Page 7 of Seven Summer Weekends
This was reason enough to climb back into bed and call her mom. Addison had been determined to handle this whole thing on her own, but was suddenly feeling like she had made a big mistake. Maybe she should have considered her mother’s advice, which was, “Dead or alive—don’t get involved with that woman!”
On the phone now, her mother repeated her unhelpful opinion, adding a few more choice words. Luckily, her tirade was interrupted by a text from the agent.
Agent Nan: Is the dog black and white—and shaggy?
Addison: Yes. Very.
Agent Nan: It’s your neighbor’s dog. I’ll text him. You should nail shut the doggie door. I believe that dog visits regularly.
Within minutes, a man, the dog’s owner, was standing in her living room. He knockedwhileentering. No introducing himself, no waiting for Addison to invite him in. He and his dog were obviously cut from the same inconsiderate cloth.
“Hello,” the man shouted. “Getting my dog.”
Addison looked down at her see-through white tank and skimpy undies and cracked open her bedroom door just enough for her voice to spill out.
“OK.”
“Sorry about that. She’s used to Gicky giving her a morning treat.”
The dog barked again, seemingly in agreement.
“I’ll grab one for her,” the man said, again not waiting for an answer before opening up the Volkswagen Beetle cookie jar. At least now she had an explanation.
“Next time, just give her one of these, and she’ll leave.”
“I don’t like dogs,” she yelled back. “Please make sure there’s not a next time.”
“Well, you should have that dog door closed up if you’re not a dog person,” he said huffily, as if the door were an invitation. Though, now that she thought about it, being that Gicky didn’t have a dog, maybe it was. Addison peeked out of the bedroom. They were gone.
“This place is filled with nutters,” she said out loud.
Addison was most definitely not a nutter.
No sooner did the entitled dog owner leave than her phone dinged with another message from the agent. Nohello, nowhat happened with the dog, just—
Confirming—July weekends are booked. August 7, 21, and 28 are available. Let me know if you want to list any of them.
“More nutters, I bet,” Addison said out loud. As if on cue, there was a knock at her door.
Chapter Five
Margot Ginsberg grew up in the apartment directly below the Irwin family on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. As an only child, she spent countless hours with her best friend, Gloria (Gicky), and, more often than not, Gicky’s kid brother, Morty, too. When the weather was good, they would play sidewalk games in front of the building, under the watchful eyes of all the grandmothers (Margot’s included). There was a lot of yelling in Yiddish and Italian, which the kids understood to mean the same thing—stop having fun. When the weather was bad, their play comprised sliding down banisters or messing with the buttons on the elevator. Bad weather shenanigans were often followed by a one-sided game of hide-and-seek with the super. And just when it all felt stifling, or at least redundant, Margot’s grandmother took Margot and Gicky by the hand and indoctrinated them into an entirely new world.
She taught them how to cross the Grand Concourse.
Navigating the bustling multilane thoroughfare that was loosely modeled on the Champs-Élysées was a rite of passage thatdivided a Bronx kid’s life into before and after. When the after began, so did their future. And though Gicky was often saddled with helping Morty with his homework and having dinner ready when her dad arrived home from work, the girls had plenty of fun. There was Napoli’s pizza place, where they had their first taste of pork sausage. And the bowling alley where Gicky had her first, equally nonkosher, kiss with Bobby Benedetto. There was the corner deli where they bought their first pack of Lucky Strikes and the platform of the Jerome Avenue el train, where Gicky’s dad caught them smoking. And neither Margot nor Gicky ever forgot seeing their first R-rated movie,The Graduate, at the Loew’s on Boston Road, with its giant vertical marquee and plush red seats. It seemed nothing could get more decadent than the young Benjamin Braddock’s affair with Mrs.Robinson, until one steamy August day in 1969, when a powder-blue Plymouth Road Runner pulled up in front of their building. The Who’s “My Generation” was blasting from the radio.
Morty was still at sleepaway camp in the Catskills at the time, leaving Gicky to feel a sense of freedom she had never experienced. At eighteen, Margot and Gicky had already aged out of camp and were left to sweat out the summer in the concrete jungle. They were sitting on the stoop in front of their building, Gicky sipping a Fresca, Margot, a DrPepper, when Heshie Friedman, a kid they went to high school with, arrived in his dad’s car. His best friend, Mo Price, called them over from the passenger seat.
“We have two extra tickets to a concert in the Catskills!” Mo yelled, waving them out the window for temptation.
It worked. The girls stood up to investigate. Margot snatched one from his lanky fingers and read it out loud: “Woodstock Music and Art Fair.”
“That’s right near camp!” Gicky blurted, as if that made considering their invitation less outrageous. Margot shot it down with a foreboding look, but it didn’t work. Gicky jumped into the back seat of the car and never looked back. She wasn’t even wearing shoes.
It was in that moment that everything changed.
By the time the powder-blue Plymouth drove out of sight, Margot was already regretting her decision not to go with them. And when Gicky came home, by all counts, much cooler than when she had left, Margot regretted it even more. Trying to close the chasm that had developed between them and sick of hearing sentences that began with “At Woodstock, we…” she had a little adventure of her own.
