Free Boys in the Trees: A Memoir by Carly Simon Page B

mix more deeply against my chest. Still, a dead giveaway. We heard Mommy’s voice again, this time warning and insistent. Defeated, I removed the two sad little white socks. Joey draped a scarf around my shoulders, which I’d have to keep close. Then the two of us walked like ladies downstairs.
    Among the crew of regulars that evening were Don and Deirdre Budge, Benny and Alice Goodman, Jackie and Rachel Robinson, Bennett and Phyllis Cerf, and Daddy’s new author Sloan Wilson. I was relieved to see Uncle Peter there, too, and silently prayed I could sit beside him. As usual, Joey was the first to enter the living room, absorbing a royal cascade of oooh s and ahhh s as her natural birthright. All the men except for Daddy rose to their feet, while the women at the table hesitated, stealing glances at the other females for clues on how to react. On how to respond when a much younger woman takes all the attention in the room. As dinner music, Daddy had put a record on the turntable. Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” If heaven was preparing a dramatic dénouement, it landed on its mark perfectly. The horns seductively swelled and reached their peak, just as Lucy took everyone’s breath away, simply by entering the room.
    She appeared in the hall doorway inside a golden hazy ray of the dying afternoon sun and took a lone step forward, shy, sweet, nervous, corruptible. She wore a sleeveless rose-brown dress that buttoned all the way up from the shapely middle of her legs to where her waist pulled in tight. In her hair was a dusting of polyanthus, and in possible defiance of Mommy, her feet were bare. In all our days together, Lucy was never as beautiful as she looked that night and, for the first time, I saw her through the guests’ eyes—the eyes of a larger audience—and, not least, in questioning contrast to myself.
    Daddy had risen to his feet for Lucy’s entry, too, his eyebrows cocked slightly upward in approval. No one saw it but me. It was as if Daddy had just seen an angel descend to earth, and what’s more, realized that he was that angel’s father, a certified angel-maker. At that moment I knew one thing for sure, one thing that had been true for as long as I could remember: Lucy was Daddy’s Darling, the ingénue to the star, Joey, who was loath to—and never would—relinquish her power. I was long past wishing I were Daddy’s favorite—I didn’t want him, in fact, and was officially out of the running, which was okay with me, as I had Uncle Peter to love. Tonight, as always, Uncle Peter would step in as my parent substitute. My entrance was flawlessly unnoticed. I slipped between the guests, otherwise preoccupied, neither shadow nor star. Uncle Peter saw me and whispered, “Don’t worry, we’ll get through this together.”
    At dinner, I sat between Jackie Robinson and Don Budge, at one point the top-ranked tennis player in the world. As for the Robinsons, our family had a long history with them. Jackie and his wife had lived with us during the construction of their own house a few miles away in Stamford. Daddy, Jackie, and I used to drive to Ebbets Field to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers’ home games. In the dugout I would sit on Pee Wee Reese’s lap, and was once even informally named the Dodgers mascot, with the team stitching together a special jacket for me with DODGERS printed on the back and CARLY on the front. I was very proud of Jackie, and my knowing him was a very big deal. His son Jackie Junior was my brother Peter’s best friend. Jackie even taught me to bat lefty, though it never took. I loved him. He always had the cutest look around the side of his mouth, as if he were thinking about what he was about to say before he said it.
    Across from me at the cramped, cozy table, Mommy looked glamorous and lovely. Her gardenia matched the white stripe in her stiff black-and-white cotton dress, the two colors zigzagging diagonally across her bodice in dramatic contrast to her red lipstick. She