The Last Bathing Beauty

by Nathan, Amy Sue

  “Oh my goodness,” Boop said. “You were supposed to go home and talk to Clark.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You have to go. You owe it to yourself. I missed my chance but you don’t have to.”

  “I texted Clark and told him what happened and told him I’d like to talk when I come back. That’s good enough.”

  “Good enough is not enough for you. I want you to go.”

  She would be alone again, naturally. Boop grunted only because of the song of the same title, and how she’d always switched the radio station in the Caddy because the lyrics and melody were gloomy. Now that would be her life again.

  She was no longer accustomed to being alone.

  How quickly she’d acclimated to talking to the girls instead of herself, to making reservations for three or four or five instead of calling for Delightful Buddha takeout, to walking around with a posse and a pocketful of memories and private jokes. Her cheeks still ached from all the smiling. Those weeks had filled up parts of her she didn’t know were empty—parts that were draining fast. She’d have her activities and her appointments, but that wasn’t the same as having someone close enough to hear their breathing, anticipate their habits, appreciate their imperfections. The same someone who might tell her to put her hands in the air if she started coughing, even if that remedy (which worked) had no medical soundness.

  Hannah unzipped a section of the suitcase and pulled out the tackle box. Boop gasped as if she hadn’t placed it there herself.

  “I remember this thing.” Hannah unlatched and opened the box.

  “You do?” Boop lurched back, thinking memories would pour out, but when she leaned over and looked inside, it was empty.

  She removed it from Hannah’s hands and the words spilled out as easily as the crayons had. “I used it as a hiding place, but I must have emptied it because when I checked it was empty. Well, not empty, but empty of my most special keepsake. It was the only reminder I had of the summer before I married your grandfather.”

  Hannah stayed silent, her eyes intent. Boop knew she wasn’t being judged.

  “I won the Miss South Haven pageant when I was eighteen,” Boop said.

  “I wondered when you were going to tell me.”

  “You knew?” Was everyone keeping secrets from her, the hypocrites?

  “Natalie was worried that she’d upset you with the article. She found me online and sent a message. Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

  “I promised your grandfather I’d erase everything from that summer that didn’t have to do with him.”

  “Oh, Boop, I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s done is done. I’d have liked to see that sash again though, especially with the new pageant this summer. So many memories.” Boop laughed. “Like walking around with a book on my head.”

  “Could you do it?”

  “Of course I could, but Georgia was better at it.” Boop allowed her words to drop off. “The summer of 1951 was really something. In so many ways.”

  “And they gave you a pink sash embroidered with ‘Miss South Haven 1951’ in black?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Pop gave it to me and Emma one summer. He said to add it to our trunk of dress-up clothes.”

  Boop’s limbs ran cold. Another betrayal. When would it end? Her throat thickened with sorrow and rage. “Pop gave you my sash?”

  “We were little girls. We just didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  “No one asked about it?”

  “We went home to our mom’s that summer. I guess she didn’t think it was anything more than an old souvenir.”

  The sash had been the only tangible reminder she’d had of the happy times that summer, before her life split into before and after. And Marvin had given it away.

  He’d thought it would remain a secret, just like Georgia had.

  “It wasn’t his to give away. It represented childhood dreams. College plans. Career goals. Summer love. I wasn’t hurting anyone by keeping it.”

  Hannah cocked her head. Boop was wrong. Cherishing those memories hurt Marvin. She supposed giving away the sash had been his quiet revenge. She realized neither action had defined their life together.

  “You need to talk to Clark,” Boop said. “To find out if the good in your relationship outweighs the hurt.”

  “He’s in Traverse City this week at a craft show.”

  “That’s not too far.”

  “No, it’s not, but I’m not leaving you alone, and since he’s busy, it’s good timing.”

  Few things were, so Boop would take it.

  Later Boop walked downstairs and through the living room, where Hannah had sprawled onto the couch for a nap.

