The Book of Summer

by Michelle Gable

  “Oh God, the ‘eschewing of Nantucket’ garbage!” Flick throws her head back. “I spent an hour explaining that I needed something closer to the city since I work approximately all of the damned time. Anyway, we have Tea Time. And here I am. Back. Getting married on-island and therefore not eschewing.”

  “Sorry excuse,” Bess says with a smirk. “You could’ve at least gotten married at her house to compensate for the injustice. But instead you’re ‘mocking her.’”

  “Yes. What was I thinking? Oh, that’s right. I wanted my wedding venue to still exist when the guests showed up. Well, my dear cousin,” Flick says, and taps Bess’s hand. “All your mother’s kvetching about the ‘hundreds of weddings’ on the lawn, and your marriage to Brandon will end up being the last.”

  “Felicia!” Palmer chirps as a tremor runs across her flawless face.

  “I meant the last marriage at Cliff House,” Flick hastily adds. “Not, you know, for you. Unless you want it to be.”

  “It’s fine.” Bess waves her away.

  Suddenly a phone on the counter buzzes—Flick’s, no doubt. Palmer always forgets to turn hers on or bring it in from the car. Messages collect for days before she thinks to check them.

  “Shit,” Flick says, studying the screen. “Oh fuck me. I knew I should’ve stayed a full week at the office. I’m working on this convertible debt offering…”

  She punches in a number and then holds up a finger to “shush” Bess and Palmer, though Flick is the only one talking.

  “The board says what?” she asks before stepping out onto the patio. “I thought they already approved it!”

  The door swooshes behind her as Palmer turns to Bess.

  “I’d apologize,” she says. “But you know Felicia.”

  “Yep.” Bess smiles. “That’s your sister, through and through.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  For a moment Bess feels an undeniable ache, that of missing her own sister, or what her sister should’ve been. Bess has never been as close to Lala as she’s been to Palmer. Or Felicia for that matter. Never as close in terms of miles, or years, or even heart. She loves Little Julia, sweet Lala, but the seven-year gap sometimes seems like an entire generation. And in many ways it is. Bess certainly didn’t have a phone in her backpack when she was in high school. She knows how to write in cursive.

  “So how are you, Bessie?” Palmer asks, forehead rising in concern. “Are you doing okay?”

  “Yes, I’m doing okay. Just barely.”

  Bess gives a tight smile as she fiddles with a blue-striped dish towel.

  “Is … is it still true?” Palmer asks as she leans forward. “The … ya know?” She lifts her eyebrows three times. “The people?”

  “You mean the hookers?” Bess asks. “Yup. That still cannot be undone.”

  Palmer gulps, as if hearing it for the first time. Her face goes even paler than porcelain, just this side of blue.

  “It’s still so shocking,” she says.

  Bess nods as she pulls her cardigan snug around herself. It’s hard to fathom he’s the same Brandon she fell for those six or so years ago.

  They met at a party. Bess can’t remember at whose house, but there were purple rugs and floor-to-ceiling mirrors involved. She spotted Brandon across the seventies-era monstrosity, he dorky-hot with his wavy sun-streaked hair, stone cheekbones, and black glasses. He’d spotted her in return and within seconds sidled up.

  They chatted as young unattached people do—who are you, what do you do, who will you be—and then Brandon stopped short. He stared at Bess, curiously, as if someone had asked him to opine on a movie with decidedly mixed reviews.

  “Well, nice to meet you, Brandon…” she stuttered, and began to back away.

  “Wait.”

  He placed a hand on her forearm. Even today she remembers being surprised by the strength of his grip.

  “This is going to sound silly,” he said. “But coming to talk to you was calculated.”

  “Uh, what now?”

  “I had to see for myself. I figured you couldn’t be as smart as you are beautiful. Then I thought, well, okay, she’s smart and beautiful, but she can’t possibly be as cool as she is those two things. But, I was wrong.”

  “Um?” Bess said, blinking. “Thanks?”

  He’d tease her about this later, mostly in front of other people.

  I made this big romantic gesture, if I do say so myself. And she answered “um.”

  “One day,” he said after Bess’s fabulous display of graciousness. “One day, probably within the year, I’m going to ask you to marry me. You’ll say yes because you and I, we’re meant to be.”

