The market is part farmstand and part gourmet food store: a classic Hamptons dichotomy. The low-slung building is white and pretty, with a forest green awning on one end and large white cotton umbrellas standing sentinel over the picnic tables out front. Inside, strands of tiny globe lights criss-cross from the wooden rafters. The cool cement floor is painted a dusty moss green. Tables hold baskets of produce: shiny purple fairytale eggplant the size of your thumb, knobby heirloom tomatoes striped red and orange, bunches of carrots—still streaked with dirt from the ground—propped up at jaunty angles.
She’s browsing the cold case, which is filled with containers of cold Vietnamese noodles, glass pots of thick strained yogurt, fat rounds of fresh mozzarella, local wine, and more types of kombucha than she knew could feasibly exist. She pauses to pick up a small jar of homemade roasted squash ricotta dip, flips it over to see the $14 price tag, and quickly sets it back on the shelf.
Anna and Sophie are waiting in line at the café for iced coffees and blueberry muffins—they make particularly good breakfast tacos here, dotted with bright pink pickled onions and a tangy cabbage slaw, but they all have a reservation for brunch in an hour. The three of them left the house while everyone else was still asleep to forage for caffeine and sugar to ease their hangovers.
They stayed out until 3 AM last night, starting with crispy tuna tacos and margaritas at Coche Comedor and ending up doing lemon drop shots at the Talkhouse. She would have happily called it a night after Olivia took off her shoes and tried to scale the trellis of climbing roses outside of what she swore was Ina Garten’s house, but Grace begged them all to stay, and it is her bachelorette, so they had to. (It turned out not to be Ina Garten’s house, but rather the summer cottage of a very understanding man named Elliot, who came out to see what the noise was and kindly pointed them in the direction of Ina Garten’s actual house, not even batting an eye when Olivia asked if he had any vodka he could spare for their walk.)
This is one lesson of her twenties: The word bride is worse than the word birthday, because although both force you into all kinds of social obligations you’d really prefer to skip altogether, and both require you to spend money on your friends, but the word bride ratchets up the requirements considerably. She has, in the past year, been on a horseback riding weekend in Vermont, a glamping trip to Joshua Tree, two long weekends in Nashville (one at an AirBnb so sprawling and beautiful that it cost more for each guest than the flights down and back), and a full week winetasting in Napa.
And those were just the official bachelorette parties: She has also been to countless showers, held at pink-hued tea shops or someone’s cramped East Village apartment featuring the same spread of puffy bagels, cut fruit, cheap prosecco for mimosas, and some sort of iced cookie with a wedding motif.
At first the trips were novel. Fun even. But she’s starting to grow weary of them and of going through the motions. It’s like prom, over and over again, except that each time you have to pretend like it’s the first time anyone’s ever done it. You have to act as if no one has ever gotten married before, and as if you’d like nothing better than to wear coordinating outfits to dinner each night (the second Nashville trip) or do a scavenger hunt involving asking three different male bartenders for their number (Napa).
Grace is an absolute peach of a human though, and she’s more willing to humor her in this. Grace is not a partier, at heart. She’s always the good one. The studious one. Watching her cheeks flush pink with each sip of vodka last night, her tousled curls damp with sweat from the dance floor and her wide grin testament to how thrilled she feels to be the center of attention for once, makes the effort of the trip worth it.
Their agenda today is brunch, then beach. They’ll sit on the patio at Carissa’s and eat thick-cut ham, cornichons, and sweet butter on crusty baguettes, or soft scrambled eggs piled on the bakery’s signature spicy cheddar kimchi croissants. Half of the girls lobbied to pick up overpriced sandwiches from the Golden Pear, where a turkey-and-lettuce on whole wheat costs $16 (she’s always assumed anyone who shopped there is doing it merely to telegraph that they can), along with bags of chips and cold slices of watermelon, but Grace insisted on brunch.
Getting any bachelorette party from point A to point B is an exercise in frustration, but Sophie is a preschool teacher and her skills herding toddlers has come in handy. She claps her hands like an overenthusiastic camp counselor and hustles everyone out the door, somehow managing to smooth over all of the complicated logistics: three people in this car, two people in that cab, beach towels in this bag, sunscreen in that one, and so on.
This is how she ended up at the market this morning—the alternative was staying at the house while everyone jockeyed for mirror space in the bathroom and argued about whether they should eat at Nick and Toni’s or the Palm for dinner.
She hadn’t even brought her wallet, and she looks up to see Sophie gesturing to indicate they had to wait a few more minutes for their coffees, so she takes a few steps to the next table and reaches down to unfold one of the t-shirts: extra soft heathered cotton emblazoned with a tasteful logo of the farm. They’re unobtrusive to an outside observer, but anyone who lives here considers one of these shirts a status symbol of the highest order, like a Black Dog t-shirt for the super wealthy.
The cash register dings. Two couples are laughing at one of the picnic tables outside; a man in faded jean shorts glides in on his bike, jumping off in front of the tables. She’s watching him lean the handlebars against the porch, trying to place his face. He looks vaguely familiar: tanned and fit with the confident walk of the young and moneyed. He walks up the three stairs to the entrance of the market and steps inside, picking up a wire shopping basket. Attempting to get a closer look at him without seeming too obvious, she edges around the table and bumps firmly into someone’s solid body, sending a bag and a box clattering to the floor.
“Sorry! So sorry!” she says apologetically. They’re both bending down to pick up the dropped groceries, and she reaches for the box, which is a small white bakery container holding a row of uniform chocolate medallions. The handwritten label reads: chocolate fudge crowns.
