Don't Put the Boats Away

by Ames Sheldon

  Praise for Don’t Put the Boats Away

  “Reading Don’t Put the Boats Away is like being enveloped in a family, a real family bound by love and loss, music, and science. It’s a testament to the danger of secrets and the hope we place in future generations. I enjoyed it thoroughly.”

  —Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg, Eden and The Nine

  “Don’t Put the Boats Away is a richly detailed family saga of the Suttons’ post-WWII lives—and a wonderful sequel to Ames Sheldon’s first novel Eleanor’s Wars. Ames’s knack for period authenticity is paired with a keen portrayal of the inner lives of major characters that transcend common narratives of ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s America. Complex relationships, dedication to music, science, and family loyalty, and the haunting legacy of war even on privileged families make this a compelling read.”

  —Barbara Stark-Nemon, Even in Darkness and Hard Cider

  “Sheldon shows us that, although the sea of life is filled with waves of change and raging riptides, if we surround ourselves with the people and things we love, the voyage is not so treacherous.”

  —Minnesota Monthly

  DON’T PUT THE BOATS AWAY

  Copyright © 2019 Ames Sheldon

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-602-2 pbk

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-603-9 ebk

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019935878

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For my mother, my sister, and my daughter—remarkable women scientists.

  September 1945

  She doesn’t know exactly where she’s going, but right now that doesn’t trouble her. This is the start of the next stage of her life. Harriet Sutton—who’s always been called Harry by her family—puts two fingers into her mouth and gives a piercing whistle as soon as she spots a battered black Ford with a small TAXI sign moving toward the West Madison train station.

  Brakes squealing, the vehicle stops. She opens the door and tosses her suitcase inside. As she slides in and settles on the cracked leather seat, the cabbie turns around. “You only need wave to catch my attention. I watch for customers.” He almost looks like a bum with his unshaven cheeks and chin, but his smile is sweet.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’ve just come from New York City. I guess I’m used to whistling for a cab.”

  “No wonder. Where can I take you, miss?”

  She gives the address of the boarding house where she has arranged to stay.

  The cabbie pulls into the traffic. Watching her in the rearview mirror, he asks, “How was your trip?”

  “The train was terribly crowded. Someone told me more than a million people are riding the rails every month.”

  “It’s all those soldiers returning home from the war.”

  “That’s right. They were pretty raucous. I guess it’s understandable after what they’ve been through.” Then, inevitably, she thinks about the soldiers who will never return home. Her brother Eddie.

  The buildings blur. Quickly quashing her grief, she blinks the tears back. Despite herself, a sigh escapes.

  “Miss?”

  She looks out the window and spots an arresting white granite dome. “Is that the State Capitol over there?”

  “Yep, that’s it. You’re new to Madison?”

  “I’m here to study chemistry at the University of Wisconsin.” Her stomach feels tight. While she’s excited to start, she’s also terrified. “I just hope I can make it.”

  “You seem like a capable young lady,” the cabbie says.

  “You’re nice to say that.” Disarmed by his friendliness, she says, “I can’t get over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki last month. Why did we ever create such a powerful weapon and then use it on innocent people?”

  Watching her through his rearview mirror, he says, “I’ve heard that if we hadn’t used the A-bomb on Japan, the Japs would have held out until the bitter end, and we would have lost another five million of our soldiers.”

  “War destroys so much.”

  The cabbie turns around quickly. “War is hell. I was there in France last time around, in the ‘war to end all wars.’”

  “My mother was there too,” she replies proudly. “Mother drove an ambulance in France.”

  “Is that so?”

  “And for the last two years she’s worked as a nurse’s aide in an Army hospital on Staten Island.”

  “We all did our part.”

  “I’ll say!” Harriet had become much stronger working on their Victory Farm.

  He signals a turn. “Almost there now.”

  That afternoon, standing outside Dr. Blackwell’s office on the third floor of the Chemistry Building, she knocks briskly on his partially open door.

  “Come!”

  She steps into the room. Directly ahead, a wall of books and scientific journals face her, and to her right a man wearing a rumpled jacket sits in a club chair.

  “Dr. Blackwell?”

  As he turns, she sees that his bowtie is askew. “Yes?” He sounds annoyed by the interruption.

  “I’m Harriet Sutton. We have an appointment.”

  “Ah, so we do. Take a seat.” He grabs the papers off the chair facing him and places them on top of his messy desk.

  She sits, carefully crossing her legs, and then tugs her skirt down over her knees.

  He looks at her. “How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-six.”

  “Why start a master’s program at your age?”

  She lifts her chin. “I spent the war years running my family’s Victory Farm in New Jersey. Our chickens produced 1,500 eggs each day, so my hands were full until now.”

  “I see.” Dr. Blackwell goes on to explain that she should register in the graduate school office, and he spells out precisely which chemistry courses she should sign up for.

