Page 63 of 28 Summers
Lee, let me finish. I hooked up with Fray at Coop’s wedding and now I’m pregnant.
Silence. Which Mallory had anticipated. She resisted the urge to fill the space with words. She waited, said nothing.
Finally:You’re telling me you’re having Fray’s baby?
That is what I’m telling you.
Oh my God,Leland said.Fifi won’t believe this. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up, right?
Right?Mallory thought. Leland didn’t sound angry, only baffled and maybe amused. Was everything going to be okay, then?
Just know this baby will have two godmothers who will make her every wish come true. We’re here for you, Mal.She paused.Good God, Fray’s baby. You aren’t a…couple, are you?
No,Mallory said.It was a one-time thing. Well, I mean, except for this.
Leland said,Fifi, get over here and congratulate Mallory. She’s going to have Frazier’s baby.
Yes,Mallory thought.Everything will be okay.
Now Link is a year old, fat, happy, smiling, babbling, three-toothed, putting everything in his mouth, drooling, crawling, cruising as he holds on to the furniture, cheered on by people who love him. Apple is at the party with her fiancé, Hugo, and Isolde and Oliver come as well. Isolde starts passing appetizers and Oliver is bartending and Mallory tries to stop them from working but it’s what they do. After everyone has a drink (this is a party for adults; there isn’t a single other kid here. Link has “friends” at his day care, but Mallory wasn’t about to throw unsuspecting parents into her bizarre family dynamics), the atmosphere becomes more relaxed. Cooper Senior and Steve Gladstone step out onto the front porch together, though Kitty and Sloane are holding down opposite ends of the living room like they’re tent stakes. Kitty is very much the alpha grandmother. Sloane looks like an older and slightly more distinguished version of the person Mallory remembers, though she has shown up wearing black leather leggings and a diaphanous yellow blouse, showing off a black lacy bra beneath. Her hair is still long and tangled, as though she just rolled out of bed. She seems aware that her presence here is controversial, but Sloane never cared much what others thought of her, and why should that change now just because she’s a grandmother? She sits with Fray and Anna. Anna is wearing ripped jeans and a Veruca Salt T-shirt and heavy black eyeliner; her left ear is pierced eight times. She is a very sweet person; Mallory likes her a lot, and she’s good with Link, and Fray seems happy. He comes to Nantucket once a month and rents a very cool apartment in town across the street from Black-Eyed Susan’s and he takes Link all weekend, stopping by only to pick up breast milk and extra clothes if he needs them.
And so—the party! Mallory keeps the music mellow—Simon and Garfunkel and Jim Croce—and she cranks out the hot appetizers: sausage in brioche, cheddar tartlets, Sarah Chase’s famous Nantucket bay scallop puffs. In between pulling things out of the oven and loading up platters, she checks on Link, on her mother, on Sloane.
Where is Sloane? Mallory does a quick scan of the cottage—no Sloane; no Steve either, for that matter—and Mallory wonders if they left. Did Kitty say something impolite? Mallory hands her mother the scallop puffs to pass as she does a quick lap. Bathroom? Empty. Mallory’s bedroom? Empty. (Thank goodness.) Link’s nursery? Empty. She thinks they might have gone out to the front porch to look at the ocean and get some air, but then Mallory sees the door to the guest room is cracked open and she spies Sloane and Steve inside, clearly having a whisper-fight. Sloane’s face is twisted into a furious snarl and Steve is holding his palms up.
Mallory hears him say, “You were the one who insisted we come.”
Mallory walks away. She tries to imagine Sloane and Steve in the early passion of their secret affair—the all-consuming obsession, the stolen moments of rendezvous made more heady because it was so forbidden. Had they viewed their love as a rare jewel, something no one else could possibly understand? And if so, how did it feel now that they had devolved into being just like the masses, squabbling because they felt uncomfortable at Sloane’s grandson’s first-birthday party?
Food for thought. If Mallory and Jake were evertogether-together, would they wake up one day to find the magic gone? Probably yes.
Fray and Anna have brought Link a pile of gifts, which he’s tearing open, and Kitty comes to the kitchen for more wine. “Don’t you think everyone should gather if the baby is going to open his gifts?” she asks.
“No,” Mallory says. “He’s one.” She wants to avoid a big to-do about the presents because it will turn into a showdown between grandmothers. Honestly, Mallory would like the party to be over. She’s weaning Link slowly but her breasts are still producing milk and right now her breasts are hot and full. She should go into the bedroom and pump but she’s afraid if she does, the party will detonate like a bomb, and innocent people—Apple, Hugo, Isolde, Oliver, Anna—will get hurt. She looks at Link sitting in the center of the floor, banging on a new drum that Anna got him—gee, thanks, Anna—and her eyes well up with tears because she loves him so much and yet she worries about bringing him into such a nontraditional family situation. Someday he will grow up and learn that his father was his uncle’s best friend as well as his mother’s best friend’s boyfriend and he’ll learn that his grandmother broke up the marriage of his mother’s best friend’s (and father’s ex-girlfriend’s) parents—and what will he think of that?
Never mind Kitty.
There’s a knock at the door and whoever walks in is temporarily blocked from view, though Mallory does see a taxi pulling away down the no-name road, and she thinks,Huh?
A second later she sees her brother.
Cooper is here. He came. The tears Mallory was holding back start to fall because some people just make everything better, and Cooper is one of them.
“Surprise!” he says. “My sister and my best friend have a baby and you think I’m going to miss the first birthday? You think I’m going to send a giant giraffe in my place?”
Mallory has bought a cake from the Nantucket Bake Shop. They light the single candle and sing. Link couldn’t care less, but it’s all good because this is the final hurdle before everyone can go home. Apple and Hugo, Isolde and Oliver, are the first to leave; the exodus has begun.
Senior and Kitty have bought Link a fat plastic baseball bat and a squishy baseball, among other things, and Senior is eager to take Link out onto the beach so they can play. It’s chilly but bright, Mallory says okay, fine. She and Kitty and Cooper and Steve Gladstone go outside to watch while Sloane, seeming a little calmer, offers to clean up. Senior stands a few feet away from Link and tosses him the ball. Without any instruction, Link swings at the ball and makes contact on the first try and everyone cheers.
“Natural talent here, Mal!” Senior calls out.
After a few more pitches—two hits out of five—they all go inside. Cooper volunteers to run Sloane and Steve Gladstone back into town. Once they’re gone, Fray says that he and Anna should probably leave as well; they have a dinner reservation at American Seasons that evening. Fray will be back in the morning to pick Link up for the day.
They leave and Mallory tells Kitty she needs to nurse Link and put him down for a nap. Kitty blinks and Mallory waits for her mother to comment on the fact that she’s still breastfeeding one year in, but instead, she shocks the hell out of Mallory by saying, “I’m proud of you, darling.”
“What?” Mallory says. “You are?” She doesn’t mean to sound woe-is-me or dramatic but Mallory is pretty sure she has never heard these words come out of her mother’s mouth. Kitty was proud of Cooper growing up; they were all proud of Cooper. Mallory was certainly loved but not often celebrated.
“The party was lovely,” Kitty says. “And the food delicious. I chatted with your friend Apple, and she told me what a good teacher you are and how much your students love you. She says you’re getting themallto read, which is just marvelous, darling.”
