Beach Wedding(24)

I had showered first, and after I got dressed, I decided to clear my head while the girls got ready. I was downstairs in the formal living room on one of its half-dozen couches reading a coffee table book about an hour later when Viv came down the Gone with the Wind–sized staircase hand in hand with Angelina.

“Where is everybody?” she said.

“A bunch of them are down in the playroom. We’re waiting on Tom. He’s going to be down in a minute was the latest text.”

“How long ago was that?” Viv said.

“Oh, about an hour ago,” I said as I held up the book in my lap to show Viv. “You have to see what I found here. Listen to this, honey.”

Viv and Angelina sat down on the couch across from me.

“Ready for a story, Angelina?” I said.

She nodded.

“‘In reports afterward, the doorman would recount how he had actually seen the man in the tattered green Norfolk jacket that very morning as he came in for his morning shift. Originally, the sad, almost forlorn-seeming figure lingering around on the Eighty-Eighth Street side of the building hadn’t struck him as being that out of place. At times, the down-and-out would loiter there on the building’s sidewalk exhaust grates for the heat, and if none of the tenants were around, he would tend to look the other way.’”

“Mommy, I’m so bored,” Angelina said.

“Who wants to play Laser Rabbit?” Viv whispered, taking out her phone.

“Really?” I said as Angelina seized the phone that she was only allowed to play with on very special occasions. “You call that parenting, Viv?” I teased.

“Mommies need vacations, too, thank you very much,” Viv said, tossing a throw pillow at me. “Keep reading,” Viv said.

“‘But at nine thirty that morning,’” I continued, “‘as the doorman was holding open the door of the Mackenzies’ new Mercer limousine, he spotted the man in the tattered green coat again coming around the corner with rage in his eyes and a large black revolver in his hands.

“‘Mrs. Mackenzie had just stepped out from beneath the awning when the first shot rang out. The doorman, dashing past her to seize the attacker, knocked Mrs. Mackenzie into the gutter as the second shot went wide, gouging a chunk out of the Mercer’s sideboard three inches to the left of Mrs. Mackenzie’s startled face.

“‘Mrs. Mackenzie miraculously had only been wounded in her left hip and would recover quickly. The identity of the attacker and motive for the attack were quickly discovered by arriving detectives as the shooter, an Italian immigrant and anarchist named Giuseppe Rogasta, began to scream, “Death to Capitalists,” as he was cuffed.

“‘It was after this family trauma that Mr. Mackenzie made the decision. To take his sensitive wife out of Manhattan and place her year-round at their favorite summer town in the quiet quaint Village of Southampton on Long Island’s south shore.

“‘But no normal house would do for his beloved Margreth if she were to live on the shore year-round. Fifty acres of prime beachfront was promptly purchased and Sandhill Point was born.’”

“Sandhill Point?” Viv said.

“That’s the name of the estate here,” I said, excitedly showing her the cover of the book.

On it was a black-and-white photograph of the house’s black-and-white-tiled foyer. SANDHILL POINT was embossed over the top of the picture, and on the bottom it said, House of Dreams.

“It’s a book about the house itself,” I said. “Apparently, this place is not just beautiful, it’s really famous. It was built by this guy, Arthur Mackenzie, a robber baron–era steel magnate who was a partner of Carnegie.”

“Tom didn’t mention that the house actually has a name,” Viv said, looking up at the elaborate chandelier. “And how romantic. The man had it built for his beloved wife as a sanctuary. What was her name again?”

“Margreth Mackenzie,” I said, flipping through the book. “She was the one who painted all these seascapes displayed throughout the house.”

“Even the one in our room?”

“Yep. It was one of her passions, the book says. Not only that, but the house was designed by McKim Mead White, the same architects who designed so many of the famous Newport mansions and the New York Public Library building. The landscape architect who did the gardens, or as the book calls them, the Formal Entrance Court, also did the grounds for the Lincoln Memorial.”

“That is so cool,” Viv said, smiling. “Look at us. We’re living like robber barons. No wonder it’s so expensive.”

“Not only that, but so many rich and famous people have stayed here, it’s not even funny. FDR summered here for a couple of seasons in the thirties. Eisenhower. Jackie O was here for parties and sleepovers when she was a kid. Your butt could actually be parked right where hers was. Much of the antique furniture is the same.”

Viv wriggled in her seat and laughed.

“How exclusive!”

“Mick Jagger stayed here in the seventies. Clint Eastwood. Dennis Hopper. Andy Warhol. And get this! Xavier Kelsey used to summer here for decades.”

“No way! Your favorite writer!”

“Mommy, Laser Rabbit is too hard. I’m hungry,” Angelina said, pouting.

“So much for the high life,” Viv said, standing. “Text your crazy brother again, Terry, and tell him we all have hungry kids to feed and if he doesn’t get his twenty-first-century Great Gatsby butt down here pronto, we’re all about to forget about the reservations and head to a Mickey Dee’s.”