Ruby planned to bike the spoils of her bounty into town later. Her production was impressive, yes, but all across Nantucket the victory gardens were exploding with produce. Come hell or high water, there’d be no food shortage there.
“I think you can supply the entire island’s restaurants in one go,” said the other Coffin, the Celery Stalk.
Ruby smiled. It was plumb dandy to be in on the effort, as much as she joked about the “for victory” rallying cry. Perhaps there was something more to Mary’s nursing aspirations than her enthusiasm for ordering people around in an official capacity. Just like Mary said, contributing to the war effort was more fulfilling than playing tennis or honing one’s golf swing. A gadabout’s life now seemed grossly out of style.
“Is everything arranged for Saturday night?” Ruby asked as she began filling her basket with produce. “Any new jackpots?”
She and the Coffins had spent the last three weeks organizing a “Sell for Uncle Sam” initiative to take place at the casino that very weekend. It was a “Hard-to-Get Auction,” with folks donating all the most prized rationed items, like nylons, coffee, tires, and sugar. The proceeds would go to purchase war bonds, and for one glorious night, no one would have to worry about busting a price ceiling or buying more than her fair share. For her part, Ruby had her peepers on some rubber-soled shoes. Shop for victory!
“We got ahold of one typewriter,” the Turnip said. “Hardly used.”
“Ohhh, we’ll raise some nice dough for that,” Ruby said. “I can’t wait. I think even Daddy will make the trip out.”
She’d also invited Mary, who responded with regret, unable to justify the odyssey from Washington. She promised to buy some war stamps in Ruby’s honor, which was a nice gesture, though Ruby would’ve preferred the person. She’d forgiven Mary for not coming with her to Sam’s bedside, an understandable refusal in retrospect. They had an unspoken agreement to never address it again.
“That’s swell news about your Pops,” the Celery Stalk said.
Ruby nodded and hoisted a basket of greens onto her right hip. Suddenly a stomach stitch overwhelmed her. She took in several deep breaths to chase it away. It was only her tummy pulling and stretching. Nothing to worry about, just a new baby freshly on its way. Sam had been home but two weeks and this turn of events said far more about him as a man than any medical records or stints in a mental ward. He’d done a man’s job. As far as Ruby was concerned, on that ugly matter there was simply nothing left to say.
54
Sunday Morning
“So I’m here,” Evan says, standing in the doorway.
“You’re here.”
Exactly as promised, Bess thinks. I would’ve loved to have been the person you settled for.
She wiggles away the thought of it, having already decided what can she really do? There’s no getting around what happened, or didn’t happen, and though she’d love to, Bess can’t exactly go back and unmarry Brandon. Neither can she jettison her job, sell her possessions, and take up residence in Sconset. They’d never work in the real world. Not for a single second, a fact long since proven. Just ask Evan: They’ve already made that mistake.
“Put me to work,” he says. “What can I do?”
He sets two cups of coffee on the round oak table between them, no spare this time. There is his cup, and there is hers, as denoted by “DECAF” scribbled in Sharpie on its side. Bess reaches for it, though she could very much stand the full caf. She is so tired her head is floating with lack of sleep. There is a gentle buzz that only she can hear.
“I brought my truck,” Evan says.
“Perfect. Some of this stuff, I don’t even know.”
Bess points listlessly to the corner. An umbrella stand. A planter. A vase Clay cracked with an oar in a bout of teenage hijinks before he understood how to operate his gangliness.
“What do you do with an umbrella stand?” Bess says. “Or ninety percent of this junk?”
“Do you have to move it all?”
“I can’t leave it here. It’d be like littering. Anyway, maybe you can start with the artwork?”
Bess gestures to a yawning seascape behind her, one of the many in the home. The painting is all large dunes and small waves, except for the shadow of a woman veering off toward the right side of the frame.
“Sure, I can move pictures,” Evan says. “Even if it is a huge waste of my notable brawn.”
“Ha! Don’t worry about that. You’ve seen the glass-encased Revolutionary War flag in the foyer. It’s bigger than my mom’s Defender so we should probably wait until your coworkers arrive. In other words, we need some muscle.”
