Lapham Rising (10 page)

No homeless people to be seen today, strangely enough. They exist in Hampton Bays, but are almost nonexistent in the posher villages. Several summers ago a homeless man was spotted wandering on the grounds of the Meadow Club in
Southampton. The members did not know what to do with him, so they threw him a party.

“Which Hampton is your favorite?” asks Hector, not faintly interested in my response. He does this sort of thing often—plays the innocent acolyte in pursuit of instruction when he seeks to distract me from a mission.

“None of them,” I tell him. “That’s why we live in Quogue.”

“Isn’t Quogue a Hampton?”

“By general location, yes. But Quogue is too dull to qualify as a real Hampton.”

In a way, it is snobbish and preposterous to favor one village over another; all have the same money, put to the same uses, though there are small distinguishing characteristics. Remsenberg has the enchantment of a hotel corridor; Westhampton, of a demimondaine who has come into money; and East Hampton, of one’s exotic first lover: wears short skirts, speaks French, and dumb as a post.

Quogue remains the best of the lot for me, because it still honors privacy. To the citizens of Quogue, “How are you?” is intrusive. They greet one another with “Morning” because they do not wish to commit themselves to the prefatory “Good.” Of course, Lapham’s rollicking presence will change all that.

“You’re telling me, it’s dull,” he says. “That’s why we’re there, isn’t it? Because nothing ever happens.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Why do you suppose Mr. Lapham is settling in Quogue?” He knows I resent the “Mr.” “And please don’t tell me he’s there to destroy the universe.”

“I don’t know. Quogue is WASPier, I suppose.”

“What does that mean, ‘waspy’?”

“That’s what we are: WASPs.”

“I’m a wasp?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m a wasp like Mr. Lapham?” He goes quiet. His silences are more unnerving than his talk. “What goes on in East Hampton?” he asks.

“Noise, gossip, and construction.”

“What goes on in Bridgehampton?”

“Noise, gossip, and construction.”

“And Westhampton?”

“Westhampton has noise and construction.”

“Why no gossip?”

“Periodontists don’t gossip. Say, isn’t it time for one of your thirty daily naps?”

“Actually, I’m feeling quite awake today,” he says, shaking himself off as if he were wet. “Quite peppy! Full of life! It must be something I ate.” I am very glad he cannot smirk. “Why isn’t there a Northampton?” he asks.

“Because it’s against the law to locate a Hampton north of
the highway.” I make a show of turning away from him. We tick tick tick past shrink-wrapped powerboats stacked like dead great whites at the edge of the road. They create their own fluorescence. I feel a pang of discouragement.

The final leg of the twenty-minute trip covers a stretch of road that runs over the Shinnecock Canal, created when the hurricane of 1938 cut a chunk out of the base of the southern jaw, and then another stretch where the Old Montauk Highway becomes Hill Street, a sudden boulevard with trees that bloom like broccoli and many substantial homes on both sides built in the idiom of the region. Hill Street constitutes the gateway to Southampton as well as the northerly border of what is probably the ritziest estate section on Long Island and second only to Newport as the birthplace of American hoity-toity. Here one may drive through alleys of linden trees, Bradford pears, and maples, all the same sculpted height, then turn left or right and crawl another quarter of a mile down white-pebble driveways to arrive at imitation Monticellos that were the precursors of Lapham’s current imitation. Only eyes clouded by sentiment see these pillared show-offs as being less outlandish than Lapham’s. Architecturally more pleasing, they nonetheless arise from the same wolfish appetite.

In this estate section, as in similar select spas throughout the country, originated the summer “cottages”—a name that
once accurately described modest bungalows attached to grand resort hotels in the 1870s and 1880s. These bona fide cottages became so popular that when the exceedingly rich decided to build their own vast homes in the quasi-pastoral idylls, they retained the generic designation. The new cottages were given names that contradicted their cottageness—
Bellefontaine, Sans Souci
, and
Beaulieu
—which eventually evolved into awkward little joke names such as
Casa Ra Sera
and
Me and My Chateau
, and further down the ladder, to
Villa Ever Payphor Dis
. (In Gresham’s Law of House Names, stupidest drives out stupider.) I heard that Lapham, as a gesture of familial gratitude, intended to name his cottage either
Holy Moses
or
Tongs a Lot
.

