Page 30 of 28 Summers
Turns out, Leland has moved from Eighty-Second Street to Greenwich Village.
“Apparently her block is quite gentrified,” Kitty says.
Mallory rolls her eyes. Kitty’s idea of New York City is frozen in 1978; she thinks everyone who lives in the Village looks like Sid and Nancy. “It’s all gentrified now, Mom.”
“Well,” Kitty says. “I’m surprised you didn’t know Leland moved.”
“I haven’t talked to Leland since the holidays,” Mallory confesses. The day after Christmas, Mallory and Leland had lunch in Baltimore at Louie’s Bookstore Café; Leland was leaving the next day to go back to New York. Their conversation was stilted because their lives were so different. Leland had been promoted to the features editor ofBard and Scribe.She boasted about her upcoming interview with Fiella Roget, the twenty-four-year-old Haitian woman whose novelShimmy Shimmywas “all anyone in the city is talking about.” In turn, Mallory had bored Leland to tears by describing her life at the high school and how she hung out with JD while he played darts at the Muse.
Mallory feels guilty that she hasn’t called Leland before now, but the longer she waited, the more onerous catching up seemed. This will be good, though—calling for a concrete reason, to invite Leland for the weekend.
An unfamiliar female voice answers at Leland’s new number.“Allô?”
“Hello?” Mallory says. “I’m looking for Leland Gladstone?”
“One moment, plisss,” the voice says.
There’s whispering. Or maybe Mallory is imagining that? She’s lying on her porch in the sun because that’s where she feels the safest, gazing at the ocean in her front yard.
I am lucky,Mallory thinks.I am blessed.
I am so, so lonely,she thinks. She’s not sure what she’ll do if Leland turns her down.
“Hello?”
“Lee?” Mallory says.
“Mal?” Leland says. “Is that you?”
“Yes, hi, how are you? Kitty got your number from Geri, I didn’t realize you’d moved, and I was busy with the end of the school year, and anyway, I’d love for you to come visit this weekend, or next weekend…” Mallory is talking too fast. She’s nervous. She can’t imagine why—for years, she and Leland were as close as Siamese twins. But that’s the issue, she supposes. They were once so close that now it feels awkward to be not as close, though Mallory knows this is what happens when you grow up: paths diverge, people lose touch. Mallory didn’t know that Leland had moved. She doesn’t know who just answered the phone. Leland’s new roommate, presumably.
There’s a sigh from Leland—annoyed? regretful?
“I wish I could,” she says. “But I’m leaving tomorrow for Bread Loaf.”
“Bread Loaf,” Mallory says. It takes her a second to understand because at first she thinksSugarloaf,which was where the Blessings and the Gladstones used to take their family ski trips. But Bread Loaf is something else, a writer thing.
“At Middlebury, in Vermont,” Leland says. “I’ll be there for three and a half weeks, so…”
“As a student?” Mallory asks. “Are you…writing a novel?”
“Me?” Leland says. “No!” She starts laughing and Mallory laughs right along with her, even though she feels miserable because Leland won’t be coming to Nantucket. Mallory wants to hang up but that, of course, would be rude and will make the chasm between them even wider and deeper. “I’m going with Fifi.”
“Fifi?” Mallory says.
“Fiella,” Leland says.
“Fiella Roget?” Mallory asks. Surely she’s missing something. Just last week, Fiella Roget appeared on the cover of theNew York Times Magazine. She’s famous, a bona fide literary phenomenon.
“Yes, Fiella Roget,” Leland says, and in the background Mallory hears the same voice that answered the phone. Leland did the interview with Fiella and they became friends; is that it? They’re such good friends that she calls Fiella “Fifi”? They’re such good friends that Fifi answers Leland’s phone and has invited her to Bread Loaf for three weeks? “She agreed to teach last year, before the book came out and she became so in demand. She decided to honor the commitment.”
“Okay,” Mallory says. She wonders why she’s supposed to care about any of this. “And what will you do while she’s honoring the commitment?”
“Network, obviously,” Leland says, and Mallory relaxes because this, at least, is a Leland she recognizes. “The waiters and waitresses are the promising writers, you know, because they’re the ones on scholarship. Everyone else pays to go. So I thought I’d sit in on Fifi’s workshops, see if I can identify budding talent, and maybe get a scoop for the magazine.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Mallory says.
“Besides, I need to fend off her admirers,” Mallory says. “You do know they call it ‘Bed Loaf.’”
