I love summer, all sultry nights and sunshine and steamy rains, changes of scene and no coats and time to spend with friends you don’t see enough of during the year. My summer was working out fine, until the week-end before Labor Day.
This past year has been a bit of a rocky passage (I’m okay, thanks) as I navigate my longest period of involuntary singlehood since age 15. Under the circumstances, the invitation to Martha’s Vineyard was especially welcome. The hosts, Darius and Dorothy (all names changed, yes) seemed as eager as I to nurture the fledgling friendship born when our mutual friend Veronica introduced us last fall. When I saw Dorothy again in March, she suggested the summer, the Vineyard, and by implication, some real time together. Lovely!
Later, I passed the idea by Veronica. Her friends, her summer ritual after all. “Great!” she said. There would be a rotating assortment of close buddies, none confirmed but many invited, in a house built for company.
Ah. Old friends, long histories.
“Maybe a bit much to add me to the mix,” said I.
“Oh no no! Come, come! Besides, they probably won’t show up.” Distances too great, other plans afoot, so on and so forth.
I wanted to say yes, so I did. I’m trying to get the hang of this single woman business. More social life: better. Besides loving her as a friend, I admire Veronica and her glamorously accomplished circle. Blue-collar strivers from small towns, fueled by their imaginations and a hunger for reinvention, they have triumphed in media-and-art-centric corporations that I cannot even imagine surviving. Veronica, nee heavily accented Roni, came of age in the outermost ring of the outer boroughs. But who among us is not, from someone’s point of view, a cliché? Product of aggressively non-materialistic and hopelessly self-satisfied academia that I am, my starting line is as mysteriously exotic to Veronica as hers is to me. Comparing our tales of origin, she once observed, “You just came to New York to be who you are.” I guess.
And the Vineyard! In my twenties, friends taking a run at the drop-out slacker idea rented a farmhouse in West Tisbury. I got up there when I could. Loved it, though the experience was not disaster-free. Fell hard for a worthless, albeit sexually adroit, man. Then we all moved into our thirties and the humbling need for adult incomes forced my friends to drop back in. My intermittent idyll ended, worthless man included. The thought of a return visit evoked gauzy weed-scented memories of Vineyard meadows and long afternoons floating in the bubble of escapist calm. An age-modified and less emotionally risky version of that bubble sounded infinitely desirable.
Arrangements, I left to Veronica. Seemed proper. What, for instance, if Dorothy hadn’t meant for me to take the invitation seriously? Easier to demur if my address were not on the email communiqués about timing and logistics. But evidently, I need not have worried. By the end of June, all was set and my inclusion, confirmed. “How nice,” I said in my email acknowledgement to Dorothy. “And thank you!”
I offered to sort out fast-disappearing ferry tickets for Veronica, her kids, and me. Done, and done. We would leave the Friday before the last week of August, to come back Labor Day afternoon. No quick turn-arounds here. I luxuriated in the anticipation. The Vineyard, with or without memories attached, is one of New England’s loveliest places.
—Returning now to the computer. Had to take a keyboard break to rest my badly pinched right ring finger, injured by the oddly engineered handle on a household appliance at Darius and Dorothy’s. Reached forward to open it and suddenly felt a huge vice-like crush on my fingertips. Three of the four have recovered, but the ring finger is still numb.
A couple of hours into our ride up from New York, Veronica mentioned that old friend Geri had flown in from the other side of the world and was already on site. There had been a virulent infection, a medical airlift and now Geri’s first break in nearly a year from her job as head of an economics advisory team in a desperately struggling nation. It crossed my mind that Veronica had kept this news to herself until it was too late for anyone to reverse course. Veronica doubtless remembered Geri’s and my failure, the one time we met, to bond.
Geri has a good brain and an arguably attractive sardonic style. She also has the hard sharp edge of the permanently disappointed and a Claire Booth Lucian disdain for other women. But those are irrelevancies, considering. Only a blindingly selfish person would begrudge her time in which to reconnect with Veronica—especially given that their friendship predates and therefore outranks mine. In any case, she was to leave on Monday. I mentally prepared myself to do my guestly duty and make myself scarce when appropriate.
It was appropriate, turned out, for me to make myself scarce 100% of the time, save when shopping for groceries. The long conversations and laughter behind closed doors? Morning coffee, the three of them sitting close and confidential on the couch? Sotto voce conversations in the passageway between kitchen and deck? Not for me. My iPad and I were beginning to tire of one another. Invited to join a run into town to pick out boogie boards with Veronica’s kids, I eagerly crowded into the back seat. Turned out my only participation came courtesy of my holding enough cash to pay for the bagels. One can look available and even expectant, but one may not force.
The house, all excess angles and jogs in a fussy style out of sync with its Modernist aspirations, sits on a tiny hillside lot. The deck spanning the short space from driveway to kitchen had potential as neutral territory to which one might tactfully withdraw, but what with kids and traffic and by Sunday, seven adults looking for conversational space, it didn’t work. I tried hanging out in my room. No good; looked like a sulky choice. But the beach! The great amenity. By summer’s end, the Atlantic has warmed, the breezes are gentle and resident car tags get you into the best spots.