“Tell me about the Hamptons again. Tell me about Southampton. We haven’t spoken of Southampton.”

“Perfumed candles and fudge,” I tell him.

“That’s all you have to say about Southampton?”

I nod.

Southampton has the seductive apathy of a debutante, but none of the appealing cruelty. I have always pictured the world ending there: the doors of the shops squawk on their hinges. The eaves of the roofs sag with debris. The druggist’s shelves are covered with thick dust caught in a prismatic light, and the white and pink summer dresses in the dress shops sway on their racks. Nothing remains of the bank but
its vault, the door open, the cash in a flutter. Nothing remains of the schoolyard but the jungle gym and the chain-link fence that has been yanked from its stanchions. The distant ocean hisses like steam in a pipe, and a fragment of a red merino sweater clings to a bush.

“I like Southampton,” he says.

“Good. We’re almost there.” Sensing that I am about to solve the horsehair problem, he hopes we’ll miss our stop.

“What do Hamptonites do in the daytime?” he asks.

“They speak of their careers.”

“Why do they do that?”

“It makes them happy. Sometimes they advance their careers by speaking to other Hamptonites. That’s why they live here.”

“That’s nice.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“But isn’t a career important?”

“Not when it interferes with a life.”

“What else do Hamptonites do in the daytime?” He appears puppylike when it suits him.

“They make themselves beautiful.”

“And what else?”

“They prepare to go to parties, or to throw parties.”

“And what else?”

“They dream up great works.”

“What comes of them?”

“Nothing.”

“And what else?”

“They hope that other Hamptonites are thinking of them. And that everyone is thinking well of them.”

“And are they?”

“No and no.”

I don’t want to go into it with him, but as the Bittermans’ dinner party demonstrated, the thinking can get unusual in places like this. In any discriminating society, my behavior on that evening ought to have led to my permanent expunction from any and all future invitation lists. Instead, it ensured my popularity, and since that time I doubt there has been a single Hamptons event—including the highly selective DeMott Club’s “Tribute to the Fox-trot” and Mrs. Epstein’s “Night of New York Geniuses”—to which I have not been asked. (The Bittermans themselves have come close to begging.) Had my case of typhlitis improved, of course, I would gladly have attended them all.

“Tell me about other places.”

“That’s enough.” I let the driver know that we’re about to get off.

“Tell me about Massapequa.” He knows the name of the midalligator town only because he was born there and that
was where I acquired him. I have always wondered if his breeder knew more than he let on; he charged me half price.

“Tell me about Shelter Island.”

“Look.” My exasperation clearly gratifies him. “They’re all the same. The Hamptons are all the same. And that includes the towns that you have not yet mentioned but undoubtedly intend to, Water Mill, Sagaponack, Wainscott, North Haven, North Sea Harbor, Noyack, and Amagansett.

“Basically, they are all the same. The same shops, the same roads, the same trees, the same geraniums in the same pots, the same Sub-Zeros and Wolfs, the same inlaid tile, the same recessed lighting, the same photographs of families at play in the same pickled wood frames, the same people wearing the same outfits, the same prattle, the same shellacked faces, the same howler monkeys brachiating from event to event, the same opinions on the same issues, the same hummus with the same chips, the same unconscious despair crouching behind the privet hedges.”

“Oh, no!” he says. “Not another lecture. Can’t you save it for the Chautauquans?”

“You brought up the subject, so you get the subject.”

“I was only trying to pass the time on a summer’s day,” he lies.

“That’s right. The Hamptons are all the same, and all of
America is the same, and all the world wants to be like all of America so that it too can be the same.” He covers his ears with his front paws. But I persist: “The same definition of happiness, the same personal lusts, the same idea of what passes for achievement, the same disregard for value and virtue and honor, the same hollowness at the core.

“And do you know who embodies, who symbolizes, who generates and perpetuates this universal vacuity?”

“I do, but you’re going to tell me anyway, aren’t you?”

“Correct. It’s Lapham!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Such a lovely day!” He sticks his little head out the bus window and contemplates the heavens. The tuberous clouds have closed ranks, and the sky is shut as tight as the hatch on an army tank.