  Boop smoothed the fabric of her periwinkle blue shorts that didn’t need smoothing. Anti-wrinkle fabrics would have been a godsend at Stern’s. She looked at her familiar surroundings, the ones she looked at every day but didn’t always see. She’d chosen a clichéd (and somewhat inaccurate) nautical decor with navy and white furniture and accents. Antique wooden tables that had adorned her childhood—and had the dings and scratches to prove it—held books and candles, figurines and art projects. Area rugs camouflaged the most worn paths on the solid oak floors that had never been replaced, though they pitched and buckled in spots everyone had learned to avoid. She walked to the sideboard and tapped the pictures of her grandparents next to ones of her great-grandsons. So many tchotchkes, some cheap yet treasured, others pricey but meaningless. What of it mattered?

  Boop sat at the kitchen table, the weight of still-unspoken questions sat on her shoulders.

  Hannah stepped into the kitchen and set store-bought chocolate-chip cookies onto the table and pulled out a plastic-wrapped sleeve. Nannie would have cringed. Boop helped herself to two.

  Hannah sat across from Boop. “I have to ask. Do you think you would have run off with Abe? If you had known?”

  Boop had dreamed of that scenario many times. The answer always unclear. “The truth?”

  “Please.”

  Boop had been so young, and scared, and her heart had been broken several times over. “I don’t know if I would have. But I’d have wanted to.”

  Hannah furrowed her brow and shook her head. “Even though you were pregnant?”

  The answer to this question would further undo Boop’s lifetime of secrets. “I would have wanted to because I was pregnant. Hannah . . .”

  Hannah’s gaze flitted back and forth between the cookies and Boop. She furrowed her brow, then opened her eyes wide. Boop knew what came next.

  “The baby was Abe’s, wasn’t it?” Hannah asked, but Boop knew it was rhetorical.

  Boop was at once relieved and ashamed. She nodded, and a knot tightened in her belly that tugged and tugged, phantom kicks from that long-ago baby, simultaneously creating a bruise on her heart. Long beats of silence filled the space between them. Hannah didn’t yell or scowl. Her expression was kind and understanding. Boop was grateful for the compassion in her granddaughter’s face, and then in her soft voice.

  “Abe didn’t know, did he?”

  “They didn’t let me tell him. God, I tried.”

  “Did Pop know?”

  “Of course.” Of course Hannah assumed Boop was capable of honesty. And in some ways she wasn’t.

  “This means Pop wasn’t my—”

  “Stop it, Hannah. Pop was your grandfather, don’t you say he wasn’t!”

  “Does Dad know about this?”

  Boop shook her head. “No, but—”

  “No buts, Boop. He deserves to know Pop wasn’t his biological father.”

  Boop sniffled and her eyes filled and overflowed. It wasn’t that simple, but Boop couldn’t talk about it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “I will talk to your dad, Hannah. But not today.”

  Over the next two days, Boop didn’t call Stuart or Georgia, and Hannah kindly gave her a wide berth. Boop eavesdropped when Hannah called the hospital, and knew Georgia
was alive and improving.

  When Hannah drove Boop to Natalie’s for her weekly manicure, they idled as the Dyckman Avenue drawbridge opened. Two sailboats progressed slowly, on their way to the lake. Boop stared ahead at the raised road.

  “I have to tell you something,” Hannah said.

  “I know I promised I will talk to your dad, and I will.” Boop was procrastinating, and she knew it. Letting out secrets might have been cathartic, but it was also exhausting.

  “That’s good, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Not this time.”

  “Oh.”

  “Georgia called this morning,” Hannah said. “She’s being transferred to rehab.”

  “It’s only been a few days.”

  “They say she’s ready to go. And since you refuse to visit her, you can’t really have an opinion.”

  “I can always have an opinion. Where are they sending her?”

  “Lighthouse. Have you heard of it?”

  Lighthouse Rehab was a geriatric facility, the last stop before a nursing home, meant for old people who might not recover, or recover fully. “I am glad she’ll be out of the hospital,” Boop said.

  “Really?”

  “What do you mean, ‘really’? I’m not a monster.”

  “Do you want to go see her?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand. She seems to, but I don’t.”

