The Bay at Midnight

CHAPTER 36

Julie
1962
I knew the day everything went wrong. It was August fifth, a Sunday. It was also the day Marilyn Monroe died.
That morning after church, all of us except Isabel took our seats at the porch table, ready to dig in to our usual hearty Sunday breakfast.
“Isabel?” My mother leaned back from her chair so she could see into the living room. We would not be allowed to start in on the eggs and bacon and rolls and crumb cake until my older sister was at the table and grace had been said.
We heard Isabel’s bare feet skitter across the linoleum in the living room. She zipped onto the porch and sat down in the chair next to me.
“Marilyn Monroe is dead,” she announced, just as we all reached for one another’s hands to say grace.
“What?” My mother took Lucy’s hand in hers. “What are you talking about?”
“I just heard it on the radio,” Isabel said. “She killed herself.”
“Oh, what a shame,” my grandmother said.
My father made a sound of disgust. “It figures that she would die committing a sin, since that’s the way she lived,” he said.
“How did she kill herself?” I asked, curious.
“I don’t want to hear about it!” Lucy plastered her hands over her ears and hummed loudly as my sister started to answer.
“Not now, Isabel,” Grandma said. “Lucy doesn’t want to hear it.”
I knew little about Marilyn Monroe, only that she was blond and beautiful and extremely sexy. Men swooned over her and women envied her. Why would someone like that kill herself?
“Let’s say grace,” my father said, reaching for my hand on one side of him and my grandmother’s on the other. We bowed our heads, reciting the words by rote, and then settled down for some serious eating. My father was the chef on Sunday mornings and his scrambled eggs were always doctored with onions and peppers and tomatoes. Sunday breakfasts were one of my favorite times with my family.
“Tonight,” Grandma said as she cut her eggs with the side of her fork, “Grandpop and I want to take you girls to the boardwalk.”
I whooped with joy, but I wasn’t surprised when Izzy begged out.
“Thanks, Gram,” she said, “but I already have plans.”
“Will you come, too, Mom?” Lucy asked.
My mother poured herself a second cup of coffee. “No, honey,” she said. “I’ll stay home and catch up on housework.” It would be years before I realized how much my mother probably welcomed an occasional respite from having us all underfoot.
It wasn’t until halfway through the meal that the topic of Marilyn Monroe’s suicide came up again.
“Girls,” my father said, “there’s a lesson in Marilyn Monroe’s death.”
“Daddy.” Lucy set down her juice glass and looked at him indignantly. “We’re not supposed to talk about it now.”
“You’re not too young to know these things,” he said to her. He looked at me, then at Isabel. “She lived in sin in many, many ways. Not only didn’t she care about how she was hurting God, she didn’t care about how she hurt other people, either.”
“I don’t think she was that bad, Charles,” Grandpop said as he buttered his second hard roll.
“Look at the facts,” Daddy said. “She had affairs with married men. Many of them. She broke up marriages. She posed…without clothes on for calendars and magazines.”
“They found her nude,” Isabel added, and my father shook his head, as if to say See what I mean?
“Probably the worst thing she did was have abortions,” he said. “Several of them.”
I cringed. I’d been taught so well by my father. How could any woman take the life of her unborn child?
“What’s an abortion?” Lucy asked.
“You don’t need to know that.” My mother sent my father a look of exasperation above Lucy’s head.
“And many people believe that she’s been having an affair with President Kennedy,” my father added.
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” my grandmother said. “You’re filling these girls’ heads with rumors.”
“I believe it’s true,” Daddy said, tapping his fingertips on the rim of his coffee cup. “I’m sorry to say it, but I believe Jack Kennedy’s capable of breaking his marriage vows, and Marilyn Monroe was certainly capable of tempting him to do so. Nothing good could come of the sort of behavior she was known for.”
I thought of my impure thoughts, reassuring myself that they were mild in comparison to the things Marilyn Monroe had done.
“I heard about a girl who cheated on her husband.” Isabel had one elbow on the table, her hand holding a piece of crisp bacon that she waved a little in the air as she spoke. “She went off on a vacation with her boyfriend and they were in a helicopter and when they got out of the helicopter, the propeller was spinning around and it cut off her head.”