  “I’d like to take some business courses too.”

  “Why?” Dr. Blackwell raises one eyebrow, which is as bristly as porcupine quills.

  “Because I want to be able to run my father’s company when the time comes.”

  Shaking his head, Dr. Blackwell declares, “That’ll never happen.”

  She sits up straighter. “Why not?”

  “You’re a woman.”

  “So what?”

  “What kind of company?”

  Clenching her right hand into a fist, she says, “It’s a chemical company! I’m here to pursue a graduate degree in chemistry so I can become a research chemist.” She has never spoken so impatiently to a professor in her life. Her parents would be appalled. She’d better get a grip on her temper.

  “Huh.”

  “Are there any other female graduate students in the chemistry department here at Madison?
”

  “One or two. I don’t know why you women bother with graduate school. After getting your degree, you just marry and leave the field.”

  Coolly she replies, “That’s not my plan.” She shifts in her seat. “Are you and Dr. Fowler friends?” Dr. Fowler was her favorite professor at Bennington; he was the one to write her recommendation.

  “We were both working on our dissertations here at the same time. I never understood why Fowler would choose to teach at a women’s college.”

  “He’s an excellent teacher.”

  “I always thought he was a little soft.”

  “I’ll stop wasting your time, Dr. Blackwell. Good day.” As she exits his office, Harriet realizes she’s going to have to find some other advisor. Dr. Blackwell won’t do.

  She just hopes she’ll be able to handle the coursework at this university. Before going to college, she’d needed intensive tutoring, and until she discovered chemistry, she’d thought she was stupid. She loves how much sense science makes. But sometimes she’s still afraid that she’s dumb. To her SAM looks the same as WAS or SAW, so she learned to read fragments of sentences for context in order to figure out what was being said. She’s learned how to manage. On the plus side, the part of her brain that makes reading a challenge is able to visualize molecules in three dimensions, and that’s very helpful.

  Later that day, Harriet sits at the table in her room at the boarding house that serves as her desk. She writes Professor Fowler to thank him for his help getting her into graduate school, and she tells him about the courses she’ll be taking. She doesn’t mention Dr. Blackwell.

  Her roommate, Klara, a perky freshman who is lounging on her twin bed, interrupts. “Is that your boyfriend?” She points to the small framed photo on Harriet’s bureau.

  Harriet moves over to sit on the other bed. “Yes. His name is Frank.”

  Until she met Frank, she’d been afraid she’d never find a boyfriend. She’s very grateful that he’s attracted to her, even if she’s not exactly excited by him. She knows she can be a bit intimidating, but Frank isn’t put off. She likes the way he teases her about being so brusque and bossy and sure of herself. She admires his values—he’s a pacifist, a Quaker, who works as an administrator at the Essex County Hospital. She respects the way he stood up to her father when he questioned Frank about that the first time the men met. She’s glad Frank hasn’t pressured her to get married when the main thing on her mind is earning her master’s degree. All she wants right now is to see what she can do on her own. “And you, Klara? I bet you have a boyfriend.”

  “I have lots of boyfriends, but I’m not exclusive with anyone. I just got here—I want to look around.”

  “That’s smart. This is a good time of life to play the field.” She almost sounds like someone’s aunt.

  “I plan to!” Klara rises and goes to stand in front of the mirror.

  Harriet watches Klara comb her long blonde hair. Then she notices the lamp on Klara’s dresser. Its shade features little round cotton balls hanging from the bottom rim. “I’ve never seen anything like that lampshade. It’s sort of silly.”

  “I think it’s cute.”

  “I kind of like it myself,” Harriet agrees, surprising herself.

  Then Klara grabs her bathrobe from behind the door and leaves the room.

  Thinking she should probably write a few more letters now before her classes start, Harriet moves back to her table. She ought to write her mother and father and her brother Nat, but the family member who fills her mind is Eddie. She leans her elbows on the surface and puts her face in her hands.

  In Eddie’s last letter, the one that reached the Sutton home weeks after the telegram from the adjutant general, he said, “I’ll be seeing you soon,” but he was wrong. Eddie had written, “Our mission is crucially important to the big push ahead, and I know we will help ensure the Nazis’ defeat.” The family only learned the details months later. A member of the Eighty-Second Airborne Signal Company, Eddie died when his glider crash-landed in France while attempting to deliver a high-powered radio set for communications between the continent and England just before D-Day.

  Her mother’s spirit is still broken, and her father never mentions Eddie’s name, but Harriet knows they both think about him every day. So does she. Harriet hopes that after she gets her degree, she’ll be able to step in and assume the traditional role of the oldest son in their father’s chemical company—maybe that would help mitigate the loss they all feel. She wants to do that for her father.

  Klara returns and climbs into bed. “Good night, Harriet.” Klara shuts her eyes.

