The Summer We Read Gatsby Part 1

The summer we read Gatsby : a novel.

Danielle Ganek.

For Harry, who just read Gatsby for the first time

1.

Summer 2008

Hats, like first husbands in my experience, are usually a mistake. But the invitation was specific. And demanding. A GATSBY party. Wear white. And below that, in imploring cursive: "Hats for the Ladies."

It's still unclear to me how hats hats were involved in Fitzgerald's story-only a few are mentioned in the novel-or, frankly, why any adult above the age of twenty would care to attend this sort of were involved in Fitzgerald's story-only a few are mentioned in the novel-or, frankly, why any adult above the age of twenty would care to attend this sort of theme theme party. I'm also still not sure that this part of the story-how Miles n.o.ble's first party at the house it took five years to design and build came to be themed around this book he'd once given my sister-was ever fully explained, but as Peck kept pointing out, I was a foreigner, so what the h.e.l.l did I know? party. I'm also still not sure that this part of the story-how Miles n.o.ble's first party at the house it took five years to design and build came to be themed around this book he'd once given my sister-was ever fully explained, but as Peck kept pointing out, I was a foreigner, so what the h.e.l.l did I know?

Like many of her observations, this one wasn't entirely accurate. Peck, short for Pecksland-that's the sort of mother she has-is my half sister. We shared the same father, although he died when I was three and she was seven, after he'd left her mother for mine. I'm as American as she is, with the same navy blue pa.s.sport. It's just that I never lived in the States and, according to her, I don't know anybody anybody, or any of the sorts of people she would have liked me to know: American celebrities, fas.h.i.+on designers, New York socialites, people who could get a table at a place called the Waverly Inn, those sorts.

I didn't own any hats of the kind I imagined Daisy Buchanan might have worn, but on this, as on so many things, Peck was adamant. She not only insisted (read: begged, pleaded, and threatened to kick me out of the house) that I accompany her to Miles n.o.ble's party, but also that I follow the oddly specific sartorial directions. She was often adamant, often about absurd things, but particularly about hats. On this, there'd been no room for argument. She hadn't seen Miles in seven years and she needed someone-me-by her side for this encounter.

I'd only been in Southampton for three days and I was in no mood for a party. Even one hosted, as Peck kept dramatically exclaiming, by the first and only man she'd ever loved. It was the Fourth of July, a holiday about which I'd always been reverent, but at that point in the summer I was still jaundiced and cynical, a divorced twenty-eight-year-old aspiring writer whose creative ambitions had led only to a dead-end job as a translator at a lifestyle magazine for tourists in Switzerland. And my only blood relative, aside from the half sister I hardly knew, had only been gone a couple of months. I was far more saddened by Lydia's death than I might have expected, especially as I hadn't seen my aunt in a few years. I was a weepy, confused mess and was finding it hard to be there, in her house, without her. So at first I politely declined Peck's invitation to join her.

But being polite and declining invitations do not agree with my glamorously eccentric half sister, and since I was at the very beginning of what was supposed to be a month of sisterly togetherness at the house we'd jointly inherited from Aunt Lydia, I reluctantly agreed to go with her. In the interest of getting along, I pulled the only dress I'd brought with me from my suitcase of jeans and T-s.h.i.+rts and borrowed a hat from the strange a.s.sortment Aunt Lydia had left in the house, unwisely choosing a drooping off-white bowler that made my head itch and kept falling over my eyes as Peck inexpertly maneuvered our aunt's ancient station wagon down the driveway.

"There's a situation," she announced as she pulled into the sun-dappled street, spraying gravel like she was commandeering a get-away car. This is a standard expression from Peck, who tends to speak in proclamations and for whom life is one long series of situations. situations. A situation could be anything from the mysteriously locked safe in Aunt Lydia's closet that we had not been able to open to the guy wearing nothing but wet tighty-whitey BVDs we'd witnessed just that morning slowly pedaling his bicycle home from the beach. (Or the situation could be A situation could be anything from the mysteriously locked safe in Aunt Lydia's closet that we had not been able to open to the guy wearing nothing but wet tighty-whitey BVDs we'd witnessed just that morning slowly pedaling his bicycle home from the beach. (Or the situation could be me. me.) "The situation situation," Peck explained, in the aggrieved tone of an irrelevant monarch, "is that you and I can't agree agree on on anything anything."