“Oh, Isabel!” my mother said.
“I am not listening to another disgusting word!” Lucy got up, lifted her plate from the table and carried it into the house.
But Isabel, as usual, had won my father’s affection. He looked across the table at her, nodding.
“Exactly,” he said.
My father was so blind. I wished I had the guts to tell him that Isabel and Ned met on the platform in the bay every night. My attempts to push Bruno and Isabel together had failed so far, and on those nights when I snuck out on the boat, there they were—Isabel and Ned, hugging and kissing…and much, much more.
My father left for Westfield later that afternoon and I saw that Wanda and her family were still on the other side of the canal. They usually fished only in the morning, but the weather was cool and I guessed they had simply decided to make a day of it. I thought I would join them.
I got my fishing gear from the garage, then walked around the side of the house to grab a dry towel from the clothesline. Isabel’s wonderful giraffe towel hung there among the plain old beach towels. I assumed that Izzy was already at the beach, so as long as I returned the towel to the line before she got home, she would never know that I’d borrowed it. I tossed the towel over my arm, then headed around the house to the backyard.
My fishing line had snapped the last time I’d used it, so I sat on one of the Adirondack chairs to repair it. Next door, Ned, Ethan and Mr. Chapman were in their boat in the dock. I could see the tops of their heads and I could hear conversation, some of it heated, but I could not make out the words.
Suddenly Mr. Chapman’s voice rose. “I said no!” he shouted.
Ned yelled something back at him, his words unintelligible.
“Go in the house, Ethan,” Mr. Chapman said, and I guessed that Ethan was either being punished for something or—more likely, from the sound of it—the conversation was not meant for his ears. I buried my head close to the fishing line, pretending to be engrossed in my task in case one of them glanced in my direction, but I was actually straining to hear what was being said.
Once the door to the Chapmans’ porch had slammed shut behind Ethan, Mr. Chapman spoke up again. “You’re not going to see her tonight,” he said.
Curiosity and hope welled up in me. If I couldn’t break Ned and Isabel up, maybe Mr. Chapman could. My nose was so close to the fishing line that I could smell the briny scent emanating from it.
“If you’ve known all this time,” Ned said, “why are you cracking down all of a sudden?”
Mr. Chapman lowered his voice, and although I leaned my head a few inches closer to their yard and pushed my hair behind my ear, I could not hear what he said. Their conversation lasted only a few more minutes before Mr. Chapman went into the house. I felt sorry for Ned. I knew what it was like to be chewed out and how powerless and angry it could leave you feeling.
I had long since finished working on my fishing line, so with the excitement over next door, I carried my pole and bucket and the giraffe towel to my own dock. I descended the ladder and was about to jump into the runabout when I heard Ned softly call my name. I peered over the bulkhead to see him walking toward me, and I dropped everything into the boat and rushed up the ladder to the sand.
I started to call hello to him, but he put his finger to his lips.
I nodded. I understand, I was saying to him. He didn’t want his father to hear.
He waited until he was right next to me before he spoke again, his voice very low. “Is Izzy home?” he whispered. He glanced toward his house as though afraid his father might be watching him. I could just about smell the fear on him.
“No,” I said. I looked at his hands expecting to see the toy giraffe, but he didn’t have it with him. “She’s gone to the beach with Mitzi and Pam, I think.” I watched his face to see if the mention of Pam sparked any reaction in him, but he barely seemed to notice. I was one-hundred-percent certain George had either mistaken someone else for Ned that day in the river or else he’d just been teasing me.
“I was wondering if you’d give her a message for me?” Ned asked.
“Sure.” I would do anything for you, I thought. It was great that he was talking to me on a Sunday. My hair always looked pretty and wavy on Sundays because I washed it and set it for church. I wondered if he noticed how good it looked. I tossed it over my shoulder as we talked, hoping the gesture was as sexy as I thought it was.
“Tell her I can’t see her tonight, okay?” he asked.
I nodded. I felt so adult. So proud to be trusted with their secrets. “Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “I’ll tell her.”
“Thanks.” He reached toward my head and I gritted my teeth, expecting him to tousle my hair as if I were a kid, but instead, he rested his hand on the back of my head and looked into my eyes. “You’re the most, Jules,” he said.
