Snark and Stage Fright (2 page)

“Who’s Anthony?” I whispered to Michael as we skirted a gleaming black grand piano and a rock wall fireplace. “One of your cousins?”

Michael bit back a smile and took my hand as we walked out onto the terrace, saying, “Anthony is one of the servants.”

“Oh. Got it.”

All of his assembled relatives—and there appeared to be at least ten of them already—cheered when we walked out onto the flagstone terrace that swept over the meadows below. I headed right for a railing as people were starting to swarm Michael for hugs. Despite his recent interest in taking our relationship to a whole new physical level, he’s not exactly Mr. Touchy-Feely, but his extended family appeared to be the huggy sort. Before an older man could clasp him in a bear hug, Michael grabbed my hand and pulled me toward him.

“Everybody, this is Georgiana Barrett. Georgia, this is my uncle Doug, my aunt Trudy, and my cousins Megan, Margot, and Jack. And that’s Rick, another cousin, and my uncle Don, who designed this place, and that’s Sterling, my cousin Rose’s fiancée, but she doesn’t seem to be here right now … ”

I lost track of everyone at that point but just tried to smile and nod and shake hands with the right amount of pressure, not too firm but not too wussy, either, because I’ve read that people can tell a lot about you by your handshake.

A short, middle-aged woman in a white, short-sleeved blouse and black skirt came up, and I automatically reached out my hand to shake hers but she just stared at me like I had burst into flames. The college-aged cousins, Jack and Margot, laughed a little.

“Georgia, this is Ingrid,” Margot said to me with a smirk that was not unlike Michael’s. “Can she get you something to drink? How about you, Michael?”

“Oh,” I said, and I could feel myself blush as Ingrid, the maid, scuttled off. Everyone resumed their happy chatter and when Ingrid came back, I took my glass of iced tea and said, “Thank you so much,” and then wondered if you were even supposed to talk to a servant at all, let alone thank them. I should have paid more attention to all of those episodes of
Downton Abbey
I’d watched with Mom and Leigh and Tori.

I drifted back to the wooden railing running between short stone pillars and looked out at the meadow, which was wild with purple and yellow flowers. Michael came up behind me and set his glass next to mine, then nudged my elbow with his own. I could see that he was smiling with great amusement at Faux Pas Number One and was no doubt eagerly awaiting the hilarity of subsequent ones.

“Riiiilllly,” I drawled in my best upper crusty accent, “they should have the help in
u
niform if we are to identify them properly.”

He put an arm around me and said, “This place is called Fox Glen because in the mornings and evenings you can see foxes out there.” He pointed to the scrubby pine forest on the edge of the meadow.

“I hope I see one.”

“Get up early with me when I go running and you probably will.”

“You
never
want me to go running with you because you say I’ll slow you down. Which is true.”

“I didn’t say ‘come
running
with me’; I said ‘
get up
with me.’”

“You know, the beach might be the one place on earth where I might willingly go for a run—without needing a rabid dingo or something to come out of the woods and chase me.” I breathed in deeply and said, “I just love the smell of the beach.”

“It’s right down that path,” he assured me. “You can see the water through those trees. The bungalow is closer to it.” He pulled a few strands of my hair and promised, “We’ll walk down to the beach in a few minutes.”

“I don’t know,” I teased, leaning into him and enjoying feeling the weight and warmth of his body against mine. “Maybe I should spend the afternoon in the library, researching which fork I’m supposed to use when dinner is served.”

He laughed and pressed his hip against mine, saying, “It’s going to be a simple cookout. You may not even need a fork at all.” He finished in his stuffiest voice, “But I can assure you that Cook has been informed of your dietary preferences.”

“‘Cook has been informed.’” I laughed. No one does stuffy better than Michael. He kissed the top of my head and was brushing my hair back to work his way to my neck when we heard a sharp voice behind us call out, “Michael!” At the sound, he jumped away from me as if a firecracker had gone off at his feet, then grinned at me sheepishly before turning to say, “Hi, Gram. How are you?”

I turned to smile hello, but his grandmother just sort of sniffed and waved me aside as she walked over to one of Michael’s aunts. Dressed in a white straw hat the size of a beach umbrella, loose white pants, and a crisp pink tunic, she toddled away from us like a determined and very stern little bird.