I
t is uniquely irritating for me to walk with Hector in public places because inevitably there will be people who recognize him and call out his name in affectionate and admiring tones. This is due to the lamentable fact that shortly after I acquired him, I made the error of writing an essay about him for
The New Yorker
, which drew him considerable and undeserved attention. Because the essay appeared in
The New Yorker
, people who wished to seem sophisticated felt they had been extended an intellectual invitation to participate in it. And because I portrayed Hector as being exceptionally intelligent and adorable (this was before his religious conversion) and cast myself as his amused factotum, total strangers have ever since felt free to address him on sight and to ignore me. Only the latter treatment has been welcome.

So it is, as we proceed down Main Street, that several people shout out “Hector!” (His name seems to require a shout.)
And “Hector, old buddy!” And “Hector, my man!” To all this he responds with the fluffy narcissism of an entrant in a dog show, which consigns me to the vassalage of one of those mute and buoyant trainers in sneakers trotting by his side.

He takes a leak on everything vertical that is not human, including but not limited to trees, telephone poles, wooden posts, hydrants, and bus stops. “I’m going to own this town,” he says.

“Just make sure all your expulsions come from that orifice.” I forgot to bring baggies. “I’m going in here.”

He sniffs up. “Reigning Cats & Dogs? Great!” He likes pet stores because he views them as opportunities to proselytize the other animals.

“
I’m
going. You’re staying out here in the street.”

“But why?” he asks, cocking his head in the How-Cute-Am-I? tilt.

“Hector! You the man!” An aging male zeppelin in a green tank top floats by, too cool for words.

“See?” says Hector. “I’m the man.”

“You are nothing like a man, Mr. Tail. That’s why you are not coming into the pet store. See that sign?” He can see it, but he can’t read it. “It says: ‘No food or drinks, no bare feet, no evangelicals.’” He sits down on the sidewalk outside Reigning Cats and Dogs, turns his head away from me, and welcomes additional shouts of fealty from passersby.

“Do you carry horsehair, or something close to it?” I ask the Orville Redenbacher behind the counter.

“‘Close to it,’ you mean like the horse?” A kindred spirit. “What are you looking to do?”

In broad terms, I tell him about the torsion spring.

“We have plenty of dog and cat hair. But that’s not what you need.” He frowns like a drowned cigar. “Know where you can find horsehair?” I do not. “In the walls!” He swings an arm to indicate the walls of his shop.

“What do you mean?” It is chastening for me to meet a
genuinely
crazy person. I ask him to clarify his statement.

“In the nineteenth century,” he explains, “they used real plaster on walls and ceilings.”

“And?”

“And to keep the plaster intact and make sure it would adhere to the frame, they stuck in horsehair as it hardened.”

“You’re kidding. So any house more than a hundred years old will still have horsehair in its walls right now?” I ask him.

“That’s right. Take a sledgehammer to any nineteenth-century house—any
original
nineteenth-century house, not one that’s been renovated—and you’ll find all the horsehair you could ever need.”

So taken am I with this information that upon returning to the sidewalk, I make the mistake of relating it to Hector. He overreacts. “Terrific!” he says. “By all means, let’s knock
down the walls of the house so you’ll have everything you need to commit a crime.” I try to pull him along by his leash, but he digs in with his hind feet. “The wages of sin,” he says. “‘Maketh a plan for revenge and bringeth thine own house down upon thine head.’”

“Or upon thine,” I cheerfully point out.

We walk past desultory tourists deep in private prayer that they will catch a glimpse of Renée Zellweger. A Piper Cub drones overhead, trailing a long red-and-black pennant advertising
Live for Today
, which I interpret as a personal communication until I see that it’s an ad for the morning television show. Gulls turned buzzards screak on the rims of the village trash cans, flap their aggressive wings, and do not scare. People pause before the windows of a shop displaying paintings of lighthouses and in front of the cheese shop. A man has sundered himself from his strolling party to gaze at a display of Stilton. Shuffle and stop, stop and shuffle. It all feels like a muffled dance of the dead, intensified, not relieved by, an occasional outcry of greeting. I hear lifers calling to one another from the caged windows of their cell doors. But that’s just me.

