Page 62 of Seven Summer Weekends

All eyes went from Aunt Gicky to Beverly, who stood up, pushed in her chair, and said, “Morty, take care of this.”

If you have ever been to a Passover Seder, you know that the timing of this dramatic revelation couldn’t have been worse. Everyone was on their third cup of wine, and had been waiting patiently for the meal to begin after sitting through an hour’s explanation of their ancestors fleeing slavery. Meaning that everyone was both tipsy and hangry.

Addison and her sister were handed a couple of pieces of matzah and dismissed to the basement to play Barbies. The two girls sat on the top step instead and listened as best they could. Over the crunching of their cardboard-like meal, they heard shouting and crying, and things said that most definitely should not have been said. And while they were too young to really understand what was up, they knew it was bad.

When they were finally fetched from upstairs, Aunt Gicky was gone. To this day, Addison never, in her wildest dreams, put two and two together. In fact, the only reason to think that the soup terrine was the trigger of the Big Terrible Thing was that she still remembered the incident vividly, considering she was all of six years old at the time.

All she managed now was, “Put Daddy on the phone.”

Addison was furious. Not so much at her mother, the most Waspy Jew on the planet, who avoided drama and confrontation at all costs, but at her dad. Beverly Irwin would rather write someone off than work through a conflict. But Addison expected more from her father. Her father was a wuss who literally kicked his only sister to the curb to save himself from dealing with his insufferable wife.

As she held the phone, there followed a lot of painful yelling (hers), and a lot of painful silence (his). For Addison, it was hard to process, after a lifetime of thinking otherwise, that her parents, particularly her father, were just people. Flawed people. They didn’t always have the right answer; they didn’t always do the right thing. And they in fact could stop talking to their closest relative over a gold-leafed floral soup terrine.

Morty Irwin was undeniably a wimp.

Maybe it wasn’t her grandfather’s infidelities or the humiliation of Jeffrey Pearlman kissing Sofie Bonelli that had shaped her future with men. Maybe it came down to the old adage about girls marrying their fathers. Or in her case, dating them.

Or maybe it was a combination of all three.

In the end, she disinvited Morty and Beverly for the following weekend, which was met with obvious relief on their part, and hung up. She went directly to the clay, relishing in the powerful sense of connection and escape. Losing herself in it once again, she gave her girl a skirt. A long flowy skirt, which she carved with tiny flowers, not unlike the pattern on the infamous china. Sometime after dark, Sally appeared at the studio door with a note tied around her neck that readMiss me?

She cleaned the paint-splattered washbasin that had become,for some inexplicable reason, her favorite thing in the house, and scratched Sally behind her ears. She pulled out her phone and texted Ben.

Want to go out on the town?

A few minutes later, her phone vibrated.

I’ll pick you up at nine.

Addison looked through the suitcase that she hadn’t fully unpacked yet and paired a bright strappy camisole dress with high-tops. While she sat in front of the mirror doing her makeup, she realized she’d barely even worn mascara since being there. She put on an extra coat and smiled at herself in the mirror.

This happy state she had found herself in came with a natural glow.

Ben arrived promptly at nine with a bouquet of cut flowers from his garden tied together with string.

So sweet.

He explained their options while she put them in water.

“There are two choices here. We go to town, and by morning the entire island will know that we are, you know—”

“What? Doing it?”

“I was going to sayan item.”

“An item? Addison laughed. “What century were you born in?”

“You sound like Julia.” He smiled. She did too. She was happy that he was comfortable reminiscing about his wife in front of her. She hoped it would continue.

“It’s just I’d rather keep this between us—get to know each other a little more before fueling the rumor mill.”

Addison was really beginning to feel like she knew him, the man who had carried her bags onto the ferry and counted herfreckles, that is. Though she realized she didn’t even know whom he voted for in the last election.

“Makes sense,” she said, thinking of when to bring up politics.

“OK. Grab a jacket. We are taking a water taxi to the Ice Palace in Cherry Grove.”

Chapter Thirty

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