Goose bumps danced down Betty’s arms.
Zaide pushed the box again. “I know you’re working more than other summers and you’re getting ready for Barnard and you’re seeing Abe Barsky. You’re not a baby anymore.” Zaide’s voice caught.
Betty’s throat burned as she swallowed her accusations, regret, and near-confessions. She fluffed the bow before untying it and set it on her lap. She glanced at Zaide, who was smiling at her. His eyes squinted small, his nose wrinkled.
“Go ahead now,” he said.
She placed the lid to the side and turned two layers of white tissue paper like they were pages in a cherished book. Then she lifted fabric, which unfolded as she raised her arms.
“Zaide, you shouldn’t have.” Oh, but she was glad he had! Betty hugged to her chest the most glamorous structured swimsuit she had ever seen. She held it out again and it regained its hourglass shape. The suit was purple, but not Shabbos-grape-juice purple—a richly saturated lavender with sparkly silver straps and a matching embellishment at the bust. Betty had assumed she’d enter the Miss South Haven contest wearing her favorite yellow swimsuit with white pinstripes. She’d never been so tickled to be wrong.
She laid the swimsuit, silky but firm to the touch, across the box and pushed back her chair. As she stood, the pink ribbon cascaded to the floor. She bounded around the desk and climbed onto Zaide’s lap the way she had when she was little and wanted him to read her a story. He’d always complied. Zaide had always made her feel special and safe and loved even though she wasn’t an ordinary girl who wanted a house and husband right away. He loved her unconditionally. Then, now, always. She hugged him around his neck. At that moment she loved him more than anyone because he knew what was important to her, and he cared enough to show her. How would she ever leave and go to New York? How could she lie to him about Abe?
Betty banished the thoughts. “You’re the best, Zaide. I never thought . . .”
Zaide pulled back and looked into her eyes. “If Nannie asks, you ordered this from Lemon’s with my permission.”
Betty nodded. “But where did it come from?”
Zaide whispered, “One of the girls knew just the store to call. Abraham and Straus.”
“In New York!”
“Now how will the judges be able to resist my bathing beauty?”
Betty wrapped Zaide in another hug. She would do anything to make him proud.
Chapter 14
BOOP
Boop, Georgia, and Doris stopped into Natalie’s salon the next day. Boop would prepare for this pageant the way she had prepared before—with an awareness of potential problems.
Natalie was standing behind the front desk.
“Smudges?” Natalie asked.
Boop glanced at her nails. “Oh no. I was thinking—” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “That you might like some help with the pageant. I could help with the registrations and even getting posters into local store windows.”
“No one says no to an old lady,” Georgia said. “And Doris and I will only be here a few more days.”
Boop scowled but acquiesced. “I’ve been looking for something to keep me busy—and I think we’d have fun working together.”
“I agree,” Natalie said. “It would be fun. You’re officially my cochairwoman!”
“Just like that?” Boop asked.
Natalie held out her hand and Boop shook it. “To be honest, I thought Piper might have fun helping me, but she’ll be at her dad’s most of the summer and she kind of rolled her eyes at me when I asked.” Natalie shrugged. “Oh! Since we’re partners, I should show you this. Remember I asked you if you remembered anything about the last Miss South Haven pageant?”
“Right,” Boop said.
“It was so long ago,” Georgia said.
“Well, I found a photo online.”
“You did?” Boop and Georgia said in unison.
Boop’s pulse sped up and her hands went clammy.
“Yes, but just one. It’s grainy and from the Benton Harbor newspaper. Nothing listed in the South Haven paper at all. Weird, right?” Natalie reached into her case and then handed Boop a piece of paper she’d never seen before. “The winner’s not even looking at the camera,” Natalie said. “There’s a short article to go with it. But this is it. Nothing else about her. I couldn’t find anything else online except her name.”
“Holy Toledo,” Georgia said.
“I know, it’s amazing, right? All you have to know is where to look and you can find anything online.” Natalie handed the paper to Boop.
Stern Granddaughter Wins Miss South Haven
SOUTH HAVEN, August 13—Mr. and Mrs. Ira Stern, owners of South Haven’s premier property, Stern’s Summer Resort, were as pleased as punch this year, as they had every right to be.
