Herb’s mouth set and he drummed his fingers on his knees, thinking. Then he said, “What if we didn’t have a war on? What if I weren’t getting sent away? You know what? I’d still want to marry you right away, and not to sleep with you or to keep you from sleeping with other men, and not to start a family or be sure a baby’s legitimate if we accidentally did start a family. I’d want to marry you because I want you to be my wife. Right now. Right away. I want to be officially connected to you. You are my person. I finally found you. Why do I have to wait any longer?”
Anne looked out the window, trying to compose her thoughts. The ferry steamed away from the calmer waters of the shoreline and hit rough water, the early October winds transforming the waves into troughs. The ferry reared and dropped, reared and dropped. Salt spray dashed against the windows and the horizon tilted alarmingly. Anne’s stomach turned.
She put her hands on her midriff. “I’m going to be ill.”
“Lie down,” Herb advised her. “Try to sleep.”
She slid down on the long bench, pulling her light cloth coat over her. Herb rose, folded his overcoat into a pillow, and gently placed it beneath her head. It did help to lie down. She shut her gaze against the way everything slanted.
She could feel Herb looking at her, and she remembered the first day they spent together just three weeks ago.
That morning, their first morning together, when Anne and Herb finally made it to Anne’s little kitchen for breakfast, they saw the sun blazing in the high blue perfection of the sky. It was late September. Anne had the windows open, and a fresh breeze occasionally stirred the curtains. As she moved around, fixing scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and coffee for Herb, she was well aware of the domesticity of the moment, she felt as if she were trying to form a mold or pattern for their future life so that this simple event would be stamped into time like a phonograph record, to be played over and over again. She wore her summer wrap, a lightweight silk peach kimono. Herb had tried to put on her white chenille bathrobe, but his shoulders were too large. How they had laughed! He pulled on trousers and an undershirt. She wanted to sit on his lap while he ate. She wanted to be the food that he ate.
Herb set his coffee cup back on the saucer and leaned back. “That was great. Thanks, Anne.” He looked out the window. “What shall we do with this fine day?”
“Well, we could stroll through the Public Gardens. The trees are just starting to turn, and I love the trees in the autumn.”
“You’d rather do that than go to a museum?”
“Oh, always!” She shot a quick glance his way to see how he took this. “I guess I’m just a Midwestern outdoor girl at heart. Anyway, Herb, I’ve been in Boston for four years. I’ve pretty much seen the museums.”
“Have you ever been out to Concord?”
“You know, I never have. I don’t have a car. Well, I do at home, of course. But when I was at Radcliffe I never needed a car, really. I just took a bus or a cab if necessary. I was so busy all the time with my courses, and every social event was with the boys at Harvard. Sometimes we went down to New York on the train, but otherwise I never even thought of leaving Boston and Cambridge. Do you think I should see Concord?”
“I do. Absolutely.” He stood up, suddenly awake and energetic. “Let’s get dressed. We’re going for a ride in the country.”
Anne wore a blue dress with a white belt, tied a red sweater over her shoulders in case they were out late, and knotted a silk scarf around her long brown curls. They walked up to Herb’s family home on Beacon Hill. While Herb changed into a fresh uniform, Anne waited in the living room, which was much like Hilyard Clayton’s parents’ stuffy old mausoleum. All she could think about was how glad she was that Herb’s parents were down at their summer home on Nantucket Island, because she wouldn’t have wanted to meet them this way, the morning she and Herb had become lovers. She was vaguely aware of the quality of the oil paintings on the walls, the porcelain on the tables, the high dignified ceilings, but it was really a small place compared to her parents’ home in Kansas City, so she wasn’t overwhelmed or even impressed. She was just thinking about Herb. She was just aching to be back in bed with him, to do all those things she’d learned to do this morning, while the sun rose.
Herb raced down the stairs, two at a time. “Okay! We’re off!” Behind the house, on a narrow cobblestone lane, sat his own automobile, a 1938 Terraplane convertible. It was aqua, with a shining curved chrome grille and white sidewall tires. The seats were natural leather, the dashboard a shining curve of wood—teak, Anne thought.
“What a beaut,” Anne said, and Herb grinned proudly.
The top was up, so for a few minutes they occupied themselves in folding it back, and then they settled onto the leather seats, and Herb turned the key and pulled out the choke and gunned the gas, and they were off.
Herb steered knowledgeably through the cramped and winding Boston streets. He glanced over at her. “Did you know that the streets of Boston were originally old cow paths? That’s why they’re so confusing.”
Anne said, “I must confess I don’t pay attention to streets. I think I navigate by buildings, landmarks. Like, my apartment is two blocks away from the little diner where Gail and I like to have breakfast.” She waved an arm through the air. “This is all new to me.”
When they reached Route 2, they picked up speed and their words were lost in the wind. The sun beat down on their shoulders and the wind blew at them, ruffling Anne’s scarf against her face. She lay back against the warm leather and allowed herself to soak in the soft magic of this day. Even without turning to look, she sensed Herb’s every move, downshifting the gears, smoothly passing a slow dump truck.
