“It was very choppy,” says the boy who vomited. He is less conventionally handsome, beaky and tall, with close-cropped red hair. He has the look of New York City around him. He’s wearing a leather jacket, despite the heat.
The third boy comes over and leans in to Yardley’s ear. “That vomit was the most heinous moment of my life,” he fake-whispers. He is generally beige—tan skin, tan hair that flops over his forehead, a medium build. He compensates for his beigeness by wearing red plaid shorts and a pink polo shirt with the collar popped.
This must be George. The canoe racer. Unless Yardley has someone else now. She is ordinary to look at—pretty but not gorgeous, nothing special about her clothes—but she has always had boyfriends. I don’t know what makes guys like her so much. Maybe it’s her confidence. Yardley doesn’t think—or at least, doesn’t seem to think—about all that stuff that keeps me unsettled. She is certain of her place in the world, oblivious, happy, better able to just love and be loved. Anyway, I adore her.
“This is my cousin Carrie,” she announces. “She’s seventeen, she can outswing any of you with a baseball bat, she knows where all the bodies are buried on this island, and you’re all very happy to meet her. ’Kay?”
Beige George shakes hands.
The broad-shouldered boy with the broken nose bows comically.
The redheaded boy in the leather jacket looks up from the bucket. “Sorry I’m so disgusting.”
“Thank you for the present, Yardley,” I say. Cheeky, but I mean it.
“You’re welcome.” Yardley marches over to the bucket of vomit and picks it up. “Major,” she says to him. “Are you finished ralphing?”
“I am.”
“Promise?”
He squints. “We’re going on dry land now, right?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Then I promise.”
Yardley climbs out of the cabin and goes to the back of the boat, where she dumps the contents of the bucket and rinses it in the sea. We all follow her, the boys lugging backpacks. Their duffel bags have been taken out by the staff.
“Do you want a mint, Major?” Yardley says. “I bet you want a mint before you meet my aunt and uncle.”
Major nods.
She gives him a mint from a paper tube in the back pocket of her shorts. “Okay, you weenies, get off the boat and meet everyone. Make big eyes at my auntie Tipper, ’kay? And shake hands with my uncle Harris.”
And so in a bustle, my parents meet George Bryce-Amory, the beige yet pink-and-plaid canoe-racing boyfriend of Yardley. George is all toothy smile, strong forearms, hearty proclamations (“Nice little place you got here”) interspersed with self-mocking asides. “Oh, I’m a terrible cook,” he tells my mother when she offers to stock the Goose kitchen for him and his friends. “It’s really shocking and even scary. I make, like, burned coffee and, let me think, kind-of-raw oatmeal and that’s it.”
She promptly invites him to come up to Clairmont for breakfast any morning, and says he can help himself to leftover pie. “The coffee’s always on by six a.m.,” she says. “And by eight there will be eggs and muffins.” She promises to buy him cereal for the cottage and extracts favorite brands from each of the boys. George likes Lucky Charms. “It’s revolting, I know. I should be eating oat bran, but I love it so much,” he says.
Jeremy Majorino, known as Major, is the ralpher with no sea legs, the red hair and leather jacket. He is the product (we learn) of an artsy private school in Brooklyn, friends with George from years of summer camp. “When George decides he’s friends with you, you don’t have a choice,” Major says, shaking Harris’s hand awkwardly. “Loyalest guy I know.”
While all this is happening, the boy with the broad shoulders and the broken nose is loafing behind his friends, his hands in his pockets as he stares out at the sea. His worn T-shirt blows in the wind. All three of our dogs come up to him and he bends over to stroke their soft heads. I hear him saying in a low voice: “Oh, hello, good-looker. Oh, yes, you too. And you. Ack, you slimed my hand. You slimed it with your dog nose! I’m wiping it off on your fur, you slimy dog. You deserve it. Yes you do. Are we friends anyway? I think we are friends.”
He feels me looking at him and stands up. Smiles. His eyebrows are thick over dark brown eyes. His nearly black hair hasn’t been cut in ages.
His name is Lawrence Pfefferman, he says to my parents. “Call me Lor, for short. Or Pfeff,” he says.
“Watch out,” Yardley whispers in my ear.
“Why?” I ask.
“Just watch out, is all,” she says. “Pfeff is a lot.”
It is pronounced “Feff.” To my parents, George explains that he and Pfeff are friends from school in Philadelphia.
“You a boating man, Lor?” says my dad, tossing his head mockingly at Major.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, then. We’ll take the sailboat out this evening, for the sunset. Everyone but that guy.” Another dig at Major, because he threw up. “You in, George? A little sailing?”
George looks hesitant to leave Major alone on their first night here, but he doesn’t have to say anything because Tipper interjects.
“Harris, we have the Lemon Hunt tonight.”
“Oh, but the weather is—”
“No,” says Tipper firmly. “I have been working for days on the Lemon Hunt. This evening is not the time.”
She takes her parties very seriously. My father grins. “Tomorrow, then,” he tells George and Pfeff. “We’ll get a good sunset. Let me show you boys to Goose Cottage.”
He grabs someone’s backpack and heads down the walkway to the guesthouse. Yardley and the boys go along.
Pfeff is the last to follow, and as he goes, he reaches out to touch the beach roses. He leaps up to tap the branch of a tree that arches over the walk.
16.
MY MOTHER TURNS to Uncle Dean. “Hello.”
“You’re beautiful as ever, Tipper. Good to see you.” He smiles.
“What were you thinking?” Her manner is perky, like she’s a wife on an old black-and-white sitcom. She tilts her head to one side.
“What? They’re nice boys,” says Dean, lighting a cigarette. He is a big man, quite a bit taller than my father, and running slightly to pudge. “Yardley’s been going out with George five months. I’ve taken the guy out to dinner. We hit the golf course a couple times.”
“You didn’t ask me,” my mother says. “You didn’t even tell me they were coming.”
Dean looks out at the sea and shakes his head. “I don’t have to tell you, Tipper. And I certainly don’t have to ask you.”
He’s right, technically. He co-owns the island. But since Harris is the elder brother, and since Dean is divorced, and probably for a million other reasons, Dean sits number two. My mother is the hostess, and Dean lets her handle the staff who do his housework and the stocking of his refrigerator. His pantry is full of favorite cookies and bottles of expensive beer, thanks to her.
Tipper smiles. “What if I’d had people in Goose Cottage already?”
He shrugs. “It has four bedrooms. The guys could double up, or someone could sleep on the foldout.”
“Not every guest would appreciate sharing with three teenage boys.”
He gives her a look. “Do you have someone in Goose, Tipper? And if you did, would you have asked me first? Or even let me know?”
She looks away.
“Yardley’s eighteen,” says Dean. “She wants to be with her guy before she goes off to college and probably never sees him again. So he’s here for a bit, and he brought some buddies. It’s nothing.”
“Three unexpected boys,” says Tipper. “You think I have enough chicken for those appetites? For tonight?”
Dean turns conciliatory. “They’ll eat hot dogs. They won’t care.”
“I care. I don’t want to feed them hot dogs.”
“They’re Yardley’s friends,” I put in. “She said they’re from good families and all that.”
Tipper turns to me. “You have no idea what it is to run this property with unexpected guests.”
“You can’t send them home,” I tell her. “It would be rude if you don’t let them stay at least a week.”