The Book of Summer

by Michelle Gable

  But Bess always wanted some indefinable “more” from the man, a realization made in the last few months, during a perfunctory stab at marital counseling. The shrink tried to tease out some daddy issues on which to pin their problems. In the end, the issues weren’t deep enough to explain why Bess ended up in that place. And now she feels ashamed for talking about Dudley like that, at $200 per hour no less, when he is basically fine, as far as dads go. At least he’s not a drunk.

  “Poor Grandma,” Bess says as she glances out the window.

  The skies are clear but the fog is leaking in. Bess’s phone indicates it’s supposed to drizzle by nightfall. A light rain isn’t exactly Hurricane Sandy, but Bess cringes to think of more weatherly abuse being inflicted upon Cliff House. The vote is the day after tomorrow. Surely the home can survive until then.

  “And poor Cissy,” Bess adds, looking back at her mom.

  “Poor me nothing. I was cared for. I was loved. As for your grandmother, she had enough mettle to get by.”

  “Yeah, this family is lousy with mettle,” Bess says. “I really miss her sometimes. Is that weird? She’s been dead for a greater portion of my life than she was alive but sometimes I can actually bring myself to tears just thinking about her.”

  “Not weird at all,” Cissy replies with a distracted sniff.

  “I really looked up to her.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  Cissy hoists a box from the table and thumps it, loudly, onto the ground, a signal she is done with the conversation. She can be so darn cagey about Ruby, the end of her rope quickly reached. Moms and daughters. Did it always have to be that way?

  “So, the divorce,” Cissy says, apropos of nothing. Not that segues are her style. “You’re still doing this?”

  “Yes, Mother. I am ‘doing this’ and, really, it’s all but done. We have a few details to work out, some papers to sign, and then the marriage is legally over.”

  Cissy frowns.

  “Mom…”

  “But you seemed to really love each other,” she says. “Brandon was so helpful. So protective of you.”

  At once Bess remembers Cissy’s first visit to their home in San Francisco. Dudley stayed behind, characteristically neck-high in yet another “earnings season.” Bess was relieved: only one parent to impress with her adulthood and new fiancé instead of two. Cissy was an easier sell, though only by degrees.

  Bess had big plans to welcome her mother to San Francisco with a meal featuring only Northern California cuisine. Oysters. Dungeness crab. Fresh sourdough. About a quarter of the way through cooking, Bess realized she had no butter, not to mention a scarcity of Chardonnay. Things spiraled from there. What the hell was she doing? Bess had never been a decent chef, and a Nantucketer was hardly going to be impressed with fresh fish. She should’ve opted for Rice-A-Roni, “The San Francisco Treat.”

  “This is a disaster!” Bess said, fighting tears of frustration. “I don’t even know what I’m doing! Dungeness crab? I burned a Lean Cuisine last night!”

  At the time, Cissy was due back from a walk. Or else she wasn’t. Cissy was known to stroll for hours.

  “Stop,” Brandon said as he entered the kitchen. “Stop. Just calm down.”

  He pried a wooden spoon from Bess’s grasp. Also a cheese grater, though there wasn’t any cheese nearby.

  “Go read a book,” he ordered.

  “I have to finish dinner!”

  “I’ll take it from here. You relax.”

  So Bess let him complete what she’d started.

  The dinner was okay, nothing fantastic. But it was more than edible, a better feat than Bess could’ve pulled off. And that Brandon stepped in rendered the meal perfect, in the end.

  You seemed to really love each other.

  “Yes, it seemed that way,” Bess says now, in the dining room of Cliff House.

  She rips a piece of tape from its roll.

  “Are you sure, sweetheart?” Cissy asks. “Absolutely certain that you want to go through with it?”

  “Yes. One hundred percent,” Bess says, and means it. “I know what you’re thinking. The first divorce in the family, the black sheep, et cetera. But there’s simply no other option. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re disappointed. And believe me, I am, too.”

  “Disappointed? Please. I couldn’t be prouder of my Bessie if you cured cancer.”

