“Let’s not, Albert, not yet. I’ve decided I want to go to St. Petersburg while the Yankees are still at spring training. Now that I’m an owner of the team, I think Jake would have wanted me to at least see them play.”
“But they’ll be leaving soon to start barnstorming up the coast. Why not wait and see them in the Bronx?”
“I’ll be hounded by reporters if I show my face at Yankee Stadium, you know that.” She put a gnawed bone on her plate. “I went ahead and booked us a sleeping compartment on the Silver Meteor tomorrow. We’ll have to get up early. It leaves from Pennsylvania Station at ten thirty in the morning, but that’ll get us to St. Petersburg by the following afternoon.”
I bit into a piece of gristle. Between our two inheritances, we could travel anywhere in the world—Casablanca, Alexandria, Constantinople. “Wouldn’t you rather take a honeymoon after the wedding?”
She got up to clear the table. “No, Albert, I’ve given this a lot of thought. We have to go to Florida before we get married.”
• • •
Up in New York it was barely spring; in St. Petersburg, palm trees swayed in the breeze against a fiercely blue sky. The sun was so bright Helen had to squint to see the road. We’d hired a car and were driving to the Don CeSar, an elaborate castle of a hotel where the Yankees used to have a contract. Helen hadn’t made a reservation, but this deep into the Depression most of their rooms were empty. Perhaps that’s why the hotel clerk, when we admitted to not being married, insisted we take separate suites. It didn’t really matter. Helen was just next door, and anyway, ever since the idea of marriage had been introduced she’d gotten superstitious about sleeping in my bed. Once we were husband and wife, I supposed we’d keep each other warm every night for the rest of our lives. But we hadn’t set a date yet, and my grandmother’s ring remained at the ready in my pocket.
The Yankees were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers the next afternoon. Helen wore a white cotton dress, I was in a linen suit, and we’d both purchased sunglasses and straw hats. The humid air teased Helen’s hair into unruly curls, but I told her she looked lovely and it was true. I liked being at a ballpark again, the thwack of ball meeting bat, the soft pop of a catcher’s mitt. Unlike the New York fans, the crowd here was relaxed, cheering and groaning in lighthearted unison. The Yanks lost, Gehrig’s hit the only highlight of a lackluster game. Afterward, as he lingered on the field to sign autographs, he looked up and recognized us in the stands. He jogged over, a little slower than he once was, the hair at his temples showing some gray in the unforgiving Florida sun. We talked for a while, the three of us. Gehrig said he wouldn’t have held out so long last year if he’d realized it would be the Colonel’s last.
“You men don’t mind playing for a woman, do you?” Helen asked.
“It’s our pleasure to play for you, Miss Winthrope, you and the Colonel’s nieces. He did you a great honor, leaving you the team and all.”
“Poor Lou, he looks terrible, don’t you think?” Helen said on our way back to the car.
“I guess the old Iron Horse isn’t as young as he used to be.”
We turned the trip into a vacation, relaxing on lounge chairs and swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, the salt water delicious on our sun-starved limbs. On the beach, we listened to the waves and rubbed suntan oil on each other’s skin. I read poetry in German while she paged through magazines, a waiter from the hotel appearing with a fresh mai tai as soon as the ice in our glasses began to melt.
The visit to Florida was slated to last a week. The afternoon of our last day, Helen said she wanted to take the ferry across Tampa Bay and explore Longboat Key, so we drove the hired car onto the Bee Line. For the next hour, we walked the deck under a hot sun, the spray cooling our faces as we searched the water for manatees. When she took the wheel and eased the car off the ferry, I didn’t think she had any particular destination in mind. I was surprised when we ended up at McKechnie Field for an exhibition game between the local Grapefruit League team and the Tigers. “You didn’t get enough baseball from the Yankees?” I asked.
“You don’t mind, do you, Albert? Being at the ballpark helps me think about Jake. We’ll have dinner at the oyster bar out on Anna Maria Pier after the game, okay?”
