Page 117 of Playworld

“Is Amanda upstairs?”

I told him I didn’t know, that I’d gone for a long bike ride, all the way to the bay’s channel. He looked at his wife and blinked several times in annoyance with his daughter, and for this allegiance I could’ve hugged him. “Do you know what that body of water is?” I asked.

He said, “Why, that’s the Shinnecock, of course.” And theresemblance between Dr. West and his daughter, in spite of his newfound kindness, was uncanny.

“Albert, not everyone knows the geography of Long Island,” Sylvia said. Then she turned to me. “Albert tells me you’re an actor.”

Now Dr. West generously gave me audience. When I told Sylvia about how I’d fallen into the business, how aCandid Cameraappearance led to roles inThe Talon EffectandThe Nuclear Family,he ceded the floor. And when I talked about the radio dramas I’d done, it was he who had questions about how they were produced—he’d grown up listening to serialized shows likeThe Shadowand still enjoyedMystery Theater—and when I told him that I too had appeared on the latter, he was fascinated. What a fantastically interesting childhood, he remarked, to have worked with such people, to have been exposed to such professionalism. If only Amanda could have the same experience, he complained, it might do her some good. And since Sylvia had by now inquired about my father’s career, how fortunate, Dr. West continued, to be so close to the creative process of titans like Leonard Bernstein, Joshua Logan, and Abe Fountain. “That is some of the greatest American music ever written,” Dr. West said. “If only my students,” he complained, “had Jacques Brel’s work memorized. If that’s not a literary education, I don’t know what is.” For the first time, I felt my childhood to be out of the ordinary, even extraordinary. “And here you are,” Dr. West said, after I’d told Sylvia about working with Alan Hornbeam this spring, “on the verge of stardom. That movie of yours is going to come out this fall, and we’ll say we knew you when. Especially my daughter. Who”—he indicated behind me—“has finally decided to make an appearance.”

Amanda approached the table, showered, in a blue sundress, with her hair pulled back. I was grateful she refused eye contact as she approached, because I could take in her summered beauty. At the same time, I had the nearly overwhelming urge to ask her why she’d invited me here. Why had she let me kiss her the night of her birthday? Why couldn’t she simply make up her mind? More likely, I thought, the fault was mine. The conversation with Sylvia and Dr. West continued, during which time she concentrated on her food, eating with complete inwardness, as if she were a critic parsing each of the chef’s choices. Her answers to herfather’s questions were monosyllabic or dismissed with a shrug until Dr. West asked her, “What are your plans for tonight?”

Amanda said, “Some of my friends are going to a movie in Southampton. Do you think you could take us?”

“We,” Dr. West said, after refilling his glass and then tilting it toward his wife before he drank, “are in for the evening.”

Amanda looked crestfallen.

“Griffin’s welcome to borrow my car,” Dr. West said.

For the first time since I’d arrived, Amanda looked at me—wide-eyed, with an expression between shock and slyness, as if by this remarkable oversight we’d been presented with an even rarer opportunity.

Dr. West shrugged. “He says he can drive a stick,” he replied, glancing between us, as if the offer were a no-brainer. And when I, unprepared for this surprise, returned his gaze fearfully, he said, “Just promise me you’ll keep it under the speed limit.”

“I’ll make sure,” Amanda said.

In my life I have been witness to several instances of perfect timing, the sort that syncs so silkily with luck the two are impossible to separate. But undoubtedly the most memorable instance came later that evening, after Dr. West handed me the Buick’s keys. He watched as I took the wheel and Amanda slid into the passenger seat, gave me the same look of outright affection I have seen, albeit rarely, in the expressions of the passionately married. I did not forget from my Christmas lesson that I needed to depress the clutch to start. I turned the ignition switch; the needles jumped and then settled. I gave the stick the same left-right toggle Dr. West had before pushing it into first. I saluted him with two fingers and recalled, as my father had described, that with just the slightest pressure on the accelerator, with a steady and gentle amount of gas, I could ease off the clutch into the point of engagement, which I did, so that as with all beginner’s luck, I looked like a pro, like a fifteen-year-old with a hardship license, and I coasted down the driveway with a slow and expert confidence, at least the appearance of such, until we were out of sight. Amanda said, “Wow, you’re good,” to which I replied, mysteriously, to myself as much as to her, “Mazel tov,” and when, at the driveway’s end, she ordered, “Take a right,” which I did without daringto stop, lest I stall the engine, and with no regard for oncoming traffic, we peeled onto Dune Road, fishtailing, ever so slightly, gravel spewing behind us like the contrails in a cartoon. The Atlantic ripped along to the south, the Quantuck Bay to the north, the Shinnecock to my east, and Amanda, smiling, thrilled, and a willing accomplice by my side.