I wanted to stand on my tiptoes and kiss him. It would have been easy. He was so close, so handsome. But I kept my bare heels glued to the sand and simply smiled at him, acknowledging the compliment. Then I headed for the ladder once again.
I was still elated by the thrill of his touch a short time later, as I cast my line into the water from the other side of the canal. I’d hung Isabel’s towel over the fence in front of me so that the giraffe was watching us with his big, long-lashed eyes. Wanda loved the towel so much that I wished I could give it to her.
“You ever seen one of them for real?” she asked me, pointing to the giraffe.
“Sure,” I said. “At the zoo in New York. Haven’t you?”
“Uh-uh,” she said, and as we started fishing, I began hatching a new plan. I could save some money and take Wanda—and maybe George, if he was nice to me—on the train to New York and we could spend the whole day at the zoo. If Wanda had never seen a giraffe, she’d probably never seen an elephant or a rhinoceros or any other wild animals. It would be so much fun to introduce her to that whole new world. I was trying to figure out how I could get away from the house for an entire day when George interrupted my thinking.
“So,” he said as he baited his hook, “why’s your big sister’s boyfriend talkin’ to a raggedy little child like you?”
I guessed he had seen Ned and me talking in my yard.
“He happens to think I’m the most,” I said, my nose in the air.
“The most what?” he asked, laughing.
I ignored him. “What if someday soon, the three of us go to the zoo in New York?” I suggested.
“How you gonna get your daddy to let you do that?” Wanda asked, and George shook his head.
“You two on your own,” he said. “I ain’t gonna get my ass caught taking some white girl across the state line.”
Our banter went on that way for nearly an hour, with me plotting our trip and the two of them telling me why it wouldn’t work. Salena and the men were a distance away from us, and I could hear them singing along with the songs on the colored radio station they listened to. Nothing was biting, but none of us minded.
The canal provided plenty of entertainment with the Sunday swarm of boats in all shapes and sizes. A few of the taller ones rocked in place in front of us as they waited for the bridge to open and let them through. More and more of the larger vessels clogged the canal, and finally, the bridge began making its familiar clanking sound as the roadway above the water slowly swung open. I wasn’t used to seeing the bridge from that side of the canal, and I was watching in fascination when a speedboat pulled up alongside the bulkhead right in front of me.
“Hi, Julie!”
I looked down, surprised to see Bruno Walker sitting below me in his boat.
“Hi, Bruno,” I said. His nearly black ducktail was a bit windblown which made him look even sexier than usual, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. You could see every bulging muscle outlined beneath his tan skin. Even lifting his cigarette to his mouth was enough to turn his arm into a brawny network of hills and valleys.
“What are you doing over here?” He looked at Wanda, then George, then back at me again. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses and he could barely mask the surprise in his eyes at finding me fishing with colored people.
“Fishing,” I said, not answering the question he was really asking. “These are my friends, Wanda and George. That’s Bruno,” I said, nodding toward him.
Wanda and George said nothing. They knew my world did not mesh well with theirs.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Bruno said. His boat bobbed on the wake of a passing ship, but he held it steady in front of us. “Are you and Isabel real close?”
I shrugged. “Sort of,” I said. “Why?”
“How serious do you think she is about Ned?”
Although the boat ride I’d arranged for my sister, Ned and Bruno didn’t seem to have sparked the triangle I’d been hoping for, I could see another possibility opening up in front of me. “I think she’s losing interest in him,” I said.
“You don’t say.” He barely moved his lips when he spoke, like the words weren’t very important to him. But I knew that was just his style, and I grew bolder.
“You should talk to her about it,” I suggested.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think I’m her type.”
“Well, maybe she hasn’t really figured out her type yet.” I sounded like Dear Abby, giving advice to the lovelorn.
“It’s hard to get to talk to her, though,” he said. “I hardly ever see her without Ned or one of her girlfriends around.” He was playing right into my hands.
“I know how you can talk to her alone,” I said.
“How?”
