Read A Hamptons Christmas Online
Authors: James Brady
A Hamptons Christmas (22 page)
“You're not at all a plain girl. You're a thin girl. Quelle différence ⦔
The snow hadn't yet melted in the New Year's cold snap, and with plenty of sun glinting off the drifts, you needed shades driving one last time to Old Beach at the Maidstone Club and then down Two Mile Hollow to the gay beach, where they had that party for the Clintons a year or more ago at Liz Robbins's wonderful old shingled house atop the dunes. I threw the Blazer into park and sat there with Emma, watching the surf for a few minutes, wanting to give her something to remember as she flew back to Geneva, what winter had been like out here in the Hamptons. Then, in a last benediction, we drove over to Lily Pond Lane for a final look at Martha Stewart's place. I tried to see if there remained in Emma's face a slim regret that things had turned out as they had. And not according to Martha Stewart's magazine.No, she just looked happy. As a kid should.
The packing had principally been done the night before, but there are always a few memories to be tucked away in side pockets, passports to be relocated and positioned, currency and airline tickets secured. Or perhaps we simply invent such chores to distract us from the ache of separation?
Sis Marley came down to the railroad station as she had threatened to do. Elegantly turned out in a wolfskin parka over tapered, lean gray flannel slacks and Eskimo boots, Sis was good as her word, hugging the child to her bosom.
“That's an astonishing fur,” Emma informed her, quite impressed.
Sis grinned her pleasure. “For all his poaching, Jesse Maine never trapped and skinned a fur like this one, sweetie.”
“I'll say not.”
Then, blowing her nose loudly into a red bandanna and climbing nimbly back into the “Deranged Rover,” Sis Marley was swiftly away with considerable burning of rubber and controlled skids, narrowly avoiding George Plimpton's car. Plimpton, who'd just recently sold the backfiles and outtakes of his
Paris Review
for sixtyfive million to somebody, had also dropped by the stationâwithout his tape recorder but with his twins, Emma's only friends of her age in town.
Paris Review
for sixtyfive million to somebody, had also dropped by the stationâwithout his tape recorder but with his twins, Emma's only friends of her age in town.
“Hi, ho!” he called out heartily. The three schoolgirls nattered on at a great rate about significant projects and improbable reunions. Then, having been appropriately briefed by George's twins, Emma suggested, “Another thing we might do in New York, Alix ⦔
“Oh?”
“Might you take me dancing?”
Her Ladyship shot the Admiral and me a prudent glance before answering.
“Absolutely not, Emma!” she said sternly, having seen no encouragement in our faces. “Not until you're at least twelve.”
“That's hard cheese, Alix,” Emma responded in Her Ladyship's lifted phrase. “The Brazilian girls at the convent all say the best dance clubs north of Rio are all in downtown Manhattan. Look, I even have a list.”
Jesse Maine was there as well, just missing by minutes Sis Marley's wolfskin.
“Gotta be an import,” Jesse said. “There ain't been wolves out here since the original Gardiners in sixteen-ought-something.
Plenty of wolves back then and they had a bounty on 'em.”
Plenty of wolves back then and they had a bounty on 'em.”
Jesse and Emma, guided by trustee and lawyer Bryan Webb, had their heads together over the possibilities of her establishing a small foundation of her own, this one dedicated to the education of Shinnecock children. If Dick and Nicole had opted out, their daughter surely hadn't. The paperwork, Counselor Webb was assuring everyone, would be completed shortly and copies dispatched to the convent for her scrutiny.
There was also a half squad of Bonac Boys, plus Tom Knowles of the Suffolk police, and Raymond, who made the doughnuts at Dreesen's and had children of his own. The miraculously restoredto-life Reds Hucko came in a pickup, happily hungover from yet another in series of welcome-home parties at Wolfie's.
“I prefer trains to limos, don't you?” Emma announced to us, “you can get up and stroll about, go to the bathroom and change seats, look out big windows and chat with interesting people from all over.”
Jesse had been briefed and was painfully aware the kid's plot to reunite her parents hadn't worked. Not quite.
“Well, as I always say ⦔ he began, trying to console her.
“ ⦠âsometimes you eat the bear. And sometime the bear eats you,'” she completed the thought, quoting and delighting Jesse. Who was less pleased with the disappointing turnout in the child's honor of his “entire Shinnecock Nation, in full and official tribal outfits and regalias,” which in actuality meant Jesse and three other fellows with a few feathers and a slack drum, there to say goodbye in their new wool flannel shirts from the Polo Shop on Main Street, purchased as Christmas gifts by Jesse out of his bribe money from Lefty Odets.
“New Year's must of been too recent for most of them, wore out like they was,” Jesse said apologetically of the missing Shinnecocks.
Wanting to cheer him, Emma said, “but you all do look awfully nice in your new Ralph Lauren shirts, Chief. Like an official Native American tribe and all, just as you said.”
Jesse looked down at himself. “Not too shabby,” he agreed.
“And, Jesse,” Emma said, “Mother Superior will want to knowâas she always says, âGod is in the details'âwere you a shaman or a sachem of the Shinnecocks? I get mixed up.”
He launched yet again into an explanation, which ended, “In peaceable seasons I may be the one thing, in times of war, if the Pequots is in the neighborhood, I may be t'other.”
Alix, wanting to console Jesse for the poor turnout of Shinnecocks, also had her say, delivering a small lecture.