Play It Again, the town toy store, is down the street from Reigning Cats & Dogs. Beyond it lie Watch It, the jewelry shop; Love All, the tennis shop; Picture This, the framing shop; Flower Power; and Hair Today. All the stores have stage
names except Bookhampton, whose name I’ve always admired because it seems to suggest a Hampton composed entirely of books. Nuts ’n’ Bolts, the hardware store, Song ’n’ Dance, the music store. Not long ago, I proposed to a cop on the beat that the police and fire departments be yoked together under the name Shoots ’n’ Ladders, but he seemed uninterested.

Writer’s Crock, briefly a chichi restaurant, now has whitewash slathered on its windows and a boarded-up door. Last spring, in an effort to create what she called a Gustatory Athenaeum for the Written Word, a garrulous groupie aptly named Lipman inaugurated it as an establishment whose only patrons were to be writers, along with a smattering of media types who would make note of the writers present. As a special touch, she drew the menu from recipes detailed in well-known books, among them Faulkner’s braised cuttlefish, Dreiser’s kumquat stew, and a dish of boiled shoes described in
The Gulag Archipelago
. The restaurant closed after six weeks, not because the writers had grown tired of their own company or the media people of reporting on them, but because a dozen customers were hospitalized with food poisoning.

The toy store allows dogs, so I let Hector tag along. But the answer comes up negative here as well.

“No. No horsehair. We do have a very nice hobbyhorse, but it’s hairless.” The woman clerk, who frightens me on sight,
bears a terrible resemblance to a photographer who once approached me at a reading. She had Medusa’s exploding hair and an expression blending anger with desire. She wanted to take my picture for future book jackets and kept flying at me as though I were a liquidation sale. If I’d had four other guys with me at the time, I would have slugged her.

When I inform the clerk that the hobbyhorse will not do, she takes the news as a personal rebuke and sulks into a copy of
Glamour
.

But on the counter I do see something of interest: a doll about a foot tall, with big brown eyes, overdressed in a yellow satin gown, a yellow beaded necklace, and a conical hat from the middle of which protrudes a pink plastic ruby.

“It comes with a wand,” says the clerk, revived by my attention to the doll. “Go ahead. Touch the wand to the ruby.” Music plays, and the doll starts to speak. “Isn’t she adorable?” the woman says. “She’s called Fairy Tale Dora. Dora—you know, Dora the Explorer?” I tell her I do not. “Oh! Dora is very popular. Children love her videos. She speaks English and Spanish.”

“Does she do construction work?” And before she can give me a straight answer, I see Dora’s hair growing out of her cone crown. The hair gleams in a braid like Kathy Polite’s. In fact, Dora looks a good deal like Kathy but seems kinder and better educated. There must be ten inches of hair sprouting
from her head. “It feels quite real,” I comment to the clerk, whose eyes begin to narrow. I rub the hair between my index finger and my thumb to test its strength. I twist it into a torsion spring. I rub it some more. I sing, “Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll,” holding my bandaged ear like a band singer of the 1920s. The smile has vanished from the clerk’s countenance.

“You seem to like the doll,” she says, her lips tightening. “This would be something for your granddaughter?”

“No.”

“A niece? The child of a friend?”

“No, I’d like it for myself,” I tell her. “I’ll take four.” That should do it. I keep stroking the hair. The woman backs away. “How much?” I ask.

She glances around the store as if searching for backup. “You know,” she says finally, “I just remembered: we’re all out of Fairy Tale Doras.” I hold up the doll in both hands as evidence of her error. “And we are forbidden to sell the floor sample.” More looking around the room. “I, uh, I could order four dolls for you.”

“But I need them today,” I insist, hoping that my enthusiasm may persuade her to bend store policy. It seems to have the opposite effect. Hector tugs on his leash and whispers, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Well,” says the clerk, her eyes now flicking from side to
side like pinballs. She is appearing more Medusa-like by the second; the locks of her hair are aflame. “Perhaps I could check the inventory downstairs.”

“Never mind,” I tell her. With petulant resignation, I reposition Fairy Tale Dora on the shelf. It is 3:51. I’m getting nowhere.

“You really are crazy,” says Hector when we’re out on the street again. “You’ll get us tossed in jail.” He may be right. When we’ve gone twenty yards or so, I turn back toward the toy store, at whose front door I see Medusa speaking with a policewoman pointing in my direction. I take the high road and move on, as if I could not guess what they’re discussing.

