1. A Bridge Across the Ocean opens with a spectral encounter aboard the RMS Queen Mary on the first day of her maiden voyage, followed by Brette’s unwanted meeting with a ghost in the present day at a baby shower. What was your initial reaction to these two scenes? Have you ever experienced something that had no earthly explanation? If you had Brette’s strange ability, what do you think you would do with it?
2. Which of the three war brides—Annaliese, Simone, or Phoebe—did you most connect with emotionally? Why?
3. Talk for a moment about the friendship between Annaliese and Katrine. What do you think drew them together? Have you ever had or do you have a friend like these two had in each other? What do you think Katrine would have thought of Annaliese’s decision to board the Queen Mary the way that she did?
4. Would you have made all the same life-changing choices that Simone and Annaliese made?
5. When Katrine falls in love with John, Annaliese remarks that they’ve only known each other a short while. Katrine says that it seems like longer, “as if to suggest Annaliese surely knew that love didn’t take note of calendar pages.” Do agree or can you relate? Why do you think Simone and Everett also fell in love over a stretch of just weeks?
6. Early in the book, Aunt Ellen tells Brette that the Drifters are “afraid of what they can’t see, just like us. It’s as if there’s a bridge they need to cross. And it’s like crossing over the ocean, Brette. They can’t see the other side. So they are afraid to cross it.” Have you ever faced a figurative bridge you had to cross where you couldn’t see the other side? What did you do?
7. As Simone prepares to leave her old life behind to board the Queen Mary, she reflects on the people who stood in as parental figures when she desperately needed them: Madame Didion, Henri and Collette, the older British couple who helped her prepare for the sailing. How do you think these people made their mark on Simone? Why do you think Simone thought it best not to stay in contact with Phoebe after they immigrated to America? Was it the right choice?
8. Were Brette’s fears about passing on her special ability completely understandable? Would you have had the same fears? Would you have had children anyway, if you were Brette?
9. When Annaliese is about to be detained on the ship and Simone decides to intervene and help her, she says to Annaliese: “If I do nothing when I know I can help you, I can never again be the girl that I was, I will only ever be that other girl, the one the war tried to make of me.” What do you think she means here? What is at stake for her?
10. Discuss the idea that the ship is an entity with a soul. What was your reaction to this revelation? Do you have a special fondness for a place that feels like it is more than just a mere location?
A COMPELLING TALE OF A YOUNG FAMILY WHO INHERITS A PHILADELPHIA FUNERAL HOME ON THE EVE OF 1918’S DEADLY SPANISH FLU . . .
Under the Canopy of Heaven
BY SUSAN MEISSNER
Pauline
AUGUST 12, 1918
The sun is just starting to peek out from an apricot horizon as I stand at the place where my baby boy lies. I would’ve come to the cemetery last night but there was still packing to do. When this same sun sets tonight, I will be miles away in an unfamiliar house and there will be no reminders anywhere that Henry had ever been mine. Not visible ones, anyway.
I look at the little marble slab that bears my son’s name and the etching of a sweet lamb curled up among lilies, and I’m reminded again that he was my angel child, even before he flew away to heaven.
I knew from the moment I held Henry, glistening and new, that he wasn’t like the other babies I’d borne. He wasn’t like my girls. They’d slipped out annoyed by the noise and chill and sharp edges of this world. Not Henry. He didn’t cry. He didn’t ball his tiny hands into fists. He didn’t shout his displeasure at being pulled out of the only safe place he knew.
When the doctor handed him to me, Henry merely looked at me with eyes so blue they could’ve been sapphires. He held my gaze like he knew who I was. Knew everything about me. Like he still had the breath of eternity in his lungs.
He didn’t care that I parted the folds of his blanket to look at his male-ness, or when I marveled at the pearly sheen of his skin against mine. I could scarcely believe I’d given birth to a boy after three girls and so many years since the last one. I just kept staring at his body and he just let me.
When Thomas was let in, he was just as astonished that we had a son. The girls were, too. They followed in right after their father, even though it was the middle of the night, and we all just stared and smiled at the little man-child, the quiet lad who did not cry.
My father-in-law came over the next morning, as did Thomas’s brothers and their wives, all of them smelling of dried tobacco leaves and spice. My parents came, too, and my sister Jane, who was six months along with her own child. They all marveled at how beautiful Henry was, how calm, how enchanting his gaze and how sweet his temperament. My mother and Thomas’s sisters-in-law stared at him like I’d done the night before, amazed as I had been at how serene this baby was. They had known, too, without knowing, that something wasn’t right.
The few months we had with him were wonder-filled and happy. Henry did all the things a baby does that make you smile and laugh and want to kiss his downy head. When he needed something, like my breast or a clean diaper or affection, he didn’t wail, he just sighed a sweet little sound that if it was made of words would have started with, “If it’s not too much trouble . . .” We didn’t know he didn’t have the physical strength to exert himself. His perfectly-formed outsides hid the too-small, too-weak heart that my body had made for him.
And yet had God asked me ahead of time if I wanted this sweet child for just shy of half a year, I still would have said yes. Even now, five weeks after Henry’s passing, and even when I hold Jane’s sweet little newborn, Curtis, I would still say yes.
