Bess’s skin erupts in goose bumps. Her breath gets short.
“Evan, don’t…” She shakes her head. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
He narrows his gaze.
“Why wouldn’t I mean it?”
“What about, whatever her name is?” Bess says. She looks away to avoid meeting his eyes. “Grace.”
“Who’s Grace?”
Bess looks back at him. His face is baffled.
“The girl with the jerk lacrosse kid? Your girlfriend?”
He laughs oddly, uncomfortably, and with no cheer at all.
“Jack’s mom? Uh, no. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s married to a buddy of mine who travels a lot. I try to help out where I can. Like I said, her son is a turkey. He needs the supervision. What made you think…”
“Never mind,” Bess says, and cowers in humiliation. “It’s a long, stupid story. I’m an idiot.”
She buries herself in his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she says into the warm place on his shirt. “I’m so lame.”
“Oh, Lizzy C.” He kisses her on the head again. “Come on. Look up. Look at me.”
It takes her a minute but Bess does as he asks.
“I love you, you know,” he says.
Bess shakes her head.
“I do,” he insists.
“What about your whole thing?” Tears are rolling down her face now, tumbling unfettered. “Your mantra. Never make the same mistake twice.”
“I still believe that.”
“Then stop—”
“The thing is, you were never a mistake. I loved you then, I love you now, and every hour in between.”
Bess smiles but can’t echo the words despite feeling every crumb of them. These feelings—his, hers, theirs together—these feelings are why Bess has stayed away from her beloved Cliff House for so many years.
As they sway beneath a red anchor flag, the memory creeps up, though Bess has spent four years pushing it away. Still, she can see a younger Bess Codman pulling her wedding dress off the pink wardrobe. She hears the knock, a knock much like the one from earlier tonight.
At the time, Bess assumed it was Palmer or Lala. Dress held to her almost-naked body, Bess flung open the door to find a man standing before her instead.
“Evan!” she gasped.
He was wearing a white shirt, sleeves pushed back, and loose khakis. Sweat dribbled on his hairline.
“You can’t see me like this!” she yipped.
Then Bess remembered it was only the groom who couldn’t see the bride before the ceremony. Random ex-boyfriends didn’t factor into the bad luck. Or did they?
“What are you doing?” she asked. “The wedding’s about to start.”
“Don’t do it,” he said. “Don’t marry the guy.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s not right for you. Not one bit.”
“Oh, he’s not, is he?”
What an intrusion. What galling pompousness. As if Bess would care what the bastard thought, a man who jettisoned her years ago in favor of an ill-advised sojourn to Central America.
“Who is ‘right’ for me, then?” she asked. “Someone more like you, I presume?”
Bess was being catty, purposefully rude, but some speck of her hoped that he might say “Yes.” As she waited for his response, the speck began to grow.
“No,” Evan said. “Not like me. We’ve moved on, haven’t we?”
“Yes,” Bess said, and gave him a hard scowl. “We have. I don’t know what this is about but I’m quite comfortable in my choice.”
She wasn’t, not at all. But it was what had been decided, the fitting course. Anyhow, Brandon was great. Handsome. Successful. Loving and protective. Or that’s how Bess regarded him then: in the best and most determined light.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said. “I have to see a man about an altar.”
With that, she slammed the door in Evan’s face. It was the last Bess saw of him until a week ago.
“When you came to my bedroom door,” Bess says now, as Evan glides her across the floor, “and said not to marry Brandon, I thought you were being difficult. Or argumentative. Until you gave me the entry, I didn’t think it was because you…”
“Because I loved you,” he answers for her. “And I still love you. I’ve loved you for my entire adult life, and then some.”
Bess’s eyes sting as the tears again form. She can’t believe what he’s saying to her, at this moment, in the very last second of everything.
“That’s what my mom said about your dad,” she tells him. “Almost verbatim.”
“How cute. We could double-date. You should know, on that day Cissy told me not to stop you. Obviously I didn’t listen.”
“She did?”
Bess’s eyebrows lift.