I agreed, thinking that would be a perfect moment to present her with the ring. I imagined asking a waiter to hide it in an oyster, pictured her surprise at finding the gold band in the shell. Her eyes would fill with tears as I dropped to my knee and asked for her hand. Because why shouldn’t I do it up right? I knew how much she’d be sacrificing, marrying me. She deserved whatever I could give her.
We found seats in the stands. Helen fanned her flushed face with the programs. I asked if she wanted me to get her a lemonade.
“No, I’m fine, Albert. Look, here come the players.”
They jogged out onto the field, their names blaring through a loudspeaker. I paid no attention until the coaches were announced. I must have heard wrong, though. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be true. I squinted but couldn’t see him. I dragged my gaze away from the field and settled it on Helen. “The announcer didn’t say King Arthur, did he?”
“I think so,” she said, her expression inscrutable behind those sunglasses.
“But that can’t be. He was out in California last I heard.” I craned my neck, but I was unable to see into the shaded dugout.
“I don’t remember you mentioning him in all these years.”
“We used to keep in touch, when he first went out to California, but he’s a terrible correspondent. You remember how he was during the war, don’t you? Neither one of us got so much as a postcard.”
Helen adjusted the brim of her hat to keep the sun off her face. “Not a man of letters, you might say.”
What a peculiar turn of phrase. It reminded me of something King once said. What if it really was him? My pulse began to race until I reminded myself that in a few days I’d be a married man.
Marriage. The institution suddenly seemed as flimsy a fantasy as a Hollywood set. What had I been thinking, to propose to Helen like that? Of course she’d expect more from me than I was able to give. Never mind about the sex. There was a corner of my heart—I felt it stirring at the mere notion that King and I were in the same ballpark—that would never let her in. She said it was enough for her, what I was able to give. But it shouldn’t be enough, not for either of us.
There was a dispute on the mound after an inside pitch grazed the batter. The Bradenton coach emerged from the dugout to argue with the umpire. He threw his cap dramatically to the dirt and there he was, King Arthur, his hair just as blond, his eyes—we were sitting right behind first base—just as blue as I remembered them.
Helen stood up suddenly. Her white dress must have caught King’s attention because he looked in our direction. He saw me and smiled, unsurprised, as if he’d been expecting me to turn up. King pointed at me, a fleeting gesture, but I could read his message as clear as if it were posted to the scoreboard. Stay there. I’ll find you.
My heart stopped and started up again. It was twenty years ago and we were back at the Polo Grounds. I was writing down my address on the back of the Colonel’s business card. If I’d known King would be waiting on my stoop, I’d have skipped dinner for the extra hour it would have given us together.
Helen’s hand touched my shoulder. Looking up, I hardly recognized the happy face I saw reflected in her glasses.
Chapter 45
There it was, the look in Albert’s eyes I’d waited all these years to see, and it wasn’t for me. How stupid I was to have brought him here. I’d wanted to see for myself he was over his infatuation with King before I let him marry me. Now I wished we’d never come. I locked myself in a smelly stall in the ladies’ room and covered my face with a handkerchief. We could have been happy, Albert and I. We had everything we could ever want: money, the estate, each other. Except I never really had him. I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter to me, what we couldn’t share. W
hat I hadn’t credited was how much it might matter to him.
King came over to us during the seventh inning stretch, shook my hand before taking Albert’s. He said how glad he was to see us both, asked if we’d wait for him after the game. Those last two innings were the longest of my life. Albert couldn’t stop talking about what a coincidence it was, us running into King here, in Florida, when he thought he’d been in California this whole time. Finally, he calculated the impossible odds of it all. “This wasn’t an accident, was it, Helen?”
I figured he’d hate me, but I was fed up with falsehoods. “There was a letter. Mr. Nakamura delivered it to me by accident. I should have given it to you. I’m sorry, Albert.”
“No, don’t be sorry, Helen.” He held my hand as he looked out over the green field. “I’m grateful. I might not have had the courage to come, if you’d left it up to me.”
