A Hundred Summers

by Beatriz Williams

  ALSO BY BEATRIZ WILLIAMS

  Overseas

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Copyright © 2013 by Beatriz Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Williams, Beatriz.

  A hundred summers / Beatriz Williams.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-59651-7

  1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Rhode Island—Fiction. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.I55643H86 2013 2013002259

  813'.6—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To the victims and survivors of the great New England hurricane of 1938

  and, as always, to my husband and children

  Contents

  Also by Beatriz Williams

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  MATTHEW ARNOLD

  “Dover Beach” (1867)

  1.

  ROUTE 5, TEN MILES SOUTH OF HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  October 1931

  One hundred and twelve miles of curving pavement lie between the entrance gates of Smith College and the Dartmouth football stadium, and Budgie drives them as she does everything else: hell-for-leather.

  The leaves shimmer gold and orange and crimson against a brilliant blue sky, and the sun burns unobstructed overhead, teasing us with a false sense of warmth. Budgie has decreed we drive with the top down, though I am shivering in the draft, huddled inside my wool cardigan, clutching my hat.

  She laughs at me. “You should take your hat off, honey. You remind me of my mother holding on to her hat like that. Like it’s the end of civilization if someone sees your hair.” She has to shout the words, with the wind gusting around her.

  “It’s not that!” I shout back. It’s because my hair, released from the enveloping dark wool-felt cloche, will expand into a Western tumbleweed, while Budgie’s sleek little curls only whip about artfully before settling back in their proper places at journey’s end. Even her hair conforms to Budgie’s will. But this explanation is far too complicated for the thundering draft to tolerate, so I swallow it all back, pluck the pins out of my hat, and toss it on the seat beside me.

  Budgie reaches forward and fiddles with the radio dials. The car, a nifty new Ford V-8, has been equipped with every convenience by her doting father and presented to her a month ago as an early graduation present. Nine months early, to be exact, because he, in his trust and blindness, wants her to make use of it during her last year at Smith.

  You should get out and have some fun, buttercup, he told her, beaming. You college girls study too hard. All work and no play.

  He dangled the keys before her.

  Are you sure, Daddy? Budgie asked, eyes huge and round, like Betty Boop’s.

  No, really. It’s the truth; I was standing right there. We’ve been friends since we were born, only two months apart, she at the beginning of summer and me at the end. Our families summer together at the same spot in Rhode Island, and have done so for generations. She’s dragged me along with her this morning on the basis of that friendship, that ancient tie, though we don’t really run in the same circles at college, and though she knows I have no interest in football.

  The Ford makes a throaty roar as she accelerates into a curve, swallowing the scratchy voices from the radio. I grasp the door handle with one hand and the seat with another.

  Budgie laughs again. “Come on, honey. I don’t want to miss the warm-ups. The boys get so serious once the game starts.”

  Or something like that. The wind carries away two words out of three. I look out the side and watch the leaves hurry by, the height of the season, while Budgie chatters on about boys and football.

  As it turns out, we have missed the warm-ups, and most of the first quarter as well. The streets of Hanover are empty, the stadium entrance nearly deserted. A distant roar spills over the brick walls, atop the muffled notes of a brass band. Budgie pulls the car up front, on a grassy verge next to a sign that says NO PARKING, and I struggle with my hat and pins.

  “Here, let me do it.” She takes the pins from my cold fingers, sticks them ruthlessly into my hat, and turns me around. “There! You’re so pretty, Lily. You know that, don’t you? I don’t know why the boys don’t notice. Look, your cheeks are so pink. Aren’t you glad we had the top down?”

  I fill my lungs with the clean golden-leaf New Hampshire air and tell her yes, I’m glad we had the top down.

  Inside, the stands are packed, pouring over with people, like a concrete bowl with too much punch. I pause at the burst of noise and color as we emerge into the open, into the sudden deluge of humanity, but there’s no hesitation in Budgie. She slings her arm around mine and drags me down the steps, across several rows, stepping over outstretched legs and leather shoes and peanut shells, excusing herself merrily. She knows exactly where she’s going, as always. She grips my arm with a confident hand, tugging me in her wake, until a shouted Budgie! Budgie Byrne! wafts over the infinite mass of checked caps and cloche hats. Budgie stops, angles her body just so, and raises her other arm in a dainty wave.

