My Short Story, "In the Hamptons."

 

Copyright Glo Lewis 9/27/2023

 

Dear Readers of My Blog, 💚

 

I have decided to share my short story, “In the Hamptons” with you. This is a work of fiction; it is not a memoir. Here is the story below (As usual, God bless, and I'll be in touch soon):

 

 

In the Hamptons

Copyright Glo Lewis 9/27/2023

 

 

   In 1966, I was a brash cub reporter with a knack for snappy prose. I covered Liza Rae’s story for The Times, in May of that year. She had lost her mind and staggered into the Atlantic Sea, ragged and half-mad at sixteen.

   Liza Rae grew up rich. She gave birth to her son, Zachary, in 1963, when she was thirteen. These two statements seem at odds because privilege has the expectation of propriety. But I am telling you the truth.

   Her family lived in Montauk, at the end of Long Island, New York, in the Hamptons, a glittering crown of windswept real estate where royals broker realms of power that are unreachable by most of us. Still, we think that we know this other world of tony neighborhoods and spoiled children. “We embrace our stereotypes of these Americans,” I wrote in The Times as follows: “Oh boo hoo: Poor little rich girl gets a comeuppance. It’s all very pedestrian. What’s new?” I queried rhetorically. “So it begs the question, why don’t we care about these kids? Why do we assume that their parents’ wealth and cachet will make them whole, that money will substitute for love?” I wrote. Did anyone care? I wondered. My exposé, which I stand by, languished in the back of the “Living” section, but here it is, partially excerpted:

    

   Her parents own a refurbished 1900’s traditional home that sits on nine acres of land that overlooks Gardiner’s Island and the surrounding bays. They can see almost to Connecticut on a cloudless day. They possess 271 feet of secluded beach below their rustic staircase, where she swam and fished when she was little. Their 15,000 square-foot-estate has 10 bedrooms with highly polished dark mahogany furniture, 13 bathrooms, two levels of blue stone decking, a circular driveway, and a spectacular swimming pool where her parents’ bejeweled friends glitter, and breezily coo over cocktails with the easy display of power purchased with the paws of lions and with as much ferocity. They are snotty, and so are their friends. They do charitable deeds when they can, but there is no reason to overdo it because the future already belongs to them-- the torch of making it in this rarefied world is lit and passed to them every day as though light runs through their veins rather than blood.

   Liza’s parents, both trust fund babies, work long hours in real estate together and are heavily invested in the stock and bond markets and have deep ties to politicians who will do their bidding on a quid pro quo basis. They are tough, tired, and tenacious. Her father prints a note, writing with the tip of his finger, in the thin ocean dust atop the stereo or the TV console in between the three house cleaners’ visits stating, “Please dust me.” Her sister, Wild, and she, generally ignore the note.

   Wild, who is two years older than Liza, is also taller and thinner. Her hair is bleached blond and stylishly short like their mother’s, and she wears expensive red lipstick on her beautiful, exotic face and European perfumes on her neck to excite the boys. She is 15 and an American princess, and Liza is 13 and a baby beauty still in training on her feminine wiles to eventually capture a well-soled lawyer, doctor, or stockbroker to continue the chain of green money.

   They often invite friends over after school, but especially for pool parties in the summer. When they were younger, occasionally they would have an older boy drive them to the Montauk Yacht Club where their family yacht is moored. They enjoyed going aboard, pulling the bar key from its hidden location in the galley, and helping themselves to the liquor. During those times, they got stinking drunk and laughed uproariously about trivialities in the way that foolish children do when they play at being grownups. Yet, they tried to be smart and savvy too. They knew some limits, such as when to go home, because they were accustomed to the absence of parents and to raising themselves. They went to prep schools and were groomed for the Ivy League from day one. Naturally, they had all been to Europe at various times, and most of them were fluent in either French or German and spoke some Spanish as well from sunny kitchen chats with the Hispanic help. Still, in all this advantage, they lacked the essential ingredient of authentic parental love. They were on their own-- little ships setting sail on swelling seas in the big water without benefit of a rudder, huddling against the elements in their many-colored coats of international cachet.

