One weekend, Sylvie got an invitation to go and stay on Martha’s Vineyard at the fabulous beach-front property of a Bennington classmate named Vicky Lalage. Aside from the beachfront property, which had been in her family for generations, Vicky herself was nothing much to write home about, a dim, honey-blond creature with spectacles, the good-egg type often found at Bennington sitting under an apple tree with a group of similarly undistinguished girls and a pile of knitting. Nevertheless, Cassandra was jealous not to have been invited to go with, and was most put out to discover that their good friend Gala Gubelman just happened to be on the Vineyard, too.
“She’s not staying with Vicky, though,” Sylvie reported over the phone once she got there. “She’s been dating this anorexic slut from Bryn Mawr and that’s who she’s staying with, not Vicky. Turns out her parents have this big place out in Edgartown.”
“Wait, Gala is dating a girl after graduation?”
“I know, right? That’s what I said! I said: Gala, you are being ridiculous.”
“What’s the girl like?”
“Absolutely impossible—” Sylvie began, before launching into an exquisitely detailed tirade about the finer points of the anorexia from which she was “supposedly” in recovery, and what a drag it was to have to go out to eat with her; the girl’s name was Tess Fox.
Exhibitionists all, this quartet of lithe young girls—Sylvie, Vicky, Gala, and Tess—spent the better part of that weekend on the nude beach. On Sunday afternoon, just before she had to go and catch the ferry, Sylvie was lying there and feeling stricken at the thought of having to go back to Black Currant. It was August by now; September, that month of new beginnings, fresh starts, was coming. Worse, it appeared that almost everybody she knew was going to be in New York City that fall except for her. Tess said that Gala could move into the studio apartment her parents had bought for her in the East Village, no problem, the two of them would be so cozy there; and Vicky revealed that she had just signed the lease on a loft in TriBeCa.
“Wait,” said Sylvie to Vicky, remembering something, “you’re a native New Yorker, aren’t you?”
Vicky nodded.
“You grew up in Greenwich Village, right?”
“Well, when I was born we actually were living upt—”
Sylvie got right to the point.
“Your parents, though. Do your parents still live there? In Greenwich Village?”
“My mother does. My father’s dead, remember.”
Sylvie was so carried away with her ulterior motives, she didn’t even bother to say I’m sorry. Instead, she rolled over on her stomach and sulked. So obviously this meant that nobody would be living in Vicky’s childhood bedroom come September. The thought filled Sylvie with emptiness on this splendid summer’s day. Then—rage! Why should Vicky’s bedroom go unused, in the most fashionable neighborhood in New York City, with so many people desperate for housing? It wasn’t fair!
She sat up straight, looked down at her sleek brown breasts and belly, then scooped up a palmful of sand and let it cascade through her fingertips, enjoying the soft heat of it against her skin. She felt full to bursting with life.
“Oh my God, did you hear the one about Penelope Entenmann?” Gala was now saying.
Penelope Entenmann was the name of the leggy cello student who was famous for letting Professor Sobel nail her in the Secret Garden.
“Oh no, what is it?” Vicky asked, being the good-egg type, genuinely concerned.
“Pregnant.”
It was presumed to be the professor’s child, and in fact was. Sylvie made a note to tell Cassandra, who had had a crush on him back at Bennington and would surely be interested in the latest about him and Penelope.
“Oh, no! What is she going to do?”
“Keep it,” said Gala authoritatively. “Rumor is she’s going to have it in Hawaii.”
“And what, like, give it up afterward?” Sylvie wanted to know. “Why doesn’t she just have an abortion already?”
“That’s, like, really judgmental of you,” Tess Fox cut in. Over the course of that weekend she and Sylvie had not exactly hit it off, so to speak, and this was too bad, since they were in for a long ferry ride together, during which, as things turned out, they would bicker almost incessantly.
“No, no, she wants to keep it, she says. She wants to raise it in Hawaii, she says.”
Idiot, thought Sylvie to herself. All of her classmates were idiots. But then she turned to Vicky and in her sweetest, most charismatic tone of voice said: “Hey, that’s so cool about the loft in TriBeCa. I forgot if I mentioned it already, but I’m going to New York, too. Any day now.” (Bullshit! Gala Gubelman was tempted to hiss, as she narrowed her eyes at Sylvie behind the lenses of her Italian sexpot sunglasses.) “But!” Sylvie carried on in all innocence. “I haven’t figured out where I’m going to be living yet. Do you think there’s any way that maybe I could crash at your mom’s till I found a place?”
Sometimes there can be much wisdom in asking for things directly because so few people do it, and in this case it worked. Vicky was pleasantly surprised by Sylvie’s candor, especially coming from this pretty, upbeat girl who made the most delicious tuna fish sandwiches anybody had ever tasted. Just the kind of girl who could stay with one’s mother, she thought. The room was available, and it would be no trouble at all. Also, she still felt a good deal of guilt over the trust fund left to her by her dead father, an aristocratic French art collector. Letting Sylvie stay in her bedroom at her mother’s would ease her conscience about getting the place in TriBeCa.
Sylvie has guts, Cassandra thought to herself on hearing the news that come September she was going to be living rent-free in a brownstone in the West Village. I would never have dared ask Vicky that. But she hugged her and said:
“Oh my God! New York! Sylvie, that’s so wonderful! And who knows? Maybe I’ll move there someday, too. After all—everyone from Bennington’s already there anyway.”
Sylvie thought this was just like Cassandra, making someone else’s news all about herself; and the thought came to her that maybe she didn’t want her best friend ever since high school to come to New York. Maybe she wanted New York City all to herself.