“Ah, shucks, it’s no problem whatsoever.” Hattie plucked the butt from her plate with her perfectly manicured fingertips. “This is the most excitement I’ve seen at the Yacht Club to date. And if you can’t get your hackles raised by a war”—she tucked the cigarette inside a napkin—“then you don’t have a pulse to start.”
“She gets it.” Topper crooked a thumb in her direction. “The woman gets it.”
“You’re a good sport, Miss Rutter,” Sam said. “And Robert over here is most sorry. Their mother wasted all her energy in raising the older three. Gave up when she got to the fourth. He was too much of a project.”
“Sam is full of tommyrot, but I am truly sorry,” Topper said. He extended an arm across the table. “Friends?”
“Friends.” Hattie shook his hand and extinguished her own cigarette. “And no apology necessary. I quite enjoy a political tussle. But just so we’re clear, Mr. Young. Robert. Topper. Whatever they call you. You keep mentioning London and Paris, but there is more to Europe than these two cities.”
“Of course, but I…”
“And I’m alarmed that you don’t seem to know this.”
As Topper tried to mask his pale-faced, dropped-mouth look of shock, Ruby smiled. Hattie did not act like a Hulbert Avenue type at all. Maybe this night wouldn’t prove such a bust. Maybe Topper had finally met his match. There was hope in their little crew yet.
*
The Nantucket High School band kicked off the parade.
Ruby felt a swirly thrill with the boom of the bass drum and the first tentative clangs of the instruments, most of them poorly played but darn spirited nonetheless.
All along Main Street and its cobblestone byways, from the red-bricked, white-pillared Pacific Bank at its head to the Rotch warehouse at its foot, people waved paper flags as American Legion floats rolled past.
Ruby and her family were smushed together on the sidewalk with hundreds of Nantucketers and off-islanders alike. To Ruby’s left was Mother, to her right was Mary. Behind them stood Daddy, his presence tall and firm. He’d been ill, unsure if he would make the trip out. Poor man had been working like a beast lately, retooling his facilities to handle gas masks instead of golf balls.
As for the other boys, Topper and Sam and P.J., they were having a few preparade pops at the Moby Dick. They promised to show up before it was over, but any pledge by Topper might as well have been made in sand, mainly where whiskey was involved.
“What a sight, eh petal?” Dad said, and squeezed Ruby’s shoulder. “Best Independence Day parade yet.”
She turned to smile, squinting with the too-bright sun, the brilliance of the trees and moors and heather. They’d opened Cliff House weeks ago but finally it was summer.
“It’s the tops,” Ruby said, blinking into the sunlight. “An absolute A plus.”
Daddy smiled and gave her another squeeze. Ruby turned back toward the street to watch as Lord and Lady Marley of England motored by. Their appearance in the parade had been Big News on the island, but who or what they were Ruby didn’t exactly know. It sounded fancy enough, which was probably the very purpose of them.
Ruby glanced toward the opposite sidewalk in time to see Hattie stroll up. She was with a pack of girls, a couple of familiar faces, though no one Ruby knew personally. Hulbert Avenue dames, no doubt. Ruby and Hattie caught eyes and exchanged smiles and waves.
Hattie was still in that morning’s tennis togs, but Ruby had changed into a shirtwaist dress, partly because of Hattie herself. When Ruby tossed on her tennis costume that morning—crisp white shorts and a tab-necked blouse—she thought herself pretty danged sporty-slick. She even gave a little strut for the benefit of her husband, who had been reading the paper on the veranda.
“Why, look at you!” Sam had said. “You’re cute as a bug’s ear.”
Ruby left the house tra-la-la-ing and feeling nifty, at least until Hattie meandered up in a midi skirt, nipped and pinched in all the right places. The getup was somehow old-fashioned and modern at the same time, and most assuredly direct from Paris to boot. Très chic, Hattie Rutter’s customary status.
“Ready for the semis?” Hattie had asked, and stubbed out her cigarette on a bench. “Let’s blast them to Hades.”
Their opponents stood on the other side of the net, gawping at the pair.
With chic playing the ad side, and schoolgirl playing the deuce, Hattie and Ruby won their match (7–6, 6–4) against the prior year’s champs. One was athletic and violent, prone to slamming balls at opponents’ bellies. The other was pretty but dim. On the beam but off the bean, as they said.
Hattie and Ruby were to face a new team in the finals at four o’clock. They’d miss the annual fisherman-postman tug-of-war as well as the various eating contests (doughnuts, pies, apples). But if Ruby had the chance at a trophy, by golly she’d go after it. Lord knew she’d never get one trying to take down a plate of pie.
“There’s your doubles partner,” Mother said, and leaned close. “She’s quite the looker.”
“That she is,” Ruby said with a nod. “Actually, I’ve been trying to set her up with Topper. I think they’d make a smashing pair.”
“Topper?” Mother screwed up her face. “Why, it’s hard to think of him settling down. He just plumb doesn’t seem interested.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Daddy grumbled.
“Oh! Look!” Mary called. “Here come the Red Cross ladies!”
“The way I see it,” Ruby said to her mom, “Hattie Rutter might very well be the one to lock Topper into place.”
Lock him into a country, she did not add.
“Perhaps,” Mother said. “But I would hate for my fiendish son to waste the poor girl’s time. She must have a line of suitors a mile long.”
“She does. But is anyone more dashing than Tops?”
“Philip Junior,” Mary offered as she kept her eyes glued to the Red Cross float and its six-foot-tall papier-maché hypodermic needle.
“P.J. is darling,” Mother said unconvincingly. “Well, I’m anxious to watch the two of you cream the Coffin sisters at four, sharp.” She wiggled her brows. “Those girls don’t stand a chance.”
“What about you, love?” Daddy said, and gave Mother a soft pinch to her side. “Surely you can bring home a trophy or two, just like the old days.”
“Oh please. My tennis is rustier than the weather vane on our roof.”
“No, I was thinking along the lines of … let me see … By Jove, I have it!” Daddy snapped his fingers. “The rolling-pin-throwing contest. I’ve seen you exhibit great skill in that department. The other night, when I came home late from work, for example.”
“Malarkey,” Mother said, giggling as she squirmed away from him. “I brandished the rolling pin. I didn’t throw it. You interrupted my baking.”
“Likely story.”
“Who could blame me? You tinker in that factory fourteen hours at a go. I barely know what you look like in the daylight. How is it that we’ve had so many kids? Better check with the milkman!”
Mary turned around, her mouth fallen in horror.
“Mother Young!” she yipped. “I’ve never heard such a crude remark!”
“Because you married the boring one,” Ruby said.
As both of Ruby’s parents laughed, Mary took several very deliberate steps away from them.