Would the universe never get tired of playing tricks on me? I wished I could go back in time and tell Mr. Nakamura to get that letter where it was meant to go. Albert might never have mentioned it. We’d be married by now, at home at Eagle’s Rest, sitting down to a supper my mother had cooked. But if I started down that road, where would it end? Would I go back to the day I saw them together on the lawn, when I asked Jake to trade King away? Or to the time I warned Jake against signing King to the Yankees? Or to that afternoon at the Polo Grounds, when King asked for Albert’s address? But if I did have the power to spin the world backward on its axis, wouldn’t I use it to go back to the moment when Colonel Jacob Ruppert spotted that motorcycle in Daddy’s garage?
There’d be no end to my regrets if all my thoughts were of the past. The only moments in my life over which I had any control were the ones in front of me now, today.
King rejoined us, face washed and hair combed, wearing khaki pants and a polo shirt open at the neck. We small-talked awkwardly until I swallowed hard and invited him to join us for dinner. I handed King the car keys, saying the sun had gotten to my head and would he drive, he must know the way better than I did? From the back I watched as he stretched his arm across the seat, his fingertips brushing Albert’s shoulder.
We crossed the Cortez Bridge and went up Gulf Drive, passing a line of little resort hotels along the beach. Half of them were out of business, pathetic FOR SALE signs tacked to their boarded-up doors. Albert turned around to talk to me. “I bet those places are going for a song. What do you think, Helen, of investing in Florida real estate?”
“You can’t be serious.” Jake had lost thousands when the Florida land boom went bust. But Albert had his own money, and the Depression couldn’t last forever. I imagined tourists would flock back to the Gulf Coast one of these days. Albert asked to pull over so he could jot down some information. We’d only traveled a few miles with King in the car and already our visions of the future had diverged.
We parked on Bay Boulevard and walked out onto the pier, pelicans perched on every piling. I was in a daze all through that dinner of shucked oysters and cold beer, the three of us huddled around a table overlooking the water. Albert made a point of including me in the conversation. Occasionally he placed a hand on my knee below the table. But these were conscious gestures. Between the two men was an unforced flow of words.
“Here, try it with hot sauce.” King shook a red dash from a tiny bottle onto an oyster and brought the shell to Albert’s lips. Albert stretched out his neck as King tipped the slippery meat into his mouth. A line of seawater ran down Albert’s chin. King dragged his fingers across Albert’s face to wipe it away.
It was like losing my father all over again, how alone I felt. I excused myself and went out to watch the sunset. There was a commotion happening on the pier. A fisherman had hooked something special. A hammerhead shark, about a yard long, thrashed its prehistoric head, the fisherman’s hook piercing its lower lip. I watched it swim in circles around one of the pilings, tangling the line and frustrating the fisherman. It turned on its side and its strange eye stared up at me. All it wanted was to be free. If I’d had a knife, I would have gotten on my belly and reached over the side of the pier to cut that string, but the shark didn’t need my interference. With a brave jerk of its head it tore out the hook and swam away. I knelt on the wood planks to catch my breath.
“There you are, Helen.” Dinner over, they’d come to find me. King drove us to the ferry landing and handed me the keys, asked when we were heading back to New York. Albert looked at me. “Not for a few more days yet, isn’t that right, Helen?” He knew very well we had tickets for tomorrow afternoon.
The ferry arrived. Cars were starting their engines. “Listen, Albert, why don’t you stay? It’s early yet. Keep the car. I’m exhausted, all I want to do is crawl into bed. I’ll get a taxi when we dock and go back to the hotel.” The car behind us in line honked. I waved them around, gave Albert the keys. “You better move the car.”
“Go ahead, Albert,” King said. “I’ll see her on board.”
King brought me to the gangplank then pulled me close. “Albert told me you did this.” I felt faint as I readied myself for his accusations: how I’d sent him away, sabotaged his career, denied them their chance. “You read my letter and brought him to me, even though you knew this might happen.” King hugged me then, that broad chest of his pressed against my breasts. “You must love him more than I imagined, to give him up like this.”
Had I given him up? Was it all decided? It was ridiculous of me to be surprised. I’d seen them kiss all those years ago. I knew what there was between them. Whether it would make them happy I had no idea. Dr. Havelock Ellis painted a bleak picture of life for men like Albert and King, but what the hell did he know? I’d seen the look in Albert’s eyes when he spotted King on that ballfield. It wasn’t perverse, or indecent, or abnormal. The only word for it was love.