   Miles showed up at their yacht one bright summer day accompanied by Wild’s boyfriend, Blue, who has eyes like the waters of the Caribbean, and some other friends from school. Miles was fifteen then and a sleek young man. Liza was twelve and still played with her Barbie dolls occasionally, but she liked Miles immediately. He smiled shyly and strode toward her, very tan and with one hand in the pocket of his tennis shorts, with the show of relaxed confidence that distinguished all of them. Liza wanted to touch his thick brown hair and stand within the circle of his arms. She wore pink lipstick and Chanel perfume, and her straight brown hair swayed at her waist. She flounced around him in a tight white dress with polka dots, trying to get his attention. Wild introduced them: “My sister, Liza: Miles. Miles: Liza.”

   Miles and she ended up making out past the sultry sunset, but it was okay because Blue was 16, and he could drive them home in his convertible Cadillac before their parents returned from their exhausting day of work at 9:00 or 10:00 PM in the service of the never-ending love of money.

   It was a few months before Liza knew that she was pregnant. Wild had to enlighten her. She was clueless. She was a kid with a kid within her.

   “You’re a little tramp and we’re going to treat you like one!” her father shouted, pushing his eyeglasses onto his bald head, his eyes bulging with rage-- hard and dark as a beetle’s shell. “You’ll be shipped to a Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers in Kansas City, Missouri, where you’ll have that baby, give it up for adoption, and then we’ll get on with our lives. As far as anyone will know, you’re studying in Paris this year!”

   Her mother paced the hardwood floor of the dining room, orange lipstick a smear on the grim gash of her mouth. She ran her hands through her short, blond hair, the many facets of her diamond rings forcing a rainbow of prisms to skate around the sunlit room.

“Yes, it’s for the best. How could you do this to me?” she wanted to know.

   When Liza’s son, Zachary, was born, she could not look at him. She covered her face with her hands in shame, but before they were to take him away, the nurse brought him to her. It was customary to let the mothers hold and feed their babies one time before they said good-bye to them. Liza fed Zachary his bottle and looking into his cherub face, she fell in love with her son. She knew then that she could not give him up, so holding him in her arms, she glided quickly along the sterile tiled walls and down the long corridors until she was outside of the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers. She hurried past the well-tended verdant lawns down a long pathway toward the residential neighborhood beyond. Alas, a nurse saw her and gave chase. Eventually, she caught up with her, and they returned to the home. Liza clung to Zachary until the staff had to call her parents, who, bristling with irritation and frustration flew to Missouri to see her with the newborn. “I’m keeping my son,” Liza said when they had settled onto the lemony yellow vinyl sofa in the visiting room.

   Her father moved his hand as though he had the impulse to strike her, but her mother threw her arm in front of him. “We’ll send her to Aunt Thelma’s in Connecticut,” she said.

   When Liza arrived with her baby at Aunt Thelma and Uncle Buddy’s home in Connecticut, Uncle Buddy, who hailed from the aristocratic South, wasted no time in setting her straight. “You’re a disgrace to this family. Your father tells me you show no remorse and are intent upon keeping that child.” He shimmied his pants up higher on his ample belly as though readying himself for a fight in which he would be comfortable.

   “He’s my son!” Liza cried, cradling Zachary in his little baby blue blanket-- a courtesy of the Florence Crittenton Home.

   “Your son can stay with the Wilsons over yonder. We have already made the arrangements. Don’t give me any of your foolishness; that’s gone on long enough!”

   Aunt Thelma whispered hoarsely, “It’s done now, dear. You can see him often if you like.” Liza allowed Aunt Thelma, tired and gray-haired, to take Zachary out of her arms-- a thing for which she can’t forgive herself.

   For almost three years, Liza scrambled across the fields every day after school, arriving breathless at the Wilson’s, and knocking on their door to see her little son.

   “See the trees, Zachary?” She pointed to the nearby woods. It was autumn. She picked up a leaf. “This one is red,” she said.