  “She kept a very important secret.”

  “Pot, meet kettle.”

  “Very funny, Hannah.”

  The drawbridge lowered, the light turned green, and Hannah eased the car across. She flipped on the signal and turned right onto Broadway Street, and turned right again onto Phoenix Street, with all the tourists. None of whom had ever heard of Betty or Stern’s Summer Resort.

  Boop reveled in the distraction of the summer bustle; she always had. Even though there would be no familiar faces before she saw Natalie’s, when she set her mind to it, each visitor to South Haven reminded her of the welcoming arms of Nannie and the jovial camaraderie of Zaide. They had treated every guest as family, and anyone they’d met as a potential friend. Maybe that accounted for the warmth Boop still felt toward the tourists, even though she had nothing to gain from their presence or their pocketbooks.

  Hannah double-parked in front of the salon. “You should forgive Georgia. I think the good outweighs the hurt.”

  “Don’t use my own words against me.” Boop unlocked the door. “I have to go in, I don’t want to be late.” She opened the door and balanced with her cane as she stepped away. Then she turned back. “I’m not mad at Georgia because I married Pop. I’m mad because she didn’t trust me to make my own choice.”

  Hannah waved on the cars behind her. “No matter what she did or didn’t do, I think you two deserve closure, Boop.”

  “How is that even possible when Georgia just opened everything up?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  Chapter 20

  BETTY

  Betty scurried into her bedroom along with her friends. Nannie sat on a sewing stool, tapping her foot on the floor as if counting the seconds.

  “You’re lucky your grandmother can do this,” Doris said. “Mine couldn’t sew a button.”

  “I am lucky,” Betty said. She knew it was brownnosing, but an extra-secure spot in Nannie’s favor didn’t hurt. Especially when Betty was going to ask for a tighter waist and a bit of a lower neckline. If Betty was feeling bold in addition to lucky, she planned to mention Abe—that they were getting serious—even though they’d already gotten serious.

  They stole kisses by the tennis court with Georgia as a lookout. They skimmed fingers whenever they passed during the day. Each night after his shift at the grocer’s, Abe and Betty sat on the porch, watching the sky, listening to the lake, and kissing while her grandparents slept upstairs. A few times they’d sneaked off to his car to have sex in the back seat—which wasn’t as uncomfortable as Betty had thought it would be, with the blanket and pillow she’d pilfered from the supply closet. That’s also where they mapped out their visits as they wiggled back into their clothes, giggling and whispering like they’d gotten away with something—which they had. They figured they’d see each other on Thanksgiving break when Abe would come to South Haven for a day. By then Nannie and Zaide would have come around and accepted Betty and Abe were an item. Then, during Christmas break, Betty would head to Detroit for a week. They also schemed when they might each take a train and meet halfway—in Cleveland—and stay in a hotel under fake names!

  Winter was hockey season, so that would be more difficult, but after graduation in June—less than one year from that moment—Abe would be in New York full-time. Maybe they’d marry while Betty was still in school. Why not? It’s not like he’d insist she stay home to bake cookies and have babies. Not right away. Not for a long time.

  Nannie looked up from her sewing and whirled her forefinger in the air like a lasso. “Stop daydreaming. Let’s get started. No one has all day.”

  Georgia looked at her watch.

  Nannie slipped Betty’s dress from its wooden hanger and held it by the shoulder straps. Each strap was topped with a blue satin ribbon tied in a bow that matched the skirt’s powder-blue overlay.

  Betty stepped out of her blue gym uniform she sometimes wore for calisthenics. It fell around her feet. Nannie handed the dress to Doris, who held it open wide on the floor, so Betty could step in. She held out her arms, and the girls lifted the dress up over her torso and onto her arms, quite like the blue birds in Cinderella, although that would make Nannie one of the mice. Doris zipped up the back and fastened the matching belt in front.

  “It fits like a glove,” Georgia said.

  Nannie removed a pin from her pincushion and pulled at the fabric at Betty’s waist. “Almost.”

