Page 5 of The Summer Club
Andi tried to hold her laughter in, but could not.
“Yeah, yeah. Serendipity.”
Inside they got their clams and got out of there. “C’mon. Cora is going to lose it if Tish beats us to the house.”
On the drive back, Andi thought about what Hugh had shared. A baby. She just could not picture her twin as a father. Sarcastic, opinionated Hugh taking care of something besides himself? But as they drew closer to Riptide, other thoughts occurred to her. Hugh begrudgingly playing dolls with Sydney when she was a toddler, to keep her busy while Cora and their father made dinner. Hugh spinning Molly through the waves when she was younger; reading bedtime stories to her upstairs at Riptide. The way he took care of Martin, always pouring him the first cup of coffee and taking it upstairs to their room before he had his own. In spite of his best efforts at being a pain in the ass, Hugh had a profound knack for caring for those he loved. Maybe this fatherhood thing would be something he was very good at, after all.
To their combined relief, there was no sign of their grandmother Tish’s town car in the driveway. Hugh grabbed the paper bag of littlenecks and Andi grabbed the bottle of vodka they’d stopped for.
“Wait,” she said, handing him the bottle. “Bring these in. I’m going to cut some hydrangeas for the table. Mom will like that.” The blue hydrangea bushes were synonymous with Riptide and they grew all around the property, bordering the seashell driveway, the front door, and stretching all the way around the house to the backyard patio that overlooked the water. It was the only decoration Riptide needed in summer.
Andi retrieved shears from the small shed and went to the fence where the shrub was most dense. She was clipping the heavy blue flowers when she heard a noise on the other side. She stood on tiptoe.
The neighbors’ house, which she still fondly called the Beckers’, was completely changed. Gone was the cute little gray-shingled cottage that had been next door every summer she could remember. In its place was a dark, sleek, modern take on coastal living. Andi scowled. The house had been listed for sale the previous year; it came as little surprise, since the Beckers had retired to Florida and hadn’t been back to the Cape in years. But it made Andi sad to see how much the new owner had changed it. She glanced at the Ford Bronco in the driveway: New York plates. Figured.
She was just about to go inside when she saw someone walk out onto the side porch. Even though she was on her own side of the fence, she felt like ducking. But she didn’t. The man on the porch made it impossible. Andi lowered her sunglasses. He looked to be about her age, maybe younger. Sandy-brown hair highlighted by the sun. And an athletic physique she couldn’t help but notice as he was dressed only in red board shorts.
Andi sucked in her breath. However ugly his house was, he most certainly was not. She’d have to find out if her parents knew him.
“Mom?” She spun around to find Molly on the porch. “What’re you doing in the bushes?”
“Shhh!” Andi put a finger to her lips. “I’m not in the bushes.”
Molly frowned. “Yes, you are.”
Andi looked down. She was completely in the bushes and her sneakers were dirty. “I’m just collecting some flowers.” She prayed the guy next door couldn’t see them. She prayed he didn’t hear her either.
“Grandma wants you to come in. She said a big storm is coming.” Molly glanced skyward as Andi untangled herself from the hydrangea bushes.
“Yeah, well, your grandma is quite the forecaster.” Andi glanced at her watch. Damn—Tish was on her way and she wasn’t changed for dinner. And when in Tish’s presence, everyone changed for dinner.
“What’s Grandma talking about?” Molly stared up at the bright sky. “There’s like zero sign of any storm.”
Andi scurried up the porch steps and handed Molly the bunch of hydrangeas. She glanced again at her watch. “Stick around. The worst ones blow in fast.”
Tish
Riptide had been her husband Morty’s idea. Morty, God rest his beautiful soul and big ideas. They’d been on Nantucket to attend his Columbia roommate’s summer wedding and decided to fritter away a few days on the Cape afterward. Why not? They were young and unencumbered and smitten newlyweds themselves. It seemed all their friends were getting married that summer of 1954, and it lent a festive sensibility to the already radiant New England season. Tish had never been to the Cape before. She was a New York native and an urbanite at heart. Summer was the only season she’d ever wished to escape her city, when the heat was oppressive and the streets became rank with odors. As a child, the only summer spots she had any familiarity with whatsoever were Coney Island and Rockaway Beach, both crowded and noisy, barely a stone’s throw from the city. Until that weekend, Cape Cod was just a postcard notion.