   “Ooo,” Zachary cooed. “Red.” He tried to put the leaf into his mouth, but Liza held onto it and gave him a kiss on the hand, she recalls.

   “Yes! Red,” she said, delighted.

   When he was almost three, Liza arrived home from school one afternoon and observed her son toddling unsupervised down the grade of the Wilsons’ land toward the woods that, she saw with astonishment, were on fire. “Zachary! Zachary!” she shouted as she charged through the line of overgrown grass of the neighboring field toward her son. As she got closer to Zachary, she could hear him.

   “Red. Red,” he said, pointing at the intense fire raging far below in the trees.

   “Zachary! Zachary, no! Zachary, no! Come to Mommy!” she screamed, rushing toward her boy.

   Zachary turned and began to run toward her but suddenly lost his footing and tumbled rapidly down the hillside. The flames crackled amidst the smoke and churned with heat that was intense as molten rubies. Her son landed at the bottom of the hill as a tree exploded. Liza watched in horror as the fire consumed her baby.

   Afterward, still in shock, Liza held up like a dutiful soldier for a while. She understood the expectation to not make a scene. Her head hung low in a funereal black veil, she attended Zachary’s memorial service with Aunt Thelma and the Wilson family, while Uncle Buddy begged off in favor of business calls.

   Shortly, her parents sent for her, and she flew home to Montauk in the family’s private jet. Her father greeted her with a pat on the back, and in anticipation of her upcoming sixteenth birthday-- the gift of a red Porsche 912. Mr. Vanderport, an elderly neighbor, hastened to admire the car, and tapped the tires with his cane. “Your kids have everything,” he chided.

   Liza’s father grinned, rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at her. “Yeah, they’re spoiled, aren’t they? Don’t lack for a thing.” He winked, and both men laughed.

   Not long after that, when she turned sixteen, Liza sped away in her new car.

   It was my day off. I was walking the beach in my frayed cutoff jeans and sandals, collecting interesting shells. I looked up from my wet, sand-muddied fingers and my sack with conch and nautilus just as Liza hurtled the Porsche onto the beach from a nearby bluff. She ran from the vehicle, splashing with an almost drunken abandon into the foaming water. Off-balance and half falling, she wailed into the pulse of the place and the roar of the sea, possessed by fury, tearing at her clothes. The wind lashed her long hair like a kite streamer, exposing the raw pain in her profile. Awash in tears, her face was a portrait in agony. Gulls screeched overhead like crazy-making clouds. I plopped through the sea and sand toward her, extended my wet hand, and shouted over the roaring ocean, “Miss, may I help you?”  

   She pushed me away, flung her arms in every direction, and screamed, “Get away! Get away from me! All of you. Everyone. I just want everyone to get away from me!” She fell into the surf, screaming and struggling with an unnamed demon, moaning and sobbing, the waves lapping over her as she writhed like a current in the saltwater.

   After a short while, paramedics arrived, apparently called by an observer. Amid the turmoil, I tried to interview her, which was impossible, and in retrospect, selfish of me.

   They hospitalized her for three weeks. As a journalist, I had a source, and I monitored her progress. When she could have visitors, I went to see her, bearing Belgian chocolates, jellied candies, California oranges, and Washington apples, all delivered to my home by my order. To my delight, she was open and candid. It helped, I think, that I’m not hard to look at, what you’d call a not-bad-looking guy. I’ll admit that I charmed her a little to get her story. But that’s what I write-- human interest. It’s a living. You readers expect that from me-- admit it. It was a relevant story, wasn’t it? A broken, deserted, tortured girl, her beached Porsche, the ragged wind, and churning sea becoming the climactic venue for her sorrow. Do we care about this girl whose baby died so tragically? Do we have any sympathy for her? Maybe we do, but only for a second. Because we know that after the tears, she will still have all that emerald currency-- that filthy lucre, whereas after our own despair, we’ll just have more tears. Thus, in that second when we care, it occurs to me, maybe then we are a tiny part of that closed community called “The Hamptons.”    

 

 

The End