I don’t know if Thomas feels this way, and I know the girls don’t. Evelyn is still sad, Maggie is still angry, and Willa is still bewildered that Henry was taken from us. I can’t say why I am none of those things anymore. What I feel inside, I’m not sure there are words to describe. I should still be sad, angry, and bewildered, but instead I feel a numbness regarding Death that I’ve told no one about. Not even Thomas.
I no longer fear Death, though I know that I should. I’m strangely at peace with what I used to think of as my enemy. Living seems more the taskmaster of the two, doesn’t it? Life is wonderful and beautiful, but oh, how hard it can be. Dying, by contrast, is easy and simple, almost gentle. But who can I tell such a thing to? No one. I am troubled by how remarkable this feeling is.
This is why I changed my mind about moving to Philadelphia. I’d said no the first time Uncle Fred made his offer, even though I could tell Thomas was interested. Back then I couldn’t imagine leaving this sleepy little town where I’ve lived all my life. I didn’t want to move to the city where the war in Europe would somehow seem closer, didn’t want to uproot the girls from the only home they’d ever known. Didn’t want to tear myself away from all that was familiar. Uncle Fred wrote again a couple months after Henry was born, and Thomas had told me we needed to think carefully before turning down a second invitation.
“Uncle Fred might take his offer to one of my brothers,” Thomas had said.
I truly would have given the matter more serious thought if Henry hadn’t begun his slow ascent away from us right about the same time. When my son’s fragile heart finally began to number his days, nothing else mattered but holding on to him as long as we could. Thomas hadn’t brought up the matter again when the third letter from Uncle Fred arrived just last week. He didn’t think I could leave this little mound of grass.
But the truth is, I have come out from under the shroud of sorrow a different person. I no longer want to stay in this place where Henry spent such a short time. I don’t want Thomas shading a view o
f the wide horizon with hands calloused from binder leaves. I don’t want the girls to end up mirroring this life of mine, in a place where nothing really changes but the contours of your heart.
More than that, I want to know why Death seems to walk beside me like a companion now rather than prowling behind like a shadowy specter. Surely the answers await me in Uncle Fred’s funeral parlor, where he readies the deceased for their journey home. Thomas would have gone to his grave rolling cigars for other men to smoke, but now he will one day inherit Uncle Fred’s mortuary business and then he won’t be under the thumb of anyone.
I don’t know what it will be like to be the wife of an undertaker. I only know that I need to remember how it was to keep Death at a distance.
I kneel, kiss my fingertips, and brush them against the H etched into the cool stone.
And I rise from the wet ground without saying good-bye.
A STORY OF FRIENDSHIP AND HEARTBREAK SET AGAINST THE GLAMOROUS BACKDROP OF HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN AGE
Stars Over Sunset Boulevard
BY SUSAN MEISSNER
AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK AND EBOOK
FROM NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
Hollywood
MARCH 9, 2012
Christine unfolds the tissue paper inside the pink-striped hatbox and the odor of lost years floats upward. She is well acquainted with the fragrance of antiquity. Her vintage-clothing boutique off West Sunset overflows with stylish remnants from golden years long since passed.
“I thought you were going to hold off estimating that lot until this afternoon,” her business partner, Stella, says as she joins Christine in the shop’s back room. The two friends are surrounded on all sides by the wearable miscellany of spent lives.
“Mr. Garceau, the man who brought this stuff in last night, just called. There’s apparently a hat in one of these boxes that wasn’t supposed to be included. He told me what it looks like. I guess the family is anxious to have it back.”
Christine withdraws a paper-wrapped lump from inside the box, revealing at first just a flash of moss green and shimmers of gold. Then she pulls away the rest of the layers. The Robin Hood-style hat in folds of soft velvet, amber-hued fringe, and iridescent feathers feels ghostly in her hands, as though if she put it to her ear, it might whisper a litany of old secrets.
She has seen this hat somewhere before, a long time ago.
“Is that it?” Stella asks.
“I think so. He said it was green with gold fringe and feathers.”
Stella moves closer, brow furrowed. “That hat looks familiar to me.”
“It does to me, too.” Christine turns the hat over to inspect its underside for signs of its designer—a label, a signature, a date. She sees only a single name in faded ink on a yellowed tag:
Scarlett #13
One
DECEMBER 1938
A brilliant California sun bathed Violet Mayfield in indulgent light as she neared the soaring palm tree and the woman seated on a bench underneath it. Legs crossed at the ankles, the woman rested her back lazily against the skinny trunk. She held a cigarette in her right hand, and it was as if the thin white tube were a part of her and the stylish smoke that swirled from it an extension of her body. The woman’s fingernails, satin red and glistening, were perfectly shaped. Toenails visible to Violet through peep-toes winked the same shade of crimson. The woman wore a formfitting sheath of celery green with a scoop neckline. A magazine lay open on her lap, but her tortoiseshell sunglasses hid her eyes, so Violet couldn’t tell whether the woman was reading the article on the left page or gazing at handsome Cary Grant, whose photograph graced the right. A wad of wax paper lay crumpled on the bench beside her handbag and a bit of bread crust poked out of it. She sat in front of the Mansion at Selznick International Studios, the stunning white edifice that moviemaker Thomas Ince had built back in the twenties to look like George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
The woman under the tree didn’t look at all like a fellow studio secretary, but rather a highly paid actress catching a few quiet moments of solitude between takes on the back lot. Violet glanced around to see whether there was someone else sitting outside the Mansion on her noon break. But the woman in front of her was the only one eating her lunch under a palm tree, and that was where Violet had been told she’d find Audrey Duvall. She suddenly looked familiar to Violet, which made no sense at all. Violet was two thousand miles away from anything remotely connected to home.
