The Never Never Sisters (22 page)

“I didn’t know you did that.” Giovanni smiled at Sloane. “Were you Peter Pan?”

“I wasn’t really anyone, but I tended to tell stories in defense of Captain Hook.”

“Of course you did,” I said.

Sloane pulled her straw in and out of the plastic top and then sipped. “I can tell
how much this means to you, Paige, so I’m promising you right here and now—when we
do the fringe festival this year, you can be Nana.”

“Well, thank god.” I laughed. I hadn’t even known she could be funny like that.

“It must be pointed out, Paige,” Giovanni said, “that if you don’t remember the
Peter Pan
plays, that doesn’t technically count as a story from your childhood. You still have
to tell us one.”

“Okay.” I pointed at him. “Special for you, a real unknown story from my childhood:
our grandfather.”

“What about him?” Sloane said.

“Mom’s dad. He’s like He Who Must Not Be Named.”

“That’s technically not a story,” Sloane said. “You really do need to work on your
narrative form.”

“Okay, fine. Once upon a time when I was growing up, my parents never mentioned or
divulged the name of my maternal grandfather. It remains a mystery to this day. The
end.”

“Maybe,” Giovanni said, lowering his voice, and we all ducked our heads in, “you’re
direct descendants of Voldemort.”

“I would almost believe it at this point.”

“Russell Cohen.” Sloane chewed the end of her straw as she spoke.

“I guess that’s as likely as anything else.”

“No, that was his name. Russell Cohen.”

“How do you know?”

“Basic research. It wasn’t that hard.”

“Are you kidding me?”

She held up her hand, palm up, fingers spread like she couldn’t believe I was asking.
“Obviously you’ve never really tried to find out.”

“I have. I’ve asked several times. I kept getting stonewalled.”

“Relying on someone else to hand you the information is the same as giving up.” She
stared me down so intensely that Giovanni and Percy swiveled their heads away from
us in reaction, each in the opposite direction. “That’s not the way to learn anything.
You always have to get it yourself.”

When we got back into the car, the summer sun was low and burning, its light so strong
as to appear almost solid across the road and treetops. In the front seat, Sloane
put “Crazy Love, Vol. II” on repeat, and Giovanni made up silly words about poor Fat
Charlie coming to counsel with me, and opting against filing for divorce.

We listened to
Graceland
the whole way up, on a loop, the sun setting golden all around us, the energy infused
with nostalgia and excitement. It doesn’t happen a lot—an anticipated memory playing
out just as beautifully as you’ve visualized it, but when it does, you just have to
soak it up.

WE PULLED UP
to the house at dusk. Above the sound of the tires crunching over the gravel driveway,
Giovanni read loudly from his phone, in the Italian accent that I was realizing he
did whenever he felt like a tourist. “Quogue is one of the westernmost beach towns
in the Hamptons, known for being family oriented and on the sleepy side of things.”
He looked up and, still in accent, asked, “Where is the disco mirror, Paige? Where
are the T-shirt guns? I was promised T-shirt guns!”

We got out of the car and stood on the front lawn for a moment, stretching our legs
before grabbing the bags out of the trunk. It felt cooler out there in all the leafiness,
and the house did appear, as I’d hoped, like a small fairy-tale cottage: sloped triangular
roof, strong trees in the front and that hammock between them.

Giovanni spun around in circles, his arm outstretched. “The beach is that way?” He
pointed away from the house and sniffed the air.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s about a mile. There’s a small pool in back, though.”

“Let’s go now,” he said. “We missed sunset, but we can walk in the water.”

“Oooh.” Sloane sounded freakishly girlish. She walked up behind him and wrapped her
arms around his waist, pushing her face into his back. “Let’s.”

“The walk will be really dark,” I said.

“How much trouble can we get into?” Giovanni said. “It’s a sleepy family town.”

The two of them set off with Bandito’s bag slung over their shoulders, amid Giovanni’s
warnings that the surf made him “romantic” and we shouldn’t wait up.

Percy and I looked at each other. “I know beggars can’t be choosers,” he said, “but
I’m really, really hopeful that I can sleep in the room right next door to theirs.”

“I might make them sleep outside next to a cold-water hose.”

We walked up the flat stone path to enter the house and went about turning on the
lights inside, checking it out. Percy’s voice came from the kitchen. “Uh-oh.”

“What?” I poked my head in.

He pointed to a straw gift basket on the kitchen counter. There was a paper card folded
in front of it:
Welcome from Bob and Michael McCan, owners of Blossom Cottage
. Pressed into the gift straw were decayed bananas, now completely black, and an oozing
pear. Stacked next to them were wrapped crackers that were probably fine, cheese wrapped
in red wax that probably wasn’t and, in the middle, a bottle of wine.

“When did Bob and Michael McCan leave this, you think?”

“Memorial Day, probably.”

We found a plastic bag under the sink and emptied everything except for the wine and
crackers into it, after which we double-tied the handles. Percy volunteered to take
it to the outside trash can while I searched the house for anything else that might
have spoiled.