“Sometimes around midnight, she swims out to the platform in the bay and just sits there, thinking,” I said. “She likes that alone time, you know? Just to think about things.” Isabel actually hated being alone. I was really talking about myself, how I relished my time in the runabout on the bay at night. But it didn’t matter. This conversation was not about the truth.
“That’s weird,” he said. I doubted Bruno was the type to appreciate moments of quiet introspection, either. He and Izzy would be perfect for each other.
“She just likes to be alone sometimes,” I repeated with a shrug. “You could find her there tonight. Then you’d be able to talk to her without anybody else around.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Ned’s a good buddy.” He looked toward the open Lovelandtown bridge, the sun in his gorgeous green eyes as he gnawed his lower lip. It was funny to see such a powerful guy look so unsure of himself. “It’s a neat idea, though,” he said, nodding as the plan grew on him. “She goes almost every night, you said?”
“Uh-huh. And I’m sure she’ll be there tonight.”
“Why are you so sure?” he asked.
“It’s Sunday night,” I said. “Dad goes home to Westfield on Sunday, so she always feels a little freer.You know, like she won’t get caught.”
“Well, thanks, Julie,” he said. “You’re okay.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
He looked behind him to see if it was safe to pull away from the bulkhead, then waved as he took off, heading toward the bridge. When the sound of Bruno’s boat could no longer be distinguished from all the other sounds on the canal, George turned to look at me.
“You up to no good, girl,” he said.
I never gave Isabel the message from Ned. Lucy and I went to the boardwalk with our grandparents that evening, and Izzy went out with some of her girlfriends. I knew that she would eventually leave them to meet Ned on the platform. Her curfew was eleven-thirty, but I doubted she’d bother coming home first, because she knew Mom would be asleep by then. I was excited about my plan and it was all I could think about as I rode the merry-go-round and Tilt-A-Whirl and ate the cotton candy Grandpop bought us. I thought I was so clever.
After we got home from the boardwalk, I went upstairs with Lucy to wait for her to fall asleep. I lay on my own bed, rereading The Clue in the Jewel Box behind the curtain, but I couldn’t read more than a sentence before my mind turned to Isabel and what might happen at midnight. I hoped Bruno would come on a little smoother than he usually did. I pictured him pulling the boat up to the platform, saying, “Isabel, is that you?” as though he was surprised to see her. I hoped he would act surprised and not say something stupid like, “Julie told me I’d find you here.” God, if he did that, I’d kill him.
Then I imagined that Isabel would look over her shoulder toward the beach, wondering why Ned hadn’t yet arrived. Maybe it would make her nervous to have Bruno there as she waited. It probably would, because she wouldn’t want Ned to catch her with another boy. Maybe she and Bruno would talk for a few minutes, though, and she’d begin to relax. She’d realize that, for some reason, Ned wasn’t coming. Something had gone wrong with their usual arrangements. And maybe she would look at Bruno in a different way. There was only a little sliver of a moon out tonight, so it was unlikely she’d be able to see his pretty green eyes, but maybe she’d still be attracted to him. My fantasy did not go so far as to have her invite him onto the platform, but at least they would start talking. At least she would begin to compare him to Ned and, with any luck at all, find Ned lacking.
Lucy fell asleep quickly, as she often did when I was present, and I piled up the bedspread beneath the covers. Then I padded quietly across the attic floor and down the rickety steps.
Grandpop was already in bed—I could hear him snoring as I passed through the living room—and I joined my mother and grandmother on the porch for a game of canasta. I could not concentrate on the cards any better than I’d been able to on my reading.
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” my mother said, after I dealt twelve cards to each of us instead of eleven. It was the third or fourth mistake I’d made.
“I’m tired, I guess,” I said.
Grandma pressed her palm against my forehead.
“I’m not sick,” I said with a laugh.
“The two of you make a fine pair,” Grandma said, shaking her head. “Julie’s tired and Maria can hardly see.”
My mother’s eyes were red and teary. She’d told us that she’d shaken out a beach blanket before washing it and sand had blown in her face.
“I can see just fine,” she said. She sounded a little annoyed.
Grandma returned her attention to her cards. “I bumped into Libby Wilson at church this morning,” she said.
“Yes, I saw you talking to her.” My mother drew a card from the stock. “How’s she doing?”
