Beatriz Williams - A Hundred Summers - The ultimate romantic escapist beach read

Budgie begins to clap her hands, and so do I, sharp slaps like a metronome. I’m watching the field, all right, but not Graham. My eyes are trained on the white number 9 in the middle of the line of green jerseys. He stands right behind the fellow in the center, with his head raised. He’s shouting something, and I can hear his sharp bark all the way up here, ten rows deep in cheering spectators.

Just like that, the men burst free. Nick Greenwald pedals backward from the line, with the ball in his hands, and I wait for Graham to run up, wait for Nick to hand the ball to Graham, the way Budgie said he would.

But Graham doesn’t run up.

Nick hovers there for an instant, examining the territory ahead, his feet performing a graceful dance on the ragged turf, and then his arm draws back, snaps forward, and the ball shoots from his fingertips to soar in a true and beautiful arc above the heads of the other players and down the length of the field.

I strain on my toes, lifted by the roar of the crowd around me as I follow the path of the ball. On and on it goes, a small brown missile, while the field runs green and white in a river of men, flowing down to meet it.

Somewhere at the far end of that river, a pair of hands reaches up and snatches the ball from the sky.

The crash of noise is instantaneous.

“He’s got it! He’s got it!” yells the boy on Budgie’s other side, flinging the rest of his Hershey bar into the air.

“Did you see that!” shouts someone behind me.

The Dartmouth man flies forward with the ball tucked under his arm, into the white-striped rectangle at the end of the field, and we are hugging one another, screaming, hats coming loose, roasted nuts spilling from their paper bags. A cannon fires, and the band kicks off with brassy enthusiasm.

“Wasn’t that terrific!” I yell, into Budgie’s ear. The noise around us rings so intensely, I can hardly hear myself.

“Terrific!”

My heart smacks against my ribs in rhythm with the band. Every vessel of my body sings with joy. I turn back to the stadium floor, holding the brim of my hat against the bright sun, and look for Nick Greenwald and his astonishing arm.

At first, I can’t find him. The urgent flow and eddy of men on the field has died into stagnation. A group of green jerseys gathers together, one by one, near the original line of play, as if drawn by a magnet. I search for the white number 9, but in the jumble of digits it’s nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps he’s already gone back to the benches. That hard profile does not suggest a celebratory nature.

Someone, there in that crowd of Dartmouth jerseys, lifts his arm and waves to the sideline.

Two men dash out, dressed in white. One is carrying a black leather bag.

“Oh, no,” says the boy on Budgie’s right. “Someone’s hurt.”

Budgie wrings her hands together. “Oh, I hope it’s not Graham. Someone find Graham. Oh, I can’t look.” She turns her face into the shoulder of my cardigan.

I put my arm around her and stare at the throng of football players. Every head is down, shaking, sorrowful. The huddle parts to accept the white-clothed men, and I catch a glimpse of the fellow lying on the field.

“There he is! I see his number!” shouts the Hershey boy. “Twenty-two, right there next to the man down. He’s all right, Budgie.”

“Oh, thank God,” says Budgie.

I stand on my toes, but I can’t see well enough over the heads before me. I push away Budgie’s head, climb on the bench, and rise back onto the balls of my feet.

The stadium is absolutely silent. The band has stopped playing, the public address has gone quiet.

“Well, who’s hurt, then?” demands Budgie.

The boy climbs on the seat next to me and jumps up once, twice. “I can just see … no, wait … oh, Jesus .”

“What? What?” I demand. I can’t see anything behind those two men in white, kneeling over the body on the field, leather bag gaping open.

“It’s Greenwald,” says the boy, climbing down. He swears under his breath. “There goes the game.”

Kiki was determined to learn to sail that summer, even though she was not quite six. “You learned when you were my age,” she pointed out, with the blunt logic of childhood.

“I had Daddy to teach me,” I said. “You only have me. And I haven’t sailed in years.”

“I’ll bet it’s like riding a bicycle. That’s what you told me, remember? You never forget how to ride a bicycle.”

“It’s nothing like riding a bicycle, and ladies don’t bet.”

She opened her mouth to tell me she was not a lady, but Aunt Julie, with her usual impeccable timing, plopped herself down on the blanket next to us and sighed at the crashing surf. “Summer at last! And after such a miserable spring. Lily, darling, you don’t have a cigarette, do you? I’m dying for a cigarette. Your mother’s as strict as goddamned Hitler.”

“You’ve never let it stop you before.” I rummaged in my basket and tossed a packet of Chesterfields and a silver lighter in her lap.

“I’m growing soft in my old age. Thanks, darling. You’re the best.”

“I thought summer started in June,” said Kiki.

“Summer starts when I say it starts, darling. Oh, that’s lovely.” She inhaled to the limit of her lungs, closed her eyes, and let the smoke slide from her lips in a thin and endless ribbon. The sun shone warm overhead, the first real stretch of heat since September, and Aunt Julie was wearing her red swimsuit with its daringly high-cut leg. She looked fabulous, all tanned from her recent trip to Bermuda (“with that new fellow of hers,” Mother said, in the disapproving growl of a sister nearly ten years older) and long-limbed as ever. She leaned back on her elbows and pointed her breasts at the cloudless sky.