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The Last Bathing Beauty

Page 4

by Nathan, Amy Sue


  Boop inhaled, tasting the lake, maybe a speckle of sand, surely a droplet of sadness at remembering how her grown-up life had begun.

  Antiquated yet still ample in Boop’s mind, Nannie and Zaide’s expectations, fears, and stereotypes popped to the surface and bobbed like a buoy, threatening her current feminist sensibilities. Still, she didn’t want to dispel the myth of her and Marvin’s love story.

  “Why would you say you didn’t love Pop?” Hannah asked. “She’s lying, right?”

  Georgia shook her head.

  “Then why did you get married?”

  Boop looked at Doris, then at Georgia, not for permission, but for confirmation. They nodded. Their expressions were neither happy nor sad. Hints of smiles documented their acceptance. As always.

  It was time.

  Boop was faced with saying things her granddaughter did not want to hear, words she would remember forever. Memories shrouded her resolve, but Boop shooed those thoughts away. She was not Nannie. Hannah was not eighteen. It was not 1951.

  Boop filled her lungs with enough night air to expel a hidden truth.

  “I was pregnant.”

  Hannah walked around the porch. Boop stopped counting after twenty laps.

  “You’re making me dizzy,” Georgia said. “Sit down.”

  “You both knew?” Hannah looked at Doris and then Georgia.

  They nodded.

  “My family, the doctor, the girls,” Boop said. “That’s all. Others probably suspected, but it wasn’t something you talked about.”

  “It was something you lied about,” Doris said.

  “Did your grandparents force Pop to marry you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what exactly?”

  “Oh, Hannah, it’s a long story. All you really need to know is that your pop was a mensch.” Boop had always known this, and she’d been grateful. But had she been grateful enough?

  Hannah gulped. “You did it for the baby. For my dad. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe that’s enough.”

  “Just because it worked out for us doesn’t mean you don’t deserve more than that uncertainty now,” Boop said.

  “If you didn’t love him, why did you stay?” Hannah’s voice cracked.

  “I did fall in love with him. It just took time.” But there was more to it. While there had been many things Boop had wanted to become, a leaver was not among them. Unlike her parents, every time Boop had escaped back to South Haven to recharge, whether for a weekend or for months in the summers, she’d returned home on the day she’d promised to do so, sometimes ahead of schedule.

  She’d never forgotten that she was a lucky girl.

  “I will always come back,” she’d said to Marvin when she was nineteen and had been Mrs. Peck for less than a year. “I’m going to help my grandparents with the blueberry festival. I’ll be back on Tuesday before dinner.” She hadn’t ever asked permission. She’d simply share her intention, which Marvin would accept because she always returned as promised.

  True, he hadn’t been a child then, but a psyche could easily be bruised at any age. Boop had made sure her husband never had to sneak downstairs and unlock the door, rationalizing that she might have forgotten her key. He’d never tapped strangers on the shoulder because they had Boop’s hair, walk, or mannerisms. Marvin never had to make up a story about where his wife was or why she was gone. She’d kept the promises she’d made to Marvin before God and their families as well as the one she’d made to herself.

  But these promises were also her penance for needing to get married.

  Hannah shouldn’t have worries or what-ifs when it came to marriage. Enough of those would come along with motherhood.

  “If you’re not in love with Clark anymore, or if you never were, you’ll fall in love with someone else one day, and you’ll see. And that’s what you deserve. That’s even what your baby deserves. Heck, it’s what Clark deserves, don’t you think? Even if that means waiting.”

  “You didn’t wait,” Hannah said.

  “She’s right,” Doris said.

  “I didn’t have any other acceptable options,” Boop said. “They called it ‘getting in trouble’ and that’s exactly what it was. Trouble.”

  “And marrying Pop got you out of trouble?”

  “You bet it did.” In more ways than one. “And Pop got something in addition to a pregnant bride. Your great-grandpa Stan wasn’t going to give Pop the business until he had a nice Jewish wife—one that he approved of—a healthy Jewish baby, and a brick bungalow in Skokie.”

  Hannah flinched. “That’s awful!”

  “Your grandmother has had a wonderful life,” Georgia said.

