“Oops.” She pats the car. “Sorry.”
“I’ll bill ya for that later,” he says with wink.
Evan lunges into the truck bed and then pulls Bess up behind him. He clears a place for her atop a lumpy gray bag.
As Bess settles onto the makeshift seat, she presses her hands along the bag, which is weighted down by … something. The whole deal is reminiscent of a body bag. Not that Bess has ever seen one in person. Not yet anyway.
“Lacrosse equipment,” Evan says to Bess’s quizzical face. “I’m coaching some rug rats in town.”
“Oh. Cute.”
Evan pops open a small, red cooler and hands her a beer.
“So lay it on me,” he says. “Tell me the gory details.”
“I’m at such a loss. Cissy’s the official problem child of the family but up until now it’s been fun, part of the gag, the wonky fabric in our family quilt. She’s always been reasonable, in the end, but the reasonableness ship has sailed. It’s crashed, actually. Lost at sea. Meanwhile the rest of my family is useless. Christ.” Bess exhales. “What even is a geotube?”
“It’s essentially a large, sand-filled jute bag that looks like a burrito.”
“Another erosion-control measure?” she asks. “Just like the oh-so-successful seawall?”
“Yep, though geotubes are supposedly better because, unlike concrete or stone, the sand is compatible with the existing beach. They say it’s less detrimental to the downdraft beaches, too, and, best of all, isn’t an eyesore like a hard armor structure would be.” Evan sighs. “It’s what your mother would argue, in any case.”
“She would argue that, wouldn’t she?” Bess says. “I can see why she’d be excited about geotubes, in theory, but let’s be real. Isn’t it too late for Cliff House?”
Evan nods sadly.
“I’m afraid it is.”
“I don’t get it,” Bess says, picking at the label of her Grey Lady Ale. “Cissy’s no dummy. She must know Baxter Road is history. Why can’t she just cut her losses and leave? She’s always blathering on about good New England sensibility. This isn’t sensible at all.”
“Come on, Lizzy C. Cliff House has been in your family for generations. It’s not just a house. It’s a lifetime.”
“Yeah but what’s a lifetime but memories and photographs? She can keep those!”
“I suppose,” he says. “But memories are so much more vivid when you’re in the spot they happened instead of relying on your brain to paint the picture.”
“Gee thanks, that’s not depressing at all.”
“You know how it is,” he says, and gestures to the view. “When was the last time you thought about this place?”
“Hussey House,” Bess says with a smile. “Or what once was Hussey House, since you’ve demolished it with your greedy, money-grubbing schemes.”
“I am a greedy bastard, aren’t I? Imagine, wanting to eat and put gas in my car.”
“Must be nice!”
“Bottom line, if you don’t have the anchor, what is your memory but a ghost?”
Bess shrugs and then peels the label all the way off her bottle.
“To be honest,” Evan says, “I’ll be sad to see Cliff House go, too. I have my own set of memories, ya know.”
“I’m sure you do. We both do. Some better than others.”
Evan finishes off his beer. As he grabs a second, Bess watches two seagulls dive at each other, then flap away.
“I’ve never told you this,” Evan says. “But my great-aunt used to work at Cliff House.”
“What?” Bess says, spine straightening in surprise. “She did?”
“Yep. My grandfather’s sister.”
“When was this?”
“Ages ago. In the forties. She married later in life, but before that was a maid at Cliff House. My aunt said Ruby was a real firecracker.”
“Really?” Bess laughs and sets down her beer. “Grandma Ruby? I find that hard to believe. She was a bit of a groundbreaker, a feminist in her way. But very much in her way. Stone-faced, stoic. ‘Firecracker’ is not a word I’d use. Cissy’s a firecracker. Ruby was … an aircraft carrier. A battleship gliding into the harbor.”
Then again, Bess frequently teased her grandmother about her very Bostonian, “low-heeler” persona. Ruby always answered with a tee-hee and a sip of gin, and so Bess took her grandmother for the very best of sports. In retrospect maybe it was because she knew otherwise.