  I don’t know these friends of hers. Dartmouth boys, I suppose, familiar to Budgie through some social channel or another. They aren’t paying much attention to the game. They are festive, laughing, rowdy, throwing nuts at one another and climbing over the rows. In 1931, two years after the stock crash, we are still merry. Panics happen, companies fail, but it’s only a bump in the road, a temporary thing. The great engine coughs,
it sputters, but it doesn’t die. It will start roaring again soon.

  In 1931, we have no idea at all what lies ahead.

  They are boys, mostly. Budgie knows a lot of boys. A few of them have their girls nestled next to them, local girls and visiting girls, and these girls all cast looks of instinctive suspicion at Budgie. They take in her snug dark green sweater, with its conspicuous letter D on the left breast, and her shining dark hair, and her Betty Boop face. They don’t pay my pretty pink cheeks much attention at all.

  “What’d I miss? How’s he doing?” she demands, settling herself on the bench. Her eyes scan the field for her current boyfriend—the reason for our breakneck morning drive from Massachusetts—who plays back for Dartmouth. She met him over the summer, when he was staying with friends of ours at Seaview, as if Hollywood central casting had ordered her up the perfect costar, his eyes a complementary shade of summertime blue to her winter ice. Graham Pendleton is tall, athletic, charming, glamorously handsome. He excels at all sports, even the ones he hasn’t tried. I like him; you can’t help but like Graham. He reminds me of a golden retriever, and who doesn’t love a golden retriever?

  “He’s all right, I guess,” says one of the boys. He seats himself on the bench next to Budgie, so close his leg touches hers, and offers her a square of Hershey. “Decent run in the last series. Eleven yards.”

  Budgie sucks the chocolate into her mouth and pats the narrow space on her other side. “Sit next to me, Lily. I want you to see this. Look down at the field.” She points. “There he is. Number twenty-two. Do you see him? On the sidelines, near the bench. He’s standing, talking to Nick Greenwald.”

  I look down at the near sideline. We’re closer to the field than I thought, perhaps ten rows up, and my vision swarms with Dartmouth jerseys. I find the number 22 painted in stark white on a broad forest-green back. Strange, to see Graham in a sober football uniform instead of a bathing costume or tennis whites or a neat flannel suit and straw boater. He’s deep in conversation with number 9, who stands at his right, half a head taller. Their battered leather helmets are tucked under their arms, and their hair is the same shade of indeterminate brown, damp and sticky with sweat: one curly, one straight.

  “Isn’t he handsome?” Budgie’s shoulders sink under a dreamy sigh.

  Number 9, the taller one, the curly-haired one, looks up at that exact instant, as if he’s heard her words. The two of them are perhaps fifty yards away, and the bright autumn sun strikes their heads in a wash of clear gold.

  Nick Greenwald, I repeat in my head. Where have I heard that name before?

  His face is hard, etched from the same brickwork as the stadium itself, and his eyes are narrowed and sharp, overhung by a pair of fiercely gathered eyebrows. There is something so intense, so fulminant, about his expression, like a man from another age.

  A vibration crackles up my spine, a charge of electricity.

  “Yes,” I say. “Very handsome.”

  “His eyes are so blue, almost like mine. He’s such a darling. Remember how he chased my hat into the water last summer, Lily?”

  “Who’s that one? The one he’s talking to?”

  “Oh, Nick? Just the quarterback.”

  “What’s a quarterback?”

  “Nothing, really. Stands there and hands the ball to Graham. Graham’s the star. He’s scored eight touchdowns this year. He can run through anybody.” Graham looks up, following Nick’s gaze, and Budgie stands up and waves her arm.

  Neither responds. Graham turns to Nick and says something. Nick is carrying a football, tossing it absently from one enormous hand to the other.

  “I guess they’re looking somewhere else,” says Budgie, and she sits down, frowning. She taps her fingers against her knee and leans close to the boy next to her. “You couldn’t be a darling and spare a girl another nibble, could you?”

  “Have as much as you like,” he says, and holds out the Hershey bar to her. She breaks off a square with her long fingers.

  “Are they friends?” I ask.

  “Who? Nick and Graham? I guess. Good friends. They room together, I think.” She stops and turns to me. Her breath is sweet from the chocolate, almost syrupy. “Why, Lily! What are you thinking, you sly thing?”

  “Nothing. Just curious.”

  Her hand covers her mouth. “Nick? Nick Greenwald? Really?”

  “I just . . . he looks interesting, that’s all. It’s nothing.” My skin heats, all over.

  “Nothing’s nothing with you, honey. I know that look in your eye, and you can stop right now.”

