Page 2 of Bad Summer People
In truth, buying a house on Fire Island hadn’t been Lauren’s choice. It was Jason’s thing, this island, this tiny town, Salcombe. His best friendfrom childhood, Sam Weinstein, had grown up spending his summers in Salcombe, and Jason used to stay at Sam’s house for months at a time. He was a built-in playmate for Sam, an only child whose parents were eternally in the midst of contentiously breaking up and getting back together. The boys had a group of Salcombe friends they palled around with, and Sam and Jason continued to use the house long after Sam’s parents ended up getting a divorce and buying separate vacation spots in the Hamptons (his dad) and Nantucket (his mom). Sam and Jason spent their teenage summers together in the Salcombe house, working as camp counselors, drinking at the beach at night, sailing and capsizing Sunfish for fun. Lauren had heardallabout it.
Twenty years later, Sam still had the house, a blue-shingled stunner that overlooked the Great South Bay and had the best sunset views in town. He and his wife, Jen, and their three kids, Lilly, Ross, and Dara, came out in June and left in September, just like Lauren and Jason. Sam and Jason were still best friends, though Sam lived in Westchester (Scarsdale; full of strivers but the best schools around) and Jason and Lauren were in the city. But Salcombe remained their special place.
When the kids were small, and it became clear that Jason’s job was going to earn them some real money, he began talking about finding a spot to buy in Salcombe. Lauren had spent her twenties partying in the Hamptons, and all her friends were starting to settle there, buying beachfront in East Hampton and Amagansett and Sag Harbor. She resisted the idea. Why would she want to be stuck on Fire Island all summer, where she knew no one? They’d had a blowup about it one night after the kids had gone to sleep.
“I feel like you’re forcing this on me, and I don’t want to do it,” Lauren had said to him. This was two apartments ago, in the modest two bedroom they lived in on Eighty-eighth Street and Third Avenue (they’d since upgraded to a four-bedroom on Park).
“Lauren, listen to yourself,” said Jason calmly. It always pissed her off when he answered her anger with moderation. “I’m saying we can afford to buy a summer house! My only ask is that it’s in the town that I grew up going to. The kids will love it, I’m one hundred percent sure.”
“Youdidn’t grow up going there,” Lauren spat back. “Sam did. You were always just a guest.”
“Lauren, the Hamptons are a nightmare. You know that. The crowds, the overpriced restaurants, the traffic to get there. It’s like the worst parts of the Upper East Side transported three hours east. Four if you take the LIE.”
“Yes, I’m aware of what the Hamptons are; I’ve been there a million times. I’ve also spent summers with you and Sam and Jen on Fire Island. I’m bored there! What will I do all day?”
“You’ll figure it out,” said Jason. “You’ll play tennis. You’ll make friends. The people who have houses in Salcombe are as rich and powerful as your friends in the Hamptons—they’re just not wearing shoes.”
Lauren had known she’d lost the argument before it had even started. And she knew she was acting spoiled. But she’d finally found a community in their neighborhood; at that point, Arlo was in kindergarten at Braeburn, and Amelie was at the Brick Church preschool. The thought that all her mom friends would be spending the summer together without her made her anxious and jealous, and she hated that Jason needled her about it. “You need to stop doing things just because everyone else is,” he’d say, after she’d insist on going to a certain vacation spot in St. Barts, or hiring the most sought-after tutor, or joining the golf club in Westchester that half of Braeburn belonged to. It’s not like Jason was some renegade. He’d grown up on the Upper East Side and had returned to the city after college, he worked in finance, he wore the same Brooks Brothers button-downs that all the other dads did. Where did he get off telling her she was a sheep? Jason had gotten a big bonus that year, and so that had settled the conversation. They’d bought a gorgeous, upside-down modern-style house in Salcombe, right on the ocean. Lauren had pretended to be happy about it. And though she’d never admitted it outwardly, Jason had been right. Now she loved it there.
Fire Island was just a sliver of land off the south shore of Long Island. A barrier island, flanked by the Great South Bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, it was approximately thirty miles long—its widest point, which happened to be in Salcombe, was only about halfa mile. Small towns dotted the island, the most famous of which were Cherry Grove and the Fire Island Pines. If you weren’t from New York and you’d heard of Fire Island, it would have been in this context—as a gay party haven, a wild summer retreat filled with fit homosexual men.
