Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

When the credits rolled, Delilah filled with dread. She checked her watch. They had plenty of time to make it back to Hyannis for the last flight. Delilah made the kids use the bathroom and wash their hands and faces with soap. Then they piled into the car, humming the Vunderkids theme song.

“Well?” Delilah said, in her best gung-ho camp counselor voice. “What did you think?”

Yes, they had loved it. Yes she was the best mom-slash-auntie in the whole wide world!

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Chloe lamented.

Delilah agreed. It had gone too fast. She had only begun to breathe like a normal person. The thought of going back to Nantucket and of having to attend a cocktail party weighed her down. She would skip the party, she decided, and incur Phoebe’s wrath.

It was nearly dark outside. After Delilah had been on the highway for ten minutes, the chatter in the back quieted. Delilah did not want to go home yet. She racked her brain. How could they prolong this trip? What could they do? Delilah spied a billboard for a Friendly’s ice-cream parlor at the next exit. Could she in good conscience buy the kids ice cream after plying them with so much grease and sugar at the theater?

“Hey,” she said. “Does anyone want to stop for hot fudge sundaes?”

There was no answer. Delilah checked her mirror, then turned around to double-check. All four kids were asleep.

“Hey!” she said.

No one moved.

She did not think, and the not-thinking felt good. She turned herself around on the highway and headed west.

She arrived back on the savannah at five o’clock. She had been there all day with her clipboard and her checklist and her skill at tying knots in the slick silver ribbon attached to the iridescent pearl-colored balloons. Was everything in order? Everything was in order. Flooring had been laid over the scrub grass and a tent was erected over the flooring. Once it was dusk and the tent was illuminated, it would indeed look like a party far out in the wilds of the African plains. The savannah was eerily beautiful, a 92-acre parcel of grassland with a few gnarled but majestic trees. Sankaty Head Lighthouse and a thin strip of ocean were visible beyond.

The caterers were setting up; the bartender polished glasses. Phoebe had her hair done in a twist. She was wearing a silver silk Anjali Kumar dress and a funky necklace of silver rope with silver and clear beads. She was wearing silver flats, out of respect for the savannah itself. Phoebe was nervous. She had actually held her prescription of valium in her palm and rattled it, wondering what to do. Take one? Last summer it would have been unthinkable to attend any social event without taking two valiums or preferably three, but last summer, and the six summers before, nothing had been expected of her. Tonight she had an announcement to make.

Fifteen minutes before the guests were to arrive, Jennifer handed Phoebe a glass of champagne. Just one sip, Phoebe thought. One sip would taste good.

Jennifer smiled at Phoebe. She was about to say something flattering. Jennifer, for whatever reason, thought Phoebe was fabulous-despite her eight-year hiatus in the netherworld-and Jennifer’s faith in her gave her faith in herself. This night was going to be a watershed for Phoebe.

“First of all,” Jennifer said, “thanks for helping. The party looks beautiful.”

“It was nothing,” Phoebe said. She meant this. Pulling the party together had been a layup. But Phoebe newly appreciated her gift for organizing this kind of thing. She had impeccable taste, and no detail escaped her.

“What you’re doing for your friends is so amazing and generous,” Jennifer said.

“Well…” Phoebe said. “I’m just sorry you didn’t know them. They were amazing and generous themselves.” Tears welled up, and she blotted the corners of her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “Okay, this cannot happen when I’m making my speech.”

“Amen,” Jennifer said, and they clinked glasses.

The band started up. Phoebe had asked for Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, all the oldies. She wanted a real old-fashioned feel to this party; she wanted it to evoke an era gone by, the country club parties that her grandparents used to attend. The cocktail of the evening was the savannah sidecar. The caterers were passing devils on horseback, pimento cheese toasts, clams casino, classic shrimp cocktail, mini lamb chops with mint jelly, and gougères. People streamed in along a temporary walkway lined with luminarias. Phoebe and Jennifer stood at the entrance to the tent and greeted everybody. Phoebe talked with people she hadn’t seen in years. She had studied the guest list; the trick was pinning the right names to the right people. She was listening to herself and was impressed. She was charming; she was funny! She wanted the party never to end. She would find something else to chair, she decided. She would follow in her grandmother’s footsteps and be a philanthropist and hostess. It was her calling.

Suddenly Addison was upon her. She took stock: he was wearing khaki pants, white shirt, navy blazer, madras bow tie (Phoebe had insisted on the bow tie). He was wearing loafers with no socks. His hair, what there was of it, was combed. He smelled like aftershave and Jack Daniels. It was odd to see him this way-approaching her like any other party guest. It made him seem like a stranger. Phoebe remembered the spring she’d met Addison and how much she had adored him. He was balding, true, and he was divorced from a notorious socialite and had a baby daughter. He was not quite what she had imagined for herself (she had imagined someone like Reed). But Addison was rich and he was charismatic, he was seasoned, he had lived in other countries and done interesting things. He understood the way the world worked and he wanted to show Phoebe. She knew herself well enough to know that she needed someone older. This had ended up benefiting her. Addison had been strong enough for both of them. He was able to endure. That he had eventually fallen in love with Tess only showed that he was human after all. It also showed Phoebe how deeply she’d been buried. And despite Tess, Addison had not left her. She would thank him for that someday.

She wished she could greet Addison with the same enthusiasm and joie de vivre she greeted everyone else with, or she wished she could greet him with the kind of secret, quiet love that her grandmother always reserved for her grandfather (she had bloomed in his presence and wilted in his absence, even after sixty years of marriage). But what Phoebe felt when she saw Addison was concern, weariness, a dash of contempt, a dash of pride, a dash of hope.

How many drinks at home? she wondered.

He bent to kiss Jennifer first, out of courtesy, and then Phoebe. “Looks great,” he said, of the tent, she supposed.

The contempt popped up, like a bottle Phoebe had been trying to hold underwater. “How many drinks have you had?” she whispered.

He smiled at her fondly, but it was an act. He held up one finger and moved into the tent.

One, she thought. Which meant two. Or, more likely, three.

The Chief and Andrea arrived a little while later. To Phoebe’s delight, and her considerable surprise, they looked sensational. Normally when they went out on the town, they wore neutral colors. The Chief often wore a gray suit that he’d bought off the rack at Anderson-Little in 1989. Phoebe teased him mercilessly about that suit, but it didn’t matter-she loved Eddie, bad suit and all. Andrea normally wore boring beige, or black. Tonight, however, Andrea had on a red silk halter dress and red sandals, and Ed wore navy pants, a white shirt, and a blue-and-white seersucker jacket. The Kapenashes might have raided Phoebe and Addison’s own closets, they looked so dashing. Phoebe did a little dance, waving her arms in the air. The champagne was going to her head.