Summer in the Hamptons

by Robert Granader

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Back in the kitchen I tell the story of the man who sees what I see and expresses it as I wish everyone else would. Nate, one of the cooks, asks why I care.

“You don’t leave the kitchen. You don’t know what I hear,” I tell him, “There’s so much waste.”

“They don’t need to care, it’s their money,” he says. “And they ain’t gonna run out of it. Maybe they wouldn’t approve of what you spend your money on.”

“Yeah, food and bus fare out to the Hamptons, I’m really living it up,” I tell him. “I don’t need their approval.”

“And they don’t need yours,” he says.

“They’re not happy,” I tell him.

“You know what: you don’t seem so happy,” he says.

“I’m happier than them,” I say. “Out there no one smiles, even with all those perfect teeth.”

“You want happiness,” he says “Here it is,” as he holds up an egg.

“You see this? It’s the same egg you buy at the store. I scramble it, but I add truffle, whipped butter and caviar and it’s good, it’s great. They pay me a fortune for it because they think that’s how eggs come. They think this is how eggs taste, they have no idea that I add fifty dollars worth of ingredients. I win and they win.”

“How?”

“Because they can tell their friends no one makes scrambled eggs like Nate. ‘You gotta taste ’em,’ they say, and I’ve got more money than when I was working the diner,” he says.

“It’s not about the object,” Lulu chimes in. “It’s about the story. It’s the thrill, the competition of outbidding the other rich people in the room; that’s their winning, and then there is a long wait, through the difficulty and frustrations of getting it all set up, and then the thrill returns when they can tell their friends the story of all they went through. That’s the rush.”

“It’s not worth it,” I announce to the entire kitchen. “They don’t need reasons to feel like they are better than everyone else.”

“You make it about you,” Nate says. “You feel like you are better than them because you think they waste their money, and you spend yours prudently.”

“I am better than them,” I announce. “People who don’t waste money are better than people who do. That’s not a point of view, that’s a fact.”

“What’s waste?” Rachel says, turning to dry some dishes.

I leave the kitchen, glad the summer is almost over. I’m not mad at these people or their money, I just worry that if they can’t be happy, no one can. Including me.

There was a time when I started this work that I would either be in a city house or a beach house. Now I’m more like a piece of luggage: they carry me to all their houses, their kids’ apartments, their planes, their boats.

Sometimes during the week I work the golf circuit, and while the job is the same, it’s better because I’m outside and I get my steps in. And then around two hours into the round when they get too drunk to drive the cart I get the nod to make sure they don’t damage the greens.

On this final night of the “season” I can hear commotion in the bathroom. Two guests went in there when I wasn’t looking. I can’t imagine one of these couples at this late hour taking advantage of the moment. But maybe it’s a husband, and he’s not with his wife. This bathroom is tucked away. If they were going to take part, this would be the place to do it. But then the yelling starts, and this situation is no longer cooperative.

“What’s the big deal?” I know it’s Red’s voice.

“It’s his story, and we are their guests, and you don’t have to be disagreeable,” the woman’s voice says

“I wasn’t disagreeable,” he shouts back.

“Either you say nothing, or you say something rude,” she says. “Those are your two channels.”

“Who cares? This is a dinner party,” he says. “They are all drunk and won’t remember this in the morning.”

“I know you think they are wrong,” his wife argues, “but no one wants to hear it.”

“No one cares what I say,” he pushes back.

“I care,” she says.

“Bullshit,” was the last thing I heard before the door opened and they stormed off in separate directions.

“That’s why they all move to Florida,” somebody is saying when I walk back into the kitchen.

Lulu works in the kitchen baking breads and cakes. I pull her aside to tell her more.

“Is this about Red?” she asks.

“He agrees with me,” I say.

“You’ve told me,” she says while icing a cake. “Did you know if you live in Florida you don’t have to pay taxes?”

“That doesn’t sound right,” I say.

