Family Secrets

by Nancy Thayer

  “Albert White is the best man this world has yet to come up with,” Bobby said heatedly. “Any girl would be lucky to get him. He’s decent, intelligent, wealthy—”

  Jean stuck her hands over her ears, just as she had when she was younger and Bobby was bossing her around. The ironic thing was that for years she had had a schoolgirl’s crush on Al White. He was as handsome as they came, with blue eyes and thick blond hair and skin that was tanned all the time from rowing or sailing or playing tennis. He’d been in Bobby’s class at the Naval Academy and had come home all the time with Bobby, because his own home was so far away, out on the West Coast. Jean had been smitten. In fact, in the early years she’d made a pest of herself, but Al had always been kind. She’d spent hours of her life—days, weeks, months!—daydreaming about him, mooning over him. Then, suddenly, they all got a little older. Jean went off to her freshman year at Radcliffe and returned home grown-up and gorgeous. Al confessed to the astonished Bobby that he loved his sister, and Bobby, in a triumphant act that he assumed would make everyone happy, told Jean.

  And immediately, Jean stopped loving Al. She’d said, “That’s nice,” and shrugged.

  What had happened? Where had the feeling gone? Jean was as mystified as anyone else. She’d always been told she was perverse, wanting to do the things that boys did, insisting on having her own way, taking offense when Bobby offered a compliment and saying thank you when he insulted her, confusing everything. But this baffled even Jean. She wasn’t proud of herself for her fickleness, and in her secret heart she knew that she had stopped adoring Al White simply because he was too good a man. Goodness did not attract her much these days.

  Bobby and Jean rode together in a dark truce for a while, both absorbed in their own thoughts, until Bobby said, “I only meant to do the best for you, and now I’ve ruined your life.”

  “Oh, Bobby,” Jean said, reaching over to pat his arm, “my life isn’t ruined. I still have a place on the review, and Hal will probably be more interested in me now that he knows I’m so young.”

  Ice coated Bobby’s voice when he spoke: “I meant I ruined your life when I told you Al was in love with you. It was bad strategy on my part.”

  “Strategy,” Jean said scornfully. “God, you are such a martinet! And you know what I think about all that, Bobby! That’s one reason I’ll never marry Al. I have always said that I’d never, ever marry a career navy man. And I mean it, Bobby. I do. I will not be a navy wife. And that’s the end of it.”

  Then both of them were angrily quiet. Brother and sister, they loved each other fiercely. There was only a slight bit of jealousy between them; more than anything, they were protective of each other. Their easy intimacy had faded though, because Jean thought Bobby was boring, and Bobby thought Jean was wild. For, like his father, Bobby had gone to the Naval Academy and had decided to make the navy his life; while Jean constantly and with increasing fervor shunned the life their parents had given them.

  It hadn’t been a bad life; in its own way it had been both secure and adventurous. As young children, they had moved a lot, from base to base, as their father was transferred. They’d started new schools almost every year and sometimes entered a school in the middle of the year. They learned to rely on each other more than on the people they met—whom sooner or later they always had to leave—and developed a veneer of sophistication, as well as an honest depth of ease about dealing with the world. It was anything intimate that baffled them; they had never learned how to handle things that approached them closely, and their reaction to anyone who intruded into their small, closed circle was one of alarm.

  Finally their father’s age and experience had gotten him a desk job in Washington. They’d settled into the fine old house on Bancroft Place that their mother inherited from her parents. For the past five years they’d lived in luxurious stability.

  Even so, Jean was determined not to be a navy wife. She admired her mother; she respected her. She loved both her parents, but she had always, from the moment of her first conscious thought, been ambitious for herself. She wanted everything: fame, fortune, adventure, excitement, independence, spontaneity. She was smart enough to get it. She’d proved that. After two years of straight A’s at Radcliffe, she’d gotten bored with college life and increasingly fascinated by a group of serious intellectuals in Cambridge.

