The Last Book Party Read online

  “You were too?”

  “Obviously,” she said. “So you don’t know Franny very well.”

  “Well enough,” I said.

  Leaning back against the counter, she folded her arms. “He’s a charmer, that one. A sorry mismatch with his parents though.”

  “How so?”

  I had no idea what she meant. The way I saw it, Franny was creative like his parents.

  Lane lifted the kettle from the stove and filled the mugs with water. She sat down at the kitchen table, gesturing for me to sit opposite her. I did as she instructed.

  “Franny isn’t bookish at all,” she said. “He doesn’t even read. I mean, I’m sure he can read—but it’s possible he’s dyslexic or something. He’s not in the slightest way intellectual or interested in literature or writing like Tillie and Henry.”

  She went on, explaining that sometimes people have a child who is a perfect match for them and sometimes they get a mismatch.

  “You know, like a guy who lives and breathes sports either gets a kid who’s a wonder on the baseball field, and of course the guy will give himself full credit for that, or he gets a kid who would sooner stab his eyes with a fork than play sports, in which case he blames his wife.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Or like the hippie, feminist mom who ends up with a girl who only wants to read Cosmopolitan.”

  “Ha! Exactly,” said Lane, looking at me with surprise. I was pleased to have made her laugh. Despite her off-putting manner, Lane was amusing and smart, and I wanted her to like me.

  “Franny doesn’t seem any the worse for it,” I said, trying to hide any evidence of how much time I had spent considering Franny’s psychology. “He’s happy, he’s talented, and, as you said, he’s a charmer.”

  Lane blew on her tea.

  “He’s a child,” she said.

  “Isn’t he twenty-seven?”

  “Precisely.”

  I waited for her to continue.

  “For as long as I’ve known them, Henry and Tillie have mistaken Franny’s lack of book smarts as a lack of intelligence. Rather than meeting him where he is, which is a perfectly fine place to be, they’ve let him stay in a bubble. They treat him like a child, and he remains a child.”

  “He supports himself, doesn’t he?” I asked, her statement ringing true, yet making me want to come to Franny’s defense.

  “To an extent,” Lane said. And then she waved a hand in the air as if to brush away this topic of conversation.

  “Tillie’s going titilly, you know.”

  “Titilly?” I asked, not even knowing what I was saying.

  “Yes, to Rome. In September.” To Italy, I realized. Lane continued: “For a reading, and then a month as a visiting scholar at the American Academy. She’s really on the up-and-up, you know, finally getting her due as the genius she is.”

  Lane then proceeded to give me her assessment of Tillie and Henry as writers. Her take boiled down to the “fact” that despite Henry’s “epic tenure” at The New Yorker, Tillie was the “mind to watch.”

  “There was a time when Tillie was swept away by Henry, when he was at his younger, swashbuckling best, at the height of his powers and all that. But now? He’s a good journalist and, in person, a great raconteur, but his choice of subjects is absolutely unfathomable. He wrote an incredibly long article about—I kid you not—crop dusters. He’s a great wordsmith, but he overreports so much that it’s just kind of lame.”

  Lane took a sip of tea. I was shocked by how harshly she critiqued Henry. His reporting from the Vietnam War, some of which was included in the collection of columns that Hodder, Strike had published long ago, was richly detailed, riveting, even emotional. And many of his profiles were funny.

  Lane looked at me and frowned. “Why ever would you leave a job in publishing to work here?” she asked.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, I suppose you think you’ll learn something working for Henry,” she said, with a quick, cold smile. “Perhaps you will.”

  13

  The next morning, dishes were piled high in the kitchen sink. Henry and Tillie, both wearing Indian-print cotton drawstring pants that may have been pajamas, were standing at the counter looking at some kind of drawing.

  “It makes no sense to put the bar table so far from the driveway,” Tillie said. “It goes here, by the beach plums, as usual, so the guests can pick up a drink as they walk in.”

