As Sam leaned in to kiss her again, Ruby beamed. God, she was happy. So deliriously happy.
Oh, the night had the potential to end badly, it did. In two hours Sam might be passed out on the marital bed, or making sick in Mother’s roses. But Ruby loved him even more when he was like this, filled with light, not ruminating on battleships or gas masks or that awful Hitler and his bombing planes. This Sam reminded her of the one she’d known since she was a girl.
“Come, my love,” he said, boosting Ruby to her feet. “Let’s take those hooves for a spin.”
“Saaaam…” Ruby said, protesting a little.
Her knees ached, her ankles keened. That iron lawn furniture was no joke and she’d moved it all herself. But Ruby followed him nonetheless. Sam was the most splendid dancer. Whenever his shoes began to bop, the room split in two. Everyone wanted to watch him move.
“Long day, my darling?” he asked, detecting the crackle in her ankles as he spun her about the floor.
“The longest. I think the furniture reproduced while we were away. There are more pieces than ever. And the plumber was three hours late to turn on the water! All the while, Mother barked orders and Mary didn’t lift a single craggy talon.”
Sam tipped his head back and laughed.
“Oh Mary,” he said. “Good old Talons Magee. Well, now, what can you expect from Mrs. Philip E. Young, Junior? She’s gestating a future scion of industry in that steel belly of hers. And steel never bends.”
Sam twirled Ruby once beneath his arm, and then again. She was dizzy from the dancing, and the champagne, and the attentions of her very own Cary Grant. Lord, was Sam ever a dreamboat. When you’d known someone most of your life, it was easy to forget.
“Well, Mrs. Packard,” Sam said after sending her toward the floor in a most beguiling dip. “Sounds like you’ve worked the feathers right off your tail. But here you are, dancing with me. And you’ve cleaned up rather well, it should be noted.”
“Oh I try,” she said. “All for my special man.”
He gave her a few more whirls and Ruby’s insides soared straight to the heavens. Soon the band changed its tempo, “God Bless America” on the docket. Ruby checked the clock on the far wall. Dang it all to hell. The party was about to end.
As if reading her thoughts, Sam frowned. But when Ruby looked over her shoulder she realized it was not the clock causing him to glower but her brother, marching straight at them.
“Hello, lovebirds,” Topper said, affecting a drawl. “Mind if I have this dance?”
“I’m grateful for the offer, but you should dance with your sister,” Sam said.
“A real cut-up, this guy.” Topper offered Ruby his arm. “Shall we?”
“Do you mind?” Ruby asked her husband.
“Of course not. Dance on, you two.”
Sam made a circular motion with his hand and Ruby smiled in thanks. Perhaps the chilliness she saw between the men was squarely in her mind.
“You kids have a nice trot,” Sam said. “I’ll be enjoying a smoke near the valet.”
Though he smiled, Ruby noticed that his eyes seemed lost. The brewing of his inner jingoism, no doubt. Ruby watched as he walked off, singing along to the band.
Stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with a light from above.
“What’s the matter, little sis?” Topper said, and placed a hand at the small of her back. “Blue to be with second place? Listen, I’m no Ducky Shincracker like your boy Packard, but I can cut a rug or two.”
“So you claim,” Ruby answered, casting eyeballs about the room.
She watched Sam brush against a potted palm and then slide through the door.
“You seem to be having a lovely night,” Topper said, gently leading her to the beat. “At least until I showed up.”
“It’s been wonderful,” Ruby said. “Before and now. We’re having a blast. Sam is in a great mood. It’s fab to see.”
Topper cocked an eyebrow.
“Sam’s in a great mood. As opposed to…?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Ruby shook her head. “It’s just that Sam can be so serious. Moody.”
“That he can,” Topper said with a nod.
“It’s nice to watch him reveling in the night, having a drink, dancing. He’s been so worried, lately. Hitler. This war. It’s not even our war. He’s distraught over nothing!”
“Nothing?” Topper threw her a strange look. “Whaddya mean he’s upset ‘over nothing’?”
“The war in Europe…”
“Listen, darling, that ain’t nothin’.”
