A Hundred Summers

by Beatriz Williams

  “I’m not. I . . .” I left my words to teeter and balance on the salt wind, until I could hear them from an objective distance and realized how frantic they sounded, and how false. I was still shaken from Kiki’s disappearance, still unsteady from the gin. “Well, all right. Thank you. It’s very kind.”

  “It’s not kind,” he muttered, striking forward toward the clubhouse.

  I had forgotten what it was like to walk next to Nick, with his height and breadth looming by my side, and his long strides propelling us along. My heart was still thumping, my breath was still shallow. Kiki clutched my hand, skipping along by my other side, oblivious to the viscous currents swimming around the grown-ups as we walked through the sand.

  “We should talk,” said Nick, out of the blue.

  “What?”

  “We need to talk. It’s why I came here, to talk to you.”

  We reached the steps, and he stopped and turned to me. The railing shadowed his face in a long dark stripe.

  “What do you mean?” I whispered.

  “You know what I mean.”

  My heart was pounding so hard against my ribs, I thought the force of it might knock me down. “I don’t see that we have anything to talk about, after all this time.”

  “We have everything to talk about.” He lifted his hand, as if to close it around my arm, and then dropped it to his side.

  “No, we don’t, Nick. Not a single thing.”

  “Lily . . .”

  I turned and climbed the steps, dragging Kiki along with me. My hair brushed against my damp cheeks; my dress stuck to my back from all the exertion, all the anxiety. I picked up my shoes at the top and struggled into them, teetering, ignoring Nick’s outstretched hand.

  I had no pocketbook with me. I marched through the lounge, through the foyer, out the door. Budgie was waiting in their car, right outside the door, reclining elegantly in the passenger seat as the motor ran and ran. A lithe car, some dashing make, like the Packard Speedster Nick used to drive, too sporty for a rear seat.

  “What’s this?” Budgie lifted her dark head from the back of the seat and watched us approach. Her lips were almost black in the darkness. She must have reapplied her lipstick, or else not touched her dinner.

  “We’re giving Lily and her sister a lift back,” said Nick, opening the door. “Can you make room?”

  Budgie smiled in welcome and slid over. “Of course! Plenty of room, if I spoon up to my husband. I see you found your adorable little sister. Koko, is it?”

  “Kiki,” said Kiki.

  I settled in and put Kiki on my lap. “Yes. Nick was good enough to go after her.”

  Nick shut the door without comment and went around to the driver’s side.

  “He was off like a shot, when she went by. It was very sweet.” Budgie leaned her head against Nick’s shoulder as the car thrust forward into the evening. “You’ll be a good father one day, won’t you, darling?”

  “I hope so,” said Nick.

  We would have driven back in silence, except for Kiki’s chatter. She asked Nick about the car, about its engine and its capabilities, and he answered in patient detail, giving her his full attention.

  My family’s place sat near the end of Seaview Neck, past all the others. Nick drove his flash roadster with excruciating slowness over the pitted gravel of Neck Lane, as if afraid to disturb the neighbors or the car’s delicate suspension. Budgie’s long leg pressed against mine, moving in tandem with me at every jolt in the road. In ages, in no time, we were pulling up to the familiar old cottage, shingled in graying cedar just like the club, with a single light glowing at the entrance. “This is it?” asked Nick, looking across our bodies to the front door, freshly painted two days ago in gleaming white to withstand the ocean weather for another season.

  “Yes. Thank you.” I reached for the door handle, but by the time I had fumbled around Kiki’s body to work it properly, Nick was out of the car and opening the door for us.

  “Thanks again.” I let Kiki slide to the ground. “Say thank you to the Greenwalds, Kiki.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Greenwald. Thank you, Mrs. Greenwald.” She sounded unnaturally docile.

  “You’re welcome, darling,” said Budgie, over the car door.

  Nick crouched on the gravel and held out his big hand. “You’re welcome, Miss Dane. It was a very great pleasure to meet you at last.”

  “It’s Kiki.” She shook his hand gravely and looked up at me. “He can call me Kiki, can’t he, Lily?”

  “I suppose so, if he likes.”

