Summer Beach Reads

by Thayer, Nancy

  Finally they peeled into the hospital parking lot. Helen was out the door before Worth had taken his keys from the ignition. His long strides made up for her quickened steps, so they entered the hospital together and raced up the stairs.

  “Wait for me!” Charlotte called, only a few feet behind.

  “Hurry!” Helen called back to her daughter. She felt absolutely childish with glee and anticipation.

  They burst into the maternity ward and were directed to the same room Suzette had gone into the night before. The door was closed.

  “Quiet,” Helen cautioned. “They might all be sleeping.” She grasped Worth’s hand hard; it was like clutching the bar on a Ferris wheel or roller coaster.

  They went through the door. Suzette half lay half sat on the bed, her multicolored hair limp against her skull. She looked up at them, her blue eyes shining. Teddy sat on the side of the bed, gazing down at the bundle in Suzette’s arms.

  “Hey,” he said to his parents. “Come meet Dawn. We named her Dawn. She was born right at dawn.” He slipped off the bed so his parents and sister could get close to his wife and new daughter.

  Helen eased her hand from Worth’s. She moved close to the bed and peeked down, then said to Suzette. “May I hold her?”

  “Sure.” Suzette lifted her baby up.

  Dawn was coddled in white blankets, which Helen pulled away slightly, so she could see more of the infant, the little arms, the wrinkled neck. “Oh, she’s beautiful.”

  Charlotte squeezed up. “Let me see her.”

  Worth stood behind them, pressing to see. After a moment, he said, “She has black hair.” Looking into his son’s blue eyes, he added, “She has black eyes.”

  “Like blackberries,” Helen cooed. “Worth, remember, babies’ eyes are generally dark blue at birth. And their hair can fall out and another color come in.”

  But Worth turned without another word and left the room.

  Twenty-three

  It was Grace who broke the news to Nona. Of course, Nona thought, it would be.

  Nona was in her wicker chair in the garden, toying with the lunch Glorious had brought her on a tray. A disgustingly healthy lunch, basically a salad with some chicken breast cut up in bits. And a piece of seven-grain bread, nicely buttered. Glorious took great responsibility for the state of Nona’s bowels. Nona was grateful, but she would have preferred a club sandwich.

  “Nona!” Grace actually tripped on the threshold as she rushed from the house out onto the patio. “Suzette had her baby!”

  Nona’s old heart leaped. “Tell me everything!”

  “It’s a little girl. Only six pounds, but all her bits and bobs intact.”

  Nona clapped her hands together. “How lovely!”

  “Maybe not,” Grace said, trying to sound solemn but unable to disguise the satisfaction in her voice. “She has black hair and olive skin. Suzette and Teddy both have blue eyes and blond hair—well, Suzette would, if she ever let the natural color grow back.”

  Nona let the information float in the air between them. “How is Suzette?”

  “Oh, I think she’s fine. It was Helen who phoned, and she said Suzette’s kind of bleary from the experience, but she’s okay. Well, she should be, she’s so young. And I’m not so sure that baby was a month early, not when she has eyelashes and fingernails and all. Nona, I don’t want you to be upset, but I’m not so very sure this is your—um, great-grandchild, your blood relative. From what I’ve heard, she doesn’t look a thing like anyone in our family.”

  “Oh, Grace,” Nona said. She meant it as a rebuke, but Grace took it as disappointment.

  “I know, I know, it’s unfortunate. But apparently Teddy isn’t upset. Maybe he’s just being nice to Suzette. Anyway, Charlotte’s taking photos with her digital camera, and she’ll be here any moment to show them to us.”

  “Mom!” Mellie waddled out onto the patio. “You promised you’d take me shopping! There’s a trunk show at the jeweler’s.”

  “Suzette had her baby,” Grace gushed. “A little girl. With black hair and olive skin!”

  “Oooh,” Mellie cooed. “A little girl. How’s Suzette?”

  “She’s fine,” Grace snapped impatiently, disappointed by her daughter’s response.

  “After we go to the jeweler’s, we can buy some cute little pink things for the baby,” Mellie said. “And some flowers! Come on, Mom, I don’t want to be late.”