“According to Aunt Jeanne,” Evan says, “Ruby and her brothers palled around with a bevy of good-time girls and boys. Constantly getting into scrapes and shenanigans and forever winning sporting events at the club.”
“Are you serious?” Bess says, laughing again. “Ruby complained about Cissy’s athletic, rough-and-tumble nature. I never guessed Grandma was at all sporty.”
“She was an amazing tennis player, apparently.”
“That’s incredible.”
“My aunt might’ve been the help, but she adored the ‘young ones at the big house.’” Evan thinks for a moment. “Although there was some European girl she didn’t care for. Anyway, it all sounded like a constant party. Until the war happened, of course. Then all bets were off.”
“Wow,” Bess says, staring down at the flatbed and the nails discarded in the grooves. “It’s weird how people change.” She looks up. “Good thing I’m my predictable, same self.”
“The same!” Evan says with a cough. “I can think of five ways right now that you’re a completely different girl than the one who walked the stage at Nantucket High.”
“Oh yeah? Name one.”
“You haven’t touched that beer.”
He taps the open, full bottle sitting beside Bess’s foot. The man, he is not wrong.
“You could match me chug for chug back in the day,” he says.
“Ah. Yes. Drinking skills. One of my finer qualities. At least as determined by weaselly local teens.”
“Hey!” Evan yelps. There’s a hint of disappointment in his deep brown eyes. “I knew you had a bias against townies. That’s why you won’t drink my beer.”
“No,” Bess says, and picks it back up. “It’s not that.”
She studies the bottle. In holding it, she knows the beer is already warm.
“What is it then?” Evan asks. “You a wine type now? Spend your weekends in Napa?”
“Uh, no. I’ve been to Napa three times. I do like my wine but I like beer just as much. So, no. It’s not that.”
Bess peeks at her watch. It’s five thirty, or two thirty back in the Bay. She wonders if someone is trying to contact her. Right now someone could be calling her name.
“Bess?”
“If you want to know the truth,” she says, “the God’s honest truth is that I’m neither a wine girl nor a beer one, at least not right now. The type of girl I am is pregnant. A pregnant girl who doesn’t know what the hell to do.”
27
The Book of Summer
Nick Cabot
July 29, 1941
Cliff House
Tops told me to write in this book and doggone it, I shall do so.
’Allo folks, the name is Nicholas Cabot. You might know me as just plain Nick, Topper’s Harvard chum. The smarter and more attractive of the duo, to be sure. Alas Harvard boys we are no more. We both dropped out. There are things to do, you see. Battles to be won. People to impress with our dash and valiance.
As for me, I’m registered straight-up class 1-A (no kids or war work to hold me back!) and will soon head out to basic training for the good ol’ army. Meanwhile, Topper’s farting around the island, deciding what to do. I told him don’t wait to be drafted. All sails and no wind, that boy. Looks swell in the harbor but not exactly going anywhere.
I’ve come to Cliff House for our last hoorah. I’m not unaccustomed to Nantucket, been here a time or five. It’s funny how Tops’s island is not the one from my mind though. When I think of the place, my mind conjures the mansions on Main Street. Those grand homes with
their heavy knockers and silver nameplates and monstrous screaming eagles above their front doors. But, lo and behold, there’s a charmer of a spot called Sconset, seven miles away but might as well be a thousand. Topper’s family’s spread is about a mile up from its heart.
Cliff House is a stately affair, as are a few others down the lane, though most are modest in size. Little weathered boxes, many drowning in flowers. Why, it almost makes you want to chuck it all and take up a fisherman’s life.
Even in Sconset, there is tennis and sailing and golfing and bowling. There are card games and dances and Friday night parties on the Cliff House lawn. Every person, every last one of us, is tanned and gay. We might be the closest point physically to Europe, three thousand miles dead ahead to Spain, but you’d never know it. Out here, you can almost pretend it doesn’t exist.
Oh yes, I could stay in Sconset the rest of my days and be quite content but that’s not in the cards. On Tuesday I’ll thank Mrs. Young and give Tops one last pat on the back. I’ll leave this place calmer, and more wistful, but with new matchbooks and memories and a clip of honeysuckle to remember it all by.
