Page 13 of The Book of Summer

“My wife!” he shouted, ranting, chucking golf balls at us both. “Get away from my wife!”

Playacting, a gag, a Topper special to the hilt. There isn’t a night so perfect my baby brother can’t ruin it with one of his tireless pranks.

“Get lost, creep!” I said as Topper ranted about his alleged wife—me—who was stepping out behind his back.

“It’s only my brother,” I then told Sam, who looked stricken and scared.

“But…” he sputtered, eyes jockeying back and forth between us.

“He’s easy to recognize, what with that gangly height, not to mention the blasted camera forever bobbing from his neck.”

“Gangly?” Topper said. “I prefer to think of myself as stately. Possessing an immaculate and powerful presence.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said with a snort.

“You two,” Sam grumbled. “I can’t fathom the depravity…”

Depravity? Forget the romance, now my beau was red-faced and cheesed.

“Oh, Sammy, everything’s fine,” I said. “You know Topper. He likes to play the fool. And he’s quite accomplished to that end.”

Topper lifted his camera. Click. Right in Sam’s face.

Well, you would’ve thought he walloped him upside the head. Sam unleashed a squall of curse words, then turned and stormed off down the beach.

“Swear to the dickens!” Sam called as he tromped away. “You two must’ve been raised in a zoo! A monkey exhibit! Someplace where a suitable evening can’t be had until someone throws his feces at a guest!”

My mouth fell open. Topper and I locked eyes. Then my brother collapsed into a fit of laughter on the damp sand.

Instead of following Sam, which would’ve been the shrewder course, I chewed out Topper something fierce. By the end of it, though, we were both in stitches. He does a spot-on impersonation of not only fake double-crossed husbands but also stupefied real-life boyfriends and feces-hurling primates. (Oh, Sam! If you ever read this, please forgive me! It’s only because you’re such a doll that I can excuse his boorish behavior in the first place.)

Alas I fear we might be done for, kaput, Sam and me. There is only so much Topper someone with manners can take. Though they were friends once, something happened about the time Sam left for Princeton. A lack of some understanding, as each of them tells it. Two different people, is what they mean. If either boy reads this, please clue a gal in. And set aside your differences for a person who loves you both.

In any case, I’ll insist my brother fix this situation. If he can’t, well, he’ll need to find me a new man since he’s the one who constantly chases them away. If I ever hope to get married, I should probably keep that particular monkey in his cage.

Yours sincerely,

Ruby Young

7

Sunday Morning

Bess sets the Book of Summer back onto the table.

“I can’t imagine Grandma Ruby making a joke about feces,” she says with a chuckle. “I just can’t. She’s too civilized for that.”

“Really the joke was more my father’s,” Cissy says. “And Topper’s. But your grandmother was not short of moxie.”

“Self-controlled moxie,” Bess says. “It’s funny. Ruby always called Topper by his real name. So there is Robert, or Topper, and Grandpa Sam. Her other brother P.J.”

“Walter, too,” Cissy says. “He was the middle brother who died as a teen.”

“For a ‘house of women’ there sure were a lot of dudes.”

Cissy gives a halfhearted smirk.

“Well, the dudes they come,” she says, eyes cast toward the floor. “And they go.”

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