28 Summers Page 27

  Cooper and Tish are talking to Ursula de Gournsey, and Cooper can tell Tish is a bit starstruck; Tish can’t believe Coop knows UDG and that the superstar congresswoman is attending their wedding! Tish is telling Ursula about their honeymoon to the Italian Riviera—Capri, Sorrento, Positano—which, like the wedding, is being paid for by Tish’s parents. She and Cooper are leaving in a few weeks.

  “At the end of August?” Ursula turns to Coop. “So does that mean you’re canceling on Jake this year?”

  “Canceling…what?” Tish says. She smiles at Coop, waiting for an explanation.

  Coop has no idea what Ursula is talking about. He and Jake do meet for the occasional beer at the Tombs, but only when Jake is in Washington. They have also subbed on each other’s company softball teams, though that was long ago.

  “Coop and Jake go to Nantucket every Labor Day weekend,” Ursula says. “It’s guys only, which is something you’ll come to appreciate after a while. Jake is always the nicest right after he gets back from the island. And you two have been doing it for…what? Thirteen, fourteen years?”

  Cooper has enough experience with relationships to just smile and nod.

  “Huh!” Tish says. “I didn’t know anything about this!”

  Nantucket every Labor Day weekend for thirteen or fourteen years? Exit—he needs an exit!

  Cooper chuckles. “We’ll talk about it later,” he tells his new wife. “Let’s get one more cocktail before we’re seated.”

  Nantucket every Labor Day weekend for thirteen or fourteen years? Meaning since…1993? Yes, that was the first time they went to Nantucket, for his bachelor-party weekend, right after Mallory inherited the house. That was the year he married Krystel. Krystel, ugh—Cooper can’t think about it, and he shouldn’t think about it. Krystel was two wives and five serious girlfriends ago.

  That first year, he’d left the same day he arrived, and then they’d returned the following year—was that on Labor Day weekend?—but other than that, Cooper had been to Nantucket only for his nephew’s first birthday. He feels guilty about not visiting more often but he’s been busy.

  Why would Ursula think that Cooper and Jake have been going to Nantucket every Labor Day weekend for the past however many years? Obviously, that’s what Jake has told her. Is Jake up to something? Has he fabricated a long-running lie to his wife, the person whom some people hail as “the smartest woman in America”?

  There must be another explanation, but Cooper won’t worry about it right now. It’s time to sit down to the Caesar salad. The General Warren Inne is famous for it, Tish says.

  Cooper has all but forgotten the conversation with Ursula but the newly minted Letitia Morgan Blessing has not. She brings it up over the tenderloin with Bordelaise and sweet-corn risotto.

  “You’re going to Nantucket over Labor Day weekend with Jake McCloud?” she says. “This is a thing you do? You might have thought to mention it. You do realize that’s only a couple days after we get back from Italy.” (Tish doesn’t want to quarrel during her wedding but Cooper has insisted on both of them being completely transparent in this relationship because he was so badly burned by his previous two wives—the first wife was a crack addict; the second was escaping an arranged marriage down in Uruguay. Tish can’t believe she is only now hearing about some bromance trip that Cooper takes every year. It’s weird, though, because Tish knows that Coop didn’t go to Nantucket last Labor Day weekend; they had spent that weekend in Bay Head, New Jersey, with her family. So what’s going on?)

  “I don’t go to Nantucket with Jake every year,” Coop says. “I mean, I have, but not in over a decade. I think Ursula is just mixed up.”

  (Really? Tish thinks. Ursula de Gournsey doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who gets mixed up.)

  Coop starts watching Jake. He’s sitting at table 4 with Ursula and Tish’s family friend Fred-from-San-Francisco and some friends of Tish’s from Vassar. Ursula is on her phone, texting, it looks like, which is vaguely insulting—but then again, she is running for the U.S. Senate, so she probably has urgent business, even on a Saturday evening in August. Jake rises from the table and heads to the bar where…Mallory is ordering a drink. The two of them talk; it looks like an intense conversation. Is it intense, or is Cooper just projecting? Jake and Mallory know each other; they’ve known each other since that first summer and knew of each other while Coop and Jake were in college. They’re friendly—so what?

