After a few stretches, Bess pads to the downstairs bathroom, where she runs a brush through her long, straight hair. A few of Cissy’s blond, kinky ones end up on her shirt. Bess checks herself in the mirror. She looks a tad pale but otherwise not so bad. Of course, she’s not wearing her glasses, so that helps.
Bess tugs down her pants, realizing just how badly she needs to pee. She closes her eyes in relief. After what feels like minutes, Bess opens her eyes and reaches for the toilet roll. Then her gaze drifts downward and Bess lets out a scream. Her formerly white jeans, bunched around her ankles, are now completely caked in blood.
56
The Book of Summer
Ruby Young Packard
June 6, 1944
Cliff House, Sconset, Nantucket Island
“Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.”
That’s the news from the front lines today. The allies have initiated a large-scale attack, the end game the liberation of a continent. I’ve had the radio blasting all morning, waiting for news, listening to FDR ask the nation to join him in prayer.
I’ve put off food shopping for the past three days and paid the price by having to venture to the market today. At every turn people were deadly silent. What to make of this attack? We are liberating people but we’ll lose so many along the way. As we passed each other, we exchanged glances of compassion, acknowledgment that on this day we all share the same mind.
How many men will perish? I’ve already lost one brother in this war, one brother by accident, and two babies, both male, by chance. A woman should never talk about dead babies in polite company but it is so very hard to forget them. Together these losses tell me one thing. This world is no longer safe for men.
As I write, I think of the sign in town. France: 3,000 miles. France. The beaches of Normandy. A hopeless journey. A lifetime away.
With a heavy heart,
Most sincerely,
Ruby Packard
57
RUBY
June 1944
Her little garden was suffering.
Ruby liked to think it was on account of the invasion in France, that this living, breathing thing she’d cultivated with her own two hands was showing the sympathies of the world. In truth the explanation was far more practical. They were in the middle of a drought. Ruby prayed the dying vines didn’t portend things to come.
On another continent the fighting raged on. Though the Allies demolished the vaunted “Atlantic wall,” there were miles left to go. Homebound nerves were frayed and fried but everybody plodded on. Citizens visited the Red Cross to donate blood and purchased war bonds at unprecedented levels, minds forever locked on the sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, and friends fighting in France. As for Ruby, she had in mind a “sister,” too. Mary was now overseas, sworn into the army, same as P.J. Ruby wondered if their paths might cross.
“Any news?” Daddy would call and ask.
It was now up to Ruby to collect the bad and pass it out like sugarless cake. Daddy was sick, so very sick, his voice skinnier by the day. She’d been ginning up a plan to get him out to the island but Daddy wouldn’t hear of it. He had nurses and books and a mighty fine radio, all he really needed, he claimed. Ruby wasn’t comfortable leaving Cliff House so couldn’t go see for herself.
“Don’t stew a single second,” he’d said. “You enjoy the summer in Sconset. I hear the acting colony is flourishing, the Nantucket Players at full bloom! Have fun and I’ll see you back home in the fall. Meanwhile, please call me with any news.”
Any news?
Not today, Daddy. Thank God. Granted, it would’ve been nice to have some word that all was nifty with her loved ones, but Ruby had to think they dealt the bad business first. She was A-OK to wait.
Ruby spent the morning in Nantucket Town, visiting shops and friends and delivering the paltry spoils of her garden. A little food was better than none but good gravy it was all a twig compared to last summer’s bounty.
Despite the world-changing enormity of the invasion, Nantucket looked the same as it had months before. Bicycles were everywhere. Women helped guide boats into their slips. Every afternoon when the fishing fleets came in, people swarmed the docks, banding together to ice down the catches. The only detectable change was in the service flags in the homes.
If a family had someone fighting, they placed a flag in the window, a blue star for each person away. The blue stars turned to gold when a life was given. On Nantucket more gold cropped up every day. The Cliff House flag was still three blue, Ruby unable to make the change or changes required. Never mind the gold stars, Mary deserved a blue one of her own.