Concord lay about fifteen miles northwest of Boston, away from the growing city, nestled among forests and neat farms. A perfect little village, with handsome colonial mansions and tidy stores and banks in discreet brick buildings, it slumbered beneath the sun like a town dreaming of the past.
And it was a town in love with its past, a venerable past. Herb parked the car near the long grassy rectangle named Monument Square and ushered her around the village, pointing out historic spots. Emerson had lived in Concord, and Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne as well. They strolled along Lexington Street, and stood in silent thought in front of Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott had written Little Women. Walking a bit farther, they came to another house, where the Alcotts had lived; then, Hawthorne; and, much later, Harriet Lothrop, writing her book The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.
“So much history in one place,” Anne mused.
“And you haven’t seen my favorite spot yet.” Taking her arm, he turned her back toward the center of town and his car.
“Walden Pond?” she guessed.
He only shook his head and smiled.
They got back in the car and drove out of town along a narrow wooded road, not much more than a lane; the houses fell away, and they were in the countryside. Trees lined the road, shading them from the sun, making the light seem to flicker as they rolled along. Twice a bright orange maple leaf drifted down into the convertible. One landed on Anne’s lap, the other on Herb’s head, and they laughed.
Herb steered the car into a small car park, and said, “We’re here.” They got out, crossed the road, and walked along a path between more august old trees. The lane was sprinkled with fallen leaves, like flags or trail marks.
Anne saw a modest wooden bridge. Before it stood a small obelisk, indicating that the stone wall was a memorial stone for the British solders killed and wounded here during the Revolutionary War.
“For the British soldiers,” Anne whispered, and she couldn’t help but think of them, those boys in their red coats, so far away from home, having survived crossing the Atlantic in order to march this far and then, on foreign soil, to die.
They crossed the bridge, their feet thumping solidly against the wood. On the other side rose a statue by Daniel Chester French of the Minuteman. Beneath the plinth, c
arved into a plaque, were words from Emerson’s memorial hymn:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
“I’ve memorized that poem,” Herb told her. “We had to, in school.”
“I’d like to hear the rest,” Anne told him.
Herb cleared his throat.
“On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.”
“Oh, Herb.” Anne hugged herself, tightly.
“I know,” Herb’s voice was hoarse. “I’m always moved, every time I come out here. I think of those farmers, that raggedy band of men fighting against the British troops, but I think of the British troops as well, who were probably all yearning to return to their own homes and families and farms and green fields and lush meadows.” He cleared his throat. “And of course those words—that made those heroes dare to die, and leave their children free—well, that’s what we’re going to be doing over in Europe, isn’t it?”
Anne looked straight ahead, at the gentle arch of the bridge. “Are you afraid, Herb?”
He chuckled, putting an arm around her shoulders and hugging her against him. “Of course I’m afraid, only a fool wouldn’t be. But I’m not superstitious, if that’s what you mean, I’m not—well, dreading the battles. And I do believe what we’re doing is right, I believe in the cause, and I’ve always thought a man had to have a cause to believe in, a cause he would die for, if he was going to be a real man.”
Her throat was swollen with unshed tears. She managed to say, “You are sort of an old-fashioned guy, aren’t you, Herb?”
“No, I don’t think I am. Or if I am, so are most of the men in the country. But don’t you see now, Anne, why it’s important to me to marry you? I don’t know, maybe it’s old-fashioned of me, but I’d like to have a wedding ring on my finger and a wife to write letters to, and not just any old wife. I’d like to know you were my wife. Here, in my country while I’m off fighting.”
He was such a romantic man. Anne had never met such a romantic man. “You know I love you, Herb.”
He tilted her face up so he could look in her eyes. “Then marry me,” he said.
She had said said, “I will. Yes. I will …”
“Anne?” Herb leaned over and gently touched Anne’s shoulder. “We’re almost there.”
She sat up, smoothing her skirt down over her legs. She ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m not a very good sailor, I’m afraid.”
“It was a rougher crossing than usual.”
She stood, pulling her sweater up against her shoulders, and looked out the window at the long harbor with sandbars and long stretches of beach and gray shingled cottages among the low dunes. Fishing boats motored past, and a handsome orange and black Coast Guard vessel was pulling away from the dock. She saw cars on shore, and people standing in the sunshine waving at the approaching ferry. She liked seeing the bustle of normal life. It made her braver. Herb’s parents were only two people, after all, in all the wide world, and as Herb said, in all this wide world they had found each other.
Herb stood behind her. He didn’t touch her, but she could feel his breath on her hair. “How do you feel?”
“Better.” She looked up at him. “Much better. I was being silly before, and I’m sorry. I want to marry you, Herb. As soon as possible.”
Twelve
The very early mornings had come to be Charlotte’s favorite time of day. She’d wake to her alarm, pull on her work clothes, and tiptoe through the sleeping house, down the stairs, and out to the mudroom, where she sat on an old wooden bench and laced up her boots. Then, careful not to slam the door, she stepped out into the fresh morning. As she hurried to her shed for her tools and then strode up the drive toward her garden, dawn slowly revealed itself like a secret shared with her alone. She had become so acquainted with the few magic moments when the sun, with stately royalty, rose, that she could sense it on her shoulders before her eyes saw the light. She felt a primitive response in her belly and across the back of her neck; it was if someone invisible leaned toward her, whispering. She felt a breath.
