A Hamptons Christmas (6 page)
Read A Hamptons Christmas Online
Authors: James Brady
Alix wasn't much help.
“Odd, I felt that way myself at your age, though far too shy to bring it up in mixed company. But we girls certainly exchanged confidences. As, for example ⦔
My father gave Her Ladyship a look and called upon Inga to put the child to bed.
When Jackson Pollock crashed and burned, they planted him there â¦
The Admiral took me aside next morning. Something about needing to have the main house roofed in spring and did I want my cottage reshingled at the same time.“Amazing about that child's father,” he said when we were out of earshot and gazing skyward, as if entranced, at roofs. “To make a corner in soybeans on the mercantile exchange and then just drop it all to go off to the Himalayas.”
“What Himalayas?” I demanded.
“Nepal. The monastery at Kathmandu. Studying to be a monk.”
“A monk?” I realized I was sounding sappy, but this was all news to me.
“Yes, a Zen adept hoping for admission to full monkhood and busily turning prayer wheels. She gets the odd postcard from her dad but little more. The merchant bankers at Rousselot Frères pay for her schooling and send an allowance. The father's apparently put the whole bundle in trust and taken vows of poverty.”
“Mmm,” I said. I hate to spoil anyone's good story or to disillusion my old man. But Susannah had confided in me her father was a geologist wintering (it was summer down there) at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica, taking salinity readings from ice cores in a
study of global warming. This was when she wasn't blaming his being a riverboat gambler for her failure to be awarded holy cards by the nuns. Or recalling that, although he used to send her gaudy postcards from distant climes, these days he kept her abreast of his commercial dealings with mailed clips from
Fortune, Business Week,
and
Forbes.
study of global warming. This was when she wasn't blaming his being a riverboat gambler for her failure to be awarded holy cards by the nuns. Or recalling that, although he used to send her gaudy postcards from distant climes, these days he kept her abreast of his commercial dealings with mailed clips from
Fortune, Business Week,
and
Forbes.
“I am proud of him, y'know,” she'd assured me. Too proud, apparently, to keep her stories straight.
It occurred to me I was spending entirely too much of what the trendy (and the child psychologists) call “quality time” thinking about this appealing, but probably spoiled and surely confused, runaway child, when the woman I loved and was plotting to marry was here under my roof for the first time in half a year.
So rather than choose between them I took Alix and Susannah to Main and School Streets in Bridgehampton for thick shakes at the Candy Kitchen. I'd been an only child and knew nothing about how youngsters these days wanted to be entertained, but reckoned you couldn't go too far wrong with ice cream.
“Did you know her mother dances with the Kirov Ballet?” Alix asked when Susannah had excused herself to go to the ladies' room.
“She told me she was at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, advancing Madame Curie's research into molecular structures and the halflife of certain isotopes.”
Alix's brow knit. Though prettily. “She can hardly do both, can she?”
“I don't believe so.”
We ordered the thick shakes. But before I could tug out my wallet, the kid slid her credit card at the waitress.
“My treat,
messieurs/dames,
” she said firmly. “The ice cream in Geneva is grand, too, especially the chocolate. But everyone says American ice cream is the best. Why is that?” Susannah asked.
messieurs/dames,
” she said firmly. “The ice cream in Geneva is grand, too, especially the chocolate. But everyone says American ice cream is the best. Why is that?” Susannah asked.
“Jane,” she corrected me when I used her name.
“Yes, Jane. It's the buttercream content,” I said, not having the slightest idea but suspecting that sounded pretty good.
Bob White, who used to tend bar next door at Bobby Van's,
came in, and we reminisced about the place, which was where Willie Morris drank. Willie's dog, Pete, was popularly accepted as the “mayor of Bridgehampton,” since he spent so much time on Main Street, sleeping in front of Van's while his master drank. Capote drank there as well. And Jim Jones, who wrote
From Here to Eternity
. And George Plimpton. Jones was dead now, as was Willie, and of course Truman, who was forever losing his license in Bridgehampton for driving under the influence. So instead of serving drinks to drunks, Bob White was now selling cars to the sober. These days he is one of the star salesmen at Buzz Chew Chevrolet. In fact, he sold me my last two Chevy Blazers. And good, reliable cars they turned out to be.