  Nona’s daughter and granddaughter scurried away. Nona let her head fall back against her chair. Suddenly she was exhausted. If she had the energy to call Glorious, she’d ask her to help her back to bed. But she was too tired even to call out.

  Perhaps she dozed. She heard Grace’s car roar off, and then silence.

  It seemed only a moment later that she heard the Chrysler’s familiar purr. She looked around. The shadows had shifted on the patio, so she had slept, time had passed.

  She heard the slam of car doors and the crunch of gravel. Then she heard Worth and Helen, and they were arguing.

  She played possum, shutting her eyes again and letting her head fall sideways.

  They came through the hedge. Worth sounded furious. “That baby is not my grandchild.”

  “Lower your voice. Nona’s sleeping.” Helen spoke softly, but her voice shook with rage.

  “Helen, how can you disagree with me about this? Any moron could see that child is not Teddy’s.”

  “No!” Helen’s voice cut like a whip. “Any moron could see the love on Teddy’s face when he looks at that little girl!”

  “Why are you so eager to claim a child who has no blood relation to you?” Worth demanded. “Charlotte will get married someday. She’ll give you grandchildren. Hell, Suzette might even have a baby with Teddy!”

  “Don’t be disgusting. Teddy loves Suzette. Clearly he loves the little girl. So what if she’s not his genetically. He’ll adopt her.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to call her my grandchild.” Worth was almost snarling.

  They didn’t speak as they walked past Nona and stepped over the threshold and into the living room.

  Just inside the French doors, Helen said, “Worth. You’ve said you want us to stay together.”

  “Of course I do!”

  “If that’s what you want, what you really want, I’m telling you this in no uncertain terms: You can have it, if you will stop being such a total jackass and accept this baby, this baby Teddy loves, into our family.”

  Worth’s voice turned bitter. “You’re blackmailing me, Helen. Even if I say whatever you want me to say, I can’t change the way I feel.”

  “Oh, yes, you can. You want me to change the way I feel about certain matters, don’t you? You’d like me to live out the rest of my life as if certain thoughts and sorrows and imaginings didn’t press on my heart like stones. You’d like me to love you again, right? Really love you?”

  Worth grumbled, “The two—sins—are not equal.”

  “Worth,” Helen said, and her voice was adamant, “I will divorce you.”

  Nona’s heart jumped. She held her breath and strained to hear.

  “For God’s sake, Helen.”

  Helen remained calm but unyielding. “I mean it. I will divorce you.”

  There was silence. When Worth spoke again, his voice was conciliatory. “Let me put it this way, Helen. You want a grandchild. I want an heir.”

  “That little girl could be your heir.”

  “No.”

  “Then we’re at an impasse.”

  Helen, then Worth, stormed through the living room, into the hall, and up the stairs.

  I must tell them now, Nona thought. I only hope I’m not too late.

  January 1946

  “Ilke? Wer ist es?” Even with the German words, the man’s voice was familiar.

  Anne remained frozen on the threshold of the house. Perhaps it was the wrong house, she thought. Perhaps it was the right house and this woman lived with her husband and Herb had been given a room
here. Perhaps—

  The German woman stepped back into the shadows just as Herb strode down the hall to the open door. He wore his khaki uniform, with his tie tucked inside his shirt between the third and fourth button. His hair was shorter than she’d ever seen it, parted on the left, combed into blond furrows. When he saw Anne, he slammed to a halt, lurching backward, as if he’d run into a pane of glass. His jaw dropped.

  “Anne?” His expression showed surprise and then, quickly, not joy, not delight, but consternation. “Anne, is that really you?”

  She took one step forward, reaching out her hand to touch him. “It’s really me, Herb. I came on a Stangarone freighter.”

  “My God.” Herb lifted his arms to receive her as she pressed herself against him, but he did not bend to kiss her lips. “My God, Anne.”

  When he did not kiss her, her fears were confirmed. Still, she tried to sound normal—what was normal now?—as she moved back from her husband and, with a bright smile, asked, “And who is your beautiful friend?”