This was true. I was trying, I really was. But to say it wasn't going well between Peck and me would be an oversimplification. The first three days had been, well, strained. Inheritances will do that, people tell me. Our circ.u.mstances weren't necessarily unusual: a beloved elderly aunt bequeathing a small second home to two nieces who must come together to settle the estate. Except the two nieces, half sisters raised an ocean apart by two utterly different women who'd both loved the same man, had a complicated complicated relations.h.i.+p. And it was a house in the Hamptons. Southampton, to be specific. (Apparently there are nuances I couldn't possibly understand, being a relations.h.i.+p. And it was a house in the Hamptons. Southampton, to be specific. (Apparently there are nuances I couldn't possibly understand, being a foreigner foreigner.) Also, as Peck kept telling me, n.o.body calls it "the Hamptons."

Certain types of New Yorkers, I was to learn, and style-obsessed Peck, to her delight, was now one of these these New Yorkers, go to the Country on weekends and in the summers. To them "the Country" refers to anyplace outside Manhattan, which is "the City." The City is where you live during the week. On the weekends, you go to the Country. Even suburbs like Larchmont and Scarsdale are the Country to such city people, as are Southampton, East Hampton, and Westhampton. These were the sorts of distinctions about which my sister was appalled to find I didn't already know. New Yorkers, go to the Country on weekends and in the summers. To them "the Country" refers to anyplace outside Manhattan, which is "the City." The City is where you live during the week. On the weekends, you go to the Country. Even suburbs like Larchmont and Scarsdale are the Country to such city people, as are Southampton, East Hampton, and Westhampton. These were the sorts of distinctions about which my sister was appalled to find I didn't already know.

"Literally." Peck often started a sentence that way. Lit- Lit-tra-ly. It was a verbal tic and could be contagious. She sped up and then slammed on the brakes as she cursed the driver ahead of us. "I don't see how we could be related. You have no sense of priorities priorities."

This was a theme she kept revisiting. Peck felt vehemently that we should ignore Lydia's wishes-"It's not like she would know know"-and keep the house we'd inherited. In her view, to trade the house for money was like looking a gift horse in the mouth and, therefore, terrible manners. I was far less p.r.o.ne to vehemence, but on this Lydia's mandate for us had been clear. And I had absolutely no interest in keeping what would only be a sad reminder that all of them, my father, my mother, and my aunt, all the members of that generation of Moriartys, were gone. Only Peck's mother was still around, and she was living in Palm Springs, "where she belongs," as Peck, who adored her mother, put it.

In her opinion, I should have immediately jumped to the obvious solution, one that involved my moving to New York, where everybody everybody lives, allowing us to keep the house in Southampton for shared weekends and summers. Or I should go back to Switzerland, where, last she checked, the Hampton Jitney-an evocative name for what was nothing more than a big green bus that took people from Manhattan to the villages of the Hamptons and back-did not make any stops, and simply leave the house in Southampton to her. She didn't see why she should be forced to sell just because I was so determined to be, in her view, lives, allowing us to keep the house in Southampton for shared weekends and summers. Or I should go back to Switzerland, where, last she checked, the Hampton Jitney-an evocative name for what was nothing more than a big green bus that took people from Manhattan to the villages of the Hamptons and back-did not make any stops, and simply leave the house in Southampton to her. She didn't see why she should be forced to sell just because I was so determined to be, in her view, difficult difficult.

"Lydia made it pretty clear in the will she didn't expect us to keep it," I said. "I'd like to honor her wishes." Whenever I pointed out that Peck couldn't afford to keep the house, that we we couldn't afford to keep the house-even together, according to the lawyers, we couldn't afford to pay the taxes, let alone for any of the maintenance on the place-she would sigh dramatically and change the subject. "You know what your problem is?" she would ask, and then pause, as if awaiting a response. "You're afraid to couldn't afford to keep the house-even together, according to the lawyers, we couldn't afford to pay the taxes, let alone for any of the maintenance on the place-she would sigh dramatically and change the subject. "You know what your problem is?" she would ask, and then pause, as if awaiting a response. "You're afraid to live live."

Now she made a sound like a harrumph. "Were you always so obedient?"

"I suppose so," I said.

She looked over at me for far longer than seemed comfortable, considering that we were now going sixty in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone. "See, that's the thing with you. You've got to come out of your sh.e.l.l. Life is just too G.o.dd.a.m.ned short for that kind of att.i.tude."

That morning, I'd made things worse, voicing the perhaps too caustic opinion that she was only interested in seeing Miles n.o.ble again because she'd recently discovered that he'd become such a financial success that he'd built himself an enormous house-a place that grew larger, "twenty thousand square feet," "thirty thousand square feet, at least," every time I heard Peck express her enthusiasm about seeing it-in Bridgehampton.

