Snark and Stage Fright (4 page)

“So you and Michael … ?” Her question trailed off; it was too ridiculous to ask.

I nodded and said, “Me and Michael.”

“Wow. I mean, I’m sorry, but … Just—wow. It’s a surprise, that’s all.”

I should have held my tongue. Manually. With both hands. But I just couldn’t.

Before I could stop myself, I said, “Well, it’s part of his community service.”

Her sandy brows drew together over her lowered sunglasses and she looked at me. “Really?” She drew out the word so that it had about eighteen syllables.

“Yeah. Michael got arrested for passing bad checks. But he was just sentenced to community service since his family knows the judge and all. So he has to take orphan girls with no hope of modeling careers down to the Cape once or twice a summer. And I’m this week’s lucky orphan!”

After a few seconds, she snarled, “Michael would never pass bad checks,” and eyed me with great indignation.

“
That
was the part of the story you found unbelievable? Not the orphanage for failed models?” I laughed.

“I’m finding this whole
situation
pretty unbelievable, to tell you the truth.” She shook her head. “Don’t you find it an eensy weensy bit surprising yourself?” she asked me and then sat there with two fingers poised like pincers a few millimeters apart to indicate the “eensy weensy-ness” of my chances of being with Michael.

“What’s that, Catalina? Your cup size before the surgery?” I blurted out—just as Michael showed up.

“Everything okay here?” he asked after he dropped a cloth shopping bag filled with some crusty bread, cheese, and a bunch of big green grapes onto the towel.

I waited for Catalina to burst into wounded tears. But she chirped, “Georgia is
sooo
funny,” as if we had just been laughing and braiding each other’s hair in one of history’s finest moments of girl bonding.

Interesting ploy.

Michael raised one eyebrow at me as a frown pulled at the corner of his mouth. But he shrugged, handed me a jar of peanut butter and a knife, and explained, “Quickest thing I could grab.”

“Peanut butter?” Catalina gasped as if he had presented me with a banana slug on a plate.

“Georgia’s a vegan,” he said simply.

“Oh, poor
you
! You’re going to miss out on Dr. Endicott’s lobster feasts.” She pouted in sympathy and batted her eyes a few times, which was something I thought only happened in cartoons.

I assured her, “I’ll survive without seeing his dad throw a living creature into a pot of boiling water, thanks.”

Michael looked at me, brows raised in surprise, and I just shook my head quickly and hoped he knew how much I really like and admire his dad despite his cruelty to crustaceans.

Catalina informed me as she placed a hand on his shoulder, “Well, Michael
loves
lobster.”

“I know. But he has many fine qualities despite that flaw,” I said, and he pulled a piece of hair off my cheekbone and laughed at that.

Catalina examined a second grape between two fingers and then asked, “Are you still in high school, Georgia?” sort of the way you would ask someone if they still had to report to their parole officer.

“Yes. And what are you going to do now that you’re out of school, besides posing for pictures in overpriced clothes and inducing bulimia in preteens?” I asked, and Catalina’s eyes narrowed and her lips mashed together for a second.

“Hey, George,” Michael said, rising suddenly. “We really should head up to the house to get ready for the big dinner.” He stooped to begin putting the bunch of grapes and the bread and cheese back into the bag and said to Catalina, “Rose is getting married tomorrow, and the rehearsal dinner is at my aunt’s house tonight.”

“I know. God, I
love
your aunt’s house,” she said, keeping her eyes on me while she helped Michael fold the beach towel. Meanwhile, I tried to get the umbrella to collapse and it did, right on my fingers, pinching the flesh in the mechanism, but I willed myself not to howl in pain. “I’ll be there tomorrow, at the wedding and the reception,” she promised and gave Michael a kiss on the cheek as he pulled the bag and the umbrella over his shoulder. Then she wiped his cheekbone slowly, to cleanse it of any lip gloss. I was surprised she didn’t want to leave her mark. “See you tomorrow, Georgia!” she called after us, and I think I shuddered visibly.

As we climbed the weedy bank, he was impossible to keep up with. Michael’s a fast walker under any circumstances but I kept getting slowed down by bucketfuls of sand filling my flip-flops and when I removed them the sand stung my hand where the umbrella closure had cut into it, slowing me down even more. When I finally reached him at the top of the hill and started on the stone path to the bungalow, I said, “You’ll be happy to know Catalina thinks you make an
ex
cellent boyfriend.”

