Seven Summer Weekends

Chapter Four

As the boat did a one-eighty in the small basin, Addison headed down the stairs to beat the crowd and claim her luggage. She saw only two pieces, which worried her, until she spotted the tall stranger standing by the door holding the others. The boat landed and, first to exit, she could see him place her bags on a bench on the dock.

“Thank you,” she said, barely audibly and to no one.

She scanned the crowd, pondering which one was the real estate agent she was meant to meet. Smiling faces abounded, except for one. A woman on her phone wearing a conservative getup and Joan Didion sunglasses was shifting her weight impatiently from one leg to the other. Bingo, she thought. Clearly the only person who was there for business versus pleasure.

She was right.

According to Gicky’s attorney, Nan Murphy had been a real estate agent on Fire Island since she was in her late twenties. Now, at sixty, she had outlasted them all. Apparently, she was the child of an affluent New York City real estate family who used all she overheard at family dinners to corner the market on this narrow spit of sand.

Addison wound her way through the chaotic crowd and approached her with a tentative “Nan?” The impatient woman suddenly morphed into agent mode. A big fake smile lit up her face, followed by a firm handshake and a “Nice to meet you.”

Nan had a golf cart—which was good because Addison’s heels would not survive the cobblestone walk. She helped Addison load it with her belongings. Their mode of transport felt weirdly elitist. Everyone else was fetching and loading up wagons—old-fashioned wooden versions with witty names carved on the back for the sentimental types or industrial-looking green plastic crate models for the more practical.

“There’s a wagon over there, somewhere, with your aunt’s name painted on it. You can come back for it whenever you please. Hopefully, she left the combination,” Nan said as their golf cart scooted off ahead of the throng.

“Wow, the streets are so narrow,” Addison observed.

“You call them narrow streets, we call them wide sidewalks. It’s our version of glass half-full.”

Ugh. The woman had her figured out already. So much for leaving practical, glass-half-empty Addison on the other side of the bay.

Addison guessed that people who chose to live on a tiny sliver of land where the threat of one big wave lingered constantly weren’t overly preoccupied with practicality. Not to mention the fact that they put up with all that schlepping to houses you could get to only by boat.

The broker looked down at Addison’s heels.

“First time?”

Addison blushed and smiled.

They heard the words “Hi, Nan” a dozen times between the ferry dock and the house. By the third or fourth, Addison felt compelled to ask, “Does everyone know you?”

“Everyone knows everyone,” Nan said dryly.

She couldn’t tell whether Nan thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Addison had spent the summers of her childhood in a close-knit community on a small lake in Michigan, but this felt next-level. For starters, she saw that Bay Harbor had only one market and a small liquor store. She would have to go to other towns to find restaurants, bars, ice cream shops, and possibly friends. According to Nan, it was a tight-knit group. Houses often stayed in families for many generations. Their children, who befriended other children, had children of their own, who befriended their children. It had been like this since the first beach cottage was erected in 1907, Nan explained, when Gilbert P. Smith had closed his fish factory and began selling off parcels of land.

Nan’s lecture on island history felt like the perfect segue to inquire about selling Gicky’s house, but Addison felt funny bringing it up straightaway. The feeling only got worse when they arrived at the house, where the agent immediately handed her a sealed letter from her aunt.

“You are lucky to have had an aunt who loved you so much,” said Nan. “Gicky was only sick for a few months before she died, but she had explicit instructions. She was a legend in this town—and exceptionally vocal about keeping things the same. She hasn’t touched this place since the eighties, but the house has great bones. Though if anyone were to buy it, they would probably knock it down and build some bloated monstrosity—as Gicky would call it.”

Despite Nan’s words, Addison guessed by the real estate agent’s Hermès sandals and Celine sunglasses that Nan did not mind the lifestyle that flipping beach shacks and turning them into bloated monstrosities afforded her. On their way to the house, Addison had noticed the disparity between the original cottages and the new constructions that towered over them. It made sense that some residents would be troubled by the transition, especially her aunt Gicky. From the little she knew about her, she was as much a hippie as Addison’s father was a conservative. It wasn’t a surprise that those two hadn’t seen eye to eye on things. Especially when it came to the Big Terrible Thing that divided them, whatever that was.

