The Last Book Party(24)
I pulled out the copy of The Secret of the Old Clock and imagined myself in a poodle skirt as Nancy Drew, but I didn’t have the titian hair or the gumption. The more fitting choice for me would be Bess, Nancy’s timid and slightly plump sidekick, but where was the fun in that? I ran my finger over the spines of tattered old copies of Rebecca and The Secret Garden and Sweet Savage Love, one of a series of bodice rippers I had devoured the summer I was fourteen.
It was hard enough figuring out how to look one’s best for a party, let alone choose some alter ego. Wasn’t costume selection a window into the soul, a clue to a person’s fantasy self? What else to make of those girls at costume parties at Brown who jumped at the chance to wear skimpy I Dream of Jeannie outfits and the frat guys who dressed as devils just to hold a whip?
I went outside onto the deck, careful not to let the screen door slap. The moon was shining like a spotlight on the marsh, where the tide was nearly high, covering most of the grass. The wind was coming from the south, and I could hear the surf from the bay. The water would be wavy and warm. I climbed up on the deck ledge and let my legs swing down and kick against the wood. I thought of my mother’s suggestion to choose a character from a book I loved. I felt the breeze from the bay and shivered. The first book that came to mind was Jeremy’s, and his wistful, lonely leper.
16
The phone rang at seven the next morning, interrupting my chance to sleep late on my first Saturday since I’d started working for Henry. I didn’t have to pick up the receiver to know it would be Danny, and that he’d be calling for one of two reasons: to report on some new mathematical breakthrough that my parents and I would assume was impressively significant without understanding why, or to seek reassurance that despite a less-than-perfect score on an exam or a classmate’s exceptional performance in class, he was not a failure. My parents’ constant readiness to reassure Danny of his brilliance was not just a reflection of their desire for him to be happy but a force of habit. Praised for his intellect since he was a toddler, Danny had only one rubric by which to judge himself.
Growing up, and through high school, his tantrums were legendary—notebooks shredded, books tossed, doors slammed—all because of a 99 on a test. Suffering when he suffered, my parents would make excuses for his behavior, as if his perfectionism was understandable, even the logical response for someone with his gifts. No one in the family saw the incongruity in my getting praised for getting a 90 on an exam, while we all felt sorry for Danny the few times his performance wasn’t flawless. My parents meant well, but recently I’d begun to wonder if their rapt attention wasn’t reinforcing Danny’s belief that extreme distress was an appropriate reaction to falling short of his high standards.
Thankfully, Danny rarely wanted to talk to me in these states, which probably contributed to our getting along so well. It also helped that in the Venn diagram of our ambitions, there was no overlap. He was numbers; I was words. We had come to this understanding as children, after years of being suspicious of each other. Danny couldn’t believe how much I read or how fast. Convinced I was skimming and unable to retain what I had read, he used to try to test me. One day he yanked A Little Princess from my hands, flipped through the pages, and said, “Quick, what was the name of Captain Crewe’s business partner?” To which I disappointed him by answering immediately, “Carrisford.” At the same time, I didn’t understand most of his math explanations, like why I should account for compound interest when saving my babysitting money. Eventually, we gave up the battle and resigned ourselves to being different.
Unable to fall back to sleep, I climbed out of bed and went to the kitchen for coffee. My mother was sitting at the table, twirling the phone cord around her fingers as she listened to Danny. My father hovered over her. “Do you want me to take over?” he whispered, looking, at that moment, much older than his fifty-four years.
Danny’s episodes were less frequent than they used to be, but the routine was nonetheless predictable. This phone conversation would go on for at least an hour, sometimes two, and my parents would become anxious themselves, unable to think about or discuss anything else, until my mother would brave a return phone call to Danny in the evening or the next day, and we would all know by looking at her face whether his mood had passed. Once it had, my father would reiterate his opinion that something practical, like banking or insurance, might be less stressful for Danny than academia.
I took my coffee out onto the deck. The sun was already strong, the sky an intense blue. I heard the tat-tat-tat of a woodpecker in the distance. Inhaling deeply, I looked out over the edge of the marsh in the direction of the ocean and Tillie and Henry’s house, wishing I was there instead of here. Soon, Tillie and Henry would begin preparing for a dinner party they would host that night after attending a benefit for an AIDS support group in Provincetown. From what I’d overheard, the guests included a drama critic from The Boston Globe and his painter wife, the editorial director of Provincetown Arts, and “Lanie and Eric,” as Tillie had said, who I now realized were Lane and her sculptor father. Even if she was there only because of her father, Lane’s invitation rankled.
I had spent twenty-five summers in Truro and felt as if no one knew the place better or loved it more. I knew the way the sun setting over the bay behind Toms Hill could make the windows of the houses across the marsh appear as though they were on fire and at what time the bobwhite in the tree outside my bedroom would start its chant. I knew that the parking lot attendant at Corn Hill Beach filled her water bottles with vodka, and that the Truro harbormaster didn’t know how to swim. Three years in a row, I had entered the Truro Scavenger Hunt, and for three years in a row, I had won, most recently because I happened to know that the Truro artist Milton Wright was Wilbur and Orville’s nephew.