Always,
Nick C.
28
RUBY
August 1941
Not to sound uncharitable on the matter, but Ruby was damned glad that Nick Cabot character had split.
He was nice enough, if you didn’t listen too closely, and you couldn’t really fault a soldier going off to war. But, goodness, the man sucked up every crumb of Topper’s time. With Nick around, it was as though the rest of them hardly existed, background players all.
On top of that, Nick didn’t seem to like Hattie. Anyone not entirely charmed by the girl had to be several cards short of a full deck. How could he object? Unless he had a beef with beautiful, witty, continental babes who were a gas to boot. If so, then good luck.
“Selfish egoist of a girl,” Ruby overheard him say one night at the casino.
She didn’t so much “overhear” as he said it right to Topper’s and Ruby’s faces after Hattie sashayed off to find Mary. That alone told you the girl was generous to the gills. She sought out Mary, of all people.
“Excuse me?” Ruby said with a hard glare. “You have a problem with Hattie?”
“Okay, I was a little harsh,” Nick conceded. “But there’s simply nothing to her.”
“‘Nothing to her’?” Ruby steamed, glaring fiercely at her brother, who snapped his head away. “She’s beautiful and brilliant and a kick and a half!”
“Beautiful, I suppose. But the rest of it? Sweets, you’re reading her all wrong. Less breeding and couth and she’d be a hedonist. Only in it for the fun and gluttony.”
“Gluttony. She eats like a bird. Topper! Are you going to let your friend talk about Hattie like that?”
Not meeting eyes with either one, Topper patted Ruby on the shoulder and said to his friend, “You get used to her.”
“‘Used to her’? What? Like a heat wave or an itchy skin condition?”
Ruby hadn’t imagined there could be a person alive who didn’t find Hattie Rutter incomparably charming. There must’ve been something darkly wrong with this Nick Cabot character. He probably kicked old ladies.
“So Nick’s off to Europe,” Ruby said on a glorious blue and gold afternoon as she and Topper approached the tenth hole of Sankaty Head.
Nick had been gone twelve hours and it was as obvious a statement as one could make but Ruby wanted to make it nonetheless. Since the man’s departure, Topper was all gloom and blue moods. Nick Cabot’s view of things still clung to her brother like a sticky, light film.
“Yes, he is,” Topper said. “Off to fight the evil Axis.”
With a bite of the lip, Topper teed up using one of Daddy’s balls. When they ran out of this batch, that’d be it. Until the war was over, he’d make no more.
“I’m sure you’ll miss him,” Ruby said as Topper set up. “We all will! Such a card to have around. But my guess is Hattie will be pleased as punch to have her beau back. She’s positively thrilled you’re staying the full week and not going back to Boston.”
Ruby was workin’ it like a pro, but “thrilled” was not exactly the shape of it.
Hattie’s response had been “That’s swell” when Ruby told her. Just two words: “That’s swell.” Of course, Hattie was not the excitable type and was hardly “thrilled” by much. A hedonist. Honestly. Hattie’s unflappable demeanor was the very issue Nick took with her, no doubt. The man had all the class of an untrained Labrador. Case in point: He tromped around the upstairs in his shorts as if he were in a boys’ dormitory. Even easygoing, pal-to-all Sam carped at the guy to please keep his twigs and berries in their sack.
“‘Thrilled,’” Topper said with a cough, on to his sister right away. “Really. That sounds like a Ruby word, not a Hattie one.”
With an inhale, he swung and knocked the ball a clear two hundred yards off the tee.
“Well, thrilled in her own special way,” Ruby clarified. “So I hear you two are going deer-spotting later?”
“As far as I know.”
“That should be fun.”
Ruby placed her ball on the ladies’ tee and gave it a whack. It went far, though didn’t come close to Topper’s.
“It’s a shame Daddy hasn’t had the chance to get to know her,” Ruby said, and flung her bag over her shoulder. They began walking down the fairway. “He’d like her, don’t you think? I can’t believe he came all this way for the parade but didn’t stay for the ball.”
