CHAPTER 16
Maria
1927-1939
It was funny how when you neared the end of your life, you could find yourself thinking about its beginning. I was only five when my parents and I spent our first summer at the bungalow. The canal was brand-new back then, only having been completed the year before. There were very few houses in Bay Head Shores at the time, and everyone already knew one another, so I think it was particularly difficult for my mother to make friends at first. Rosa Foley was an oddity, with her exotic dark looks and Italian accent, but my father was so very American that he was able to make inroads for us with the other families and their children and I quickly had several playmates.
When I was eight, nine-year-old Ross Chapman moved in next door and became my best friend. We’d fish together in the canal and swim together at the beach. He taught me how to play tennis when I was eleven and I taught him how to dance when I was twelve. The Chapmans lived in Princeton during the rest of the year, while we lived in Westfield, so Ross and I never saw each other or even exchanged letters during those months. Come summer, though, we’d pick up right where we left off.
The summer I was fourteen, I started viewing Ross differently. He’d grown tall and lanky in a very handsome way. I’d started that adolescent yearning for a boyfriend, and although he and I were still just pals, I fantasized about him being more than that. He was on my mind even during the school year, and when talking with my Westfield girlfriends, I would refer to him as my boyfriend. My friends were envious, thinking I had a luscious summer love. I knew Ross would probably clobber me with his tennis racket if he knew how I talked about him. I was still just the girl next door to him.
When my daughters were growing up, they liked to date one steady boy at a time, but things were different when I was a young teen. My friends and I did everything as a group. “Maria’s gang” was how my father referred to us. At the shore, my “gang” consisted of about twelve youngsters. Many of us had boats, and we’d cruise between the bay and the river with ease.
The summer Ross was sixteen, he showed up at the shore with a Ford Phaeton convertible. Oh, my, the fun we had with that car! Of course, it was only meant for four people, but we managed to squeeze six or seven of us into it, some of the kids standing on the running board, hanging on for dear life. We were wild—not by today’s standards, of course, but we thought we were pretty crazy. Everything felt so safe back then. No one I knew ever got hurt in a car crash. No one drowned in the ocean. And certainly, no one was murdered. Our placid lives would all change in a few years, with the stock-market crash and the Second World War, but our teenage years were easy and fun filled.
Once several of us could drive, we started hanging out at Jenkinson’s Pavilion on the boardwalk. We nearly lived there, dancing to live music in the evening, swimming in the huge saltwater pool during the day, and basking for hours on end in the sun. It was a wonder I never got skin cancer, but I had my mother’s Mediterranean skin and I guessed that saved me.
My dark looks, however, came with a price.
The summer I was seventeen, the intensity of my attraction to Ross had deepened to the point of obsession. Not only was he handsome, he was brilliant as well, getting straight A’s in his private high school and being accepted to Princeton for the fall, where he would follow in his father’s footsteps by studying law. It seemed, though, that we would never be more than friends. Ross would often give me a ride to parties and other get-togethers, and on the way home, we would talk about who we were attracted to, who we would like to go out with. You, I wanted to say. It’s you I want to go out with. It was hard for me to listen to him say he liked Sally or Delores, when my longing for him was eating away at my insides. I played the game, too, though, telling him I had a crush on Fred Peters, the best-looking boy in our group. Ross only responded that he thought Fred was interested in me, too.
The change came when I was crowned queen of the Summertime Gala, an annual Point Pleasant event. It featured a small parade, and I rode on a little float pulled by a few of the boys from my gang, Ross and Fred included. I was dressed all in white from head to toe and wore a crown. My envious girlfriends treated me coolly, but my fifteen minutes of fame seemed to alter Ross’s view of me.
He drove me home after the parade. He turned the car onto Shore Boulevard, but instead of continuing down the road to our houses, he pulled over and parked in front of the woods.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
He glanced at me, then smiled almost shyly. “I want to tell you something, Maria,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“You made a very beautiful queen,” he said. Ross had never said anything like that to me before. He’d never commented on my looks in all the years I’d known him.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I hope you don’t think this is silly of me,” he continued, “because I know we’ve always just been friends, but I thought about you over the winter. I thought about how swell it was going to be seeing you again this summer.”
“I thought about you, too,” I whispered.
“You did?”
I nodded.
“I went out with some girls in Princeton, you know, but I was thinking of you the whole time,” he said. “I’d look at pictures my parents had of you and me…you know, sailing and in our tennis clothes and…you know those pictures.”
I nodded again, my heart brimming with joy and gratitude. These were the words I had longed to hear from him and had heard only in my imagination—and in the lies I told my Westfield girlfriends.
