28 Summers: The gripping, emotional page turner of summer 2020 by 'the Queen of the Summer Novel' (People) (35 page)

“What?” Mallory says. She and Link are home now, home sweet home; it’s August on Nantucket, the weather is glorious, the water is cool but not cold, and Mallory swims enough to make up for her lost month. She goes to Bartlett’s Farm for corn, tomatoes, blueberry pie, broccoli slaw, a bouquet of peach lilies. Baseball has already become a distant memory.

“He said I don’t have to if I don’t want to,” Link says. “He thinks maybe Christmas will be better. We’re all going to Hawaii, I guess.”

Mallory says, “It’s my first Christmas without my parents, but yeah, Hawaii sounds great. Have fun.”

“Mom,” Link says, and he grabs Mallory around the middle and squeezes her the way he does when the subject of Senior and Kitty comes up. “You can join us.”

Mallory laughs through her tears. Yes, she’s crying again, for the umpteenth time. Her parents each had their idiosyncrasies. But now she sees that they were her anchors. They were
there—
Kitty with her tennis and her dreams of British royalty, Senior with his pragmatic worldview. Both of them were perplexed about Mallory’s partnerless lifestyle not because they disapproved of it but because they loved her and wanted her to find someone.

Mallory calls Fray. In the fourteen years that they have been co-parents, she has never spoken to Fray in anger. But today, yes. Today, she is loaded for bear, as the saying goes.

“You told Link he didn’t have to come?” she says by way of greeting. Fray didn’t answer his cell so she has ambushed him on his office phone. She sends his secretary, Mrs. Ellison, a large bag of vanilla caramels from Sweet Inspirations every year at Christmas specifically to ensure this kind of emergency access. “What the hell?”

“He doesn’t want to come,” Fray says. “He was away all summer playing baseball and now he wants to see his friends. I was thirteen once. I get it.”

“Don’t you want to see
him?
” Mallory asks. “You’re his
father
. Don’t you want to put your eyes on him, have the birds-and-the-bees talk, introduce him to his sister?”

“His sister has turned the household upside down,” Fray says. “Anna has postpartum depression. She’s a mess, so she’s getting help, and I’ve hired someone to be with the baby full-time. This isn’t a great summer for me, Mal. Frankly, I was relieved.”

“Relieved,” Mallory says. Postpartum depression is serious; she can’t argue with that. Poor Anna. Mallory shouldn’t send Link out to that kind of fraught situation.

“It’s not forever,” Fray says. “I told Link we’d take him at Christmas.”

“That’s very nice, but that plan leaves me alone at Christmas, and I just can’t handle that this year,” Mallory says.

There’s silence. Fray clears his throat. “That hadn’t occurred to me. And I’m sure Thanksgiving will be difficult for you too.”

“I need Link at the holidays,” Mallory says. “The holidays are mine, August is yours. That’s how we do it. That’s what works.”

“But not this year,” Fray says. “I’m so sorry.”

Link isn’t going to Seattle for a month, but what about for two weeks? Or a week? Or just over the long weekend before school, Labor Day weekend? By Labor Day, Anna might be feeling better.

“It’s too far for a weekend trip,” Link says. He sounds seventy years old, Mallory thinks. He sounds like Senior. “Besides, I want to go stay with Uncle Coop over Labor Day weekend.”

“Uncle Coop?” Mallory finally gets a clear breath.

“The Black Keys are playing at Merriweather Post Pavilion,” Link says. “I was hoping maybe Uncle Coop would take me.”

Mallory goes online and buys two seats, row C center, for the Black Keys at Merriweather Post on Saturday, August 30. Link texts all his friends to brag. Mallory steps out onto the deck and sits in her spot in the sun; the boards have two worn-down ovals where her butt cheeks have rested so often for the past twenty-one years. She runs through the reasons this is a good development—Link gets to see his favorite band live in concert, he’ll get some quality time with another male role model…and he will not be here on Nantucket.

Mallory calls Cooper. She has a momentary panic that he already has plans that weekend.

“Hey, are you free Saturday, August thirtieth?” she asks.