  I leaned on one of the rickety wooden chairs around the kitchen table, figuring I’d wait for a pause in their conversation to make my presence known.

  “The ground is slanted there,” Henry said. “Very awkward.”

  He planted his thumb on the paper. “The booze goes here, I man the table, I get a direct view as everyone arrives.”

  Tillie put her hands on her hips.

  “Fine. Put the table where you want it. But you make absolutely no sense—as soon as ten people are at the drinks table, you won’t be able to see a thing but who’s off the wagon.”

  Henry sighed and stepped out the door onto the back porch. With a quick glance my way, Tillie continued talking, as if I had been part of the conversation all along. “You’d think we would have this down by now but sparring over the planning of the book party is as much a part of the tradition as the party itself. But why we start these discussions so early defies logic.” She poured a cup of coffee and put it on the table near me. “Henry likes to see the guests arrive so he can be the first to try to figure out who they are.”

  “Why wouldn’t you know the guests? Aren’t they all friends coming to celebrate a book launch?”

  “It’s not a book party, it’s the book party,” Tillie said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not following you.”

  Tillie explained: every Labor Day weekend, to mark their wedding anniversary, she and Henry threw a big costume party at which everyone dressed as a character from a book. Over the years, Henry turned the costumes into a competition, insisting that a prize be given to the first person to identify all the characters at the party. The method of determining the winner was never clarified, but Henry spent the evening perusing, interrogating, and recording his findings in a small notebook until at some point—usually when everyone was too soused to argue—he would declare himself the victor.

  “The only time he was stumped,” Tillie said, “was when his brother’s second wife dressed as the so-called heroine of that Judith Krantz novel, Scruples. It’s hardly a secret that going with popular fiction is the best way to confuse Henry, but our crowd rarely turns to the best-seller list for inspiration.”

  “The costumes are generally quite clever,” Tillie continued. “Ours are among the best. When Franny was a toddler, we put him in blue Dr. Denton pajamas and had him carry around a purple crayon.”

  “How adorable,” I said. “Harold and the Purple Crayon was one of my favorite children’s books.”

  “Yes, it was adorable—until he drew on the walls. A rascal even then—but that wouldn’t surprise you.”

  The comment caught me off guard. How much did she know about what had transpired between Franny and me? Before I could respond, Tillie opened the door to her office and said, “You’ll come to the party, of course.” And then she went into her office and closed the door.

  Henry didn’t mention the party again that morning, most of which he spent at his typewriter working on what he told me was a “burgeoning blemish of an idea,” while I continued reading about August Belmont’s quest to get the Cape Cod Canal completed before the Panama Canal. The party, which would be on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, was still more than a month away, which meant there was time for me to come up with a good costume.

  When I arrived home that afternoon, my mother was sitting on the deck reading Architectural Digest. In contrast to Tillie, with her long hair and bohemian outfits, my mother looked typically suburban. Her short, dark hair was smooth and tucked neatly around her ears. She had flawless red polish on her toes, and
her legs were a buttery tan, in lovely contrast to her tailored white shorts. Somewhere along the way to parenthood, she’d left behind all traces of the artistic girl who once hung out in Manhattan with musicians and composers.

  My mother asked how my day had been, and I told her that Tillie had invited me to a party—a much bigger deal than the cocktail party in June—at the end of the summer. My mother put down her magazine and looked up at me.

  “You were invited to the book party?”

  “You know it?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “I read about it years ago in Talk of the Town.”

  14

  The guest list for the party morphed constantly, with names added and names crossed off. The latest version, in its usual place on the kitchen table, included Henry and Tillie’s regular crowd, who came for tennis and dinner parties and backgammon; Tillie’s publisher and editor; a crew of painters and sculptors who had been summering in the Wellfleet woods for decades; a bunch of Provincetown artists, among them Lane’s father, Eric Baxter; and a handful of out-of-towners, including Winthrop and Tracy Grey. I assumed the latter were Henry’s brother and his second wife, who had maligned herself in Tillie’s eyes by reading Judith Krantz.