The upstairs really should have been two rooms—a master and a spare—but the McCans
had divided the spare into two mirror-image cubbies with just enough room for a full
bed crammed against the wall and a dresser each. They had painted one room sea green
and the other light blue. Across the hall were a tiny beige bathroom and the master
suite.

I went back downstairs to find Percy at the kitchen sink, pumping hand soap into his
palm. “Slugs,” he said.

“Thanks and sorry. I checked out the bedroom situation.”

“Oh?”

“A master for the lovebirds and then two identical rooms—one green and one blue. Which
do you want?”

“The better one.”

“They’re identical.”

“I don’t care. You assign them—it’s your house.”

“I’m trying to be a good host. You choose.”

“What shade of green?”

“Like the first grass of spring.”

He whistled. “Nice. What color blue?”

“Palest wash of robin’s egg.”

“You speak some real Pantone poetry.”

“Why don’t you take green? It’s slightly closer to the bathroom.” I sat on one of
the kitchen stools and regarded the bottle of wine standing forthright on the kitchen
counter. I wanted to sit out on that hammock and drink wine until I was as mellow
and relaxed as someone should be in a beach town in summer. I held up the bottle to
Percy. “I should throw this out, shouldn’t I? Because of Sloane.”

“I’m sure it’s okay. She works around wine.”

“Yeah, but here, in New York, with all the reminders of her childhood . . . might
be too much.”

Percy smiled—
I see where this is going
. “We could hide it in the trunk of your car.”

“Right.”

“Or we could bury it in the yard. Pour it into the sink?”

“Or we could drink it.”

“Drink it?” He mimed surprise. “We’d have to do it quickly, though.”

“So that there’d be no trace of it when they get back.”

We pulled open the kitchen drawers in a rush, looking for a corkscrew, but came up
empty. “Come on,” I said. “They have
this
”—I held up what looked to be a rubber diaphragm with perforated holes—“but not anything
for wine. I mean, what is this for anyway?”

Percy regarded it. “Maybe it’s an oven mitt?”

“An oven mitt?” I pulled out an actual cloth oversized hand with a rooster print.
“This is what an oven mitt looks like, Percy.” He held up a corncob holder with a
tiny fake ear of corn on it. “And
that’s
a corncob holder. You, sir, are no help. No help at all.”

I continued to open and shut drawers. I glanced up, about to make a caustic comment
about his lack of assistance, when I saw him sticking the corncob holder into the
top of the wine bottle. “It’s all right.” He braced the bottle against his thigh—those
jeans again—and after a few twists, his biceps moving under his T-shirt, pulled out
the cork. “No apology necessary.”

We decided against glasses and walked out shoeless to the hammock. The sky was completely
dark when we eased into the rope seat, swinging gently, our heads at opposite ends
of the hammock.

“So that was Dave running in the park that day, right?” Percy handed me the bottle,
and I took the first swig.

“Yep.”

“Is that your thing? Running together?” I handed the bottle back to him.

“Not at all. I was freaking out, couldn’t you tell?”

“You have a bit of a poker face.” He swigged from the bottle and then passed it back.
“But speaking of Dave, I have some updates on your case.”

He had figured out, he said, a possible meaning for the notes from Hedda’s office.
Stuben was the head of the corporate department—something I should have remembered—and
if the random letters were initials, which Percy thought they were, this could be
a possible translation:

June 30
, (met with) AP (Annie Poleci) about DT (Dave Turner) and NS? (three possible combinations—Noah
Styles/Nathan Shreeky/Nick Sebly)
Hour meeting, 3 x. notified corp. dept. (phone), Stuben (phone). Implement handbook
policy.
I took a sip, holding the wine in my mouth and letting it sit for a while as I listened.

“Get it?” Percy said. “She’s memorializing a meeting. Someone named Annie Poleci was
saying that Dave and this other guy did something, so she took the steps in the handbook
and notified his department heads, et cetera.”

I swallowed. “How do you know Annie Poleci is AP?”

“Believe it or not, she’s the only person at the firm with those initials. She’s a
junior associate in the corporate group, just started last fall.”

“That’s Dave’s department.”

“I know. She and I are now Facebook friends. And in the same singles book club.”

I tilted the wine bottle to my lips for a long swallow and wiped my mouth with the
back of my wrist. “That’s a weird coincidence.”

“Not a coincidence. I friended her as part of this. Everything’s sort of falling into
place. The book club meets every two months. You know when the next meeting is?”

I shook my head. “Two months from now.”

“Next Monday. Near Washington Square Park.”

“How—”

“Once I got the name of the host, it was easy to get her address through the DMV.
It never works out this easily, Paige—everything rolling along without need for a
plan B.”

I should’ve asked some questions then, but the wine was starting to blur the edges
of our conversation. “Let’s talk about something hammock-y.”

“What are some hammock-y topics?”

Percy’s feet were sprawled by my elbows. “Like your crooked toenails.”

He glanced at them. “What?”

“You should file them. It’s sandal season.”

“I don’t wear sandals.”

