Mumma had to work hard for the few moments of pleasure she got from this party of Grandmother’s, where nobody wanted to know her. The sisters of the groom, deprived of the opportunity to be bridesmaids on display—and in one case bridesmatron as well as the envied mother of the flower girl—gathered Spencer’s bride under their collective wing. They wouldn’t leave her alone. They took charge of her in shifts, escorting her from group to group. “This is Mrs. Gillespie, she went to school with Mother,” “You haven’t had a chance to talk to Cousin John Spencer, Father’s brother’s second wife’s daughter’s husband,” and “Oh, and here’s Jonquil. Jonquil Cartenbury, Rida. Jonquil, this is Rida, Spencer’s bride from California. You two will have a lot in common, Rida, Jonquil’s from the South—Georgia, isn’t it?”
“Virginia,” a pretty young blonde woman of about Mumma’s age answered with a sweetly indulgent smile for Phyllis’s geographic limitations. She turned her smiling face to Mumma to add, “Charlottesville. That’s in the foothills of the mountains, but I’m not a mountain girl, oh my no. My daddy’s family removed there during the war. For safety.”
“From Nazi attack?” Mumma wondered.
“I mean the War of Northern Aggression.”
“What war of northern aggression?” Mumma demanded.
Jonquil looked sympathetically at Pops, then lowered her eyes to her own clasped hands to murmur delicately, “Sherman.”
“Sherman who?” asked Mumma. (“I could see what she was up to, but life is too short to fly off the handle at every little thing and I already had your grandmother to take care of.”)
“The Civil War, Rida dear,” said Phyllis.
Mumma glared at both of them. “The names wars get…sometimes…It wasn’t very civil, that war, from what I’ve read.”
“Did you enjoy Gone with the Wind?” asked Jonquil, all wide blue eyes.
“Of course, the book and the movie. And how did you like Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln?” Mumma shot back before concluding her point. “Like calling that other one the War to End All Wars. You’d think people would learn.”
Jonquil Cartenbury nodded, smiling, waiting, but Mumma was finished. Finally, Phyllis said, “You two will have to get to know each other.” Jonquil Cartenbury fingered her pearls, then tucked her blonde pageboy behind a delicate ear to display the pearl earrings, leaving it to Mumma to disagree grimly, “No, we don’t.”
It became clear to Mumma that Pops’ sisters were among the enemy. Juliet, who had at last figured out that her favorite brother was no longer going to stand at the edges of a party joking with her the way he used to, blamed Mumma for her loss and glared from a distance, or glared from Mumma’s side as she inserted her new sister-in-law into yet another small, happily chattering group. Since Mumma had never had sisters, she took this dislike at face value. The older two disliked her with more finesse. When someone quite politely inquired about something as harmless as Where had the young couple met? How was Rida enjoying Cape Cod? or, What did Spencer plan to do now? Before Mumma could even start to answer, her attendant sister took over. “During the war, Spencer was in Hawaii, I don’t know if you knew that. But was that you I saw on the golf course this afternoon? How’s your putting?” “They just got in this afternoon, you know how Spencer leaves things to the last minute. I don’t think the poor girl’s had time to bathe, much less see the dunes and beaches. But what do you think of this idea of building a breakwater off the Point? Will it really control the silting?” “Spencer’s returning to Harvard, to do a doctorate, and he’ll probably decide to work there, or MIT. What’s Timmy going to do, now that he’s settling down, has he told you? Timmy’s not here today, Rida, so you haven’t met him. He always wanted to go into business, didn’t he?”
Mumma put up with this until a sister interrupted the sixth or seventh group of strangers to introduce Spencer’s bride and bring their easy conversation to a grinding, unwilling halt before setting it off on leaden feet in a new direction: “Are you sailing in the Wednesday twilight series this year?” At that, Mumma simply extricated her arm and walked away. She made no explanation, made no excuse; she just broke loose. Phyllis stared after her, and when Anne came over immediately to ask her where Rida was going, just shook her head in palpable amazement at her brother’s wife’s odd behavior. The two sisters stood shoulder to shoulder, stupefied by Mumma’s unmannerliness. Then they set off together to report to their mother.