  “I did, but yours can be better. Learn from my experience. Pop and I both got what we needed—but was it what we wanted?” Boop shrugged. “Eventually, yes, but I don’t want you to wait for eventually.”

  Boop wanted Hannah to have what she’d lost.

  Smothered memories gasped for air through unguarded cracks in Boop’s consciousness. She’d once had drive and ambition. Dreams and naivete. And a figure to die for.

  Far-off big-band music, Zaide’s laughter, and the roar of roadsters resounded inside her. The clean scent of hair cream tickled her nose. The bite of peppermint toothpaste coated her tongue. Was it all in her imagination? Or could the girls and Hannah hear it and smell it and taste it too?

  Hannah studied her. “You have a lot of thoughts about love for someone who says she wasn’t in it.”

  Boop diverted her gaze and gathered her thoughts, then looked back at Hannah. “I’ve had a lifetime to consider it.”

  Hannah nodded, her curiosity momentarily muted. “What would you have done if you hadn’t gotten pregnant? What were your dreams? Did you have plans?”

  The questions chipped away at Boop’s resolve to keep that summer veiled within the personal story she’d created—how she’d been a young woman who wanted nothing more than to be Mrs. Marvin Peck, housewife and mother. She looked at her friends.

  Doris shrugged.

  “It’s up to you,” Georgia said.

  After all this time, Boop remained unsure of how to explain the unexplainable. “It was another lifetime, Hannah. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It matters to me.” Hannah placed her hand on her stomach. “It matters to us.”

  Boop had so wanted it all to matter.

  Time tumbled forward and back. People and actions overlapped and crisscrossed through the years. Would it be possible for Boop’s experiences at eighteen to benefit her granddaughter now? Could Boop’s pain be Hannah’s gain?

  She was not a frivolous old woman, yet Boop recalled a frivolous girl—one who’d been charging toward a limitless future until she’d crashed.

  “You must remember something,” Hannah said.

  Against her heart’s better judgment, Boop remembered everything. After all, it had been the best and worst summer of her life.

  Chapter 3

  BETTY

  Summer 1951

  Betty needed to pick up her pace or she’d miss what she’d been waiting for since forever. It was almost noon and the summer staff would arrive in South Haven in about three hours. And now that she was eighteen, she would no longer be “Bitty Betty Stern”; she’d be part of the gang.

  She was old enough to join in on the secret bonfires that weren’t so secret; enjoy a day off, playing cards in the staff cabins; or drive to a nearby beach in Benton Harbor or St. Joseph, where no one knew them.

  Most of the kids caravanned from the University of Michigan, about one hundred fifty miles away. Ann Arbor had seemed so far away when Betty was a little girl, but ever since she’d seen her first fashion magazine at about age ten—a copy of Harper’s Bazaar left behind by her mother—she’d wanted to leave Michigan for New York City. That’s where magazines were made. Nannie had said so when Betty asked.

  She hadn’t read the articles at first but had lost her thoughts among the images of wom
en in swimsuits on a windy beach—a beach not unlike her own, aside from the palm trees. Later that day, she’d read the articles, so she had a reason to keep the magazine open and on her lap. Nannie would never ask her to stop reading. Betty was a good reader, above her grade level. Someone had written those words about the fashions and fabrics and styles—of course they had: words didn’t appear by magic. The idea that this was someone’s job had ignited her imagination. Betty had wanted to be that person, have that job, from that day forward. And now in a few months she’d be headed to Barnard College in New York City. She stopped short of attributing her aspirations to her mother and credited Diana Vreeland and Harper’s Bazaar.

  The only things she thanked her mother for were her hair and her figure, and Tillie had had no say in bequeathing either one.

  On one of their visits, Betty’s parents had chosen to give her a Sally-kins doll, the kind with a soft body and hard, molded head and hair. Betty had already gravitated away from dolls and toward books and puzzles—but how would they have known?

