The Book of Summer

by Michelle Gable

  Cissy nods wearily and sets down her glass, the weight of fifteen years, the weight of ninety-nine, at once heavy upon her. She gazes out toward the horizon as thunder rumbles in the distance. The forecast calls for heavy rains.

  “Well, now you know,” Cissy says. “There’s not much else to say.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty to say.” Bess walks under the overhang and out of the drizzle. She glances toward the box, half expecting rats and mice to come leaping out. “Like, what the hell, Mom?”

  “Bess, be constructive.”

  “Fine. Why cheat on Dad? Why maintain such a sham of a marriage?”

  “Because of you. And Clay and Lala. Even your dad. Sometimes keeping the family together under one roof is the best option. By the way, I find the word ‘sham’ unnecessarily harsh.”

  Bess makes a dramatic show of looking upward at the ceiling above them. She takes several large steps backward, out into the weather, letting her eyes travel the full height of the house.

  “Hmmm,” Bess says. “There’s a roof. For now. But I don’t see our family under it. No Dad. No Clay. And definitely no Lala. We are right now at only forty percent.”

  She steps back beneath the covering.

  “You know very well that ‘under one roof’ is metaphorical,” Cissy says. “And, really, I was referring to your childhood. I did what I needed to and I don’t regret it.” She inhales, taking a shaky, quivery breath down with her. “If it makes you feel any better, Chappy and I are done for good.”

  “Of course it doesn’t make me feel better,” Bess says. “Plus you’re not ‘done.’ I’ve heard the two of you are quite prone to the back-and-forth.”

  “Not like this. I mean, yes, we’ve, um, severed relations before,” Cis says, starting to tear. “But I’ve instigated it. I’ve been the one to declare ‘enough.’ Never Chappy. That is, until today.”

  “Why?” Bess asks as an unexpected surge of protectiveness courses through her. It’s like she wants to go all Cissy Codman on the man and tell him to fuck off. “What’d he say?”

  “That he’s too old for this shit.”

  Bess fights a hard smirk. Indeed they are both too old for this shit.

  “So there’s nothing to get riled up about,” Cissy says. “Because it’s over. Done. All the way finished.”

  “I’m sorry you’re upset,” Bess tells her. “I really am. But you’re going to have to give me a minute here. It’s like someone’s pushed me into a wall but, hey, no big, because I don’t have an actual concussion.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Bess.”

  “My parents’ marriage. Fake.”

  “It’s not fake,” Cissy says, and grits her teeth. “It never has been. We know what we are to each other. And that is our concern, not yours.”

  “It’s a little bit mine. I did live with you for a good portion of my life.”

  “Oh, Bess, don’t be such a baby,” Cissy says, sounding so much like Grandma Ruby it’s like a ghost tickling the back of Bess’s neck. “It’s not the worst thing in the world.”

  “Why do people keep saying that?”

  “This sort of thing happens all the time. We’ve always done what we believed was best for our children, and each other.”

  “You stayed together ‘for the children’?” Bess says. “I guess that sort of thing does ‘happen all the time’ but I thought our family was different.”

  “Elisabeth, your father is difficult,” Cissy says. “I recognize that I am, too, but in a completely different way. Dudley and I started in the same place but moved too quickly in opposite directions. I tried with him, even when my own mother said to let him go.”

  “Grandma Ruby? She would never!”

  “It’s true. I almost left him. I was so close.” She shakes her head. “Then my mom died and I just … couldn’t. You were still in high school and Lala was so young. The loss of your grandmother was hard enough and I didn’t want this family to suffer another blow.”

  “I get why you felt that way then,” Bess says. “But we’re adults now and she died twenty years ago. Why not get divorced fifteen years ago? Seven? Last week?”

  “Darling, I tell you this with great love—”

  “Oh, no, here we go.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Cissy says.

  “Right. Because I’ve never been divorced.”

  “You’re lucky, Bess. You don’t have kids. In your case, a divorce—not such a big deal.”

