Bess walks over to the rusted green glider and slumps down onto it. Meanwhile, Cissy fiddles with her Red Sox hat, trying to appear unruffled while she searches for the best response.
“Well, Elisabeth,” she says at last, her voice strong and assured. “I can see why you weren’t keen on taking him back. I’d tell him to go fuck himself but my guess is the pervert’s already tried.”
52
The Book of Summer
Ruby Young Packard
July 10, 1943
Cliff House, Sconset, Nantucket Island
Oh happy days!
Sam is here, with me, at Cliff House. I can almost (almost!) pretend we’re back to sunnier times. We are missing (and missing and missing) Mother and Topper. And Sam is to ship out in six days. But for now I revel in our togetherness, in our love. Not to get all gooey about it but there ya go!
Every morning we make a picnic lunch, pack up our umbrellas, and traipse across the big lawn and down the wooden stairs onto our beach. We find ourselves the perfect spot, which is any spot, really. I whip off my huaraches and wiggle my toes into the sand, my face turned to the sky.
Alas the war has changed even the beach. Uniformed men patrol at all hours, stepping over bathing beauties left and right. Stations are manned by life guardettes instead of the traditional guards. At least the island is only dimmed and not blacked out at nightfall.
In the evenings we cycle the eight miles to Nantucket Town for dinner or dancing at the club. Though we ditched the flag-raising this year. I couldn’t stomach hearing the names of members who’ve passed.
This summer I’ve swapped culottes for dresses, no more meddling slips or dickering with a thorough coat of Mexitan. Bikes have taken over the whole darn island! The pleasure drivers are gone and meanwhile cheerfully painted bicycle racks are popping up everywhere, displacing hitching posts and parking spots.
At restaurants, schoolgirls now wait on customers, filling in for their older sisters who’ve gone to work in factories, the big sisters themselves having replaced the men off at war. It’s a constant circle of replacement these days. You take from this to give to that, praying there won’t be a gap in the chain.
Some things, however, cannot be replaced or swapped out and sunshiny days will be hard to come by once Sam leaves. But leaving is what he wants and therefore what I want, too. Maybe I’ll tuck a pinup of me into his luggage, if I can work up the nerve.
I’m happy they judged Sam fit for service. Regardless of what happened to lead him to this spot, my husband is alive! He is recovered and he is well. Most would deem this a blessing of the highest order. I certainly plan to.
Until later,
I remain,
Ruby Packard, wife to Lieutenant Packard, U.S. Navy.
53
RUBY
August 1943
Ruby was glad they lived at the end of the street, because that was some racket outside, impossible to ignore. Which was Ruby’s very problem.
She peeked out through the ruffled curtains of what was once the boys’ bunk room but would be a nursery before too long. It faced the road, not the sea, because what did a baby need with a view? Ruby touched her stomach. Her monthly was almost a month overdue. She prayed that the two weeks Sam spent at Cliff House did the trick.
Damn it all to hell, though. Hattie was still down there, stomping about in her calfskin heels, looking swell as forever in a green Sunday dress with a basque top. She had a mile of pearls around her neck, bunched together and caught with a mother-of-pearl bee. Ruby wanted to ask her all about it but of course could not. Hattie didn’t have a stick of luggage with her, which meant she came all that way just to talk. Well, no thank you and good luck. Ruby had her fill of Hattie’s two cents, if her words were even worth so much. She wondered how many cents that blasted magazine paid.
Though Ruby was intent on evading her former friend, she opened the window a crack, just to suss out what was what.
“I know you’re up there!” Hattie called, quick on the draw. “Let me in, for the love of God! I’m on your side, Ruby!”
Because she wasn’t a complete clod, Ruby did feel a crumb of guilt. To travel from New York to Boston, with a ferry at the end, was a helluva slog. Especially when only two ferries ran per day, boats so loaded with extra freight they were always an hour or more delayed.
But before Ruby got completely slushy over the girl, she reminded herself about Hattie’s “investigative piece,” out there for all to read. A touch of fame on the backs of people she once claimed to love. What a witch.
“You can’t lock me out here!” her old friend cried. “Rubes, this is bonkers! You’re the one who…”
Hattie paused. She shook her head, red curls bouncing to and fro.
Ruby was “the one who,” wasn’t she? She’d sent those photographs to Hattie, seeking an explanation but apparently not wanting the truth. Or Hattie’s version of it anyhow.
“Topper was the best kind of fella,” Hattie had said when she’d rung. “He’ll be forever in my heart. But what you see is what he got, if you catch my drift. The pictures don’t lie.”
Hattie had spent a long time looking at them, stewing on a decent thing to say. In the end she’d decided that she owed it to Ruby to call it like she’d seen it, even if it caused some bruises along the way.
“Your brother was a remarkable person,” Hattie had said. “But he was a sad, confused young man. He didn’t know himself at all.”
Sad? Confused? What about Topper’s pranks, his wide-as-the-world grin? No one smiled or goofed around like him.
“He didn’t want to be who he was,” Hattie said on the phone. “He wanted to be like everyone else and so he fought it. Your brother hated being a fairy.”
“A fairy? Honestly, Hattie. The two of you had … relations.”
“‘Relations’?”
“I saw it! In the butler’s pantry!”
“Oh my,” Hattie had said with a chortle. “Not a spot you’d like to spy one’s brother in. Yes, we had a bit of fun together. But he never enjoyed it as much as he wanted to. He was always somewhere else. Poor guy. I tried to talk to him about it. There are communities where…”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear any more.”
And then Hattie had posed the question that’d render Ruby weak-kneed and stammering.
“Were there other photos?” she’d asked. “Anything with Sam?”
“With Sam?!” Ruby had choked, for she’d not told Hattie why he’d been hospitalized.
She’d mentioned only trauma, a brief mental … faltering. But Ruby revealed nothing about the senator’s son, or that he and Sam were busted in the munitions room. She never used the word “pervert,” as the doctor had.
“Gosh, Ruby, I thought that’s why you sent the package,” was Hattie’s response. “Given the business with Sam in that hospital.”
“No! I sent it because of Topper, obviously!”
“Huh. I wouldn’t have figured you’d bring up old dirt on someone who was dead.”
“Don’t get all high horse on me,” Ruby had snipped. “Hattie Rutter, a woman who takes it in the rear.”
“Whoa, Nellie. That’s a low cut, sport. You do know their history, yes?”