“Let’s look in One More Time,” says Hector. He is eager to get off the street. One More Time is an elegant secondhand shop that sells stuff once owned by the old-rich families of the area. Over the years it has become an accidental and transitional repository of Southampton folklore. When one of the great cottages is demolished to make room for a newer and larger monstrosity such as Lapham’s, the contents are often sold to One More Time, which in turn sells them to newcomers. Thus does the High Life stay aloft in remnants, as photographs of the Whiffenpoofs of 1928 or of the St. Paul’s lacrosse team (all wearing beanies), or cast-iron doorstops in the shape of Scotties or rabbits, or stacks of pinkish cake
plates, or tiny tarnished silver spoons are passed down to those who wish to acquire the old world here, much as they do by way of the calculated fantasies of Ralph Lauren.

Hector, I am certain, regards whatever time we might spend in this shop as another delaying tactic. But I know that unusual things may be found here, so I ask the horsehair question as we enter.

“You will not believe this,” says the proprietor, a sharp and witty woman who always appears to be looking me over as a potential future piece of merchandise. “We were given a hatbox full of horsehair only last week.”

“A hatbox full of horsehair!” I repeat. We seem equally excited, though I soon discover it is not for the same reason.

“A hatbox full of horsehair,” she says again. “Mrs. Livingston, of Gin Lane? Do you know her?” It comes to her that she is talking to me. “Oh. I guess not. Anyway, Mrs. Livingston discovered the hatbox in her attic. It belonged to her husband’s grandmother, also Mrs. Livingston.” I attempt to wave away the mesmerizing biography of the Livingstons. “Well, sir. She discovered a hatbox full of horsehair.”

“Please do not say it again,” says Hector.

“Yes! It seems that the older Mrs. Livingston wanted to preserve the hair of her favorite jumper, a gelding named Mr. Huey, after Mr. Huey went lame and had to be shot.”

“A hatbox full of horsehair!” I repeat deliberately. “Well, my dear. You have a sale.” For a moment I allow myself to think my tide may be turning, and I offer a silent thanks to the gelded Mr. Huey and the sentimental Mrs. Livingston.

“But that is the part you won’t believe,” says the woman, and in so doing indicates that my brief taper of happiness is about to be snuffed out. “I sold the hatbox this very morning!”

“No!” I cry.

“Yes!” she cries back. She assumes I am reacting to the coincidence rather than to a catastrophe. “Do you know a couple named Lapham?” she asks. My cheekbones freeze over, my left eyelid twitches, and all my cells go dry. “Well, it seems that Mrs. Lapham makes her own throw pillows, and when I told her about the horsehair, she grabbed it up. It makes a perfect stuffing.”

“Doesn’t it,” says Hector.

“It’s very sweet, really. She’s is making a pillow as a surprise for Mr. Lapham and is planning to present him with it on the occasion of the completion of their new house. I hear it’s magnificent. It’s quite near your island, actually.”

“Is that so?” Hector snickers.

“And the whole thing was pure luck: she’d come in for a pair of Victorian asparagus tongs, but then she saw the horsehair. Of course, it was ideal. Such a nice story,” she goes
on. “The Laphams had a dog who died last year. Why, it was just like your little Hector! A Westie!” Up shoot those ears. “So Mrs. Lapham, knowing how Mr. Lapham adored their dog, is embroidering a picture of it on the cover of the pillow. You never saw anyone happier than she was when she took hold of that hatbox full of horsehair. Providence, she said. She called it Providence.”

“Amen, sister,” says Hector. I drag him out of the store.

“We’re going home,” I tell him.

He sees a gregarious Jack Russell down the street and begins barking furiously at him.

“May I ask why you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Bark at the sight of another dog.”

“Because other dogs bark at
me
.”

“Yes, but
why
?”

“I don’t know,” he says, eyeing me as if I had asked him the stupidest question in history.

“You don’t see me flying off the handle when I spot another human being.”

“Actually, I do.” I drop the subject. “You’re giving up?” he asks hopefully.

“Not a chance.” Armed with the information provided by the pet store proprietor, I am eager to get back to Noman.
Hector senses this. I glance down. “No! Please!” Without warning, he has assumed a take-a-dump squat at the base of a venerable sweet gum.