“Hey, Mal,” Cooper says. His voice is flat. His natural pep and charm have diminished since Kitty and Senior died. So another benefit of sending Link is that it will cheer Cooper up—win-win-win! “Yeah, I am. Why?”

Mallory uses a measured, concerned-mom voice rather than a snake-oil-salesman voice. Link doesn’t want to see Fray, so he’s staying on Nantucket instead; Mallory wanted to surprise him with something special after his incredible performance in Cooperstown and so she was hoping Coop would be willing to host Link over Labor Day. He wants to see the Black Keys at Merriweather Post. Mallory already bought two tickets, row three.

“I probably put the cart before the horse on the tickets,” Mallory says. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m psyched about the concert,” Coop says. “The concert’s not the problem.”

“Okay?” Mallory says. “What
is
the problem?”

“The problem is, I know what you’re doing,” Coop says. “I
know
what you’re
doing,
Mal.”

Mallory focuses on the sparkling surface of the ocean, the waves turning, turning, turning. “What am I doing?”

“You want me to say it? You want me to
say
it? Fine, I’ll say it. You’re getting rid of Link.” He pauses. “So you can be alone over Labor Day weekend. I know about you and Jake, Mal.”

Is Mallory surprised to hear this? Yes. Yes, she is. She wants to throw her phone into the water.

Jake told Mallory years ago that Cooper seemed off—maybe sour, maybe indifferent. They didn’t get together anymore. Mallory wasn’t concerned by this. People grew apart. Adults had busy lives. Hell, Mallory now sees Apple only at school and maybe once or twice over the summer because Apple is married with nine-year-old twins; she’s
busy
. Cooper has such a tumultuous personal life that he might not have evenings to spare, especially with Jake back and forth to Indiana.

But now.

“Coop,” she says.

“I don’t want to be a party to your deception,” he says. “It’s the adultery I object to, yes. But also, Mal, he’s
using
you.”

“No,” she says.

“He has Ursula,” Coop says. “You have…nobody. It kills me thinking about you spending most of the year by yourself, waiting for him to return. You’re like one of the sea captain’s wives, standing on your widow’s walk. It’s heartbreaking.”

“It’s not like that,” Mallory says. Mallory had relationships with JD, with Bayer, with Scott Fulton—and she had relations with Fray. She has hardly been alone all these years, but she never found anyone she loved or even liked as much as Jake and she didn’t see the point in settling.

She has always felt she has agency in her relationship with Jake. She was the one who decided, that first summer, not to turn it into something bigger. If she had, she’s sure the relationship would have ended, maybe even ended badly, and Jake would be nothing but a name from her past. As unconventional as their romance has been, Mallory believes she made the right choice.

She isn’t famous like Ursula; she isn’t a scene-stealer. She’s just a person—a good person, she has always believed. To Coop, it must seem like she has zero integrity, but where her relationship with Jake is concerned, Mallory would argue she has nothing but integrity. She has never taken more than her share. Their weekends together have a certain purity; they aren’t dirty or mean-spirited. She’s not trying to fool herself; she knows it’s wrong. But it’s also right.

If Mallory tells Coop this, will he understand? He may; he may not. She isn’t sure what kind of warped rulebook he uses when it comes to love. Or maybe she’s the one with the warped rulebook. Or maybe there is no rulebook.

Mallory has a ripcord. Will she pull it?

“I’ve lost a lot already this year,” she says. “I can’t give him up too.”

Yes, she is using the bald, gaping, awful fact of their parents’ death.

She might also say:
If you hadn’t left your own bachelor party, this would never have happened.

“Okay,” Cooper says. “Send him down.”

Mallory breathes out a “Thank you.”

“Oh, and by the way, I’m dating someone new,” Cooper says. “Her name is Amy. She’s a psychologist. I can have her talk to Link, see if he’s okay.”

“He’s okay,” Mallory says. “Maybe you should have Amy see if
you’re
okay.” She cringes, wondering if it’s wise to crack a joke at Coop’s expense.

He laughs. “Amen,” he says.