  Nick straightened. “Good night, Lily.”

  I turned before he could fix me with his eyes.

  “Good night,” I said, over my shoulder so I didn’t have to watch him climb back into the car next to Budgie. Watch him drive away together with Budgie, back to the house he shared with Budgie, to the bed he shared with Budgie.

  I took Kiki’s hand and passed under the climbing wisteria, into the darkened cottage my great-grandparents had rebuilt from rubble after the great hundred-year storm of 1869.

  5.

  SMITH COLLEGE, MASSACHUSETTS

  October 1931

  You think I’m crazy,” says Nick Greenwald. “Admit it.”

  “Of course I don’t. It’s an awfully nice jacket. Here we are.”

  He looks up at the neon-pink coffee cup blinking above our heads. Before I can intercept him, he makes an expert adjustment of his crutches and opens the door for me. “Nice place,” he says.

  “Best pancakes around. Also, it’s open early on Sunday morning.”

  I’m handling this like a cool cat, like a woman of the world, as if I accept seven a.m. dates to Sunday breakfast every weekend of my life. My body swings past his, into the welcome coffee-scented warmth of the vestibule. At least my familiarity with the diner is unfeigned. I nod at the waitress. “Hello, Dorothy.”

  “Oh, hiya, Lily. What can I . . .” Dorothy’s words slow and fade. Her frizzing head cants back, traveling up Nick’s long length to land at his face. I can almost hear the pop of her eyes from her head.

  Nick smiles down at her. “Breakfast for two, please, Dorothy. A quiet corner, if you’ve got one.”

  Her throat works. “Booth all right for you?”

  “Of course.”

  In a daze, she takes two menus from the counter and leads us to a booth in the corner. The restaurant is nearly empty. One older couple, dressed for church, eats furtively near the door, and a policeman sits at the counter with toast and coffee. The air feels overwarm, overbright, after the foggy dankness of the outdoors. Behind me, Nick’s crutches make rhythmic clicks and thumps against the linoleum.

  I slide into one side of the booth. Nick slides into the other and props the crutches next to him. Dorothy hands us our menus. “Can I get you some coffee?” she asks, scratchily.

  “Yes, please,” I say.

  “As much as you’ve got,” adds Nick.

  Dorothy sticks her pencil behind her ear. “Right away,” she says, and turns back down the aisle, casting me a wide-eyed look.

  Nick doesn’t notice. He’s gazing at me, smiling. His face is drawn and pale and softer than I remember. He sets down his menu. “I gave myself fifty-fifty odds you’d come downstairs.”

  “Then why did you drive down here at all?”

  “Well, for one thing, I left a hundred-dollar bill in the left pocket by mistake.” My eyes widen, and he laughs. “Not really. The thing is, I went right to sleep last night, I was bone-tired from the game and everything, but I only slept for two hours. I woke up around midnight and couldn’t go back. I kept thinking about dinner, thinking about you. At two o’clock I jumped in the car and started driving. I figured I wasn’t going to get any more sleep anyway.”

  “But it’s only a three-hour drive.” My mouth is dry, my ears are ringing. I dig my fingers into the menu to keep them from shaking.

  He shrugs. “I lay down on the seat for a bit when I got here.”

  I picture him fol
ded in his late-model Packard Speedster, huddled under his overcoat, trying to find a comfortable spot for his cast. “How did you know which dormitory was mine?” I ask.

  “Woke up Pendleton and asked him before I came. I took a chance you were in the same house as Budgie.” He knits his hands together above the menu and leans forward. His eyes turn earnest. “Do you mind, Lily?”

  Dorothy comes and pours our coffee. I wait until she moves away, and say: “I don’t mind, Nick. I’m glad you came.”

  He blinks and looks down at the menu, and then he reaches forward and takes my hand, very gently. His thumb, broad and enormous, brushes against the base of mine. “Good, then.”

  I glance down at my hand, which looks tiny inside his. “I didn’t sleep much, either,” I say, almost a whisper.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.”

  I look back up. “But why?”

  Dorothy returns with her pad of paper and her composure. “Decided yet?” she asks, as friendly and careless as she’s ever been, except her face is a little flushed.