  Mallory gets her wine. She heads back to table 2, where Brian Novak is waiting with his arm draped over the back of her chair.

  Cooper watches Jake’s eyes follow Mallory back to the table. Even once she’s sitting down, his gaze lingers. Cooper thinks: Mallory and Jake? Coop has a vision of the two of them slow-dancing at PJ’s however many years ago. That had been…a little strange, even unsettling, but the dance had ended and they’d returned to the table.

  Every Labor Day weekend on Nantucket for the past thirteen years.

  The next time Jake gets up—he’s heading toward the men’s room—Cooper follows him.

  “Be quick,” Tish says. “It’s almost time for the toasts.”

  Tish is very excited for the toasts—because who doesn’t like hearing other people say nice things about them?—though Cooper dreads the inevitable “Third time’s the charm” joke.

  “Nature calls,” he says. As he follows Jake to the men’s room, Cooper realizes that Jake and Mallory would have been left on Nantucket alone that first year because Fray had some crazy accident and Leland bailed, as Leland does. At the time he thought nothing of it. Then the second year, Cooper met Alison the flight attendant and ended up spending the entire weekend in her room at the Nantucket Inn, again leaving Jake and Mallory alone. He didn’t wonder about that then because…well, because he was in his twenties and woefully self-absorbed.

  Has Jake returned to Nantucket every year to…see Mallory? To…sleep with her? That must be wrong. Jake has always been with Ursula. They have a child. Furthermore, Mallory has a child, Link, whose father is Fray. That development was bizarre enough. There is nothing going on with Jake and Mallory. Coop should go back and sit down. He should check that Fray’s best-man toast doesn’t make any references to Coop’s previous marriages.

  But instead, Coop pushes into the men’s room.

  Jake is at the sink, hands on either side of it, staring into the mirror. He looks…agitated.

  “You okay, man?” Coop asks.

  Jake straightens. “Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s just…a lot.”

  “What’s a lot?” Cooper asks.

  “My life,” Jake says. “I don’t expect you to understand and I’m not going to bore you with the particulars.”

  “Speaking of particulars—” Cooper stops himself. He can’t ask Jake about it. But then again, he can’t not ask. “Does Mallory let you use her cottage on Labor Day weekend? Do you go every summer? Labor Day weekend?”

  “Did she tell you that?” Jake asks.

  “No,” Cooper says. “Ursula said something. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  He and Jake stare at each other. Cooper finds he’s shaking. Jake is Cooper’s role model and has been ever since Cooper picked him as a big brother in the fraternity so long ago. And Jake’s relationship with Ursula has been a paragon for Cooper; it’s what he’s been looking for all these years and what he has finally found with Tish. He doesn’t want to hear that it’s fatally flawed.

  “No,” Jake says. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  Later, after the first dances and all the garter and bouquet nonsense—Mallory doesn’t catch the bouquet and Coop overhears Kitty scolding Mallory for not even trying—Cooper corners his sister at the bar. The band is playing “Rock Lobster,” and Tish and her bridesmaids are going nuts on the dance floor, so Coop has a minute.

  “I want to bring Tish to Nantucket,” he says.

  “You should,” Mallory says.

  “What about Labor Day weekend?”

  “Won’t you
be in Italy?” she asks.

  “We get back the twenty-eighth.”

  “Don’t you have a job?” Mallory asks. Her voice is light. “You’re going on a two-week honeymoon, then you’re going to turn right around and come to Nantucket for the long weekend?”

  Cooper shrugs. “Why not?”

  “Doesn’t Tish have a job?” Mallory asks.

  “Just answer the question, Mal,” Cooper says. “Can Tish and I come up to Nantucket for Labor Day weekend?”

  Mallory takes a sip of her wine. Does she look guilty? Is she a homewrecker? A longtime serial homewrecker?

  “Labor Day isn’t great for me,” she says.