  “Ha!” Bess laughs, breathless in shock, as if someone’s just punched her in the chest. “Too true. No big deal. What an accurate way to describe it. In fact, we’ve conducted all proceedings via text messages and Facebook chats. As they say in a physician’s office, you’ll only feel a pinch.…”

  “I didn’t mean you wouldn’t understand about a divorce in general,” Cissy says. “It’s merely that you seem so sure of yourself. So utterly confident that a permanent split is the best course. I promise it’d be different if kids were involved. If a whole lifetime was.”

  “If kids were involved.” Bess snorts. “Well, surprise, Cis, because—”

  Bess freezes. There is a kid involved, sort of. For now. But even though Cissy is a lifelong Democrat, the ultimate bleeding heart and a women’s rights drum-pounder to the core, there’s no decent way to explain a proposed abortion. Not even Cissy would understand.

  “Because what?” Cissy asks, pink spreading across both cheeks.

  Bless it, the woman can hear the patter of potential grandbabies a mile away.

  “The decision to get divorced,” Bess stutters. She sniffs but then gets ahold of herself. “The decision is clear-cut, but not because we were child-free. Brandon was … he is … abusive?”

  It still sounds strange, not right, like it doesn’t exactly fit. No bruises, no bumps. All the bad stuff that a person cannot see.

  “Abusive … question mark?” Cissy says, jacking both eyebrows way up into her hairline. “That doesn’t sound like something you should be on the fence about.”

  “He was,” Bess says with a nod.

  Was he? He was.

  “Oh, Bessie,” her mother says with a sigh.

  “Verbally,” Bess adds. “He never hit me, though at times he seemed close. It’s good that I work so much. I stayed out of the cross fire. And who knows, it could’ve gotten physical, eventually, if not for the hookers, who saved me in the end.”

  “The hookers?!”

  It takes a lot to shock Cissy. A whole hell of a lot. But Bess has surprised her in a way no one else ever has.

  “It’s a long story,” she says.

  Bess walks over to the rusted green glider and slumps down onto it. Meanwhile, Cissy fiddles with her Red Sox hat, trying to appear unruffled while she searches for the best response.

  “Well, Elisabeth,” she says at last, her voice strong and assured. “I can see why you weren’t keen on taking him back. I’d tell him to go fuck himself but my guess is the pervert’s already tried.”

  52

  The Book of Summer

  Ruby Young Packard

  July 10, 1943

  Cliff House, Sconset, Nantucket Island

  Oh happy days!

  Sam is here, with me, at Cliff House. I can almost (almost!) pretend we’re back to sunnier times. We are missing (and missing and missing) Mother and Topper. And Sam is to ship out in six days. But for now I revel in our togetherness, in our love. Not to get all gooey about it but there ya go!

  Every morning we make a picnic lunch, pack up our umbrellas, and traipse across the big lawn and down the wooden stairs onto our beach. We find ourselves the perfect spot, which is any spot, really. I whip off my huaraches and wiggle my toes into the sand, my face turned to the sky.

  Alas the war has changed even the beach. Uniformed men patrol at all hours, stepping over bathing beauties left and right. Stations are manned by life guardettes instead of the traditional guards. At least the island is only dimmed and not blacked out at nightfall
.

  In the evenings we cycle the eight miles to Nantucket Town for dinner or dancing at the club. Though we ditched the flag-raising this year. I couldn’t stomach hearing the names of members who’ve passed.

  This summer I’ve swapped culottes for dresses, no more meddling slips or dickering with a thorough coat of Mexitan. Bikes have taken over the whole darn island! The pleasure drivers are gone and meanwhile cheerfully painted bicycle racks are popping up everywhere, displacing hitching posts and parking spots.

  At restaurants, schoolgirls now wait on customers, filling in for their older sisters who’ve gone to work in factories, the big sisters themselves having replaced the men off at war. It’s a constant circle of replacement these days. You take from this to give to that, praying there won’t be a gap in the chain.

  Some things, however, cannot be replaced or swapped out and sunshiny days will be hard to come by once Sam leaves. But leaving is what he wants and therefore what I want, too. Maybe I’ll tuck a pinup of me into his luggage, if I can work up the nerve.

  I’m happy they judged Sam fit for service. Regardless of what happened to lead him to this spot, my husband is alive! He is recovered and he is well. Most would deem this a blessing of the highest order. I certainly plan to.