“New Year's is a time for hangovers everywhere, Chief. I assure you, in Scotland, they play a huge soccer match New Year's Day between Celtic and Rangers, the Papists versus the Presbyterians. There's always a riot and next morning's Glasgow papers run a frontpage box: THE DEAD INCLUDED ⦔
I didn't think it was precisely the appropriate note on which to say farewell, but my father filled in, somewhat more helpful.
“I'd be pleased to dance a final hornpipe, Emma, if you wish.”
“Oh, would you, please!
Merci bien.
That would be most agreeable,
mon amiral.”
Merci bien.
That would be most agreeable,
mon amiral.”
We were all trying our best to say good-bye. And do it properly. And not break up crying or anything, the way you tend to be especially at Christmas with the holidays ending and friends going off all in different directions. In the end the kid we'd taken in, took us.
Completely.
She was better than her own people, had Nicole's brass and Dick's guile, and more heart than either of them.
We all stood back to watch my father dance to the beat of the Shinnecocks' drum while Emma grinned and clapped hands, then, when he was finished and somewhat winded, she ran to him and he leaned down to be hugged.
“Now you keep working on your chess game, Emma. Fifteen seconds between moves. Be firm on that. Fifteen and not a second over!”
“Aye aye, sir. And do practice poker when you have time. You could be quite good at it, I believe. Especially at stud. Just takes a little work.”
“Yes, yes,” the Admiral said impatiently, turning away to stare off down the track so she couldn't see his face.
The shame was, I concluded, her mother and father didn't appreciate the pure gold they had here.
She was a child to be held close, to be loved, enjoyed, and treasured. As I myself was painfully aware that I should be holding close, enjoying, and treasuring, and not again letting go, Alix Dunraven.
“The train!” a boy down the platform shouted. And others picked it up. “The train, the train.” In winter, East Hampton values its small distractions.
You could see it now coming at us out of the cold, clear winter morning from Amagansett way, the big headlight in the nose of the locomotive shining even in full daylight. You could hear the horn blowing and, just east of the station, the bells sounding as the crossing gates started down, their red lights lit and blinking, their big striped white-and-black arms descending across the roads to halt traffic. You could see the engineer high up staring straight ahead, chin up, eyes piercing, and fiercely so, until, catching sight of a couple of small boys on the platform waving up at him in the cab, he gave them a jolly return wave, sounding his whistle as he did, causing us all to jump back a few feet from the edge as the train rolled, rather fast still, into the East Hampton station, ready to pick up passengers and take them the hundred miles into Manhattan, into Penn Station, and to trains and planes and destinations beyond.
“Next year,” Emma cried out. “Next year I'll be back. Taller, too, and maybe not so plain.”
Alix whirled on her.
“We've got to have something of a heart-to-heart on that, my girl,” said Her Ladyship. “You're not at all âa plain girl.' You're âa thin girl!'
Quelle différence
, I assure you! Look at me, I'm a thin girl, but Beecher and lots of chaps just dote! Don't they, darling?” she said, addressing me.
Quelle différence
, I assure you! Look at me, I'm a thin girl, but Beecher and lots of chaps just dote! Don't they, darling?” she said, addressing me.
“Well, I ⦔
There was another round of hugs and kisses and good-byes, then
Alix was backing away from me toward the train, and Emma was with her, holding one hand. Then they were aboard. The trainman called, “All aboard!” and, hanging from the car steps in the old-fashioned and approved style of good railroad men everywhere, he waved an arm and the train began very, very slowly to move, its whistle sounding. Her Ladyship and her ward had by now taken seats and waved to us. My father shouted, though I don't think they could hear:
Alix was backing away from me toward the train, and Emma was with her, holding one hand. Then they were aboard. The trainman called, “All aboard!” and, hanging from the car steps in the old-fashioned and approved style of good railroad men everywhere, he waved an arm and the train began very, very slowly to move, its whistle sounding. Her Ladyship and her ward had by now taken seats and waved to us. My father shouted, though I don't think they could hear:
“Remember next year! The Santa Claus parade!”
The kid's grinning face, solemn just seconds earlier, appeared in the greasy, smoky window of the old train, one arm waving. So maybe she could hear him after all. Behind her, I could see Alix, a hand lifted though not waving, a kind of lorn salute, I guess.
My father waved, too. With a big, damaged hand snugged warmly into a bright red wool mitten. In a few years Emma wouldn't be a child anymore but a teenager, improper thoughts and all, but to the Admiral she was still very much a kid. Promising to come back again next Christmas, telling my father she was counting on him to care for the Lionel trains until she did.
The locomotive's big wheels slipped and skidded a few times more, loud and squeaking, before gradually gaining traction and moving into a smooth, powerful roll, leaving behind the painted wooden signs that proudly announced, EAST HAMPTON, and pulling the train quickly away from the little old rural station along the one-track, snowy right-of-way toward the great city.
Toward tomorrow and all the tomorrows and a world beyond.
With an exceedingly deferential bow to Mr. Charles Dickens, who some years ago in London, wrote a little story memorializing and celebrating the very same glorious and jolly season.
The Marines of Autumn
The Coldest War
Fashion Show
Nielsen's Children
Paris One
The Press Lord
Superchic
Designs
Holy Wars
Further Lane
Gin Lane
The House That Ate the Hamptons
The Coldest War
Fashion Show
Nielsen's Children
Paris One
The Press Lord
Superchic
Designs
Holy Wars
Further Lane
Gin Lane
The House That Ate the Hamptons
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