What are we talking about in 2015? “Hotline Bling”; Stuart Scott; the Affordable Care Act; Paul Ryan;
American Sniper;
James Corden; the California drought;
Hamilton;
FIFA; Subway Jared;
American Pharoah; Fitbit; Syria; Bill Cosby; San Bernardino; Ashley Madison; dabbing; Brian Williams; Selina, Amy, Gary, Dan, Jonah, and Mike; “Love Wins.”

U
rsula still reads four newspapers every morning, though she has added the
Skimm
—and, on Fridays,
Leland’s Letter
. The Dirty Dozen feature on her has been viewed over two million times, but it’s not the number of people who have seen it that matters. It’s the
kind
of people.

On the negative side, it turns out that A. J. Renninger reads
Leland’s Letter
. She publicly criticized Ursula for her comment about women supporting each other and becoming vested in one another’s success.

“The senator, whom I counted as a dear friend, didn’t offer any help while I was running for mayor,” she said in a statement to
Politico
. “And I believe that’s because she didn’t want to view me as the most powerful woman in this city.”

Ursula had nearly called AJ then and there to set the record straight: She hadn’t supported or endorsed AJ because she didn’t believe AJ would be the best mayor. That AJ had won anyway came as no surprise; her fund-raising efforts were so impressive that Ursula was sure that she promised kickbacks and favors to special interests. Ursula didn’t attend the inaugural party because she had “other plans”—she’d worked late, gotten on the treadmill, and had cereal for dinner.

On the positive side, it turns out that the features editor of
Vogue
reads
Leland’s Letter,
and she offers Ursula a profile, which is published in the 2015 spring fashion issue. Ursula models power suits by Carolina Herrera, Stella McCartney, and Tracy Reese. The photographs are probably more enticing than the article, though it’s a substantive piece, and at the end the writer, Rachel Weisberg, asks Ursula if she’s planning on running for president.

Ursula says, “I’m not ready yet, but I wouldn’t rule it out for the future.”

This statement sets off a string of firecrackers. In a moment of extreme hubris, Ursula showed the article to her daughter, Bess. Bess is fourteen, a freshman at Sidwell Friends, and she has very much come into her own. She plays volleyball and the flute; she reads incessantly about social injustice. The novels she likes best feature marginalized adolescents from third-world countries. Are you walking across Africa with only one red pencil? Then Bess McCloud wants to read your story. Ursula secretly loves how passionate and devoted Bess is to inclusivity and diversity, even though Bess has started going to the mat against some of Ursula’s own policies. Bess, like so many young people, is a bleeding-heart liberal.

Ursula thought Bess might like to see the
Vogue
article because Ursula makes her position on certain sensitive issues clear. Ursula wants to pass legislation requiring universal background checks for gun purchases; this simple measure will do wonders, she believes, in keeping assault rifles and bump stocks out of the hands of maniacs, especially underage maniacs. She thinks health care should remain privatized, and she’s determined to tackle prescription-drug costs. She has a healthy LGBTQA agenda that protects rights for civilians and military personnel. Ursula is an “independent,” a “centrist,” a “political Switzerland,” but she wants Bess to see what that means, detailed in glossy-paged black-and-white.

However, the next morning when Bess comes into the kitchen, where Jake is making her omelet as usual and Ursula is on her laptop, skimming the
South Bend Tribune
—stormwater drainage issues are on the front page,
again
—she says, “So. You’re running for president?”

Jake spins around, spatula in hand. “What?”

Later that day, Ursula’s mother, Lynette, calls. Whereas Bess and Jake were both visibly upset about the idea of Ursula running for president, Lynette is elated. “You know your father predicted this when you were seven years old, glued to the Watergate trial. You knew what impeachment was before you knew how to ride a bicycle. I told the girls over lunch at the University Club today and they’re all going to vote for you.”

Great,
Ursula thinks.
That’s five people.

“I didn’t announce that I was running for president,” Ursula says to her mother, the same thing she said to Bess, to Jake. “I said I wouldn’t rule it out. And I promise that when I do announce, you will not find out from
Vogue
magazine. We will have discussed it thoroughly first.”

Jake and Bess had seemed skeptical about this answer; Lynette, disappointed.