“Yep. I went to her, crying like a baby. It was pathetic. I had plans for some big confession, a declaration of love. She told me it wasn’t fair, that I should’ve done it long ago and I ‘had plenty of chances, sonny.’ Leaving you to your day was the right thing to do. She was not wrong.”
“Well,” Bess says, her breath shaking in her chest. “She was and she wasn’t.”
The right thing to do. Bess is beginning to think that in most circumstances there’s no such thing.
“And don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Evan says. “I’ve used the word ‘love’ approximately twelve times in the last three minutes and you haven’t replied once. That’s okay, though, because I know you feel the same.”
Bess smiles and thinks about this for a bit. Pretends to think about it, because the answer is clear.
“Yes,” she says. “I do.”
Just as Bess goes to make a joke (“If this is a ploy for sex, remember, I just got out of the hospital”), the doors suddenly whoosh open and a gale blows in. It’s Cissy in a short red dress, Chappy on her arm.
Chappy! Her dad! Bess scoots out of Evan’s hold and turns to look for Dudley. He is across the way, coming in from enjoying a cigar outside.
With a hard glare aimed at Cissy, Dudley takes a terse sip of bourbon. This perfect night, made even more perfect by the fact that it followed Bess’s very worst day, this night is about to end in catastrophe. Damn Cissy. You don’t bring your boyfriend to a wedding that your husband is already at. That’s just straight etiquette.
“Fuck,” Bess says.
Her father closes the door behind him and beats a hot path toward Cissy and her date. Dudley lurches at Cissy and then cloaks her in what can only be described as a friendly embrace. While Bess stands stunned and blinking, her father does the unthinkable. He shakes Chappy’s hand. Proof that the world will never make sense.
The reunion breaks up. Chappy beelines toward one bar, Dudley the other (not too chummy, thank God). Bess turns to Evan.
“Excuse me for a minute?” she says.
He nods, unable to answer. Bess pecks him on the cheek and finds Cissy, who is standing alone at the edge of the dance floor.
“You made it!” Bess says, and gives her mom a hug. “I was getting worried.”
“I had to finish packing! It’s a big job.”
Bess laughs and shakes her head.
“Packing?” she says. “A big job? You don’t say. I’m so glad you’re here, Cis. You look spectacular.”
“So do you.” Cissy takes her hand. “How are you?”
“Oh I’m fi—”
“No, how are you really doing? Don’t give me the pat wedding-reception answer.”
Bess considers this.
“Actually, the pat answer and the real one are not so far apart,” she says with a smile. “I’m fine. Better by the second.”
Cissy smiles in return and touches her daughter’s cheek.
“I love you, Bessie. I’m heartbroken for what you’ve been through.”
“Me, too,” Bess says. “But suddenly it all looks so different. Like for the first time, everything might turn out fine.” She snorts. “I guess
because by the time you realize something truly sucks you’re most of the way through it.”
“That’s my girl.” Cissy pulls Bess in for another hug and a strong kiss on the lips. “You’re a remarkable person. Thanks for being there for me. Literally there. In Sconset, at Cliff House. I couldn’t have gotten through this on my own.”
“Yeah, you’d still be on that veranda if not for me.”
“Oh, I would’ve moved on eventually.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” Bess says.
Suddenly the microphone crackles. The band changes tune. A rough, familiar voice ripples through the room.
“Wow,” Cissy says, and whips around, a grin erupting across her face. “Is that … ‘A Piece of My Heart’? I’m impressed. You generally don’t get Joplin at a wedding.”
“Oh, God!” Bess cries, though these are happy tears.
“Oh my. Is that…?”
Bess peers around Cissy’s wide, wide hair to see Evan clutching the mike. His shirt is partially unbuttoned, the periwinkle tie is gone. Sweat shimmers on his face as if he’s been singing all night.
“Holy shit,” Bess says.
“Are you being … serenaded?” Cissy asks, then twists up her mouth.
“Holy shit,” Bess says again as she realizes that yes, she’s being serenaded.
