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“I’m fine, Mummy, thanks.”
“He’s hungover,” growled Teddy.
“Lovely service.” Michael forced a pious smile, but Teddy wasn’t buying it.
“Please. Pull the other one. I can smell the booze on your breath from here.”
In his regulation corduroy trousers, sport jacket, and brogues—Teddy De Vere wore the same clothes to church ev
ery Sunday of the year, and saw no reason to change because he happened to be in America, or because the temperature was nudging well into the nineties—Michael’s father was like Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey, as English as PG Tips tea and cucumber sandwiches. If Disneyland had an England theme park, Teddy De Vere could have been one of the characters.
Alexia winked at Michael. “Hungover or not, we’re glad you made it, darling. Aren’t we, Teddy?”
“Humph.”
“Now we must go and say hello to Father Timothy. We’ll see you two at dinner tonight.”
“Dinner?” Michael frowned.
“At the Meyers’,” said Alexia, kissing him on the cheek and wiping off a lipstick mark with her handkerchief. “Drinks are at six.”
“No kiss for me?” Roxie said sarcastically.
Alexia yawned. “Do change the record, Roxanne. I wonder sometimes if you have any idea how boring you can be.”
“Bitch,” muttered Roxie under her breath as her mother walked away.
Michael winced. He hated the conflict between his mother and sister more than anything. Pushing Roxanne’s wheelchair across the street to the Even Keel coffee shop, a favorite hangout since their teens, he bought her a conciliatory frappucino.
“I suppose you’re going to defend her now, are you?” said Roxie.
“No. I’m going to keep out of it.”
“You and Dad are as bad as each other. You never stand up to her.”
“I seriously don’t know if I can make it to the Meyers’ drinks party this evening,” said Michael, adroitly changing the subject. “My head feels like someone dropped an anvil on it.”
“Yes, well, I’ll drop an anvil on it if you abandon me tonight. You can’t leave me to cringe through hours of Mummy’s boasting on my own: G7 Summit this, Ten Downing Street that. Lucy Meyer lapping it all up like a poodle. Blech.”
Michael frowned but said nothing.
“Summer’s flying in specially for it, you know,” Roxie teased. “I know you wouldn’t want to miss her.”
Michael rolled his eyes to heaven. Summer Meyer had been his and Roxie’s childhood playmate. She’d always had a quiet but burning crush on Michael. Shy even as a little girl, as a teenager poor Summer had gained a huge amount of weight. The last time Michael saw her, she must have been seventeen, weighed around a hundred and eighty pounds, and was so silent in his presence she was borderline autistic. The thought of sitting through a four-hour dinner trying to make polite conversation with a sweet but mute Rosie O’Donnell look-alike was stomach churning. And Michael De Vere’s stomach was already churning.
“If I come, will you make Dad put me back in the will?”
Roxie laughed. “No. But if you don’t come, when I have all the family money and you’re completely financially dependent on me, I’ll send you to the workhouse.”
“Fine. I’ll come. But I am not sitting next to Summer Meyer and that’s final.”
“Michael. You’re sitting there. Next to Summer. If she ever gets here.”
Lucy Meyer pointed to an empty chair on Michael’s right. Roxie De Vere collapsed into giggles, earning herself a death stare from Michael. Talk about the hot seat! On Michael’s left sat Vangie Braberman, the tone-deaf widow of Senator Braberman, who owned one of the smaller cottages on the Pilgrim Farm estate. Vangie was in her late seventies and had a complex series of ailments that provided her with inexhaustible conversational material. Michael De Vere had known her since his childhood, and at this point probably knew as much as Vangie Braberman’s doctor about the old lady’s irritable bowel syndrome, and certainly more than he wanted to. Vangie refused to wear a hearing aid, but carried an ear trumpet that had once belonged to her grandmother, which made her look like something out of a Victorian picture book. She was fond of hitting young people with it if they insisted on mumbling, something that, according to Vangie, Michael’s generation did “CONSTANTLY!”
On Michael’s right, an empty chair sat reserved for Summer Meyer. In the faintest wisp of a silver lining to the cloud currently looming over Michael’s head, Summer’s plane had been delayed out of Boston, so he’d be spared her shy, burning stares for the first course at least. But she was expected to arrive in time for dessert. If Michael’s memory served, no force on earth could keep Summer Meyer away from a good dessert. The prospect of Lucy’s tiramisu would be enough to have her swimming across the sound from Boston. The first whale sighted off the Vineyard this summer.
Meanwhile Summer’s mother, Lucy, trim and pretty in a plain white shirtwaist dress and raffia wedgies, was on her feet, relishing her role as hostess. Lucy Meyer had a motherly, nurturing way about her that Michael’s own mother had always lacked, but she also managed to keep herself in great shape. As a boy, Michael used to fancy Lucy Meyer as the ultimate yummy mummy. He was pleased to see that she hadn’t changed.
