Page 44 of Endless Summer: Stories
After they switch places, Genevieve releases great, hiccupy sobs and Jessie reaches over to rub her niece’s shoulder. Jessie’s only thirteen years older than Genevieve, so she feels like she’s in a unique position to impart some wisdom. She has experienced her own heartbreak; the first time was with Pick the summer that Genevieve and George were born. Jessie fell for Pick the instant she laid eyes on him—he was making a BLT in their guest cottage, Little Fair—and later that summer, he had been her first kiss. But then Pick started dating a girl he worked with at the North Shore restaurant. Even now, after Jessie and Pick have been together for ten years—three dating, seven living together—Jessie can still recall the specific nature of that pain, so fresh and intense it was nearly beautiful.
Then, years later, as a student at NYU’s law school, Jessie had suffered through a breakup with Theo Feigelbaum, which left her more angry than sad.
“I know how you feel,” Jessie says.
Genevieve’s laugh is a single, startling gunshot. “You don’t.”
“Fair enough,” Jessie says. “But I can promise you, you won’t always feel this bad. You’ll meet someone else—”
“I don’twantanyone else!”
Jessie nods—she’s doing a terrible job here, throwing gasoline on the smoldering fire of Genevieve’s emotions with every word that comes out of her mouth.Let it go,she thinks. She doesn’t need to take on Genevieve’s drama; she’ll have enough on her hands when she tells her mother the news. But when Jessie turns the key in the ignition, she hears faint, familiar strains of a song she loves, and she turns it up. Then, as a symbolic gesture, she releases her hair from its tight professional bun and pulls out onto Madaket Road. She wants to create a cinematic moment—two young women driving along a curvy island road, wind in their hair, singing at the top of their lungs:She drives me crazy! And I can’t help myself!
But Jessie’s fantasy fizzles when Genevieve switches the radio off.
“I hate that song.”
Jessie tries not to take offense. Genevieve probably listens to bands Jessie has never heard of; she has a sense that in the world of punk, to be authentic is to be obscure. But in Genevieve’s determination to be disagreeable, Jessie hears a cry for help, and Jessie decides that, no matter what it takes, she will find a way to bond with her niece. She will forge a real connection this weekend. She will become Genevieve’s trusted person, a mentor, a life raft.
Genevieve says something Jessie doesn’t hear. “What’s that?” Jessie says. She slows the car a bit.
“I said, I wish Aunt Kirby had come. She’s so cool.”
Jessie blinks. Kirby, whom none of them have heard from in months and who didn’t bother returning the urgent message Jessie left on her answering machine, is cool?
Jessie takes the next curve so fast that Genevieve grabs the dashboard and Jessie thinks,Who’s cool now?
“Dude!” Genevieve cries out.
“There are still twenty-five curves left before home,” Jessie says. “Better buckle up.” Then she comes to her senses and eases off the gas. It’s amazing how quickly being with her family has turned Jessie back into a child.
2. LOVESHACK
It’s nearly midnight when George and Sallie reach All’s Fair. The street is poorly lit, the neighbors’ windows are all dark, and when George lifts the welcome mat, he can’t find the key. His kingdom for a flashlight. The key must be there somewhere, but when George gets down on his knees and runs his hands over the damp wooden deck boards beneath the mat, he feels nothing but pill bugs, which make him snap back in a way that is seriously uncool, and he mustn’t appear uncool in any way in front of Sallie.
“I’m not sure what’s happening,” George says. “The key is always there. It’s been there for the past forty years.”
Sallie shifts the bag from Savenor’s in her arms—she insisted on bringing sun-dried tomatoes and the Iberian ham that she likes—and says, “Is there another way in?”
George now regrets stopping at the Club Car for martinis on their way from the ferry. He had three drinks to Sallie’s one, using the Kentucky driver’s license of an older clerk in Welby’s office. (The bartender had frowned at it and said, “Is this thing real?,” to which George responded in what he believed to be a convincing bourbon-and-racehorse drawl, “What do y’all think?”) When he ordered the third martini, Sallie put a maternal hand on his back and asked if he was nervous and he said, “Why would I be?” It had become a strategy of his to answer questions with questions; it threw people off, put them on the defensive, or so he liked to believe.
“You’re an adult, George,” Sallie said. She held up her empty glass to him. “Almost twenty years old.” Her eyes flicked to the bartender. “I mean, twenty-two, plenty old enough to bring a woman home for your family to meet.”
Plenty old enoughhas been a favorite phrase of Sallie’s since they secretly started seeing each other six weeks ago. George was interning for Congressman Welby in the offices on Sudbury Street. George’s buddy Raymond (whose ID George was using) had set him up on a blind date with his cousin Dana, an assistant to Governor Dukakis. George wasn’t sure how he felt about dating a Democrat, but in the snapshot Raymond showed him, Cousin Dana looked a little bit like Phoebe Cates, so George agreed to meet her at a bar behind the statehouse called the Twenty-First Amendment.
When George walked into the bar—not as confidently as he might have because it was his first time using the ID—he heard someone call his name.
“Is that George Whalen?”
The bar was crowded, dark, and smoky, and the clientele were dressed in a style George thought of as “state government,” which wasn’t as upscale as “federal government.” (George was the only person in the place wearing a bow tie and suspenders.) He glanced around, thinking the voice must belong to Cousin Dana, but his eyes landed on a very attractive redhead smoking a cigarette and drinking a martini.
George blinked. It was not just any attractive redhead, he realized. It was his mother’s best friend, Sallie Forrester—and George’s first instinct was to walk right out, because Sallie was only too aware that George was underage. Sallie must have read his mind, because she beckoned him forward with an elegantly manicured finger, and when he was within reach, she yanked one of his suspenders and murmured in his ear, “Don’t worry, Georgie, I won’t tell.” Instantly, George got an erection. This was Sallie, whom George had fantasized about all through puberty. He used to stroke himself upstairs as Sallie and his mother and Joey Whalen and whatever thug Sallie was dating—she had a penchant for thugs—sat downstairs drinking martinis and smoking. George used to imagine Sallie excusing herself for the ladies’ room, sneaking upstairs to George’s room, ducking her head under his covers, and pleasuring him with her mouth.
It was powerful stuff, and George found himself captive to his old horniness now. He should say goodbye and go find Cousin Dana. Better Phoebe Cates than Anne Bancroft.
“Sit down, George, you cutie,” Sallie said. “Let’s get you a drink.”
When George ordered a Sam Adams, his voice cracked—he had unwittingly reverted right back to his fifteen-year-old self—but the bartender didn’t notice or didn’t care. He probably thought Sallie was George’s mother or aunt. He set a sweating bottle of beer in front of George and said, “Buck fifty.”