She straightens up and looks the person right in the eye, handing over the box, then squeaks in surprise. “Elspeth!”
The woman looks back at her coolly, as if waiting for more of an explanation. She starts to introduce herself, which is ridiculous given that she’s lived three doors down for nearly 15 years. “I’m just here for a friend’s bachelorette party. Grace Elwood? Maybe you knew her? She was at our house a lot. We played field hockey together?”
But Elspeth interrupts her: “Why don’t you take these.” (It should be a question, but it comes out like an order.) “They’re excellent. Very rich. Made with condensed milk. Tell Grace congratulations.” And then she thrusts the box of cookies at her and leaves without another word.
Standing there holding the box, she’s torn between an urge to laugh and an urge to immediately call her parents and describe the interaction, which is truly par for the course. Elspeth had owned her house—just down the street from theirs—for as long as they’d lived there, but had never grown warmer or less strange over the years.
Their neighbors were, in a word, weird. Eccentric is another adjective bandied about often, but she feels that’s too quirkily loveable. They are just odd, and not particularly nice either. Elspeth comes from family money, a lot of it, and she has the patrician nose of an oil painting of a Mayflower passenger. Her hair is a wild and unruly cascade of curls, and she favors floaty caftans or gardening clogs with slim-fit, high-rise jeans. Her husband Michael works as a lawyer in the film industry, though Elspeth is deeply sensitive around the topic and likes to emphasize that he largely works on documentary films about things like ecotourism and microfinance.
She once heard Elspeth tell another woman that her husband worked in the nonprofit world, which made her snort with laughter. Nonprofits, indeed. Last month he had a meeting with Harvey Weinstein at the Soho House—so, sure. Let’s call it a nonprofit. Elspeth was absolutely the kind of trust fund baby who spent college wearing patchouli and buying all her meals from the co-op bulk section, as if she were on a tight budget, when in fact it was just a brief rebellion against what she must have known was her inevitable return to luxury: her face cream cost more than most people’s monthly rent, and she refused to drink anything but imported French bottled water. (“They have a far healthier approach to food safety legislation,” she’d say loftily.)
Her father once famously knocked on Elspeth’s door on a Monday evening to pick up a set of antique sconces that she was donating to the town’s charity auction, and Elspeth answered the door in her full and resplendent birthday suit. Completely nude. As her dad likes to tell it, she looked at him questioningly, even though, as he points out, “we had confirmed the time a few hours before that! She knew I was coming!”
Elspeth had stared at him, clear-eyed and supercilious, while her dad stammered something about coming back, and she’d simply turned on her heel commandingly with a sweep of her long hair, went into the other room, and returned to hand him the sconces…still without a stitch of clothing.
Absolutely weird. She suspects that Elspeth is dying to be labeled anything, be it eccentric or otherwise. She thrives on attention — being talked about gives her a sense of purpose.
This is all fine, but ever since the sconce incident, her father hasn’t been able to properly look Elspeth in the face. This has proved uncomfortable and inconvenient on more than a few occasions, such as at the Ackerman’s Easter party last April when Elspeth requested an amaretto sour from her father, who was helping Tad Ackerman make drinks at the bar. He tried to thrust it at her awkwardly without making eye contact and ended up spilling it all over her white linen jumpsuit. In true Elspeth fashion, she had chosen not to wear a bra, which only made her father blush triply hard and exacerbated the whole issue even further.
Seeing her here, in such an incongruous place, makes her homesick. She also wants to call him immediately and tell him the story. She wants to lie in bed in the dusty, glowing light of a July evening and talk to him, about this and nothing and everything. Ordinary, uninteresting bits of her life are like a currency she exchanges with him—she wants to know everything of him in return: his own odd neighbors, the color of the house where he grew up, the type of glassware in his kitchen cabinet, his brunch order, his parents’ middle names, what he wears on an airplane, his heart, his whole ticking, pulsing heart.
Elspeth’s Fudgy Chocolate Condensed Milk Cookies
Makes a few dozen small cookies
510g (2 1/2 cups) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
14 ounces sweetened condensed milk
42g (3 tablespoons) butter
240g (2 cups) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
11/2 teaspoon espresso powder (optional, for enhanced chocolate flavor)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
56g (1/2 cup) chopped toasted nuts (optional)
56g (1/2 cup) cacao nibs (optional)
In a medium saucepan, combine the chocolate chips, condensed milk, and butter. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate is fully melted.
Turn off the heat and add the flour, baking soda, salt, espresso powder (if using), egg, and vanilla. Stir to combine well.
Add the nuts and cacao nibs, if using. These are nice additions for crunch but not necessary!
Let the dough cool, and then chill it for about 20 minutes in the refrigerator. Once chilled, divide the dough into four equal portions (or three, if you want larger cookies). Roll each portion into a log, about 2" wide, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap.
Chill the logs for at least 2 hours, or you can pop them in the freezer for 20 minutes if you're in a rush. You just want them to be firm and easy to slice.
When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F, and line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
Working with one log of dough at a time, slice the logs into thin slices (about 1/4" to 1/2" each)—the thicker the slice, the chewier the cookies will be.
Place the cookies on the prepared baking sheets—you don't have to leave too much space, as they don't spread much.
Bake the cookies for 12 minutes. They'll look underdone, but that's okay, take them out anyway. They'll firm up as they cool. Repeat with the remaining logs (you can also keep the dough frozen for up to a month before using).