," I said. "And you're right. We should do whatever we can to keep this place."

She looked startled. "But you don't want to."

"Of course I want to," I said. "I just don't have the money."

She sighed, perching on the end of my bed. She sat there for some time in silence and then stood, having made up her mind. "I don't either. All I have is credit card debt. And we should do what Lydia told us to do."

By the time she rushed out of the room to "do something about this mop on my head," we had agreed to accept the Bosleys' offer on the house. She'd decided it would be too awkward to let Miles buy the place from us and would turn her efforts to attempting to rid his house of "every element of tackiness," as she phrased it. "You know, he's horribly vulgar vulgar." It was her goal, she explained that evening, wrapped in her towel, to turn the enormous place into her version of Yaddo, where creative people could gather. "Stella!" she exclaimed. "You could come there next summer and write."

Perhaps I could. But now it was almost time for me to go back. My return airline ticket was waiting, marked with the date that loomed as a deadline for the end of me and Finn. I was scheduled to fly home on Sunday, the day after our final Fool's Farewell. And as we walked on the beach that morning under a deep blue sky, the sunlight glinting off the ocean, I made a decision that seemed altogether practical, although I was no longer sure how I felt about calling Switzerland my home.

"When we say good-bye," I told Finn that morning as we walked with Trimalchio on the beach, "let's have it be for good."

He stopped walking. "What do you mean?"

We'd been holding hands as we walked and now I turned and took his other one in mine as I faced him. "I can't help thinking I'd rather keep the memory of this perfect stretch of bliss just as it is, as a beautiful little gem that could become a touchstone in later years, than let it fizzle out with dribs and drabs of resentment over time, the way long-distance relationships always seem to do."

He shook his head. "That's not how it would work, not with us."

"What makes you so sure? The first few weeks of any relationship are always great."

"Not like this," he interjected. "Nothing like this."

"True," I said. "This was extraordinary. But in this setting . . ." I gestured at the powerful beauty of nature that surrounded us on the wide empty beach.

"It has nothing to do with setting," he said. "I'm willing to take a chance. I'll visit. You'll visit. We'll make an effort."

I let go of one hand and started walking again. He fell into step next to me and Trimalchio trotted along at my other side, tilting his head up toward me as though trying to understand what was going on.

"That's just it," I said. "Effort. It already sounds bad. And then it will get worse. At first we'll approach it with enthusiasm and all sorts of plans. But over time, it will start to seem too hard. And neither one of us will want to compromise. And then one weekend you'll cancel on me at the last minute. A flight won't work out, there'll be a hurricane that night or a work emergency and it will seem too difficult to come. And I'll get resentful and we'll both wonder who the other one is actually having dinner with . . ." My voice trailed off as he stopped and stared at me incredulously.

"Jesus Christ," he said with a laugh. "Have you done this before?"

"No," I said. "But I've seen friends try to have relationships with people from far-off countries and I've never seen it work."

"So we're just to say good-bye at the airport, is that it? And never speak again?"

"You're going to take me to the airport?" I asked, surprised.

"I was planning on it," he said. "And then I thought I'd get on a plane myself the following week. I have a potential client to visit in Zurich and could easily stop in Lausanne for a few days afterward. And then you could come back here for Labor Day weekend."

"Labor Day is not a holiday in Switzerland."

"So I'll go back there then," he added. "It's too soon to say good-bye for good. What if this is it? You're not going to throw that away just because we haven't lived in the same city until now."

"We haven't even lived on the same continent," I pointed out. "Ever."

In my my younger and more vulnerable years, as Nick Carraway would say in the opening lines of younger and more vulnerable years, as Nick Carraway would say in the opening lines of Gatsby Gatsby, my father was not around to give me advice. This was a defining theme, I believed, of the story of my life, and for years I told myself this was why I often made poor decisions. But now I believed I'd undertaken a rewrite. And I could no longer use the fact of my father's early death to rationalize the choices that had later proved to be bad ones. My decision to end this seemingly idyllic relationship before it had time to begin was made, I fully believed, in the most rational and carefully considered manner.