“Today, when I saw how other men looked at you…” He shook his head. “I knew I had to let you know how I feel. I couldn’t take the chance of letting you get away.” He took one of my hands in both of his. “I’m in love with you, Maria.”
I was sure that my smile lit up the car. I let go of his hand and reached out to hug him. “I’ve loved you for years,” I said, my lips against his ear.
He drew away from me, then leaned over to kiss me, so tenderly I barely felt it. He raised his hand to my breast, touching it through my silly white queen dress, sending a spark through my body.
“I want you.” He smoothed my thick hair behind my ear.
“I want you, too,” I said.
“Tonight,” he said, “let’s break away from the gang at Jenkinson’s. We can go out on the beach under the stars.” He lifted my hand and drew it to his lips, and I nodded.
“All right,” I said. I knew what I was saying, what I was agreeing to, and I knew it was a sin. But I didn’t care.
That night at Jenkinson’s, we danced, both with other people and with each other, trying not to be too obvious. Around nine o’clock, Ross and I stepped out onto the broad porch and down the stairs to the beach. We slipped off our shoes and our feet had barely touched the sand before we were kissing. We made love beneath the Jenkinson’s boardwalk, while the band played Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller songs almost directly above us. It was the first time for me, although I was sure it was not for him. I lost my virginity to Ross that night on the beach. I’d lost my heart to him years before.
Ross and I began going out separately from our gang of friends. He’d come to pick me up, and my parents, who had always liked him, were delighted at seeing us together. Of course, they had no idea how far our relationship had gone. They invited him to dinner or to play cards with us, and I felt proud of how easily he slipped into my family. Our relationship, always based in friendship, became more sexual than I ever could have imagined. It was rare that one of our evenings together did not end with lovemaking, often in the sandy lot across from our bungalows, where a crescent of blueberry bushes provided the right amount of cover. It was not the sort of tender lovemaking I’d grown up imagining, but rather a hungry, animalistic devouring of each other. During daylight hours, when I would be helping my mother around the house, the memory of being with Ross the night before would make me suck in my breath with a sudden blaze of desire.
Ross and I rarely spoke about the fall, when he would be going to Princeton and I would study teaching at the New Jersey College for Women, but we did talk about the future.
“I’d rather you study art than education,” he said one night. I was lying in his arms, encircled by the protection of the blueberry bushes, my dress draped over my bare skin. Hanging on a chain around my neck was his high-school ring, which he’d given me the day before. I couldn’t stop myself from fingering it.
“What could I do with an art degree, though?” I asked him. “I’ve always wanted to teach.”
“That’s because you’ve been thinking you’ll have to earn a living to support yourself,” he said, kissing my nose. I heard the smile in his voice.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“Well, you know I’m not in a position to ask you to marry me now,” he said, “but if you and I do get married one day, you won’t have to work. I wouldn’t want you to work. You would have plenty to do helping me entertain my law colleagues.”
I smiled to myself, snuggling closer to him. I could see my future in front of me. Our future. I pictured our elegant home in Princeton, our beautiful children—a boy and a girl. I could see myself in an exquisite hostess gown, welcoming our distinguished guests.
“We’ll see,” I said, because although the fantasy was delightful, my parents had instilled in me the satisfaction that could be gained from having a career of my own. I knew it would take me a while to let go of that dream.
Our friends had quickly realized we were a couple, despite our initial attempt to keep our relationship to ourselves. Once we were out in the open, the girls seemed to feel less threatened by me and they became my friends again. I’d missed them and I was glad.
One night, Ross and I were at Jenkinson’s with the whole gang. We were standing in line at the fresh orangeade stand, the boys telling jokes and the girls groaning in response. The orangeade vendor was Italian, his accent stronger than my mother’s but very similar. James, one of the boys in our gang, gave him a dollar bill to pay for a ten-cent orangeade. I was never sure exactly what happened, but James somehow tricked the vendor into giving him two dollars in change. I watched most of the boys and some of the girls in my gang snickering as we moved away from the orangeade stand. By the time we were out of earshot of the vendor, James was nearly doubled over with laughter.
“Can you believe that imbecile?” he asked us. “Stupid wop!” I looked quickly at Ross. He was grinning. His upturned lips, his teeth, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes—those details would stay with me for the rest of the night. They were all I could see when I looked at him. I was half Italian. My mother was a full-blooded “wop.” Why couldn’t I tell him how much his mockery of the immigrant vendor hurt me? If he wondered why my lovemaking that night lacked its usual energy, he said nothing about it. I was waiting for him to ask me what was wrong. Then I would tell him about my sense of betrayal. But he never did ask, and I tried to push my sadness to someplace deep enough inside me that it would not rise up again.