  I was pleasantly surprised to see the list also included a few local business owners, like Bob Worthington, the owner of the Blacksmith Shop Restaurant, and Patricia Sonnenschein and Barb Green, a longtime couple who owned a landscaping business and showed up a few times a month to mow the scruffy grass around Tillie and Henry’s house. The most surprising inclusion on the guest list was Dickie Compton, a Truro Realtor who donned a seersucker suit and tie every day, even during the worst heat waves. At some point each summer, Dickie would stop by my parents’ house, ostensibly on a social visit, but with the not-so-hidden agenda of seeing if they might want to sell their property.

  “Is Dickie Compton a friend?” I asked Tillie, who for some inexplicable reason had started discussing the guest list with me one morning when I went down to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee.

  “Close friend, no. Closet poet, yes,” Tillie said, bumping the old dishwasher door closed with her hip. “And as skilled on a sewing machine as Itzhak Perlman on a Stradivarius.”

  Before I could ask her to elaborate, she went into her office and closed the door. Exchanges like this were typical. With Tillie, conversations would often end with a pronouncement that could well be the closing line of a play designed to leave the audience murmuring in wonder after the curtain fell.

  When I saw Alva’s name on the guest list, I realized that I hadn’t seen her since I’d returned to Truro. I decided I would stop by the library on the way home to say hello. She was my only real friend in Truro and I was looking forward to spending more time with her. As I rode toward the library, I thought Alva might also have some recommendations for accounts of the building of the canal.

  I rested my bicycle against the big oak tree at the bottom of the hill on which the library sat and climbed up the cement steps to the entrance. Alva was alone—it was a perfect beach day—and using a feather duster on the bust of Henry David Thoreau on the mantel of the fireplace.

  “Did Mr. Thoreau ask for blush on his cheeks?” I said in greeting.

  “Oh, you!” she said. “What an unexpected surprise.”

  “And an extended one,” I said, explaining that I’d be staying well into September.

  “That’s delightful!” she said.

  But when I told her about my new job, she pursed her lips.

  “Working for Henry Grey? I didn’t see that coming.”

  “Don’t you like Henry?” I asked.

  “Who doesn’t like Henry Grey?” she said, turning back to dusting Thoreau. “He’s a charmer.” She stopped for a moment, holding the feather duster up like a torch. “Charm, however, can be … how shall I put it? Disorienting.”

  “He’s really nice,” I said. “When was the last time you spoke to him, anyway? You should give him another chance.”

  She stepped down and pushed the little stool under her desk with her foot.

  “Oh, we’re on fine terms, it’s not that. He just plays a little loose with the rules. Mind your wits, dear.”

  Mind my wits? It was an oddly mixed metaphor for Alva, who was usually so precise with her words. Alva, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of Truro history, launched into a detailed story about how amused the locals had been when Henry and Tillie had bought their house on North Pamet Road more than twenty-five years ago. The house, an old saltbox, originally the home of a whaling captain, hadn’t been lived in for years and was infested with chipmunks and squirrels, which in turn had attracted a large and vicious fisher cat. “Henry and Tillie were so young and unprepared—trust fund babies, it was assumed,” Alva said. “Rumor has it that Henry climbed into the attic with an old rifle and started shooting at the shadows. He was a real Mr. Blandings.”

  “A mister who?” I asked.

  In response, Alva stepped over to the A–H fiction shelves under the window. She handed me an old hardcover titled Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. I’d never heard of the book and was surprised to learn from Alva that it had been made into a movie starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy.

  “Just read it,” she instructed.

  The book, which I read that evening, turned out to be a very funny novel from the 1940s about a successful New York advertising executive and his wife, who flee their midtown apartment for their dream house in the country that turns into a nightmarish money pit. It not only made me laugh, but helped me take a longer view of Henry and Tillie, who, despite their status as local celebrities, were technically still “wash ashores” like me.