“Miss Duvall?” Violet said.
The woman looked up drowsily, as though Violet had awakened her from sleep. She cocked her head and pulled her sunglasses down slightly to peer at Violet over the rims. Het luminous eyes, beautiful and doelike, were fringed with long lashes she couldn’t have been born with. The casual glance was the wordless reply that she was indeed Audrey Duvall.
“My name’s Violet Mayfield. I’m new to the secretary pool. Millie in accounts payable told me you are looking for a roommate. I was wondering if you’d found one yet.”
Audrey smiled and her painted lips parted to reveal moon-white teeth. “Good Lord,” she exclaimed, her voice rich and resonant, almost as deep as a man’s. “Where are you from?”
“Pardon me?”
“You’re not from around here.”
“Um. No. I’m from Alabama. Originally.”
Audrey’s smile deepened. “Alabama. Never been to Alabama.”
Violet didn’t know what to say. Had the woman not heard what she asked?
Audrey patted the empty space next to her. “Have a seat. What did you say your name was?”
“Violet Mayfield.” She sat down, and the cement beneath her was warm from the sun despite it being early December.
Audrey lifted the cigarette gently to her mouth and its end glowed red as she inhaled. When she tipped her head back and released the smoke it wafted over her head like a feathery length of gauze.
“Want one?” She nodded toward the pack of cigarettes peeking out of her handbag.
“No, thanks.”
“Don’t smoke?” Audrey puffed again on the cigarette and smiled as the smoke drifted past her lips.
Violet shook her head.
“My last roommate didn’t, either. She was always leaving the windows open to let the smoke out.”
“Did you not like it when she left the windows open? Is that why you need a new roommate?”
Audrey laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
Violet said nothing.
“She got married.”
“Oh.”
Audrey pushed the sunglasses up onto her head, fully revealing shining tea-brown eyes that complemented her shimmering brunette hair. She seemed to study for a moment Violet’s navy blue dress with its plain white collar. Violet’s mousy brown hair—far less wavy than Audrey’s—was pulled back into a beaded barrette she had bought in a five-and-dime on the day she started heading west.
“So you just moved, then? From Alabama?”
“I came by way of Shreveport, actually. I’ve been working for my uncle the past year. He’s an accountant.”
“And how long have you been here?’’ Audrey asked.
“Two weeks.”
“And you found a job that quickly?” Her tone held a faint edge of sly admiration. “Good for you!”
“I’ve worked in an office before,” Violet said quickly. “And I went to secretary school.”
“I’ve heard there’s a school for what we do,” Audrey said, amused. “What are you? Nineteen? Twenty?”
“Twenty-two.”
“That will come in handy here, looking younger than you really are,” Audrey murmured. “I’m thirty and can still pass for a twenty-year-old if I need to.”
“Why would you need to do that?”
Audrey tossed back her head and laughed. Even her laugh was low and rich. “You seem to have a k
nack for humor, Violet from Alabama.” She arched one penciled eyebrow. “So. Did you come to Hollywood to be a movie star?”
Violet startled at the question. “No!”
“That’s why most girls your age come here.”
The thought of performing in front of people didn’t interest Violet in the least. Hollywood had beckoned her for a different reason. “That’s not why I moved here.”
“No?”
Her motivation for coming to California apparently mattered to Audrey Duvall. “I met one of Mr. Selznick’s talent scouts at an audition in Shreveport. He said he’d put in a good word for me if I wanted a secretarial job at the studio.”
“You went to that audition?” Audrey’s eyes widened in measurable interest.
“Only because my cousin Lucinda insisted I come with her. She found out people from Hollywood were coming to Shreveport to search for a young woman to play Scarlett O’Hara. I let her talk me into being interviewed along with everyone else. I think by the time Mr. Arnow got to me he was just relieved to talk to someone who had actually read Margaret Mitchell’s book and wasn’t fawning all over him.”
“You don’t say!”
“I told him I was a much better secretary than I was an actress and that I knew stenography, and that I’d lived in the South all my life. He told me if I wanted a job at Selznick International in Hollywood, he’d put in a good word for me. He said it would be handy to have a Southerner in the secretary pool during the filming. So I came.”
“Just like that?” Audrey seemed both intrigued and dubious.
Violet nodded.
“You have a family back there missing you right now?”
“Just my parents. And my two brothers, Jackson and Truman. They’re both married now and raising families. I doubt they think about me much.”
A Bridge Across the Ocean Page 32