Ursula reads
Leland’s Letter
now because she’s grateful—the overwhelming response to the Dirty Dozen column flipped a switch and Ursula has become intriguing (and maybe even inspiring) to people outside the Beltway—but also because Ursula enjoys it.
Leland’s Letter
is smart. There are articles about sex and relationships, books, art, music, sports, movies and TV, food and wine, travel. It’s one-stop shopping aimed at American women who want to read about more than just fashion, beauty, and home decorating. Ursula reads a terrific interview with the eighty-year-old poet Mary Oliver; she reads about the French entrepreneurs who rehabilitated the reputation of rosé; she reads about Berthe Morisot’s place among the other (all-male) Impressionist painters in 1890s Paris.

Every single article is fascinating, exhaustively researched, and brilliantly written. Frankly, Ursula enjoys
Leland’s Letter
more than the
Washington Post
and the
Times
put together.

Ursula spends the first two weeks of August in South Haven, Michigan, visiting her mother. Lynette de Gournsey sold the big house in South Bend and bought a condo on St. Joe’s River and this beautiful vacation home on Lake Michigan. Ursula is sitting in an Adirondack chair on her mother’s expansive, shady lawn on a bluff overlooking the lake as she opens
Leland’s Letter
on her laptop. Jake has taken Bess to the Golden Brown bakery for “breakfast” (meaning cookies) and her mother has a “committee meeting” (meaning mimosas with her best friends, Sue and Melissa). The lead article in
Leland’s Letter
this week is titled “Same Time Next Year: Can It Save Modern Marriage?”

Ursula clicks on it eagerly. She would love to know how to save modern marriage. If marriage is an “ebb and flow,” then she and Jake are in a long ebb, or possibly a permanent, stagnant swamp. This article was written by Leland Gladstone herself. Leland curates and edits the blog, but she doesn’t do any writing herself. Except, now, this.

…late-night conversation with an intimate friend revealed a shocking secret…this friend, let’s call her “Violet,” has been conducting a clandestine relationship over the course of two
decades that she calls her “Same Time Next Year.” She and her lover meet for one long weekend each year, then they part and do not communicate—no calls, no texts, no e-mails—until the following year rolls around.

At first, I was scandalized. (“Violet” is single, but her lover is very, very married.) However, the more I ruminated upon her confession, the more I think it sounds kind of…heavenly.

It
does
sound heavenly, Ursula thinks. She could only too easily see conducting such an affair with Anders, were he still alive. He might have married AJ, and Ursula would still be with Jake, but she would meet Anders in Las Vegas every spring and they would go to that bar that they went to during the Umbrecht Tool and Die case and sing karaoke. They’d have dinner at the Golden Steer and go dancing at Hyde as they had that one memorable night, then they’d make love in a suite overlooking the Bellagio fountains.

If Anders were still alive and Ursula could pull this off, she would come back to Jake and Bess feeling so…refreshed, so energized, so grateful.

This, too, is a point Leland explores in the article. Is monogamy in long marriages an unrealistic expectation? So many people fail at marriage. What if it’s not the participants but the rules that are to blame? Is it possible that a short, tidy affair like the one “Violet” enjoys is the answer? Violet and her lover meet at the beach somewhere. They sail; they take walks and collect sand dollars; they watch movies; they eat Chinese food and read each other the fortunes from their fortune cookies.

Ursula pulls back like she’s been stung. Reads that again.

Sand dollars? Fortune-cookie fortunes?

Leland’s intimate friend. “Violet” is a made-up name.

Ursula sets down her iPad. She feels like she’s going to vomit. But wait, wait. This is a classic case of Ursula getting ahead of herself—and hasn’t her newly hired life coach, Jeannie, provided Ursula with strategies for coping, and isn’t one strategy with stressful situations to take things slowly and methodically rather than running around like her hair is on fire?

Sand dollars. Fortune-cookie fortunes.

Years and years ago, after Jake left PharmX and contracted that staph infection, Ursula had been hunting through his desk looking for his COBRA information so she could pay the bill for his hospital stay, and she had come across an interoffice envelope that just looked…strange. When she felt it, it was bumpy. She had opened it and found three sand dollars and a handful of fortune-cookie fortunes. Those two things. Only those two things.

Coincidence?

One long weekend per year—Labor Day weekend.