Each community on Fire Island had its own ferry line from the mainland—the only way to get there, as the island didn’t allow cars—and its own personality. Ocean Beach was a bustling town with restaurants, bars, and hordes of twentysomethings from the city doing share houses. Point O’ Woods was an exclusive hamlet with large homes that passed down through the generations (no Jews allowed). Then there was Salcombe, a tiny family place filled with a mix of Jews, WASPs, and Catholics, with the commonality of success and a studied, low-key vibe. Like the rest of the island, Salcombe was 99 percent white. (In fact, Lauren could think of only one Black person she’d met in Salcombe, and like her, he’d married into it.)
Salcombe was an incorporated village of about four hundred houses, some traditional summer cottages dating back to the 1920s and some, like Lauren’s, newly built, modern and beachy, with open floor plans and rooftop decks with water views. Everyone knew everyone (and everyone knew everyone’s business). There were eighty-year-olds who’d been coming to Salcombe for fifty years, plus their adult children who’d been coming their entire lives, plus their grandchildren who were now the inheritors of the sailing lessons and the day camp. You could see a little face on the playground and know, just from the shape of his nose or the swoop of his hair, that he belonged to the Rapner family or the Metzner family or, God forbid, the evil Longeran clan. The village was made up of a web of connecting boardwalks leading back and forth to the beach and the bay. Everyone rode bikes—rusty, squeaky things—to get where they needed to go. You had no choice. A bike ride from the bay on one side of the island to the beach took less than five minutes. Because there were no cars, just some village pickup trucks to transport packages and tote garbage to the dump, children were set free at an early age. Packs of seven- and eight-year-olds roamed alone, riding bikes to each other’s houses or bringing fishing rods to the dock, no parents in sight.
Salcombe had one general store, referred to as “the store,” which carried basic groceries and prepared foods, and that charged about double what you’d pay off island. For years, the store held residents hostage to its outrageous prices, but now mainland superstores delivered to the ferry, and so you could stock your house at a reasonable cost, which is what Lauren and her cohort did. There was a connecting liquor store, a closet filled with wine and vodka, basically, for those who hadn’t the foresight to bring enough booze from the city. Down Broadway, Salcombe’s main boardwalk drag, were a quaint white, wooden town hall and an adjoining library that smelled of oak and dust and was filled with well-worn summer reads and children’s books from the ’70s and ’80s. A little farther toward the beach was one baseball field, which hosted an avid adult softball league on the weekends and was the scene of the kids’ camp during the week. A small playground sat next to the field, home to a rickety jungle gym, likely not up to current safety standards, and a swing set that croaked with every push.
The only other communal area in town, reallythecommunal area, was the Salcombe Yacht Club, which sat on the bay, right near the ferry dock. “Yacht club” was truly a stretch. It consisted of a small marina, with about twenty spaces to dock sailboats and motorboats, plus a petite beach area for kayaks and Hobie Cats. The main yacht club building, on the other side of the boardwalk, looked somewhat like a large beach house and had two interior rooms: a restaurant set up with a bar in front, and a bigger, open area in back with a little stage, a pool table, and space enough for toddlers to run around while their parents ate dinner. There was also an outer deck that overlooked the bay, perfect for sunset drinks. Five tennis courts appeared around back, all clay, four smooshed together in stacked pairs and one outlier closer to the club. All in all, it was an unimpressive affair, as these things go, but it fit with the shabby chicness of Salcombe just fine. Crowds gathered there every night for drinks and dinner, and every day for tennis and gossip. And Lauren felt good telling her friends in the city that she hung out at a “yacht club” all summer. Let them think what they wanted to.