  “Anne.” Herb stumbled over his words for a moment, and then gathered himself. “Anne, this is Ilke Hartman. The army requisitioned a spot in her home for me. She—she has been very good to me over this past year.”

  Well, Anne thought, that was ambiguous. She forced herself to smile at Ilke. “It’s nice to meet you, Ilke.” Rats, she thought, I sound like Herb’s mother, all prissy and polite. But how did you talk to a German, anyway?

  Ilke did not return Anne’s smile. Instead, she spoke to Herb in German, her words rushing together in a stream of guttural explosions. Herb replied in German. Ilke turned, then, and slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  Herb reached forward to shut the front door of the house. Then he put his hand on Anne’s arm. “Come into the kitchen, Anne. Are you hungry? Thirsty? How did you get here; I mean, how did you find the house? You must be very tired.”

  She told him about Georgia and her bike ride as he towed her along down the dark hallway.

  “You left the bike on the street?” Herb demanded, sounding almost angry. He left her, ran down the hall, and out the front door. The bike leaned against the brick wall. Herb picked it up and carried it inside. “Nothing is safe here. You have to remember, people will scavenge anything, they need everything. A working bike with all its parts is like gold.”

  She said, “I didn’t know.”

  “No, of course not, I’m not scolding, I’m just telling you.”

  He led her into a warm room smelling of baked bread and bacon. A kettle steamed softly on the stove and a cat lay curled in one of the kitchen chairs around a long wooden table. Herb shut the door to the hallway and gestured to a chair.

  She laughed. “Herb! Herb, I don’t want to sit down! I didn’t just come three thousand miles in order to sit down and have some bacon! I want to hold you, Herb, my goodness, I want to cover you with kisses. I’ve missed you so much, I couldn’t live one more minute without you!”

  His face did not lighten. He frowned. He moved away. He ran his hands through his hair. “Well,” he said, and a weight of guilt was in his tone. “Well. It’s not—” He looked at Anne. “How do I tell you this?”

  “Just say it.”

  “That woman you met. Ilke. She’s carrying my child.”

  Now Anne did sit down, because her legs would no longer support her. The information flew into her like a flaming arrow, piercing her with flame.

  “I’m sorry, Anne. I never meant—you have to understand. The war, the winter—it was hard. So much death and devastation, the world was black to me. And then to be here in a kind of civilization, and Ilke was so kind—and you have to understand, Anne, I was so weary. So stunned. Even then I didn’t know for sure that I would live another day.”

  Anne nodded. She was gripping her hands together, but she struggled to keep her voice pleasant, not accusing, not injured. “So was it comfort with this Ilke? Comfort, not love?” If he says yes, Anne thought, even as her belly burned with jealousy, I can survive this.

  “Yes. Yes, Anne, it was comfort, not love.” His skin went blotchy with emotion. “I’m not proud of that fact.”

  “And she got pregnant.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she know you are married?”

  “Yes. She knows all about you. I showed her your picture.”

  The thought of Herb and the other woman bent together over her picture, the two of them in a kind of conspiracy, increased the pain in her heart. For a moment she was too overwhelmed to speak. Finally, she asked softly, “And what are your plans?”

  Herb surprised Anne by laughing, a bitter laugh she’d never heard from him before. “My plans? My plans are simply to live through this day and the next.”

  “The war is over,” Anne protested.

  “But not the danger. We are occupying German territory. Unexploded bombs are everywhere. Some Germans hate us, and who could blame them? Three days ago a sixty-year-old cobbler killed the American who was billeted with him, in revenge for the death in the war of his own son.” Seeing the alarm on Anne’s face, he hurriedly continued. “No, I fear no harm from Ilke.”

  “Because you are lovers.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “When is her baby due?” The words were glass shards in her heart.

  “In six weeks.”

  “It is your baby.”

  “Yes.” He looked at Anne with old and weary eyes. “Her parents were killed during a bombing of Bremerhaven. Her fiancé was killed at Normandy. Her brother was killed in the Bulge.” He made a gruff noise. “For all I know, my men could have been the ones to kill him.”

  “What will you do once the baby is born?” Anne asked.