  “Two eggs, scrambled,” I say, “and lots of toast.”

  “Well, now.” Nick turns to her, keeping my hand firmly in his. “I’m hungry this morning. Four eggs, bacon, toast. How are your pancakes?”

  “Best pancakes in the Berkshires,” she says. “Ask anyone.”

  “I’ll have a tall stack, with butter and syrup.” He hands her the menu. “Thanks, Dorothy.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She takes his menu and mine, and mouths something at me as she goes, something emphatic.

  “Do you have that effect on all the girls?” I ask dryly.

  “What effect?”

  “I mean Dorothy would gladly change places with me right now.”

  “I’m not a flirt, if that’s what you mean.”

  I shrug my shoulder in the direction of Dorothy’s disappearance. “But you like to charm people.”

  He laughs. “If only Pendleton could hear you now. He’s always telling me to be nicer, to come out of my corner and talk a little.”

  “Then what was that all about?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just happy.”

  My hand still sits in his. He gives it a little squeeze, and I feel a smile stretch across my face, because I am happy, too. “You haven’t answered my question,” I say.

  “I haven’t, have I? All right, Lily. Miss Lily Dane of Smith College, Massachusetts, and . . . and where else?”

  “New York.”

  “Of Massachusetts and New York. The Upper East Side, I’m reckoning.”

  “And Seaview, Rhode Island,” I add, smiling.

  He rolls his eyes. “And Rhode lousy Island, where your family has probably summered for generations, hasn’t it? Turn your head. No, the other way. Out the window.”

  I turn to the steamed-over plate glass, the shadowed buildings across the street. “What, like this?”

  “Now move your eyes and look at me. Just your eyes. Tilting up a bit. Yes.” He breathes out. “Just like that. That, Miss Lily Dane, of only the best sorts of places, that is why I couldn’t go back to sleep last night.”

  I turn to face him, laughing. He’s leaning against the back of the booth, smiling, watching me benevolently. “That?” I ask.

  “You flashed that look at me about halfway through dinner. I was talking about, oh, what was it? The hospital, I guess. And you looked at me sideways, with those funny dark blue eyes of yours, and I couldn’t remember my own name. I stopped short. You must have noticed.”

  “I think so.” In fact, I remember perfectly. He’d been talking about the brand-new X-ray machine, and about radiation exposure. I’d thought, at the time, he’d stopped only because he was afraid the subject was too technical for ladies. I had sat there in my elegant chair at the Hanover Inn, overflowing with frustration and longing to tell him that I did care, that I wanted to hear everything he had to say.

  I reach for my coffee cup. The heat curls around my nose and mouth, while the white ceramic bowl covers—I hope—my flushed cheeks.

  He stretches out his arm for his own cup and lifts it, left-handed, because his right hand still holds mine. He drinks deeply and sets it down in the saucer without even looking. “So there I sat, like a complete idiot, my train of thought snapped in half. I said to myself, Greenwald, this girl leaves in an hour. You had better figure out how you’re going to find her again. Why are you shaking your head?”

  “I don’t know. Because you’re like a scene from the movies. My love affairs are usually so unsuccessful.”

  “Usually?” He lifts his eyebrows. They are strong eyebrows, like the rest of him: straight and dark, thick without bushiness. “And which ones weren’t?”

  “Well, there was Jimmy, the son of one of the fishing boat captains in Seaview Harbor. But he was ten that summer, and I was only eight.”

  “Older man, eh? And since then?”

  Nothing. Some dates, some holiday flirtations, petering off into indifference. No boys to meet at Miss Porter’s School, no boys here at Smith. During summers at Seaview, only a few, too familiar and too conventional to be interesting. “Oh, I don’t know,” I say, drinking my coffee. “The usual.”

  The food arrives on piping-hot plates. Dorothy arranges it all in lightning strokes of her arms, toast plates and butter, a pot of strawberry jam. She refills our coffee. The syrup rolls down the sides of Nick’s pancake stack in lazy threads. He lets go of my hand at last and closes his fingers around his knife and fork.