Topper took to dancing again, this time more slowly, deliberately, a subtle shift between his feet.
“I know,” she said. “It’s a war. And now there’s conscription. But it’s over there.”
She jerked her head, though it was not in the most accurate direction. Essentially she was aiming toward Boston.
“Yes,” Topper said, his brow darkening. “It’s ‘over there.’ For now.”
“It’s like he’s infected everyone.”
“Who? Hitler?”
“No! Why would I bring up Hitler on a night like this? I meant Sam!”
“Whoa, girl,” he scoffed. “‘Infected’? Don’t you think that’s a mite hard-nosed?”
“I didn’t really mean infected, per se.”
“I agree with your husband,” Topper reminded her. “We need to get involved in this war. Am I infected, too?”
“Well, that’s different,” she said. “You’re still in college.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sure at Harvard it’s the very fashion to…” Ruby shook her head. “The thing is, Daddy’s started making gas masks and even Mother is in the blue moods about it all.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s thinking of joining the Grey Ladies.”
“No!” Topper let out a fake gasp. “Do-gooding and Bundles for Britain?! Say it ain’t so! We cannot have that kind of philanthropy in our family. We might earn a reputation for being kindhearted!”
“Hilarious.” Ruby gave him a swat to the shoulder.
“This war, Red. We can’t stay out of it forever. By us I mean the United States. I mean you, I mean me.”
“Don’t get any ideas.”
“I’m going over,” he said. “If I’m not drafted, I plan to sign myself up.”
“Topper! You can’t! Mother wouldn’t survive it. I wouldn’t!”
“It’s a matter of time, the only question being … do I go the army route, or do I climb aboard a ship?”
“This isn’t funny!” Ruby yipped. “Of all the nights…”
“I have to go, Red. It’s the right thing to do.”
“But this war isn’t ours to fight!” Ruby looked up at him, a crick already forming in her neck. At six-four, Topper had a good foot on her. She spent ninety percent of their time together with her face tilted toward the sky. “Lindbergh says they’re making the same mistakes from the first war. You’re going to risk your life for that?”
“Dear God. Don’t even talk to me about Lindbergh.” Topper pretended to spit.
“We were tricked into coming to people’s rescue and lost fifty thousand men in the process! Not to mention we don’t have the power to defeat the Axis right now. A suicide mission is what it is.”
“You sound like Chuck Lindbergh sure enough. That’s not a compliment, by the way.”
“What do you have against Lindbergh?”
“He’s practically a German. Folks call him the ‘number one Nazi fellow traveler.’ And he supports racial purity! That’s eugenics, Ruby. In case I need to spell it out.”
“I don’t agree with him on that front. But he’s a patriot! And he’s been through so much.”
“He’s handsome and had a baby kidnapped. Sorry, Red, that doesn’t make him right. And don’t get me started on that wife of his.”
“Anne is delightful,” Ruby said.
She’d met her once, back a
t school. Anne Morrow was a Smithie, too, and had made an appearance on campus, enchanting every last one of them.
“Mrs. Lindbergh is so lovely and strong despite the tragedy,” Ruby said. “Why, if I were in her shoes, I’d never step out of my house.”
“Doesn’t give her the right to act like a cretin. For the love of God, Red, that book of hers is a Nazi handbook if ever there was one. The Lindberghs. Christ. I’d welcome their insight even less than I’d welcome typhoid fever.” Topper eyed the ceiling as if in contemplation. “Smallpox? Polio? A knife to the gut? All of the above?”
“I get it. You don’t care for them. I just can’t figure how muddling around Europe’s problems does anything for us.”
“You want it to do something for us?” Topper wrenched up his mug. “To begin, as it relates to Hitler, it’s first stop Europe, next stop the world.”
“But he’s said he has no designs on this part of the globe. I read it in the Times. Your favorite rag.”
“Well, if there’s ever a man to take at his word,” Topper said with a snort, “it’s Hitler. Just ask the Austrians. And even if he were being uncharacteristically honest, you can’t … It’s not morally sound to be an isolationist anymore. I’m a little embarrassed you still have such ideas.”