She knew, scientifically, this was only the routine turning of the planet, but personally she believed it was much more than that. Sometimes she felt as if it were a kind of message, or that a message was displayed in the rising of the sun in a language she could not yet decipher but might be able to, someday. And if it was absolution, would she know?
She carried her supplies out to the table by the roadside. With an old rag, she wiped the dew from the surface of the table, shook out the checked tablecloth, and spread it over the table, smoothing the cloth down with her hand, standing back to ascertain that it hung evenly all around. She put the woven basket on the table and added five dollars’ worth of nickels, dimes, and quarters, in case her customers needed to make change. Double-checking the list she kept in her notebook, she wrote the items for sale and their prices on the whiteboard and propped the board and the wooden sign against a cookbook stand that had been collecting dust in Nona’s pantry. Then she went to her garden to collect the day’s wares.
During the past three years, she had trolled the Take It or Leave It shed at the local dump for vases, mason jars—anything that could hold a bouquet of flowers. In the winter, during days when it was too cold to go out, she put all the containers through the dishwasher, stacked them, clean and dry, in cardboard boxes, and lugged them to the shed. Now she walked across the sandy stretch of untended low moorland to her garden. She unlatched the gate, entered, and walked down her rows, eyeing her various plants, until she came to the flowers. Kneeling, she snipped away, carefully placing the blooms in her basket. She carried them to her shed, set out the containers, filled them with water from the tap, and occupied herself for a while, making pretty spring bouquets, mixing ranunculus and pansies, iris, peonies, and poppies, inserting long slender stems of beach grass and beach peas or wild chokecherries for height and whimsy. These arrangements went for seventy dollars, but they were fresh, unique, and worth it—she always sold as many as she put out.
Next, she cut several bunches of asparagus and lettuce. She filled her basket with arugula and loose lettuce leaves, rinsed them, and tucked the leaves into plastic bags. Later, at seven-thirty, when Jorge arrived, he would cut and rinse more lettuces. She picked tiny bright-green pea pods, radishes, herbs, and onions, tied the clusters up with green twine, and laid them on the table. She had only just finished stocking her little stand when the first customer arrived, a woman named Muffy Nerwell, who was Charlotte’s mother’s age and drove a Hummer, on this island where the speed limit was never higher than 45 miles per hour. Muffy came every morning, early, wanting to have first choice. She told Charlotte she arranged her evening meal according to what Charlotte had fresh that day. She was frustrated because Charlotte didn’t have carrots, potatoes, and corn like the local Stop & Shop did, and when Charlotte was present to wait on her, she expected Charlotte to give her a five percent discount.
Charlotte was glad to finish with the transaction. She returned once again to her shed, where she went into a kind of Zen mode as she sowed more spinach and lettuce seeds into little plastic trays. For the first time in months, her concentration was divided, and this irritated her. A lot was going on in the house, and she wanted to know about it firsthand.
Most important, she knew Nona would be all right. The doctor had said so, and Nona had wakened briefly last night, murmured that she was fine, and then fallen back into sleep, which Charlotte was sure was exactly what the nonagenarian needed after
such an unusual day of socializing.
Oliver and Owen were leaving this morning. She hadn’t had a chance to spend much time with them, but they would be back in two weeks and she’d catch up then. They were fine anyway; she could tell.
Charlotte’s father was flying back to Boston sometime today. Her mother had planned to return with him, to continue packing and organizing for the move to Nantucket for the summer, but then she had told Worth she’d fly home later; she needed to talk with Teddy and Suzette. Charlotte was glad her father would be absent for this conversation. Worth was hard on Teddy, he always had been. Well, Teddy had always been a rascal. As far as Charlotte knew, her father had not approached Teddy or Suzette since their arrival last night. Certainly, her father, who could be the most charming of men, had not been welcoming.
But really, Charlotte thought, there had hardly been time. After Nona went off in the ambulance, everything was in chaos and the party was pretty much over. It had been almost midnight when Nona was returned to her own house and her own bed. Any sense of celebration had dissipated, replaced by simple relief that Nona was alive, and everyone drifted off, exhausted, to bed. Charlotte had heard Teddy and Suzette in the attic room next to hers. She hadn’t been able to make out the words, but she caught the mood, Teddy’s low rumbling, Suzette’s soprano counterpoint. Suzette had talked a lot. Good to know the strange young woman could talk a lot, Charlotte had decided, as she fell asleep.
Now her hands moved swiftly, in a sure rhythm, as she poked holes in the dark prepared soil, inserted the minuscule seeds, and smoothed the holes closed. Her mind was not so orderly. It was more like an oscillating sprinkler, flipping from image to image, from concern to concern. Why did her father look so worried? Were Teddy and Suzette really married? Was Teddy the father of Suzette’s baby? Her father cared about that sort of thing, and even though it didn’t matter much to Charlotte, she could understand her father’s point of view.
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