“Have you heard them dance around the question: ‘Where are you from?’”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I say.

“You notice everything!” she says. “This is why they go to Florida so much.”

“I know the seasons,” I say. “They spend their summers in the Hamptons, fall is for New York City, and the winter is warmed in Florida.”

“They really don’t need winter clothes anymore,” Lulu says. “They just follow the sun.”

I told Lulu about the woman who complained about the difficulty of remembering where she left her favorite sweater. “She takes pictures of her drawers,” I tell her.

I return to the party with a new tray, this time with tiny cups of coffee. I want to wear a badge that says “Yes, of course it’s decaf, it’s ten o’clock at night.”

I see Red and his wife getting their coats, trying to slip out before anyone notices.

Seasonal work is a euphemism for no benefits. So the goodbyes and discussions at the end of the season feel like the end of something bigger, of life, of this life.

Lulu is in the seat next to me as our bus bounds along Highway 27 back into the city.

“You think we’ll be back,” she asks.

“I don’t want to be back,” I tell her.

The companies who employ the summer army don’t make personnel decisions until spring, when the party calendar shapes up. I hope by next summer we’ll have different jobs. Ones with benefits.

“I thought they’d be happier,” I say.

“I know you did,” she says, “but you knew money doesn’t make anybody happy.”

“I know, but I thought this kind of money was different,” I say with a sigh. “They’re not even trying.”

“Trying to do what?”

“To enjoy all the stuff they have,” I say. “They’re still chasing some mirage.”

“We all are,” Lulu says. “Ours is just a cheaper version.”

“Maybe.”

“We all have holes in our lives, you know,” Lulu says. “Some are bigger than others, but we spend our lives trying to fill them.”

“Are our holes smaller because we have less money?” I ask with a laugh that comes at two in the morning.

“The holes never get filled,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how big they are. But I guess you knew that.”

It was dark outside in a way that made me wonder if light would ever come again. There were no stars, no moon, and few streetlights or headlights. Inside the bus I could only see her eyes when another car passed, which didn’t happen much at that hour.

“I don’t know what causes our holes, what opens them up, but I know that money can’t fill them,” she says. “I know a room from across the ocean can’t.”

She was looking out the window, lost in her own world. My jokes didn’t bring her back.

“Yes, it fills some holes,” she says, pushing her fingers against the window. “But not the big ones.”

“It’s the wanting,” I say. When she didn’t answer, I kept going. “We are happier without the wanting. They want something unattainable. They want to feel better than everyone.”

I had heard so many stories over the summer from these rich and infamous, it could fill a book of frustrations and grievances. I heard stories about people who complained because their oceanfront room was too loud because of the sound of the waves; the bottle of wine was good, but there was a better year; the tennis court needed grooming; the putting greens were bumpy; the new car had lost its smell; the waiter poured the eight-dollar water too often; the food wasn’t right, but they couldn’t tell why. The bad service, the tile that came in wrong for the bathroom, the things that were installed wrong and then required a complete tearing out of walls, floors, and ceilings, and then they sold the place before they moved in.

“Never right,” I say. “That would be the theme of this summer.”

Lulu wasn’t saying anything and so I just thought about all those days, the dinners, the stories, the way they spend their money. And the few moments, the rare moments, of real laughter, not the canned stuff.

Lulu had been thinking about it, too because she came back to life.

“When I paint my apartment and it’s not right, and it’s never right, it’s still okay,” Lulu said. “But how would I feel if I paid a lot to have a master painter from Europe come in and do it and then it wasn’t right? Maybe that hurts more.”

“So they should just stop?” I tell her. “Leave the Hamptons and the private clubs and see how it feels?”

“But then who are they?” she says. “They’re nobody special.”

“They should try walking into a diner full of people they don’t know. And they should order the coffee and the eggs,” I say.

“And they’ll see eggs without caviar stink,” Lulu says.

“No,” I say, “they’ll realize that there’s happiness in plain eggs.”