RUBY
July 1941
As they sat in the dining room of the Yacht Club, Hattie Rutter glowed and crackled like a blaze. Her hair, her cheeks, her lips, all a fireball brand of red. She had on a dress, God love her, a maize Parisian number so impeccably tailored she’d make a military fella look a wreck. And beneath it all, breasts that were high and full like a moon over water. Ruby longed to quiz Hattie about the specifics of her foundations—she could do with a little perk-up herself—but it was too crass, even for the summer and the beach.
Plus, there were things more pressing than the pertness of one’s breasts. For all of Ruby’s talk about Topper’s dash, his suave bewitchery, the man was seriously rough. Possibly hungover. Like he was going to capsize.
Topper’s hair was greasy and matted, his face sweaty and pale. He spoke in the rambling, slurred manner of a drunken vagrant as he smoked cigarette after cigarette, barely letting one extinguish before taking flame to the next. Not even Ruby could ferret out the handsome devil within him and she always saw the best in her brother, as a rule. It was a wonder Hattie hadn’t excused herself to the ladies’ and wiggled out the window.
“I can’t believe FDR still thinks we can stay out of this war,” Topper said.
“He doesn’t think we can, he hopes we can,” Sam returned. “Two different things.”
Ruby’s husband and brother were pecking at each other like a couple of roosters. Something about the recently announced Russian invasion. Bolsheviks. Two equally hateful countries duking it out until their deaths. Ruby took a few slugs of her sloe gin fizz to stave off an encroaching headache.
“Nothing,” Topper said, mindlessly tapping his fingers as he stared out at the harbor. “We’re doing nothing. Bunch of yellow-bellied pansies.”
“Speaking of yellow, what’s that color you’re wearing, Hattie?” Ruby asked, trying to direct the conversation back toward the prettiest dame in the room. “Would you call it a Naples yellow? It sure is nifty!”
She was awkward as hell, but Ruby had to do something.
“Huh.” Hattie shrugged. “Never thought to check. I just call it my yellow dress from France.”
“Well, you look sensational,” Ruby said, and meant it.
Hattie Rutter’s fashion sense was bar none, yet she always seemed desperately clueless about it. “My yellow dress,” for Pete’s sake. Hattie had a gift, an innate gift. Style spilled right onto her.
“Whaddya think, fellas?” Ruby asked. “Isn’t Hattie just beyond?”
“Now’s the time to strike,” Topper said. “While Hitler’s focused on Russia.”
“Boys.”
Ruby slammed both palms on the table and rose to partial standing. The men startled, and every adjacent party turned to stare. With a mad blush, Ruby slowly lowered herself back down. Mother would hear about this within the hour and likely have her head.
“Can you please,” Ruby said between gritted teeth. “Can you please, for the love of all that is holy, shut up about Hitler and pay our new friend the slightest respect? Every man in this cotton-pickin’ joint developed a puppy crush on her before the salads were out. What’s wrong with you two? Communists and Nazis, when this stunner’s at our table. For the love of God.”
“Oh, golly, Ruby,” Hattie said after a giggle and a gulp of gin. “You’re sweet as hell, but you don’t need to come to my defense.”
“It’s not about your defense. The point is…”
Ruby sighed. What was the point, exactly?
“I just wish these two imbeciles would stop jawing for a second and appreciate the scene that’s in front of them.”
“Honey,” Sam said, and placed a hand gently on Ruby’s knee. “I appreciate you like nothing else. No two ways about it.”
“Yeah, Red. Don’t take it so personal.” Topper’s eyes zipped all over the table, every which way but up. “Your friend’s a real doll. A dish times two. Sorry, Miss Rutter. We’re a mite single-minded at present. When the entire world is on the precipice…”
“Don’t think a bug about it,” Hattie said. “These are serious times.”
Topper gave her a quick salute and turned to get a better shot at Sam.
“We can’t wait around for Russia and Germany to destroy each other,” Topper said.
“No use getting emotional about it, old sport. FDR will dip his toes into this pool, by and by. But we need to be rational. Measured.”
“Measured?” Topper balked. “Wrong. We should send every goddamned tank, bomber, and able-bodied man overseas tomorrow. Hitler’s already wiped out an entire generation. He’s bankrupted the art and culture of Paris, London, and Rome. Fifty million people are starving, and that doesn’t even count the ones dying in forced labor camps. How many more countries will we let fall? How many people will die before we step in?”