  They were starting a literary review called War Stories, a journal of wide-ranging fiction and nonfiction centering on war: firsthand reminiscences or dramatic fictional recreations of battles in the World War or the Spanish Civil War, heartbreakers about war brides and war widows, new translations of the Iliad, research papers on the Crusades, diaries written during the Civil War, poems about the American Revolution. The catch, the beautiful secret, was that antiwar stories, pacific propaganda, and radical ideals would be threaded into each issue in such a skillful way that readers would, over a period of time, be converted, without their knowledge, to the cause of peace. Hal Farmer and Stanley Friedman, the founders of War Stories, craftily plotted exactly how to seduce bankers and businessmen into reading their review.

  The girl Jean admired most at Radcliffe, a brilliant senior named Myra Kaplan, had taken her to one of the early organizational meetings. Afterward she’d introduced Jean to the staff. Jean volunteered to work as a secretary for them as many hours a week as she could for no pay. Much of this fall semester she had been holed up in their basement office off Hancock Street opening mail, typing letters, proofreading essays and short stories, and penciling in her own opinions—for they’d discovered that she was sharp and literate, and soon welcomed her remarks.

  Everyone was talking about Hitler and how soon the U.S. would end up in another war in Europe. Jean’s secret dream—no, her plan, her goal—was to go to Europe as a reporter for War Stories, to send back firsthand accounts from the fields of action. She’d be willing to quit college, risk danger, crawl in the dirt, sleep in Polish barns—her imagination was limitless when it came to her future with this review. She did not want to sleep with Hal Farmer simply because he was attractive but because he knew so much, and she sensed that by being as close to him as she could some of those qualities would rub off on her. And she wanted him to know more about her, to appreciate her—to trust her to turn in reports that would make War Stories famous.

  This was possible because, unlike her father, Hal Farmer thought women were as intellectually capable as men. In fact, Hal often said he wished men possessed more feminine qualities—insight, intuition, compassion. Hal actually spoke of his own emotions and didn’t think of himself as any less a man because of them.

  This was heady stuff for Jean. The only other man she’d seen in action, close-up, was her own father, and Hal Farmer was as different from Lawrence Marshall as a man could be. Commander Lawrence Marshall was a man of action. Jean loved her father, she supposed, yet she hated him at the same time. He was proud, taciturn, and abrupt—a man used to commanding; and his interaction with his family was also commanding. He was not unkind, but he was unfair, especially, it seemed, to Jean. Doubly undermined by being the second child, the “baby” of the family, and by being female, Jean was refused privileges that Bobby received early on simply because he was male. As she’d blossomed into young womanhood, Commander Marshall had grown even more stern, more censorious with his daughter; he’d made it quite clear without ever putting it in just so many words that her virtue was his territory, his responsibility, his possession, and he would decide when Jean should capitulate. Commander Marshall would indeed give his daughter in marriage when she married, for it was clear in his own mind that she was his to give.

  Jean’s mother acted as a sort of liaison officer between Jean and her father. And as her father’s regulations for her life became more and more stringent, Mrs. Marshall could only plead, “Oh, Jeanie, don’t you see it’s because he loves you so? He only wants to protect you!”

  If this was love, she did not want it. And she did not need protecting. Her teachers
had always informed her parents that she was smart, and her parents had always translated this information into a belief that Jean was good, that she worked hard, was reliable, responsible, willing to follow authority, eager to obey. Jean knew it meant that she was intelligent, shrewd, quick, capable. Her mind could take her where she wanted to go.

  And, at the moment, where she wanted to go was to bed with Hal Farmer. She was nineteen. It was time to lose her virginity. She didn’t want to “save” herself for marriage; she hated the implication that a woman’s body was only a safety-deposit box for a dowry, one single jewel, her precious maidenhood. Furthermore, she had no desire to marry. Rather she dreaded it, feared it. Marriage was a prison, a trap; marriage was an ending.

  She would write her own rules. She would give her virginity freely, without contract, and to a man she knew she wouldn’t marry. She had no illusions that she’d marry Hal Farmer. He was already married.