“Embarrassed? Ouch. And since when do you care about morals?”
Topper flinched as if stung, though he’d jabbed at her first.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” Ruby started.
He shook his head.
“No. I know. It’s fine.” He sighed. “The thing is, Ruby, I’m a lover not a fighter.”
“Spare me!”
“I don’t like the thought of getting involved in some far-flung war any more than you do. But we can’t keep burying our heads in the sand. Grievous atrocities are being committed. Last week, five thousand Jews were rounded up in Paris and shipped off to prison camps, to endure God knows what abuse. These places have death quotas, Ruby. Which they’re besting several times over.”
Ruby’s stomach lurched. She clamped her eyes shut. The boy was far too fixated on every iniquity they printed in The New York Times.
“Topper, please…”
“You can’t turn away, Ruby. That man—Hitler—he’s pure evil. He must be stopped.”
Ruby opened her eyes and nodded absently.
She didn’t wholly agree with her brother, or with Sam, but Ruby understood Topper’s heart. For a second she felt a ping, the urge to do more than complain or disagree. For all his claims that the woman was a fascist monster, Ruby quite concurred with Mrs. Lindbergh, who said that her heart wanted to help but her mind questioned the sanity of it.
“I suppose I can do something,” Ruby said. “With the Bundles for Britain program. The Grey Ladies are in the thick of it. According to Mother, they’ve requested more hands.”
Yes, Ruby decided. She could take to knitting socks and hats to be sent overseas. Though she wasn’t in favor of the United States joining the fight, that didn’t mean she couldn’t support Britain and her allies. There was more than one way to think about this war.
“Bundles for Britain?” Topper said with an arched brow. “You’re really going to join up?”
“Why not? You’ve said it yourself. I have an idealistic view of the world. My tinseled cocoon and whatnot. Time to get serious. I’m having too much fun.”
“Aw, hell,” Topper said with a forlorn sort of head tilt. “Ruby, you’re a doll. Bundles for Britain sounds swell but don’t listen to your baby brother. I’m full of bunk ninety percent of the time.”
“That is definitely true.”
“Forget serious, Red. You keep your sunshine. You stay in that cocoon. Everybody loves the la-la girls. In New England you’re the rarest kind of bird.”
17
Island ACKtion
CLIFF HOUSE UPDATE: CISSY C CALLS REINFORCEMENTS
May 20, 2013
As I informed my ACK squad a scant five days ago (click here for the full article), though the building still stands, for all intents and purposes, the legendary Cliff House is finit.
The Baxter Road behemoth has been the site of some of the island’s most festive and famous shindigs. According to hospital records dug up by my intrepid intern, a total of seven Kennedy-related injuries have been reported on the property over the years. Many more have not been reported. And one can only imagine the sexual misdeeds committed on-site. There’s no telling whose DNA would be found if the dressing rooms that once surrounded the pool remained.
But the pool is gone, along with the dressing rooms, the lawn, the tennis courts (one clay, one hard), and most of the back veranda. The only thing left, really, is the home itself, one-quarter of a privet hedge, and a cantankerous owner still inside.
Don’t misunderstand. Cissy Codman and her seldom-seen husband Dudley are not entirely out of options. Tuesday will mark an important day in the fight to save their home. That night, the Board of Selectmen will vote on whether to move ahead with Cissy & Co.’s controversial hard armor schemes. She’s worked wicked hard on her quest and has even kicked millions of her own. Calls to Dudley Codman have gone unreturned, as per usual.
“It’s not happening,” says lifelong Sconseter and commercial fisherman Chappy Mayhew. “Her gimmick would cause havoc on a very fragile ecosystem. True locals won’t stand for it.”
To aid her cause, Cissy’s shipped in one of her kids. It’s the middle of her three children, Elisabeth Codman. Bess is an ER doctor in San Francisco and a graduate of Nantucket High School. She is the only one of Cissy’s kids to have attended school on-island.
“I’m only trying to get her out of the house,” Bess tells the ACKtion. “Seriously, Corkie, it’s nothing more.”
