On fire island, p.2
On Fire Island, page 2
He looked younger than I’d expected. His success and proclivity to use old-fashioned language in his writing often made me forget he was just five years older than I was. He ordered, without a menu.
“A New York strip, rare, with a side of fries and a Scotch and soda, please.”
It was just what I imagined Ernest Hemingway would order. I drained my glass of merlot and garnered the nerve to speak to him.
“Sorry to bother you, but are you Benjamin Morse?” I asked, already knowing the answer. To be fair, he was taller than I imagined.
“Hey,” he curtly answered with a dismissive grin.
“I’m Julia, Julia Gold,” I said, which brought just a nod in return.
“I want you to know that you broke my heart,” I added.
He looked annoyed, as if he had heard this same refrain a dozen times or possibly as if he were just full of himself and didn’t want to chat at the bar of a busy NYC restaurant where chatting was not only tolerated but expected. I guessed he knew that Tom Wolfe and Jay McInerney frequented The Odeon, and he came here ironically. I felt the sinking feeling of disappointment burn in my belly.
“I’m sorry I killed off Patrick O’Reilly,” he said, adding, “you know they aren’t real people though, right?”
I could have left it at that, since clearly my fantasy of Benjamin Morse far outweighed the ornery real thing, but for some reason I didn’t want him to think of me as just an ordinary fan.
“Not in that way,” I explained. “I’m an editor at Sopher-Grace. I read you on submission.”
“Well, you were the only house we didn’t hear back from, so I guess you didn’t like it.”
“I loved it actually, ergo the broken heart.”
“But you didn’t throw your hat in the ring?”
Finally, he spoke like he wrote. This made me smile, even though I was pretty sure he would not measure up to my lofty expectations.
“My boss didn’t back me up,” I admitted.
“Maybe you need a new boss.”
“I got one, thanks.”
His steak arrived, and he navigated the perfect bite. I looked to the door for my date and adjusted myself as not to interrupt Ben’s meal. Soon he reengaged.
“Did you ever read the final version?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And it was good.”
“Just good?”
Truth was, I wouldn’t have killed off Patrick O’Reilly either. I wouldn’t have given him and Erin O’Malley a happily ever after, but I wouldn’t have offed him, a detail that wasn’t in the early draft I had read. I certainly would not tell him as much.
“What? Was it the ending?” he asked impatiently. “Most people love it, you know. Only a few readers have said otherwise.”
I decided he must be one of those authors who combs through Goodreads and Amazon for negative reviews. My Hemingway comparison that had seemed so promising when he ordered a Scotch and soda came to a hard stop. I doubted Papa Ernest would give a crap that Suzy from Schenectady was disappointed in the ending of A Farewell to Arms.
“It’s good, really. I mean, how many weeks have you clocked on the bestseller list now?”
In a case of perfect timing, my date, the Doctor, entered and caught my eye.
“My friend is here. Very nice to meet you!” I exaggerated.
I wished I hadn’t had to.
That night I returned home to a new follower on Instagram and a private message that read,
Curious about how you would have ended it.
I had thought about this before but spent more time contemplating if I should answer than how I should answer. In the end I decided it was in no one’s best interest to edit a book already in print. I went to sleep without responding.
In the morning I woke up to another message from him.
Sorry if I was rude at the bar last night. I’m obviously insecure about the ending.
It’s hard to know if neurotic people become authors or if becoming an author makes people neurotic, but either way the result is the same. As familiar with this particular human condition as I was, I responded with real insight and praise, stroking his ego and soothing his self-doubt as I had found myself doing often with many an author facing criticism. Soon a back-and-forth between us developed. What began as typical publishing industry therapy morphed into shoptalk, followed by chitchat and eventually flirtatious banter. Somewhere in between it all the real Ben Morse, with his boyish charm and his powerful observations, grew on me, and eventually the reality of him excited me more than the fantasy. Tired of obsessively checking my Instagram messages, I gave him my cell—and each of us later admitted to texting and deleting multiple iterations of the question “Should we meet in person?”
That summer, I took a share in a house on Fire Island with my old roommate from Sarah Lawrence, Sarah Lawrence. (Yes, her name and the name of the school were one and the same, and yes, it had made her an instant campus celebrity—which she thrived on.) I’d never been to Fire Island, but Sarah Lawrence had been a part of a group house there every summer since graduation. The vibe of the house, which had been founded on beer pong, cold pizza, and shots of Jäegermeister, had matured with its residents, now more interested in charades, clambakes, and chardonnay. It was finally approaching my speed, so when a spot opened, I grabbed the chance to perk up my social life a bit. I spent too much time reading and way too much time texting with Ben Morse. He was no better, by the way. Writing epic love stories on trains, on planes, and in hotel rooms while covering games and tournaments and even the Olympics seemed to render his personal life nonexistent.
Sarah Lawrence was pacing back and forth across our itsy-bitsy room in her teeny-weeny bikini, the smell of her, courtesy of her sacred tube of Bain de Soleil Orange Gelée, penetrating my nose every time she trudged by. She was obviously eager to get to the beach, though too passive-aggressive to say it with actual words.