Their 18-year-old granddaughter, South Haven resident Betty Claire Stern, graduated with honors from South Haven High School in May and is planning to matriculate at Barnard College in New York, New York, in September.
Yesterday, brown-haired, blue-eyed Betty went on to win the crystal-encrusted crown and pink satin sash reserved for our Miss South Haven each year. Betty won the title over 19 other lovely girls representing local resorts.
The annual contest to pick South Haven’s summer sweetheart was sponsored by B’nai B’rith and held at the North Shore Pavilion.
Much to the crowd’s alarm, right after this photo was taken, our new beauty queen ran swiftly from the stage and fainted by the beach. At the time of this printing she is said to be resting comfortably at home, after suffering from exhaustion. Being a distinguished bathing beauty is hard work indeed.
We extend our best wishes to beautiful Betty for a speedy recovery.
Boop mouthed the words as she read. She felt Georgia’s arm around her, holding on. She heard Doris’s breathing. Boop stared at the photo of the girl they’d called beautiful, and felt no connection to her. That was a different person—which didn’t seem right. She’d felt as if her life had been interrupted, so that there was before and after. The unidentifiable middle was in that photo.
Boop saw crisp lines, a purple swimsuit from a New York boutique, and a pink sash instead of grainy shades of black, gray, and white.
Of course it was the only photo or mention of her; Nannie and Zaide would have seen to that. They didn’t even announce her engagement or marriage to Marvin in the newspapers. “Too many questions, and not enough answers,” Nannie had said. Rumors had swirled. Lies were told.
Boop traced her finger along the sash, which looked dull and ordinary.
“Do you remember something?” Natalie asked.
“The suit was purple.”
“That’s a lovely detail. Does this mean you were there? Did you know this girl?”
Georgia held her tighter, and Boop didn’t know if it was an attempt to encourage or discourage what came next.
Foggy moments drifted back to her consciousness. Her parents in the audience. Marvin too. The beach. All the images in her head looked faded by sunlight.
“I’m that girl, Natalie.” She folded the paper and handed it back. “I’m the runaway bathing beauty. Or I was.” Even for Boop it was hard to believe. The girl in that photo had been trim and toned and giddy. She was rich with dreams and expectations. Her disheveled appearance in the photograph made it almost look like she had known what would happen next.
Natalie gasped, then leaned over and hugged her. “This is more than I could have hoped for. I’m going to look so good at the next meeting, saying, ‘My friend, Boop Peck, was the last Miss South Haven.’ Can you tell me what happened that day? But if it’s too much or you want me to keep it a secret, I will.”
“No more secrets,” Boop said.
“She was suffering from exhaustion,” Georgia said.
“Oh, that’s terrible,” Natalie said.
“It was,” Boop said.
Before she said anything else, the girls ushered her away.
&n
bsp; Boop’s next few hours passed in a blur of box kites, beach umbrellas, and oversize SUVs that blocked her view of the lake. Remembering the Miss South Haven contest, where the threads holding her life together unraveled quicker than a ball of wool chased by a rambunctious kitten.
It was there, on that day, that her life lay in temporary ruin and permanent redirection. What did the kids say? Own it. Still, it was her redirection, her life that followed. Hannah’s thoughts about how Abe had led her to Marvin applied to the pageant as well. Perhaps every event had been preordained. She’d never been meant for another life or another love. Maybe even without the pregnancy it all would have ended—Abe, Miss South Haven, Barnard. But if that were so, the longing inside her would not have resurfaced, the memories wouldn’t pinch her heart. She wouldn’t be in her eighties and wondering what if.
Doris stepped onto the porch and set a light shawl over Boop’s shoulders. Georgia followed with a cup of tea. Boop didn’t want any tea. They thought she was sick.
“I knew it was a mistake to go poking around in the past,” Georgia whispered.
“Should we call Hannah? Or Stuart?” Doris asked.
“I’ll call them later,” Boop said. “I’m fine.” She would be fine—wasn’t she always?
