Page 15 of Songs of Summer

Whether she really meant it or just didn’t feel like being lectured by her older sister, who knew? Bea remembered waffling between judgment and jealousy at the time—until Veronica’s next question, which elicited embarrassment and anger.

“When did you lose your virginity?” Veronica asked Bea, with a hint of payback for what she must have felt was Bea’s holier-than-thou attitude.

“I don’t kiss and tell like you do,” Beatrix fibbed. It wasn’t all a lie. The first half of the sentence was painfully true. Boys liked Bea, but they liked her as a friend. In contrast, those same boys only wanted to get into V’s pants. Everyone chose Veronica, and she used her sex appeal like a power trip. Until one day the following summer when a lifeguard named Chase Logan, whose unofficial motto was “Savin’ lives and breakin’ hearts, dude,” called out to Beatrix from his perch in the sand.

“Hey, Bea!” he yelled.

Beatrix was shocked that he even knew her name. She approached the chair feeling unusually confident, sporting thetwo-toned Norma Kamali bathing suit her mom had treated her to for spring break in Acapulco. Her mother had been duly surprised and excited that Bea wanted to partake in the collegiate tradition of sun and debauchery. Both her parents, Caroline and Shep, were very social creatures and known to be the life of every party. While Veronica seemed cut from the same cloth, Bea was much more reserved.

She walked right up to Chase and said hello.

“You’re readingThe Fountainhead? Cool,” he shot back with an approving look. Bea smiled, shocked that he was interested in literature. By the time she found out that he only knew the book because Robbie, the jerk-faced waiter inDirty Dancing, waved it in Baby’s face to justify his ego, she had already lost her virginity to Chase. It was a big deal. She had been the only one of her friends who was still a virgin.

Suddenly they were an item, and it was Beatrix, not Veronica, who was nestled on the couch at house parties, making out with the hottest lifeguard on the beach. She hadn’t realized until then how jealous she had been of her sister. It made her feel awful: she knew that jealousy was the most divisive emotion, especially within a family.

She wondered if Veronica would still have that effect on her today. She thought not, but couldn’t imagine an occasion, aside from her father’s eventual passing, when they would be in the same room together to find out. With any luck, Shep Silver would outlive them all.

Now, as they reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, Bea opened Paul’s Chex Mix, slipped on the airline headphones, and flicked through the zillion choices of in-flight entertainment, searching for something light to get her out of her head.

Track 7

Veronica

Veronica

“I don’t getwhy you are going. I never even heard you mention these people before.”

Veronica (Silver) Morgan looked up over her suitcase and grimaced at her husband. It was an absurd thing to say. Veronica may not have detailed her sordid past to Larry over their twenty-year marriage, but he certainly knew plenty about it. And if he wasn’t listening, which was often the case, there was aNew York Timesbestselling novel that included enough barely disguised detail about Veronica to raise eyebrows. The tell-all of sorts, chronicling one summer in the small beach town back East where Veronica and her sister Beatrix had come of age, didn’t cause as big a stir as when Charles Webb turned Pasadena upside down with his “fictional” account of a recent graduate’s affair with Mrs.Robinson. But it got people talking—especially the ones from their little sliver of sand who had always wondered what had come between the two Silver sisters, whose rift had become fodder for small-town gossip.

Larry knew Veronica wasn’t an angel before he marriedher. He used to joke that her fiery red hair was sourced from the fire in her belly. But years later, when the local writer’s book had made quite a point of sullying her reputation, he learned more than he had previously imagined. So did Veronica. The author, her dad’s neighbor at the beach, let her read a chapter or two in advance and asked permission not to change her (maiden) name. “It’s the least you could do for your sister,” he said. Shocked that the reason her sister didn’t speak to her was revealed in its pages, she agreed. She had hoped that the sacrifice would encourage Bea to forgive and forget. It did not.

Veronica knew she had hurt and betrayed Beatrix in the worst way possible, but until then, she didn’t know the repercussions of her betrayal. She signed the author’s release, only asking that he change the name of her town and her husband’s line of work. The author moved them to Palo Alto and wrote that her husband had made his fortune in tech when in truth they lived in LA, where he had got in early with crypto.

The discussion had reminded her of the sidewalk game she and her sister would play at the beach, back when they were young and still thick as thieves.

“V my name is Veronica and my husband’s name is Vance and we come from Venice where we sell vaginas.” They would fall to the ground laughing.

It may have been the last time they’d laughed like that together, certainly the last time they laughed like that together on the subject of Veronica’s vagina.

She moved to the bathroom to pack up her makeup and toiletries. Larry followed.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said, pouting.

“Well then, you will know how I have felt for most of our marriage.”

She stopped to look at herself in the magnified mirror. Just last week she had noticed the appearance of jowls. They were ever so slight, but they were there, on either side of her mouth, threatening a perpetual droop. You couldn’t get filler for jowls. No dermabrasion or Fraxel or cream made from the womb of an octopus would counter the gravitational pull of time. Veronica’s usual expectation of being the prettiest woman in the room would not hold up well with jowls. Jowls were next-level aging. She was not ready for next-level aging.

She finally answered her husband, as best as she could.

“You don’t get it, Larry. All these years I’ve felt like a pariah at the beach, and they’ve finally included me. I am invited to Renee and Jake’s wedding and I’m going, with or without you.”

“That last part is funny, V, because I don’t remember you inviting me to come with you,” Larry quipped.

She stopped packing up her toiletries and asked, “Larry, would you like to come with me to Fire Island to stay at my dad’s house and attend a wedding on a boat?”

She knew it was an empty invitation. Among other things, Larry got seasick on a float in their pool.

He rolled his eyes. “You know how busy I am at work right now.”

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