Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

“Good,” Mallory says. She grins at him. He clicks.

White takeout boxes, fragrant steam, soy sauce, chopsticks—then Mallory presses Play on the VCR and settles next to him on the couch and they’re back at the Sea Shadows Inn in Santa Barbara with George and Doris, who notice each other eating alone in the inn’s restaurant. They raise their glasses to each other and eventually end up sitting side by side in front of the fire. They’re talking, laughing, building the foundation for a relationship that will last one weekend per year for the rest of their lives.

“Fortune cookies!” Mallory says when the movie is over. She throws one at him. He snaps her picture.

Mallory’s fortune: Competence like yours is underrated.

“Between the sheets,” she says.

Jake’s is Go for the gold! You are set to be a champion.

“Between the sheets,” he says.

Mallory gets up. “Let’s go, champ.” She’s standing before him in her cutoffs and an Espresso Café T-shirt, her hair flattened on the side where she was lying on his chest during the movie.

What if he called Ursula and told her he wasn’t coming home? What if he quit his soul-sucking job with PharmX? What if he opts out of the lease for their new apartment on Twenty-Second and L? What if he stays here and finds a job, even if that job is playing guitar at the Brotherhood of Thieves?

“Are you okay?” Mallory asks. “It looks like you’re a thousand miles away.”

“Actually,” he says, “I’m right here.”

They’re kissing on the bed when the phone rings again.

“Apple,” Mallory murmurs. “Ignore it.”

He can feel her tense a little as the message plays. It’s followed by the beep.

“Uh, hi?” a voice says. “I’m looking for Jake McCloud? This is Ursula”—“What the hell?” Jake says. Mallory sits up—“de Gournsey, his girlfriend, and I need to get a hold of him. It’s urgent.”

Ursula’s father has died. He suffered a heart attack in the middle of an orientation event for Notre Dame freshmen, a picnic at the lakes. He was taken by ambulance to St. Joe’s but was pronounced dead on arrival. Ursula tells Jake she’s going to fly to South Bend in the morning and Jake says he’ll meet her there. They hang up, then Jake spends over an hour on the phone with the airline, switching his flight, while Mallory sits on the couch with her face in her hands.

When Jake finally leads her to bed, they lie side by side in the dark. Mallory says, “I’m sure this is the last place you want to be right now. It’s one thing for us to be together when Ursula is happy and preoccupied with work. But it’s another thing for us to be together when she’s dealing with this kind of life-changing loss. You shouldn’t be with me. You should be with her.”

Mallory is right. Dr. de Gournsey—Ralph, or “Ralphie,” as Jake and Ursula had jokingly referred to him since they were thirteen—is dead. Dr. de Gournsey was bald with a slight build, but he had a deep, powerful voice, which made him intimidating. That, and his formidable intelligence. Dr. de Gournsey was an expert on Southeast Asian culture; in the de Gournseys’ living room was a curio cabinet filled with jade and coral figurines that he and Mrs. de Gournsey had collected in their travels to Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines. Over the years, Ralphie had been an ally of Jake’s; both he and Mrs. de Gournsey (Lynette; she insists that Jake call her Lynette) had. The three of them bonded in order to deal with the force that is Ursula.

“Ralph loved model trains,” Jake says. He thinks of Ralph inviting him down to the basement to see the trains for the first time, Christmas of ninth grade. The setup was elaborate, a serpentine track on a custom-made platform with hills and curves and a meticulously detailed Christmas village. Ursula’s brother, Clint, had no interest in the trains, Jake knew, so Jake, hoping to win over Ralph de Gournsey, had been an enthusiastic admirer of his model trains. He wants to explain this to Mallory, but would she care or understand?

She might understand better than he thinks because she says, “Do you want me to sleep in the guest room so you have some space to grapple with this? I feel like such an interloper. I didn’t know him.”

“No, stay here,” Jake says. Part of what he’s feeling is anger and resentment that the timing is so bad—if only this had happened next week, or even tomorrow. But it had happened today, when all he’d wanted was to make love to Mallory one last time—and now the waters are muddy, indeed.

Jake flies to South Bend through Boston and Detroit and he lands there on Monday at four o’clock in the afternoon. He plans on taking a taxi to the de Gournsey house but when he steps off the plane, he sees his father. Alec McCloud opens his arms and Jake steps into them.

“You’re no stranger to grief,” Alec says. “You’ll help her get through this.”

When Jake and his father climb into the car, Alec says, “So Ursula told us you were…on Nantucket? With your friend from Hopkins? What’s his name again?”

“Cooper,” Jake says. “Cooper Blessing.”

“Right,” Alec says. “Ursula said it’s become quite the tradition.”

Jake’s heart feels like it’s being feasted on by jackals. After Jessica died, Jake made a vow to be good for his parents’ sake. They had been through so much; he didn’t want to add to their burden. He would meet or exceed his potential; he would stay out of trouble; he would not lie to them. Jake imagines telling Alec about his relationship with Mallory. Every Labor Day weekend, no matter what. It would be such a relief to tell someone. What would Alec say? What would Jake’s mother say? He’s too ashamed to even venture a guess. He can’t confide in his parents. He can’t confide in anyone.

“Yes,” Jake says. “I go every year. Labor Day.”

Ursula isn’t doing well. When Jake gets to the de Gournsey house, she’s lying facedown on her childhood bed.

“Hey,” Jake says as he eases down next to her. “I’m here.”

She starts sobbing into her pillow, eventually lifting her face to the side like a swimmer taking a breath. Then the words come, making sense but no sense: She’s a terrible daughter, the worst, she’s bossy, ungrateful, domineering, cold, harsh, superior. Both her parents feared her and they should because she’s held them in contempt all her life…until now.

“My father loved me but he didn’t like me,” Ursula says, whimpering. “You told me yourself they said I was gruesomely self-centered. And I was! I am! I am this very instant!”

Jake rubs her back. She’d sounded much stronger over the phone and Jake imagined that when he showed up, she’d be organizing the reception at the University Club, picking hymns for the service, writing an obituary for the South Bend Tribune . A part of Jake suspected that she might even be working .

But now Jake sees he was wrong. Ursula’s armor has been pierced.

They make it through Tuesday in a daze. Friends and neighbors stop by to visit with casseroles, flowers, banana bread, boxes of Chocolate Charlie, books about dealing with grief, and bottles of Jameson, which was Ralph’s favorite, though no one else in the house touches the stuff. Everyone says a variation of the following to Jake and Ursula: You two are so lucky to have each other. Also: When are you getting married?

Wednesday, at the funeral, Jake and his parents sit in the front pew with Ursula, Lynette, and Ursula’s brother, Clint, who has arrived from Argentina in the nick of time with one hell of a beard. Half the faculty of Notre Dame is there; President Malloy gives the eulogy, a soloist from the university choir sings the “Ave Maria.” The Mass is beautiful. Ursula cries through the whole thing. Jake had thought she might speak, but it’s clear that’s just not possible. Ursula is lost and sinking. Jake wonders if this is what he’s been waiting for all these many years: a chance to serve as Ursula’s buoy, a chance to swoop in like Superman and catch her as she plummets.