Pointing out that my half sister seemed more intrigued with the idea of this extravagant evidence of wealth than she was with the man himself was not something that needed to be said, I'll admit. But she had been going on and on endlessly about that very subject-"Literally? I can't believe he's so . . . successful"-since I'd arrived, so I wasn't exactly being the contrarian. I was simply trying to get out of putting on a dress and a hat and going with her.

Since then, she'd been even more impatient with me, and she made another noise when I clutched the armrest as she swerved to avoid a woman walking three Labradors. "Jesus Christ," I muttered, as we then narrowly missed a Range Rover headed in the opposite direction.

"Don't be so nervous nervous," Peck said in a tone that had grown increasingly peevish all day. She'd always seemed irritated by me, but since my arrival in Southampton she'd added a dash of what I could only interpret as disappointment. "I'm the one who should be nervous. I'm going to see Miles n.o.ble again for the first time since he broke my heart clean in two."

I opened the window. Air rushed in, smelling intoxicatingly of salt and honeysuckle, and something else too, something like ambition. I breathed in deeply.

"Watch the hair," Peck warned. She had fantastic hair, a red-gold cascade she liked to wear fluffed as big as possible around her face. "Otherwise I look like a pinhead," she'd say, in the self-deprecating manner specific to the truly vain.

A Philip Treacy hat-I knew it was Philip Treacy because she kept telling me, dropping the name as though it might mean something to me-was pinned precariously into her curls, and she had on a low-cut vintage flapper dress. It was white, of course, and showed off her spectacular cleavage-she referred to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as "the twins"-to advantage. "G.o.d, I look a wreck," she complained, although of course she didn't at all. She'd made an effort and she looked magnificent, regal and cool and stylish at the same time.

"Look at my nails," she cried out, flas.h.i.+ng a hand in front of my face. "I've bitten them all down to the quick with nerves. And of course this dress is wrong. All wrong."

Peck is what she likes to call a Fas.h.i.+onina. "I coined that term," she'd explain, whether you cared for an explanation or not. "Everyone calls people like me Fas.h.i.+onistas. But the Fas.h.i.+onina Fas.h.i.+onina is an entirely different creature." According to Peck, a Fas.h.i.+onina is more elegant than a Fas.h.i.+onista; a Fas.h.i.+onina knows about taste and style, whereas a Fas.h.i.+onista is all about trends. She described her fas.h.i.+on sense as "rock 'n' roll Auntie Mame." She took such things seriously, as befitted a fas.h.i.+on diva, and over the years her style had evolved into full-fledged glamour with a vintage 1930s flair. It was ill-mannered, she liked to tell me, not to make an effort. is an entirely different creature." According to Peck, a Fas.h.i.+onina is more elegant than a Fas.h.i.+onista; a Fas.h.i.+onina knows about taste and style, whereas a Fas.h.i.+onista is all about trends. She described her fas.h.i.+on sense as "rock 'n' roll Auntie Mame." She took such things seriously, as befitted a fas.h.i.+on diva, and over the years her style had evolved into full-fledged glamour with a vintage 1930s flair. It was ill-mannered, she liked to tell me, not to make an effort.

Of my my dress-a long white cotton thing-she'd sniffed, "Hippie chic." And then, "You really should do something with your hair," because I'd emerged from a shower with it wet and hanging down my back. I was sure I was the one who looked "a wreck." I felt haggard and exhausted and my nails too were bitten to the quick. "Actually don't." She'd reconsidered. "I'm just jealous. I've always been dress-a long white cotton thing-she'd sniffed, "Hippie chic." And then, "You really should do something with your hair," because I'd emerged from a shower with it wet and hanging down my back. I was sure I was the one who looked "a wreck." I felt haggard and exhausted and my nails too were bitten to the quick. "Actually don't." She'd reconsidered. "I'm just jealous. I've always been insanely insanely jealous of you. I wish I could waltz down here with no makeup, in an old nightie and with stringy wet hair, and look like that." jealous of you. I wish I could waltz down here with no makeup, in an old nightie and with stringy wet hair, and look like that."

