Bart nods. Affair. Prostitution ring. Jail. He knows he should be shocked, but if anyone has a family with weirder stories than Allegra, it’s Bart Quinn.
“But your parents are still together?” Bart asks. “They survived?”
“They are,” Allegra says. “They did. My mom didn’t come tonight because she’s volunteering at Academy Hill. Handing out candy.”
“My parents are still together too,” Bart says. “And my mother had an affair.” Here he shakes his head. He eyes the bottle of tequila but drinks his beer instead. “With this guy named George who came to our inn every year to play Santa Claus.”
This makes Allegra laugh. As it should. Because it’s absurd. Apparently, while Bart was away, Kelley and Mitzi separated. Mitzi moved with George to Lenox, Massachusetts. And Kelley entertained thoughts of getting back together with Margaret, his first wife. But love won out in the end—that’s what Mitzi said when she explained it all to Bart. She said she wanted to tell Bart everything so that there were no secrets in the family. But honestly, Bart feels like he wouldn’t have minded if Kelley and Mitzi had kept all of that a secret forever. Mitzi and George—ick! And it had been going on all the years that Bart was growing up, even back when Bart believed that George was Santa Claus.
“My siblings are fine,” Bart concedes. “They’re my half siblings, the children of my father and Margaret Quinn, the news anchor.”
Allegra nods like she gets it, but she may be too young to know who Margaret Quinn is. Only old people watch the news on TV.
“Patrick and Kevin are married with kids,” Bart says. He thinks about informing Allegra that Patrick has also been to jail recently, but why not save some surprises for the second date? “Ava teaches music in New York City. She’s still single, but she’s dating some guy. A professor.”
“Your sister was my music teacher in fifth grade,” Allegra says.
Bart laughs. “She was?” he says. “Too bad for you.”
Tequila shot #3:
He’s trying to decide if Allegra might be a person to whom he can confide everything. She has good listening skills, and she seems to have a fair amount of emotional depth, more than one would expect from a beautiful nineteen-year-old. Girls who look like Allegra have life unfold easily. They get what they want. They don’t hit roadblocks. Allegra seems to have a few demons of her own, although they are nothing compared with Bart’s. She’s never been out of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She is, in essence, him before he joined the Marines.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Bart asks. Here he is, all but proposing to the girl, and he hasn’t even checked if she’s available. Girls as pretty as Allegra always have boyfriends, he reasons. But then again, if she had a boyfriend, would she have agreed to come outside with him?
“Had,” she says. “Until recently. Hunter Bloch. You know him?”
“Ugh,” Bart says. “Yes.” Hunter Bloch was two years ahead of Bart in high school. He was a hockey player and his father had money, two factors that made Bart steer clear of the guy. “Until how recently?”
“We dated for four months,” Allegra says. “I found out a couple of days ago that he was cheating on me.”
Bart whistles. “Idiot.”
Allegra executes her cute little bow again.
“Maybe his stupid mistake is my good fortune?” Bart says.
Allegra tilts her head. “Maybe.”
Is it the tequila taking control of his brain, or is she actually the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on? “I haven’t dated anyone since high school,” he says. “I mean, before I deployed, there were girls… one-night stands.”
Allegra says, “I would expect nothing less.”
“Then I was held prisoner for two years,” Bart says. “I watched half of my buddies…”
“Bart,” she says. She steps closer to him and takes his hand.
Kiss her, he thinks. Does he remember how? He leans in. His lips meet hers, softly, so softly.
Yes, he remembers how.
KELLEY
Mitzi is a social butterfly. A papillon. Kelley watches her from his wheelchair. He and Lara are stationed at one of the central tables, where he can feel like part of the action without having to do much. Mitzi gave up her fanciful notion of wearing the gold roller-disco jumpsuit—thank heavens, as it no longer exists—and instead chose a flowing purple gown with diaphanous sleeves that look like wings. Her wild, curly hair frames her face. Her cheeks are pink with excitement. She flits from group to group, grasping hands, leaning in to ask questions about this person’s new job, that person’s aging mother. How does she keep track of it all? Kelley wonders. One of the things that has come to him with age is a narrowing of the periscope; he cares, now, only about his family. But Mitzi, of course, is young and healthy, she thrives on interaction, and since they closed the inn, her world has shrunken considerably.
Kelley wonders if, perhaps, she is anxious for him to hurry up and depart already, so she can get on with her life.
What a maudlin thought! And unfounded! Whenever Mitzi moves from group to group, she seeks out Kelley’s eyes, waves, and blows a kiss.
Kelley tries to take inventory of the rest of his family. The band has started playing, and Kevin and Isabelle are the first ones out to dance. They’re good, too, fluid and elegant, like the dancers in one of those movies Kelley’s mother used to love. Frances Quinn was a sucker for Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and for the large-scale productions of Show Boat and Silk Stockings. She loved a man in a white dinner jacket. When Kelley got married to Margaret, Kelley and his brother, Avery, and all the groomsmen wore white dinner jackets to the rehearsal dinner as a surprise for Frances. The photographer took a picture of all of them surrounding Frances. If Kelley is remembering correctly, that was the happiest Frances had ever looked.
Frances Quinn would have loved Isabelle, Kelley is certain. She is classing up the Quinn bloodline. Even at two years old, Genevieve babbles in French; she can count to ten and recite the days of the week. She calls Kelley Grand-père and Mitzi Grand-mère. Margaret is Mimi.
Where is Margaret? Kelley wonders. He doesn’t see her.
Ava is standing at the bar talking to Mrs. Gabler, Bart’s kindergarten teacher. Ava is a saint.
Paddy and Jennifer are sitting and eating, although Paddy is on his phone and Jennifer has a faraway, distracted look on her face. Are they okay? Kelley wonders. They have weathered a couple of big storms recently—Patrick’s incarceration, Jennifer’s addiction to pills—but Kelley thought the ship had righted itself. They don’t look miserable, just not as happy and carefree as Kevin and Isabelle.
Where is Bart, the guest of honor? Come to think of it, Kelley hasn’t seen Bart all night. But since Mitzi doesn’t seem to be worried, Kelley isn’t worried. Although it must be nearly time to cut the cake—ice cream cake from the Juice Bar, a tradition—so Bart had better turn up. Just as Kelley thinks this, the side door opens and Bart walks into the party, holding hands with a Japanese geisha girl.
Dear Lord, Kelley thinks. Is this girl a…? Did Mitzi arrange for a…? Did Kevin and Patrick, maybe, as a joke, hire a… stripper dressed as a geisha?
Mitzi sees Bart and the geisha, swoops them up in her purple wings, and ushers them toward Kelley. No, not toward Kelley, toward the round table that holds the ice cream cake festooned with twenty-two candles, plus eighteen extra candles, one for each of the soldiers in Bart’s platoon who perished. That was at Bart’s request, his insistence.
Lara turns Kelley in his chair so he has a good view of the cake. Jennifer and Patrick stand up, Ava breaks away from Mrs. Gabler, and the band finishes its song. Kevin leads Isabelle off the dance floor. Mitzi lights the candles, and Ava clinks a spoon against a glass. The crowd quiets and people gather around the table in a loose ring.
Bart is still holding hands with the geisha. Kelley is confused. Who is it?
“Who is that?” Kelley asks Lara, but his voice is drowned out when the band launches into “Happy Birthday,” and Lara wouldn’t know anyway, would she? Lara lays a hand on Kelley’s shoulder as everyone starts to sing.