  Betty turned the pages of the latest Seventeen but gazed out the laundry room window. A few clouds floated by, though not enough to dim the sky or her excitement. She balanced the open magazine on top of a box of borax, flipped one more page, and read the headline: “Your Future: Where Is It?” She dog-eared the article for later. Then she dipped her hands into the pocket of her apron, knowing she’d find bobby pins and rubber bands from the summer before. Bits of lint collected beneath her nails. With the bobby pins pinched between her lips, she swept her hair off her neck, securing it into a ponytail, then off her face with pushes and twists.

  Work could not be put off any longer. She fluffed the pile of blue embroidered curtains that would hang in the guest cottages once she ironed them. It was the same blue her grandfather had mimicked in all of Stern’s Summer Resort’s tablecloths, napkins, and bedspreads. Even the matchbooks and ashtrays were the same shade, a color that was “easy on the eyes and just right for a vacation,” Zaide had said. He’d dubbed it “Stern Blue.” Betty was never sure if he realized the irony.

  The iron hissed its willingness to begin, and Betty laid a linen and lace panel flat on the board at her waist. The back and forth sliding motions were hypnotic. For the past three summers, Betty had been the lone ironer until the laundry girls’ shifts began.

  The air grew damp with steam and crisp with the smell of warm starch. Betty closed her eyes and pretended it was the lingering scent of an extinguished bonfire. She’d been awakened by that smell throughout her childhood, as well as by laughter on the beach outside her bedroom window. When she was twelve, her curiosity and a preteen crush on a waiter named Gerald had compelled her to the window, and she realized it likely wasn’t boring grown-ups outside. She padded over and watched as shadows danced at the lake’s edge without music—at least, she couldn’t hear any—their arms in the air or around each other. Others lay close together atop blankets spread out on the sand. From that moment on Betty had wanted to be the girl a handsome boy teasingly chased across the beach, laughing with that knowing kind of smile that said, I dare you to catch me. The girl who was still dancing a slow dance in the arms of a dashing prelaw major as the sun came up, and whose evening ended at daybreak with a perfect kiss. Just like in the movies.

  By her junior year of high school and after a month of milkshakes and movies with Robert Smith, Betty was secretly thrilled when Robert had carried a blanket during their usual after-dusk walk on the beach. It was so romantic, even more so because it was fall and she knew he’d put his arm around her. He’d unfolded the blanket and swung it out like a red tartan sail, and the fabric had floated down to the sand. He’d chosen a spot far from the light of her house or that of her neighbors. Soon his arm around her led to kissing, which led Robert to press his body against Betty’s so that she’d had to lie back on the blanket. She hadn’t stopped kissing him, though the wool had itched her calves, back, and shoulders as if an army of ants was running rampant on her skin. She’d squirmed, which somehow had prompted Robert to skim his hands over her blouse and unbutton it. It had been an odd sequence of sensations, but not entirely unpleasant.

  Betty had later told Georgia that she’d allowed Robert to go to second base because she was sixteen and it was time. What she hadn’t told Georgia was that she’d kind of liked it.

  A week later she’d set her limits with Robert when he unzipped her pedal pushers. Flustered and curious, she’d allowed him to do so; then, despite her haze, she’d lifted Robert’s hand and placed it above her waist.

  “Can’t blame a guy for tryin’,” he’d said.

  With a sizzling jolt, Betty opened her eyes wide. “Criminy!” She’d jammed the front end of the iron into the underside of her forearm. The summer hadn’t even officially begun! Betty would need to be more conscientious during her daydreams.

  In the kitchen, Nannie held Betty’s arm firmly but gently, and patted butter on the burn, tsk-tsking with each circular motion. She wiped her greasy fingers on her apron in even strokes. Even Nannie’s messes were meticulous.

  “Betty, how many times do I have to tell you not to iron with your eyes closed?”

  “I only closed them for a second.” It hadn’t been much more than that. “I was thinking.”

  Betty didn’t want Nannie to know she was thinking about necking when she should have been thinking about creases and pleats. Plus, Robert had dumped her for Joan Kepler, who had a bigger bosom and fewer morals.

  “This is quite the burn,” Nannie said. “What on earth were you thinking about? Boys, perhaps?”

  “No! I was wondering if the Bloomfields were coming back this year.”

  Nannie narrowed her eyes. “Why wouldn’t they be coming back? Everyone comes back. Did you hear something?”