By the end of our walk, Finn agreed with me. "Perhaps you're right," he said, as we headed back on the path through the dunes that led to the parking lot. "It will be more sensible this way.

We were quiet for the walk back to Fool's House. I'd planned, even before the walk on the beach, to finish packing that afternoon while Finn paid a visit to one of the job sites from which he'd been getting increasingly frantic phone calls. That night, we were having paella for dinner with Peck, Miles, Hamilton, and Scotty over at Hamilton's house. It was to be our own personal last supper, what Peck called "family night" before the increasingly large Fool's Farewell, to which Peck had now invited more than three hundred people.

"You don't even know three hundred people," I said to her as I made an initial stab at packing my suitcase in preparation to leave. Somehow, though, my clothes had multiplied like the bunnies that were hopping all over our lawn-how? I didn't think I'd bought much, just the dresses and shoes the day I went shopping with Peck and the Girls, a couple of bathing suits, a T-shirt here and there-and I was never going to be able to fit it all into the one bag I'd brought with me.

"Miles does," Peck said with a proud nod. As I was trying to pack, she'd appeared in my room wearing a long white caftan with elaborate beading around the neck, and she leaned in the doorway elegantly smoking without offering to help. "He knows everybody everybody." Through Miles Peck had met all sorts of people, including but not limited to celebrities, fashion designers, and people who could get a table at a place called the Waverly Inn. They were all invited to the Fool's Farewell.

We were selling the house mostly furnished, although Peck was keeping the bar cart and its accessories and I'd planned to take a box of books, including Lydia's copy of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby. We were each keeping one of our father's paintings, already bubble-wrapped and placed in the garage with the rest of the paintings and the boxes. We agreed that the Pink Lady, who'd been in the house since before it was Lydia's, should stay where she was. The Bosleys would have to decide about her when they moved in.

I was feeling increasingly nostalgic that afternoon as we puttered around the house. I remember hearing the Coldplay song "Viva la Vida," the summer's anthem, for what seemed like the hundredth time, and Peck with her tin ear singing along at the top of her lungs, getting the words wrong.

"I just remembered something," she cried out suddenly as I decided not to even try to fit everything into the one suitcase. I would use one of the dusty old cases on the shelf in the garage.

Peck flicked her ash in the direction of the small ashtray she clutched in the other hand and missed. "Back in a flash," she cried out.

I thought we'd finished organizing the contents of the house but Peck came back to my room a few seconds later holding a large wicker laundry basket in two hands, the cigarette and ashtray having been deposited somewhere. "Remember that day I dumped everything out of the desk drawer and then Finn called to invite you to the Four Seasons?" She held out the basket so I could see what was inside. "This is all the stuff that was in that drawer. I completely forgot about it."

"Is there anything in it?" I asked.

"I have no earthly idea," she exclaimed, turning the basket over so the contents, papers and business cards and clippings from magazines, rained down onto the wood floor.

A slip of notepaper drifted to my feet and I picked it up. It had several holes at the top, as though it had once been pinned to a bulletin board. Across the top were four block letters that read SAFE and then underneath, in tiny handwriting that was still recognizably Lydia's: "Scott's birthday." "Here it is," I said, holding up the loose piece of paper. "If we'd found this right away, we would have been able to open the safe."

Peck glanced at the handwriting. "Scott," she said with a laugh. "As though he were her boyfriend."

Another item in the pile at my feet caught my eye and I reached down to pick it up. It was a postcard, and it too was p.r.i.c.ked with holes along the top where it must have been pinned up. The front of the postcard was an image that was unmistakably recognizable as the painting that we had erroneously believed to be a missing Jackson Pollock. On the back was an invitation to an opening at a gallery in East Hampton containing the following words: "The Woman as Muse. Oil on Canvas. New Works by Julian Powell."

I held it out so Peck could see it. "Julian Powell," I read aloud. "How did we not make that connection?"

She shrugged. "We weren't looking for it."

"I'm glad we found it, though," I said, waving the postcard in my hand. "That explains why the painting meant so much to her."