Way to play it cool, Bess. Way to lay low.
Stay tuned for news coming out of the Selectmen’s Office on Tuesday. Island ACKtion will be live-tweeting the event.
* * *
ABOUT ME:
Corkie Tarbox, lifelong Nantucketer, steadfast flibbertigibbet. Married with one ankle-biter. Views expressed on the Island ACKtion blog (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al.) are hers alone. Usually.
* * *
18
Tuesday Morning
“Well, well, well, the Bradlee girls are back on A-C-K,” Bess sings, joke-style, as she glides through the side door of Tea Time, her cousins’ house in town. “Alert the authorities.”
Some might call Tea Time a compound—the Bradlees certainly wouldn’t—but it has a front house and three guesthouses (aptly named “For Felicia,” “For Palmer,” and “For Everyone Else”), plus a pool, so it qualifies to Bess. Also, a former presidential candidate slash secretary of state has a place down the road and his is irrefutably smaller.
However.
“You can’t have a compound in town!” Aunt Polly insists.
You can’t have one in Sconset either, apparently. Or you can, but it won’t last forever.
“Frick and Frack.” Bess smiles, sauntering into the kitchen of the main house. “Together again.”
Frick and Frack, or Flick and Palmer. Two sisters, two vastly different women, though close all the same.
Flick is tall, broad-shouldered, husky-voiced, and assured. She makes piles of money on Wall Street and has her own weekend home in Amagansett, in addition to “For Felicia” in Nantucket Town. Palmer is the little sister and Bess’s closest friend. Delicate and blond, she is a former “mid-tier ballerina” who danced for some time with the Little Rock Ballet Company before chucking it all to get married to a guy with great hair and a country club membership.
“I never had to get a real job,” she’d tell you in a delighted hush, never pretending she wanted it any other way.
Now Palmer teaches ballet to little girls in an Atlanta suburb, tots like her own cherub Amory, who is always either napping or sitting with her ankles crossed, mouthing the words to a picture book with her perfect pink lips.
Palmer has a sprightly, caref
ree, all-the-world’s-a-dance vibe that would be utterly hateable if she weren’t so self-aware, not to mention insanely nice. Everyone loves Palmer Bradlee, including and especially her husband, who calls her this, Palmer Bradlee in full, as if it’s her first name or he’s introducing a celebrity.
“Bessie!” Palmer says, giving her a fairy’s hug: delicate, light, and smelling of flowers. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“We thought you weren’t coming until the wedding,” Flick says, and marches to Bess’s side. She wraps her in an athletic, wrestler’s embrace. “What gives?”
Palmer shoots Flick a glare. Or, as close to a glare as she can get.
“What gives is a very good question,” Bess says. “Long story short: Cissy’s back at it.”
Flick walks over to the coffeemaker and pours them each a cup.
“Cissy’s still at it,” Palmer corrects.
“Yes.” Bess nods. “Still at it. And I’ve come to save the day. Poor Cis, right?”
“Jesus.” Flick rolls her startling green eyes. “I love your mom, but come on. It’s time to give up already.”
“Everyone agrees. Except Cissy, of course. That’s the problem. She believes that nothing or no one can match her will and determination. In fairness, very few can. Lala was born four weeks early but Cissy claims it would’ve been earlier if she hadn’t ‘held her in’ for ten days.”
“Goodness, I just love Aunt Cissy,” Palmer chortles. “She is the best.”
“This is not normal,” Flick says gruffly.
“I agree but…”
“What kind of meds is she on?”
“Meds?”
“I think her dosage might be off,” Flick says. “When was the last time your mother saw her shrink?”
“Oh, Felicia! You’re such a Manhattanite,” Palmer says with yet another charming giggle. “Aunt Cis doesn’t have a shrink. She’s a New Englander!”
“She needs one. I’m sorry but there’s dedication and there’s obsession and your mother’s flown past both. She wouldn’t talk to me for a month after I refused to get married at the house.”
“Well, that’s your own fault,” Bess says. “You were already on shaky ground after buying that place in the Hamptons.”
The Book of Summer Page 8