On her own, Mumma gravitated toward the musicians, who had been playing unobtrusively, as instructed, as usual. At Grandmother’s beach parties there was always music. It was a point of pride with her, and there was always dancing. Mumma planned to ask the bandleader to play a tango. Any dancer knows the special pleasure of a tango, which she hadn’t danced in a long time. To get to the bandstand, Mumma had to pass by Grandfather, who was standing with Brundy to watch the festivities. Both of them were drinking purposefully, the handsome, hawk-nosed, white-haired man in his seersucker suit, his tie loosened and his face beaded with sweat, and the tall, tanned younger man, who was one of a few wearing white linen. Brundy even had a white linen vest, and he had removed his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves, as handsome as his father and much more attractive.
As Mumma passed near, Grandfather’s arm snaked out and wrapped around her waist; he spread the fingers of his hand up over her ribs toward her breasts; he pulled her toward him and she smelled the aroma of whiskey, like a cloud of perfume all around him, as he suggested, “How about a kiss from my new daughter-in-law? A kiss for the new man in her life,” with the smile of a man who knows no woman will say no to him.
Mumma didn’t even bother putting her hands up flat against his chest, in the time-honored way girls can fend off undesirable attentions while pretending not to, so as not to offend, hoping—however much they might be offended—to be themselves inoffensive. Mumma wasn’t that kind of girl. She looked right at him, and when his eyes rose to her face, that look wiped the smile off his and loosened his grip. Before he could pull back, she said, without changing her expression, “I’ve known a lot of men just like you.”
Unaccustomed as he was to rebellions, Grandfather was momentarily wordless. Then, “I don’t know what Spencer is doing, trying to bring you into my family,” he said, and turned to Brundy. “Your brother always was a fool. A brain, none of us can equal his brains I’m often told, but the boy has no sense.”
“Dad,” Brundy protested, but he was protesting to his father’s back. Grandfather had walked off. Brundy started to apologize to Mumma. “Dad just—” but she cut him off.
“I’ve met worse. Not much worse, and not many, and I don’t know why you all don’t either make him stop or get rid of him. Frankly.”
At that, Brundy laughed out loud, and she smelled on his laughter more of the same whiskey perfume. Brundy was drinking, but he was not drunk. She looked into his face, looking up, since like all of the Howland men he was over six feet. Looking up, she could see that however much he had drunk, he was stone-cold sober.
“I was going to ask them to play a tango,” she told him. “Do you tango?”
“I did, in my day. I haven’t for a while,” he said, a sad statement, saturated with unspoken losses.
“Good,” Mumma said. “Let’s do it.”
Tango music cleared the dance floor of couples moving in sedate small squares, leaving it entirely in the possession of Mumma and Brundy. “Spencer won’t mind?” Brundy asked, putting out his hand for her to lay her palm flat against.
“Spencer doesn’t enjoy dancing, but I was a dancer when we met. Only USO, only the chorus, but still, I was.”
They stepped, wheeled around the turn, and leaned their cheeks together for the next passes. Brundy was a good dancer, relaxed, fluid—no surprise, since Spencer had boasted about his brother’s coordination. Brundy was the athlete in the family; he had a dramatic flair, too, and when he threw his head back to look down into her eyes, she realized how little expression his own da
rk blue eyes had held up until that dance. With the music pulsing around them and nobody able to overhear what they were saying, she remarked, “You had a bad time, didn’t you.” When he didn’t respond, she looked carefully at him, concluding, “And this is worse.”
That was when the music’s rhythms halted and the two dancers looked around to see that the rest of the guests were gazing out over the tranquil harbor with averted eyes, while Grandmother was stepping away from the musicians and Lally was approaching them.