Lydia's copy of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, not a first edition but a version published later, was sitting on the bedside table where I'd left it when I reread the last few pages only that morning. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. I tucked the postcard inside the dust jacket flap and closed the book. I tucked the postcard inside the dust jacket flap and closed the book.

19.

Traditionally, the Fool's Farewell had always taken place during the day at the cracked and crumbling tennis court. The bar cart, holding champagne and strawberries-"Just like at Wimbledon," explained Peck, who'd never been to the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships but was quite the expert on what one ate and drank and wore and did there-would be wheeled down the driveway and set up on the sidelines along with white folding chairs for the spectators. She may not have attended Wimbledon, but she had been to a few more Fool's Farewells than I had, so she viewed herself as the keeper of the tradition. This year, however, we made the decision to break from tradition-or she made it and I went along with it-and hold the party in the evening, with a deejay for dancing rather than tennis as the entertainment. Our decision was made after a lengthy discussion with Hamilton, who "did so love the sight of men's legs in tennis whites," but also thought it would be fitting that this year's event take on a different flavor, since it was the Final Farewell.

It was a warm Sat.u.r.day afternoon at the very beginning of August, but there was a gentle breeze, carrying the sweet smell of freshly mown gra.s.s and salt, to keep the sun, high in the cloudless blue, from beating down too relentlessly.

The deejay we'd hired was a pudgy boy wearing what looked like pajamas who seemed buried behind a mountain of equipment and speakers on one end of the porch. We also enlisted the help of a caterer for some of the food, although Peck and I had made guacamole and lobster rolls and a few other specialties of hers. We rented tables and bought flowers and votives we'd planned to use to light the porch. The old plank floors seemed to sag even more under the extra weight, but Fool's House in the candlelight looked its most charming.

The first strains of an amped-up version of the old cla.s.sic "Love Is in the Air" were blasting as the Girls gathered around the two of us, pecking at us like friendly birds.

"Let me see you," Lucy demanded, stepping back to admire my dress, the one we'd picked together. "You're fabulous fabulous," they decreed. "Isn't she fabulous?"

"Et moi?" Peck wanted to know, never one to miss an opportunity to fish for a compliment or use her French. She was wearing a long turquoise halter dress that matched her eyes, and she'd never looked prettier. The Girls voiced their admiration at length until she exhorted them to get c.o.c.ktails "before the mad rush begins." The Girls tended to be obedient, especially when vodka was involved, and they moved toward the bar as the place quickly began to swarm with people.

I took a c.o.c.ktail and wandered through the lawn, as evening fell, catching snippets of conversation. There seemed to be a reckless glamour to the people gathered under the lanterns among the trees and crowded together on the porch, as though anything could happen, anything at all. Or that may have just been my perspective as I catalogued the scene, committing it to memory. I stood out on the gra.s.s, looking up at the ramshackle house Lydia had loved for so many years, and I wondered how the Bosleys would fare there. Would they "get" the house as Peck and I did and fall in love with it? Would they make it their own, renaming it perhaps, and starting their own traditions? Or would the house "get" them, overwhelming them with responsibility and faulty plumbing and the desperate need for an expensive new roof and a dishwasher, at the very least, to update the kitchen?

As I gazed up at the house, I noticed Finn come through the door to the porch. I hadn't seen him since that morning, when he'd gotten up early after a somewhat somber dinner at Hamilton's. He'd stayed the night with me at Fool's House, but neither of us had been able to sleep much, and by six he'd headed off, leaving me to finish packing and get organized for the night's festivities. He was taller than almost everyone, so he was easy to spot, and my heart flipped over when I saw his head, wet hair gleaming.

What was I thinking? I realized with a jolt that I couldn't possibly say good-bye to him. How had I not understood that this was bigger than both of us? We would have to work something out, a long-distance relationship, a bicontinental affair, until something more permanent could be decided on. But the idea of a final good-bye when I headed to the airport? That was impossible.

