Digger at the moment, and besides, Digger didn’t know Janey as well as she did. Digger was the only person she’d ever met who seemed to be mysteriously immune to Janey’s charms—and while she had to admit that if that weren’t one of the reasons she had married him, it was certainly one of the things that had made her like him, it also meant that Digger could never understand the way she really felt about Janey. The truth was that while she was sometimes afraid of Janey, she was also equally afraid for her.
There was something very seductive about her, but it was a dangerous sort of seduction, because inevitably Janey had a way of damaging anyone who became involved with her. It was a fact of which Janey appeared to be blissfully unaware, and there were times when Patty couldn’t help wishing that something bad would happen to Janey and she would learn her lesson, although she wasn’t exactly sure what that lesson should be. And then she would feel guilty, because Janey was her sister, and you shouldn’t feel that way about a sibling.
But even as a child, Janey hadn’t been what was considered normal, Patty thought, standing up and peering down the street in vain. There had always been a supreme indifference about Janey: Every summer at the country club, while the other kids were swimming and playing tennis, Janey, who was fat and not athletic and didn’t like being seen in a bathing suit (now that was ironic), would sit at a picnic table in the woods, playing cards. Other kids tried to be friends with her, but Janey would dismiss them with a cutting remark.
And so it wasn’t really surprising that the whole family had been relieved when Janey had been accepted into the Ford modeling agency at sixteen. That first summer, Janey had been gone for three months, and Patty remembered it as the best summer of her life—she’d won the twelve-and-under state championship in swimming—and for once, no one in their family was fighting. And then the following summer, Janey had supposedly gone away for good. But eventually that seemed to 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 35
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go all wrong as well, although nobody in the family ever talked about it or said why, including Janey. All Patty knew was that she would never forget the end of that second summer, when Janey was eighteen and had come back from the South of France as different as if she’d gone to another planet and returned an alien. She had Louis Vuitton suitcases and designer clothes from France and Italy, she had handbags from Chanel and shoes from Manolo Blahnik, and in the afternoons, she would show Patty her things and tell her how much they had cost. Patty remembered that one handbag alone had cost $2,000, and when she looked scared, Janey had told her—in that new voice she’d developed with the fake European accent—
that life wasn’t worth living if you couldn’t have the best it had to offer.
Patty returned to the bench with a sigh. Being a Monday afternoon in June, the main street in East Hampton wasn’t particularly crowded, but Patty was beginning to feel uncomfortable. A Mercedes passed, and then a Range Rover and a Lexus; it seemed that nobody in the Hamptons had a car that cost less than $100,000. She reminded herself that her own Mercedes was equally expensive, but that did little to prevent her from feeling like an interloper who, try as she might, never really felt like she belonged in this scene. It was just like the Mercedes, which Digger had paid for, and therefore wasn’t really hers.
Maybe the problem was that it was all a little too perfect, she thought; with the meticulously maintained antique houses that lined the beginning of Main Street, eventually blending into the pristine white buildings that housed expensive shops.
Or maybe it was just that the whole place screamed money: The windows of the real estate office behind her featured poster-size aerial photographs of $10 million estates, while the
There was something very seductive about her, but it was a dangerous sort of seduction, because inevitably Janey had a way of damaging anyone who became involved with her. It was a fact of which Janey appeared to be blissfully unaware, and there were times when Patty couldn’t help wishing that something bad would happen to Janey and she would learn her lesson, although she wasn’t exactly sure what that lesson should be. And then she would feel guilty, because Janey was her sister, and you shouldn’t feel that way about a sibling.
But even as a child, Janey hadn’t been what was considered normal, Patty thought, standing up and peering down the street in vain. There had always been a supreme indifference about Janey: Every summer at the country club, while the other kids were swimming and playing tennis, Janey, who was fat and not athletic and didn’t like being seen in a bathing suit (now that was ironic), would sit at a picnic table in the woods, playing cards. Other kids tried to be friends with her, but Janey would dismiss them with a cutting remark.
And so it wasn’t really surprising that the whole family had been relieved when Janey had been accepted into the Ford modeling agency at sixteen. That first summer, Janey had been gone for three months, and Patty remembered it as the best summer of her life—she’d won the twelve-and-under state championship in swimming—and for once, no one in their family was fighting. And then the following summer, Janey had supposedly gone away for good. But eventually that seemed to 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 35
t r a d i n g u p
35
go all wrong as well, although nobody in the family ever talked about it or said why, including Janey. All Patty knew was that she would never forget the end of that second summer, when Janey was eighteen and had come back from the South of France as different as if she’d gone to another planet and returned an alien. She had Louis Vuitton suitcases and designer clothes from France and Italy, she had handbags from Chanel and shoes from Manolo Blahnik, and in the afternoons, she would show Patty her things and tell her how much they had cost. Patty remembered that one handbag alone had cost $2,000, and when she looked scared, Janey had told her—in that new voice she’d developed with the fake European accent—
that life wasn’t worth living if you couldn’t have the best it had to offer.
Patty returned to the bench with a sigh. Being a Monday afternoon in June, the main street in East Hampton wasn’t particularly crowded, but Patty was beginning to feel uncomfortable. A Mercedes passed, and then a Range Rover and a Lexus; it seemed that nobody in the Hamptons had a car that cost less than $100,000. She reminded herself that her own Mercedes was equally expensive, but that did little to prevent her from feeling like an interloper who, try as she might, never really felt like she belonged in this scene. It was just like the Mercedes, which Digger had paid for, and therefore wasn’t really hers.
Maybe the problem was that it was all a little too perfect, she thought; with the meticulously maintained antique houses that lined the beginning of Main Street, eventually blending into the pristine white buildings that housed expensive shops.
Or maybe it was just that the whole place screamed money: The windows of the real estate office behind her featured poster-size aerial photographs of $10 million estates, while the
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