It was the kind of thing she said but didn't really mean. Or meant only halfheartedly. She may have carried a tiny bit of residual resentment of the fact that our father left her mother (and her) for mine (and, a few months later, me). But our dad had now been dead for twenty-five years, and she wasn't jealous of me at all. After all, as she'd pointed out more than a few times in the past few days, there wasn't any reason for anyone to be jealous of me. I had a boring job in a boring country that wasn't New York. (Switzerland is a place she and other people often confuse with Sweden.) Peck, on the other hand, was an actor. (She was one of those those theater people, the ones who tell you about their craft and never, ever stop believing in themselves.) And she lived in Manhattan, or "the greatest city in the world," as she usually put it. (Yes, she was one of theater people, the ones who tell you about their craft and never, ever stop believing in themselves.) And she lived in Manhattan, or "the greatest city in the world," as she usually put it. (Yes, she was one of those those New Yorkers.) New Yorkers.) "Maybe you shouldn't read too much into this party," I cautioned as we pa.s.sed the field where I remembered picking strawberries with Aunt Lydia the first time I visited Southampton. I was trying to be conciliatory, but like many of my attempts at communicating with Peck it came out all wrong. She'd read Miles n.o.ble's calligraphed invitation as a summons, a call to destiny from her past. I had a tendency to be more cautious about people and their intentions. Far too cautious, she would tell me.

"Maybe it's just a theme," I went on. "You know, white dresses, green lawns, finger bowls of champagne that change the scene before your eyes into something significant, elemental, and profound." I was paraphrasing from the novel because that was the sort of annoying thing I did when I was nervous, but she didn't seem to notice. "Gatsby is that kind of book." is that kind of book."

To this she sputtered, "Don't tell me me what kind of book it is. You hadn't even what kind of book it is. You hadn't even read The Great Gatsby read The Great Gatsby until until I I gave it to you." gave it to you."

This was true. I was twenty-one that summer I read Gatsby Gatsby for the first time. It was 2001, and I'd arrived to spend what would then be my third summer at Aunt Lydia's house with the older half sister who intimidated me. Twenty-one is late to encounter the story of James Gatz and his love for the elusive Daisy, but I'd spent a peripatetic childhood in Europe, and this cla.s.sic American novel had not been on the curriculum at any of the schools my mother had found for me. for the first time. It was 2001, and I'd arrived to spend what would then be my third summer at Aunt Lydia's house with the older half sister who intimidated me. Twenty-one is late to encounter the story of James Gatz and his love for the elusive Daisy, but I'd spent a peripatetic childhood in Europe, and this cla.s.sic American novel had not been on the curriculum at any of the schools my mother had found for me.

I would have missed many of the American cla.s.sics had it not been for my aunt Lydia, an English teacher at an all-boys academy, Saint Something's, in Manhattan. Lydia was the first person to encourage me to write. "Start early," she'd advised. "Get a first novel under your belt now." I was nine years old, spending my first summer with her in Southampton. After that, every year she would send the summer reading list she always gave her cla.s.s, and a box of books. Occasionally she visited and brought the books and the list in person. I got used to cataloguing my summers according to the books she gave me. There was the Summer We Read Nancy Drew Nancy Drew, the Summer We Read The Catcher in the Rye The Catcher in the Rye, the Summer We Read Edith Wharton, and the Summer We Read Catch-22 Catch-22.

The summer of 2001 became the Summer We Read Gatsby Gatsby. My aunt had a.s.sumed I'd already read it, and because she taught the book during the school year, it didn't appear on the reading lists she gave her cla.s.s. It was Peck who gave me the book. That summer, she introduced me to many things besides F. Scott Fitzgerald: the dressing drink, a topspin forehand, thong underwear, proper smoke-ring technique, and Woody Allen. Her introduction to Woody Allen took the form of Annie Hall Annie Hall and and Manhattan Manhattan, not literally Mr. Allen, but it was powerful all the same.

Peck was twenty-five then, already plump and gravel-voiced, theatrically and obsessively recovering from what she called "the denouement of the greatest love story ever told." Her recovery took the form of chain-smoking, devouring cupcakes, and mooning about pretending to read the copy of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby that Miles n.o.ble had given her when they first met. "I'm that Miles n.o.ble had given her when they first met. "I'm obsessed obsessed," she would tell me, waving her paperback. "I'm absolutely mad for this book. You know, a literary fetish is the new black."

Miles had read everything Fitzgerald ever wrote, he told her. "Like the Dylan song," I said when she repeated this detail, telling the story of how they met. She didn't get the reference. "Bob Dylan?" she'd muttered irritably. "What's he got to do with the price of tea in China?"

Her first words to me that summer of 2001 were "I hate you," but she'd delivered them in a cheerful enough manner, which was confusing to the pale and fragile student I was then, still grieving my mother's death, overwhelmed at the random nature of life's ironies. She'd just finished at NYU-she hadn't graduated, she'd simply finished finished-and was planning to become famous, and she held the page of her book with one finger and gazed at me with curiosity. "Just kidding," she said a few seconds later. "It's just that you're so so freaking skinny. And you look just like Daddy." freaking skinny. And you look just like Daddy."