“Why do you always wear jeans in summer? Isn’t it too hot?”

“Um.”

“How many pairs of jeans do you have?”

He flared his nostrils. “Three? This is hammock-y conversation? My wardrobe?”

“Yes.” I passed him the wine and watched him tilt it back. “And another bit of hammock-y
conversation. How come you live like a Calvin Klein ad from the nineties?”

He cough-choked, tipped the bottle back over. “Uh.” He pressed his temple.

“You have no furniture. Everything’s black and white and downtown and cool. Doesn’t
it turn off the ladies?”

“The ladies, they seem okay with it.”

“Do you play the field, Percy?”

“Do I—what—I’m sorry?”

“That’s a yes.”

He smiled, shook his head.

“And you’re like a German design student with no furniture.” He started to laugh,
and I laughed too. “Minimalism everywhere except in romantic partners. What’s with
the no furniture?”

“I’m sure I’m supposed to be insulted, but I’m a little too confused.”

“I just think people who live in a place for four years should have acquired some
stuff.”

“I don’t blame you for my confusion. You’re being very clear, and I’m sure there’s
an excellent reason why my lack of furniture is a personal affront. Are you maybe
a hoarder?” He placed an index finger on his chin. “Or part of the carpenter’s lobby?
Business has been troublingly slow lately?”

“I just think it’s weird.”

“Jeez. Hammock-y talk is brutal.”

“I should use it at work. How funny would that be? If I cut through the bull, just
told people what I was thinking.” I used my soothing nonjudgmental therapist voice.
“Mr. Jennings, it’s clear to everyone here that the problem with the marriage is that
you’re
an
asshole.
”
I laughed. “I don’t think I’d have many clients left.”

“You’d probably wind up with a syndicated radio show.”

“Maybe. So seriously, though, why have you collected so few grown-up things? Are you,
like, twelve?”

“Yes, Paige. I’m twelve. I’m glad it’s out, actually. It’s less awkward to ask you
for a field trip permission slip, which obviously I’ll need.”

“I knew it.” I swigged. “All the good ones are underage.”

Percy didn’t respond, and maybe I should have felt more embarrassed, but I was emboldened
by the wine and the darkness, which played with Percy’s features so they morphed and
faded into an unfamiliar, nighttime version of his face. What didn’t shift with the
moment was the sensory data—his warm leg against mine, the sound of the dry tone of
his voice, the featherlight touch of his fingers brushing against mine as he reached
for the wine.

“So how old are you?” I said.

“Thirty-one. To answer your question about why I live like a loser, I guess I have
odd hours. I spend a lot of time at the office.”

“That’s like saying you don’t wash your clothes because you go to church.”

“I don’t think it is, actually.” Percy reclined his head against the back of the hammock,
and his legs pushed a little into mine.

“No! No sleep!”

“All right, all right.” He sat back up. “I’m awake, see? Are you keeping me off balance
on purpose? Mrs. Paige Turner.” He emphasized the “Mrs.” in a way that sobered me
somewhat.

“I don’t go by that name. That’s Dave’s.” I leaned back and closed my eyes. “Let’s
not talk about
that
whole drama.”

He pushed me with his foot. “No sleeping.”

“Okay.” I sat back up.

“So no hammock-y talk. No talking about that whole drama. What’s left?”

“Hmm,” I said. “I’ll tell you something that no one knows, because you opened up to
me about your age and your clothes and all.”

He laughed in a one-syllable punch: “Ha.”

“I’m reading my mother’s journals.”

“And no one knows that, including your mother?”

“It’s awful, right?”

Percy sprang off the hammock quickly, wine bottle in hand. “Where are you going? Have
I ruined the hammock moment?”

“Not at all.” He walked deliberately toward the tree, heel-toe, heel-toe. “Foot cramp.”
Then he sat back down in the middle, arms outstretched on the sides, so our bodies
made a T, his body the base and mine the top. “Tell me.”

I told him—how I’d found the notebooks. How she seemed like a different person in
writing and how I felt annoyed and fascinated to learn how much was going on under
the surface that she hadn’t shared with me.

“Yeah,” he said. “But isn’t she entitled to not share that with anyone?”

I thought for a second. “In theory. But I did so much based on how I thought she felt.
That’s why I think it bothers me.”

“Like what did you do?”

I shrugged. “We didn’t discuss Sloane—ever—so I trained myself not to think about
her. I didn’t let myself because I thought it would be too painful for everyone. Meanwhile,
my mom was already tortured by the whole thing, which makes a lot more sense when
I think about it. Pass the bottle, please.” He handed me the bottle, and I drank a
little more. “Be straight with me, Percy, as I have been with you about your issues.”

“I’m sorry. How have you been straight with—”

“The toenails and the—”

“Oh, right. The whole German design student thing, yes. Okay. I wear jeans because
I used to wear shorts in the summer, but a client told me I looked like a British
schoolboy.”

“Really?”

“Really. She called them short pants, which sort of undermined my professionalism.
I seem to be able to get away with jeans. At least I could until now.”