I moved toward the porch with the intent to tell him I'd changed my mind. I thought I'd seen him going toward the bar at the far end of the porch, and I tried to catch another glimpse of him as I moved through what was now a very crowded lawn. There were hundreds of people, it seemed, spilling over the gra.s.s, and a whole group of boldly earnest dancers bopped about on the creaking slats of the porch. Hamilton saw me and waved me over to where he and Scotty were watching the dancers. "If you're looking for Finn, he left."

My heart immediately sank.

"Don't look so gloomy," Hamilton snapped. "Scotty, look at poor Stella; she's morose. She thinks he left her for good. No, no, my dear. He bought you a gift, he told us, but he forgot it. He's gone home to fetch it and he'll be right back."

The relief that flooded over me-a gift? he bought me a present present?-must have been comical, because they both burst out laughing. "Look how sweet," Hamilton said, nudging Scotty. "Now she's beaming. He bought her a going-away present. I wonder what it is."

I was now so excited I could hardly stand still, a fact that Hamilton noticed. "You and Scotty should dance dance," he suggested.

I'd never been someone who danced. But the fragile creature who'd washed up on this sh.o.r.e a month ago was gone, and I was now able to casually contemplate a little of what Peck had been calling "booty back and forth, booty back and forth." I had Peck to thank for that, I suppose. I now grabbed Scotty by the hand to pull him into the middle of the sweating crowd hopping about vigorously on the old porch.

We danced for a while-the little Scotsman knew how to move move-as the crowd around us grew louder and more raucous. Eventually there were so many people packed in on the porch between the deejay at one end and the tables and the bar at the other that we couldn't move laterally, only hop up and down, like in a mosh pit.

"I think I've had enough," I shouted at Scotty when there was no more air to breathe on the porch. Finn had not yet reappeared; I kept checking the driveway every five seconds. But I could see Peck at the far end of the lawn, with just the glow of her cigarette for company as she gazed up at Fool's House. She was standing in almost exactly the same position that I'd occupied a little earlier, and I thought I knew what was going through her mind. I kissed my dance partner on the cheek and headed down to find my sister.

It was unusual for her to be alone like this at a party, especially her own, and I expected her to be in a serious, reflective mood. But Peck didn't much care for serious or reflective.

"There must be two hundred people on the porch!" She propped one elbow in the other hand and gestured elegantly with the cigarette toward the porch so I would look and admire the scene. I did. There was a kind of beautiful madness to the swirling frenzy, with all the flickering candles in the darkness. We stood side by side, smoking, watching the kaleidoscope of people and movement and light as the party built to its inevitable crescendo and the moment imprinted itself on my brain with the permanence of a black-and-white photograph.

Suddenly there was a loud cracking sound. It was followed by an ominous sort of groan, and then slowly, almost gracefully, the entire middle of the porch fell in on itself. The dancers disappeared right before our very eyes. The deejay and his mountain of heavy equipment slid from view, and the music scratched to an abrupt halt. At first it was quiet. Anyone who wasn't on the porch was shocked and stunned silent in disbelief. We couldn't possibly have witnessed what we just saw.

Then chaos erupted and there were screams and m.u.f.fled yelling for help and people on top of one another and others emerging from inside the house, caught with one foot on the stable floor in the doorway and one foot now suspended in mid-air. Peck and I ran toward them, racing up what was left of the teetering steps to the sunken porch. We looked down into the gaping hole where the pieces of the porch and a number of our guests had fallen. There were people piled on the ground and jagged pieces of wood jutting dangerously. The deejay was still standing and he gave us a bewildered look from behind his equipment, which seemed to have landed upright as well, as though he could just go right on cranking the music from this new s.p.a.ce underneath where the porch was meant to be.

n.o.body appeared to be hurt. They started gingerly standing up, turning their wrists and stepping on their ankles to see if they'd damaged any parts, gazing up through the hole where the porch had pulled away from the house and fallen in on itself. And then the noise picked up again as people asked one another if they were okay and called out, "That was crazy!" Someone laughed.

And then there was another shout. "The candles!" At the far end of the gaping hole one of the ragged porch planks suddenly sparked where a candle had dumped its flame onto the old wood. And then another one. And another one. The planks sparked and snapped like kindling, and in what seemed like seconds, the flames were jumping, erupting into a full-blown fire before our eyes.

