Page 39 of On Fire Island

The waitress came over with a big piece of chocolate cake with vanilla frosting—the kind Dylan liked.

Dylan blew out the candles and instead of making a wish she said, “I love you, Matty.”

At least I thought it was instead of making a wish.

“I love you too, Dyl,” he said, putting his hand on top of hers.

“No, really, you will always be family,” she promised.

“Thanks, you will too.”

I wondered about that the entire walk home. If her mother would help her pick out bedding and posters and those fairy lights that the kids hang in their dorm rooms now. If Melissa would duplicitously post pictures of the finished product on social media like all the other moms do with captions likeDylan’s a freshman!andWhere have the years gone?!I wondered how different Dylan would have been if she had grown up with a mother. Would she have polished her nails and straightened her hair, or would she be just as she was right now in spite of it?

It would be nice to think of them really becoming family one day, but I doubted that would ever happen. I wasn’t even so sure that Dylan would be back the following summer. I sometimes thought she was just marking time until she escaped.

twenty-four

Be My Baby

I returned home from the birthday breakfast ahead of Matty and Dylan. I had no interest in stopping to ogle the smattering of naked sunbathers at Lighthouse Beach, as I knew they would. The mile-long length of sandy shore was once a designated nude beach until some conservatives, motivated by the area’s proximity to the lighthouse, a popular family attraction, found the concept appalling and went to court to change the law. It was a bummer for the nudists, especially on an island where “to each his own” may as well be the official motto. If you go au naturel there now, you risk a five-grand fine and a six-month stint in jail. Quite a hefty price for sunning in the buff.

Visiting Lighthouse Beach was a Fire Island rite of passage. For most kids, it promised their first look at a pair of breasts that didn’t belong to their mother. I had no doubt that these two particularly feral kids had managed to sneak away to check out the situation by the time they were ten. Renee once told me that when Matty and Dylan were seven and eight, she and Jake had spent hours driving around looking for them one cold November afternoon. It was the last day that the Bay Harbor water was on (if youlive there year-round you either need your own water well or access to the adjacent town’s line). Renee and Tuck had come out to close up the house. It was late for them. They usually closed by early October, but that particular year had been a busy one, both socially and work-wise. The minute they disembarked, Matty had headed straight to Dylan’s house, and when Renee went over to fetch him in time to make the last boat home, Jake had no idea where they’d run off to.

Renee and Jake had a brief personal history. They had once made out as teenagers, but neither of them spoke of it. In fact, Renee wondered if Jake even remembered. He never indicated that he did, and being that she was quite the looker—especially at sixteen, when the incident had occurred—it kind of bugged her. When he opened the passenger-seat door for her to jump in his truck, Jake blushed in a funny way that made her think he had remembered their kissing all along, though it could have been embarrassment from the big mess of odd junk he had to push from the seat to make room for her.

After looking everywhere for them (Jake calm, Renee panicked), Matty and Dylan were found playing capture the flag atop a giant heap of garbage at the dump two towns away. They smelled so badly that Renee and Jake had to hang their faces out the window like dogs on the way back to make the last ferry. Jake parked his truck by the boat and boarded with them to steer the boat across the bay. They made the kids sit up top, even though it was forty degrees out—more to air them out than as some form of corporal punishment for wandering off and playing in a garbage dump. It was an endless series of shenanigans like this, bringing up a spirited kid like Dylan. From what I heard over the years, she once refused to leave an abandoned baby seal on the beach for three days, she saved a giant buck whose head got caughtin a garbage pail cover, and tried to catch lightning in glass after watching the movieSweet Home Alabama. The first two examples were in the off-season, but Matty was present for the lightning debacle. They were lucky to be alive to tell the tale. I wondered what Jake would think of her and Matty’s virginity-losing pact. To me it seemed benign in comparison to all of her other schemes, but I’m not the single dad of a teenage daughter.

As I reached Bay Harbor, I passed Pam and Andie sitting on the beach. Pam was consumed with the final chapters of a beach read, while Andie was passed out under the umbrella, next to baby Oliver. They both lightly snored in sweet synchronicity. My guess was that Andie had been on baby duty the night before, and that this was a well-deserved nap. Pam was a big reader though; like me there was nothing that could come between her and finishing a book—not even total exhaustion.

A few blocks down I found Ben, sitting in a chair by the ocean. Our song, “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes, was blasting from his earbuds so loudly I could hear it on my approach. At first I thought it was sweet, and even danced around his chair a bit, like old times, but I soon realized that he must have been listening to it on repeat all morning. Even under his Wayfarers, I recognized the comatose look in his tear-stained eyes. This auditory torture wasn’t new for him; I had heard him filling the morning silence with my old phone messages more than once. He had kept a handful from before I was sick, and every one from after. He listened to the before ones on repeat, simple messages from a busy, happy life.

“Thinking about cooking tonight—want to pick up everything I need?”

“Hi, baby, meet me and Sally at the dog park by the museum. Love you!”

“Hi, baby, the reservation’s at eight. Want to meet me earlier for a drink?”

“Hi, baby, I think you should switch chapters nine and eleven. Take a look.”

And his apparent favorite from the multitude of times he played it, just “It’s me, Jules,” followed by a small fit of laughter for my unnecessary introduction. “Call me back.”

If this were the nineties, he would have already worn through the answering machine tape.

Playing “Be My Baby” and doing a few jokingly sexy dance moves was traditionally the easiest way to get Ben out of his chair. I tried now—really embracing the saying “dance like no one is watching”—you know, because no one was watching. The song hooked you in from its famous first beat.

BUMP Bump-bump bump. BUMP bump-bump bump.

The first time we danced to “Be My Baby” was about two weeks after “meeting” on Fire Island. We had already squeezed in six dates, including the Foo Fighters at the Beacon,Sweeney Toddon Broadway, and a Yankee game where Ben got to show off his press access. We watched the action from George Steinbrenner’s old box—though the wordboxwas a misnomer—it was more the size of a shipping container. It held many years’ worth of memorabilia, chairs shaped like leather baseball gloves, and an odd selection of B-list celebrities of the day—reality-show players like a runner-up onAmerican Idoland the then–Apprenticestar, Donald Trump.

Ben admitted he was happier sitting in the nosebleed seats eating hot dogs and drinking beer than hobnobbing with the rich and almost famous. I was happy to hear that.

For date number seven, I chose one of my favorite restaurants—a little Italian place in the West Village called Palma. We werestill in that phase where each story was new and each touch electric. After two and a half hours sitting at the tiny table soaking up every last bit of marinara and every last word from each other’s mouths, “Be My Baby” came on overhead. It was definitely a song of my parents’ generation, but I had always loved it too.

Ben stood as the incomparable intro registered in his mind and unexpectedly pulled me from my seat. The combination of a couple of bottles of vino, his old soul contemplating the possibility of new love, and the fact that we were the last ones left at the restaurant caused him to uncharacteristically let loose. He danced in a funny way, one minute waving his arms around, the next comedically pulling me close, but his eyes never strayed from mine.

That night, along with the ethereal voice of Ronnie Spector, he vowed, “Oh, since the day I saw you, I have been waiting for you, you know I will adore you, till eternity.”

He was right about that.

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