“How does Oliver feel about his rabble-rousing on Vietnam? He can’t like it with Billy in the navy.”
“He doesn’t know about that part yet.” Maren grimaced.
“Oh dear.” Georgie’s eyes widened.
Earlier that year, at the end of a tortuous process, Billy had enlisted in naval Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island. Though Maren and Oliver had agreed to let Billy make his own decision regarding the war, Maren had not been able to hold her tongue when he was nearing college graduation. The draft boards were notoriously susceptible to manipulation, and she begged Billy to let her and Oliver help.
Billy, however, already felt guilty about the protection his college deferment had provided. He felt badly for his mother, agonized for her, but every conversation ended the same way.
No, I have no desire to fight, he would say calmly. Yes, of course I’m ambivalent about the war. But he would not let them intervene. In his usual, deliberative way, he’d considered his options and arrived at his decision.
In recent months, Maren had been gripped by a terrible foreboding. She had tried to reason with herself. Mothers whose sons were actually fighting had nothing like her levels of anxiety.
Oliver was calmer. Duty on a ship was safer and could actually be good for Billy, a top student with an interest in travel and diplomacy. But Oliver also had more sympathy than Maren for the war, or at least the original impulse behind it. He saw Korea and Vietnam as proxies to hasten the collapse of Communism.
Though he’d grown frustrated with how the war was being prosecuted, with Billy in the navy he had redirected his anger to the antiwar movement, especially those in its number who said men like Billy had sold out their generation. He grumbled as he read the paper every morning.
Maren, against the war from the start, had more sympathy for the protesters, but Patrick struck her as the sort of young man for whom the war was merely a convenient tool. If not for Vietnam, he would have found some other way to express his righteousness, some other outlet to exercise the terrible power of his magnetism.
“Oliver told me you all took Annie down to that big protest in D.C.,” Georgie said.
“Well, we knew she would end up there no matter what. She’s fascinated with all of this.”
“That must have been a sight, all those hippies at the Lincoln Memorial!” Georgie actually brightened at this. She wouldn’t like a hundred thousand antiwar protesters showing up in her own backyard, but it was the kind of spectacle she loved at a safe distance.
“Oliver was horrified. I thought it was interesting. Annie looked like she wanted to jump in the Reflecting Pool with all of them,” Maren said. “I don’t think she understands it all perfectly, but she loves the idea of being a part of a cause.”
When Lillian Belmont approached, the conversation turned to golf, and Maren’s attention wandered. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched one of Woody’s young women. Maren had met her when they’d come in. She had some trendy name, like Tammy or Sherri, the kind they never heard on Haven Point, where everyone was named for some ancestor.
The woman stood by the record player, eyes closed, weaving in a sort of semi-dance. If she looked past the stringy hair and unfocused expression, Maren realized she actually resembled Annie, a similarity that added to her uneasy feeling.
Oliver joined them, looked around the room, and smiled.
“Interesting, what Woody’s done with the place,” he said. Woody seemed to have tried for the spare, modern look the Donnellys had affected so well, but the funky lamps and bright orange plastic chairs didn’t work in an old Haven Point beach house with unfinished walls and creaky floorboards.
“Isn’t it awful? Just as long as he doesn’t tear it down, I suppose.” Georgie wrinkled her nose.
“What is it with you and these houses, Georgie?” Maren asked. “I swear, one could be hanging together by embroidery thread, and you’d still think the owner should keep it standing.”
“Well, first, there’s no reason a house should get to that state. Haven Point homes have good bones and can be properly maintained.” Easy for Georgie to say, since Graham men could fix anything. Georgie was forever needling Oliver about how helpless he was with household repairs.
“And second?”
“Second, once a house comes down, we don’t know what will go up in its place,” Georgie replied, unapologetic.
“I think it’s more than that,” Oliver said with a twinkle in his eye. Oliver loved Haven Point, but he had none of Georgie’s sentimentality about the houses.