  “Well, I hope you’d be a little prouder of me if I cured cancer.”

  “Professional accomplishments,” Cissy says, and blubbers her lips. “Who gives a crap? And, by the by, if you think you’re the black sheep, you’re not paying attention.”

  “Either way, there’s no going back.”

  No going back. Bess’s side twitches. She tries to rub it away.

  “Okay, my dear,” Cissy says. “I hear you. But I do think it’s better to talk things through with someone who loves you.”

  “Thanks but I’ll pass.”

  “I still don’t…” Cissy shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand why you’re getting divorced. Is there a specific reason?”

  Bess hesitates. Yes, she has a reason or twelve. Most of them she can’t mention to her mom.

  “At its simplest,” Bess says finally, “he’s not the person I thought I married.”

  Then again, maybe he is and Bess should’ve seen it coming. There were signs. She couldn’t say there weren’t signs, emergency meal preparations notwithstanding.

  “Not who you married?” Cissy answers with a small grunt. “They never are. Your grandmother could’ve told you that. But just because…”

  “Mom.” Bess gently smacks the table. “I’m serious. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll only get upset or angry and I’m so tired of feeling both of these things. One day I’ll tell you the full story.”

  “Fine.” Cissy scoots around the table to give Bess a hug. “And since you called me ‘Mom,’ I suppose you mean business.”

  “Oh yeah, I mean business. Big business.”

  “All right, Big Business,” Cissy says, checking her watch. “I’m off for a jog. I’d ask you to join me but…”

  She shrugs. Although Bess is a decent golfer and a crack tennis player, the family knows she never exercises in vain. Or, as Lala likes to tease, Bess doesn’t want to sweat if no one’s keeping score.

  “Should we squeeze in nine holes later?” her mom says.

  “Sure. I’d love to.”

  “Okay, sweetums.” Cissy gives her a slap on the rear. “Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

  “Thanks, Cis,” Bess says as her eyes dart out to the patio. The fog is already thick, rolling in with greater force. “I’ll try to keep myself alive.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  Tuesday can’t come soon enough.

  8

  The Book of Summer

  Ruby Genevieve Young

  July 19, 1940

  Cliff House, Sconset, Nantucket Island

  The last cigarette has been smoked.

  The last car has puttered away.

  Mother’s bedroom door is closed. Even Topper has worn out his shenanigans and is holed up in the boys’ bunk room.

  And here I sit, at my desk, the windows thrown open and the sound of the waves crashing nearby. It’s my last night as a single gal, twelve hours until I’m a married hen.

  Tomorrow at exactly eleven o’clock in the morning, I’ll stand beneath the pergola, white wisteria dangling overhead. Sam and I will exchange vows and voilà, I’ll transform from Miss Young, Philip Young’s only daughter, into Mrs. Samuel Packard.

  “You’ll always be a Young,” Daddy says. “More than a Packard, to be sure.”

  I suppose in some ways, yes. But not in the way of Topper and P.J. It’s different for girls. As much as I’ll be proud to carry Sam’s name, that’s Mrs. Packard to you, I’m still losing some part of me. It’s nothing but change from here on out, I suppose.

  “Don’t
worry, petal,” Daddy says whenever I anguish over any little thing. “It’ll all work out in the end.”

  And you know what? He’s been right thus far.

  So tomorrow, when I’m anointed Ruby Packard, after the luncheon, and the toasts, and the jitterbugging on the patio, Sam and I will hop into a car (a black Mercedes-Benz Roadster) and zoom off toward the airport where we will board the late plane to Acapulco.

  Two weeks in the Mexican sun and then it’s back to Boston, where Sam will chair Daddy’s newly minted Golf Products division. He has no interest in dentistry and it seems this is the only family spot being offered to him. Alas, nothing to brood over, as there’s plenty of room for Sam at Young Processing Co. Who knew a bunch of old guys stomping about with sticks in their hands could generate such a gold mine? Sammy doesn’t seem notably buzzed by the prospect, but he’s not keen to play.

