“Aw, she’s just excited.”
Yes, Bess thinks, her sister-in-law is excited. Excited about her ability to act like the empress of an enslaved land.
“So, what kind of turnout are you expecting?” Bess asks, and reaches for someone’s half-eaten bagel. Flick’s, most likely, as Palmer can’t possibly eat carbs. “Cissy tells me the guest list is small?”
“Was small,” Palmer says. “My sister is so entertaining. She keeps adding guests like she’s throwing another ice cube into her lemonade.” She hesitates and lowers her voice to a whisper. “There will be a lot of people from Choate. Is that … okay? Will you…”
“Listen, P,” Bess says, shaking her head. “What happened twenty years ago is nothing. Rest assured, it’s the very least of my humiliation and shame.”
This is true, though it’s a humiliation still. Bess can’t admit this to her cousin, however.
“Well,” Palmer says with a sniff. “You shouldn’t have the smallest speck of shame about what happened with Brandon. He was a verbally abusive, controlling dickwad.”
“Okay, he’s a jerk. And I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you use the term ‘dickwad,’ so cheers to that. But verbally abusive? Come on. That’s a tad excessive.”
It’s not the first time Palmer’s sung this tune. She’s been playing it for some time now and Bess cannot get her off it.
“In my opinion he was,” Palmer says. “But either way, regarding the sex workers, he acted like a creep on his own. No assistance required.”
She takes a sip of coffee, wrapping both delicate, spindly hands around an old, cracked Yacht Club mug, her fingers obscuring the little blue flag.
“We had fun, though, didn’t we?” Palmer asks in her Disney princess voice. “At school? Before you left?”
“We did,” Bess answers with a smile.
“‘Door open, one foot on the floor!’” Palmer says in her best dorm-mother voice.
“Yeah, I think you’re the only person who followed that rule.”
“Or you think I followed it.” Palmer blows Bess a kiss. “To this day Brooks can’t understand why I have no modesty around the house. Sweetheart, I grew up showering with a hall of girls. Most of them all too willing to catalogue one’s warts.”
Her warts? What could Palmer possibly be self-conscious about? She is a ballerina sculpture, a perfect work of art.
“The one thing I remember,” Bess says, “about coming to Nantucket after Choate was how blithely people ordered pizza. Wait, what? You just pick up the phone and ask for food? Don’t we need to dangle someone from a window by their ankles?”
Palmer laughs.
“Geez, what we did for crappy pizza!” she says. “Remember when you joined the a cappella group?”
“Bad idea.”
“The worst. Because although you have many talents, singing is not one of them.”
“I was awesome at hand bells, though.”
“No one is good at hand bells,” Palmer says, still laughing, as Bess’s belly fills with warmth.
Little Amory bounds in then, curls springing with each step. It’s a wonder she can move at all, engulfed as she is in a frothy nightgown whisking around her like pink frosting.
“Bessie-boo!” Amory squeaks, running toward her. “You’re here!”
“I’m here, Ammy. I’m here.”
Bess clutches the little girl to her chest. As she nuzzles those curls, Bess inhales and feels a definite pull, a sense of yearning from a place unknown.
19
The Book of Summer
Patience Grimsbury June 10, 1941
Cliff House
Mrs. Young asked me to write in this Book of Summer, which seems peculiar given my station, but she swears it’s made for all.
The summer commenced in its usual way, the women fussing about, and I have to go in and fix naturally they’re getting everything precisely right! I just fill in where I can! Mrs. Young and Mrs. Young, Jr., and Miss Young-now-Packard, they all have such a knack for making this grand house hum. I’m fortunate they let me be a part of it!
I’m waiting—any day now—for one of the younger set to announce her pregnancy. They are all trying, this I know. I hope this “Grey Ladies” enterprise doesn’t hamper things in the womanly department. There’s only one way to become a mother—focus on the endeavor wholeheartedly. Not that I know a thing about it, in the end.
Whether a baby or two will soon be on its way, I can’t predict. But I do know one thing. This will be a summer for the ages. A summer to remember. I only pray that I can keep the whole thing ticking.
Dutifully,
Patience Grimsbury
20
RUBY
June 1941
It seemed like a lot of training for something so nonmedical. But after four monotonous weeks, Ruby was a certified member of the Red Cross Hospital and Recreation Corps, aka the Grey Ladies, Sconset branch. Together they knitted children’s blankets and clothes and could upgrade to bandage rolling if all went well.
Ruby was pleased to help, even in this minor way. A gal could argue with the war, but she couldn’t dispute outfitting displaced baby Brits. Meanwhile Mary took to it like it was her calling, and how. She delighted in the rigors of training, the long days spent at the Legion Hall, a fraternity of women united beneath a common goal. They were like a military battalion but with less threat of bodily harm, plus infinitely better attire.
“I never realized that other women could be so extraordinary,” Mary confessed late one night, drunk on do-gooding and a little sherry.
It was quite the change of tack for her sister-in-law. To date Mary had approached everything with grim tenacity, even her own wedding. Her demeanor when she believed herself pregnant was precisely the same as when she found out that she wasn’t. But with the Grey Ladies, Mary showed pep, some swing in her walk.
“We are nurses!” Mary trilled, repeatedly, on their first official day. “Isn’t it grand?!”
They were on the veranda, Ruby working on an afghan as Mary knitted baby bunting.
“We are nurses!” she continued to sing while adjusting her jaunty nurse’s cap.
“Not exactly.”
“Oh don’t be such a negative Nellie. We have the certification and pin to prove it. Helping the war effort. I’ve never felt so alive. Isn’t this pure delight?”
“You betcha,” Ruby answered, trying to join a new ball of yarn.
“Delight” was not the word Ruby had in her head. She was a little tired. And bored. And her fingers were already sore as the dickens. Plus, she was getting dizzy trying to concentrate so closely on the pattern.
“Hmmm,” Ruby said, inspecting a dropped stitch.
If an afghan looked bonkers but still kept a person warm, was there room for complaint? Ruby chased the thought away with a blush. The Brits deserved nice things, too. Just as Topper said: a la-la girl indeed.
“These socks!” Mary held up a pair, knitted by some other Lady. “Are they not precious?”
“Sure are.”