They’d gotten off the ferry in Hyannis and pointed their hunter green Austin Healey north, up the elbow of the Cape. Tish had liked Hyannis just fine and wondered aloud why they couldn’t just stay there. The bustling village streets were lined with colorful convertibles, the boutiques and restaurants teeming with tourists. It seemed like the quintessential hub of summer activity. It was good enough for the Kennedys! But Morty had wanted to explore the more rugged environs of the Cape, and had suggested they head north toward the Cape National Seashore, where the coast was less developed and the waves were legendary. “Don’t worry, I’ve found us a lovely hotel along the way,” Morty promised her. “It will be romantic.” One thing about her late husband, he understood romance.
Tish herself was a pragmatist. Raised in an Irish-Catholic family of seven children in Yonkers, she’d had to be. A working-class daughter of the Great Depression, she knew a thing or two about rationing food, mending clothes, and stretching a dollar. Her childhood had not been easy or anywhere near the vicinity of comfortable. But somehow her parents had managed to feed their large brood, her mother working on and off as a cleaning lady and church secretary, and her father as a felt hatter, where he stood before the factory cauldrons in the scalding room making ladies’ hats. How different Morty’s childhood had been, growing up the only child of a successful banker in Manhattan. Even during the throes of the Depression, his family remained comfortably ensconced in the safe netting of family money, escaping the city for his grandparents’ looming estate on the Hudson. Morty’s education had never been interrupted, his stomach never empty at bedtime. Had they grown up on entirely different planets, their early years could not have been any more dissimilar.
But by the fall of 1951, when they first met at a Columbia Lions football game, from all outward appearances they were simply two ordinary college students attending a homecoming game on a golden October afternoon. Tish and her cousin, Maribeth, both second-year nursing students, were taking a rare break from their studies. Tish hadn’t even known there’d be a football game that weekend; sports didn’t hold much interest for her. Outside of academics, her college experience consisted of a morning commute to campus, attending classes, and an evening trek home to the crowded family apartment on Devoe Avenue. Tish was the first girl in her family, and the only child besides her brother, John, to go to college. “Marry a nice Irish boy,” her mother had urged her when she first expressed interest in school. “Settle down.”
But Tish had other designs. A child of the thirties and forties, she was desperate to change her life. And she did just that, gaining acceptance to the Columbia nursing program. “I’ll be able to get a job at any hospital in the city,” she assured her parents. What she did not say was that she’d finally be free.
Tish had no thought of marriage or men; she’d never really even had a serious boyfriend. Her childhood was spent helping to raise her younger siblings and keep house, balanced with school. The little taste of adulthood she’d had had been devoted wholly to her studies. Now on the cusp of graduation, she could not afford to waver. Finally, her hard-earned fresh start was within arm’s reach. What she did not realize was that meeting Morty Darling at the Columbia Lions game that fall day would also be a fresh start.
As she stood in the stands shivering in her wool sweater, she did not notice the handsome young man seated on the bleachers beside her. When he offered her his coat, she barely glanced at him before declining. Tish hoped the game would end soon; she had to get back to the library. Not once did she sense anything special was about to happen. But as soon as he’d laid his gentle brown eyes on her, Morty Darling had other plans.
Two nights later they went out on their first date. He took her to Keens Steakhouse, a place she’d only dreamed of eating at. But she would not allow herself to be swayed by the fine cut of his suit. Or his genteel manners. As she dug into the decadent plate before her, she told him all about her big family in the small apartment in Yonkers. About the burns on her father’s hands when he came home from the hat factory. And the confusion in her mother’s eyes when Tish first told them she wanted to go to college. By the time she polished off her prime rib and sautéed spinach, Tish felt laid open. And unable to look away from those gentle brown eyes any longer. “I’m going to be someone,” she told Morty Darling. Though it came out sounding like a warning.
Morty had smiled. “Sweetheart, you can be anyone you wish,” he said, reaching across his untouched plate to take her hand. “But I hope, someday, you’ll also be my wife.”
Tish’s eyes still well up at the memory. Who did Morty think he was, saying such an outlandish thing to a young woman he’d just met? Well. He knew very well who he was. And as soon as she got out of her own way, Tish eventually did too. Morty was a family man even before he’d started his own. And what he saw in Tish was a future together. Despite all the trappings he’d grown up with and the sparkling prospects his family status assured him, what he wanted was her. A no-nonsense, first-generation Irish-American girl with steel-blue eyes and a stubborn streak.
By the time he took her to the Nantucket wedding that summer weekend, they’d been married six months. Tish was tired from the wedding festivities and a little queasy from the ferry ride. What she wanted was to get to their hotel. They were only a few miles from it when Morty slammed on the brakes.