A Hamptons Christmas (15 page)

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Authors: James Brady

BOOK: A Hamptons Christmas
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“The count kept ordering wine. My mom had to speak sternly.”
The sleek stretch limo in gleaming white rolled silently down Further Lane to enter our driveway just before nine next morning, Boxing Day, December 26.
“Beecher, Beecher! Alix! Admiral, come see! Inga, I told you they wouldn't forget me over Christmas! I told you! I guaranteed it, didn't I?”
“By God!” the Admiral said, appalled but yet impressed by the sheer length of the limo. “A day late but hardly a dollar short, eh?”
Alix and Inga got Emma dressed in white kneesocks and Mary Janes and the navy blue velvet dress Her Ladyship had gotten her at Punch on Newtown Lane. By 9:30 she was ready, the liveried chauffeur bowing and scraping in the best tradition, referring to a written schedule of some sort, and, supposedly, assuring us:
“The young lady's to be back here by four, sir.”
“Fine.”
There was of course no one else in the car. Had we really expected there might be?
My father, the professional, consulted with Emma, then with the chauffeur, on Dick Driver's unlisted phone number and several other identification cross-references. Emma and he agreed that all
checked out. So off she went. For a belated Christmas with her parents. As we all sent up a small but genuine huzzah!
Happy for her.
I guess we all, maybe even Emma, understood the significance of the hired limo. If either Dick or Nicole showed up with his or her own wheels, it would be a point scored against the other. That's how it was in these long-running legal and emotional scrimmages. A rented car, on the other hand, was neutral turf. The demilitarized zone. That night, over dinner, and still red-cheeked and breathless from her adventures, Emma gave us her account of a delicious day spent with her mother and father.
“It was a really neat limo, first of all,
première classe sans doute
, Admiral. With a TV in back and bottles of Evian and an ice bucket and fresh flowers in a vase. Cashew nuts, too. I love cashew nuts; Mother Superior lets us have them on feast days. And an intercom so the driver and I could talk. And room to lie down even. Stretched out, Alix. You would have loved it, even more room than your Hummer. And a sun roof. I stood on one of the seats and rode along for a while with my head out. Like the Queen in London, reviewing the troops. But it was too cold to stay out there long.”
“The Trooping of the Colour,” Her Ladyship said, “one of those hoary old traditions people make sport of, but which I suspect they'd miss terribly if they were done away with. You know, rather like foxhunting and Guy Fawkes Day.”
Emma resumed her report: “My father had me first. And (this triumphantly) he was all alone! No cover girls. Not even one! He even left Miss Lithuania home. I mean, I've nothing against cover girls but, you know, we had a chance to talk. He might run for President, he said. Millions of voters want him to. And we drove someplace for lunch. The best tunafish sandwiches ever—lots of mayonnaise, and nice soft white bread. Not like European bread at all. He said that new photo he'd sent me was a portrait by Bachrach, is that the name? They only do pictures of famous people.”
“Yes, very fine photographers,” the Admiral said.
“And we drove around for a while past lots of big houses and estates and stuff and my father said if I really,
really
liked the Hamptons, he might buy a place out here one of these days. A big place, not like the house we rented here one summer. He's got a new Ferrari, too. But he thought the limo was better for driving around with me, so I didn't actually get to ride in the Ferrari. It's bright red.
“He used the cell phone a lot. Even the day after Christmas, big business is big business. That's what he said. ‘If they publish the
Wall Street Journal
that day, it's a workday.' He let me call a girl I know from the convent. She lives in San Francisco. I had her number, but the maid said she wasn't there. And we toured a very posh country club he said he was thinking of joining.
“But it was mostly closed. For winter, I guess. The grass was all brown. I did tell you about lunch, didn't I? Tunafish with lots of mayo?”
Once she'd been kissed good-bye by her father (“He had to get back to Manhattan—a chopper was coming for him”), the limo whisked Emma off to Nicole and the Impaler.
“I was hoping maybe he stayed behind in Transylvania, but I guess they wanted to be together for Christmas.”
“You don't like him?” Alix asked.
“He's okay. Sort of dopey. But real handsome. I think he's younger than Mommie. But don't tell anyone I said that, okay? I call him Count all the time and he likes that. He likes to be called Count and not Vlad.”
“Or the Impaler?” I asked, not able to resist.
Emma looked solemn and shook her head. “
Pas du tout
, Beecher. I'd never do that. Wouldn't be polite making fun. Transylvanian people are sensitive, you know. Especially about Dracula and all those scary movies. Wolfbane and not looking into mirrors, and people with long canine teeth, and sprigs of garlic and stuff.”
Her mother also took her to lunch. Not tunafish this time. “Mostly like finger food. Salads. Greens. Shrimp and chilled lobster. I don't know the name of the place, but it was pretty nice. I had a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. With lots of chips.
And low-fat milk, though I don't know why. I'm skinny enough as it is. The count kept ordering wine. My mom had to speak sternly.”
“She do that a lot?” the Admiral asked.
“Well, she makes her point of view known. I think that was one of the problems with her and Daddy when I was little.”
 