“Oh, I can’t wait,” Georgie said.
“You see, Maren, to Georgie, Haven Point houses are like churches. So long as they remain standing, they can welcome the prodigals when they finish wandering in the wicked world. If they’re torn down, there is no body for the lost soul to return to.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Georgie replied with a little scowl, elbowing him in the ribs.
“Seriously, though,” Maren said. “Do you all think things are changing on Haven Point? For the worse, I mean?”
“What do you mean, for the worse?” Oliver eyed her curiously. “I assume you’re not talking about houses.”
Maren had surprised herself, blurting this out, though it was something that had been tickling her consciousness for weeks.
“It’s just … I don’t know. All the divorces, the arguments about the war. There’s a degenerative quality to it.”
“Maren, I never thought I’d hear you fret about change on Haven Point,” Oliver teased. “I wouldn’t think you’d care if a band of gypsies set up camp by the yacht club.”
“I am not fretting,” she insisted. “Something just seems different this summer. I see it with Annie and all their friends. And Woody, and all this here.” She looked around the room.
“This is just a thing Woody’s going through because of Sarah,” Georgie said with a dismissive wave at the gaudy furniture. “It’ll pass. These are hard times with this awful war, and the kids behaving so badly. Haven Point will get back to normal. The country will get back to normal.”
“As to Annie and her friends,” Oliver added, “all I see is the Donnelly family having a predictably insidious effect.”
Georgie nodded in agreement.
They had each responded in typical fashion. Oliver and Georgie saw nothing amiss in the fractured families, the disagreements, the misbehaving teenagers. To their thinking, nothing could crack the just and worthy foundation of the enterprise that was Haven Point.
As for Annie’s rebelliousness, the equation was simple: She was off-kilter. She was consorting with a member of the Donnelly family (whom Haven Point had rejected, but who had taken up residence anyway). Ergo, Annie’s behavior was the fault of the Donnelly family.
As the conversation wandered in another direction, Maren turned toward Woody’s girl again. She finally remembered the name. Denise.
When the Beach Boys’s “I Can Hear Music” began emanating thinly from the RCA Swingline record player, Denise lifted the needle and replaced it.
As Maren watched her sway drunkenly to “Black Magic Woman,” another of Annie’s new favorites, she felt certain Georgie and Oliver were wrong. Some larger, unseen force was at play, and it was tearing Annie away.
“Oliver, are you ready to go?” she asked abruptly. She wanted to get out, home to Annie and Charlie.
“Sure.” He looked at her with some concern. He might not know what was on her mind but he could tell something wasn’t right. She wanted to hug him for his willingness to leave on a dime.
“Want to walk up with us?” he asked Georgie.
“No, thanks.” Georgie tilted her head toward the snacks, where Cappy hovered, trying to find something edible. “I think he’s hoping to get a meal out of what’s on that table.”
“I wish him luck,” Oliver said, casting a skeptical glance at the buffet.
As she and Oliver headed toward Haven Point Road, they saw three figures down the lane. Two walked away.
When the third turned in their direction, Maren recognized Harriet’s angular silhouette.
Even if she’d been invited to Woody’s party, Harriet would not have attended. Having claimed her slice of the moral high ground for staying married, however superficially, she disapproved of all divorces, particularly the scandalous one involving these two couples.
“Hi, Oliver,” Harriet said when they reached her. She smiled up at him warmly.
“Hello, Harriet,” Oliver replied. He showed no sign of noticing Maren’s exclusion from the greeting. Oliver remained oblivious to Harriet’s ways, even after all these years, and Maren had never thought it worth enlightening him.
“Can you believe that racket?” Harriet looked at Maren and inclined her head in the direction of the Donnelly property, from which loud music was emanating. It was not band music, which would indicate Finn and Mary Pat were entertaining, but more modern strains.
“Awful,” Oliver agreed.