Perhaps I had been far more concerned with embarrassing myself in front of Dr. West than Amanda because her humiliation of me was already complete. But we were finally alone, and despite the situation’s stressfulness and illegality, I felt happy for the first time since my arrival. Where could she go, after all? Though it wasn’t long before I lost whatever actor’s nerve had gifted me with such a perfect performance earlier. I stalled at nearly every stop sign and ground the clutch as the car lurched and halted. But each time after I restarted it and stalled it again, Amanda at least interacted with me: she snorted at my mistakes, laughing, and she was occasionally encouraging, just as she might be to a cabdriver new to the area. “Deep breaths,” she said, after I killed the ignition and before restarting yet again. And when I looked at her, she was the Amanda of old—the Amanda, that is, when we had no audience. “You can do this,” she said, and covered my hand on the stick’s eight ball. “Thereyou go,” she said, as I gave the car gas and once again we were off. (Although sometimes, after I’d waved the cars behind us to go around, with the same impatient, hurry-up gesture as my father, she mumbled, “This is crazy.”) The plan was to grab Claire and then decide where we were going. Amanda mentioned a party at the Quogue Field House—maybe we go straight there, she said; and, as if I too summered out here, I replied, “Tanner Potts asked if I was coming.” In place of a heart she had, it seemed, a compass rose. She pointed us down pitch-dark side roads, some with no name, and the convertible was a wind machine as we raced along streets lined with oaks, their overhanging branches forming what was nearly a tunnel, the leaves ghost-lit by the headlights’ high beams, and above, just beyond this coned luminescence, a star-splashed strip of sky that made the night seem miraculous to me, and made Amanda worthy of admiration no matter how coldly she was crushing my heart.

And after a while, I got more of a hang of the clutch, even confidently dropping into third when the speed limit allowed. We soon pulled into Claire’s driveway, which was laid with powdered white gravel. Thehouse’s windows, lit from inside, cast their soft yellow rectangles on the roundabout. Claire approached us in silhouette, took the back seat, assessed the situation with something like wry shock, and then said to Amanda, “He can drive?” To which Amanda replied, “He’s learning.” Then she smiled at me proudly, and I loved her.

“Where to, ladies?” I said, briefly happy in my role.

Amanda asked Claire, “Should we go to the movie?”

“We should get drunk,” she said, and from her purse produced a hip flask, “on the way to the field house.”

Amanda said, “Onward, Jeeves.”

“The field house it is,” I said. I started the car, put it in first, and immediately stalled.

“Take two,” Amanda said.

Claire took a swig from the flask and handed it to Amanda, who took hers and, after swallowing, said, “Blech,” and then handed it to me. I, like the chaperone-chauffeur that I was, responsibly refused. This was no sacrifice: I was already high on adrenaline, the night colors were brighter and night sounds lovelier, the engine’s fraternal howl matched my soul’s cry, and while I cringed a bit at seeming uncool, I was also determined, partly out of self-protection but also chivalry (and a dash of desire for approbation from Dr. West) to get Amanda safely home tonight.

The girls were tipsy by the time we arrived at our destination. Out of the car together, they wrapped their arms around the other’s waist and walked with a hip-bumping shimmy; rather than slow them, their half-drunk conjoined state somehow helped them walk faster. But by now I expected desertion. The building, its eaves hung with string lights, pulsed with dance music, the bass line of “Le Freak” thumping outward, and voices at once articulate and indistinct rose above the clink of cutlery and glassware, all of it combining with the bay’s breeze to make it seem as if the structure were less a clubhouse than a moored yacht.

We made our way to a ballroom where the space was after-dinner dim and the tablecloths, set on the giant rounds, were blank screens across which the lights from the disco ball traveled. Beneath it, seemingly the entire beach club’s cohort, sans youngsters, had migrated here wearing a broadly defined but consistent dress code: the men in seersucker or linen, almost all of them sockless in docksiders or leather slippers, theircollared shirts unbuttoned at the top or cinched with bow ties that were pediatrician-bright. The women all wore some version of modest, midlength summer dress, sleeveless and ruffled at the shoulders, with patterns mostly floral, so that, taken together, they formed what could be considered a vast and expensively landscaped backyard. A half dozen couples danced, one pair synced with practiced skill, another doing the Hustle, most paralyzed below the waist and herky-jerky up top. Claire and Amanda were mingling, were so remote from me that I, their driver, felt like the help. With each passing second, I was more painfully aware of my Converse sneakers and lack of a jacket to hide the alligator on my shirt. But here, again, was Tanner, in pleated shorts and a tie and blazer, taking huge pulls from a can of Foster’s. Once again, he ordered that I follow him, and he led me down several dark hallways until we were in the darkened clubhouse locker room. He spun a combination lock, opened the door, and handed me a striped jacket that looked closer to a convict’s uniform than a blazer.

“It’s my dad’s,” he said, “so be sure to give it back.”

Soon we were both standing at the bar. Amanda and Claire had made themselves scarce. Tanner and his friends—I was introduced to Croker, Squi, PJ, Brett, and Chip, who were discussing today’s round of golf. (From over their heads, someone handed me a beer.) It was a “scramble,” Tanner explained. I didn’t understand the scoring or the lingo, but my lack of knowledge mattered little to them.

“…so we’re at the seventh,” Tanner said, “there’s a prevailing right-left wind, and Biff can’t hit a fade for shit, he has to draw everything, so to cut the dogleg he doesn’t just take itoverthe bunkers, he takes it over Brett’s house.”

“No way,” Squi said.

“But it hits his roof—” Tanner said.