 
They drove around, too, as Dick Driver had done. Visited Shelter Island on the car ferry. Emma was a bit vague as to the geography. “But we saw some deer grazing on trees.”
“Browsing,” my father put in. “Deer graze on grass but browse on trees and bushes. Especially the lower limbs.”
“
Merci bien, mynheer
. I'll straighten out the girls on that back at the convent. A middle former always enjoys scoring a point of grammar or vocabulary with the upper form.”
Then, in her enthusiasm, Emma told us about visiting the aquarium. Sharks, octopi, sardines, a porpoise, jellyfish, and some frisky seals.
“Well,” Alix said when Emma finished and went upstairs to change out of her party clothes, “at least in the end her parents did the correct thing. She really did seem to have had a grand day, didn't she?”
“Tunafish sandwiches. A Ferrari she saw but didn't get to ride in? A country club that was closed? A ride on the Shelter Island ferry? Short rations, those, don't you think?” The Admiral wasn't cutting Mr. and Mrs. Driver much Christmas slack. Not when measured against a set of electric trains.
“What do you think, Beecher?” my father asked.
“Oh, sure. The kid seemed happy, didn't she?”
“Well, yes. I grant you that.”
“Yeah,” I said. Letting it go at that.
Alix sensed I was going to say more. “And … ?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “only there's no aquarium in the Hamptons.”
“Not a child's fault, of course. Your choice of parents.”
So we'd caught the kid in a lie. So what? Alix figured it all out pretty well. At least I thought so. Alix knew about lies (or, as she put it, “the versions, so to speak, of the same truth”), part of her stock in trade, always had been:
“Emma doesn't want to be a victim. To be pitied. She'd guaranteed her parents wouldn't let Christmas pass without seeing their daughter. Promised us they'd be here. So in the end she had to arrange her own outing, her own idyllic day with the loving parents, and ordered up a stretch limo with her credit cards. Invented the whole day …”
“But why the deuce would a child — ?” the Admiral protested.
“Don't you see, sir,” Alix said quietly, “she had to protect her own parents' image. Couldn't permit the world to see them as the self-absorbed and thoughtless people they apparently are. She was protecting Nicole and Dick.
“And, at the same time, she didn't want you and me and Beecher to pity
her
and be sad. She didn't want to spoil
our
Christmas with
her
disappointments.”
“But as adults we can't encourage this sort of, well, mythmaking, can we?” the Admiral objected.
“We can if the myth is crafted not of malice but out of love,” Alix said quite firmly.
“Should I speak to her?” my father asked.
Alix's response rather keenly indicated what she thought of that particular notion.
“Only if to agree the local aquarium does indeed sound a super place.”
 
 
Then we had a fright, uncomfortably close to a kidnap. Thanks to Jesse Maine, it was short-circuited. And though it turned out to be more opera buffa than genuine, it put all of us, especially the Admiral, on the alert.
“That Odets,” Jesse reported. “He's telling me her daddy wanted young Emma to visit him in Manhattan for a few hours today. Except that it's got to be hush-hush. Don't want the wife to know about it. Or you and your daddy, Beecher.”
“But that's absurd,” I protested. “Driver's her father. If he wants to see his daughter over Christmas, that's grand. It's what we've been hoping for. Let him send a car or fly out here and pick her up. So long as Emma doesn't object, why would we?”
“Beats me. But Odets says he'd like to sort of spirit her away, get her to New York and back, all in the same day with no one the wiser. I told him I was sure we could handle that for him.”
“Jesse, you can't do that.”
“I know I can't. And I ain't. Have a little faith, Beecher. I'm playing this boy like a big bass on light tackle.”
The reason Driver wanted his daughter in Manhattan turned out to be a photo op. The
Regis and Kathie Lee Show
(she was still there) was doing a holiday special during the Christmas school break at the Rockefeller Center ice rink and at FAO Schwarz. They wanted some celebrity parents and their kids and had asked Driver (Madonna's and Trump's and the Giulianis' kids were also on the producer's wish list).
Jesse went on, “Lefty says the kids'll get free teddy bears and such. I told him, ‘Teddy bears? The kid smokes.' Says Lefty, ‘Don't
matter. Driver says a Christmas video of him with the daughter is just what them judges need to see over there in that World Court in Belgium.'”
“Holland,” I said.
“Teddy bears,” said Alix. “Regardless of motive, it's a charming idea. Very old-world. Y'know, Beecher, I still have a favorite teddy bear myself.”
“I've met him. Name of Nubar,” I said.
“Precisely. Named for that delightful chap Nubar Gulbenkian who used to sue Fleet Street regularly for one shilling in damages. Enjoyed court proceedings. Had Fortnum & Mason send in lunch in hampers during the trial. Chilled champagne, potted shrimp and pheasant.”
“A photo op indeed!” my father thundered. “I'll be damned if we'll play cat's-paw in a custody fight.”
“Shouldn't we ask Emma? Maybe she'd enjoy a day in town with her father.”
“Then let him contact us directly,” the Admiral riposted, “and not send around snoopers!”
I don't know why Jesse was grinning so broadly. “Well, you can stop arguing. About five A.M. this morning me and Odets met down by the Reutersham parking lot and I told him the deal's off. Security's so tight along Further Lane, with all them rich Protestants, no one's borrowing Miss Emma for the day. Not even me with all my Native American wiles. But as disappointed as his boss is going to be, Admiral, might not be a bad idea to keep a close lookout in case they try again.”
My father thanked Jesse and told him we'd “secure our flanks with all hands on deck.”
Jesse admitted he had toyed with the idea of sending a ringer into Manhattan in Odets' limo just to embarrass Lefty and annoy Mr. Driver.
“Where do you find a ringer for a ten-year old girl?” I asked.
“I was going to tog out Phil Swift Rabbit in a stocking cap and woman's coat and send him. He ain't got nothing better to do and enjoys a nice ride.”
“Phil Swift Rabbit's forty and he's got one eye,” I protested.
“I know. But he's small and skinny and there ain't much light at five A.M.”
“Jesus, Jesse” was all my father could say, and we all agreed not to tell Emma. Though Alix argued it was the kind of devious plot the kid would love.
 