  15

  The next day, when Henry got up from his typewriter and went downstairs to brew a fresh pot of coffee, I took the opportunity to look over his desk. I picked up an old maroon hardcover, surprised to see that it was Anna and the King of Siam. I opened it to a page with a Post-it note and saw Henry had sketched a miniature of King Mongkut. On another Post-it, he had scribbled Go balder—with theater wig? Or bolder … and shave! Henry still had a good amount of hair. Was he seriously considering shaving it all off for his costume? The stakes of this party were higher than I had imagined.

  Tillie meanwhile kept up a running dialogue about what character to portray. On my way down to the kitchen for a cup of tea later that morning, we crossed paths. She stopped me, saying, “I’m thinking of Mrs. Malaprop—wouldn’t that be fun? I can say ridiculous things all night, and it will only get easier as the alcohol flows.” Dropping her voice to a whisper, she added, “Don’t say a word about this. Promise to forget. Illiterate it from your memory!” She chuckled at her joke as she continued up the stairs.

  That afternoon, as I was getting on my bicycle to ride home, she called to me from her car. “Is Eliza Doolittle a complete waste of effort?” she asked. “So easy to guess, but the hat would be a hoot.” Before I said anything, she backed out of the driveway and sped off, her tires kicking up pieces of gravel.

  Daunted by how serious Henry and Tillie were about choosing the perfect costume, I remembered why I’d always hated costume parties, and even Halloween, when more often than not my indecision would end with me in a black leotard and tights with a fur neck wrap fastened to my bottom as a tail and my mother declaring, “There! You’re a cat.”

  Over dinner that night, my mother suggested I choose a character from one of my favorite books.

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know … maybe Caddie Woodlawn? You must have read that one three hundred times as a girl.”

  “Freckles, braids, and a calico dress?” I said. “Not the look I’m going for.”

  “OK, then, how about the young woman from Pride and Prejudice?”

  “Seriously, Mom? Could it be any more predictable for someone my age to dress as Elizabeth Bennet?”

  She pushed her plate of pasta and clams forward on the table and folded her arms. “Jane Eyre?”

>   “Mom. I work for Henry.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t you remember that Jane worked for Mr. Rochester, in his house?”

  She smiled smugly. “All the more fitting.”

  “You don’t remember how that turned out?”

  I waited for her to recall that Jane Eyre falls in love with and marries her much older employer. My mother looked confused for a moment, then nodded and said, “Oh, of course.”

  Suddenly, her face lit up. “I’ve got it! Marjorie Morningstar. You’ll find a vintage dress with a sweetheart neck and flared skirt, and you’ll just need to add pumps, pearls, and white gloves.”

  “Marjorie Morningstar is the last character I would choose,” I said.

  “It would be charming!” my mother said.

  The idea of dressing as a conventional upper-middle-class girl who gives up her dream of acting to become a suburban housewife didn’t interest me in the slightest. I wanted to choose something Henry and Tillie would find unpredictable and clever.

  “The end of that book was deadly depressing,” I said.

  “She ended up in a beautiful house in Mamaroneck!”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m only trying to help,” my mother said “It’s a costume, not a prophecy.”

  My father, who seemed to be only half listening, tossed an empty clamshell into the bowl in the middle of the table and said, “What was that book you spent hours reading on the beach one summer in high school? Exodus? You would make a wonderful Sabra!”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “More spaghetti?”

  My mother shook her head and pulled the bowl farther from my father, who in defiance reached instead for another piece of garlic bread.

  “You’re so indecisive. Perhaps you should go as Goldilocks,” she said, getting up and taking the breadbasket, which she put on the kitchen counter.

  After my parents had gone to bed, I sat on the floor in the hall by the low bookshelf along the wall that was filled with a motley assortment of books and magazines: back issues of Gourmet magazine, paperback legal thrillers left by houseguests over the years, books my brother and I had read as kids, and volumes my mother wanted to keep but that didn’t fit the ocean, beach, and fishing themes of the books on the shelves in the living room.