Gathering the corners of the shawl with one hand, she felt the widening stitches and the wearing yarn. Nannie had crocheted this shawl for herself when Boop was seventeen. For years Boop had stored it in a tight-lidded plastic shirt box, folded in layers of white tissue paper and sprinkled with mothballs. Whenever she would open the box, the pungent and toxic smell would mean the shawl was safe, that she could wrap it around her as if it were Nannie herself. She was older than Nannie had ever been, but she was also that young girl sometimes—lately more so than usual, or maybe than was healthy.
The weight of the shawl transmitted only the wonder of Nannie to the forefront of Boop’s thoughts. Her grandmother had knitted, sewed, cooked, baked, operated a resort, sustained a marriage, raised a son, watched him leave home to rarely return, and then raised her granddaughter. Yetta Stern had been the small, strong, grand dame of South Haven, who accomplished much and who had dared to dream on behalf of her granddaughter. That was, until her and Zaide’s guidance had gone askew.
Boop had tried to right the wrongs of the past. To teach Hannah the lesson Boop wished she had learned.
Energy surged through her. A jolt of recognition of a forgotten tenacity—to help herself.
Hannah doesn’t need to learn from the past; I do.
Boop should have been using those long-ago experiences as a way to understand what Hannah needed from her. Not what Hannah should do or think or feel. If they wanted to get married, Boop would support it. Clark was a good young man, just like Abe had been, maybe not someone she would have chosen for Hannah but that wasn’t her job. Boop didn’t need to see it, feel it, or know it; she needed to trust Hannah the way she wished she’d been trusted.
Boop left the shawl on the back of her chair and walked into the house. The girls followed.
She lifted her cell phone from the end table.
“Who are you calling?” Georgia asked.
Boop placed her index finger to her lips and turned to the window. Gulls dipped and soared and spun as if she had a front-row seat to a bird ballet. The phone clicked its connection.
“Hi, Boop,” Hannah whispered. “I’m sorry I haven’t called, but I was just about to.”
“Am I on speakerphone?”
“No.”
“Well, push the button. I think Clark should hear this.”
“He’s gone.”
“When he comes back, tell him I get it.”
“Get what?”
“My family got in the way of me and Abe. I won’t get in your way. I pinned my past onto your future, and that was wrong. If this is where your life is leading you, Hannah, then I’ll support you any way I can. And I bet your dad and Emma will agree.”
Behind Boop, the girls clapped lightly but tittered loudly. On the phone, Hannah gasped then went silent. She was crying.
“Oh, Hannahleh, I’m sorry, I should have said that right away. You just caught me off guard and it brought back so many memories. But that was my past, Hannah. It has nothing to do with your future.”
“We don’t have a future,” Hannah said. “Clark changed his mind.”
“We’ll see you soon, then,” Boop said, then pressed the button to disconnect the call.
“What’s going on?” Georgia asked.
“Clark broke it off with her,” Boop said. “He changed his mind.”
“How dare he,” Doris said. “There’s a baby.”
“There are two sides to every story,” Georgia said.
Boop stepped back. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on Hannah’s side. I’m just saying we don’t know what happened.”
“What happened was that she went home to tell him she loved him and wanted to marry him and he said ‘no thank you.’”
Georgia shook her head. “I bet it was more complicated than that.”
“Poor Hannah,” Doris said. “What can we do?”
Boop scampered through the living room, collecting framed snapshots from the end table, the bookshelf, and the wall. “We can get rid of the evidence.” She headed into Zaide’s old office.
“What are you doing?” Georgia yelled.
Arms full, Boop emerged holding every picture of Hannah and Clark she could carry. If Hannah had given it to her, Boop had displayed it. Hannah and Clark in Mexico. Hannah and Clark in kayaks. Hannah and Clark skiing, gardening, posing with silly faces. Now these would be reminders of her breakup—as if her belly wouldn’t be enough.
“You’re going to throw away all those photos?” Doris asked.
“Yes.” Boop tipped her head toward the screen porch so the girls would follow her. “But not the parts with Hannah in them.”