  “I haven’t thought that far.”

  “Do you plan to divorce me? To marry the mother of your child?” Please, Anne prayed, please God, help me.

  “No,” Herb said, quietly. “No, of course I don’t want to divorce you. I love you, Anne. But the baby—I don’t know.”

  Anne buried her face in her hands. Tears poured from her eyes. She thought the pain would destroy her. Desperately she wondered what to do next: flee this house where her husband had been living with a beautiful German woman? Try to live in this town with Georgia and work at Stangarone’s? After all, her own situation was hardly significant in the scope of the damage wrought by this war. She didn’t even know where she would sleep tonight.

  How many bedrooms were in this little house, how many beds? Was Herb sleeping with Ilke? Would he lie down next to the beautiful blond woman while Anne lay awake, writhing with jealousy, in the next room?

  “Herb,” she choked out, because she had to say it, “Herb, that woman is German. How could you sleep with a German? How could you?”

  Herb said sadly, “The war is over. Ilke is not just a German. She is, first of all, a human being.”

  “Oh, damn you and your piety!” Anne grabbed the first thing she saw—a small cut-class bowl of sugar on the tabletop with a matching small pitcher of cream—and threw it across the room. It smashed against the wall. With a yowl, the cat leaped up and darted out. “How convenient for you, to see her as a human being. You are not King Arthur, Herb, you are not a damned knight in shining armor, an open-minded, generous, kind-hearted saint! You’re just another man who’s played around on his wife and got caught!” Her rage was fully unfolding within her. She rose and paced the small room, flailing her arms in the air. “Don’t you think I longed for comfort, too? Don’t you think I had opportunities to sleep around? Not every attractive man was overseas, you know. There were plenty—but I wanted only you!” Her final words cut through her anger with a broad swath of grief, and she collapsed, knees buckling, sobbing. “I wanted only you.”

  Herb came to her. He wrapped his arms around her and helped her stand, and he held her close to him, patting her back, murmuring softly, “Anne, oh, Anne.”

  “Why couldn’t you want only me?” she cried.

  “It was the war, Anne. It wa
s the war.”

  His embrace soothed her. Hearing his voice with her ear pressed against his chest reassured her. It was so familiar. And it was loving, she could feel his love like a balm, soothing her burning pain. After a while, her tears stopped. Herb asked her to sit down. He put food on plates for them both—an odd little meal of bread and bacon and potatoes fried in bacon fat. Anne couldn’t eat hers, but she finally drank the tea, and when Herb saw that she really had no appetite, he put her food on his plate, and ate it all.

  “You learn never to waste food here,” he explained.

  He asked about his parents, and her parents, and Gail, and the island, and he seemed to come into focus as they spoke. Anne sat back in her chair and studied him. He was very thin, almost gaunt. Blue half-circles of tiredness lay across his cheeks. She felt a twinge of guilt for her own selfish tirade. What did she really know about the war, about the conditions of his life these past months?

  When he’d finished eating, he pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair. For the first time, he relaxed. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” He looked at his watch. “You must be tired.”

  She shook her head. “I suppose. I’ve got so many emotions raging inside me, I don’t know how I feel.”

  “You should sleep. I should sleep. I have so much work to do tomorrow.” Seeing the alarm on her face, he said, “There are two bedrooms upstairs. Ilke is in her parents’ room. You can have the back bedroom. No one has been sleeping there.”

  Meaning, Anne understood, Herb hadn’t been making love to Ilke on that bed.

  “I’ll sleep on the couch in the front parlor,” Herb continued. Again he picked up on her reaction. “I don’t suppose you want me sleeping with you tonight. And no, I haven’t been sleeping in Ilke’s bed for some time now. She’s too restless with her pregnancy. I’ve been on the sofa. I actually like the sofa. I like having the security of the back against my back. It makes me feel safe.”

  Once again Anne felt a stab of guilt that opened her up to a kind of understanding of what Herb’s life had been like during the war. She wanted the security of him in her bed. He wanted only the security of a safe place to sleep. So things were reduced to the elementary here, to primitive needs. The desire to console him fought with her jealousy and anger.