Page 28 of The Summer Club

“Mother, we are not going down that road again.” Charley has always insisted it was not Cora’s decision or desire; that it was his too. But Tish will never accept that. Cora had manipulated him. Just as she did back in college, right before graduation, when he was slated to start medical school in the fall at Yale. Yale!

Cora had always been calculating. It was Tish’s fault she’d not raised her son to recognize that in a woman. To be on the lookout for those who might wish to prey upon him. After all, her Charley was a catch. Bright, kind, handsome. And… well, let’s face it: rich. She’d tried to protect him; oh, it was all she’d spent her whole life doing, it seemed. But despite her endless efforts, she’d failed.

Charley was not finished. Cora must’ve gotten him worked up, knowing Tish would call. “What you did was wrong. And I can’t begin to imagine how we are going to make this right with the kids. Sydney’s wedding is in two weeks! Did you give any thought to that before you dropped this bomb on all of us?”

She has never heard him this angry. Well. Maybe she should not stay on, here in Chatham. Maybe she will eat her scone and pack her bags this very morning. But no, she has to make things right with Charley, before she goes. Time is too precious, these days. She feels it, more and more. She will stay, she decides in that moment. She will make it right with her son before she leaves, if only he’ll listen. “Charley, this bomb was Cora’s, I shall remind you. And I have been holding it in silence for over forty years. As a favor to you. And in deference to your wishes. But you are a Darling, and your father would have wanted you to share the family legacy with your child. And that means—”

“Children,” Charley says sadly. “They are all three my children.”

Tish sighs. “Well, isn’t this the biggest part of the problem.”

It’s been the division between them since Cora. The true divisor, as Tish has come to call her.

Tish thinks back to the first time she met that woman; the first day of the rest of their ruined lives, she has long thought with ire. A verdant late-May day on the campus of Vassar. The weather was warm and bright, perfect for Charley’s graduation ceremony.

She and Morty’s parents had driven up from the city the night before. They’d stayed at the same hotel, but at opposite ends. Since Charley had gone off to college there was no longer any reason to maintain the pretense and posture of a functioning family. It was an unspoken arrangement that suited both. Tish stayed in the smaller New York apartment she’d shared with Charley before college, and Morty’s parents divided their time in their usual way between the city, the Hamptons, and the Hudson Valley house. They did not talk on the phone. They did not get together for dinner downtown, even when both parties knew the other was in the city. Only when Charley came home from Vassar for the holidays did they gather, feigning lukewarm pleasantries and donning false smiles until Charley returned to school, leaving them to scuttle to their corners without so much as a word or a wave goodbye. It was how things were.

As such, the day of graduation, the three of them met at the north end of Vassar’s campus at an agreed-upon time and place, and, seemingly together, took their seats for the ceremony.

“Beautiful day,” remarked Morty’s mother.

“If they start on time we can be on the road by dinner,” his father said.

Tish turned her body slightly away from them. How could they not be happy to be here celebrating Charley? How proud she was of her son graduating magna cum laude! Pre-med and an economics major, with a minor in English literature.

“Well, he’s certainly a jack-of-all-trades if a master of none!” his grandparents had joked last Christmas to friends over the punch bowl at their annual holiday party, to Tish’s astonishment. “The plan is medical school, but who knows? It may very well be the circus.” To which their friends had laughed and laughed.

Burning with fury, Tish had glanced feverishly about the room to determine Charley’s whereabouts, praying he’d not heard. After all his hard work! After making dean’s list semester after semester. Though they rarely communicated, she’d long assumed his grandparents held the same depth of pride for their grandson that she did.

Morty’s parents had clung to Charley since they’d all lost Morty, but not in the same vein Tish had. It was because he was their legacy. Morty had been an only child, as had his father. And now there was just Charley to carry on the Darling name. Tish supposed they loved Charley in their own arm’s-length formal way but Tish would argue they did not know him. They did not know his character or his humor or his easygoing nature any more than they knew his ambition; if Charley said he was going to medical school, to medical school he would go.

A woman in a cranberry suit took the seat beside her. “Mother of a graduate?” she asked Tish brightly.

Tish beamed. And, after making sure to ask the woman about her own graduate, she extolled her seatmate with Charley’s academic prowess. “My son is going to Yale. For medical school.”

“My goodness! Yale. You must be so proud!”

Tish knew to expect the look of admiration and wonder people got when she told them the news, but she never tired of it. It filled her up that morning, just as it had the first time she told someone (the doorman in their apartment building!) that Charley had gotten into an Ivy League school, his first choice. They had been a lonely team of two, she and Charley, all these years without his father. But she’d endured. Having kept her promise to Morty and seeing Charley along the path to his promising future, today was her day too.

“Well,” Morty’s mother said, as the first graduate’s name was called. “You were right. Charley’s going to medical school.” It was the only thing nearing kindness that Morty’s mother had ever said to Tish and, even though she was used to steeling herself against all interactions with the family, Tish felt herself give in and well up just a little.

Later, when Charley’s name was called and he walked across the stage wearing his magna cum laude medal, Tish could not help herself. She leapt to her feet and, ignoring the mortified looks on Morty’s parents’ faces, placed her index finger and thumb to her lips and whistled with all her might. It was uncouth and over the top and something she knew Morty would have loved. When Charley turned her way and waved, it was all worth it.

After, as joyful graduates searched the grass for their tossed caps and made their way to find their families with arms extended, Tish scanned the crowd eagerly awaiting her turn. She was bursting with pride. So much so that she’d even accepted the invitation by Morty’s parents to join them and take Charley out to lunch. Yet another surprise. Anything was possible that day, it felt.

“Where is he?” Morty’s mother wondered aloud.

“Don’t worry. He’ll find us!” And then, emerging from a group of fellow graduates, there he was. His face bright, his cheeks flushed as he hurried toward them. So handsome in his cap and gown! Tish waved her arm excitedly. But Charley did not wave back. His hand was stretched behind him and as he neared someone stepped out from the swirl of his gown, holding it. A tall, blonde, young woman. Who, even with her ducked chin, radiated beauty. When she looked up at them and smiled, Tish’s gaze fell straight to her swollen belly.

They did not go to lunch to celebrate. Instead, Tish propped herself up in his dormitory doorway as Charley tried to explain. “I love her, Mom.”

“You’ve never even mentioned her. And she’s pregnant?”

“I’m going to marry her,” he told her.

Charley stood apart from her across the room, calmly zipping his suitcase. Tish wanted to grab it. To hurl it out the window. And herself after it. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I know this seems sudden, and I’m sorry. But it’s the right thing to do.”