  Brandon was decisive like that, one of the things Bess appreciated most about him. Usually when Bess acted with such resolve it resulted in some sort of calamity.

  “We will get married, Beth,” he said.

  “Bess,” she told him.

  “Either way.” He shrugged. “Within the year.”

  After a great, long pause Bess replied deftly: “Okay.”

  Brandon took this as advance acceptance of his future proposal. A preapproval, if you will. Alas, Bess would never be sure what she meant by her reply. “Okay.” It’s what you say when you lack real words.

  “I’ll get over it,” Bess says, to herself as much as to her cousin. “One day it will all be a bad dream.”

  Palmer doesn’t nod. She’s not buying it, not yet.

  Outside, the winds are beginning to pick up, the drizzle turning to hard rain. Thank God the vote is tonight, because with every gust it feels like Cliff House is one inch closer to the end.

  But the vote is tonight.

  Which means it’s Tuesday and then it will be Wednesday. If she were to look at her calendar, Bess would see all of tomorrow blocked off. She still hasn’t canceled her appointment, but it’s not a matter of simply rescheduling. Suddenly Bess wants to leap on the next plane. Or straight off the Sankaty Bluff.

  “So, I’m going to change the subject,” Bess says, stomach wobbling and turning.

  “Understood.”

  Palmer gives her an ardent thumbs-up.

  “Is everything set for the wedding?” Bess asks.

  “Just about!”

  Her cousin perks at once. Really, it’s downright rude to talk to Palmer Bradlee about anything other than cake and tulle. Not that she can’t handle it; it just doesn’t seem right.

  “Lala’s sorry she can’t make it,” Bess says. “Flights from Sudan are hard to come by.”

  “At least Clay and Tiffany are coming!”

  “You act like that’s a good thing.”

  “Bess!”

  “I love Clay. But Tiffany…” Bess rolls her eyes. “Luckily it’s only for the day.”

  Tick, tick, tick, says the clock in her mind.

  “You’d think by pregnancy number three,” Bess goes on, “Tiff wouldn’t be so dramatic. People do give birth around here. We have a legit hospital on Nantucket, believe it or not.”

  “Aw, she’s just excited.”

  Yes, Bess thinks, her sister-in-law is excited. Excited about her ability to act like the empress of an enslaved land.

  “So, what kind of turnout are you expecting?” Bess asks, and reaches for someone’s half-eaten bagel. Flick’s, most likely, as Palmer can’t possibly eat carbs. “Cissy tells me the guest list is small?”

  “Was small,” Palmer says. “My sister is so entertaining. She keeps adding guests like she’s throwing another ice cube into her lemonade.” She hesitates and lowers her voice to a whisper. “There will be a lot of people from Choate. Is that … okay? Will you…”

  “Listen, P,” Bess says, shaking her head. “What happened twenty years ago is nothing. Rest assured, it’s the very least of my humiliation and shame.”

  This is true, though it’s a humiliation still. Bess can’t admit this to her cousin, however.

  “Well,” Palmer says with a sniff. “You shouldn’t have
the smallest speck of shame about what happened with Brandon. He was a verbally abusive, controlling dickwad.”

  “Okay, he’s a jerk. And I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you use the term ‘dickwad,’ so cheers to that. But verbally abusive? Come on. That’s a tad excessive.”

  It’s not the first time Palmer’s sung this tune. She’s been playing it for some time now and Bess cannot get her off it.

  “In my opinion he was,” Palmer says. “But either way, regarding the sex workers, he acted like a creep on his own. No assistance required.”

  She takes a sip of coffee, wrapping both delicate, spindly hands around an old, cracked Yacht Club mug, her fingers obscuring the little blue flag.

  “We had fun, though, didn’t we?” Palmer asks in her Disney princess voice. “At school? Before you left?”

  “We did,” Bess answers with a smile.

  “‘Door open, one foot on the floor!’” Palmer says in her best dorm-mother voice.

  “Yeah, I think you’re the only person who followed that rule.”

  “Or you think I followed it.” Palmer blows Bess a kiss. “To this day Brooks can’t understand why I have no modesty around the house. Sweetheart, I grew up showering with a hall of girls. Most of them all too willing to catalogue one’s warts.”