Daddy? He'd been dead for eighteen years. But I did resemble our father, or at least the few photos of him I'd seen. I had his dark wavy hair and brown eyes and I was angular, like him, while Peck took after her mother, with freckled Irish skin that burned easily and wide-set blue eyes.

Miles n.o.ble looked like Jim Morrison, according to Peck. He was brilliant, s.e.xy, the funniest guy she'd ever known. His name had come to be a sort of shorthand for the perfect guy, an inside joke for half sisters who grew up separated by an ocean, without much in the way of inside material. When Jean-Paul, the now-ex-husband my friends referred to as "that awful Jean-Paul"-as though that were his full name, That-Awful-Jean-Paul-turned out to be so, well, awful, Peck said to me, "He was never your Miles n.o.ble, was he?"

Men were always falling in love with Peck, or so she would tell me. And she did have a regal air that seemed to bring out the pa.s.sion in even the mousiest little creatures. But inevitably she'd come up with several reasons to be disappointed. A pa.s.sion for cats, for example. Or ordering a salad for dinner. Or the wrong sorts of shoes. "Ta.s.seled loafers," she would whisper into the phone, as if such a thing were so awful it couldn't be voiced too loudly. It explained everything. Afterward, she'd always add, "Well, he was no Miles n.o.ble."

"For someone who wants to be a writer, you don't seem to understand about this book," she complained now as she slammed on the brakes at a red light. We were on Route 27, the traffic-snagged highway that runs all the way along Long Island to Montauk, making our way from Southampton to Bridgehampton. "You, of all people, should know when a book had this kind of significance, a person doesn't just randomly send an invitation after seven seven years of nothing, with such a theme, if he doesn't intend it to mean something." years of nothing, with such a theme, if he doesn't intend it to mean something."

"True," I acknowledged. "But what does it mean?"

"It means, I suppose, that he's come to his senses and he wants me back. But it's too late for that. And you know what? You were right."

Her words surprised me. Peck was not in the habit of telling me I was right about anything.

"This morning." She gestured at me with one hand. "When you implied I was only going so I could see the house. It's true. To satisfy my curiosity." She nodded, as though she needed confirmation. "I would never go through that again, that kind of love. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I wouldn't even wish it on you you.

"It's a sickness," she continued. "That kind of obsessive, all-consuming, intense feeling, where you can't eat and you can't sleep. And G.o.d, remember how tragic I was that summer we broke up? Moping around a whole summer, reading and rereading The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby, as though it contained all the answers to the mysteries of life."

I did. It had been rather impressive, a heaving performance of grief and self-pity that I'd witnessed with a combination of awe and amus.e.m.e.nt. I had always believed such intense displays of emotion to be the stuff of books and movies and songs and therefore purely fict.i.tious. I didn't think people could actually feel that strongly about each other and I viewed my half sister's dramatic display as characteristic hyperbole.

"So what do you think he he wants?" I asked her, as a gut-wrenching sunset began to tinge the wide-open sky with pink, the famous "painters' light" about which Lydia had spoken so evocatively and adoringly, and we turned off the highway in the direction of the former potato fields that had been transformed over a period of five years into Miles n.o.ble's fantasy of a country estate. wants?" I asked her, as a gut-wrenching sunset began to tinge the wide-open sky with pink, the famous "painters' light" about which Lydia had spoken so evocatively and adoringly, and we turned off the highway in the direction of the former potato fields that had been transformed over a period of five years into Miles n.o.ble's fantasy of a country estate.

"He wants what every man wants when he's built a house. He wants to fill it," she said. We fell in behind a long line of cars snaking toward the driveway that would lead to the house.

"He's been living in Hong Kong and Dubai," she went on, her syllables rounded and carefully defined. "An international man of mystery, from the sound of it. Now he's come back home to roost. There's an apartment in New York too, I hear. A penthouse, all raw and ready to be designed. What he wants wants is a wife." is a wife."

I'd always admired the way Peck could speak with such authority about the unknown wishes of others. She delivered her opinions as though she'd received some divine wisdom that told her she was right, despite any evidence or logic to the contrary.

She tapped her fingers on top of the steering wheel in time to the music, the Grateful Dead's "Eyes of the World," from a CD I'd brought along. "I wonder what he looks like now."

Miles n.o.ble lived, for just a summer, in what could only be described, in Fitzgerald's words, as an incoherent failure of a house an incoherent failure of a house. It was the biggest thing I'd ever seen. Also the ugliest. There were small windows in strange places and a huge arched door and two turretlike structures, one at each end, giving it the feel of a mad castle, and not in a good way. As we followed the line of cars down the driveway toward a gaggle of valet parkers, we both gazed up at the house before us in awe. The front of the house was lined with purple and pink hydrangeas and far too many wood chips, a whole garden store's worth of bright reddish things. It rose awkwardly out of its landscaped acres of lawn like an ungainly p.u.b.escent girl uncomfortable with her sudden size and lack of beauty.