  “Everything all right?” asks Dorothy.

  “Perfect. Thank you.”

  Nick’s eyes have left me faithlessly, to fix in all-consuming hunger on the breakfast before him. “Thanks,” he says to Dorothy, and hesitates, politely, with a glance back at me.

  “Eat!” I tell him.

  For a moment or two, we are silent, devouring breakfast. I would say Nick shovels the food in his mouth, but he’s a little more elegant than that—not much, but then he must be famished. Efficient, perhaps, is a better word. The pancakes disappear in seconds; the eggs are obliterated. I watch him in astonished awe, hardly noticing the taste of my own food.

  “I beg your pardon,” he says, wiping his mouth. “That wasn’t very civilized, was it?”

  “I was about to charge admission.”

  He laughs. I like his laugh, easy and quiet. “Sorry. I was just about gone with hunger, with all that business yesterday and then being up most of the night.”

  I look at his broad shoulders, his solid torso, his rangy body disappearing under the table. He’s like an engine, idling in neutral, consuming vast amounts of energy even at rest. “Don’t apologize.”

  “The food’s good, too,” he says. “You come here often, I take it?”

  “I like to study here. They don’t mind if I stay for hours and spread out all my papers. Dorothy refills my coffee, brings me pie. You should try the pie.”

  “I’d like to, sometime.” He reaches for his coffee cup. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “Tell me why you’re here. Why you came downstairs, instead of having me kicked out by the housemother.” His eyes are bright and well fed. I love their color, all warm and caramelized, almost molten, hints of green streaking around the brown. I’m just happy, he said earlier, and he looks it.

  Should I tell him the truth?

  Budgie would say no. Budgie would tell me to hold my cards close to my chest, to make him work for it. I should be cagey, mercurial. I should leave him in doubt of himself.

  “It was just before you broke your leg,” I say. “You were standing there with Graham, staring into the crowd. You looked like . . . I don’t know . . . fierce and piratical. Different from everyone else, filled with fire. You leaped out at me.”

  He is pleased. His smile grows across his face, and I think again how it softens the rather blunt arrangement of his bones, the uncompromising set of his jaw and chin and cheekbones. A few curls dip swe
etly into his forehead, and I want to twirl them in my fingers. “Piratical, eh?” he says. “Is that what the girls like these days? Pirates?”

  “That was the wrong word. Intent, I should say.”

  “You said piratical. That was your first word, the honest one.” He is twinkling at me, not fiery or piratical at all.

  I shift direction. “What were you thinking about, looking up like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The next play, probably. You get in a fog during a game. The fog of battle, the joy of it. The rest of the world sort of fades into the mist.” He shrugs dismissively.

  “But you’re so good at it.”

  He shrugs again. “Practice.”

  “That forward pass, the touchdown, right before you were hurt. I don’t know a thing about football, but . . .”

  “A lucky toss. The receiver did all the work.” He looks down at his plate and swipes up a trace of yolk with his toast.

  “Are you upset about your leg?” I ask, softly.

  “Well, yes. My last season. Stupid luck. Or rather stupidity, because I should have known . . . But that’s the game, you know.” He looks up. “Touchdown one moment, almost crippled the next. Anyway, I mind a lot less right now than I did yesterday.”

  We finish our breakfast. Nick insists on paying the check. He leaves, I notice, a large tip for Dorothy. We walk back out into the chill damp air, and I pull my collar tight against my neck. The street is busier now, filling with Sunday traffic. I look up at Nick, tall and impervious in a dark wool overcoat. He turns to me, and his face is serious again, almost hesitant. “What now?” he asks.

  “When do you have to be back?”

  He looks at his watch. “Half an hour ago. Team meeting. But I don’t think they were expecting me. Anyway, Pendleton will cover for me. Say I was too doped-up or something.” He taps the tip of his crutch against his cast.

  “Still, you should get back. You must be exhausted.”

  “Do you want me to go back?” His breath hangs in the cold air.

  “No. But you should, all the same.”

  He holds out his arm for me, remembers his crutches, tucks them ruefully under his shoulders. “Then I’ll drive you back to your dormitory.”