“Here’s my batch of goodies,” Ruby said to the man at the CDVO. “I apologize for its dearth.”
It was hard to accept how much her spoils had shrunk and withered.
“It’s getting worse each day,” she added.
“Sure is,” the man grumbled.
He had two sons in the service, Ruby recalled. She offered him a sympathetic smile.
“Hang in there,” she said. “They’re doing what they can and so are you. There’s a lot to be proud of, all the way around.”
He nodded and then signaled for the next gardener.
Ruby turned and walked back toward the Downyflake, where she’d hitched her bike. And just her luck, the Coffin sisters were lolling about, chomping on penny candies. Ruby grimaced. She wasn’t keen on chatting them up but the time had passed for scurrying off.
“Hello, ladies,” Ruby said, trying to kick up the tenor of her voice. “Hot as the devil’s tail today, isn’t it? Sure wish it would rain.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” they said, exchanging pointed looks.
Devil’s tail. Ruby couldn’t have ordered up a worse visual from a catalogue of sin.
“Will they have the Fourth of July tennis tournament this year, do you think?” Ruby asked, and lunged up onto her bike.
Buoyant was the vibe she was going for, even if it fit funny nine days out from Normandy. Nonetheless, Ruby aimed to pull out all her la-la girl tricks. It was the only way to cope.
“I’ve gotten out on the courts, here and there,” Ruby babbled on. “But my serve is just bananas. I really need to tune my game. Anyhow, toodle-loo!”
Ruby gave the pedals a push and chugged off, glad she couldn’t hear Celery and Turnip’s scuttlebutt stirring in her dust.
* * *
Ruby unlocked the front door, glancing at the service flag as the latch clicked. Three blue stars. Inaccurate multiple ways and no doubt criminally unpatriotic. Truth be told, she was scared to make a change, as if righting the stars would invite ever more loss. It was silly, but Ruby wanted to hold to the losses they’d already had.
“Hello?” Ruby called, her voice echoing through the entryway.
She looked at the clock. Two hours she’d been away. Ruby’s eyes skipped to the stairs, then down toward the kitchen, her feet and heart unsure which way to tread.
“Hello?” she said again.
Footsteps pattered on the wood.
“Hello, Mrs. Packard.”
Mrs. Grimsbury appeared before her. The woman was back at Cliff House full-time on Daddy’s insistence, even though he didn’t know the half of it. Ruby protested but was pleased to have old Mrs. G. around. The woman didn’t talk much, but it was less lonely knowing she was in the home.
“Hi there,” Ruby said. “Sorry I’m late. I got caught up in town. How is everything?”
“Just fine. Nothing of note in today’s post. I saw the Western Union man but he made no stops on Baxter Road.”
“Thank God.”
Ruby exhaled. That they might live another day.
“I’ve made some tea,” Mrs. Grimsbury said. “And put out some cheese bobbies.”
“Thank you,” Ruby said. “And is—”
“In the library. Hasn’t moved all morning. Won’
t give me a word.”
“I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for the rudeness.”
“Think nothing of it,” the woman said. “I understand.”
Some miracle, that. Mrs. Grimsbury was a pious sort. Ruby thanked her lucky stars for the woman’s mercy, for her penchant for acting like there wasn’t a problem beyond stubbornness and a touch of grump.
“Thank you,” Ruby said again.
She ventured toward the library, though she would’ve rather retreated outdoors. Oh, to spend the afternoon lounging in the veranda’s shade, sipping Mrs. Grimsbury’s superb tea.
At the library’s threshold, Ruby rapped gently on the door frame. The room was warm, dark, and still. Ruby knocked a second time. The lump on the chaise twitched in response. Her stomach tightened.
“Sweetheart?” she said.
Sam rolled over and turned toward his wife.
“Hi there,” she said with a smile.
