A Hundred Summers Read Online Free PDF Page A

the club manager know where we were eating tonight. The surf, I’d say, was too fierce for Mother.
    After our meal, we’d pass through the rest of the veranda, greeting acquaintances, and when we reached her table I’d be composed, settled into the routine of shaking hands and expressing admiration for new hairstyles and new dresses, of lamenting the loss of elderly members during the past year, of celebrating the arrival of new grandchildren: the same conversation, the same pattern, evening after evening and summer after summer. I knew my lines by heart. A minute, perhaps two, and we’d be gone.
    Kiki skipped up the steps ahead of me, and I leaned down to pick up my empty glass. My hair spilled away from Aunt Julie’s pristine chignon, loosened by the sea air and its own waywardness. I pushed it back over my ear. My cheeks tingled from the spraying surf and the brisk walk. Should I visit the powder room, return myself to orderliness, or was it too great a risk?
    “Why, hello,” said Kiki, from the top of the stairs. “I haven’t seen you around before.”
    I froze, bent over, my hand clutched around the smooth, round highball glass as if it were a life buoy.
    An appalling silence stretched the seconds apart.
    “Well, hello, yourself,” said a man’s voice, gently.

3.
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
October 1931
    E veryone at the Hanover Inn recognizes the man adorning our table. We perch on our oval-backed chairs, the three of us, eating steak and scalloped potatoes, and there isn’t a diner nearby who doesn’t crane his neck, elbow his neighbor, whisper, nod in our direction.
    Budgie sits up straight as a stick, glowing with pleasure, and consumes her steak in minutely carved pieces. “I wish they would stop staring,” she says. “Do you ever get used to it?”
    Graham Pendleton pauses with his knife and fork suspended in the air. He fills his chair, fills the entire room: all square shoulders and slick brown hair catching gold from the lights above us. Up close like this, he is absurdly handsome, every angle in perfect symmetry. “What, this?” he asks, tipping his knife at the table next to us. On cue, the awestruck occupants return to their conversation.
    “Everyone.” She smiles. “Everyone.”
    He shrugs and sets back to slicing his steak. “Aw, I don’t notice, really. Anyway, it’s only on Saturdays. Once the old boys leave town, I’m just another student. Could you pass the pepper, please, Miss . . . ?” The word drags out. He’s forgotten my name already.
    I hand him the dainty cut-glass shaker of pepper. “Dane.”
    “Miss Dane.” He smiles. The pepper shaker looks ridiculous in his thick hand. “Thank you.”
    “Darling, you remember Lily ,” says Budgie. “We spent the summer together, didn’t we? At Seaview.”
    “Oh, right. I thought you looked familiar. You’ve changed your hair or something, haven’t you?” He puts down the pepper shaker and makes a motion near the side of his head.
    “Not really.”
    But Graham has already turned back to Budgie. “Anyway, Greenwald’s the real talent. These old-timers are just too stupid to realize it.” He fills his mouth with steak.
    Budgie’s face assembles into a smiling mask. “What, Nick ? But he’s the quarterback. He just stands there.”
    Graham’s throat works, disposing of the meat. He reaches for his drink, a tall glass of milk, creaming at the top. “Didn’t you see his throw, in the second quarter? When he got hurt?”
    “Of course it was exciting. But you’re the one running all day. Scoring touchdowns. You do all the real work.”
    He shakes his head. “I just get all the attention, because I’m the fullback, and because Greenwald’s . . . well, you know.” He drinks his milk, flushing Nick Greenwald’s Jewishness from his mouth. “You’re going to see it more and more, the forward pass. Plays like that, they fill the stadium. You saw how excited everyone was. He’s all skill, Greenwald. He’s got a