And he’s lifted the entire room to its feet.
I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it …
The other guests flood the dance floor. Soon, the entire room is singing, shaking from the power of their voices. Evan Mayhew has brought the house down.
Chappy takes Cissy’s hand and pulls her onto the floor. Meanwhile, Bess’s heart flops all over the place. She is wildly charmed by the gesture, but it sure would be nice to have someone to dance with. Bess prays this won’t all end in the “Macarena.”
As if he can read her thoughts, and hell maybe he can, Evan turns the mike over to the real vocalist and jumps off the stage. He saunters up while Bess stands dumbed and speechless.
“So,” he says. “Better than Coolio?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“I do love you, Bess,” he tells her. “It’s not just the night or the moment or the really good booze.”
“I love you, too,” she answers. Then pauses. “Although I am on Vicodin. So who knows?”
Evan throws back his head and laughs.
“Oh, Lizzy C. A piece of my heart indeed.”
You know you got it if it makes you feel good.
64
The Book of Summer
Ruby Young Packard
June 1, 1948
Cliff House, Sconset, Nantucket Island
The house is open, the flags are raised, and the ferries from New Bedford and Woods Hole are running regularly once more. All that and I have three new bathing costumes, my favorite featuring blue-and-white stripes and close-fitting shorts. It’s just as Mother said, the summer will always come.
They’re expecting 40,000 visitors on Nantucket this season, a record by far. Folks are ready for vacation and now we’re only a ninety-minute flight from New York. There’s now no place on earth unreachable if you have but ten days to spare. Sconset doesn’t seem so isolated anymore.
Not that the trains are suffering, not by a mile. Grand Central reported last weekend was its busiest in history. I’m sure more than a few bodies were bound our way, judging from all the gruff city voices I heard on Main Street. Admittedly I am often vexed by the tourists, even though I’m technically an off-islander myself. Not that I feel like one. Baxter Road is more my home than Commonwealth Avenue, no matter how many days I spend in each.
The roads in town are jammed with cars, from new and sporty to old-fashioned and high-slung. That the gasoline stockpiles are being released is quite evident and already biking has fallen out of fashion. Cycling is back to being a “roughing it” kind of pastime. Or as the New York Times proclaimed, “a holiday sport suited only to those hard of muscle and with dogged determination.”
In addition to prepping the house for the season, we’ve spent the past few days golfing and sunning and sailing, too. I never understood my little brother’s obsession with the sport until I tried my hand for real. And wouldn’t you know? There is a certain splendor to sailing, to gliding upon God’s great sea using nothing but rags and a chunk of wood. The simple beauty of the sport is not unlike Sconset itself, with its gray shingled homes huddled together in quiet, restrained dignity, sturdy against the winter winds.
But it’s winter no more. Outside glassware clinks and the waiters scurry about. We’re holding a fête tonight, the first of the summer. Our guest list tops one hundred and every single person RSVP’d “yes.” Old friends and new. Nantucket and Boston and New York, even Washington town. Three cheers for summer. May it be made only of long days.
With love and hope,
Yours truly,
Ruby
65
RUBY
Summer 1948
They stood by the swimming pool, or the three-quarters pool that it was.
“It won’t be done by the party,” Ruby noted.
She was in her bathing costume, with a mallard-green scarf wrapped around her shoulders. Her feet were sandy. They’d just come up from the beach.
“This is not good at all,” she said.
They were supposed to have 150 guests and their yard was torn to bits. Not the brightest notion to start a large construction project during the busiest season in a decade. Had Mother been alive she could’ve told Ruby that.
“You were the one who insisted,” Sam pointed out. “The builders warned us that the timeline was too slim, that even a few hours of inclement weather could derail the whole thing.”
Ruby glared at her husband over the top of her sunglasses.
“Not helpful,” she said.
Suddenly an orb of yellow frenzy flashed in Ruby’s periphery.
“Cissy!” Ruby barked, scuttling across the bricks and wood. “Put that down.”
The three-year-old was right then dropping rocks into the gaping hole in their yard.