“Oh, who knows,” Grandma said. “You never hear about how Libby’s doing from Libby.You just hear about everybody else’s problems, never her own.” She was talking fast, and I loved how cute and hard to follow her Italian accent could be when she was on a roll.
“What did you learn about everybody else’s problems?” Mom asked. She placed a four of spades onto the discard pile, then pressed a tissue to the corner of her red and watery left eye.
“Betty Sanders is sick again,” Grandma said.
“Oh, dear,” my mother said. “This is what? The third time. Do they think it’s…?” She let her voice trail off. People didn’t mention cancer in those days, as though speaking the word aloud might cause you to catch it.
I was trying to see my mother’s watch. It looked like it was around ten thirty-five, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Probably,” My grandmother placed four queens on the table in front of her. “But no one’s saying. They took all her female parts this time.”
“Ugh,” I said, my big contribution to the conversation. My mind was elsewhere and I didn’t know who Betty Sanders was, anyway.
“I’ll send her a card,” Mom said.
“Libby said that, last fall, Madge’s boy got arrested and you’ll never guess why,” Grandma said.
“Why?” my mother asked.
“Rape.” Grandma whispered the word.
“Oh, my goodness,” my mother said. “Is he in jail?”
“They couldn’t pin it on him because the girl was a tramp,” Grandma said. Then she nudged me with her elbow. “It’s your turn, Julie.”
“I think that’s terrible,” my mother said, as I drew a card from the stock. “Rape is rape, whether the girl is a tramp or not.”
I liked that they were talking about something to do with sex in front of me. I felt like I had crossed some kind of threshold when I got my period and was no longer considered a child in their eyes. I knew rape meant sex forced on a woman, but I couldn’t understand how that could happen. How did a man do that? How did he pry a woman’s legs open? Imagining sex—even mutually desired sex—was so hard for me. I remembered trying to force that tampon inside myself. It had been impossible. If sex was so difficult to accomplish to begin with, then how could rape occur?
“Well, she did have a reputation,” Grandma was saying. “Libby said Madge was furious that anyone would think her son would do something like that.”
My mother laughed. “And the last thing anyone wants to see is Madge Walker furious,” she said. “Remember the time her husband accidentally spilled a drink on her at the clubhouse?”
It took a moment for the name to sink into my distracted mind. Madge Walker.
“What’s her son’s name?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Grandma said. “But she only has one.”
Oh, my God, I thought. How many Walker families could there be in our tiny community?
“Bruce,” my mother said. She looked at Grandma. “That’s it, isn’t it? Bruce?”
“Maybe,” Grandma said with a shrug.
My heartbeat kicked into high gear and I stared at my mother’s face. She was concentrating on her cards, not making the connection between the Bruce Walker who was a possible rapist, and Bruno, the boy who hung around with Isabel’s crowd of friends. Mom had even allowed Isabel to go for a boat ride with Ned because Bruno was with them!
And now I’d sent him out to visit my sister, who would be alone with him, in the dark.
“So the police decided he really didn’t rape that girl, right?” I asked as I discarded a seven of clubs. I didn’t care what card I got rid of.
“The girl was…loose,” my grandmother said, “so they couldn’t prove it one way or another. Even though she had bruises. That’s why you always have to keep your reputation clean.” She wagged a finger at me.
“Well, even if it wasn’t actually rape—” my mother pressed a tissue to her eyes again “—he’s doing things he shouldn’t be doing.”
“It was rape,” my grandmother said. “Libby was sure of it.”
My grandmother and mother continued talking about the neighborhood gossip, while my mind drifted even farther away. I remembered how unsure of himself Bruno had looked on his boat that afternoon when I suggested he talk to Isabel. He’d seemed intimidated and vulnerable. A rapist wouldn’t look so unsure of himself, I thought. He had to be innocent. The girl probably lied just to get him in trouble. But when I went to bed for real at around eleven o’clock, I couldn’t sleep. Was there a chance I had set Isabel up to be harmed? Was she still at one of her girlfriends’ houses? Should I sneak out and try to find her? I wished I could use the phone, but it was on the living-room wall, too close to my parents’ bedroom.