I looked up from my current entertaining exchange with Ben and blurted, “Go to the beach, Sarah. I’ll meet you there.”
“Is it that author again? Will you ask him out already?”
“I will, soon.”
“Bullshit!” she called, as she grabbed my cell and took off with it to the bathroom.
Five minutes later she returned, announcing, “Benjamin Morse will be on the noon ferry.”
I probably changed six times before picking up Ben at the dock that day, which was quite a feat, since I’d packed only three outfits. I’d never experienced anything close to what I was feeling when his ferry appeared in the distance. My heart froze in my chest, and by the time the boat came close enough for me to read her name—ironically enough, the I’M HERE—I thought I might pass out from nerves. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only nervous one. Ben had also tuned in to the discrepancy in our sizes and our uncanny resemblance to Beauty and the Beast. He’d convinced himself that the chemistry we had clearly established through the written word would never fly in person.
And so it was, on that hot summer day, many, many months after I had first read his manuscript and fallen in love, Benjamin Morse exited the ferry with a shy, blushing smile and a handful of wild clary—the same flowers that Patrick O’Reilly had given Erin O’Malley after they first made love in the fields of Tipperary. How he found a bouquet of wild clary before making the afternoon ferry was beyond comprehension. I ran to him.
When I reflect on that weekend, I always seem to see it through a hazy lens, offering only a fuzzy recollection of first touches, first smiles, and first inhaling of the scent of him, a woodsy mixture of the salty bay and a summer campfire. When his lumbering arms enveloped me in our inaugural hug it filled me with a feeling I had never experienced before. I belonged in his arms. I badly wanted to stay in them forever.
It was his maiden visit to Fire Island and, while I was a newbie myself, I was sufficiently familiar with the simple lay of the land—a grid-like arrangement of beach-themed streets traversing the narrow strip from the bay to the ocean—to find my way around. The bay side boasted a small town dense with bars, restaurants, boutiques, and three separate ice cream shops, each with a perpetual line leading to its door. The ocean side contained a vast and beautiful beach dotted from one end of the thirty-two-mile island all the way to the other with colorful towels, colorful people, and an abundance of gratitude.
We spent most of the day by the ocean in the company of my housemates, playing Kadima, riding the waves, reading, and basking in the sun. We took part in the group barbecue dinner and stayed for a few rounds of charades. I picked A Tale of Two Cities—which Ben quickly guessed from my miming a tail. For his turn he quite hysterically got stuck with The Vagina Monologues. If I hadn’t been into him before, watching him attempt to act out the word vagina, without one, made me fall even harder.
He suggested a walk and an ice cream cone before the last ferry, and we ended up sitting on the swings at the playground on the Great South Bay, each with a scoop of Moose Tracks to distract us from the narrative running through both of our heads—Where is this going?
“I have to make the boat,” he said, slowing down his swing and jumping off. He grabbed the chains of mine to slow it down too. The moon was full, and its light caught his shy smile.
“Can I kiss you goodbye?” he asked softly.
“You can kiss me hello,” I responded breathlessly.
His mouth was sweet and cold, and we kissed on that swing for what felt like hours. He never made the last ferry boat.
Back at the house, I crawled into the barely twin bed next to a sleeping Sarah Lawrence and gave him mine. His legs hung off the end, and I marveled, again, at the difference in our sizes. A sliver of light from the full moon outside illuminated our faces enough to stare into each other’s eyes (and souls) until our lids became too heavy and we both drifted off.
The next day, we rode the Long Island Rail Road back to the city together, holding hands the entire way. And we didn’t let go until this past Tuesday night at Sloan Kettering hospital, when I quietly left the earthly world for good.
two
My Funeral
Even though we knew the end was coming, Ben and I did not discuss the funeral or what I wanted. Knowing my control-freak mother as I did, expressing my wishes seemed as pointless as when I asked for a small bat mitzvah and ended up making my grand entrance into the ballroom of The Pierre Hotel on the back of a camel. I took it as a lesson, and when it was time to marry, Ben and I eloped. It was a transgression that my father understood and my mother never forgave. I was certain that my funeral would be seen from the same vantage point, my mother’s, with little consideration for what my barely half-Jewish, fully heartbroken husband would need. It was wrong of me not to tackle the subject with my family in advance. I just didn’t have it in me, even though I had nightmares that my mother would open up my coffin, yell “Is that what you’re wearing?” and apply her signature Dior red lipstick that she’d been unsuccessfully pushing on me since the tenth grade.
In the Jewish religion, the preference is for a burial to take place within twenty-four hours of death. So it was the very next day that Ben stood at my graveside funeral. I was shocked that he won the debate between an intimate graveside service versus a multilevel extravaganza at Riverside Memorial Chapel, but apparently, even my indomitable mother was not on her A game after losing her firstborn child. It was the only argument she had lost in years, although, in her characteristic fashion, losing may have been her plan all along.
