The Book of Summer

“No ma’am!” Hattie trilled. “Just a cowgirl and her band of assorted misfits, all of us intent on dragging ol’ Lady Liberty onto the dance floor. You don’t want Ben Franklin wandering off with some other dame, do ya?”

“I’d never!” Sam said. “Everyone knows Ben is a most loyal guy.”

Ruby smiled weakly at her husband and then looked at Hattie.

“I’m not in the mood for dancing,” she said.

“What kind of dingy excuse is that?” Hattie asked in a manufactured huff. “Listen here. You’d best get in the mood. You’re not going to pout all night and be crowned the dullest girl at the ball. I simply won’t allow it! It’s the last party of the season.”

“Actually there’s the oyster party tomorrow night,” Mary said. “At Cliff House. So not the last party, factually speaking.”

“Okay, Mary Todd.”

P.J. and Mary were dressed as the Lincolns, the joke being that they should’ve swapped roles. Mary was a dead ringer for Abe himself.

“I stand corrected.” Hattie rolled her eyes. “It’s the last dance of the season. Come on, you fuddy-duddy.”

She reached a hand toward Ruby.

“Up!” she said. “Up and at ’em! You can’t be this gorgeous and hide outside all night. Hip hop! To your feet! Get that hiney on the dance floor!”

Hattie snapped three times in rapid succession as Ruby continued to eye her outstretched hand. Things had been stiff between them, at least on Ruby’s side, after what occurred in the pantry. Ruby recognized her own prudishness. She might have been a virgin on her wedding night, but there’d been stories aplenty at Smith. Nonetheless, the wad of revulsion lodged in her belly was difficult to pass. Yet as Ruby looked at her pal’s hand, her reserve began to crackle like ice in the sun. Damn that Hattie, she could charm the gloom out of a ghoul.

“Let’s go, my friend,” Hattie said. “Chop-chop.”

“Come on, baby,” Sam said. “Where’s that happy girl of mine?”

“I’ll let you try my peace pipe,” Topper offered.

At last Ruby smiled.

“A peace pipe?” she said, and stood. “An interesting accessory for someone so jazzed about the war.”

The uncertainty and agitation began to lift from Ruby’s body, like the fog off the ocean at midday. And just in the nick of time.

The summer was over and, according to Topper and Sam and the president of the USA, a war was imminent. Daddy was probably sicker than Mother let on and Topper and Hattie were … they were something. But Ruby couldn’t let the summer end like this. Sconset had her heart and she needed to leave a piece of it there, a bookmark to hold her place until they returned.

“All right, people,” she said. “Let’s head inside. And I’ll show you how the jitterbug is really done.”

*

Just like that it was over.

The last drink was poured, the final cigarette ground out and left smoldering on the flagstone. The oysters had been scraped out, the shells hauled off. All that remained was a fishy scent in the air and Ruby on a chaise, blue polka-dotted frock fanned out around her.

As the caterer’s van rumbled away, Ruby drained the last of her champagne and sighed. Soon she’d be back in her bedroom, in the tall brownstone near the river on Commonwealth Ave. A hundred miles away—no greater distance than the world. Ruby always felt at odds those first weeks back, even though Boston was her home and a few doors down Mother would be keeping house at number twenty-five, same as forever.

Yet the early days fit awkwardly, like a dress in the wrong size. Ruby would catch glimpses of herself in a mirror and marvel at her hair, shades blonder, and her legs, longer and leaner and tan. Even her eyes seemed to have an extra kick to their green. But by September’s end, she’d fade back to her dishwater self. Everything would fit again.

Sam would do what he had all summer—it didn’t change much for the men. He’d rise for work every Monday at six o’clock sharp, then toil away for the week, the chief difference between the seasons being where he dined and drank on weekends. Meanwhile, without Mother and Hattie and tennis and Cliff House itself, Ruby would need to drum up a scheme or two to fill her days. More war work, she thought with a frown. God bless it, she still wasn’t sure about FDR and his big plans.

“Hey there, Ruby Red,” Topper said as he tromped out onto the veranda. His shirt was untucked, his hair a sprawl.

“What’s shaking?” he asked, and took a seat beside her.

“Nothing much. Just enjoying the last moments of this.”

Ruby gestured toward the lawn, to where Miss Mayhew was trying to unstring lights from the trees. The woman cursed as she made it into a worse jumble.

“The ending is always bittersweet,” Topper said. “But we had a helluva summer.”

Did they? It was hard to tell, and so Ruby nodded as she gazed out toward the ocean. By October the grounds at Cliff House would turn gray and cold. Mother’s flowers would shrivel as bayberries overtook the dunes below.

“We’re lucky,” Topper said, his eyes following hers. “To have this place to come back to.”

“I don’t want to hear nostalgia from you, Robert Appleton Young. It’s going to set me in a foul mood. You’re supposed to be merrier than that.”

“Sorry, old gal,” he said. “I’ll slip back into my Topper duds by the end of the day. Just for you.”

Ruby bobbed her head. They were quiet for several minutes, the wind whisking around them. As she stretched a shawl tighter around her shoulders, Ruby turned back toward her brother.

“Do you think you’ll keep up with Hattie?” she asked. “After we all leave?”

“Aw, Red, not this old song. I know you envision yourself a merry matchmaker but things don’t always line up as you’d please.”

“I understand, okay? That’s not what I’m asking.”

Ruby paused.

What, exactly, was she asking? What was it Ruby wanted to know? That there was something between Hattie and Topper? That what she witnessed was more than two animals clawing at each other in sweaty, needful desperation? You didn’t do that sort of thing for the heck of it. Or maybe you did. What did Ruby know about it, really? Perhaps European cupboards were positively packed with people doing exactly that. If so, Hitler was in for it should his aspirations pan out. An entire continent of people blind from the clap.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Ruby said at last. “Will you keep in touch?”

“‘Keep in touch’?”

“Surely you’re going to maintain some sort of … correspondence.”

“Golly, dunno. Haven’t really noodled on it,” he said with his telltale Topper squint. “It’s hard to say. Hattie’s a swell gal, no matter what, and I’m grateful to have gotten to know her.”

“I’ll bet,” Ruby mumbled.

“Of course you’re the main thing we have in common.” Topper gave his sister a nudge. “So without you around, who knows?”

“Without me around, who knows indeed.”

“You know, we were sniggering the other day,” he said. “About how much you want us to be married to each other, when we don’t want that at all.”

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