  Her warts? What could Palmer possibly be self-conscious about? She is a ballerina sculpture, a perfect work of art.

  “The one thing I remember,” Bess says, “about coming to Nantucket after Choate was how blithely people ordered pizza. Wait, what? You just pick up the phone and ask for food? Don’t we need to dangle someone from a window by their ankles?”

  Palmer laughs.

  “Geez, what we did for crappy pizza!” she says. “Remember when you joined the a cappella group?”

  “Bad idea.”

  “The worst. Because although you have many talents, singing is not one of them.”

  “I was awesome at hand bells, though.”

  “No one is good at hand bells,” Palmer says, still laughing, as Bess’s belly fills with warmth.

  Little Amory bounds in then, curls springing with each step. It’s a wonder she can move at all, engulfed as she is in a frothy nightgown whisking around her like pink frosting.

  “Bessie-boo!” Amory squeaks, running toward her. “You’re here!”

  “I’m here, Ammy. I’m here.”

  Bess clutches the little girl to her chest. As she nuzzles those curls, Bess inhales and feels a definite pull, a sense of yearning from a place unknown.

  19

  The Book of Summer

  Patience Grimsbury

  June 10, 1941

  Cliff House

  Mrs. Young asked me to write in this Book of Summer, which seems peculiar given my station, but she swears it’s made for all.

  The summer commenced in its usual way, the women fussing about, and I have to go in and fix naturally they’re getting everything precisely right! I just fill in where I can! Mrs. Young and Mrs. Young, Jr., and Miss Young-now-Packard, they all have such a knack for making this grand house hum. I’m fortunate they let me be a part of it!

  I’m waiting—any day now—for one of the younger set to announce her pregnancy. They are all trying, this I know. I hope this “Grey Ladies” enterprise doesn’t hamper things in the womanly department. There’s only one way to become a mother—focus on the endeavor wholeheartedly. Not that I know a thing about it, in the end.

  Whether a baby or two will soon be on its way, I can’t predict. But I do know one thing. This will be a summer for the ages. A summer to remember. I only pray that I can keep the whole thing ticking.

  Dutifully,

  Patience Grimsbury

  20

  RUBY

  June 1941

  It seemed like a lot of training for something so nonmedical. But after four monotonous weeks, Ruby was a certified member of the Red Cross Hospital and Recreation Corps, aka the Grey Ladies, Sconset branch. Together they knitted children’s blankets and clothes and could upgrade to bandage rolling if all went well.

  Ruby was pleased to help, even in this minor way. A gal could argue with the war, but she couldn’t dispute outfitting displaced baby Brits. Meanwhile Mary took to it like it was her calling, and how. She delighted in the rigors of training, the long days spent at the Legion Hall, a fraternity of women united beneath a common goal. They were like a military battalion but with less threat of bodily harm, plus infinitely better attire.

  “I never realized that other women could be so extraordinary,” Mary confessed late one night, drunk on do-gooding and a little sherry.

  It was quite the change of tack for her sister-in-law. To date Mary had approached everything with grim tenacity, even her own wedding. Her demeanor when she believed herself pregnant was precisely the same as when she found out that she wasn’t. But with the Grey Ladies, Mary showed pep, some swing in her walk.

  “We are nurses!” Mary trilled, repeatedly, on their first official day. “Isn’t it grand?!”

  They were on the veranda, Ruby working on an afghan as Mary knitted baby bunting.

  “We are nurses!” she continued to sing while adjusting her jaunty nurse’s cap.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh don’t be such a negative Nellie. We have the certification and pin to prove it. Helping the war effort. I’ve never felt so alive. Isn’t this pure delight?”

  “You betcha,” Ruby answered, trying to join a new ball of yarn.

  “Delight” was not the word Ruby had in her head. She was a little tired. And bored. And her fingers were already sore as the dickens. Plus, she was getting dizzy trying to concentrate so closely on the pattern.

  “Hmmm,” Ruby said, inspecting a dropped stitch.

  If an afghan looked bonkers but still kept a person warm, was there room for complaint? Ruby chased the thought away with a blush. The Brits deserved nice things, too. Just as Topper said: a la-la girl indeed.

