Beach Wedding(7)

“I can see you in your little red plaid tie from your class picture,” Viv said excitedly. “My goodness, were you cute.”

“Where were you when I needed you, Viv?” I said, cordially kissing her hand. “As hard as it might be to believe, the nuns, as well as the other girls in my class whom I often terrorized, did not share your most excellent taste.”

“Where’s your high school? Nearby? Bishop what was it called?”

“Bishop McGann Mercy. No, that’s in Riverhead. Let’s skip it. I certainly did as often as I could.”

“Oh, boy,” Viv said as I swung a U-turn back for the train underpass. “Where to now?”

“No, no. It’s a surprise. You’ll see,” I said.

Ten minutes later and six miles to the northeast back in the Bays, the power-line buzz of a cicada started up as I stopped the car and rolled down the window. I folded my arms, smiling out at a patch of faded asphalt parking lot behind the Southampton town police department.

The things we remember, I thought, looking at weeds growing along its edges. The little things that once seemed so important.

I gestured out again at a small utilitarian building beside the police department.

“This, Viv, as you can see by that sign yonder, is the Southampton town justice court, where Dad used to work and where Mom would drive us once a week to make him watch us after school while she went food shopping. Picture epic games of catch out in this parking lot here, and a crazed-looking man in a tie feeding bologna sandwiches to his five hungry plaid-clad kids under that tree there where there used to be a picnic table.”

“Probably removed to the Smithsonian for its crazy Long Island suburban family diorama,” Viv said.

“See, Viv. Now you’re getting it,” I said, peeling back out of the lot. “Okay, now for the real juicy part.”

A few minutes later, we pulled off Halsey Neck Road back onto Meadow Lane at the beach.

But instead of making a right back toward Tom’s beach mansion, I took another nervous breath and hit the left clicker and headed north in the direction of where my brother had gestured the day before.



8

Hedges suddenly appeared on both sides of the sandy road. Big, boxy manicured hedges, high and thick and intensely dark green, separated at generous intervals by tall white wooden gates.

As I drove, I suddenly remembered how my buddies from high school used to call this section of hedge-lined road the Canyon of Zeros. Zeros, not as in losers, but as in the nine you needed in your bank account to afford living in one of its privacy shrub–bordered beach houses.

After about three and a half miles, I slowed and stopped on the right-hand shoulder of the sun-faded blacktop. There was a thin gap in the hedge to our right, and through it, down a hopelessly elegant slope of lawn, one could just make out the hard, razor-sharp roofline of a vast modern glass house against the ocean.

Staring at it, I thought about rolling down the window, but then thought twice and just turned up the AC instead.

The many-winged house, built by some famous architect in the early sixties, looked more like some kind of school or corporate park building, I knew. I had looked it up on Google Maps once, and from the air, the glass box structure on the landmark estate almost looked like a giant question mark.

How ironic, I thought as I lifted my iced coffee and silently peered at the roof’s tempered blue glass edge.

Because it was a question all right.

The question was:

Why the hell did I decide to come back home after all this time?

“That’s it? That’s her house?” Viv said.

“Yep. That’s it. They call it the Glass House around here. Very famous. And why not? After all, it’s where the end began. You know the rest, Viv. Okay, end of tour,” I said as I dropped the coffee back into the cup holder and went to put the car in Drive again.

“Oh, no. No way,” Viv said, grabbing my wrist. “We’re here now, Terry. You’ve been carrying this stuff with you so long you can’t even see how it eats at you. Get it out. All of it. Once and for all. I want to hear the story in a straight line. From your own mouth. Right here, right now.”

“I’ve told you a million times,” I said.

“Never from beginning to end. And never all of it.”

“Come on, Viv. We need to get back.”

I saw a hardness enter Viv’s pretty caramel-colored eyes.

“Tell it, Terry,” she said. “Get it off your chest. Tell it now.”

What an idiot I was to dredge all this up, I thought as I looked over at my wife with a quickly building annoyance.

But she only stared back at me steadily.

I looked at the house again through the hedge. Then I looked back at Angelina, who had fallen asleep. I envied her.

That’s when it happened.

All of it started coming back.

As I sat there, more than twenty years disappeared, and I started to recall everything.

Why I had gone away to college in Philadelphia. Why I had never come back. Why even now I was reluctant to be here.

“Tell me from the beginning, Terry,” my wife said. “Tell me the whole thing.”

I looked out at the sunlight starbursting off the glass roof edge of the beach house, off the ocean in the distance.

Then I began to remember it.

The very worst memory of my life.