  Until later,

  I remain,

  Ruby Packard, wife to Lieutenant Packard, U.S. Navy.

  53

  RUBY

  August 1943

  Ruby was glad they lived at the end of the street, because that was some racket outside, impossible to ignore. Which was Ruby’s very problem.

  She peeked out through the ruffled curtains of what was once the boys’ bunk room but would be a nursery before too long. It faced the road, not the sea, because what did a baby need with a view? Ruby touched her stomach. Her monthly was almost a month overdue. She prayed that the two weeks Sam spent at Cliff House did the trick.

  Damn it all to hell, though. Hattie was still down there, stomping about in her calfskin heels, looking swell as forever in a green Sunday dress with a basque top. She had a mile of pearls around her neck, bunched together and caught with a mother-of-pearl bee. Ruby wanted to ask her all about it but of course could not. Hattie didn’t have a stick of luggage with her, which meant she came all that way just to talk. Well, no thank you and good luck. Ruby had her fill of Hattie’s two cents, if her words were even worth so much. She wondered how many cents that blasted magazine paid.

  Though Ruby was intent on evading her former friend, she opened the window a crack, just to suss out what was what.

  “I know you’re up there!” Hattie called, quick on the draw. “Let me in, for the love of God! I’m on your side, Ruby!”

  Because she wasn’t a complete clod, Ruby did feel a crumb of guilt. To travel from New York to Boston, with a ferry at the end, was a helluva slog. Especially when only two ferries ran per day, boats so loaded with extra freight they were always an hour or more delayed.

  But before Ruby got completely slushy over the girl, she reminded herself about Hattie’s “investigative piece,” out there for all to read. A touch of fame on the backs of people she once claimed to love. What a witch.

  “You can’t lock me out here!” her old friend cried. “Rubes, this is bonkers! You’re the one who…”

  Hattie paused. She shook her head, red curls bouncing to and fro.

  Ruby was “the one who,” wasn’t she? She’d sent those photographs to Hattie, seeking an explanation but apparently not wanting the truth. Or Hattie’s version of it anyhow.

  “Topper was the best kind of fella,” Hattie had said when she’d rung. “He’ll be forever in my heart. But what you see is what he got, if you catch my drift. The pictures don’t lie.”

  Hattie had spent a long time looking at them, stewing on a decent thing to say. In the end she’d decided that she owed it to Ruby to call it like she’d seen it, even if it caused some bruises along the way.

  “Your brother was a remarkable person,” Hattie had said. “But he was a sad, confused young man. He didn’t know himself at all.”

  Sad? Confused? What about Topper’s pranks, his wide-as-the-world grin? No one smiled or goofed around like him.

  “He didn’t want to be who he was,” Hattie said on the phone. “He wanted to be like everyone else and so he fought it. Your brother hated being a fairy.”

  “A fairy? Honestly, Hattie. The two of you had … relations.”

  “‘Relations’?”

  “I saw it! In the butler’s pantry!”

  “Oh my,” Hattie had said with a chortle. “Not a spot you’d like to spy one’s brother in. Yes, we had a bit of fun together. But he never enjoyed it as much as he wanted to. He was always somewhere else. Poor guy. I tried to talk to him about it. There are communities where…”

  “Stop. I don’t want to hear any more.”

  And then Hattie had posed the question that’d render Ruby weak-kneed and stammering.

  “Were there other photos?” she’d asked. “Anything with Sam?”

  “With Sam?!” Ruby had choked, for she’d not told Hattie why he’d been hospitalized.

  She’d mentioned only trauma, a brief mental … faltering. But Ruby revealed nothing about the senator’s son, or that he and Sam were busted in the munitions room. She never used the word “pervert,” as the doctor had.

  “Gosh, Ruby, I thought that’s why you sent the package,” was Hattie’s response. “Given the business with Sam in that hospital.”

  “No! I sent it because of Topper, obviously!”

  “Huh. I wouldn’t have figured you’d bring up old dirt on someone who was dead.”

  “Don’t get all high horse on me,” Ruby had snipped. “Hattie Rutter, a woman who takes it in the rear.”