It was now late June, and she was finally sitting on a painted bluebench on the top of the Fire Island Queen ferry, headed for Salcombe. She’d spent the previous week in the city dealing with the kids’ graduations, getting a haircut at Sally Hershberger, getting a wax, getting her nails done, and seeing friends for “until September” drinks. The sun was shining on the Great South Bay, and the black-and-white Fire Island Lighthouse stood in the distance, welcoming the Parkers back to their summer home. Arlo was next to Lauren, messing with his iPad, and Amelie and Jason were sitting behind them. Amelie had spotted one of her little friends, Myrna, and had insisted they sit together. Lauren could hear Myrna and Amelie having a five-year-olds’ chat, talking about the names of their teachers and discussing their favorite kinds of animals.
Lauren closed her eyes behind her Tom Ford sunglasses. She felt the breeze ruffle her newly shorn, newly highlighted blond bob. She heard Jason say hi to Brian Metzner, Myrna’s dad, and Brian slide into the seat next to Jason.
“Hey, dude, how are you?” Brian asked, clapping Jason’s back in greeting.
“Not bad,” Jason said. “How was your winter? You guys make it out to Aspen this year?”
Brian was a hulking guy. His checked button-downs strained at his stomach, and he’d shaved his head when he’d started to bald in his twenties. He was a hedge funder, a very successful one, and whatever he spoke about, no matter the subject, he framed in financial terms.
“Oh, man, yeah, we killed it in Aspen,” Brian said. “At first, I thought we’d only have marginal success, with Myrna especially, but then we got her to level up and get her game on. By the end of the trip, she was racing down black diamonds. Her execution was high, dude.”
“That’s awesome,” said Jason flatly. Lauren could tell he was dreading the boat-ride-long conversation. Jason and Sam tolerated Brian, but they didn’t like him. She wondered where Brian’s wife, Lisa, was. Lauren and Lisa were friends—they all lived on the Upper East Side—but their kids went to a different school (Horace Mann, all the way up in the Bronx), and so they mainly communicated over text during the winter, exchanging occasional gossipy tidbits and DM’ing each other Instagram posts in which mutual acquaintances looked fat or old. Lisa was “studying” to be a life coach, the trendy new career of choice for bored stay-at-home moms who may have once chosen to become interior decorators or handbag designers. Lauren thought it was ridiculous—what advice could Lisa give? Marry rich? Lauren took her AirPods out of her Celine bag. She’d listen to a true-crime podcast and tune out Brian and Jason. Before she had the chance, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Lauren, oh my God, hi! I love your hair!”
Standing to her right was Rachel Woolf, a longtime Salcombe resident who’d befriended Lauren, by force, when Lauren had first arrived. Rachel’s family owned a house right by the yacht club, and she’d inherited it when her mom died a few summers ago (her dad had died in a car accident when she was barely a teen). In a town of gossips, Rachel was the reigning queen, and you couldn’t do anything—from having an affair to having a new tennis partner—without her knowing about it. Rachel was forty-two and still single, unhappily, though she’d dated about half of Salcombe in her youth. Lauren suspected she’d even slept with Jason at some point, but if that was the case, Lauren didn’t want to know.
Rachel was thin, almost too thin, with brown straight hair and buggy blue eyes. Some men thought she was attractive, perhaps in a puppy dog kind of way, but Lauren didn’t see it. Even if Lauren hadn’t wanted to be friends with Rachel, which often she didn’t, she was an impossible person to avoid. Rachel went to every party, hosting many, and you had to stay on her good side if you wanted to have any Salcombe social life whatsoever. Lauren patted the seat next to her, motioning for Rachel to sit down.
“How was your winter?” Lauren asked as Rachel settled in, pushing her L.L.Bean monogrammed tote under the seat. Rachel was embarrassingly unfashionable. “Have you been coming out here a lot?”
Though nearly all Salcombe’s summer residents lived in the city, they rarely saw each other outside its confines. The relationships were very much June through September, and the townspeople kept it that way through an unspoken pact. Rachel lived about ten blocks from Lauren andJason in Manhattan, but Lauren never socialized with her there. Their friendship existed in this very specific bubble.
“Good! I mean, fine. I was dating this guy for about six months. Divorced, lawyer, two kids. But we broke up last month. He didn’t want to get married again and, well, you know how I feel about that,” said Rachel.
Lauren did.
“How about you?” Rachel continued. “I read that stuff inNew Yorkmagazine about your kids’ school. Sounds like a nightmare.”