“Ouch,” Evan says, walking to her side of the table. “I’ll try not to take offense. Okay, Lizzy C., whatever you need, I’m at your disposal.”
Though he’s going for his usual swagger and sway, Evan moves awkwardly, shuffling like a robot. What he wrote in the Book of Summer, it is the very most he’s ever given Bess. Or anyone else for that matter, though Bess doesn’t know this. What she does know, however, is that her heart is suddenly snagging all over the place, like panty hose after a day of med school interviews.
Bess jiggles her shoulders in order to wake up. High school loves are invariably bigger in your brain. It’s sentimentality, a certain kind of homesickness, really no different from what’s going on with Cissy and the house. Maybe Bess can find an engineer willing to move Evan closer to the road.
“All right,” she says. Bess slaps the table to bring herself fully into the right decade. “Go to it. Rip that sucker off the wall.”
“But isn’t there, you know, protocol, for moving artwork?”
“I’m sure there is, but who has time for protocol? Cissy is now more concerned with being a pain in my ass than the integrity of her personal effects so I’ll do whatever it takes. I need to follow Flick’s advice. ‘Get the shit out and be done with it.’”
“Your cousin is a smart lady,” Evan says.
He goes to inspect the back of the seascape, as if it might tell him something.
“I should inform you,” he says, “that Cissy’s outside. On a lounge chair in some sort of gingham, whaddya call it, tankini.”
“A tankini?” Bess gawps.
“I asked what she’s doing and she said, relaxing and sunning herself. You might have noticed it’s raining.”
“Jesus H., that woman. Because of course she’s sunning herself in a rainstorm.”
“Is she okay?” Evan asks, inspecting the seascape’s frame. “Because she seems a little—”
“Off her rocker? Batshit insane? Psychoneurotic?”
“More zealous than usual,” Evan decides on.
“You’re very polite. Cissy is not in a good place.” Bess wags a finger. “Thanks, in part, to your father.”
“My dad?”
“You know he dumped her, right?”
“I’m not sure he had a choice.”
“Oh, there’s always a choice.”
The words sound biting, though Bess does not mean them to be. This is about Cissy and Chappy and their AARP love affair. Meanwhile Evan looks like someone just criticized his throwing arm. Bess would know, because she’s criticized it before.
“Evan.”
She rests a hand on his forearm. He glances down, warily.
“Thank you,” she says. “For showing me that letter.”
“You’re not mad? Uh, and, I didn’t mean anything by it. It just seemed like something you should have.”
“Of course.” Bess clears her throat but still it’s closing up. “And I’m not mad at all. How could I be? Though you should’ve given it to me the day of my wedding. Or told me how you felt when we talked that afternoon. It would’ve saved heaps of grief, not to mention buckets of cash.”
Bess is trying to joke, but it comes out all wrong. She doesn’t give two shits about the money.
“I’m kidding,” she says, smiling awkwardly, no doubt looking like someone trying to hold in a far
t. “I would’ve married him anyway.”
Would she have? Most likely. Bess was no Cissy Codman, but she’d inherited a few drips of the woman’s stubbornness. It’d be hard not to, with that strong a streak.
“Seriously, though,” Bess says.
Evan has turned away from her and is more or less ripping the painting from the wall. But if he leaves a hole, no matter. Only the hermit crabs will care.
“It was incredibly sweet and genuine and maybe if…”
Bess doesn’t finish the thought. Can’t finish the thought. Maybes are for moping and for regrets. And Bess doesn’t believe in any of that.
“You’re a great guy, Evan Mayhew.” She thwacks him on the back, like he’s just caught a forty-yard pass. “Every girl should have a high school boyfriend like you.”
“Thanks,” Evan mumbles, then tears the seascape down.
He leans it up against the table as he glowers, refusing to look Bess’s way.
“Where are the other paintings?” he asks, so obviously done with this conversation it makes Bess’s stomach dive. “The foyer? I remember something in the library.”