  Eddie must have been the glue that bound the family together. With his death, everything changed. Eddie had been her buddy. They’d competed against each other at tennis, worked on jigsaw puzzles together, joked and kidded each other all the time.

  Within moments, Klara’s breathing indicates she’s asleep.

  Her other brother Nat is much younger than she. But she wants to be a good sister to the only sibling she has left, even if they aren’t particularly close. A few months ago she tried playing tennis with him, but he isn’t athletic. One night he took her to a jazz club in Manhattan where the music was so frenetic it gave her a headache. She promises herself that tomorrow she’ll write a letter to Nat, now in his final year at Phillips Academy in Andover.

  Shouldn’t she write her mother? The problem is that she doesn’t have anything to say that her mother would care about. Since Eddie’s death Eleanor has continued to work as a nurse’s aide at Halloran Hospital, but once she gets home, she retreats to Eddie’s empty room. Nothing seems to rouse her mother’s interest. Eventually Harriet began to feel she was in danger of becoming infected with her mother’s despair. It’s a relief not to have to witness her misery every day.

  Klara is snoring quietly. Harriet tiptoes over to the stack of books on her dresser and pulls out her copy of Stuart Little, the spine of which she’s turned to the wall. She finds this recently published volume thoroughly delightful, though she’d be embarrassed to be seen reading a children’s book. Harriet loves the tiny mouse and his heroic quest in search of his friend Margalo. She wishes she had a friend like Stuart does. Her best friend at college—Sarah—left after their sophomore year to marry and move to Texas. Harriet has yet to find another kindred spirit.

  As she leaves for the lab early one morning a week later, Harriet spots frost on the mums outside the house. Walking quickly up Bascom Hill, she’s shocked by how cold the wind feels coming off Lake Mendota. “This is outrageous!” she says out loud.

  A young man passing her as he descends the hill replies, “Miss?”

  “It wouldn’t be this cold at home until November!”

  The man’s cheeks are bright pink. “Where’s home?”

  Harriet shakes her head. “Never mind.” She doesn’t want to be diverted by any man. From now on, she’ll keep her eyes down when she’s walking around campus.

  As she continues up the steep incline, she realizes she’d better buy some long underwear and slacks. She’ll stick out among the women on campus in their plaid skirts with sweaters, saddle shoes, and white bobby socks, but at least she’ll be warm.

  Later that afternoon, she sits in the front parlor of her boarding house reading the Capital Times before going to meet Judy, the other woman in her analytical techniques course, for dinner at Memorial Union. According to the newspaper, there’s some controversy over the spiral-shaped gallery that Frank Lloyd Wright designed to house Solomon R. Guggenheim’s art collection in New York City. A wave of homesickness washes over her. Taking a deep breath, Harriet tells herself she just needs to make a friend or two. Someone with interests like hers, someone who’s not as immature as Klara. Maybe Judy will become a friend—she seems thoughtful. There are very few women in chemistry, though one of the teaching assistants in the organic chemistry lab is female; perhaps she’d be another candidate.

  What else would help her feel more at home? Looking
around the room, she spots a card table pushed up against the corner. She’ll ask Mrs. Schmitt whether she could use that table for piecing together the jigsaw puzzle she brought. And Bach, she thinks, recalling Sunday mornings when her father played Bach cantatas, concertos, and masses on the phonograph. She should look for a place where she can hear Bach.

  A few nights later after Harriet returns from studying in the library, she gets the jigsaw puzzle from her room and brings it back downstairs to the parlor. She pulls a chair up to the card table, opens the box, and starts laying out the pieces right-side up. This is a puzzle she and Eddie had made before he left for basic training. Taking a picture of the barn on their family’s farm, they glued it onto a thin piece of wood, and then Eddie showed her how to operate the jigsaw he’d received for his birthday a few years earlier. The pieces she cut aren’t nearly as smooth as Eddie’s, but they still fit together well enough.

  Klara appears at Harriet’s elbow. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m starting to work on this puzzle. Want to join me?”

  “OK.” Klara pulls another chair up to the table.

  “First I like to pick out the edges.”

  Klara joins in, pushing the edge pieces to the side. “Then what?”

  “We put them together to form the frame for the picture.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Klara starts connecting edge pieces to each other.

  Harriet looks at Klara. “This is kind of fun, isn’t it?”

  “Mmmm.” Klara is clearly preoccupied. She fits two pieces together.

  “My brother and I used to spend hours working on jigsaw puzzles together. It’s such a companionable way to spend time with someone—you can talk or not, it doesn’t matter.”

  The clock on the wall is ticking but otherwise the room is quiet. The hooked rugs on the floor add to the feeling of coziness.

  “Harriet?”

  She looks up from the table.

  “You could look really attractive if you curled your hair. It’s thick and such a pretty shade of brown. I could show you how to set it.”