Chapter One ONE Sunrise Highway opened up in front of the green MG roadster, and with her hands gripping the steering wheel perforated with tiny supple leather dots, Everleigh hollered to Roland, "Is this thing a car--or a rocket?" He didn''t hear over the roar of the roadway, and she zipped the convertible forward, racing by dry, dusty potato farms, charging for Southampton, that exclusive enclave of old money, a charmer of a town on the Atlantic Ocean that sat about thirty-three miles from the eastern tip of Long Island. She couldn''t believe how the car could catch the horizon on these wide-open roads. She glanced at Roland in the passenger seat, who was pretending to play guitar to the notes of Chuck Berry''s "Roll Over Beethoven." "Should I go faster?" she hollered, this time louder. Roland nodded her on with a mischievous grin, and she felt a jolt, some kind of electric shock in her reflexes, and she pushed down on the accelerator. The speedometer read eighty miles an hour. Wisps of her dark hair blew out of the gingham headscarf she''d tied about her neck, and she gripped the steering wheel tighter, cursing her parents for forbidding her from learning how to drive, how they said it wasn''t a proper pastime for well-bred Manhattan girls. Which was why, in a rare act of rebellion, Everleigh paid their Upper East Side building''s doorman five dollars in secret to teach her anyway.
They went out together once a week, and then she''d borrow his car sometimes, for an extra five. Later, after she''d been driving for a few years, she''d begged her father for one of those new two-toned pink-and-white Dodge La Femme models that came with a pink jacquard-printed shoulder bag and umbrella to match the car''s interiors. But all two-hundred pounds of him shooed her out of his law office on the tenth floor of Thirty-First and Madison, exasperated that the family had a private car service and she didn''t want to use it. Well, now she had a fiancé''s car to drive. As the slick two-seater raced over the Shinnecock Canal, the water''s color mimicking the blue of her favorite sapphire ring, the farms turned to forests then back to farms, and Roland began yelling at her to slow down. She had to turn right--"Right now," he yelled--and she managed the sudden angle, the car emitting a resounding screech, catching air and bouncing down on the shiny blacktop. All six feet of her fiancé slammed down alongside her in the passenger seat. "Take it easy, Lee--I actually need this car.
You know, to get around in." He stretched out his tanned arm and rubbed the back of her neck where her garnet necklace clasped. She imagined that as a boy his hands gripped the gear shifts of the cars at his parents'' Detroit automotive factories as child''s play and, later, when he was a teenager, how he must have stared out at the assembly line and dreamed of building a speedster of his own. Curious that he lost all interest in the family business at the age of twenty. He liked to tell people that he might be a Whittaker, but he was not a Sovereign, the company''s fanciest sedan, which Everleigh had seen Princess Grace step out of in Life magazine. "Roland Whittaker, I''ve done everything I''m supposed to do in this life of mine, from earning straight As and running the high school charity ball to landing one of Manhattan''s most eligible bachelors. Now please, let me have my fun." She noted his aviator sunglasses, how his slick of light hair was blowing up off his baby face.
He wore a simple white T-shirt, sleeves rolled over his modest biceps. Just then, the speeding car hit a pothole, and it felt like one of their tires was swallowed whole. "Your father will kill me if he finds out you''ve been driving my car without a license." He smirked, but she was forced to brake hard rather than return the gesture. A horse trailer pulled in front of them, the smell of manure so strong that Everleigh pinched her nose. They were truly in the country. "Well, Daddy doesn''t have to know." She wished they were back on the highway, where she didn''t have to think much about details, surviving on instinct and adrenaline alone.
"When are you going to tell me what we''re doing out here?" His mouth turned up, showing off his fresh shave--Roland was always meticulously groomed--and his whole face glowed like stars, the way it did whenever he had some big idea he wanted to spring on her. Already that afternoon, a week after their June engagement party, a year after they met, he''d surprised her with a telephone call, telling her to pack her bathing suit and several changes of clothes for the weekend. They''d pulled out of her parents'' Upper East Side garage to the bleating horns of yellow cabs for a weekend in Southampton. "Souse-hampton," as Roland liked to joke, since residents at the fabled summer colony were known for their spirited parties. Everleigh loved Roland''s impulses, the ones where they got in the car and just went, figuring out the details later. They gave her a sense of freedom she''d rarely felt as a debutante. Roland scratched at his temple, acting perplexed. "Wasn''t this drive all your idea?" "Roland!" She glanced in the rearview mirror, relieved her lips were still the color of fire engines, and, out of the corner of her eye, saw him smiling.
