Page 64 of Endless Summer: Stories
“Oh, well!” Jessie said, and Pick sang a few bars of Tiffany’s “You Just Keep Me Hanging On.”
It was a running joke, them together but not married, and yet there was something hard and unyielding underneath their lightheartedness, and that something was that their mothers hated each other.
No longer!Jessie thinks. She’s suddenly seized by such a heady elation that she leaves the dishes in the sink and runs for the phone on the sunporch. She’s going to call Pick overseas and tell him about this, phone bill and time difference be damned.
But when she gets to the sunporch, she finds someone already on the phone. And that someone is Kirby.
Reading is a great place to find your next movie—but so, as it turns out, is a family reunion.
After Kirby sobered up—this took four glasses of ice water, a strong cup of coffee, and a three-hour beach nap—she found herself alone under the umbrella with Magee. Everyone else had gone up to the house to shower and get ready, but Magee said her only responsibility was to melt ten pounds of butter (ten pounds!), which she could do “in her sleep,” and she was determined to now enjoy the golden hour in relative peace and quiet.
“I’m sure you see me as just a homemaker,” she said. “But raising those boys and keeping things just so for your brother is a lot of work.”
Kirby nodded. “I can barely take care of myself.”
Magee said, “Has anyone filled you in on the twins?”
“What about the twins?”
Magee leaned forward in her chair. “I hardly know where to start.”
She took the kind of breath Kirby imagined a person about to swim the hundred-meter freestyle in the Olympics might take and then she told Kirby about Genevieve dating the punk-rock drummer, Andrew, who went by the moniker “Mouth” and who had a tattooacross his skull. (Kirby didn’t get to see the tattoo in person until dinner, when Andrew removed his baseball hat.) Andrew had recently left his wife and was apparently planning on moving in with Genevieve.
“At Brown?” Kirby said.
“That’s not even the scandalous news,” Magee said.
The scandalous news was George dating Sallie Forrester, Blair’s best friend.
“Stop it,” Kirby said.
“It’s true,” Magee said. “I found Sallienakedup inNonny’s bedat All’s Fair. Isn’t that disgusting?”
Naturally, Magee found it disgusting, but Kirby found it… something else. A seed of an idea took root in her imagination. What about a coming-of-age movie about boy-girl twins, set on Nantucket in the summer? One has gone punk with a full-on punk-rock drummer boyfriend and one is a young Republican, a devotee of George Will, who starts dating his mother’s best friend. And then—then!—their cool aunt shows up from LA because their mother is in Paris and these kids needs guidance. Plot twist: The aunt is just as screwed up as they are, if not more so.
Kirby waited through dinner, collecting details like she would shells off the beach: Genevieve’s hot-pink flattop and safety-pin earrings, George’s bow tie, Sallie’s conspicuous absence at the family dinner. She’ll add in the aunt’s failed attempts at recovery (maybe she’ll even work in the scene with Blowman somehow).
The instant the party broke up, Kirby dashed to her room and scribbled down a pitch; it was still only dinnertime in LA. She used the phone on the sunporch because it afforded the most privacy, and she called Tyesha.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me,” Kirby said. “But listen.” And Kirby pitched her.
When she finished, there was silence and Kirby thought for a second that Tyesha had hung up. But then Tyesha said, “You know, that isn’t bad. It’s got elements of a John Hughes movie but it’s college instead of high school, which I like. And East Coast instead of West. No one has really done Nantucket in the movies or television yet—”
“Not correctly,” Kirby said. In her opinion,One Crazy Summerdidn’t count.
“And we haven’t seen boy-girl twins like this before,” Tyesha said. “I think you might have something. So you flew outeast,then?”
“I did,” Kirby said. “Last night.”
“Let’s set up a lunch when you get back,” Tyesha said. She paused. “I’m proud of you, Kirb. This could be good.”
Kirby hangs up, thinking,I guess I’m going back to LA? I guess I’m not the screwup aunt after all?But no sooner does she set the receiver down in the cradle than her sister walks in.
I’m still the screwup aunt,she thinks.
Ugh!Jessie thinks. She has done an outstanding job of avoiding Kirby all day… but now here she is. Jessie’s excitement about calling Pick is quashed. She turns to leave the sunporch, and Kirby says, “Jessie, wait. Please. We need to talk.”
Fine,Jessie thinks. She pivots and shuts the glass doors firmly behind her, closes the curtains. Kirby wants to do this now, they’ll do this now. Jessie kept an eye on Kirby throughout dinner; she drank only water and seemed, at least from three seats away, sort of like her old self.