  Riding through the cold, dark night in the warm safety of her brother’s car, Jean reflected on all these things. She knew her brother loved her enormously, that he would even die to protect her; but she also knew that if she told him how she felt and what she was planning, he’d be horrified, and he would think that it was his duty to lock her up somehow, to protect her until she’d come to her senses and submitted. The men she loved most in her life—her father, her brother—were also, somehow, her enemies.

  “Bobby, what did you tell Mother and Dad? I mean, about me?”

  “I told them that I didn’t want you riding on the trains. They’re so crowded these days I was certain you wouldn’t get a seat, and you’d arrive home exhausted. That’s no way to start your Christmas holidays. I said I wanted to drive up to get you.”

  “So you didn’t tell them I’d gone to New York.”

  “No.”

  Jean grinned in the dark. “Thanks, Bobby. I owe you one.”

  “Good, because I’ve got one ready.”

  “Oh, no,” Jean groaned playfully, dramatically putting her face in her hands. “It’s not so bad. Al’s going to ask you to go to the Navy Christmas Ball with him. I want you to go. We’ll get a table, you and Al and Betty and I.”

  “That’ll be a thrill,” Jean said, but under her breath.

  She had never liked Betty from the moment the little mouse entered their lives: a sweet young thing filling her life with bridge parties, charities, and tennis games while waiting for Bobby to graduate from the academy so that they could get married. The minute they were engaged, Betty had started to come over every night to chat with Commander and Mrs. Marshall while hand-hemming and embroidering linens for her hope chest. Betty had no opinions of her own; she was too quick to agree with everyone, and she was so relentlessly sweet that she made Jean want to throw up.

  But the real reason Jean despised Betty was that, under all that sweetness and light, she was greedy; she’d chosen Bobby out of all the other fine young men because she knew he’d eventually inherit a lot of money when his mother died, and she wanted that money. Betty had never said as much, but her interest in Jean’s mother’s crystal or china and vacation home in Newport was obvious. Once, while accidentally passing through the house, Jean had overheard a conversation that gave her the willies.

  In her breathless, high, helpless mouse voice, Betty had said, “Bobby, honey, you know I’ll follow you anywhere, but I do worry about the kind of life we’ll have. I wish I could change, but I can’t help it—you know I’ve always been delicate. I’ll live with you anywhere in the world, but I know a naval officer’s salary doesn’t provide for much in the way of things that make life pleasant.”

  Bobby, always the valiant protector of women, had replied, “Look, Betty, I’m going to come into some money someday, and I bet my parents would be glad to advance me some toward getting a maid for you and a decent place to live wherever I get stationed.”

  “Ooh, do you really think so, Bobby? Oh, that is just so wonderful! I didn’t realize you were so lucky. Oh, sweetie, I’m going to make you the best little home you ever saw …”

  That conversation and the sight of Betty nearly drooling when her future mother-in-law showed her the family Spode china and Waterford crystal that her son and his wife would be given had turned Jean’s stomach. Finally, Jean had spoken to her mother.

  “Honey, she just likes nice things,” Mrs. Marshall had said of her future daughter-in-law. “Perhaps she does have the instincts of a social climber—that will be helpful for her career as a Navy wife. The social niceties are very important; entertaining can be crucial as a couple makes it through the Navy ranks. Betty has drive, and I’m glad. She’ll be a great help to Bobby.” Mrs. Marshall had smiled coyly at Jean. “Don’t be so hard on the girl. I think you’re just jealous because she’s taking your brother away from you.”

  Hopeless, Jean had thought to herself, and hopeless, she thought now as she drove through the dark in her brother’s custody toward the imprisoning safety of her parents’ home. Jean thought of herself as the most wonderful package, a basket of flowers, a casket of jewels that she was only beginning to discover, and in the midst of her joy of discovery she was forced to deal with the knowledge that her family loved only the vessel. They did not know what her goals, dreams, desires were; they did not want to know.

  But they were her family, and it was Christmas, and she would be back in Cambridge in two weeks. She would play the part of the good daughter, good sister, for that brief period, and let anticipation, like a liqueur, warm her blood, fill her head with fantasies that in two weeks she would make real.