"Everybody out," I yelled, as the fire seemed to engulf the porch instantly and then spread to the cedar shingles that covered the entire house. Immediately the people on what was left of the porch poured onto the lawn in a mad rush to escape, and Peck and I helped pull those who were caught in the hole in the middle to safety. The deejay was trying in vain to pull apart his equipment so he could get it out of the way.

"Leave it," Peck shouted at him as the flames jumped to the second floor windows in a matter of seconds.

"Call 911," I called to the crowd behind us on the lawn, watching as Peck and I made sure everyone was out of the way. I couldn't believe how fast the fire moved to take over the house. It was like a tinderbox, igniting instantly. "Was anyone still inside?"

"Trimalchio!" Peck suddenly screamed, dashing down the steps of the porch and around to the back of the house.

I followed her. We had to elbow our way around some of the guests, who were all staring, dumbfounded, at the leaping flames quickly turning Fool's House into an enormous bonfire. "Where would he be?"

"Check Lydia's room," she cried. "I'll look in mine."

We swung open the kitchen door and raced into the house. It was already thick with smoke and I quickly grabbed two dishtowels and ran them under the faucet. "Wait," I called after Peck as she ran up the stairs, "put this over your nose and mouth."

She didn't listen to me. "Check the dining room first," she called down. "Anyone in here?" We both shouted at the top of our lungs. I didn't have to check the dining room. Trimalchio was at my feet already.

I picked him up and yelled up to Peck, "I got him." She didn't answer me and I yelled again. "Peck, come on, I've got him. There's n.o.body else in here."

I ran the dog to the kitchen door and swung it open. "Go get help," I told him. He gave me a worried look. "She's going to be fine; go on."

I let the door swing shut and raced back to the stairs. The living room curtains had gone up in flames and the fire was quickly moving into the house. I took the steps two at a time, still clutching the two wet dishtowels. I held them over my nose but I was also trying to yell for Peck. She wasn't in Lydia's room or in either of the other two bedrooms, or in the bathroom.

I moved the dishtowel and shouted, "Peck!"

By now the fire was already raging inside the house and I could hear loud cracks as beams snapped. I ran back down the stairs into a pool of flames, beating them off me with the damp towels. The kitchen was already burning and I couldn't go back out that way. "Peck!" I screamed again, heading through the dining room toward a window that looked clear. I told myself I'd missed her. She must have gone out the front door while I took Trimalchio out the back. I pushed at the window, which probably hadn't been opened since the seventies. It was stuck fast. I could feel the heat behind me as I pushed as hard as I could, still shouting for Peck. The smoke was thick in my lungs. Just when I thought I was going to have to find another way out, the window gave way slightly. I pushed it open enough to fit through the frame and punched and shimmied my way into the bushes on that side of the house.

As I lay there, almost unconscious from the smoke, I knew. Peck was dead. Hadn't she predicted this very thing, at the beginning of the summer? She'd said they'd have to carry her out of there in a box.

The pain of grief overtook me and in that moment, just before it all went black, I understood what Lydia had meant when she wrote to us about what she hoped we would find in her house. It was us, Peck and me, the bond of sisterhood between us: that was the thing of utmost value Lydia wanted us to find.

I pa.s.sed out.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Finn's face looking worried. When he noticed I was coming around, he smiled. "Hey, kid."

"Peck," I tried to say. But all that came out was a croak.

"Shhhh," he said in a soothing voice. There was no better sound in the world than his voice. "Don't talk. I can hear the ambulance. You're going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay."

I opened my mouth again to ask about Peck. But nothing came out. I started to cry. "It's going to be okay," he kept repeating in that voice of his, deep and raspy and comforting. "Everything's going to be fine."

Behind us, the house was a bonfire. I could hear sirens and men shouting instructions and I pulled myself up onto my elbows to see what was going on. I needed to know about Peck.

"Don't try to get up," Finn said. "Here comes the ambulance."