It's Changed so much it's all the same. (Do you hear us, Jay Gatsby?) Summer in the Hamptons: It's all so different you'd know it in a minute. ... Big money clinging to the center (ordering the party lemons in on Saturday afternoon, then laughing over sour drinks, watching the rinds go out as garbage Sunday morning). Small change around the edges; young, pretty (looking in). ... And, yes, the popular journals still send artists with their sketch pads to catch the tattletale moments: a Senator's brother at play (things you've seen a thousand times), a parasol shadow creeping across polka dots onto a wicker pram. Quick sketches done with a stiletto. ... Still true: You can't hear a Rolls-Royce coming. You feel it. The sound of money here is the silence it buys. Behind topiary hedges, on greens as trim as billiard tables, for serious croquet, private tennis. ... The cranky sea tried to wash the Beach Club away in 1938 (remember?), but the Beach Club wasn't ready to go. It may take more than acts of God to finally wash this terrace down. Mother and son are at their table again (still) talking about his last marriage, hers, other disasters they have survived together. And they are eavesdropping over "the sound of tinkling waiters" on the kind of clever conversation they invented 40 years ago. "Love, darling boy, is a dream ... and I am beginning to think they will never change this luncheon menu." A sturdy terrace, indeed. ... City people on the sandy fringe make crowds of themselves even when they don't have to, because two weeks at the beach can't cure the New York feeling that we are all in this together. Secretaries, brokers, salespeople, copy writers, wild hairy children a stone's throw, a putting green away from the hush of money. Listening to the difference, wondering: Could the artist possibly be painting them into the picture? ... Some of the proud ponies are left and some have turned to minibikes, but they still call it polo. Some of the power has turned to giggles, some of the danger to scraped knees, and most of Sunday's fine sporting togs have turned to flesh. And then at night, in small spaces, these athletes dance off whatever is left of the day to a roaring music and drink whiskey that is legal and take pills that are not. (Prohibition is as much fun now as it was then.) Most of the fine old cars are gone now (time and the salt air), but some of the riders have hung on all this time. And (can you believe this, Gatsby?) the artist swears by his fancy mustache and his quick brush that although the cars shown here are different, and the dogs-although the footmen are missing-this is the same woman: the flower of the Twenties (Daisy?) 50 years later. The floppy hat and sunglasses cover the scars of a recent face lift and daily shots of vitamin B12 have kept her sense of drama and style up to the occasion. Today, lunch at the Beach Club with her granddaughter. The artist says the old lady had the look of someone passing secrets. Over lobster tails and romaine: the same secrets, rich enough for another summer.
