Beach Wedding(30)

“Tom, you incredibly crazy son of a bitch,” I said to myself with a smile as I ran toward it.

The chopper had just landed on the grass between the house and the pool by the time I got to where everybody was standing on the sundeck.

It was my turn to gape at them now. The entirety of my siblings and in-laws and nieces and nephews were all in their Sunday best atop the marble side steps of the house. Everyone was holding champagne flutes. Robin ran over and handed me one as I arrived beside Angelina and Viv.

My mom, half amazed, half terrified, in a silvery dress, came over and laughed as she squeezed my hand and gave me a kiss.

Viv tried to say something, but it was impossible to hear her over the quivering roar of the helicopter.

Like everyone else, I just stood there rooted to the stone steps, gaping at the rumbling aircraft. With the whole back of the house as well as the grounds floodlit, it looked like something out of a magazine shoot or a scene in a James Bond movie maybe.

Just as I thought this, as if on cue, Tom came running out of the side of the house in a three-piece suit. As dapper as Fred Astaire, he descended the marble steps and dashed to the chopper and popped the door. He really hammed it up on the way down, of course, as everyone laughed.

Who is it? I was about to scream at Viv, but then I realized who it was as the chopper’s door slid wide and a small cute strawberry blonde woman stood cowering in it.

It was Tom’s wife-to-be, Emmaline Fullerton, I suddenly realized as I remembered her photo from the save-the-date card that had been stuck to our fridge for the last several months.

She made quite the entrance, didn’t she? I thought as I stared wide-eyed at the aircraft.

Or at least my brother was making sure she did.

With her were two similarly stunned-looking impeccably dressed young men. They were her two younger brothers, Toby and Gordon, I remembered Viv telling me. Tom helped them all down out of the helicopter and then suddenly scooped Emmaline up in his arms and carried her across the lawn.

As he carried her up the stairs, the chopper pilot gave us a thumbs-up from behind the canopy. We all cheered, especially all the Rourke boy cousins, as it lifted back up into the dark sky.

“You’re absolutely nuts, just incorrigible,” Emmaline said, punching at Tom’s chest as he finally let her down in front of us.

“Emmaline, this is the fam,” Tom said casually. “Everyone, this is Emmaline.”

She gave us all a little wave, still looking quite flustered.

“When you said you had a ride waiting for us at the airport, I thought you were talking about a car, you incredible idiot,” she said.

“A car?” Tom said, frowning. “I thought I told you, honey. They changed the town ordinance. Cars aren’t allowed anymore. At least not in Southampton. You’ll just have to get used to flying, I’m afraid.”

But even Tom couldn’t hold it in. He burst out laughing when he saw how ridiculously startled Emmaline looked.

“He’s a madman, isn’t he?” she said, staring at us as he buried his face into the nape of her neck. “No, really. This is how he introduces us? Some kind of practical joke? He knows I hate flying. Who would do this? I think he may truly be an actual lunatic.”

“You’re right. He is, Emmaline. But now he’s your lunatic, so good luck,” I said, and everyone laughed.

I decided I liked Emmaline. She was a character like Tom. You could tell. Nothing like the stuffy London banking executive I had expected. She would give Tom a run for his money.

I looked around at the lit-up estate, the Parthenon of the pool house, the massive lawn, the flashing red lights of the departing helicopter.

And clearly, Tom had a bit of that, I thought, shaking my head.

As we all started meandering back toward the house, I stopped for a moment and turned and looked north up the beach. About a dozen houses up, I saw the lights there on its dark curve.

Staring at the lights of Hailey Sutton’s glass house, I thought about how Tom was probably accomplishing his mission. He had no doubt pissed her off with his little low-flying chopper gag.

But was that such a good thing? I suddenly wondered.

I was lifting the flute to take a sip of the champagne when I paused. Instead, I left the glass on a stone railing as I kissed my daughter on top of her head. Then I took my wife’s hand and headed back into the house.



41

Past the Coast Guard station in Montauk at the end of a little drive called Star Island Road is a secluded bayside parking lot. On weekend nights when I was in high school, kids often used to park in it with their significant other to watch the submarine races, to quote the term of the time.

On a beautiful unseasonably cool morning two days later, I pulled my Honda into this same lot and shut off the engine and got out of my car. I didn’t see any racing submarines, but at the end of a dock at the far end of the lot, I saw the tall mast of an old fishing trawler swaying back and forth against the cloudless sky like a branchless tree in a soft breeze.

Then as I came around some hedges that rimmed the lot, I looked out at the water and smiled as I saw a guy in a sea kayak paddling in.

“My goodness, little Terry Rourke. Look at you,” my dad’s old friend and partner Marvin Heller said as I helped him onto the dock.

“You look great as always, Mr. Heller,” I said to the short and handsome sixtysomething Black man as we pulled in his kayak.