"We promised each other no secrets, and this is starting to feel like a secret." Everleigh always thought it a silly promise though; of course she had secrets. After a childhood dressed in stiff formal dresses and elephantine bows, her parents parading her through the Plaza''s marble-and-crystal lobby to reach their three-bedroom suite (the apartment her parents snatched up two years after the war), Everleigh savored any night that she and Whitney changed into trousers and talked over martinis at a no-frills bar in the Village. A place where no one knew their names or their parents'' names or where they attended school or what their addresses were. It was exhilarating to experience the city anonymously; she sometimes attended free photography lectures or slipped into the Paris Theater across from her apartment, eating a bucket of popcorn alone. These outings were her secrets to keep, and anyway, she knew Roland and her parents would judge them as unconventional, if not entirely improper. The car began driving rough, like it was trudging through mud, and she and Roland met eyes with concern. He leaned his torso out the window to get a look.
"We have a flat, Lee. Let''s go as far as we can." "I thought we didn''t have a destination," she toyed. She steered the car on to Southampton Village''s Main Street. It was dusk, and fashionable couples strolled the bricked, tree-lined sidewalks, some eating outdoors at the Buttery, the biggest crowd at a place called Bowden Square. "The owner, Herb McCarthy, is a hoot, a former Brooklyn Law grad turned restaurateur," Roland told her. "You won''t get a better steak or a better joke than at Herb''s. I''ll take you there.
" He kissed her cheek, and she blew him a kiss in return, her eyes wide with wonder at the sight of a clerk in a suit and pumps locking fancy Saks Fifth Avenue''s double doors. Roland caught her surprise and chuckled. "It''s not really the country out here." Air hissed from the tire, and the car began to pull to one side. She drove slowly through a lovely neighborhood of imposing houses and parked where Roland told her to, in front of a shingled manse with a large portico out front. "We can walk from here," he said. "I''ll deal with the tire later." "Walk where?" Everleigh unstuck the cotton of her white collared dress from the backs of her knees.
She let Roland grab their suitcases, one leather handle in each of his hands. "Come on. I want to show you something," Roland said. A Ford Thunderbird with wood paneling on the side slowed to a stop, and inside, a gentleman about their age, wearing a stethoscope and a shine of dark hair, leaned toward the passenger window, unrolling it. "Hi, buddy," the young man said, as if he knew them. "You need some help?" On the breast pocket of his white coat, embroidered in red thread, was his name: "Dr. Brightwell." Everleigh immediately blamed his friendliness (or was it nosiness?) on small-town life; as if anyone in the city would care if someone was stuck on the street.
Roland leaned into the open window. "Just a flat, Doc. We''ll come back for it." "You sure? I got a jack in the trunk." The doctor''s car idled, puffing gray smoke from the tailpipe. "It''s okay--we live right around the corner." Everleigh took a step back. "We do?" The young doctor smiled.
"It''s going to be hard to get a mechanic out to the summer colony tonight. Unless you have one on staff." Roland put his hands on his hips, flipping his hair off his face. "Maybe I can borrow one from Mr. Ford. He''s on Gin Lane, isn''t he?" "Well, his son is here, Henry Ford II," the doctor said. "A lovely man." "The Fords live near here?" Everleigh had heard about Halcyon Lodge and its modernist cube-like addition, a glass box designed by Phillip Johnson, but she''d only seen a photo in the Post .
Roland shushed her, and when the stranger drove off, Roland offered Everleigh his arm, hooking hers inside. "Shall we," he said. There was a long row of elm trees on either side of the gracious street, several driveways leading to several more summer "cottages," although it was a hoot to call them that when they probably had six or seven bedrooms, maybe more. She untied her headscarf, setting free her shoulder-length.