came in, and we reminisced about the place, which was where Willie Morris drank. Willie's dog, Pete, was popularly accepted as the “mayor of Bridgehampton,” since he spent so much time on Main Street, sleeping in front of Van's while his master drank. Capote drank there as well. And Jim Jones, who wrote
From Here to Eternity
. And George Plimpton. Jones was dead now, as was Willie, and of course Truman, who was forever losing his license in Bridgehampton for driving under the influence. So instead of serving drinks to drunks, Bob White was now selling cars to the sober. These days he is one of the star salesmen at Buzz Chew Chevrolet. In fact, he sold me my last two Chevy Blazers. And good, reliable cars they turned out to be.
I introduced Bob to Her Ladyship and to Susannah, whom I identified vaguely as “ ⦠and of course Lady Alix's ward, Jane, as you know.”
The kid promptly stuck out a hand and shook Bob's, identifying herself as, “Jane Pendragon,
a sus ordenes, signor
.”
a sus ordenes, signor
.”
Where the hell did she get that, the Pendragon part, I mean?
“Sure, I guess,” Bob said, probably wondering why this kid thought he was Italian, or was it Spanish? He ordered a coffee and slipped into the booth with us, being right at home. After a few remarks about the weather and Christmas shopping, Bob asked, “Did you hear the latest about the Old Churchyard then?”
“Only that another lawsuit was thrown out.”
Like most of us in East Hampton, I knew how Jacob Marley's estate bought up all the gravesites. On a small, parochial scale, there hadn't been anything like it since the Louisiana Purchase. It was the kind of yarn you might long ago have argued about half-drunk at Bobby Van's with Capote and Willie and maybe Irwin Shaw if he were in town and drinking. The kind of story that belonged in
nouvelle vague
movies by Renoir or Truffaut, with film noir subtitles.
nouvelle vague
movies by Renoir or Truffaut, with film noir subtitles.
But I'd been back in town only a few days, Alix hadn't been here since last summer, and young Jane (Susannah) was a convent schoolgirl from Switzerland. So none of us was really up to speed on cemetery happenings. Bob White filled us in.
“They stole Mean Jake's bones again. Got into the mausoleum.”
“So that's twice now!”
“Three times,” Bob corrected me.
“That is rum,” added Alix, not at all sure who Mean Jake was or why anyone kept stealing his bones. “Is this a sort of Dr. Frankenstein affair?” she asked. “Trafficking in body parts?”
“Frankenstein and Dracula,” said her dutiful ward, Jane. “Those are the chaps. I dearly love those stories.”
Since my father had briefed me already with that clip from the
Times,
I picked up the thread, explaining about the Old Churchyard. “There are forty-five cemeteries in East Hampton but only this one's controversial.”
Times,
I picked up the thread, explaining about the Old Churchyard. “There are forty-five cemeteries in East Hampton but only this one's controversial.”
“Why's that?” asked Alix. Jane/Susannah was listening carefully but not saying much. Maybe she was measuring Bob White, who again took up the story.
“Because of a rich guy people called Mean Jake, now dead,” Bob began. “They set up the churchyard early in the 1800s, about two centuries back, mainly for local blue-collar people, Baymen and other fishermen and farmers mostly, and the nonconformists. There never was a church there on the property, but still they called it the Old Churchyard, because that sounded nice, holier even. Then when Jackson Pollock crashed and burned, they planted him there, which was quite okay since he lived right down the road and was considered local for all his fame. Except that after they buried ol' Jackson, the place got trendy. Frank O'Hara and A. J. Liebling were buried there, Elaine de Kooning, Jean Stafford. A big advertising noise on Madison Avenue, guy named Ad Reinhardt, even told a joke about it just before he croaked, âThe place is so famous people are dying to get in there.'”
“Ha!” said Jane brightly, “that's pretty good.” Kids like it when they get the punch line right away.
Bob gave her a grin, pleased that she appreciated his yarn. Then he resumed. “That was thirty or forty years ago. And when Ad died, sure enough, they planted him there.”
I didn't rush Bob. Let the story come out. He'd tell it better than I could.