  “Gloves!” Betty tugged away from Nannie and skittered to her dresser. She opened the top drawer and lifted out a slim gold cardboard box, unwrapped a pair of white gloves from protective paper, and pulled one onto each hand. “They’re practically new.” Betty stopped moving, as if in a game of freeze tag. She looked at Nannie, who nodded.

  “You can never go wrong wearing white gloves,” she said. “Now come here and let me finish so we can all get back to work. No time for dawdling.”

  Following her grandmother’s instructions, Betty stood at attention as Nannie kneeled, then pulled and folded and pinned the hem.

  “I think it’s a little loose at the chest,” Betty said.

  “You can win without showing too much.”

  Doris nodded, but Georgia covered her mouth, knowing Betty’s plan had been foiled.

  Then Georgia glanced at her watch again. “I have to go.”

  “Where?” Betty asked.

  “Timbuktu,” Georgia said. “Where do you think? I have a tennis lesson. Every guest deserves special attention.”

  “Who’s this star student?” Doris asked.

  “Not a star, Sam—Mr.—Bloomfield. He wants to be able to hit tennis balls with his daughters, so he’s doubling up on lessons on weekends.”

  Nannie removed a straight pin from between her lips. “Good for him, Georgia. And that’s because of you. The Bloomfields are lucky to have you.”

  Georgia blushed. “Thank you. See you later, girls?”

  “Of course!” Betty and Doris said in unison.

  “Doris, would you help Betty take off the dress without sticking herself? And then just leave it on the bed.” Betty held Nannie’s arm and helped her grandmother stand. “Georgia, dear, I’ll walk back with you. Ira’s got to be wondering where I am, and it’s almost time to check in on the kitchen.” She brushed off her dark-blue shirtwaist.

  Georgia stepped aside and allowed Nannie to walk out the door and down the stairs first.

  As they disappeared from view, Betty clutched Doris’s arms. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course. But take off the dress first.”

  She stepped ging
erly from her pinned frock. In her slip and brassiere, Betty sat at the edge of her bed near but not on top of the dress. She wrung her hands in her lap.

  “What’s got you all wound up?”

  “My grandparents aren’t going to be happy about this.”

  “You’re killing me, Betty. Spit it out.”

  “I’ve been thinking about my parents. I may invite them to the pageant.”

  “What would your grandparents say?”

  “They’re always happy to see Joe, but I thought I wouldn’t mention it. In case they say no, which they probably will. I could just write them. Then no one would have to know. What do you think I should do?”

  “Does that really matter?”

  It didn’t, but Betty appreciated that Doris allowed her to babble. If her parents agreed to come, Tillie and Joe could see her as the woman she’d become. They might even like Abe, and to get on Betty’s good side they might help convince Nannie and Zaide that half-Jewish was enough—even if they believed it was the wrong half. Even if she didn’t get their help with Abe, they’d still see her triumphing onstage before she headed off to New York to pursue her own dream, the way they had pursued theirs. The difference being, she wasn’t abandoning a child to do it.

  Over the next weeks, Betty’s days became predictable yet dazzling. Abe could be around any corner—and he often was. Yet her work in the laundry room provided a short reprieve, and while she missed the rush of anticipation, the rhythm of the machines soothed Betty, reminding her of her origin. The machines thudded, whirled, and buzzed, and none of the laundry girls paid mind to Betty. She liked her hours here. This was where Betty knew what was expected of her and she didn’t have to be poised or coiffed or even polite. One day she’d heard the girls swearing aloud, not caring one iota that she was nearby. It was as if Betty weren’t their bosses’ granddaughter. Since Betty’s summer life existed in the spotlight and was governed by propriety, she loved standing a little bit slouched, leaning while she worked, wiping sweat with the back of her hand in lieu of a handkerchief. She had wanted to tell her grandparents how much she cared for Abe, but it never seemed to be the right time for that conversation—that argument. She’d promised she wouldn’t “go overboard” but overboard she had gone. Headfirst, as if she’d ducked beneath a wind-forced wave.