Addison realized she had a small window to inquire about selling before going against whatever was written in the letter—a small window not to look like a complete and total ingrate.

“The thing is, I’m not sure I can afford the upkeep of this house,” she moaned, setting the stage.

She felt proud of herself for coming up with possibly the only “I’m not a total ingrate” excuse. The feeling was short-lived.

“Gicky had that all figured out,” Nan explained. “The property comprises three structures. The main one-bedroom house, an artist’s studio, and a guest cottage that Gicky rented by the weekend to pay for the expenses and more. Word is, she bought this place outright with the profits from a lucrative gallery run in the early eighties. It was right after Hurricane Gloria decimated the island, when houses sold for beans. The rental income covers taxes, town dues, and some upkeep. And if you wanted to turn her studio into another guesthouse, you could double that. Plus, if you’re not like Gicky, who cared about alone time, you can rent it by the month or week.”

The story of how her aunt had acquired the house did not surprise Addison. She had found an article from the Times circa 1985 among the clippings in her father’s desk drawer about a gallery show Gicky had been in with Keith Haring and Jeff Koons. And while both these artists saw far greater success than Gicky had, she supported herself nicely with her art.

“You’ll have no problem affording it. If you want to, that is. Come on, let me show you around.”

The main house was quaint and cluttered, with a distinct hippie vibe.

“She was a self-confessed maximalist,” Nan said, sugarcoating the fact that Aunt Gicky was a bit of a hoarder. Addison was the opposite, never caving to sentimentality. She kept nothing. If she were to think about why that was, she could probably blame it on her mother. Beverly Irwin placed materialism above most everything else, and while Addison liked nice things as well as the next girl, she never placed much emotional importance on them like her mother did. While Gicky seemed to collect things that brought back memories, her sister-in-law Beverly was more interested in collecting status markers, like designer bags and shoes.

“I don’t envy whoever has to clean this place out,” Addison stated, until she realized that would be her.

The agent read her expression and added, “Houses on Fire Island are sold with all of their contents—aside from personal stuff. It makes things much easier for the seller. Not so much for the buyer.”

Addison took it all in. The house was enveloped in whimsy—doorframes covered in sea glass, walls turned into canvases, the bathroom ceiling flanked by angels in bikinis. While it wasn’t the Sistine Chapel, it made the thought of tearing it down all the more egregious.

The tangerine-colored sofa with a dark wood frame had a kaleidoscopic crocheted throw draped over the back. A tremendous macrame owl with wooden-bead eyes covered the wall behind it.

The kitchen appliances looked nearly original to the mid-century house, as did the vinyl floor. A list was taped to the refrigerator—the words Guesthouse To-Do’s written on top in a rainbow of colors. Everything was an art project. Addison homed in on an adjacent recipe that read Gicky’s Favorite Scones, ironically held in place by a Life’s a Beach and Then You Die magnet. The recipe looked easy enough to follow, Addison thought. Maybe she would take up baking. So far in her adult life, she had only mastered boiling water.

She opened the lid of a handmade cookie jar shaped like a Volkswagen Beetle. It was filled with dog treats.

“Did my aunt have a dog?”

“Not that I know of.”

The bedroom was more minimalist than the rest of the house, except for a series of oil paintings of an exceptionally handsome man at different ages. Addison was immediately curious about the model, who appeared to be a consistent fixture in her aunt’s seemingly autonomous life.

The hallway adjacent to the bedroom was dedicated to images of summers past. Sunsets, group shots, and a handful of pictures of Gicky hamming it up for the camera—Gicky on the ferry, Gicky at an art show, Gicky with a baby girl. Addison looked closer at that one. On further inspection, it wasn’t just any baby girl—it was her. The photograph gave Addison a pang of regret. Her aunt clearly had memories of Addison, while Addison barely had any of her.

They stepped into the studio, where the smell of clay startled her before pinching at her heartstrings. Some people don’t like the smell, but to Addison it was akin to a garden after the rain. Even better than that, it smelled like a memory, one of her last of her aunt Gicky.