“It is indeed too bad he wasn’t fit to stay.”
“And he’s been back exactly once. In all those weeks!”
When they approached Topper’s ball, he crouched down to inspect the lie of the grass.
“Poor man has been working so hard,” Ruby gabbed on. “Who knew you could be a businessman and factory worker both?” She paused, hand on hip. In the distance birds tittered. “Are you going to take the shot? Or will you keep making that ball false promises with your inscrutable gaze?”
Ruby waited for Topper to react. But he didn’t laugh, not a chuckle for miles. He always humored his sister, no matter how crummy the joke. But not this time. Instead he rose to standing and looked out over the fairway.
“Is everything okay…?”
“You know he’s not well,” Topper said.
“Who? Daddy? He wasn’t all roses on the Fourth, that’s true. But it’s only because he’s been working like the devil with this gas mask venture. It’s really great what he’s done, when you think about it. I was skeptical at first but…”
Ruby let her voice trail off as she thought about the masks. There was a classification for this type of work. 2-B. Men necessary to national defense, therefore nondraftable. Daddy was too old for war, but her husband and P.J. worked at Young Manufacturing. Topper would work there, too. Ruby let loose a relieved smile.
“This isn’t about any gas masks.…” Topper gently touched her arm. “Pops is ill, Red. You have to see that. He looks terrible.”
Ruby whipped out of his reach.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a real Sally Sunshine? He seems a tad beleaguered, like I said, but Mother would tell us if he were sick.”
“Would she?”
Topper turned and took his shot, missing the green by a hair.
“Well, goddammit,” he said. “Close is never good enough.”
“That shot is decent and you know it. A slight breeze could nudge it into the right spot. And, by the way, Daddy is not sick.”
“Use your eyes,” Topper said. “And that precious brain of yours. Time to poke your cute head from beneath the rock. Dad is not himself. Your shot, Ruby. I recommend a seven iron.”
“If I wanted advice, I’d have used a caddy.”
Ruby pulled out a seven iron anyway and knocked the ball a yard from the hole.
“Not too shabby,” Topper said.
He reached for his putter and, with one swift stroke, the ball
plunked into the hole. A birdie. His third of the day.
“Nice one,” Ruby griped.
Her second shot had been much better than Topper’s, but now the best Ruby could do was to match him on this hole. All that and she’d still be twelve strokes back. Ruby was always playing from behind.
“Go to it, sis,” he said.
Ruby clomped up to her ball and examined it from every angle, like Topper would, though she sorely lacked his golfing precision.
“Well, if Daddy is sick,” she said, still kneeling, “then you should do something about Hattie.”
Ruby stood and plinked the ball. It missed the hole by one inch wide to the right.
“What do you mean ‘do something’?” Topper asked. “Come on, Red, you can putt better than that.”
“Make an honest woman out of her. And, if I could putt better, don’t you think I would?”
“That’s not how golf works.”
Ruby rolled her eyes and finally tapped the ball into the hole. She leaned down to pick it up.
“An honest woman?” Topper said with a cough-cackle. “We’re a smidge late for that, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be a worm.”
“Surely you’re not implying that I should propose?”
“And why not?” Ruby asked. She set her clubs down with a huff. “You and Hattie get along magnificently and you’re beautiful together. She’s smart and athletic, in addition to being drop-dead gorge.”
“Ah, Red. Hattie’s a doll and you’re spot-on with all of it. But I’d say a few bang-up physical and personality traits aren’t enough to start a marriage by.”
Ruby was confused. Weren’t those the precise things you started a marriage by?
“You know Daddy worries about you,” she said. “He thinks you’ll never settle down. If you’re so certain he’s sick, you could make him a happy man.”
“He does worry about that,” Topper said with a nod. “But there’s nothing I can do about someone else’s stress. Anyhow, if I did propose to Hattie, she’d sock me in the chin.”
“See? You’re a perfect match!”
“Sweet girl, I know you want the best for me. And for Hattie. But a hasty engagement is as far from ‘the best’ as you were from the fairway on hole five.”
The Book of Summer Page 14