“So when Mean Jake died they brought a marble mausoleum into the Old Churchyard and moved him in. No problem. He lived half the year in Palm Beach, but he had a big house here and people knew him. Didn't mean they liked him. But he wasn't an outsider. The trouble came when they read Jake's will. And named his only kin, his sister, executor as well as sole heir.
“There were one hundred and ten plots vacant in the churchyard when Jake died, which made it one hundred and nine, and by God! didn't Sis take out her checkbook and write a check to the cemetery trustees for the whole damned one hundred and nine? Said that was what Jake wanted her to do, writing it into his will, so he wouldn't be bothered for all eternity by having anyone 'round him that he couldn't stand. Or put up ornate monuments that blocked his view of the bay.” To his few intimates, and with irritating frequency to Sis, Mean Jake had made his wishes apparent with a brisk, if crotchety, candor. Bob White filled us in on Jake's dislikes, ticking them off in a gruff voice supposed to be the dead man's:
“Jerry Della Femina, that sourpuss Paul Simon, Helen Rattray (she edited the local weekly paper), Ron Perelman of Revlon, Macklowe the real-estate man, and Peter Maas (who once wrote a piece about him in
New York
magazine). Do I need them planted next to me over the centuries?”
New York
magazine). Do I need them planted next to me over the centuries?”
No! And these were all, for better or for worse, Jake's neighbors. And on whom, he was turning a dead back.
According to Bob White, Mean Jake was concerned that East Hampton's Old Churchyard was becoming a tourist attraction. “Like that place in Paris.”
“You mean the Cimetière Père Lachaise?” I said.
“Oh, I adore Père Lachaise!” Alix enthused. “Where Colette and Proust sleep alongside Baron Haussmann, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Lalique, and Proust's lover, Reynaldo. Did you know, Jane, Sarah Bernhardt had only one leg?”
“Like our Sister Euphemia?”
“I dare say,” Alix agreed, not knowing yet about the sister and the tramcar, but forging ahead with more on Bernhardt.
“Only one leg, but did it give âthe divine Sarah' pause? Not a bit of it. Had scads of lovers, well into her sixties.”
I got back into it then, knowing how explicit Her Ladyship could be. “But today Père Lachaise is where they bury rock stars and actors, with groupies trampling the other plots, weeping and lighting candles, all the while littering the grounds with scrolls of bad poetry.”
Bob White nodded knowingly. “Yeah, that's the kind of stuff drove Jake nuts.”
As we talked, you could almost hear Alix's mind working.
“Mmm,” she said now, “just think. Now that he's a neighbor of yours and the Admiral's, Beecher, you might have Puff Daddy in there one day as well.”
“Wow!” said Jane. “Does he live here too, Puff Daddy?”
“Cut a certain figure last summer when I was visiting,” Alix responded. “He and that lovely Miss Lopez he squires about.”
“Beecher?”
“Yes, Jane.”
“If Puff Daddy ever dies and they bury him out here, will you let me know? I'd love to pay my respects on school break.”
This was some kid, or maybe it was typical at her age, thrilled by both a Martha Stewart Christmas and a rapper's grave.
“Police called in to find Jake?” I asked Bob.
“You know Bonackers, they're being pretty hush-hush about it. And Sis doesn't want any more bad publicity. The other two times they stole Jake's bones, they brought 'em back. Besides, a couple of the Bonac Boys are on the force.”
The Bonac Boys were locals, contemporary equivalent of the Sons of Liberty up in New England just before the American Revolution, patriotic fellows who tarred and feathered Tories or anyone else who objected to their bullying tactics. A Bayman named Peanuts Murphy was their leader.
Mean Jake's will cut his sister some slack. She could parcel out the plots at her discretion, admitting people she thought brother Jake would have tolerated. “I'd go through eternity anytime with Tony Duke,” her brother had allowed. Okay, too, was Gordon
Vorpahl, the genius mechanic who used to tune Jake's cars and who died in the pits at an auto race.
Vorpahl, the genius mechanic who used to tune Jake's cars and who died in the pits at an auto race.
Maybe the Admiral would qualify. I resolved to ask Sis one day. If she was in a good mood, that is. Jake wasn't the only “mean” one in the family.
When I went to get the car, I just barely heard Susannah's (Jane's!) question:
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