Settled on the screen porch, Boop, Georgia, and Doris hunched over their laps more from intention than age. They sliced through photographs, sometimes cutting around Hannah’s image as if playing paper dolls, sometimes just cutting out Clark’s head to preserve the scenery.
“What are you doing?”
Hannah? They looked up in succession. Boop, Georgia, then Doris.
Boop shuffled the scraps off her lap as if she were brushing away crumbs, then stood. She hugged Hannah and turned so that her granddaughter wasn’t facing the girls. Boop waved her hand back and forth, hoping they’d know to hide the evidence. Georgia swept clippings into a wicker trash bin and Doris tucked a few under her bottom. Just in time too. Hannah pulled back and whirled around.
“I thought you were coming tonight,” Boop said.
“I said soon. I didn’t want to worry you, but I was already in the car when I called.”
“You’re with family now,” Doris said. “We’ll fix you up right as rain. I leave in the morning but that’s plenty of time.”
Hannah reached out her hand and Doris grasped it. “That’s okay,” Hannah said. “I’m glad I got a chance to see you.” She glanced around. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Boop said. She’d never have started this if she’d known Hannah would arrive and catch them. It was meant to be a subtle change. There would be no visual reminders of Clark in South Haven. It would be a safe place for Hannah to heal.
Hannah plucked a discarded scrap from the trash can. “What are you doing?” she yelled.
Boop grabbed the photo. “I’m not going to have photos of Clark around. You don’t need to see that.”
“These are my memories!”
“I told you we shouldn’t have done this,” Georgia said.
Boop narrowed her eyes and scowled at her best friend.
Hannah plucked out six pictures of Clark and held them like playing cards. “You can’t just throw him away. For God’s sake, bubbes, turn the frames facedown, put them in a drawer. Don’t decapitate him.”
“It was her ide
a,” Doris said.
Boop placed her hands on her hips. “Best one I had all day. How dare he abandon you and the baby like that.”
“He didn’t abandon the baby. He said he didn’t want to get engaged now.”
Boop slumped. She’d panicked. Overreacted. “You left that part out.”
“I didn’t think you were going to mastermind a photo slaughter in the time it took me to drive here.”
After a few beats of silence, Hannah covered her mouth with her hand and the photos, and chuckled. Nervous that she was misreading the situation again, Boop kept silent. Then Doris hiccupped and laughed, and Georgia downright cackled. Only then did Boop join in as she collected Clark bits from the rubbish bin and set him on the arm of the glider. Later they’d find a way to put all the pieces back together.
That evening, they gathered at the kitchen table for Chinese food from Delightful Buddha.
“How about a little soup?” Doris asked, pouring wonton soup from its carton into a small bowl for Hannah.
Georgia dumped five fortune cookies out of their waxy bag onto the table. Doris reached for one; Georgia shook her head. “Pregnant ladies pick first.”
Hannah chose a cookie and waited because she knew the rules; everyone has to have a cookie before anyone can crack hers open. Boop and Marvin had invented this rule with Stuart, and it stood now as part of Peck family lore.
“You pick, Boop,” Hannah said.
Boop reached for the cellophane packet farthest from her. “Your turn, Doris.”
Doris picked one, which left two for Georgia.
“When I say ‘three’ we open them,” Boop said. “One, two, three.”
Hannah laughed as they pulled open the packages. If a silly game of paper fate was what it took to make her smile, Boop was in.
“I’ll read mine if I can see it.” Georgia squinted. “Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.”
“Well, of course it is,” Doris said. “Listen to mine. ‘Big journeys begin with a single step.’” She looked up, eyes wide. “I think it has to do with marrying Saul.”
Boop shook her head. “I’m opening the last one.”
“Why? What does yours say?” Hannah plucked it from Boop’s hands and read, “A truly rich life contains love and art in abundance.” She tore the small paper into two pieces. “There won’t be art in my life anymore. Not like it used to be. I don’t know why they call them fortunes anyway. A fortune is a prediction of the future, not just a quote. Excuse me, I have to pee.” Hannah pushed back from the table. The bathroom door closed a few moments later.
The Last Bathing Beauty Page 15