  Whenever I start to spook about the changes I remind myself that a year from now we will be back at Cliff House. Mother and Daddy. My brothers. Sam and me, with (hopefully) Sam Junior already on his way. The summers, at least, will never change, other than a couple of new people along for the ride—God willing.

  And with that, I am, for the final time,

  Yours truly,

  Miss Ruby Genevieve Young

  9

  The Book of Summer

  Samuel Eugene Packard

  July 20, 1940

  Cliff House, Sconset, Nantucket Island

  The Legend of the Golf Ball

  -OR-

  Rubber Man and the Dentist

  Many years ago, a decade almost, two men met up at the club in Sconset as they were wont to do several times per week, June through August every year.

  One was a skinny fellow, a scientist by training but a businessman by trade and sheer doggedness—now a honcho of some repute. He’d founded a rubber-processing operation, selling to industry. The top producer for a time.

  The other man was bigger, brawnier, a former Harvard linebacker whose middle had somewhat gone to pot. He was a dentist, an entirely new profession amid his family. They had been stock speculators previously, which worked well until it rather didn’t. Now the family sneaks by on its old prestige.

  So on this particular day, these two men, both fathers with a passel of kids between them, grabbed their sticks, and headed to the Sankaty Head Golf Club.

  Things started out most inauspiciously, for the Rubber Man at least. He was the superior player and thus more prone to golfing discontent. As for the Dentist, any shot not destined for a bunker or the Scotch broom was dandy by him.

  By the sixth hole, a straightforward job, the morning had taken a sour turn. The Rubber Man missed a very makeable putt, by his standards anyway. Enraged, he launched his putter into the brush, followed by a seven iron toward some other gent’s caddy. After completing his tantrum, Rubber Man picked up the offending ball from where it sat on the green.

  He held it to his eyes.

  “The core is off-center!” he shouted. “I hit that ball expertly!”

  “Is it the lie of the green?” the Dentist suggested.

  It sounded right anyhow.

  “No, no, no,” Rubber Man said. “It’s the ball. I’m gonna slice this bastard open and take a look inside.”

  “Or you could x-ray it.”

  “Come on,” he said with a scoff. “Where am I going to find an x-ray machine?”

  “I have one,” the Dentist reminded him. “I’ve used it to study your teeth.”

  “Hot damn! You’re right. Sometimes I forget you’re a tradesman, too. Come on, let’s go.”

  Soon Rubber Man and the Dentist were ensconced in a Packer, motoring toward Boston. Once in the city, the Dentist unlocked his office, making a liar out of its “closed for two weeks” sign.

  They fired up the x-ray machine. To the Dentist’s vast surprise, though not at all to Rubber Man’s, the golf ball was the problem. Its core was off-center, oblong and tilted.

  By the next summer, Rubber Man had patented a cross-winding machine, which created a perfectly round core. And just like that, his company began manufacturing golf balls along with the swim caps and water bottles they’d resorted to when rubber prices fell. A few years later he’d use this same machine to develop the “dead center” ball. He’d name it “Titleist” for all the titles its users would surely win.

  “I never thanked you for that,” the Rubber Man said, years later, on that same sixth hole at Sankaty Head. By then one-fourth of U.S. Open entrants used his Titleists. “You suggested the x-ray machine and in effect improved both my golf game and my balance sheet. The former immeasurably more important than the latter, of course.”

  “Speak nothing of it,” the Dentist said, stumbling.

  His old friend was not known for his compliments or a tendency to give credit where credit was due. He may have been a scientist-turned-businessman but he lacked the smooth glad-handing of the type.

  “Yesterday I transferred ten thousand shares of Young Processing Company into your name,” Rubber Man told him, matter-of-fact.

  “Much obliged,” replied the Dentist, as yet unsure whether this gesture was generous or miserly to the extreme. What did ten thousand shares mean, really?

  “It’s unfortunate you’re too elderly to have more kids,” the Dentist said, joshing for the most part. “Or I might ask that you name one in my honor. It only seems fair.”

  Rubber Man laughed.