  “Really? How come?”

  “Bunch of reasons,” she says. “I like to prep for my first week of school. And Link comes back from Fray’s on that Monday, so over the weekend I clean his room, wash his sheets, sort through his toys, that kind of thing. Any other weekend would work, though.”

  “Sort through his toys?” Cooper says. “That’s the excuse you’re handing me?”

  Mallory bumps him with her shoulder. “Wait until you have kids,” she says. “Hey, best wedding so far.”

  A week before Thanksgiving Jake calls Cooper and asks if he wants to meet for a beer at the Tombs. Cooper wants to meet Jake very badly—because his marriage to Tish is over. The third time was not the charm; the third time was shorter than even the ill-fated first and second times. Cooper overheard Tish on the phone with her “family friend” Fred, who is not a family friend, it turns out, but an old boyfriend, and actually, not even an old boyfriend—when Cooper checked Tish’s cell phone, he found sixty-eight calls between the two over a ten-day span. Tish cried and begged for forgiveness when he confronted her. It was only an “emotional affair,” she said. She’d never slept with Fred. Well, okay, she’d slept with Fred once, but it wasn’t memorable. Actually, a handful of times. She had slept with Fred a bunch of times, but she wasn’t in love with him. She was in love with him but he lived in San Francisco. She was moving to San Francisco; she had accepted a position at the de Young Museum.

  Yes, Cooper wants to have a beer with his old friend Jake McCloud, but Cooper has a nagging suspicion that Jake and Mallory have some kind of arrangement, and, sorry, Cooper won’t collude. He isn’t able to cut Mallory out of his life, she’s his sister, but he can put his friendship with Jake on ice.

  “Sorry, man,” Cooper says. “I’m all jammed up.”

  Summer #16: 2008

  What are we talking about in 2008? Eliot Spitzer; Wisteria Lane, the New York Giants, Dancing with the Stars; the Beijing Olympics; the Kindle; Slumdog Millionaire; SoulCycle; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; Wii; Lehman Brothers, High School Musical; the global financial crisis; the election; “Who Would Ever Want to Be King?”

  Everyone is focused on who will be the next president of the United States. But not Mallory. She watches the election coverage—Wolf Blitzer on CNN because her beloved Tim Russert passed away in June—only to find out if Ursula de Gournsey unseats incumbent Indiana senator Thomas Castillo.

  Why, yes; yes, she does.

  Ursula de Gournsey—UDG—is a United States senator.

  Summer #17: 2009

  What are we talking about in 2009? Bernie Madoff; US Airways Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River; Springsteen Super Bowl; Somalian pirates; the Nook; Michael Jackson; Sonia Sotomayor; Twitter; barre class; Ted Kennedy; Dunder Mifflin; Tiger Woods; al-Qaeda; The Hangover; “Boom Boom Pow.”

  The older Jake gets, the more he realizes that very few situations are purely good or purely bad. Ursula wins her Senate seat, which initially seems purely good. She has launched herself onto an even larger platform, and she secures a coveted spot on the Judiciary Committee. She’s only forty-three years old; her future is bright.

  There’s a victory party in Washington held at the Willard Hotel, and all of the donors who gave above a certain level have been invited. Bess has been spared—she’s back at the condo with Prue—but Jake has to stand by his wife and thank every single person who comes through the line. Only about half of these people are from Indiana. The other half are Washington establishment and political operatives, people who use their money to buy influence.

  A big man in a double-breasted blazer comes through the line and Ursula murmurs, “Bayer Burkhart, the guy from Newport, and his wife, Dee Dee, in the pink. They’re friends with Vince and Caroline Stengel, remember?”

  Jake remembers Newport, the invitation that he declined because it was on Labor Day weekend, yes, but the who-knows-who-from-where has been lost. Obviously Jake knows Vince Stengel, the Rhode Island senator, but has he ever met the wife? He can’t remember. His brain has short-circuited when it comes to meeting people. He knows everybody he needs to know, and even that number can be whittled down to double digits. Low double digits.