“I’m telling you, we’ll step in,” Sam said. “Eventually. But it has nothing to do with saving folks halfway across the globe and everything to do with saving ourselves.”
“It must hurt to be that cynical and dead inside.”
“Topper!” Ruby chirped.
“No, no, it’s fine.” Sam patted Ruby’s knee again. “Your brother likes to shoot off. That’s his entire persona. Robert. You have to understand, this is about dominance and clout. The balance of power in Europe is the very reason the United States has reached its superpower status. And now that it’s threatened?” Sam blubbered his lips and took a drag of his cigarette. “We’re all up shit creek. Even Thomas Jefferson once fretted about what might happen if Europe operated under a single hand. This isn’t about ideals. It’s about maintaining our strength. And any action that threatens our formidable military force must be carefully considered.”
“Maybe to save the world we need to sacrifice our own.”
“Honestly Topper,” Ruby said. “Is this appropriate dinner conversation? Killing our countrymen?”
“You can’t look away,” Topper said. “Not even for a good meal, especially when others are going hungry.”
Ruby glowered at him.
“Half the stuff they print about the starvation and labor camps is fabricated,” Sam said. “Yellow journalism through and through, designed to tug at the heartstrings of impressionable students such as yourself. This country’s education system is turning out a bunch of pantywaists.”
“Good grief, Sam,” Ruby said. “You only graduated two years ago.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Sam went on, ignoring his wife. “Things aren’t peachy, but the papers embellish.”
With a scoff, Topper chucked his napkin onto his plate, which was still piled with meat. Ruby went to remove the discarded linen but found it already mottled with gravy. She glanced at Hattie and detected the hint of a smile, one eyebrow ever-so-slightly raised. What must she be thinking? Nothing good. She hadn’t said a word.
“Well, I’ve read,” Ruby said, trying to remove the stains from Topper’s napkin with the corner of hers, “the folks in the camps are being treated well. They’re even allowed to observe their religious practices without harassment.”
Topper snorted.
“I’m sure reports from Der Führer are as reliable as a drunk.”
He turned back toward Sam.
“We are all of us humans in this world. We should protect each other, not worry about arbitrary lines drawn by dead men or our own preeminence. Hitler is pure evil. He must be eradicated.”
“He is evil, I agree, but…”
“Stop it, you two!” Ruby barked, letting go of the last smidgen of pretense that the night could be saved. “We’re supposed to be having a nice dinner but you blockheads ruined it. Bolsheviks. A war we’re not even in. Hitler—at the dinner table! You boys are the worst! The positive end of good manners! Good Lord, Hattie, I am so very sorry. They are not normally this repellent.”
“Aw, don’t sweat it, Ruby,” Hattie said with a chuckle.
She leaned over and snaffled a smoke from Topper’s pack. Hattie preferred French cigarettes, always at the ready with a package of Gauloises, but a lowbrow American brand could do in a pinch.
“I don’t mind talk of war,” Hattie said. “It’s more real than a Yacht Club romance, that’s for certain.”
“You shred it, wheat,” Topper said in approval.
Ruby blushed furiously and set to attacking her salad.
“But I have a question for you, our dear and oh-so-educated menfolk,” Hattie said.
She gave a cute smirk, and then sucked deeply on her cigarette. They all waited as Hattie exhaled over her shoulder, the smoke curling away in a seductive dance. As Ruby scanned the room, she noted every man in the place trying to catch a peek of this magnificent and rare bird.
“What about the Iceland rumors?” Hattie asked, honoring the table with her attentions once again.
“Iceland?” Ruby said, thoroughly flummoxed.
“Sorry if I sound ivory-tower about the whole deal, but I’ve been cut off from the real world these days, truth be told.”
“That’s exactly how it’s supposed to be on Nantucket,” Ruby groused.
Anyway, women weren’t supposed to be so politically charged. At Smith the only ones who moaned about politics were the bespectacled, down-at-the-heels pinko types. The gals with no beaux and tragic hair.
“Why would we send troops to Iceland?” Hattie asked. “Seems like a real crummy place to me. What would Nazis want with it, if the gossip’s true?”
“Iceland is a stepping-stone,” Sam explained. “An important stop between Europe and the States, as the Vikings demonstrated.”
“The Germans are Vikings,” Hattie said. “Got it.”
“But Hitler says he has no interest in our part of the world!” Ruby blurted out.
“Oh, Jesus H.,” Topper said. “Ruby. Please stop taking Hitler at his word.”