“Wait.” Although he is finished, Bess is not ready for him to leave, even if it’s only into some other room. “I want to show you something.”
She goes over to one of the boxes.
“Check this out,” Bess says, and returns to Evan, paper in hand. “Remember the articles I told you about? The ones Grandma Ruby kept, written by that Harriet Rutter person?”
“Rutter?” Evan’s eyebrows lift.
“Yep. Gram basically stalked the poor woman. Most of it’s just box scores and beauty tips, the odd piece on the war. But this.” She flicks the paper. “I found it in the bottom of an old jewelry box.”
She passes Evan the article, which is from a magazine, the page having lost its gloss. The paragraphs are taped together, likely snipped from different places.
“‘Is He Man Enough?’” Evan reads. “‘And do we care?’”
He hands it back.
“Scintillating,” he says. “But Harriet Rutter can keep her man musings to herself. I’m not really up for an education in lovemaking techniques from the forties.”
“It’s not what you think. In some ways, it’s the opposite.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Bess says. “The article is backward and progressive simultaneously. Sometimes it’s touching and other times appallingly non-PC.”
“Well, it was written in, what?” Evan asks. “Nineteen forty-five? They hadn’t invented political correctness yet.”
“It was forty-three. Okay, listen to this. ‘It used to be,’” Bess reads, “‘that the Armed Forces did not allow among its ranks a certain type of fella. You know the kind. Those with the swish and the swash, the sort of man interested in the charms of other men.’”
Bess looks up.
“She means gay,” she says.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“‘Heretofore Uncle Sam was choosy,’” Bess continues, “‘and enjoyed the benefit of being able to exclude confirmed homosexuals from service. Whether diagnosed by self-admission or a battery of tests—’”
Bess drops her jaw for effect. Evan remains stone-faced, confused as to why they’re talking about gay soldiers from World War II.
“I mean, ‘diagnosed’?” Bess balks. “How is one diagnosed?”
“According to that article, a ‘battery of tests’?” Evan says, holding up air quotes.
“And what are these diagnostic proceedings? The man must redecorate a room? Dunk a basketball? His dance skills are assessed by medically trained experts? What?”
“They gave him guy-on-guy porn and waited for a boner?”
“That,” Bess says, trying not to laugh, “is disgusting.”
She reads on.
“‘Whether diagnosed by self-admission or a battery of tests, a man could be precluded from enlisting simply due to his feminine nature, a lightness to his step.’” Bess looks at Evan again. “‘Lightness to his step’? She knows they’re not actual fairies, right?”
“Continue,” Evan says, smirking and making a circular motion with his hand. “Sounds like you’re close to the good stuff.”
“It’s all good stuff, in a crooked sort of way.” Bess returns her eyes to the page. “‘But with a war on, things have changed and now the entire world is at stake. Men are dying and new ones are called to the front. Our fathers and brothers and friends are being drafted and each day we cast our nets ever wider. As the war bloats and our troops thin, we must ask ourselves, are we truly sending all able-bodied men? Can a person be too homosexual to serve?’
“You see?” Bess says. “I can’t tell if Harriet Rutter is being compassionate, as in, hey, they’re still men, why are we excluding them? Or whether it’s more a matter of, as long as we’re killing people, why do the queers get a pass?”
“I don’t know,” Evan says with a shrug. “Despite the lightness in the shoes and whatnot, I’d bet that even suggesting gays should serve in the military was extremely avant-garde.”
“You have a point,” Bess says. “Just wait, it gets better. Also worse. ‘Homosexuals can presumably shoot a gun. And I’ve known many that are quite the sportsmen; some can even run like the wind!’ Because, naturally, running like the wind is of chief importance in battle. Is she implying they’d run away screaming? Like a woman from an old-fashioned cartoon finding a mouse in her kitchen?”
“I think she’s just saying they’re athletic.”
“Geez, you really are the nice guy,” Bess answers with a smirk. “She goes on to talk about how, and I quote, ‘the setting is not ideal. To send confirmed perverts to live in stressful conditions, conditions featuring communal showers and stacks of other men, seems like a recipe for sodomite disaster.’ I mean…!”