 
Jacob Marley's home, the big house vaguely recalled by young Emma Driver, had been sold when they settled the estate. The unmarried Sis had never lived there in any case, only filling in on occasion to play hostess for her brother. She had her own place, a house on the east bank of Three Mile Harbor, overlooking a small marina she owned and, as something of a hobby, managed.
“I like boats, the smell of salt,” she told the curious, “I like boat people. And from this house I look out on a pleasant body of salt water, into which the sun sinks each evening at dusk. If your tastes are anything like mine, what better place to live? Anywhere?” To intimates she admitted there was another, tongue-incheek motive:
“And I may be the only ‘marina operator' listed by the Vassar Alumnae bulletin.”
The Admiral drove us over in his car. There was plenty of parking. Few people went boating at Three Mile Harbor in the cold December. A weathered old man scratching himself manned the naval stores and bait shop at the head of the marina property. Glancing out through a streaked and frosted window at us, and calculating shrewdly that we weren't going to buy bait or shop for tarred line and turnbuckles, he ignored us. Alix and I returned to the car while my father and Emma walked up the path to Sis's house.
“This isn't it,” Emma said flatly, “this isn't the house I remember.”
“No,” said my father gently, “you're right, that was another house, Jake's place. That's been sold.”
The Admiral called out, alerting Sis to their arrival, not wanting to startle her. After a moment or two, a tall, physically impressive woman came out onto the broad veranda hung with its faux gaslamps, unlit now of course in the gray but bright winter morning. My father hadn't seen Sis for a time, but she was a familiar figure in her gum boots, wide-wale corduroy pants, and an oversized man's denim shirt, with red workmen's suspenders, a cigarette in her crimsoned mouth, and a man's felt hat cocked jauntily over one eye, topping off the ensemble. There was a lean, rangy elegance about her despite the odd getup. Even the snapbrim gray fedora looked right. The look was Roz Russell out of Kate Hepburn, with overtones in the husky voice of Jean Arthur, of the Mr. Deeds days, the era of Jefferson Smith.
As my father made the introductions, pleased to see Emma curtsey nicely and extend a firm hand to her hostess, he stared into Sis's face, looking for any indication her hostility to Driver was carrying over to his daughter.
“If there had been,” he told me when he got back, “I wouldn't have left Emma there alone with Sis. I would have found some excuse to stay, discuss the weather, hint I could use a cup of coffee against the chill. But there wasn't. So I issued ‘good day to all here' and left.”
“And Emma didn't seem intimidated?”
The admiral gave me a look.
“Not our Emma. She said, ‘
va bene,'
and went off with Sis, like a couple of sorority sisters.”
I was less confident about Sis, the keeper of her brother's flame. As heiress and executrix, she knew what her brother had done to secure the happiness and well-being of the child of his worst enemy. You could have written novels about it; stage plays; Proust crossed with Faulkner by way of Ibsen. Old Marley, betrayed by his protégé Driver, still the benefactor of the rogue's only child. Sis could have been forgiven a natural resentment.
Here's what Emma herself, and later Sis, told us of their meeting.
Sis, who never had a child, never even came close, wasn't famous for tact:
“Not a child's fault, of course, your choice of parents.”
“Mo, ma'am,” the girl said, having been thoroughly coached by the Admiral to try being agreeable.
“Come sit by me, dear.” They were in a wonderfully cluttered living room with overstuffed furniture, ship models, highly polished brass sextants, compasses, and ships' bells, with oil paintings of ancient sea battles, British and French men o' war mostly, firing broadsides. It was a glorious room such as children love, and Emma stared at the paintings and ached to get up and touch the ship models. Beyond vast picture windows, boats' masts and rigging stood out against an expanse of water.
“
Merci bien
, dear lady.”
“Chocolates?”
“
Danke.
”
“What the devil language do you speak?”
“Several tongues. Our school in Switzerland is known, humorously, as the Tower of Babel.”
When the kid was seated and munching, Sis started up, her language to the point, clipped and salty, but not vulgar:

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