“I see she remembers me.” I laughed, and Michael’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “Fondly.” I had met Michael’s grandmother once before and she had practically tossed me out of the Longbourne Country Club that night, which would have been okay with me. I had only been there because my family had dragged me to a Harvest Ball there. But it had been the first time I’d danced with Michael and the first time, I think, that I had started to think there was something pretty appealing about him.

“She’s doesn’t even know you, George,” Michael reassured me. “Don’t worry about her.”

“Hey, I don’t want to cross her. She looks like she supplements her prunes each morning with a big ol’ bowl of nails,” I said. Then I let my head wag like a palsied dowager’s and pointed to various people as I scolded, “I don’t approve of you, and I don’t approve of you, and I don’t—”

Megan, his cousin who goes to middle school somewhere in Boston, heard me and let out this high-pitched laugh that threw me into a panic. And that’s when I realized that their grandmother was now standing right behind me.

I turned bright red and gulped, “I’m sorry,” and started backing up in an involuntary retreat—and I kept going, right over the waist-high railing around the deck and into a rosebush below.

“George!” Michael yelled as I went over.

I don’t know what hurt more—my pride or the thorns in my side as Michael leaped down the stairs and helped pull me out to relative safety. I was vaguely aware as I brushed myself off that everyone was staring, but they were too polite to say anything or to snicker. Decorum obviously ruled the day here. Even the bees had the courtesy to refrain from stinging me when I had landed ass-first in their midst. Michael took my arm and called, “Do you want to take me and Georgia to the beach, Megs?”

Megan jumped up from her chair, stifling a giggle, and motioned for me to follow her when I climbed back up to the deck. I looked back at Michael and mouthed before following her, “I’m sorry!”

He just shook his head, but I could tell he had found my backflip off the porch an unappealing party trick.

When we got into the house, Megan said, “I told my mom you can share my room tonight. I’ll show you where it is so you can change.” But she couldn’t help but snicker again, “A big ol’ bowl of nails.”

At least I had one ally there, apparently, besides Michael.

Megan took me up a metal flight of stairs that twisted like a corkscrew and down the hall into another wing of the house and into a bedroom that didn’t look like it belonged to any adolescent girl I’ve ever met. It didn’t look like it belonged to anybody, really, not anybody with a personality. It was neat and clean and tastefully furnished, with two twin beds and matching dressers and blue bedspreads with seashells stitched on them, but there were no posters on the walls or worn stuffed animals or anything that would mark it as a girl’s room. It reminded me of the pristinely fake rooms you find set up to display furniture at IKEA, though none of the furniture here had labels and prices on it and I doubt if it had been assembled with an Allen wrench and a set of inadequate instructions like our bookshelves at home had been. But I guess that’s because it’s a vacation house. Maybe the whole idea is to keep vacation houses neutral for guests; still, I felt a little like security would come and haul me out of there if I tried to open up a drawer or even sit on the bed.

Megan pointed out the bathroom in between this room and the next and talked to me through the door as I changed into my bathing suit.

“This house is really amazing,” I said as I wiggled into my Old Navy tank suit.

“My dad designed it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“People photograph it all the time.”

“That must be weird,” I said when I walked out of the room, but she wrinkled her brow in confusion and asked, “Why?”

As we walked across the terrace and down the stairs to the path to the beach, I was so struck by how beautiful the beach was that I stopped worrying that my Williams College T-shirt didn’t look too ratty or failed to cover my butt. It was wonderfully sandy compared to most of the rocky ones I’d been to since we moved east from Colorado two years ago. Maybe Michael’s aunt and uncle had had the servants haul all of the rocks off the beach so it would be softer and nicer to lie around on.

Michael took my hand and we dove together into the first big wave that came and let it wash us, laughing, back to the shore. We played around in the waves for a while and then I looked for sea glass with Megan until it was time to go back up to the house, which had been transformed in our absence. Grills had been set up on the edge of the lawn and there were several white-covered tables and white-covered chairs and chefs in white hats and a team of people in purple polo shirts and black pants setting the tables with napkins and Mason jars with tiny roses overflowing their rims. This was not exactly my family’s idea of an outdoor barbecue; at home, cookouts usually involved paper plates and plastic utensils no one would have to wash and my dad arguing with my mom about how much lighter fluid to put on the charcoal. I was pretty sure there wasn’t a hot dog within miles of the Glass Boat.