Addison flashed back to one of her aunt’s yearly visits—one of those early childhood recollections that leave an indelible mark on your brain—fuzzy pictures with unexplained feelings attached to them. Her aunt, ever the artist, had brought Addison and her younger sister a large lump of clay and a set of sculpting tools. Her sister, Ivy, didn’t like how the clay felt on her hands and got under her nails, but Addison relished it. She and her aunt spent most of the weekend elbow deep in the earthy substance.

Addison popped open a vat of clay and rolled a piece between her fingers. Could bonding with a child thirty years ago over ceramics have led to this outrageous inheritance? It seemed implausible, besides being sad and somewhat cautionary. An entire life lived with no one to bequeath your greatest possession to. She thought again of the picture of the two of them in the hallway, and when she did, she remembered how her sister’s daughter, Lucy, had captured her own heart the minute she was born. In fact, Lucy’s existence and the love Addison felt for her were the only thing that made Addison question her ambivalence about having kids. Ivy often drove her mad, but Addison would literally throw herself into oncoming traffic for that niece of hers. And though Addison had never considered it before, Aunt Gicky must have loved her as much as Addison loved Lucy. In fact, if someone had asked Addison right then and there to write her will, she would probably leave this house and all of her earthly possessions to little Lucy. And if she and her sister couldn’t get past some Big Terrible Thing, like the one that had divided her parents and her aunt, she would grieve losing contact with Lucy more than the rest of them combined.

She considered asking Nan more about Gicky, but then thought better of it. From the contrasting looks of the two women—the broker buttoned up to her neck, even in the heat of summer, and her aunt, judging by her photographs, happiest in bikinis and caftans at any age—she doubted the two had been close. Nan confirmed her suspicions when she admitted how quickly she had become the enemy of people who want to keep things the same in this town.

“There’s no stopping progress,” she said. “It was only a matter of time before outsiders found this place and started Hamptons-izing it. It is not my fault people want bigger and better, and someone was going to profit. May as well be me.”

Addison didn’t care to make a comment on the subject.

“One of your neighbors wants to buy the place, by the way—he swears Gicky promised to sell it to him for half the asking price. Says he has it in writing—though I’ve never seen it, and I’m sure you can confirm it wasn’t in the will.”

“It wasn’t.” The will was very specific. Everything aside from her artwork was left to Addison. The artwork was to be featured in a retrospective in the fall, curated by her longtime gallerist, CC Ng, with the profits going to a children’s art charity in Harlem where Gicky had often volunteered.

“Well, I’m warning you. Your neighbor has been champing at the bit for this place. He’s been a bit off since his wife passed away a couple of years ago. I heard he stood in front of a bulldozer that was set to dig up the old cement sidewalk to replace it with pavers. Something about destroying sacred land where his wife’s footsteps had walked.”

“That’s so sad.”

“You say sad, I say crazy. Just don’t let him or his even nuttier best friend bulldoze or sweet-talk you. Everyone around here pulls the sentimental card when it comes to real estate—you should remain immune to that. If you want to sell this place, I can get you two or three times what your neighbor will offer you.”

“Got it! I will not be sweet-talked!”

“Great. Your aunt arranged things mostly on her own this summer, so don’t be surprised if random people show up the next few weekends.”

“Oh, lovely.” Addison smiled sarcastically. The agent enjoyed it.

“I believe there are three open weekends. Let me know if you want to keep them available for renters or not.”

“I was hoping to have my friends one weekend, and I’m sure my parents will want to visit.” As the words left her lips, she knew the latter was most likely false. For her parents, missing a summer weekend at the lake was like breaking one of the Ten Commandments. The only thing that would get her mother to Fire Island would be a resolution to the Big Terrible Thing that had come between them and her aunt Gicky.

“How much does it go for?”

“Gicky charged three fifty a night, focusing on weekends, so her weeks were free to paint and sculpt.”

Addison did the math in her head.

“That’s lucrative, but I still think it may be best for me to sell.”