“In the camp,” Brundy said to Mumma with the first genuinely welcoming smile she had seen since she arrived at the Point, “they called me B-24.”
“The Liberator?” Mumma was a war bride, she knew her planes.
Brundy grinned, a boy again briefly, and devilishly good-looking.
“B-24 it is,” Mumma told him, and at that moment Lally arrived to say, “You haven’t danced with me yet, Brundy.”
“First,” Brundy told his wife, “I want to find Spencer and congratulate him. He’s my brother, Lally, and I’ve barely seen him to say hello to. You can find someone else to partner you, although I don’t think Mother’s ready for the dancing to begin.”
As he left the two women, Mumma said only, “Your husband is a good dancer.”
“You should know,” Lally answered, sorrowfully. “If you’ll excuse me…” But she warned Mumma before she turned away, “He hasn’t been himself since the war. Since the camp. Since he got back.”
“What did you expect?” Mumma asked, but Lally didn’t want to discuss it and drifted off, leaving Mumma once again alone. Mumma was ready to leave by then, and for good, but Pops had been sent to join a group of men and women his own age and she couldn’t catch his eye. She could understand that he wanted to visit with cousins and summer friends. She didn’t expect him to stick close to her side; she’d always exercised autonomy, even before she knew what the word meant. So, figuring she had been there for everyone to see for at least an hour—and those people had taken full advantage of the time she’d given them—she exited up the sandy road.
(“But Mumma, what about talking to Abigail Smith?” We couldn’t get used to Abigail Smith actually having once been engaged to our father, even if Mumma was the one he married. The idea that Abigail Smith might have been our mother took our breath away. “That,” Mumma said. “Don’t remind me about that. You know I don’t like to boast.”)
Abigail was the only guest Mumma had wanted to talk with, but Abigail had been standing among the Howlands, keeping someone between herself and Grandfather with practiced skill. When Mumma saw Abigail finally going off to join another group, she intercepted her, hand outstretched to reintroduce herself. She was not warmly received. (“And I didn’t blame her for that, not one bit. As far as she was concerned, I was the home wrecker.”)
“I was wondering which one of these houses belongs to your family,” Mumma said. She was trying to be friendly, since after all, Abigail was someone who had agreed to marry Pops, so she must have loved him, so maybe she was someone Mumma would like.
“I’ve always been a guest of the family. In the big house.” Abigail’s cool smile was sent in Mumma’s general direction.
Of course Mumma understood that the woman’s pride had been injured. She had no doubt, however, that her heart was intact. “You’re so cool and also so pretty,” Mumma said, which was true. “No wonder they wanted you for his fiancée, I don’t blame them a bit.”
“That’s very good of you.”
“But you know, even if they don’t, because they don’t appreciate him at all. You know you’re not his type.”
“I beg your pardon?” Abigail protested. “I have to differ. I am exactly his type. I am exactly the type of person Spencer prefers. I’ve known him all my life. We’re cousins, distant cousins, but still, we’re the same kind of people from the same kind of background and education. We have the same goals in life. We live by the same standards. If I may be brutally frank, you’re the one who doesn’t belong here.”
“Oh I know that,” Mumma agreed. “You don’t have to tell me that. But that has nothing to do with being his type, does it? Anybody can see Spencer needs someone to look up to him. Not someone to admire, and he’d have to admire you, wouldn’t he? But I’m thinking about you, really, because, you know, you remind me of Sonia.”
“Sonja Henie?” Abigail was practically laughing out loud at Mumma.
“I thought you were so educated,” Mumma said. “But I guess not, unless you’ve just never read War and Peace. Sonia Rostov—the cousin, I mean. Or unless the one you really remind me of is Amy, Amy March, and I know you’ve read Little Women. The sister who marries the rich boy who really loves Jo.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” As many Hollywood moguls discovered, Abigail Smith’s angers were icy and elegant.
“But I do,” Mumma assured her. “If I were you—Did you know my maiden name was Smith too?”