Saturday afternoon, Veronica and Geri took a very, very long walk along the shore. Dorothy and I pretended to supervise the children, who, unsurprisingly, had no need for us. Dorothy appeared to find my intermittent observations inoffensive, at least, but not interesting. Sunday afternoon, back on the sand, Veronica, Geri and Dorothy arranged the three beach chairs away from me, put their heads together and kept their voices low. Well, okay. Lots of catching up to do. But eventually, enough! Someone leafed through a People magazine, comments were exchanged, and I moved in a bit. There followed a desultory chat in the lingua franca of our time, celebrity gossip, but the crypto-conversation soon died, killed by disinterest.
I am a friendly sort and not generally, so far as I know, socially inept. My sister, joking about the frequency with which I attract unbidden confidences, points to the invisible-to-us neon sign blinking on and off over my head, “Talk to HER. Talk to HER.” But try as I might, the graceful social gesture eluded me. Prepping dinner, driving from here to there or returning from a solitary walk down the dusty road, I tried. I failed. A new tack? Nope. Alone for more than a moment with Geri, I said I’d love to hear about a typical work day. Last thing she wanted to talk about, “but thanks for asking.” The stink of her pity for the clueless (me) seeped through the room. Later: how about an amusing tale? Oops! Taking way too long; drop it. Thud, thud, thud. Thud.
On Monday it hit me that I was suffering a version of culture shock, the feeling that you do not know the rules and that everything you say is wrong.
Geri’s Monday departure had been delayed to Thursday. Immediately thereafter, more old, old friends were to arrive for the long Labor Day weekend. I like meeting people, I really do. But this was not looking promising.
—another break, in consideration of numb fingertip. Looked it up.
Nerve damage, apparently. The internet says it might recover in a few weeks, a few years, or never.
Monday evening, Darius showed up. Our host! Dinner was a reasonably jolly affair, during which I surfed along the conversational wave without trying to contribute much. Well, that’s not quite true. I had turned into a dish-washing Gold Medalist. You could not put a dish down in that house without my whipping it off for a thorough, sterilizing scrub.
Tuesday morning, everyone was occupied except for Darius and me. Figuring to promote the general welfare by skipping the beach and prepping some food, I asked about a run to a farm stand. His smiling “sounds too much like work” relaxed into a cheerful comparing of notes about the wonders of summer produce. Farm stands, we agreed, have it all over the supermarket. The work, I assured him, would be all mine. Believing we had cooked up a plan, I left to take a shower.
Half an hour later and brimming with purpose, I returned to find the space I thought I had opened for myself utterly gone. Darius had zero, none, no interest at all, in a produce excursion. In fact, he was quite peeved with me. Really? He had not, he said, expected me still to be present in his house. Oh? I had never mentioned a departure date, not to him and not to Dorothy. Could that be right? Could Veronica possibly have been that vague?
Startled, shocked, I went in search of my hostess. Certainly she would uncross the crossed wire. But no. She confirmed her husband’s accusation. She scolded me (gently, but scolded nonetheless) for having pressed the produce cause. Suddenly I saw that Darius’s soupcon of anti-Semitism, born of his immigrant anxieties, was stuck like a burr to the soupcon of Jew in me. I was, apparently, an irritant, an undefined add-on with a behavior problem and a yellow star signaling “pushy” pulsing fluorescently on my unsuspecting brow.
Veronica walked in. I was leaking tears of dismay and disbelief as Dorothy, without quite offering a welcome, insisted in her gentle tones that it’s okay, okay okay, there’s plenty of room. Plenty, if I move to the attic. Took me a few minutes to realize she meant, move as far away as possible from her and Darius’s room. I was having a hard time keeping up with my spin of emotions, never mind the disastrously shifting social sands.
Stricken, fearing she’d screwed up, Veronica spoke to me in a gently (lots of gentle going on) reproving tone. “You bought tickets before the dates were confirmed.” What?? I am the daughter of the thriftiest man in America. Never in my life have I shelled out for a maybe. Stunned though I was, I did not fail to register that in her distress, Veronica had thrown me under the proverbial bus. Interesting. Never had that happen before. Noted.
Later, I located the emails about arrangements and confirmations. What I thought was true had in fact been true. Later still, Veronica found her own email trail. By then, of course, it was way, way too late. And anyway, it did not matter.
Arrangements or no arrangements, I was not wanted. (Such fun news in my marriage-is-over year.) Did not belong. The only question was how best to minimize the damage. Leave? A dramatic move, followed inevitably by wordy post-mortems sure to curdle whatever was left of the vacation spirit. Time-consuming round-robins of analysis and self-justification would settle into a narrative about the Ruined Summer of the Ruinous Interloper. Stay? Terminally awkward, with the extra added fillip of Darius’ punitive anger ratcheting up with each hour I remained on the premises.
One ferry, two busses, one taxi and 10 hours later, I was home. The next day I sent Dorothy and Darius, cc to Veronica, a lovely thank-you email, regretting the brouhaha and hoping that skies had turned blue in all senses of the phrase. Reciprocal apologies have not been forthcoming. I had planned to send a post-visit hostess gift, something more substantial than the treats with which I arrived, but I have decided against it.
“We need to talk,” Veronica texts me. I am not enthusiastic, but neither am I in favor of scuttling friendships. I have agreed to meet her Tuesday after work. I suspect she hopes for absolution, but I am not in the mood.
Fall! A clean slate. Couldn’t come at a better time.
And you? Why are you glad it’s fall?