“Oh good grief,” Ruby said, and hoisted Cissy up against her waist. “You want to help, don’t you? Finish this pool yourself. I know what you’re thinking, you darling scamp.”
That was so like Cissy. She’d shown them exactly who she was, and straightaway. So independent, utterly take charge. Why, just that morning and out of the clear blue, Cissy took it upon herself to fold the laundry. It mostly involved slinging everything into a heap in her bureau, but the thought was there.
“You’re a cute bug, aren’t you?” Ruby said, and kissed her soft head. “Though a buzzy one.”
Cissy squirmed to break free, right on time.
Lord, Ruby loved her little spitfire, but the get-up-and-go really wore a woman out. Sometimes there was a mighty fine line between vivacity and being a real pill.
She released Cissy to the ground and looked back at her husband. It was hard to believe that something so on the move could bind two people together in one place. When Sam showed up the year before, quite sheepish and from the oblivion, he took one gander at Cissy’s round cheeks and that sassy sapphire gaze and knew at once he could never leave.
“Hey, whatcha got there, baby girl?” Ruby heard her husband ask.
“Box!” Cissy said, and crinkled something in cellophane. “Secrets!”
Ruby took three rapid strides forward and swiped the box from Cissy’s hand. She chuckled. “Secrets.” Or, rather, cigarettes. An ancient, emptied-out package unearthed by the workers. Ruby turned it over. Gauloises, Hattie’s favorite brand. Ruby gave a watery smile of remembrance, of regret. They’d really fouled it up, hadn’t they?
Though she still viewed Hattie’s article as inexcusable, ultimately it was not unforgivable. And so Ruby had extended the olive branch, sending Hattie a birth announcement when Cissy arrived.
Mrs. Ruby Young Packard announces the birth of her daughter, Caroline Sarah Y
oung Packard, on November 20, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Ruby wasn’t looking for a gift, but she didn’t even get a response.
Ruby sent more letters over the years, all unanswered. She even invited Hattie to the “Salute to Summer” cocktail soirée they were holding that very night. They were raising money for the old sailors’ home, and Hattie loved a good charity case. Plus, Ruby wanted to introduce her to Sam’s pal, an honest-to-God congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives. John Kennedy was handsome as the devil and miraculously unattached. Ruby could tell he was a good mama’s boy, not to mention Sam said he planned to run for governor! The kid was going places.
“Kennedy,” Sam said with a laugh when Ruby broached the topic weeks before. “Hattie Rutter is too ambitious for the likes of Jack. He has big plans and needs a wife without too many plans of her own. Hattie would just get in his way.”
Ruby didn’t agree, but it hardly mattered, as Hattie obviously didn’t plan to show that night or ever again. In the end, Ruby told herself it was for the best. They should leave the summer of 1941 where it belonged: in a trophy case on the highest and prettiest shelf.
* * *
“You look stunning,” Sam said.
Ruby stepped out of her dressing room and into the light. She had on a gown of deep blue crepe, two daring gaps running from beneath her arms all the way down to her waist. As she walked, the accordion-pleated skirt skimmed across the floor. It was all a tad grand and chichi for Cliff House, but this was a benefit and Ruby always did her best to look the part.
“Why, thank you,” she said, and took a small curtsy. “Mind helping me with my jewels?”
She walked toward the blue velvet box on the dresser. Inside was a necklace of diamonds and emeralds, a present from Sam on their anniversary several weeks before. The gift was a mite over-the-top, as he’d missed quite a few. He’d spend the rest of his life trying to make up for what he did. That is, when he wasn’t picking himself up after yet another fall.
“Of course I’ll help,” Sam said, and approached the dresser. “It’d be my honor.”
As he went for the box, his hands shook. He struggled with the clasp.
Damn it, Sam was drunk already. Ruby smelled the whiskey on him but told herself all was fine. Sam had always been a drinker and he seemed in a dandy mood. She hoped he could hold it together for the rest of the night.
The Book of Summer Page 35