"Isn't this fantastic?" Peck asked breathlessly.

I glanced over at her, a.s.suming she was being sarcastic. I was about to say something about how I'd never seen anything more hideous when I realized her awe at the sight of the house before us was not the same as mine. There was reverence in her eyes.

"It sure is big," I said.

She nodded. "Forty thousand square feet, at least. Indoor and outdoor pools. The gardens are modeled after a place in Ireland."

We stepped out of the car and a valet parker handed Peck a ticket. Then we were greeted at a long table by five or six very attractive women in tiny black dresses. Peck took my arm in excitement as she stated regally, "Pecksland Moriarty. And guest."

We made our way behind other white-clad arrivals along a path, lined with hurricane lanterns, that led to the back of the house. "I can't believe Miles lives here," Peck whispered to me, still holding on to my arm. "It's out of a movie, isn't it?"

"The s.h.i.+ning?" I whispered back, but she was too excited to realize what I meant.

"Everybody's here," she said as we came around the corner to a vast terrace where a sea of people were already gathered. here," she said as we came around the corner to a vast terrace where a sea of people were already gathered. Everybody Everybody was obediently wearing white. And hats. Some of the people were smart and elegant. And some were hard and bored. On them, the white dresses and the dinner jackets appeared cheap. But, I couldn't help noticing, they were, for the most part, an extraordinarily attractive group of people. So this is the Hamptons, I thought, as I allowed myself to be pulled along into the fray with my sister at my side. was obediently wearing white. And hats. Some of the people were smart and elegant. And some were hard and bored. On them, the white dresses and the dinner jackets appeared cheap. But, I couldn't help noticing, they were, for the most part, an extraordinarily attractive group of people. So this is the Hamptons, I thought, as I allowed myself to be pulled along into the fray with my sister at my side.

"Look at that," I said to her, pointing at the lights that spelled out three letters on the bottom of the swimming pool. "What does that say? MAN?"

"Those are his initials initials," Peck exclaimed. "Miles Adam n.o.ble. That's cool."

"Very existential," I remarked as we headed to one of several lit-up bars set up on the gra.s.s. Everything was blazing with lights, from the monogram in the pool, which was now changing colors, to the trees hung with lanterns and the tables set with candles. Even the flagpole in one corner of the back lawn was surrounded by at least four or five lights, s.h.i.+ning upward from the base at the American flag flapping in the breeze.

As we waited for a couple in matching white tuxedos and fedoras to select something from the many choices of c.o.c.ktails, Peck shook an American Spirit from a pack she carried in the tiny white box she was using as a purse. She smoked the elegant, old-fas.h.i.+oned way that glamorous women used to smoke, her right elbow in her left hand and the long fingers of her right hand lined up flat against her face. She'd take a deep drag and then fling her right hand with its cigarette all the way out to the side.

The His-and-Hers pair in the tuxes turned and waved their hands in front of their faces, ostentatiously fanning away her smoke. "How rude rude," Peck exclaimed as they quickly moved away from us. She blew a stream of smoke at their retreating backs.

She ordered two dirty martinis-and when I interrupted to change mine to a c.o.ke, she exclaimed, "What are you, the mayor of Sobertown?" Peck turned back to the bartender, a pretty older man, one of those character-actor types in a white dinner jacket and bow tie, and clarified. "Make hers a double."

The bartender gave her a blank look as he poured the vodka. There were small signs on the bar indicating that the bar was "sponsored" by this particular brand.

"She's a divorcee divorcee," Peck felt compelled to explain. She p.r.o.nounced the word as though she were speaking French, with a rolling r r and the emphasis on the last syllable- and the emphasis on the last syllable-de-vorr-SAY.

He handed us each a martini speared with three ma.s.sive olives and winked at me as Peck clinked her gla.s.s against mine. "Big and stiff," she proclaimed, making sure the bartender and everyone else in our midst could hear her. "Just the way I like them."