The cars had all been loaded. The ferry blew its whistle. I stepped back and stumbled. King grabbed my arm, saving me from falling in the water. Over his shoulder I saw Albert. He’d parked the car down the road and was walking back. They stood there together in the circle of light at the end of the dock as the ferry pulled me back across the bay.
• • •
I wasn’t sure I’d ever see him again, but Albert returned to the Don CeSar the next afternoon in time to drive me to the train station in Sarasota. I’d spent a sleepless night thinking of all the things I wanted to say, but sitting beside him in the car none of the words seemed to matter anymore. He offered to wait with me on the platform but I didn’t think I could stand it. I told him to go ahead, resenting how easily he agreed. I made him promise to write and to call and to visit. He made me promise the same. “You’ll be our first guest when we open our hotel, Helen.”
When had it become “our” hotel, I wondered. I didn’t know if King planned to give up baseball to become a hotelier, or if it was simply that everything was already “we” with them.
We kissed good-bye, his closed lips pressed briefly to mine. “Here, Helen, I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a gold band set with diamonds and rubies. “It was my grandmother’s,” he said, sliding it onto my finger. “There’s no one else it could ever belong to, I hope you know that, darling.” He meant to be kind, but the ring was a tragic reminder of all I’d never have. I watched him drive away, the rooms in my heart that had been furnished for him empty and forlorn.
I was temporarily blinded under the arched portico as I moved from full sun to deep shade. I was waiting for my eyes to adjust when a small figure ran toward me from out of the gloom, a little boy whose mother had just noticed he was no longer at her side. Afraid he’d dash out into the street, I grabbed him and lifted him off the ground, his feet churning in the air. His laughing face came into focus. It was astounding, how much he looked like James: same softly curled hair, same golden skin, same green eyes.
“Thank you so much, ma’am. I told you to stay right by me, Horace.” His mother was neatly dressed in a linen suit, her flat-brimmed ha
t trimmed in blue ribbon to match her blue handbag. Her complexion was more richly brown than her son’s, but up close the resemblance was unmistakable. She seemed eager to get back to her suitcase and basket, abandoned some yards back under the portico.
The boy was heavy in my arms but he had calmed down, distracted by the dragonfly brooch I always wore. He tried to pluck it from my lapel and his mother swatted his little hand. “Oh, he’s all right,” I said. “He reminds me of—” What word could I use to convey to this woman the place Jimmy held in my heart? To say he reminded me of my custodian’s child wouldn’t come close to the truth. I thought of what Clarence had said, that I couldn’t have loved him more if he were my own. “He reminds me of my son, when he was this age.”
“Your son, ma’am?” Her eyebrows pulled together as she looked me up and down. My tanned skin was nearly as dark as Bernice’s had been. I wondered if this woman would make the assumption that I belonged on her side of the color line? She flashed me a quick smile as her eyebrows settled back into their natural shape. “I’m Mrs. Glenn,” she said, holding out her hand.
Shifting Horace’s weight to my hip, I managed to extend my left arm, the gold ring a surprise on my hand. I’d have to introduce myself as Mrs., but I hesitated to use my own name, fearing she may have read about me in the papers. Glancing down at the monogram on my suitcase I blurted out the first name that matched. “I’m Mrs. Weldon. Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Glenn. But you, Horace”—I tickled him and made him laugh—“you call me Aunt Helen, you hear?”
He suddenly became shy. “Yes, Aunt Helen.”
I set Horace on his feet as we crossed the portico. Mrs. Glenn picked up her case in one hand and her basket in the other. I kept hold of Horace’s hand as we moved into the station. They were going to Maryland, Mrs. Glenn told me. “How far are you traveling, Mrs. Weldon?”
I’d been dreading the isolation of my empty compartment, the ordeal of being seated alone in the dining car. They wouldn’t be good for me, those solitary hours. “To New York, but perhaps we can travel together as far as Washington?”
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