“It must be hard, knowing Annie is over there, with Patrick and those other kids.” Harriet attempted a look of sympathy, as if she felt for Maren and Oliver’s plight with their wayward child.
“Annie’s at the Donnellys?” Oliver turned to Maren. “She said she was going to Jilly’s.”
“Remember? This came up at the last minute,” Maren said in a soothing tone, surreptitiously pressing her foot into Oliver’s. Oliver got the message for once.
“Oh, of course. That’s right.”
“You know where they are, right? In that outbuilding they call The Stable. A bunch of bedrooms, basically.” Harriet directed her comment to Oliver, whom she evidently felt was the only one who could possibly have any parenting standards. “I heard it’s crowded with kids, beer bottles everywhere. Mary Whalen just told me they have these strange glowing light bulbs.”
“Black lighting, most likely,” Maren said nonchalantly. If Harriet wished to cast her as the atrocious modern parent, she figured she’d play along.
“So how is Polly doing?” Oliver asked, trying for a change in subject.
“She’s fine. All the better for not taking an interest in the Donnellys!”
You mean they haven’t taken an interest in her, Maren thought meanly. Harriet had an adaptable turn of mind when it came to her children. When charming, outgoing Fritz was around more often, Harriet was forever going on about how boring and introverted other children were by comparison. Harriet did an about-face, though, when Fritz staged his gradual escape from his mother, and began to spend more of his summers with his father on Watch Hill in Rhode Island. Polly’s frailty and shyness were now the highest virtues, and livelier kids were out of control. She gossiped relentlessly about Annie.
Eventually, Oliver managed to get Harriet off the subject of the Donnellys and deftly wound down the conversation.
“Maren, what is going on?” Oliver asked as he and Maren walked up the hill. “This Patrick character sounds worse than I thought.”
“I’m not sure.” Maren sighed. “Honestly, I think Annie might be a little out of her depth. But again, Oliver, we really have to be careful. You know when we say up, she says down.”
“I understand,” Oliver said.
Maren was certain he did not.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As they sat in the semi-dark living room, waiting for Annie to get home, Maren felt a surge of the anxiety that had dogged her all these months. She thought it was about Billy, but now she realized it was free-floating, and had found a new place to land.
A half hour later, Annie walked in, shut the door quietly, and began to tiptoe up the stairs.
“Hello, Annie,” Oliver said. “How was Jilly’s?”
Annie spun around.
“Oh, fine,” she said, trying to arrange her face in a casual expression. “I’m tired, though. G’night.”
“Annie, come here.” Annie approached, a little tentatively. Oliver stood.
“You were at Patrick Donnelly’s house tonight. Why didn’t you tell us?”
Maren could practically see Annie’s mind working, trying to settle on a strategy. She evidently concluded the best defense was a good offense.
“Why? Because you’re obviously prejudiced against Patrick!” Her face reddened, and she spoke through clenched teeth.
Another battle anticipated. Another battle relished, Maren thought.
“Do I smell beer on your breath, Annie?” Oliver said, leaning a little closer.
“So what if I had a beer?” Annie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “All the kids drink beer here.”
“I told you I didn’t want you at this boy’s house, Annie, and this is why. Patrick Donnelly should not be giving beer to a girl who’s underage.”
“Patrick didn’t give it to me, Dad. And you don’t know him at all. Patrick is serious and committed. He’s become really important in the college antiwar movement!”
Oliver paused, a dangerous beat. Maren felt a stab of regret that she’d not gotten ahead of Annie in letting Oliver know about Patrick’s politics. She could not imagine a worse manner for the subject to come up.
“Oh, really? He’s an antiwar activist?” Oliver spoke slowly, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Such a lovely lot! These are the people who object, for example, to your own brother.”
“He’s finally opening some people’s eyes around here! You know what your problem is? You and Mom aren’t angry enough!” She leaned in toward Oliver, body strained. “And you’re right. He would say Billy shouldn’t have gone into the navy. It encourages Nixon when boys like Billy sign up.”