“It’s not that I believe him, it’s only that he must have his hands full so why…”
“His hands are full with Russia, which is why we should strike now!”
“A German occupation of Iceland would be highly strategic,” Sam interjected. “The Brits have been stationed there but are moving their troops to the Continent. People think FDR is going to offer up some replacements. It’d be a way to aid Britain without jumping all in.”
“Why can’t he send troops to Iceland and to Europe?” Topper said. “We’ve got plenty of men in this country anxious to help.”
“For example…” Sam said, gesturing toward Topper and rolling his eyes.
“You boys are aces,” Hattie said with a cackle. “Big fun.”
“Speaking of big fun!”
Dang it all to hell, Ruby wasn’t going to give up yet. Hattie must’ve met some real charmers in Europe to withstand Topper and Sam for so long a stint.
“It’s buckets of fun,” Ruby said, “to watch Hattie play tennis. She whips that ball around almost as deftly as she can knit a pair of booties. We’ve entered the Independence Day tournament together. Won’t that be a hoot? I think we’ve got a decent shot at top prize.”
“Swell, swell,” Topper said, lighting yet another cigarette, though one was still fuming and pinched between his teeth. “If we do go to Iceland, it just proves that we don’t actually care about helping the Allies. We care about protecting ourselves.”
“Nothing wrong with protecting ourselves,” Sam said. “The initial deployment has to go somewhere. This is good as any.”
“I’m sure Londoners and Parisians will sleep better at night knowing we’re in damned Iceland, cutting up with Eskimos and so on.”
“You’re thinking of Alaska. And it’s save ourselves first, sport.”
Topper grunted and flicked his cigarette. It skittered into Hattie’s shrimp salad.
“Robert!”
Ruby leapt to her feet. This time she didn’t care who was watching.
“Your manners are abysmal! Mother would be horrified. I’m horrified. Hattie, Miss Rutter, I’m so extremely sorry. I’d offer an excuse but I can’t think of a decent one.”
“Ah, shucks, it’s no problem whatsoever.” Hattie plucked the butt from her plate with her perfectly manicured fingertips. “This is the most excitement I’ve seen at the Yacht Club to date. And if you can’t get your hackles raised by a war”—she tucked the cigarette inside a napkin—“then you don’t have a pulse to start.”
“She gets it.” Topper crooked a thumb in her direction. “The woman gets it.”
“You’re a good sport, Miss Rutter,” Sam said. “And Robert over here is most sorry. Their mother wasted all her energy in raising the older three. Gave up when she got to the fourth. He was too much of a project.”
“Sam is full of tommyrot, but I am truly sorry,” Topper said. He extended an arm across the table. “Friends?”
“Friends.” Hattie shook his hand and extinguished her own cigarette. “And no apology necessary. I quite enjoy a political tussle. But just so we’re clear, Mr. Young. Robert. Topper. Whatever they call you. You keep mentioning London and Paris, but there is more to Europe than these two cities.”
“Of course, but I…”
“And I’m alarmed that you don’t seem to know this.”
As Topper tried to mask his pale-faced, dropped-mouth look of shock, Ruby smiled. Hattie did not act like a Hulbert Avenue type at all. Maybe this night wouldn’t prove such a bust. Maybe Topper had finally met his match. There was hope in their little crew yet.
* * *
The Nantucket High School band kicked off the parade.
Ruby felt a swirly thrill with the boom of the bass drum and the first tentative clangs of the instruments, most of them poorly played but darn spirited nonetheless.
All along Main Street and its cobblestone byways, from the red-bricked, white-pillared Pacific Bank at its head to the Rotch warehouse at its foot, people waved paper flags as American Legion floats rolled past.
Ruby and her family were smushed together on the sidewalk with hundreds of Nantucketers and off-islanders alike. To Ruby’s left was Mother, to her right was Mary. Behind them stood Daddy, his presence tall and firm. He’d been ill, unsure if he would make the trip out. Poor man had been working like a beast lately, retooling his facilities to handle gas masks instead of golf balls.
As for the other boys, Topper and Sam and P.J., they were having a few preparade pops at the Moby Dick. They promised to show up before it was over, but any pledge by Topper might as well have been made in sand, mainly where whiskey was involved.
“What a sight, eh petal?” Dad said, and squeezed Ruby’s shoulder. “Best Independence Day parade yet.”
She turned to smile, squinting with the too-bright sun, the brilliance of the trees and moors and heather. They’d opened Cliff House weeks ago but finally it was summer.