“Is that why you had to snap at her like that?” he asked without looking at me. I was shaken by this but determined not to show it.
She
had started the catfight, not me, and even if he didn’t know that, he should know that I would never be mean to someone arbitrarily.

“Hey, I was merely restating documented fact. Images of super skinny fashion models
do
contribute to high incidences of eating and body dysmorphic disorders in female adolescents.”

He looked directly at me now as he opened the screen door to the porch and just said, “Really, George?”

“Well, it’s not like it’s an instantaneous thing,” I allowed. “It’s not like a girl sees a Victoria’s Secret ad, feels inadequate, and immediately runs to the bathroom to stuff her fingers down her throat—though I’m pretty sure Cassie has done exactly that.” I set down the folded towel and bag of water bottles next to the umbrella and followed him into the little white kitchen. I’d felt so relieved that morning to move down into his parents’ little gray bungalow (little by comparison) and out of the Glass Boat. Now I felt anything but relieved. “You’re mad at me,” I said.

He frowned and opened the refrigerator to return the cheese.

“I don’t see why you had to say that to her. It’s not like Catalina decided to become a model just so she could mess with the self-esteem levels of overly impressionable girls,” he said.

“Are you sure? Because while you were gone she seemed pretty determined to make
me
feel inadequate.”

He shut the fridge door and brushed some sand off his plaid bathing trunks.

“You do that all on your own, Georgie,” he sighed.

I felt really bad. On the one hand, one could easily describe Catalina with a word that I never use because it’s so sexist. (I’ll just say that if she gives birth one day to a litter of puppies, I won’t be surprised). On the other hand, Michael was hardly responsible for what she had said in his absence. And I can be a little trigger-happy with the tongue when I feel threatened.

I walked over to him and put a hand on his elbow and felt every cell in my body relax when he put his arm around me. I rested my head on his shoulder for a moment, breathing in the smell of Michael mixed with ocean air and salt water, which is pretty much the best smell ever.

“I promise to keep my rapier wit in its sheath for the rest of this visit,” I said. “I would never do anything to make you or your family uncomfortable.”

“Not intentionally, anyway.” He smiled and kissed the top of my head. “I need a shower.” He walked out of the room and then stuck his head back in the doorway. “You weren’t
jealous
of Catalina, were you, Georgie?” he asked with a grin that was way too delighted by this concept.

I pretended to be very preoccupied with finding the exact right spot for the peanut butter jar in the cabinet above the sink, and he just laughed and walked away. But he was replaced in the doorway almost instantly by his grandmother, with her white hair wrapped in a silk striped scarf and wearing a high-collared white blouse and pink cotton skirt.

“Hi, Mrs. Endicott,” I said as nicely as I could and tried to smile, trying to fashion myself as the picture of Sweetness and Politesse. “Remember me? From the rosebushes yesterday?”

“I
do
remember you,” she assured me. “From the Harvest Ball last year.”

I felt myself redden darker than my slight sunburn as I busied myself getting a glass of water, saying, “Oh, that’s right. I think I remember that.”

She sniffed and put a ringed white hand on the back of a simple wooden chair. “You were dancing with a young man who had forfeited his country club membership, I recall, due to certain … improprieties.”

I gulped down some water, nodding. “Yeah, I think that’s true, too … ” I had danced with Jeremy Wrentham then; he’d cut in on Michael, which had seemed like something out of a Jane Austen novel at the time. It had not, however, turned out that way.

“And now you are here with my grandson,” she observed.

“Yes. Yes, I am.” I tried not to frown or to look unpleasant, but I couldn’t help wondering how long we were going to play the you-state-the-obvious-and-I-agree-to-it game. I didn’t know the rules, and I was pretty sure the game was rigged, and not in my favor.

The most senior Mrs. Endicott pulled out the chair and sat, hands folded, as if she were about to interview me for a job or a scholarship I would never get, though she would enjoy watching me squirm and supplicate myself in false hope. She waved me over to the chair across from her and nodded as I took a seat.