I took a long time getting dressed for dinner because I was convinced that my red-striped cotton sundress would be hopelessly déclassé for the occasion and regretted that I hadn’t bothered to bring a blow dryer because my hair was sticking out in weird little wings. I was trying to pat it down with a flat hand but it kept springing back up, when Michael knocked on the door.

“What are you doing?” He laughed as I tried to knock a particularly recalcitrant clump into submission with the back of a hairbrush. “Giving yourself a concussion will not excuse you from dinner, you know.”

I turned and took him in. His own hair was curling again after being towel-dried and he had a soft tan that made his eyes and hair look even darker. He was wearing a brick-red polo shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts without a crease in them, and the sun had kissed a soft pink glow along the tops of his cheekbones. I wanted to trace them with my finger so much I reached my hand out but asked instead, “How do you pack to stay so wrinkle free? I feel like a mess. Is this dress okay?”

“You look great. Are you ready now? I made sure my aunt seated you next to my grandmother.” He laughed, and I must have looked suitably horrified because he shook his head and offered me his bent arm like we were in the nineteenth century and walking into some drawing room to hear an accomplished young lady play the pianoforte. “Come on.” I took his elbow and we went back out to the terrace filled with people. I met his cousin Rose, the bride-to-be, who seemed distracted but nice enough, as well as more cousins and second cousins, and when we were standing on the lawn talking to one of the many relatives I noticed a man in a seersucker jacket off in the distance, holding a shot glass and saying something to Michael’s uncle Don that made him laugh.

“Oh my God,” I whispered to Michael. “Is that Forrest Ritter? The writer?”

Michael craned his neck slightly to see and nodded. “Yeah. He has a house down the road and plays golf with my dad and uncle. Have you read his stuff?”

“Some of it. I admit I only understood about twenty percent of it. It’s like, really experimental, isn’t it?” His books are weird and confusing, a mash-up of cartoons and German legends and particle physics. My dad, a Brit lit professor, says it’s “postmodern” but actually
likes
it. He thinks Forrest Ritter is about the only decent writer to live since Queen Victoria died. “My dad would be so stoked if he were here, yards away from a great writer.”

Michael took my hand and said, “So let’s go say hello to him,” and I almost choked on my stuffed cherry tomato.

“No! No … I won’t have anything to say to him and I’ll sound like an idiot.”

He frowned slightly and urged, “Come on, George, I’ve known him since I was about five. He taught me how to play Texas Hold ’Em.”

One of the things I love about Michael is that he always surprises me. Yet somehow the idea that he was taught to play poker by a certified literary lion didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel that the gulf between us was even wider than I had once feared. Back in Longbourne, with all the days of summer lying before us like an unexplored and verdant landscape, nothing else and no one else had mattered, and I had forgotten, before he’d invited me to the Cape, how different we are. Here in the Glass Boat, I felt the difference more keenly.

“I’ll introduce you later,” he promised, and I nodded.

There were other famous people there under the twinkle lights and paper lanterns strung between the trees: a senator or two and some football player I vaguely recognized from a cereal box, and a newsperson from Boston. But I kind of kept an eye on Forrest Ritter without meaning to. He was so striking, handsome in an odd sort of way, with craggy features and weathered skin and hair that was graying at the temples. When he talked, he moved his hands a lot, and they were big, strong hands that looked like they’d spent their sixty or so years baling hay or roping cattle, not pecking at the keys of a laptop.

We ate dinner at a table with Megan and some other cousins and Cook
had
“been informed,” apparently, because one of the caterers brought over a grilled Portobello mushroom burger for me after serving everyone else big, fleshy burgers made out of some unfortunate animal. At least they appeared to be charred well done—I can’t stand it when blood drips out, the way my dad eats them. Over dinner, Michael and his cousin Clark, an investment banker with a bald spot, argued about the Occupy Wall Street movement and whether it had made any difference in society or had just inconvenienced people like Clark, but I held my tongue because I didn’t want to upset anybody after I had already insulted his grandmother so publicly. I wasn’t about to accuse Michael’s cousin of sucking the lifeblood out of homeless people or beating the poor with shovels. When I excused myself to visit the bathroom, Michael caught my hand for a second and squeezed it like he knew and appreciated it.