  Still, Jake plays along. “Hello there, Mr. Burkhart.” He shakes the guy’s huge, powerful hand. “I’m Jake McCloud.”

  Bayer tilts his head like he has a crick in his neck. “Jake McCloud. I told your wife this already, but I feel like I’ve met you somewhere. Years ago. Your name is familiar. I’ll figure it out at some point.”

  Jake has never seen this guy before in his life. He laughs. “All right, Mr. Burkhart. Thank you for your support.”

  Bayer Burkhart holds on to Jake’s hand an instant longer than is socially acceptable—Jake has at least developed an instinct for this much—and he’s still looking at Jake strangely. He thinks he knows him from somewhere. Everyone wants a personal connection, Jake gets it, but come on. He extracts his hand.

  A little while later, there’s a familiar face in the line that Jake hasn’t seen in a long time. It’s Cody Mattis, the guy who tried to get Jake a lobbying job with the NRA. Cody has risen in the ranks there. Now he’s the number-two or number-three guy.

  But what is he doing here? “What is Cody Mattis doing here?” Jake asks Ursula. His voice is low but she can probably sense his concern. “You didn’t…Ursula, you didn’t take money from the NRA, did you?” If Cody Mattis is here, then the answer is yes. Even if Ursula didn’t accept money directly from the NRA, she took it from a dark-money source in bed with the NRA. For all Jake knows, Bayer Burkhart is the dark money.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Ursula says.

  “Later” is midnight in the condo. Bess is asleep; Prue has gone home after a long day. Jake goes into the dark bedroom, where Ursula is pretending to be asleep.

  “Your campaign accepted money from the NRA?” he says.

  “Don’t sound so self-righteous,” she says. “You were the one who lined up an interview to work for them.”

  “That was ten years ago, Ursula. And I canceled it.”

  “Because I told you to,” Ursula says.

  “No, because you told me about the shooting in Mulligan, and, using my own moral compass, I decided I didn’t want anything to do with the gun lobby.”

  “You’re sounding pretty sanctimonious,” Ursula says.

  “How much did you take from them?”

  “Seven hundred,” she says, then she clears her throat. “Seven fifty.”

  Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. “What did you have to promise them in exchange for that money, Ursula?”

  She sighs. “You and I both know that Indiana is a pioneer state. Hoosiers like their rifles. All I promised was that I wouldn’t vote to take them away or make them any harder to get.”

  “Rifles meaning AR-15s.”

  “Rifles meaning for hunting, Jake,” Ursula says. “Turkey, quail, rabbit, deer…”

  “Return it. Return the money.”

  “I can’t,” Ursula says. “They gave it to me, I spent it, I won. I can’t just return it like a sweater I’ve decided I don’t like.”

  Jake swallows. He has been with Ursula for nearly thirty years and he would have said he knew everything about her. But it turns out he doesn’t know her at all.

  “That Mulligan shooting,” J
ake says. “The kid, a seventeen-year-old, Ursula, bought the gun at Walmart and no one asked him for ID. Gun laws need to be tightened, not kept the same, and certainly not loosened.”

  “Can we just go to bed?” she says.

  “Return the money,” he says. “Or I’m leaving.”

  Ursula laughs indulgently, like he’s a little kid holding his breath. “Okay.”

  Jake sleeps in his study. He thinks about the media circus that will take place if he leaves Senator Ursula de Gournsey over a policy decision. They made a pact back when Ursula first ran for Congress that they would not bring politics into their home. They weren’t going to agree on everything; that was a given. Politics covers such a vast spectrum of issues that it’s unlikely any two Americans hold the exact same views; each person’s political DNA is unique, like biological DNA. Jake thinks gun control is a big deal that will keep getting bigger until some laws are passed. It’s feasible that, ten years from now, there will be mass shootings like the one in Mulligan happening every week.

  Ursula disagrees—maybe. Maybe she is siding with her constituents who hunt. Or maybe she is so blindly ambitious that she takes any cash she can get.

  Will Jake leave her?

  No.

  But he wants to.