“As I said, houses with this size property rarely become available. If you still want to sell in September, it will be easy.” She looked around at the cluttered house and added, “There’s a white elephant sale at the end of August. Weed through all of this stuff before then so we can stage it properly.”

“Noted. Thank you.”

“I will let you get settled. Here’s my card. Text me with any questions.”

She said “text” in a way that screamed, Don’t call me unless the house is on fire—and even then, don’t call me.

And she was gone.

Addison sat down on the afghan-laden couch and carefully opened the letter. The lingering smell of clay still had her under its spell, rendering her more nostalgic than usual.

Dear Addison,

I don’t expect you to remember all the time we spent together when you were a little girl, but in your eyes, I saw a light, a curiosity that reminded me of myself. A twinkle that I had only ever seen in my own. And while I chose not to have children, as I aged, I sometimes regretted it. Regretted not having someone to leave my beloved home on my beloved island to. Regretted being here and gone without creating more sentiment than “that Gicky made a mean lime rickey,” or “Gicky was a poet” (previous case in point). It may just seem like a house on a beach, but if you let yourself, you will soon find that it is so much more. It is, in fact, a road map for a happy life. A circle of the seasons that always leads you back home, to peace and tranquility, to the ocean. To the familiar, especially in this increasingly unfamiliar world. To your loved ones—your chosen family.

It would be my preference that you don’t sell. I have spent the last few years of my life living full-time on this little island. Our street is one of the only ones left that looks as it did when I first fell in love with it. My wish is that it both stays the same and stays in my family—and you are my family. I see that you don’t yet have one of your own. If you ever choose to become a mother, there is no better place to raise children.

While I hope that the young girl with the twinkle in her eyes is still there, there are no actual conditions for this inheritance. I have lived my adult life doing what’s best for me and would never stipulate you do anything but. My freedom meant the world to me, and I respect yours as well. So, please consider spending the summer here and then, in September, do what you want with the place.

With love,

Aunt Gicky

The finality of Gicky’s death sank in. Addison’s stomach ached, whether from melancholy or hunger, she wasn’t sure. She went with the easiest to fix.

Popping open her luggage, she pulled out a pair of cutoffs, a vintage Bruce Springsteen shirt from the River Tour, which she usually slept in, and her flip-flops. She looked in the mirror and admired her transformation before heading to the store—she looked like a local.

The Bay Harbor Market reminded Addison of the market back home on the lake in Michigan. It sported the same painted wooden shelves and narrow aisles. The kids behind the register—whoever was of the age that summer—were ringers for the kids doing the same back home. Addison herself had worked at the Lake House Market over many a summer before and after sleepaway camp.

Too hungry to do a big shop, she headed for the deli counter and waited in line for a sandwich.

The tall man from the boat approached, flashing his dimple.

“You again,” he said with a smile.

Addison blushed and smiled in return.

“What’s good?” she asked, motioning to the vast array of deli meats and cheeses in the case in front of her.

“It’s more like who’s good,” he whispered. “Insider tip. Position yourself so that you always order from that guy.” He pointed to the tallest of the three behind the counter.

“That seems tricky.”

“It’s not. When any of the other guys ask to help you, say, I’m still thinking, until Little Les over there asks. Watch and learn.”

A skinny guy with huge ear gauges asked, “What can I get you?

“Still thinking, bud, thanks.”

The ear-gauge guy moved on to the next customer before the tallest one approached.

“The usual?” he inquired.

“You like turkey?” her new friend asked Addison.

“I do.”

“Avocado?”

“Yes.”

“Make it two,” he told the chosen one, “one for me and one for my friend, You Again.”

Addison giggled. She wasn’t a giggler. Soon, Little Les handed them each a perfect sandwich wrapped in white paper.

“See you around,” said the tall stranger, who smiled before flashing his sandwich to the cashier without stopping to pay.

“Not if I see you first,” she joked, before berating herself for the cliché response.

She grabbed a few more things and placed them all down at the register. The young girl behind it sized her up. Addison had no idea that the checkout staff here were the greatest purveyors of gossip in town.

“If you will be here for a while, you should set up an account. Will you?”