Bess makes a gagging sound and slaps the paper again.
“‘Sodomite disaster’!” she says. “What kind of personnel handles that?”
“The Red Cross?” Evan tries.
“Harriet does quote some Red Cross friend who claims the setting is much too much for these perverts, what with the ‘veritable smorgasbord of flesh.’”
Bess drops both hands, smacking the article against her thigh.
“You take issue with ‘smorgasbord’?” Evan guesses.
“And the flesh! But just when I think old Harriet R. is going completely off the homophobic rails, she veers back toward ‘touching.’ Not like touching, touching—”
“So, double touching?” Evan jeers.
“Speaking of ‘confirmed perverts.’” Bess shakes her head as Evan breaks into full-blown laughter. “I meant heartwarming, you sicko. It’s actually kind of sweet. Hattie interviewed gay servicemen. She claims that despite the flesh buffet and what we imagine to be a bunch of macho, fag-hating dudes, the front lines were a safe place for homosexuals. She writes, ‘Here’s the rub. Out there it’s far more accepted than it is on our own American soil. As it happens, when it comes to male-on-male lovemaking, fellow soldiers look the other way.
“‘I interviewed one homosexual, a former navy lieutenant discharged after repeated offenses. He claims his proclivities were well known and he received far more guff and razzing due to his status as a half-and-half.’” Bess snorts. “An editorial note specifies this means half Mexican, not half ‘Negro’ as one might assume. Well, the guy told her, ‘if a man could find comfort amidst such hell, the general view was: cheers to that.’”
“Aw,” Evan says. “Love on the battlefield.”
“Right? Apparently decades-long affairs began in these circumstances. ‘Being at war,’ a gay soldier told her, ‘was the freest I’d ever been. The most alive I’ve felt was on that ship.’”
Bess sets the paper down.
“You’re right,” Evan says. “That is kind of sweet. Minus the half-breed stuff.”
“One man she interviewed said it was hard to return to the States
because it was back to hiding his true self. The article also mentions pictures, but Grandma didn’t save those.” Bess frowns. “Bummer.”
“It’s nice to think,” Evan says, picking up the article, “that some people found solace in such horrible circumstances.”
He studies the paper, brows crinkling.
“Harriet Rutter,” he says. “That might’ve been the ‘good-time gal’ my aunt talked about. The one who palled around with your grandmother.”
“They were undoubtedly close. Hell, part of me thinks Ruby had some ‘undiagnosed’ sexual leanings in Hattie’s direction. She was unduly concerned with her.”
Evan grimaces and his eyes dart back toward the article.
“What?” Bess says. “What is it?”
“It’s like…” He shakes his head. “You know when you have that sensation? A memory trying to come out? And you can’t decide if it’s real or just something you made up?”
“That describes ninety percent of the time I spend at this house.”
“I feel like…” he says. “Do you think … I seem to recall some rumor? About your grandfather?”
“You mean that he was an alcoholic? Yeah, not a rumor. That’s true. Did I ever tell you that he died falling through a plate glass window while drunk?”
“No.” Evan shakes his head. “Yes. You did tell me that. Way back. But…”
He taps the page.
“This might be about him. Because of him.”
“Wait. You mean Sam Packard was gay? That can’t be right.”
“But you said he was discharged? Somewhat unceremoniously? The rumor was…” Evan squints hard. “I swear there was something about this. My aunt mentioned…”
“No. God no. That’s wrong. I didn’t know him, and he had his problems. But. No. Those weren’t the issues he had.”
Even as Bess says this, she wonders. An alcoholic is never just an alcoholic. He’s someone with a genetic predisposition and a trigger, a reason to self-medicate. He’s depressed. Injured. Suppressing some unwanted emotion. Then there were her grandfather’s discharge papers. Psychoneurosis. A flimsy diagnosis, like what a 1940s doctor might say if he was too nice to call you a pervert.
The Book of Summer Page 29