I moved over to the other bed in my curtained cubicle so that I could peer through the window. It was as dark as dark could get; I could barely make out the canal. The water and the woods and the sky were all the same shade of navy-blue. I sat there, listening to the crickets in the woods next door, feeling my options slip away from me as the minutes passed. I suddenly remembered Bruno talking about Isabel in Ned’s car, using his hands in a wordless allusion to my sister’s breasts. Oh, God.
It would be all right, I told myself. Maybe Bruno wouldn’t even show up. Then Isabel would come home, angry with Ned. That would be good. Maybe that would be an even better outcome for me—until Ned told her he’d entrusted me with the message that he would not be able to meet her. I hadn’t thought about that, about how annoyed Ned would be with me when I said I’d forgotten to give her his message. That would probably mess up any tiny chance I’d had with him to begin with.
The word rape kept slipping back into my mind. Was Bruno really a rapist? I thought of the girl who’d accused him. She had bruises, Grandma had said.
I got off the bed, unable to stand it anymore. The clock on my night table read eleven forty-five. I’d spent too much time thinking and not enough time acting. I was going to the beach. I quietly descended the pull-down stairs, thinking that if the current was moving in the direction of the bay, I would take the boat. If not, I would run to the beach. I wished I could take my bike, but it was in the garage and if I opened the garage door, I would wake up everyone in the house.
I should get Ned, I thought as I walked onto our porch. I should admit to him what I’d done and have him go with me. This was important enough, serious enough, for me to come clean with him.
I quietly left my house, then raced across the sand to the Chapmans’ back door. I lifted my hand to knock, but hesitated. The Chapmans’ house was dark, not a light on. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t knock on the door, wake up his parents, and have to explain my stupid scheme to all of them. Certainly they would get my own parents involved and that would just waste time. I turned around, and although the night was very dark, I could see the outline of their Adirondack chairs, four in a row, as I ran back to my own yard and our dock.
The current was lazy, probably on its way to slack tide, but it was still pulling in the direction of the bay, and the water sparkled with phosphorescent jellyfish. I’d seen that glittery display of light before, but not yet this summer, and I decided it was a good sign, for no reason other than that I needed to think positively about what lay ahead. I untethered the boat and climbed down the ladder, then used the oars to push out of the dock.
The current caught the runabout and carried it slowly toward the open water of the bay. I sat near the motor, clutching the tiller handle to keep from being pulled against the bulkhead. How much time had passed since I’d checked the clock? Five minutes? Ten? The second I hit the end of the canal, I would start the motor and head toward the platform. Bruno probably wouldn’t be there yet if it was not quite midnight, and I would tell Isabel that I’d forgotten to give her Ned’s message. She’d get in the boat. I’d bring her home. And what if Bruno was already there? I’d make up something on the spot. Anything. I just wouldn’t let her stay there alone with him.
“Come on. Come on.” I urged the boat as it neared the bay. I was certainly far enough from the house to start the motor now. I pulled on the cord but received only a sputtering reply. I yanked again. And again. The motor was behaving as it had the day I took Wanda and George to the river, only this time I didn’t have George to get it started for me. I drifted into the bay as I fought with the motor. A slim finger of panic ran up my spine as the dark expanse of water surrounded me, and an unexpectedly stiff breeze pushed me away from the beach that was my destination. I had to get the boat started. I yanked several more times, my arm aching with the effort, my fingers burning, probably blistered. For a moment, I stopped pulling the cord. I looked in the direction of our beach, trying to see the platform. Without the sound of my sputtering motor, the air was quiet, blowing lightly and steadily into my face. And then I heard it: a scream.
I stood up, nearly toppling overboard, spinning my arms to stay upright. “Isabel!” I called, but I felt the breeze steal the words from my mouth and carry them behind me.
One more scream cut through the air, this time forming a word: “Help!” It was Isabel’s voice. I was sure of it.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Izzy!” I shouted. “Izzy!”
I dropped to my knees in the boat again, tugging with all my might at the cord to the motor. I was barely aware that I was sobbing—sobbing, shouting, calling for my sister—and all the while fighting with a boat that carried me deeper and deeper into Barnegat Bay.