“What does your father do—Georgiana, is it?”

“Um, yeah. My dad teaches Victorian literature at Meryton College.” It occurred to me that this was an acceptable answer, one that indicated a certain amount of culture and intellectual merit in my parentage so I said it kind of brightly.

“A decent
regional
school,” she conceded. “And what is it you want to do, Georgiana, when you graduate from Longbourne High School?”

There was something in her tone of voice that made me forget my promise to Michael from a whole seven minutes earlier about not upsetting his family. The imperious way she looked down her nose at me—literally—and held her jaw set so firmly made me form the words, “I plan to find a rich boy, get myself pregnant as fast as possible, and live off his family’s money for the rest of my life. Maybe open a little boutique in town, too, just for something to do because I do
not
think I want to be a full-time mommy.” My face flushed as I finished because I knew it was wrong to voice her unspoken fears to her, but I couldn’t help it She didn’t think I was good enough; Catalina didn’t think I was good enough; probably ninety percent of the Cape’s population didn’t think I was good enough to walk their beaches. And if I couldn’t prove my worth to them, I would at least give them a little discomfort, kind of like a bee that stings the arm that swats it. And then dies.

She pushed herself away from the table and stood up, a little shaky on her legs but her facial expression carved in granite, a bas-relief of displeasure. She started to walk away, but then turned and asked, as if she had just recalled something that gave her great delight, “You write editorials for that alternative newspaper the school board keeps trying to shut down, don’t you?”

“Yes. Last year I actually got the school board to agree that vegan alternatives to lunch needed to be offered every day. And not just wilted lettuce in the salad bar.”

She leaned forward and studied me so carefully I thought I would crack into pieces under her gaze like a clay pot stuck in the kiln too long. She said, “You think yourself a very clever girl, don’t you, Georgiana? Clever and amusing?”

“I, um … I don’t have an answer to that, Ms. Endicott.”

She stepped carefully up to the little ledge at the doorway to the living room, then turned back for a moment to warn me, “Sometimes clever people are not as clever as they think they are,” before walking out the door.

I just sat there alone for a few minutes, catching my breath.

I’d been on the Cape for fewer than fifty hours and already I had:

(1) been molested by a literary lion

(2) taken a spectacular fall off the deck in front Michael’s entire family, and

(3) made two sworn enemies, one old and one young but both ready to place my head on a pike next to the compound flagpole.

And the real party hadn’t even started yet.

4 
F. Scott Fitzgerald Observed the Obvious

The rehearsal dinner was much more formal than the previous night’s gathering, with about twenty of us seated inside at a long, ivory-clothed table and servers in black and white uniforms. I think every bit of marine life in the sea had been hauled in for the feast, but I was grateful that someone had remembered a plate of pasta al olio for me. Most of the talk at the table was about the wedding and last-minute changes or plans for the big day, so I didn’t have to say anything at all, which was good because I felt like I looked out of place enough without having to open my mouth and prove it. While everyone else bore the colors of a rainbow sherbet spread onto individual dresses and jackets and ties, I wore a dark plum-colored dress—the least hoochie one available at Forever 21—because my mom had convinced me that “jewel tones” were “right for my coloring.” I looked like a bruise on the shin of the party (and I had literal bruises and scrapes on my arms and legs from yesterday’s tumble off the deck). At least Michael’s mom had on black, as usual, with a sweeping sheer zebra print scarf draped around her shoulders, but she can get away with such eccentricity because she’s an artist and has bohemian cred I don’t. Plus, she would look chic in a pair of overalls and hip waders. Even the white streak on the side of her face looks impossibly glamorous. Michael obviously got his dark hair and eyes from her; from what I could tell, everyone on the Endicott side of his family seemed to be the result of some Nazi genetic experiment in producing healthy-looking, blue-eyed blonds for the Fatherland.

After dinner, someone from the Boston Symphony came in to play the piano as even more guests arrived and milled about or clustered, sipping cocktails and chatting. I stuck next to Michael and smiled and nodded at anything anyone said, especially when Catalina arrived and everyone seemed thrilled to see her, like she was the Duchess of Cambridge bringing in the heir to the throne. She gave Michael another kiss on the cheek and whispered something that made him blush a little.