Read Online The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek - Free Book Online Page B

have been raised.
    I wouldn’t call her pretentious, though some people, without understanding the nuances of her performance, might use such a word, thinking she was putting on airs. But she really wasn’t. She was always open about her mother and her background, and appreciative of the sacrifices “Mum” had made for her. She wasn’t a snob, either. But she was a Method actor and she’d immersed herself so thoroughly into the role in which she’d cast herself that she knew no other reality.
    If you asked her about this, as I once had, trying to reconcile the interpretations of the story of her life into one cohesive narrative I could understand, she would feign ignorance. But Peck was more astute than that, and I believed her refusal to grasp what I meant resided in a decision she’d made early on, that envy was far more palatable than pity. She viewed herself as a character and her upbringing as backstory. “If you need a subject ,” she would say, impatient that I’d yet to write anything resembling a novel, “why not me ?” And then she would add, “I’d write it myself, but who has the time?”
    From the bar cart Peck now chose two glasses and, with great flourish, poured the drinks into the glasses, garnishing them with two quarters of lime speared with plastic toothpicks from a collection in a small silver jar. The toothpicks had little figures on the end that were supposed to look like jesters, the kind of gift I suppose one would give to a person who named her home Fool’s House.
    The lemons and limes for the bar cart had been sliced by Just Biggsy. That afternoon he’d cut panini in the shape of hearts. He rolled chopped beef into meatballs and cut phyllo dough, sliced carrots, and shaved thin sections from the salmon that Peck had brought home from the market. He worked efficiently, his hands moving quickly, and he knew where everything was. I’d expected some jockeying for position within the house between Peck and me, without Lydia to mediate. But there were advantages to taking up temporary residence with a woman who envisioned herself as one television gig and a jail sentence away from being the next Martha Stewart; Peck was constantly preparing food and drinks and trying new recipes. And Biggsy, who was gracious and proper and deferential and treated us exactly as a long-serving butler would his royal charges, helped enormously. In those first days at Fool’s House the handsome young artist proved himself indispensable.
    The friction between my sister and me didn’t have its source in the upkeep of our shared house, although Peck could be ill-tempered when I wasn’t as quick with the compliments as she’d have liked. What we didn’t agree on was the future of the house. Peck kept dropping hints about expensive renovations we might undertake and how she wanted to turn Fool’s House into an artistic and literary retreat. She called me a “stick-in-the-mud” and a “nervous Nellie” when I pointed out that neither of us was in possession of money for such a plan. She even said, “Shut your piehole” when I suggested we schedule a meeting with a real estate broker.
    Now Peck lifted her glass and clinked mine. She’d gotten some of the recipes for the food for the Fool’s Welcome from a magazine article entitled, with absolutely no irony, “The Perfect Hamptons Party.” The instructions on how to host such an event were accompanied by heavily styled photographs of carefully cast models posing as guests, looking maniacally happy as they lifted their glasses in a fictional toast to the “chef,” a stout woman in a red taffeta dress.
    “I wonder how they got the corn cakes to look like that,” Peck had mused, staring at the image in the magazine. There was something in her voice, a poignant note. She knew, didn’t she, that those freakishly grinning people toasting the model-slash-real-woman hired for the photo shoot to pose as the chef were all on the job, paid to sit around the