He stared back vacantly, his face dull, his eyes glazed and bloodshot. Ruby held her lips together, her back ramrod-straight in the way of old Mary. She could not crumble. Ruby would not fall.
They’d been drilling it into their heads for years. The women needed to be strong while the men were away. And Lord, did Ruby ever try. But what the ads and the posters and Uncle Sam himself neglected to mention was you had to be doubly strong if and when the men returned.
* * *
Sam had been at Cliff House three months. He hadn’t wanted to return to Boston, so Ruby brought him to Sconset.
Some ninety days ago the navy determined that Sam’s transgressions were not onetime in nature, due to the definition of “one time.” Sam was now a diagnosed sexual psychopath and confirmed deviant, discharged by the armed forces for good.
But Sam was home! He was safe from fire and shells and German submarines. Ruby told herself this was enough, no matter the reason behind it. There was no black-and-white in this war, no right or wrong, simply a continuum of circumstances, a million spots where a line might’ve been breached.
And while Ruby could hate Sam or what he’d done (again!), what good would that do? He already despised himself enough for the two of them.
“Sometimes in such hell,” the doctor had said, trying to reassure, “these men succumb to their basest desires.”
Ruby didn’t mention what Hattie had said, that his “experimenting” went further back and these “basest desires” were what made for such a prickly relationship between Topper and him.
But, Sam didn’t want to be that person, a fact that served as a brightness in this ugly dark. He was disgusted with himself, couldn’t abide his own reflection in the mirror. Even on the ship, minutes after lying with a man, Sam would throw up from the sickness inside.
“Every time,” he told his wife, who handled it like the strongest battleship ever conceived, “I wept for the person I’d become.”
It would stop, Sam insisted, once he was back in their world of roses and sailboats and parties on the lawn. It was a onetime situation, which, of course, was some tough math considering that the navy caught him twice.
Because he was so repulsed by his actions and what he’d done to his wife, Sam spent his days asleep, or drunk, or both, all of it to dull the memories and the pain. Ruby endured alongside because sometimes, every once in the odd while, she’d see a spark of the man she loved. And he was remorseful, passionately so. What could Ruby do? Forgive us our trespasses as we too forgive.
Things remained awkward in their bed, in their house, and on their sleepy isle. Folks knew Sam was home and that he had no physical ailment, as far as they could tell. His own parents stopped coming out to Nantucket, which proved something had gone seriously off the page.
“A fairy,” Ruby overheard someone say in the casino locker room.
The girl thought Ruby was still on the court.
“He’s a fairy,” she said. “Just like Ruby’s brother.”
As it happened, Topper’s predilection was not the world’s safest secret. Every summer he had trolled clubs and courses and watering holes, coming on to women, yes, but often trying for their brothers, too.
“Fairy.” “Queer.” “Sexual psychopath.” Ruby resolved not to let these words provoke her. Mistakes, more than a few, but Topper was dead and Sam was regretful and no one was perfect. Ruby recalled the words she heard last summer, in Portsmouth.
As with any other sick person, these types deserve compassion, not condemnation.
A sickness. That’s what it was. Ruby’s job was to get him well. She loved him enough for the both of them. Especially now that a baby was on its way.
No one knew about Ruby’s condition aside from her doctor, who took a cautious stance given her troubles from before. She’d lost two would-be sons thanks to a misshapen uterus. Malformed, the man called it, which made Ruby feel like even less of a woman than the nonsense with Sam.
“Malformed,” the doctor emphasized. “Not deformed.”
They sounded the same to her. Either way, when her doctor delivered the grim news, Ruby broke down, devastated but also stunned to learn that she was not completely numb to loss.
Ruby withheld news of the pregnancy for now. Sam was too breakable. They were too breakable. All Ruby could do was be careful and, above all, hope and pray. She asked the heavens to watch over this babe, and to please make it be a girl. It was already clear that a boy could not survive such times.
