In the center of the photo were two other people I didn’t recognize, obviously another couple, her hand on his arm. They looked young and happy, the center of a charmed life. As in the other photos from that era, most of them held a lit cigarette and many held cocktail glasses.
Was one of the people in the photo whom I didn’t recognize the intended recipient of the fifth gift certificate? Was the couple in the center still together? Had the person who mailed the gift certificates hoped to stage a reunion?
As I made my way to the door, I stopped again and stared at the photo from 1959. Vee Snugg was at the center, her mouth open, caught in the act of tossing out a witty bon mot the others reacted to. Fee was there, too, dressed in a shapeless shift, her arm through the arm of her date, who, like all the other men, stared at the glamorous Vee. Fee thought of herself, even described herself, as homely, but I saw a shy woman with a sweet face and a comfortable figure. Neither sister had married. Vee had spent her childbearing years in love with a married man who would never leave his wife. I wondered about Fee. Had any man ever been in love with her? What if she hadn’t been the sister of the charismatic Vee?
I tucked the 1967 photo under my arm and kept walking until I reached the locker room and exited through the front door, locking it behind me.
Chapter 16
I wasn’t sure how long I could keep the key before Bud came looking for it. I figured, let him come after me. I walked out of the back harbor with the photo and the key in hand. I kept the office where I ran the clambake business in the front room on the second floor of my mother’s house. Dad had operated the business from there for twenty-five years. With its bulky metal file cabinets, heavy oak desk, and view out the window to the Snowden Family Clambake kiosk on the public pier, the office made me feel like I carried on an important tradition.
At my desk, I turned the wooden frame of the photo upside down, poking at the brads that held its back in place. When they proved too stiff for me to move, I used a scissors to pry them open. I glanced at my cell phone on the desk surface. No call from Bud yet.
When the frame opened, I slid the photo out, put it in my printer–scanner–photo-copier, and pressed the start button. The machine chugged along while I shifted nervously from foot to foot, mentally urging it to go, go, go. For my trouble, I got a passable copy. I put the photo back in the frame and put it and the copy into an L.L.Bean tote bag I had stowed in the room. I took the tote bag with me when I left the house.
I hurried back to the yacht club, unlocked the door, and returned the original photo to its place. As I left, I noticed the images from later years along the row. The photograph I’d returned to the wall of the group from 1967 marked the gateway to a turbulent time. In the next photo, girls with straight hair parted down the middle, pale lipstick, and simple shifts with hemlines skimming their thighs stared into the camera. Boys, with jackets off and ties loosened, made faces.
Then there was a four-year gap in the photos. I suspected there had been no interest in fusty yacht club dances on the part of the young people during the end of the sixties and early seventies. Starting in 1972, the photos returned. They were in color, though everything was slightly yellowed. The color photos hadn’t held up as well as the black and white. The white dresses for the girls were gone by then, and most of the boys were long-haired, dressed in blazers and khakis. Smoking in the photos seemed to have gone out of fashion, too, though I had no doubt people did it, tobacco and other things, just no longer for the camera.
In 1977, I found my mother, standing two feet away from her date, looking miserable. She was already in love with my father, the local boy who’d delivered groceries to her house on Morrow Island in his skiff. No doubt her widowed father had forced her to go to the dance, probably with some poor kid deemed “appropriate.” I felt sorry for the girl standing alone, and even a little sorry for her poor, unaware date.
In 2005, I found me, looking almost as unhappy as my mother. As the offspring of a summer person and a townie, I’d never felt like I fit in. My parents hadn’t made me participate in many of the summer people’s rituals, but they’d insisted on this one, for reasons I couldn’t remember anymore. When her time came, Livvie got out of the whole thing by being Livvie. And being married. And the mother of a two-year-old.
I left the building, locked the door behind me, and went back to Bud’s. He looked suspiciously at my tote bag and growled, “What tookya so long?” when I handed the key to him.
“Sorry!” I called, and lit out for the police station.
*
There were no state police vehicles in the parking lot. “Is Lieutenant Binder in?” I asked the civilian receptionist.
“In Augusta with Sergeant Flynn. Back tomorrow.”
I wondered what was keeping them there. “Officer Dawes?”
“On patrol. Can I take a message?”
“No, thanks. I want to talk to one of them in person. I’ll come back later.”