She introduced me to everyone everyone, her arm encircling my waist as she showed me off. She bounced from cl.u.s.ter to cl.u.s.ter, sharing an entertaining tidbit of gossip about some person or a sharp observation about another. They were all immediately friendly to me, including me in the small talk that seemed to flow effortlessly from their mouths. Some of the guests whispered in judgment at the lavishness of the party, even as they fanned out to the tins of caviar on ice and mounds of k.u.mamoto oysters and what looked like sculptures of fresh shrimp on skewers, and lined up for the n.o.bu chef rolling sus.h.i.+ and the Chinese man in an extra-tall hat wrapping Peking duck in pancakes. There were tiny little cheeseburgers dripping juices and ketchup onto white silk and little slivers of toro toro, a fatty tuna so fresh it tasted like it had been caught that afternoon. There was foie gras on toast and smoked salmon with creme fraiche and a man in a white suit and a sombrero at a table with hundreds of avocados, mixing guacamole to order.

Peck didn't seem nervous at all, despite her professed anxiety about seeing Miles n.o.ble again, and she drew admiration, particularly from the male guests, some of whom couldn't help but stare adoringly at her magnificently cleavaged chest as she spoke.

"This is my half sister," she'd say proudly, as though this, a half of a sister, were a thing so special only she was fortunate enough to have one. "This is Stella Blue."

Technically this was true. My parents had named me after the Grateful Dead song. (That's the sort of mother I I had.) Stella Blue Ca.s.sandra Olivia Moriarty. Flows daintily off the tongue, doesn't it? The Dead played "Stella Blue" the night I was born, or that was the story as told by my mother, the queen of the unreliable narrators. Her tales were always entertaining and always embellished. They just weren't always true. had.) Stella Blue Ca.s.sandra Olivia Moriarty. Flows daintily off the tongue, doesn't it? The Dead played "Stella Blue" the night I was born, or that was the story as told by my mother, the queen of the unreliable narrators. Her tales were always entertaining and always embellished. They just weren't always true.

They'd added the Ca.s.sandra Olivia because they wanted me to have options. I exercised those options at the age of four and encouraged everyone to call me Ca.s.sie. But Peck could never resist an opportunity to remind me of my hippie roots. To her, I was Stella Blue. Or just Stella. Often, she'd give it the full dramatic Marlon Brando delivery: STELLAAAH! Especially when calling on the phone from overseas.

She wasn't the only one who refused to call me Ca.s.sie. There was also That-Awful-Jean-Paul. He'd always opted for Ca.s.sandra and sometimes Ca.s.sandra Olivia because That-Awful-Jean-Paul was Swiss and didn't believe in nicknames or names that Deadhead mothers pulled from songs.

I became a Deadhead myself when my mother took me to see them in Germany. I was ten years old. And a few years later, I found a Web site that posted song lists from every show the Dead ever played. The shows were listed by year and I did find one in Hartford, Connecticut, on the date I was born. They played "Peggy-O." And "Althea." Both of which could inspire the naming of a female child, I suppose. But "Stella Blue" was not played that night.

When I asked my mother about the discrepancy in her story, she said, "We take creative license with the fictional narratives that become our memories. Anthologized, these are the tales that become the story of your life." Right. That was the kind of thing she would say, a too-broad elaboration of one of the many life philosophies she'd cobbled together on her spiritual quest, one that did nothing to alleviate how the slight falsities in her tales bothered me. But when I expressed my distaste for the name my mother always said the same thing: "It could've been worse. They could've played 'Bertha.' "

Peck and I were sucked into the crowd, greeting what seemed an endless stream of the same anxious men and gregarious women. There was kissing and squealing and handshaking and we were pulled along by the riptide of her acquaintances. We were on our second round of martinis and Miles n.o.ble had yet to make an appearance when Peck launched into the story of how they met, for the benefit of a small crowd of listeners. Later I would look back at this moment as the beginning of what I would come to think of as a sort of awakening in me, the first in a series of s.h.i.+fts that led me to want to write a different story for myself.

"The first time I laid eyes on Miles n.o.ble," she began, "I was about to be kissed." I'd always known Peck could weave a good tale but now, as she entranced us with her words, I recognized that I could learn from her. She paused before delivering the next line. "By someone else." Another pause. "And I knew. Immediately, I knew. It was the coup de foudre coup de foudre." She p.r.o.nounced the words coup de foudre coup de foudre in a thick French accent, her words now rehea.r.s.ed and perfectly enunciated, as though she'd performed this script a thousand times, and gotten the timing and p.r.o.nunciation and the blocking just right. in a thick French accent, her words now rehea.r.s.ed and perfectly enunciated, as though she'd performed this script a thousand times, and gotten the timing and p.r.o.nunciation and the blocking just right.