For over two decades—yes, at least.

On the beach—the cottage on Nantucket.

Leland’s intimate friend “Violet”—Mallory Blessing.

Ursula combs through the years methodically, or as methodically as she can under the circumstances. Without even realizing it, she has walked to the edge of the bluff. She needs to catch the breeze. Her arms feel numb, like a doll’s arms. There was the year Ursula went to Newport alone because Jake refused to cancel his trip to Nantucket. There was the year they pushed up Bess’s christening. His own daughter’s christening! He never missed his weekend on Nantucket. It was sacred, he said, his time with Cooper, with the guys. And yet, Jake hasn’t seen Cooper in Washington recently as far as Ursula knows. And then he’d refused to go to the funeral—the funeral where Ursula met Leland and learned that Leland and Mallory had been best friends growing up.

Intimate friends.

Ursula needs to call someone, but who?

Leland?
she thinks. No; Leland would, as a journalist, protect her source.

Ursula dials Cooper at work. He’s the current administration’s new director of domestic policy, a huge, demanding job, and Ursula has meant to congratulate him, though the lines between the legislative and executive branches are blurry. But she’s reaching out now on a personal matter, so there will be no ethics breach.

Even so, it’s hard for her to get past his secretary, Marnie; Marnie obviously knows that Ursula is a United States senator and any discussion of business has to be scheduled, which this hasn’t been. Ursula says she’s calling about a personal matter. Her husband, Jake McCloud, went to Johns Hopkins with Cooper; they were fraternity brothers.

“They were?” Marnie says. “Mr. Blessing has never mentioned that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t lie,” Ursula says. Her tone is peevish, which will only reinforce her reputation as being somewhat bitchy (maybe more than
somewhat;
maybe she’s a bona fide insufferable bitch, which is why her husband has been cheating on her for more than twenty years). “They were in Phi Gamma Delta, Fiji. Jake was Cooper’s big brother.”

Marnie sighs. “He does talk about Fiji,” she says. “But I still can’t help you. Mr. Blessing is on his honeymoon this week.”

“Honeymoon?” Ursula says.
Another
honeymoon? “Well, good for him. I hope they went someplace nice.”

“St. Mike’s,” Marnie says. “Should I tell him you called? Or—”

“Might you give me his cell number?” Ursula asks. “It’s a rather urgent personal matter.”

“I’m sorry,” Marnie says. “I can’t do that.”

Ursula appreciates Marnie’s discretion even though she’s desperate to talk to Coop. “Yes, please, then,” she says. “Tell him I called.” Ursula hangs up. What next? Somewhere she used to have the number of the cottage on Nantucket. She could call and see who answers. If Mallory answers, Ursula will…what? Ask her if she’s been conducting an affair with Jake for the past twenty years?

Ursula decides to give it a shot. What choice does she have? The number isn’t in either of her phones so she Googles the white pages and punches in
Mallory Blessing, Nantucket, Massachusetts
—but there’s no listing.

Of course there’s no listing. It’s 2015. Everyone got rid of landlines ten years ago.

Another honeymoon. On St. Mike’s—St. Michael’s, on the eastern shore of Maryland. There’s only one place that anyone would honeymoon on St. Mike’s, right? The Inn at Perry Cabin.

The woman who answers at the reception desk sounds young and bubbly, which is a good sign. “Good morning, the Inn at Perry Cabin, how may I direct your call?”

“Yes, good morning, this is Senator Ursula de Gournsey.” Ursula pauses.
Please let this young woman follow politics.
“I’m trying to reach Cooper Blessing. I believe he’s there on his honeymoon?”

“Good morning, Senator! Yes, he is. I’ll just need you to provide his room number so I can connect you.”

“I don’t have the room number,” Ursula says. “I didn’t anticipate having to call him this week but something urgent has come up. If I leave a message, will you please make sure he sees it right away?”

The desk clerk says, “Ohhhhmmmmm.” She pauses. “I suppose I can just put you through. Please hold, Senator.”

The phone starts to ring and Ursula wonders how she became a woman who would interrupt someone’s honeymoon to ask about her own husband’s possible infidelity. She should hang up! But she can’t. She needs to know.