  “Whoa, Nellie. That’s a low cut, sport. You do know their history, yes?”

  “Their history?” Ruby had said, addled, confused, and quite cross. “What history?”

  “When the two were boys there was some … experimenting.”

  “Good-bye forever, Harriet Rutter,” Ruby had said before throwing down the phone. “Don’t contact me again.”

  That was the end of their conversation, and their friendship. Ruby hadn’t wanted to hear that word. Experiment. After all, her husband’s medical records contained it, too. Sam was not queer by nature but an “experimenter” by circumstance. A “casual homosexual,” if you will.

  “Subject is interested in women and has enjoyed a normal heterosexual life,” his file also stated, notes taken after a weeklong observation by a Red Cross nurse. “Not thought to be a confirmed pervert. Readily passed the gag reflex test, demonstrating infrequent fellatio. Official diagnosis of a psychoneurotic rather than sexual psychopath. Recommend to the board he return to duty.”

  And the board agreed. Stamp, stamp, stamp. A signature or two and Sam was cleared for reassignment, cleared for battle.

  “Congratulations,” the doctor had said when calling with the “good news” about tongue depressors and casual sodomy. “I hope you can both move on from here. I happen to believe that as with any other sick person, these types deserve compassion, not condemnation.”

  Ruby should’ve listened to Mary and never gone to Portsmouth to meddle in Sam’s health. It was seeing Sam and talking to that smug doctor that sent Ruby back to Cliff House and into Topper’s desk.

  Why’d she send those photographs to Hattie anyway? Did Ruby really need to dig that deep? No, she did not, and the universe punished her greatly for it. Hattie did more than study the pictures. She assessed them, wrote about them, and then put them out for the world to see. Professional advancement, at Topper and Sam’s expense. The photographs showed no faces, but to Ruby it was an utmost betrayal.

  The doctor told them to move on, and Ruby was doing precisely that. Nothing that happened on the ship was relevant anymore. The same went for whatever occurred among puckish and exploratory boys. All that was to say: Hattie Rutter was welcome to buzz off.

&nb
sp; “Ruby!” Hattie screamed from the Cliff House drive. “Let me in!”

  Ruby backed away from the window just as Miss Mayhew approached. How much Hattie might reveal to her, Ruby couldn’t guess. Harriet Rutter’s wild unpredictability was a lot more of a gas two summers before, when the world wasn’t shot to hell. Thank goodness Miss Mayhew didn’t run in their same circles and, having been a maid, she was already trained in discretion.

  Well, Ruby couldn’t worry about any of that now.

  Hattie would tell her, or she wouldn’t. Miss Mayhew would be surprised, or she wouldn’t. Whatever the case, it was time to push forward, pick out the good scraps from the rubble and the mess. And so with fire and determination, Ruby slammed the window shut and turned away from Hattie, for once and for all.

  * * *

  The victory garden was coming along peachy keen.

  There were no actual peaches but instead a smattering of vegetables, a right spiffy throng of tomatoes, carrots, Swiss chard, and beets. Ruby was surprised to find she’d inherited Sarah’s green thumb, though she did have to knock out most of Mother’s bluebells to make the room. “Deflowering for victory!” Ruby might’ve called it. No small number of lads would champion a sentiment like that.

  “The garden looks spectacular,” one Coffin sister said.

  Ruby could never remember their names. It was this sister or that, the turnip or the celery stalk. The Coffins, they weren’t so bad, but they did make Ruby pine for Mary’s sparky beat. Yes, Mary’s. The sisters were dull as wartime toast.

  “Why, thank you,” Ruby said, and swiped the dirt off her dungarees.

  Ruby had been putting her all into that garden, her heart and her soul. There’d been too much destruction and she wanted to make the world beautiful once more. Being the number one vegetable producer on Sconset was an added kick.

  “I must give credit to my sister-in-law,” Ruby added. “For starting it before she left.”

  “Nonsense!” the Turnip said. “It’s grown tenfold since then.”

  “Well.” Ruby blushed. “With lots of help. That was an aces tip about the chard. It grows like a weed! The other veggies are doing mighty fine as well. I have quite the load for today.”