  “Well,” he said. “I am too old for babies. Grandchildren, perhaps. Something to consider when the time comes.”

  “Swell idea. Alas, your children might not appreciate having to name their offspring after their father’s golfing pal. Not to mention future spouses’ opinions on the matter.”

  “Ah,” Rubber Man said with a wide grin. “There’s a solution to that. My only daughter goes to your oldest son.” He jabbed his club into the ground. “And so it is decreed.”

  And wouldn’t you know? Some years later, on the lawn of the great Cliff House, the only daughter would go to the oldest son after all.

  Whether this “deal,” however made in jest, sealed the fate of this young couple, we shall never know. But one thing is certain. The Dentist’s son will be forever grateful for a universe that befitted him with such a spectacular gal.

  10

  RUBY

  July 1940

  “So you’ll really go through with it?” Topper said. “The hitching?”

  He was supine on Ruby’s bed, lobbing a baseball from one hand to the other.

  “Why wouldn’t I go through with it?” she asked.

  Their mother would have a fit, seeing Topper in Ruby’s room while she was in nothing but a panty girdle and a bra. But Ruby didn’t have a sister, and her nearest brother, ten months younger on the nose, was the next best thing. Not that Topper was at all girlie, especially with his sports playing and skirt chasing, but he was doggone skilled at humoring his sister and pretending they were interested in the same things.

  “I don’t get it,” Topper said. “Why, exactly, are you marrying him? Because I can’t really figure it out.”

  “What’s there to figure out? It’s quite simple, really. I love Sam. He’s kind, and smart, and devastatingly handsome. All the usual reasons.”

  “Are those the usual reasons, then? I’m glad to have you around to tell me.”

  “I do what I can.”

  Ruby stood and walked over to her dress, which hung from the pink wardrobe in the corner. After giving it a thorough glare, she took to patting it down. Forty yards of silk taffeta. Lord almighty, it looked like a hurricane. The blasted thing could’ve swept up Dorothy and taken her to Oz.

  “We want the same things,” Ruby said. “Sam and I.”

  Topper froze, holding the baseball to his chest.

  “Huh,” he said with a faint chuckle. “I guess you do. You want to want them, in any case.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” Ruby said, and rolled her eyes. “Babble all
you want, but despite your best efforts, the hitching will commence at eleven.”

  Topper snorted and took to throwing the ball against the ceiling. Clonk, clonk, clonk. Mother would appear at any moment, materializing like a chimera and sporting a sour-lemon frown. Ruby glanced out the window toward the orchestra practicing in the distance. They had a fair length to go until they were fine-tuned.

  “I’m not sure about this thing,” Ruby said, turning her attention back to the dress. “There’s quite a lot of taffeta.”

  “I thought that was the point? Anyhow, you’re stuck now. You should junk the hat though, Red. Not flattering a’tall.”

  He called her this, Red, despite hair that was golden like the summer sand. She was strawberry blond as a young child, but mostly it was a play on her name. Red, as in Ruby Red, though she was never as colorful as that.

  “What do you have against him?” she asked.

  “Who? The hat?”

  “Yes, the hat,” Ruby said, and rolled her eyes again. “I’ve named him Pete. He’s quite the fella. I meant Sam, you dope.”

  Topper sniggled.

  “What’s the rub?” she asked. “You two used to be grand pals.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Listen, I have nothing against your fella. Sam’s a fine man. Attractive. Unobjectionable. That, dear Red, is the very problem.”

  “That he’s attractive and unobjectionable?” She arched a brow.

  “You need someone with more … gusto.”

  “Gusto.”

  “A little fire!” Topper said. “Some verve.”

  “Right-o. A person to match my wildcat nature.”

  Fact of the matter: Ruby was a damned straight arrow. Sure, she possessed a spicy tongue and had committed a few petty crimes in her day—the nicking of cigarettes and hooch while at Smith—but mostly Ruby listened to her parents, used her manners, and never went too far with any boy. Everyone found her universally delightful, a gem of a gal.

  “I really should be with someone who causes a scene,” she added. “It’d be the primo fit.”