The trade-off for the smaller funeral was Ben’s promise to commit to seven full days of shiva—the Jewish time of spiritual and emotional healing. On hearing the deal he made, well, let’s just say, if guilt existed in the afterlife, I’d have been riddled with it for not making my wishes clear in advance. It was a bad trade, and poor Ben had no idea what he was in for. My new Rabbi friend, who was thankfully present for the conversation, tried to warn him. She said, “When someone dies in the prime of their life, there are many, many people who want to pay their respects. It’s going to be hard to manage at the cemetery, and you are going to be flooded with visitors at your home.” Ben thought he knew better and stood his ground. I guess you rarely know better than a rabbi.
The funeral service was brief. My Rabbi friend spoke beautifully about my life cut short. She acknowledged my inner light and my dry wit that she had gotten to know over the past six months, my success as an editor and my love for books; Modena chocolate; Fire Island; our rescue dog, Sally (named for the book, Sally Goes to the Beach); and, of course, my husband of nearly ten years, the now five-time bestselling author, Benjamin Morse. No one stood up and recounted funny stories because, first, that is not something that’s really done at a graveside service, and second, a funeral for a thirty-seven-year-old is not likely to have you laughing at remember-whens. I think you need to be at least seventy before the guests leave feeling as though they had attended a roast at the Friars Club.
Ben scanned the sweltering scene with his hollowed eyes, determining that he had done no one any favors, himself included, by getting his way on the service. He steadied himself and took a deep breath in as the Rabbi read the beautiful poem “We Remember Them,” by Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer responsively with the crowd:
At the rising sun and at its going down; We remember them.
It was brutally hot, even for late June (not for me, by the way—a very nice perk of my new condition). My mother began to rock back and forth and back and forth, the ridiculously high heels she had worn for the occasion digging deeper and deeper into the ground. Someone noticed and placed a folding chair beneath her, and even though it wasn’t a good look for her—sitting while everyone else was standing—she acquiesced. It reminded me of a camp visiting day in Maine when the temperature reached a record-breaking 105 degrees. My mom, who never went anywhere without perfectly coiffed hair and a face full of makeup, rose from her lawn chair and walked directly into the lake, right in her Lilly Pulitzer.
At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter; We remember them.
My sister, Nora, traditionally a mama’s girl, took my usual spot, wrapped in our father’s arms. I hoped she would help to fill the void of my passing by becoming closer to our dad. She was crying, but as I watched her then, all I thought of was our hysterical fits of laughter in the dark when we were young and shared a bedroom.
At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring; We remember them.
My high school friends stood in a row, holding on to each other for dear life, old grudges between them instantly dismissed. A montage of memories played out in front of me, from sneaking drinks at bat mitzvahs in bandage-style dresses to throwing our shared fake IDs out the bathroom window of Webster Hall for the next group to enter with.
At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer; We remember them.
There were many people there from Random House and the publishing world in general: publicists and editors, authors and friends. Ben’s agent, the indomitable Elizabeth Barnes, was visibly rattled, which surprised me as I had never even seen her blink. I was happy for Ben that there was such a nice turnout, though he didn’t seem to notice.
At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn; We remember them.
Out of all the groups in attendance it was our Fire Island friends who felt nearest to my heart. The lot of them huddled close to one another for collective strength. All except for my nearest and dearest, our neighbor, Renee. She had stepped to the side and was clearly having a hard time keeping her composure. Losing her marriage and her best friend in one year had cracked her exceedingly strong resolve. Her ex-husband, Tuck, walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder for comfort. She swatted him away—no dismissing grudges there. I homed in on the newest addition to the group, baby Oliver, who was just six weeks old. His moms, Pam and Andie, were a part of our inner circle at the beach.
As long as we live, they too will live, for they are now a part of us as; We remember them.
Before long the sun-beaten crowd loaded themselves back into their cars, where the procession to return to the city spanned two exits on the parkway. Ben could tell, upon leaving, that most people hadn’t had the chance to express their condolences, and it panicked him. It takes a lot to keep a Jew from paying a shiva call, and not having had a face-to-face exchange with the bereaved was top of the list (maybe second to top—word had gotten out that lunch was being catered by Zabar’s). He knew that many would feel the need to tell him in person how sorry they were for his loss—a mouthful of condolence followed by a bagel with whitefish salad, and they would leave satisfied that they had fulfilled their commitment. That notion, along with the conversation on the way back to Manhattan, pushed him over the edge.
It was odd to see Ben sitting in the limo alongside my sister, my parents, and my maternal grandmother, without the link that was me. He really didn’t fit in without me beside him. I could tell it was hard for him to stomach the sight of my grandmother, alive and kicking at ninety, while I was gone so young. She began questioning everything about the upcoming shiva, from the kashruth of the food to the female Rabbi. Ben was clearly longing for a do-over.
More and more often lately, nonorthodox Jews, like us, seem to sit shiva for less than the traditional week. Ben’s family was not religious at all, and when his father died a few years ago, they sat shiva for three days and thought it was the most pious thing they’d ever done. His mom was not Jewish, and he was never bar mitzvahed.
When he met my family for the first time, Nana Hannah, my father’s mother, came right out and asked him, “Are you Jewish?”