Abigail pinpointed the important difference. “You aren’t descended from the family of the Abigail Smith who married John Adams.”
“I could be,” Mumma maintained. “Nobody knows who a foundling is related to. But that’s not what I meant to say. I meant to say that if I were you, I’d go somewhere entirely different from here. I’d go to California. Here, you’re nothing special, you’re like everybody else, only poorer. Except prettier than most, but it’s not as if you’re beautiful, is it? Out there, they’d think you were extraordinary.”
“Even though,” Abigail said through clenched teeth, “I’m clearly not.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mumma said. “But if I were you I wouldn’t stick around for the little life that was waiting for me here. I’d go—You ought to go to Hollywood,” she decided.
“Oh, really? Really? And become—what? An actress, I suppose. Where did Spencer come across you?”
“At the Officers’ Club,” Mumma told her, “and no, not an actress, you’ll have to figure out for yourself what to do, but you can do that easily, if you really are so smart. Which I think you probably are.”
“Thank you for your good opinion. I can’t tell you how honored I am,” Abigail responded, with an ever-increasing weight of sarcasm, but Mumma proved unsquashable. “Of course, I could be wrong. It could be that this is the best you can do.”
(“Abigail Smith wasn’t one of those women who get pretty with anger,” Mumma told us. “I am. When I’m angry, my eyes sparkle, my color heightens, but not her. She had that fair, fine skin, and those cool gray eyes, they had no flash at all in them, and her neck mottled red, the way fair people’s necks do. So I knew she was angry, even before she huffed off. I was the making of her,” Mumma concluded, taking credit for Abigail Smith’s legendary career as a Hollywood casting director and eventually film producer. “If it wasn’t for me, she would never have thought of it.”)
After leaving Grandmother’s party, Mumma picked up Meg from the big house for feeding and Polly for company, taking them both down the hill with her. She and Polly played gin rummy until it was time for Polly to ride her bike home. Eventually, Pops returned.
“Everybody missed you,” he said, the nearest thing to criticism he felt up to. His mother’s parties went on for hours, and seeing that introducing Rida had been the putative reason for the event, the guests got to be shocked, appalled, and offended by her early exit. He’d come in for a lot of unmerited (as he felt) sympathy. Especially his own family had had much to say, and then say again, on the subject. His mother’s “Honestly, Spencer” about summed up their collective thoughts. Except for Brundy, who seemed to have enjoyed his new sister-in-law. “My brother likes you,” Pops reported.
“Your brother wants to sleep with me,” Mumma corrected.
“Brundy?”
“Ethan. That boy’s got too much of your father in him. I hope you warn people. Your father’s a terrible snob, do you all know that? And your sisters are jealous—they have no personality, and they know it. And no st
yle either.”
“Ethan wants to sleep with you? What did he say? Did Father do something? Did Brundy?” Pops didn’t talk about it, but he knew what his family was like.
“Brundy liked me. I like him, too. His name in the camp was B-24, Spencer. That should tell you something. It’s a name he likes being called and that should tell you something too.”
“My sisters always go nutty at Mother’s parties. If anyone, it’s her they’re jealous of.”
“Because your mother respects me,” Mumma explained, against all the evidence, and correctly.
By the next afternoon, Mumma and Pops were gone from Wampanoag, leaving a Scylla and Charybdis of gossip behind them, past which only Grandmother, like Odysseus, sailed with a clear head—Grandmother and Uncle Brundy, that is, although Brundy was a useless ally, since he moved out shortly after, moved out on his wife and on his family, too, returning to Europe and never coming back to this country. “How could he do that?” Grandmother demanded. “He wasn’t a cruel boy—competitive, of course, but that was athletics. He was always a gentleman; how could he be so cruel to us? And Lally, too. What happened to him?”
Pops tried to explain. “He wasn’t in the Navy.” But Mumma thought Grandmother needed more. “When you send boys to war, what do you expect? That they’ll come back the same?”
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