“Yes, OK,” Addison answered cautiously. She was glad she had the summer lake experience to reference. Everything felt like a setup for one of those new-guy-in-small-town horror flicks.

The girl copied Addison’s name on top of a simple, lined form.

“House number?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m not sure. It’s my aunt’s house, right across from the ball field,” she said, not wanting to share her personal windfall with this rather aloof girl.

“Are you Gicky’s niece?” she asked, with a whole different ’tude.

“Yes,” Addison responded quietly, in great contrast to the girl’s enthusiasm. The girl called out to her friend behind the other register.

“It’s Gicky’s niece!”

Everyone in earshot stopped, stared, and gave her the once-over. This was not an exaggeration. Horror story vibes seeped back into Addison’s head, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The silence broke with a flurry of introductions and condolences. She felt strange accepting the latter but did so graciously. She left feeling that her aunt was a local treasure. It was a nice feeling.

After lunch (which was unexpectedly delicious), she took a quick peek at the beach. It was overcast and empty. She returned home and began looking through her aunt’s things. It was a weird experience: part snooping, part treasure hunt. She thumbed through photo albums brimming with pictures of Gicky in far-off places. Hard-to-decipher words were scribbled in cursive throughout the yellowed pages. A terrarium filled with sand from different beaches and another with hundreds of matchboxes—from Caesars Palace, Kusky’s Bowling Alley, the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, the Brown Derby. She could have spent hours just reading the covers. Every artifact left her more curious about her aunt’s life while reminding her how little she herself had lived.

Addison went to bed early that night, cracking the window a bit and listening to the distant sound of the ocean. The day had been endlessly long, and she fell off around nine. She remained asleep until early the next morning, when she woke to the sound of loud barking that seemed to come from inside the house. She peeked out the bedroom door to see a large shaggy black dog on the other side. She closed it just as quickly. To say she wasn’t a dog lover was an understatement. She’d had a pretty big fear of dogs since being bitten as a kid. This merited a text to the agent, she thought. She sent one. No response. The dog quieted down, and Addison got down on the floor and peered under the door to see if it was still there. All she saw was a pile of fur. It appeared to be sleeping on the other side.

This was reason enough to climb back into bed and call her mom. Addison had been determined to handle this whole thing on her own, but was suddenly feeling like she had made a big mistake. Maybe she should have considered her mother’s advice, which was, “Dead or alive—don’t get involved with that woman!”

On the phone now, her mother repeated her unhelpful opinion, adding a few more choice words. Luckily, her tirade was interrupted by a text from the agent.

Agent Nan: Is the dog black and white—and shaggy?

Addison: Yes. Very.

Agent Nan: It’s your neighbor’s dog. I’ll text him. You should nail shut the doggie door. I believe that dog visits regularly.

Within minutes, a man, the dog’s owner, was standing in her living room. He knocked while entering. No introducing himself, no waiting for Addison to invite him in. He and his dog were obviously cut from the same inconsiderate cloth.

“Hello,” the man shouted. “Getting my dog.”

Addison looked down at her see-through white tank and skimpy undies and cracked open her bedroom door just enough for her voice to spill out.

“OK.”

“Sorry about that. She’s used to Gicky giving her a morning treat.”

The dog barked again, seemingly in agreement.

“I’ll grab one for her,” the man said, again not waiting for an answer before opening up the Volkswagen Beetle cookie jar. At least now she had an explanation.

“Next time, just give her one of these, and she’ll leave.”

“I don’t like dogs,” she yelled back. “Please make sure there’s not a next time.”

“Well, you should have that dog door closed up if you’re not a dog person,” he said huffily, as if the door were an invitation. Though, now that she thought about it, being that Gicky didn’t have a dog, maybe it was. Addison peeked out of the bedroom. They were gone.

“This place is filled with nutters,” she said out loud.

Addison was most definitely not a nutter.

No sooner did the entitled dog owner leave than her phone dinged with another message from the agent. No hello, no what happened with the dog, just—

Confirming—July weekends are booked. August 7, 21, and 28 are available. Let me know if you want to list any of them.

“More nutters, I bet,” Addison said out loud. As if on cue, there was a knock at her door.