"He wore a crisp white s.h.i.+rt, and he looked just like Jim Morrison. He had this thick wavy hair you could just run your hands through. And he was sinewy, with dark skin that would turn bronze in the sun. G.o.d, he was good-looking. But it was more than that. He had that thing, charisma, or whatever it is, that just draws you in. And after I was finished being kissed, by a freshman boy whose insignificant name I never retained, I saw that he was waiting for me. It was one of those parties where there's a keg of beer and too many poets and actors in desperate need of haircuts. I said, 'Do I know you?' And he replied, 'I've known you all my life.' "

This was the point in the story when she let out a small, stylish laugh and lit up one of her cigarettes.

As she exhaled a long, slow plume of smoke, I eyed the crowd, looking for Finn Killian. Peck had mentioned that this friend of Lydia's, an architect who'd lived in the studio above the garage that summer I was twenty-one, might be there that night. We thought we would ask him if he knew how we might open the locked safe in Lydia's closet. I hadn't seen him since that summer right after my mother died, when I'd moved through a fog of grief. I hardly remembered him. He'd seemed a distant presence, appearing on weekends and then trying annoyingly to engage me in conversation when I was busy pretending I was Hunter S. Thompson, teaching myself to write by typing out all of Gatsby Gatsby. (I'd read this somewhere, that Thompson had learned to write by copying Gatsby Gatsby over and over again, and it was the kind of thing I had to try, if only because it seemed an awfully easy way to go about becoming a writer.) over and over again, and it was the kind of thing I had to try, if only because it seemed an awfully easy way to go about becoming a writer.) I didn't like Finn that summer. I remembered that he seemed so much older than Peck and me. He had a beard and talked about wine. Later, I'd come to know him better as a character in Lydia's many letters, always written in her distinctive Catholic schoolgirl cursive on crisp white stationery with a purple border and purple tissue in the envelopes. In them, she described Finn, this architect who was becoming a close friend, as wry. A quality that is uniquely underrated, she wrote.

He was very tall; that much I recalled. He played the guitar, knew more about the Grateful Dead than I did, and always seemed to be going on about a cabernet that was astute or a Sancerre that was crisp. He called me "kid," which I didn't think was necessary. And he had a beard beard. Need I say more? What made men think women liked it when they grew that pubic-type hair on their faces? Did I mention that my ex-husband Jean-Paul grew a beard the last year of our ill-fated marriage? I later figured out this was right around the time he started the affair with the buxom office manager. He said he liked the way it-the facial hair-defined his chin. chin.

I realized as I scanned the crowd looking for a tall guy with a beard that I didn't have a very good memory of what Finn Killian looked like. Still, I said to myself, I would know him when I saw him.

"Pay attention," Peck admonished me before she continued her story, through another exhale. "The room fell away. All those earnest college students, still so full of their potential, potential, and we talked all night. Oh, I don't remember what we said, but our eyes were glued to each other the entire time and when it was light out we walked the streets, all the way to the Hudson River and then north. There was a slight breeze and the smell of salt air." and we talked all night. Oh, I don't remember what we said, but our eyes were glued to each other the entire time and when it was light out we walked the streets, all the way to the Hudson River and then north. There was a slight breeze and the smell of salt air."

Here she paused. "That's him him?" she exclaimed.

I a.s.sumed this was simply an expression of how she felt that evening, walking up the West Side with a good-looking older guy, already successful compared to the college boys she'd been hanging out with. But Peck grabbed my arm with one hand and gestured with the other one, jabbing the cigarette toward the person who'd appeared on a balcony above us.

Later in life, had he lived, Jim Morrison himself wouldn't have looked like Jim Morrison. But Miles n.o.ble was, well, ugly ugly. That sounds meaner than I'd like, but there is no other way to say it. He looked exactly like a frog. Everything about him except, unfortunately, his hair, was thicker than in the photograph Peck had made me look at four times just that morning.

He stood on the balcony surveying the lavish and increasingly loud party sprawling over the back terrace and lawn. He sported a white Nehru-style jacket, like something designed for a maitre d' at a hip Asian restaurant. Was that supposed to be a cool look? Or was he a fas.h.i.+on victim? I was in no position to judge, having been married to a European who wore brown socks with his man-sandals, but even I knew this guy was trying too hard.

The small crowd that had gathered around Peck followed her gesture and we all looked up at the man on the balcony. He didn't appear to notice.

"I don't think this was a very good idea." Peck put the cigarette out on the bottom of her shoe and then tossed it into the flower bed. "We should just go the f.u.c.k home now." But she threw back her shoulders and marched into the house as Miles n.o.ble left the balcony above us. Our group dispersed as performers on stilts pa.s.sed around test tubes of shots. I stood briefly alone at one end of the wide stone terrace with a fountain in the center, a shallow limestone pool with spewing cherubs and enormous dancing fish spraying water through thick unsightly lips.