  White paper snowflakes twirled from strings above the dancers’ heads in the ballroom of the Army-Navy Club. It was the annual Navy Christmas Ball. Jean Marshall sat at a crowded table drinking champagne, smoking a long cigarette, looking glamorous, feeling vile. So many things were wrong.

  First of all, she looked fabulous, probably more wonderful than she’d ever looked before in her life. Her dark hair had been rolled and piled in sophisticated smooth puffs, held by rhinestone pins—and her dress! This dress! Her father had scowled and bellowed about the price, but her mother said, “Oh, darling, don’t you see? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime dress. We can afford it—let her enjoy it!” It clung to Jean’s slender figure like a second skin, floor-length, long-sleeved, high-necked—in Cambridge Jean had décolleté dresses that her father had paid for but never seen and never would; he wouldn’t let her leave the house in anything low cut. This sleek, clinging gown was all black except for the right arm and the right half of the shirred bodice. Those were a vividly contrasting white. Her fingernails and lips were painted crimson. Her earrings were twisted drops of rhinestones.

  She looked wicked. She felt wicked.

  She looked experienced.

  But the look, the glamour, the hairdo, and gown were all wasted, because Hal Farmer wasn’t there to see her.

  But Hal Farmer would never see her looking like this, she thought with deepening gloom, because Hal Farmer wasn’t the type to go to formal dances; in fact, Hal Farmer would be philosophically opposed to exactly the sort of affairs where such a dress was appropriate.

  Next to her Betty simpered in an insipidly virginal dress of frothy baby pink; she was trying to look innocent, but Jean thought she just looked like a fool. And the way Betty clung to Bobby as they entered the ballroom, oohing and aahing as if she’d never seen Christmas decorations before, made Jean want to spit. The vast room was overflowing with gorgeous couples dancing, laughing around their tables, and pushing their way to the bar. On the dance floor was a woman she’d been watching for a while, a woman Jean admired. She knew something of her history: a senator’s daughter, the woman was now twenty-eight, already married and divorced; and as if that weren’t scandalous enough in 1939, here she was in public, not merely dancing with but practically crawling all over a remarkably beautiful young man who was still at Annapolis! Everyone was talking about her brazenness, but she was obviously having a terrific time, as was her young bea
u.

  Jean wanted to be like that woman, brave, daring, rule breaking, shocking.

  And there she sat, with Bobby leaning toward her now and then, saying, “I really don’t approve of your smoking in public, and I know Dad wouldn’t either.” Or Betty, squeaking at the top of her rodent voice, “My, Jean, with your hair up like that no one would guess you’re only nineteen!”

  Al, at least, was leaving her alone. Jean knew there’d been some discussion about her before they even arrived at the dance; probably Bobby had told Al not to worry if Jean was “moody.” Jean was civil to Al, but utterly cool. No sense in leading him on. She’d danced the obligatory dances with him but had been so bored while doing so she thought she’d fall asleep in his arms. Not even the admiring or envious glances of other women studying them cheered her up.

  When they all sat around the table, crowded shoulder to shoulder with friends and acquaintances, things got a little more interesting: here, too, everyone was talking about the possibility of war. Hitler. Germany. Russia. War. She wished Hal Farmer could see how the men’s eyes became bright and wide when they spoke of war, hear their voices grow louder, deeper, as they talked faster, gesticulated more effusively, puffed out their chests like cocky, strutting roosters. From a purely objective point of view it was fascinating: the most peaceful of men seemed to have something brilliant snap on inside of them at the thought of war, something that illuminated them from within.

  Jean didn’t try to enter the conversation. In Cambridge she would have been in the middle of the controversy, her voice as loud as any of the others, but here she was first and foremost Bobby Marshall’s baby sister, and although the men would have listened to her with courtesy, they would not have heard her words. After all, she was only a junior in college, and a girl at that. What did she know?

  So she yawned. Probably it wasn’t a nice thing to do, but Bobby didn’t notice; not even Al, who was supposed to be in love with her, noticed. Everyone was discussing the war.