He stared back vacantly, his face dull, his eyes glazed and bloodshot. Ruby held her lips together, her back ramrod-straight in the way of old Mary. She could not crumble. Ruby would not fall.
They’d been drilling it into their heads for years. The women needed to be strong while the men were away. And Lord, did Ruby ever try. But what the ads and the posters and Uncle Sam himself neglected to mention was you had to be doubly strong if and when the men returned.
*
Sam had been at Cliff House three months. He hadn’t wanted to return to Boston, so Ruby brought him to Sconset.
Some ninety days ago the navy determined that Sam’s transgressions were not onetime in nature, due to the definition of “one time.” Sam was now a diagnosed sexual psychopath and confirmed deviant, discharged by the armed forces for good.
But Sam was home! He was safe from fire and shells and German submarines. Ruby told herself this was enough, no matter the reason behind it. There was no black-and-white in this war, no right or wrong, simply a continuum of circumstances, a million spots where a line might’ve been breached.
And while Ruby could hate Sam or what he’d done (again!), what good would that do? He already despised himself enough for the two of them.
“Sometimes in such hell,” the doctor had said, trying to reassure, “these men succumb to their basest desires.”
Ruby didn’t mention what Hattie had said, that his “experimenting” went further back and these “basest desires” were what made for such a prickly relationship between Topper and him.
But, Sam didn’t want to be that person, a fact that served as a brightness in this ugly dark. He was disgusted with himself, couldn’t abide his own reflection in the mirror. Even on the ship, minutes after lying with a man, Sam would throw up from the sickness inside.
“Every time,” he told his wife, who handled it like the strongest battleship ever conceived, “I wept for the person I’d become.”
It would stop, Sam insisted, once he was back in their world of roses and sailboats and parties on the lawn. It was a onetime situation, which, of course, was some tough math considering that the navy caught him twice.
Because he was so repulsed by his actions and what he’d done to his wife, Sam spent his days asleep, or drunk, or both, all of it to dull the memories and the pain. Ruby endured alongside because sometimes, every once in the odd while, she’d see a spark of the man she loved. And he was remorseful, passionately so. What could Ruby do? Forgive us our trespasses as we too forgive.
Things remained awkward in their bed, in their house, and on their sleepy isle. Folks knew Sam was home and that he had no physical ailment, as far as they could tell. His own parents stopped coming out to Nantucket, which proved something had gone seriously off the page.
“A fairy,” Ruby overheard someone say in the casino locker room.
The girl thought Ruby was still on the court.
“He’s a fairy,” she said. “Just like Ruby’s brother.”
As it happened, Topper’s predilection was not the world’s safest secret. Every summer he had trolled clubs and courses and watering holes, coming on to women, yes, but often trying for their brothers, too.
“Fairy.” “Queer.” “Sexual psychopath.” Ruby resolved not to let these words provoke her. Mistakes, more than a few, but Topper was dead and Sam was regretful and no one was perfect. Ruby recalled the words she heard last summer, in Portsmouth.
As with any other sick person, these types deserve compassion, not condemnation.
A sickness. That’s what it was. Ruby’s job was to get him well. She loved him enough for the both of them. Especially now that a baby was on its way.
No one knew about Ruby’s condition aside from her doctor, who took a cautious stance given her troubles from before. She’d lost two would-be sons thanks to a misshapen uterus. Malformed, the man called it, which made Ruby feel like even less of a woman than the nonsense with Sam.
“Malformed,” the doctor emphasized. “Not deformed.”
They sounded the same to her. Either way, when her doctor delivered the grim news, Ruby broke down, devastated but also stunned to learn that she was not completely numb to loss.
Ruby withheld news of the pregnancy for now. Sam was too breakable. They were too breakable. All Ruby could do was be careful and, above all, hope and pray. She asked the heavens to watch over this babe, and to please make it be a girl. It was already clear that a boy could not survive such times.
WASHINGTON, DC
JUL 2 8:14PM
MR. PHILIP E. YOUNG
25 COMMONWEALTH AVE. BOSTON
THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR SON CAPTAIN PHILIP E. YOUNG JR. WAS KILLED IN ACTION ON SIX JUNE IN FRANCE. LETTER FOLLOWS=
J A ULIO THE ADJUTANT GENERAL
*
Boston was steamy, sweltering. Ruby was pickling beneath her dress. She didn’t know how anyone tolerated the summer in that city, Daddy least of all.
At the front door, Ruby hesitated. Should she ring? Go right in? It was the home she’d grown up in but she wasn’t an expected visitor. She couldn’t tell Daddy she was coming or he would’ve deduced the reason. Ruby wanted him to survive the actual delivering of the news.
Finally, Ruby pressed the buzzer. A nurse answered, her face white though she’d invited this guest. A few days before, the woman had intercepted the telegram about P.J. and sent it straight to Ruby, unsure where or how to relay the news to the boy’s ailing dad.
“Do you think he’s up for seeing me?” Ruby asked, this latest blow hers to deliver.
“Probably not. But he’d want to nonetheless.”
The woman led her inside and to the first-floor parlor that had been refashioned into her father’s bedroom since he could no longer navigate the stairs.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, slowly approaching his bed. “Surprise!”
Ruby’s eyes landed on him and she gasped. I’ll see you in the fall, he’d said. Any fool could tell he’d never make it that far.
“Oh, Daddy.”
Ruby rushed to his bedside, careful not to jostle him in any way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Aw, petal.” His eyelids were gummy, his skin a yellow-gray. “I’ve been dying for so many months I wouldn’t know the first thing to say.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You can’t fear the truth, my darling girl. It’s not all bad.”
“I’m not interested in that irritating practicality of yours right now,” Ruby said with a smirk.
“Your mother tells me she’s bored up there,” he said, and lifted his gaze heavenward. “You have everything under control down on earth. She needs me more.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Ruby plummeted onto the bed, jostling be damned.
“There’s precisely nothing on earth I’d categorize as under control,” she said.
She’d planned to butter Daddy up before dropping the bomb but his bleak face told Ruby that this would be no sneak attack.
“Have you come with news?” he asked, eyes making a sweep of Ruby’s left hand.