“How edifying, Annie. Our family is now to take instruction from the son of Finn Donnelly?”
A look of gratification spread across Annie’s face. “Of course, that’s what it’s all about. He’s a Donnelly, not from a Haven Point family. You don’t know him, Dad. Not one bit.”
“I don’t? Why don’t you educate me, then?” Oliver’s jaw tightened. He was barely containing his temper.
“Patrick is smart. He has written a manifesto!” She crossed her hands over her chest as if this was the crowning glory of her argument.
“Oh, a manifesto!” Oliver said. Maren wouldn’t have thought it possible to pack more contempt into his tone, but he managed. “Good God, Annie, who hasn’t written a manifesto these days? They’re as common as pig tracks.”
“Oliver,” Maren said, in a low, warning voice.
“You’re wrong. Patrick is a real leader. He’s even speaking at a meeting in Bath tomorrow!”
To Maren’s surprise, Oliver’s face relaxed.
“A meeting in Bath, you say? Tomorrow?” He turned to Maren. “You don’t have any special plans for me tomorrow, do you?”
Maren shook her head slowly.
“I’ll go to that meeting, then.” As Oliver resumed his seat, Annie’s mouth dropped open. She seemed to be grasping for the words to articulate why this was unfair.
“You are just going to make fun of him,” she finally sputtered.
“I won’t say a word, Annie. I’ll just go and listen,” Oliver said, the picture of complacence. Annie seemed to realize she’d fallen into a trap. Having implied they didn’t know Patrick, what could she say to her father trying to do just that?
“Mom.” Annie turned to Maren, eyes pleading.
“Annie, you said you wanted us to respect Patrick’s activism. Your father said he would go and listen. We can take his word as a gentleman that he will say nothing during the meeting.”
“But…” She looked from one parent to the other, her eyes wild, then turned and ran up the stairs.
“What do you hope to achieve by going to the meeting?” Maren asked Oliver, as they climbed into bed.
“I don’t know, Maren,” he replied. “Everywhere I go, people are warning me about this character. I just need to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
Until now, Maren had sensed Oliver was clinging to what little authority he still had over Annie, but he no longer looked obstinate. Now
in his eyes she saw vulnerability and helplessness.
Unfortunately, she’d seen the same in Annie’s.
* * *
In the end, the meeting was anticlimactic. When Oliver returned from Bath and described what had transpired, Maren could not tell if he was relieved or disappointed.
Patrick and a local peace activist, a woman in her seventies, had delivered a presentation about the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which called for a total American troop withdrawal from South Vietnam by the end of the following year. A controversial measure, but tame by student radical standards, certainly on the less objectionable end of the activism spectrum.
“He was as pompous as they come,” Oliver said. “But it was all rather bland. He yammered on about the amendment, which hasn’t a prayer of passing Congress, and that was it.”
“That’s a relief,” Maren said.
“I still don’t like him.”
“I don’t either. But, again, we’re in danger of making him more enticing.”
“I suppose,” Oliver said with a sigh. “I just can’t shake the feeling that we are feeding Annie to the lions.”
“We only have a few more weeks here, and then I think it’ll be behind us. It’s not practical for her to see him after that,” Maren said. Oliver reluctantly agreed.
Annie had been grounded for lying, but a few days later she was emancipated. She worked in the morning, came home for lunch, then threw some things in a canvas bag and was off again.
It was a brilliant afternoon, so Oliver and Maren headed to the golf course. As they approached the pro shop, they saw Fritz Barrows by the door, pulling a golf glove from the side pocket of his bag. Fritz’s visits to Haven Point were brief and rare these days, with most of his time spent on the golf course or a sailboat.
“Hi, Dr. Demarest, Mrs. Demarest.”
“Hi, Fritz. Are you about to go out?” Oliver asked.
“Yes, I was going to play the front nine.”
“We are, too. Why don’t you join us?” Oliver asked. “We’ll just call for our bags.”
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