WASHINGTON, DC
JUL 2 8:14PM
MR. PHILIP E. YOUNG
25 COMMONWEALTH AVE. BOSTON
THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR SON CAPTAIN PHILIP E. YOUNG JR. WAS KILLED IN ACTION ON SIX JUNE IN FRANCE. LETTER FOLLOWS=
J A ULIO THE ADJUTANT GENERAL
* * *
Boston was steamy, sweltering. Ruby was pickling beneath her dress. She didn’t know how anyone tolerated the summer in that city, Daddy least of all.
At the front door, Ruby hesitated. Should she ring? Go right in? It was the home she’d grown up in but she wasn’t an expected visitor. She couldn’t tell Daddy she was coming or he would’ve deduced the reason. Ruby wanted him to survive the actual delivering of the news.
Finally, Ruby pressed the buzzer. A nurse answered, her face white though she’d invited this guest. A few days before, the woman had intercepted the telegram about P.J. and sent it straight to Ruby, unsure where or how to relay the news to the boy’s ailing dad.
“Do you think he’s up for seeing me?” Ruby asked, this latest blow hers to deliver.
“Probably not. But he’d want to nonetheless.”
The woman led her inside and to the first-floor parlor that had been refashioned into her father’s bedroom since he could no longer navigate the stairs.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, slowly approaching his bed. “Surprise!”
Ruby’s eyes landed on him and she gasped. I’ll see you in the fall, he’d said. Any fool could tell he’d never make it that far.
“Oh, Daddy.”
Ruby rushed to his bedside, careful not to jostle him in any way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Aw, petal.” His eyelids were gummy, his skin a yellow-gray. “I’ve been dying for so many months I wouldn’t know the first thing to say.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You can’t fear the truth, my darling girl. It’s not all bad.”
“I’m not interested in that irritating practicality of yours right now,” Ruby said with a smirk.
“Your mother tells me she’s bored up there,” he said, and lifted his gaze heavenward. “You have everything under control down on earth. She needs me more.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Ruby plummeted onto the bed, jostling be damned.
“There’s precisely nothing on earth I’d categorize as under control,” she said.
She’d planned to butter Daddy up before dropping the bomb but his bleak face told Ruby that this would be no sneak attack
.
“Have you come with news?” he asked, eyes making a sweep of Ruby’s left hand.
In it she held the telegram, the very one with P.J.’s full name typed in caps. Ruby brought it in case she couldn’t find the words to say. A lucky thing, as that was the situation as she found it.
Ruby passed the paper to her father, hand trembling. A fresh crop of tears filled her eyes. As Daddy studied the telegram, Ruby realized the gross assumption she’d made.
“If you can’t read it—”
She reached out a hand.
“No. I can still read. My vision hasn’t failed quite yet. It’s addressed to me.”
Ruby bit down on her lip and gave a small nod.
“Tilda thought it’d be best if I read it first,” she said, “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No,” he answered, his voice a wheeze.
“See?” she said after Daddy held silent for some time. “Mother doesn’t need you. She has Topper and now P.J., Walter, too. I’m the one who needs you, Daddy. Someone has to stay down here for me.”
He crumpled the telegram and held it to his still-pumping heart. Ruby’s own heart could’ve combusted with sorrow.
“Sam,” he said at last. “Have you heard from Sam? Was he at Normandy, too?”
“No,” Ruby said, and sighed. “He was not.”
She hadn’t told her father about Sam, because what was there to say? Ruby didn’t even know how to speak about it herself.
“You don’t sound too happy,” he noted. “For someone saved from almost certain death.”
Suddenly he took in a sharp inhale, and then grimaced in pain. After a moan, Daddy fumbled about his bedside table to locate a small golden bell. With another groan, he gave it a ring.
“Can I get you something?” Ruby asked. “I’m happy to—”
A nurse materialized in the doorway, a different one this time.
“Mr. Young?”
“More pain medication,” he said in a drawn-out croak.
“Right away, sir. We’re almost out. I’ll call the doctor for more.”
The Book of Summer Page 31