A few days later, my mother found a forgotten bag of pine nuts in the pantry and she made a double batch of pignoli. She put a dozen of them on a plate and told me to take them over to the Chapmans’.
I crossed our backyards and knocked on our neighbors’ porch door. I knew Ross was playing golf with his father, but his mother was home, and she pulled open the screened door for me.
“Hello, Maria,” she said. “How is the queen of the gala today?”
“Fine, thank you, Mrs. Chapman,” I said, stepping onto the porch. In my younger years, I’d spent plenty of time in Ross’s house, but now it seemed we only got together at my house. I assumed Ross felt that my parents were warmer and more welcoming than his—which they certainly were. “Mother made an extra batch of pignoli for you,” I said, holding out the plate of cookies.
“How lovely of her!” she said. “Bring them into the kitchen.”
I walked into their kitchen and set the cookies on the table in the corner. When I looked up at her, she had lost her smile.
“Whose ring are you wearing?” she asked me.
My fingers flew to the ring hanging around my neck. Hadn’t Ross told her?
“It’s Ross’s,” I said.
I saw by her expression that Ross had not told her. She looked into my eyes, confused. “Why on earth would he give you his ring?” she asked.
What could I say except the truth? “We’re going steady.” I dropped my hand from the ring to my side, suddenly self-conscious.
“But…he has a girlfriend in Princeton,” she said.
I knew about Veronica, the girl his parents kept pushing him to go out with.
“Veronica’s not his girlfriend,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. I held out the ring as proof.
She turned away from me, ostensibly to put away a cup that had been resting on the counter. “I didn’t know that,” she said tightly. “I thought he was still interested in her.”
“Well,” I said, the sense of betrayal welling up in me again, “maybe you should talk to Ross about that.”
I went home, angry with Ross for not telling his parents, or at the very least, for not telling me that his parents didn’t know. I was helping Mother with the dusting when I heard the Chapmans’ car chug past our house on the dirt road. I walked out to our screened porch so that I might be able to hear their conversation if it was loud enough.
The yelling started quickly, but I couldn’t make out anything that was being said. I ached for Ross, wishing I could have said something to his mother that would have eased the barrage of fury being thrown his way. If only I had known he hadn’t told them about us, I could have pocketed the ring. In my naiveté, I thought they were angry that he had not told them he’d lost interest in Veronica or that he’d not told them that we were going steady. The real content of their argument was something else altogether.
Later that evening, Ross came over and asked if I would go for a walk with him. Of course, I said yes, anxious to hear what had transpired between him and his parents. He held my hand as we walked up Shore Boulevard.
“I have to break up with you,” he said, the words slicing clear through my heart.
“Why?” I asked. “Is it Veronica?”
“No, no,” he said quickly, then tightened his grip on my hand. “I don’t care a whit about Veronica.You know that. I love you, Maria. I always will, and maybe someday, when we’re out on our own, we can start seeing each other again, but right now I just can’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell your parents about us?” I asked, tears welling up in the corners of my eyes.
He rubbed the back of my hand so hard my skin burned. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“Tell me.”
He was quiet a moment. “It’s because you’re Italian,” he said finally.
“So what?” I said defensively. “And I’m only half Italian.”
“Your mother came over on the boat, and to them, that’s…I don’t know.” He shook his head. “My parents have antiquated views about things.”
“You’ve known all along I was Italian,” I said angrily. “That hasn’t stopped you from making love to me when you feel like it.”
“I don’t care what your background is,” he said. “You know that, darling.”
“Then why are you letting them dictate who you can see?” I asked.
“Dad said he won’t pay for me to go to Princeton if I continue seeing you.” He blurted out the words.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He wants you to go as badly as you want to go. Do you think he would actually follow through on that threat?”
“I have no doubt at all that he would,” he said grimly. “I’m so angry with him right now that I could—” He shook his head, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.
The tears began trickling down my cheeks, and when I spoke, it was hard for me to get the words out. “But we’ve been friends forever,” I said. “Does he expect us to stop being friends?”
“We’ll always be friends, Maria,” he said.
We were in front of our houses again, back where we’d started our walk. And we were in front of the lot with the blueberry bushes as well. Standing there, we looked at each other a long time, the darkness no barrier to seeing the longing in each other’s eyes. He took my hand again, nodded toward the bushes.
“One last time,”he whispered, as he led me onto the sandy lot.
I was certain we both knew he was lying.