  “No. I just liked my nights babysitting for them. That’s all.” Betty had enjoyed those evenings because the Bloomfields were a handsome couple who deserved a night away from their three girls. Or maybe because the Bloomfields had tipped her even though it wasn’t required.

  “I’ll make sure you’re first on the list.” Nannie examined Betty’s arm again, then wrapped it with a cotton bandage she kept on hand for kitchen burns. “You’ll meet a nice Jewish boy at Columbia when you’re at Barnard. You’ll see. Someone with ambitions. Brains. Have patience.”

  Betty had plans other than patience.

  Nannie set the butter into the commercial Frigidaire marked with an M for milchig—for dairy products only. Then Nannie followed Betty to the laundry room. Betty lifted the half stack of pressed curtains from the bottom. The weight against her makeshift bandage sent a wave of prickling pain through her, so she placed the curtains onto Nannie’s arms with care. She did not want to iron them again.

  Nannie stood on her tiptoes and kissed Betty’s forehead, then twirled one finger in the still, humid air. “I’ll finish these,” she said. “You go home and freshen up. It wouldn’t look right if you were late.”

  An hour later, Betty returned. She wasn’t wearing the pink checkered shirtwaist Nannie had laid on her bed, but Nannie wouldn’t reprimand Betty in public. That afternoon she would see some of the staff who’d known her since they were college freshmen and she was fourteen. Betty needed to look grown-up to be taken seriously. She wasn’t in high school anymore, and her appearance should say “college girl.” She shuffled her feet and stared at her new summer loafers as she pressed the damp grass one way, then the other. No saddle shoes, even though they were in style.

  Nannie and Zaide sat on the wrought-iron bench under the biggest maple tree on the property, on the center lawn. They sat there every year waiting for the staff to arrive before Memorial Day weekend.

  She blew her grandmother a kiss. Later, Betty would explain that she hadn’t really disobeyed her grandmother by wearing a different outfit; she was simply saving the dress for another occasion and didn’t want to soil it. Nannie would, of course, see through Betty as if she were a piece of glass, but su
mmer meant her grandmother would be distracted by the guests, the kitchen, and her image as the balabusta—the best hostess and homemaker—of South Haven. She might not even realize that Betty was wearing a gift she’d received from Tillie.

  During one of her parents’ visits, Betty realized Nannie called them “Tillie” and “Joe,” so she had started calling them by their first names too. Everyone had thought it was so cute that a six-year-old with light-brown, sun-streaked ringlets and wearing a dress inspired by Shirley Temple would call her parents by their first names.

  Or at least that’s how it played in Betty’s memory, since no one would ever refute or confirm her recollection. Ostensibly this served to safeguard her feelings, but not knowing where her parents had gone, or why, had been fertile ground for a little girl’s imagination. When the adults in her life had decided to be honest with her, she was ten, and more than a little disappointed that her parents weren’t spies or special agents or that they hadn’t been kidnapped by pirates. The truth: Tillie was a singer, and Joe her manager and piano player. They had kept their daughter with them until she was ready to attend kindergarten and then handed her off to her father’s parents.

  Betty remembered most of the times her parents had visited. She’d straighten her room and theirs, wear her best dress, wait by the door after days, weeks, months of seeing them in every childless couple, hearing phantom voices, dreaming outlandish dreams of a normal family. When they arrived, Tillie and Joe behaved like distant relatives—polite and interested but detached. It was as if she had no bearing on their life. She knew she did not.

  Betty always waved at the window and pretended their leaving didn’t hurt. She’d feared that seeing her hurt would wound her grandparents, who only wanted her to be happy. She owed them everything.

  That’s why Betty usually packed away Tillie’s infrequent and feckless gifts, but this one was hard to ignore—a yellow sleeveless blouse with a stand-up collar, like the one Betty had seen in Seventeen, a full chambray skirt, and—the best part—a narrow red patent-leather belt. Tillie knew it would be just right, since Betty looked so much like her with peachy skin, blue eyes with flecks of green, and toffee-brown hair. Did Tillie know how the blouse and belt would show off Betty’s curves? Did she care?

 

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