Read Online Boys in the Trees: A Memoir by Carly Simon - Free Book Online Page A

overlooking Vineyard Sound. Our parents had explained to us that those houses constituted “Socialist Hill,” because the heads of labor groups either met or lived in those houses during the forties. It seemed very romantic, all the stories about people who rebelled against capitalism. Max Eastman, our great friend who had originally introduced us to the island, had written about Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin. He made them seem like romantic outlaws. I couldn’t picture outlaws. What did they say? What did they wear? I ended up owning one of those five houses up on the hill many years later, in the eighties. For ten years I spent time there living with ghosts of the Bolsheviks as I cooked clam chowder.
    That radiant day walking over Socialist Hill and admiring the tender little waves as they lapped on the shore of Menemsha Beach, Lucy, Peter, and I were aware that we were trespassing as we picked a few sprigs of this and that. Mostly, though, we followed the path, and as we approached Seward’s, I could see a reflection of myself in a car window that was parked in front of the market. I wore a white, off-the-shoulder elastic top that left my tummy bare. My hair was medium length, half blond, half brown, half short, half long, and therefore, in the end, a tousled, compromised mess, though just in the last three days I’d gotten a tan. Certain that I looked good enough to be seen, I edged in front of my siblings.
    As I was rounding the store porch, I caught sight of an extremely cute boy who, from what I could tell, was a few years younger than I. He was sitting on the steps of the porch next to Davy Gude, another Vineyard boy, whose parents and mine were friends. Lucy called out a casual “Hey” to Davy. The two of them, Lucy and Davy, had once been the subjects of a series of photographs taken by Daddy, holding hands as they ran through fields of daisies. As far back as kindergarten, Lucy, poised and charming, had already been claimed by the class’s youngest male deity, in this case Davy Gude, who was devastatingly good-looking even as a four-year-old boy.
    Davy said “Hey” back, favoring Lucy with his curvy, one-sided smile, lifting his head up from the guitar he was balancing on one knee. As he sang his song, “Didn’t Old John Cross the Water,” he demonstrated a chord, or a picking technique, to his younger friend, virtually covering an entire octave as he sang the word Galilee . He then introduced the other boy: “This is Jamie.” Jamie could have been Davy’s younger brother. We were all tall and lanky, but even sitting down, Jamie was the lankiest. Both boys had a stringy, androgynous allure, a bony teenage elegance, early out of the gate.
    Telling everyone I had to get the mail, I disappeared into Seward’s, swinging my hips as I opened the door. This was a brand-new trick, and I had to sneak a peek over my shoulder to see if either of the two young gods, Davy or Jamie, had followed my stride with their gaze.
    No such luck.
    Inside the store, I bought what I needed to get for Mom, and then gave Bill (Seward) a dime for a vanilla ice cream Popsicle, deciding that Lucy could have half. As I left, the screen door slammed with a sound that traveled on the breeze right into the center of Davy’s note. He sang the word roll perfectly in pitch with the squeak of the door. Jamie was playing the guitar now. I pulled down just a little on my white elastic top, which had ridden up my left shoulder. All of them, including my little brother, who didn’t know the song, were singing a chorus of “Roll On, Columbia, Roll On,” as I sat down on the step next to Jamie and removed the paper from the Popsicle. I started to eat it. Jamie turned his head to the left and there I was, sitting right beside him. He was playing the chords to the song perfectly while indicating to me, by pointing his long chin in the direction of my ice cream, that a bite might be a good thing, but … he didn’t even look at me. He just