  “What look?” I fiddle with the belt of my cardigan. “And what do you mean, stop right now?”

  “Oh, Lily, honey. Do I have to spell it out?”

  “Spell what out?”

  “I know he’s handsome, but . . .” She trails off, in an embarrassed way, but her eyes glitter in her magnolia face.

  “But what?”

  “You’re putting me on, right?”

  I peer into her face for some clue to her meaning. Budgie has a knack for that, for savoring nuances that whoosh straight over my unruly head. Perhaps Nick Greenwald has some unspeakable chronic disease. Perhaps he has a girl already, not that Budgie would see any previous engagement as an obstacle.

  Not that I care, of course. Not that my mind has jumped ahead that far. I like his face, that’s all.

  “Putting you on?” I say, hedging.

  “Lily, honey.” Budgie shakes her head, places her hand atop my knee, and drops her voice to a delighted whisper in my ear: “Honey, he’s a J-E-W.” She says the last syllable with exaggerated precision, like ewe.

  A cheer passes through the crowd, gaining strength. In front of us, people are beginning to stand up and holler. The bench feels hard as stone beneath my legs.

  I look back down at the two men on the sideline, at Nick Greenwald. He’s turned his eagle eyes to the action on the field, watching intently, and his profile cuts a clean gold line against a background of closely shaved grass.

  Budgie’s tone, delivering this piece of information, was that of a parent speaking to a particularly obtuse child. Budgie, hearing the name Greenwald, knows without thinking that it’s a Jewish name, that some invisible line separates her future from his. Budgie regards my ignorance of these important matters with incredulity.

  Not that I’m entirely ignorant. I know some Jewish girls at college. They’re like everyone else, nice and friendly and clever to varying degrees. They tend to keep to themselves, except for one or two who strain with painful effort to ingratiate themselves with girls like Budgie. I used to wonder what they did on Christmas Day, when everything was closed. Did they mark the occasion at all, or was it just another day to them? What did they think of all the trees for sale, all the presents, all the Nativity scenes filling the nooks and crannies? Did they regard our quaint customs with amusement?

  Of course, I never dared to ask.

  Budgie, on the other hand, is attuned to every minute vibration in the universe around her, every wobble of an alien planet. She continues, confidently: “Not that you’d see it at first glance. His mother was one of the Nicholson girls, such a lovely family, very fair, but her father lost everything in the panic, not the last one, obviously, the one before the war, and she ended up marrying Nick’s father. You look mystified, honey. What, didn’t you know all this? You must get out more.”

  I remain silent, watching the field, watching the two men on the sidelines. Some frenzy of activity is taking place, green shirts running off the field and green shirts running on. Graham and Nick Greenwald strap on their helmets and dash into the lines of uniforms assembling on the grass. Nick runs with elastic grace, keeps his long legs under perfect control.

  Budgie removes her hand from my knee. “You think I’m horrible, don’t you?”

  “I think you sound like my mother.”

  “I don’t mean it like that. You know I don’t. I’m not a bigot, Lily. I have several Jewish friends.” She sounds a
little petulant. I’ve never seen Budgie petulant.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re thinking it.” She tosses her head. “Fine. I’m sure he’ll come along to dinner tonight. You can meet him for yourself. He’s nice enough. Have some fun, have a few kicks.”

  “What makes you think I’m interested?”

  “Well, why not? You’re in desperate need of a few kicks, honey. I’ll bet he could show you a good time.” She leans in to my ear. “Just don’t bring him home to your mother, if you know what I mean.”

  “What are you girls whispering about?” It’s the boy on Budgie’s right, the Hershey boy, giving her arm a shove.

  “We’ll never tell,” says Budgie. She stands up and pulls me with her. “Now, watch this, Lily. It’s our turn. When the play starts, Nick’s going to give the ball to Graham. Watch Graham. Number twenty-two. He’ll blast right through them, you’ll see. He’s like a locomotive, that’s what the papers say.”

  Budgie begins to clap her hands, and so do I, sharp slaps like a metronome. I’m watching the field, all right, but not Graham. My eyes are trained on the white number 9 in the middle of the line of green jerseys. He stands right behind the fellow in the center, with his head raised. He’s shouting something, and I can hear his sharp bark all the way up here, ten rows deep in cheering spectators.

  Just like that, the men burst free. Nick Greenwald pedals backward from the line, with the ball in his hands, and I wait for Graham to run up, wait for Nick to hand the ball to Graham, the way Budgie said he would.