  “These socks!” Mary held up a pair, knitted by some other Lady. “Are they not precious?”

  “Sure are.”

  Ruby closed her eyes and pictured the British children, those who’d go on to receive the spoils of their work. Poor moppets. Snatched from their homes and spirited to the countryside to live with strangers. Ruby disagreed with the warmongering, but the little ones she could get behind.

  “Don’t be so glum, Ruby,” Mary said, and stood. “You’ll improve. Your output won’t always be this terrible.”

  “That’s not…”

  “Do we have enough?”

  Mary began lining up balls of yarn on the table. Twenty Grey Ladies were due at any moment. Though Mary and Ruby had been knitting all day, their efforts would continue past sundown. At least they’d have fresh blood. Even a zippy Mary was half a Mary too much.

  “I think we have plenty to work with,” Ruby said. “You’ve stocked us well.”

  “Goodness, isn’t this delightful beyond words?” Mary assessed the scene, gobbling up the balls of yarn with her beady black eyes. “It’s so much more fulfilling than playing tennis or acting with the Nantucket players!”

  “Yeah, it’s swell.” Ruby sighed.

  She’d dropped another stitch, damn it. Ruby was miserable at this knitting business. Plain awful.

  “But I’m afraid I’ll miss the tennis,” she said.

  “Ruby Packard, you’re such an ingrate! I’ll have you know…”

  “Tennis?” said a voice, pure smoothness. “No one told me we’d have to miss tennis.”

  A woman walked up then. A right dish. She was a touch older than Ruby, or the same age. Her hair and lips were both fire-engine red and she wore polka dots and a wide smile. Ruby perked up at the very sight.

  “Good afternoon!” Mary said, and swept across the patio to meet her. “Oh my! What a kicky outfit! Trousers even. I’m Mrs. Philip E. Young. And you are?”

  “Hi-ya, Mrs. Young.”

  She curtsied, though Ruby suspected it was a gag.


  “Miss Harriet Rutter at your service.” The woman extended a hand. “You can call me Hattie. Pleased to meet ya.”

  Mary’s own hand quivered as she returned the gesture. Trousers. Casual greetings. Oh the humanity. Ruby stood to rescue them both.

  “Hello there, Hattie,” she said. “My name is Ruby. Ruby Packard. Welcome to Cliff House.”

  “Charmed, Miss Packard.”

  “That’s, um, Mrs. Packard,” Ruby said, then cringed.

  What did she care, Miss or Missus? This Hattie Rutter would figure it out soon enough. Anyway Ruby still felt like a Miss. She felt like a Young.

  “All righty then,” Hattie said with a wink, already in on the joke. She took a seat on the green metal glider. “Missus.”

  “So, Miss Rutter?” Mary began.

  “Please. Hattie.”

  “Are your parents Charles and Edwina Rutter? They’ve a place on Hulbert?”

  “That’s them.” Hattie pushed off from a table with one foot, sending her chair ricocheting front to back. “Well, it’s my father. Edwina’s my stepmum. Nice lady but a bit of a snore.”

  As her glider continued to rock, Hattie glanced around sharply, deliberately, like a gopher poking its head from a hole. Then she closed her eyes and smiled. Her mouth somehow, impossibly, stretched wider. Hattie Rutter should’ve been in films. She’d light up the whole screen.

  “What a perfect afternoon.” She popped her eyes back open. “I haven’t been to Nantucket in years. And Sconset even longer. It’s beautiful here. So peaceful. I’ve missed it and only just realized.”

  “Yes, it’s grand,” Mary said, befuddled. She smoothed the front of her dress, pressing the area breasts would go if she had any to speak of. “So, uh, where do you summer?”

  What Mary did not say: You’re a Hulbert Avenue sort, so why not there? It was a posh address, smack in Nantucket Town, the pinnacle of swanky summer fun. Though but seven miles separated the two, Hattie’s type deemed Sconset certifiable backcountry, nothing but fishermen and artist colonies.

  “The majority of my schooling has been in Europe,” Hattie explained. “Paris mostly, so usually I summer on the Continent. But Europe, you know, not so fashionable these days.”