“It’s the tops,” Ruby said, blinking into the sunlight. “An absolute A plus.”
Daddy smiled and gave her another squeeze. Ruby turned back toward the street to watch as Lord and Lady Marley of England motored by. Their appearance in the parade had been Big News on the island, but who or what they were Ruby didn’t exactly know. It sounded fancy enough, which was probably the very purpose of them.
Ruby glanced toward the opposite sidewalk in time to see Hattie stroll up. She was with a pack of girls, a couple of familiar faces, though no one Ruby knew personally. Hulbert Avenue dames, no doubt. Ruby and Hattie caught eyes and exchanged smiles and waves.
Hattie was still in that morning’s tennis togs, but Ruby had changed into a shirtwaist dress, partly because of Hattie herself. When Ruby tossed on her tennis costume that morning—crisp white shorts and a tab-necked blouse—she thought herself pretty danged sporty-slick. She even gave a little strut for the benefit of her husband, who had been reading the paper on the veranda.
“Why, look at you!” Sam had said. “You’re cute as a bug’s ear.”
Ruby left the house tra-la-la-ing and feeling nifty, at least until Hattie meandered up in a midi skirt, nipped and pinched in all the right places. The getup was somehow old-fashioned and modern at the same time, and most assuredly direct from Paris to boot. Très chic, Hattie Rutter’s customary status.
“Ready for the semis?” Hattie had asked, and stubbed out her cigarette on a bench. “Let’s blast them to Hades.”
Their opponents stood on the other side of the net, gawping at the pair.
With chic playing the ad side, and schoolgirl playing the deuce, Hattie and Ruby won their match (7–6, 6–4) against the prior year’s champs. One was athletic and violent, prone to slamming balls at opponents’ bellies. The other was pretty but dim. On the beam but off the bean, as they said.
Hattie and Ruby were to face a new team in the finals at four o’clock. They’d miss the annual fisherman-postman tug-of-war as well as the various eating contests (doughnuts, pies, apples). But if Ruby had the chance at a trophy, by golly she’d go after it. Lord knew she’d never get one trying to take down a plate of pie.
“There’s your doubles partner,” Mother said, and leaned close. “She’s quite the looker.”
“That she is,” Ruby said with a nod. “Actually, I’ve been trying to set her up with Topper. I think they’d make a smashing pair.”
“Topper?” Mother screwed up her face. “Why, it’s hard to think of him settling down. He just plumb doesn’t seem interested.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Daddy grumbled.
“Oh! Look!” Mary called. “Here come the Red Cross ladies!”
“The way I see it,” Ruby said to her mom, “Hattie Rutter might very well be the one to lock Topper into place.”
Lock him into a country, she did not add.
“Perhaps,” Mother said. “But I would hate for my fiendish son to waste the poor girl’s time. She must have a line of suitors a mile long.”
“She does. But is anyone more dashing than Tops?”
“Philip Junior,” Mary offered as she kept her eyes glued to the Red Cross float and its six-foot-tall papier-mâché hypodermic needle.
“P.J. is darling,” Mother said unconvincingly. “Well, I’m anxious to watch the two of you cream the Coffin sisters at four, sharp.” She wiggled her brows. “Those girls don’t stand a chance.”
“What about you, love?” Daddy said, and gave Mother a soft pinch to her side. “Surely you can bring home a trophy or two, just like the old days.”
“Oh please. My tennis is rustier than the weather vane on our roof.”
“No, I was thinking along the lines of … let me see … By Jove, I have it!” Daddy snapped his fingers. “The rolling-pin-throwing contest. I’ve seen you exhibit great skill in that department. The other night, when I came home late from work, for example.”
“Malarkey,” Mother said, giggling as she squirmed away from him. “I brandished the rolling pin. I didn’t throw it. You interrupted my baking.”
“Likely story.”
“Who could blame me? You tinker in that factory fourteen hours at a go. I barely know what you look like in the daylight. How is it that we’ve had so many kids? Better check with the milkman!”
Mary turned around, her mouth fallen in horror.
“Mother Young!” she yipped. “I’ve never heard such a crude remark!”
“Because you married the boring one,” Ruby said.
As both of Ruby’s parents laughed, Mary took several very deliberate steps away from them.
When Ruby turned to look at Daddy, she noticed Mother clinging to his arm as tears puddled.
“Ma?” Ruby said, tentatively. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve never been better. This island. My family. Cliff House. It makes me full, finally and at last.”
Ruby flinched. Her mother’s mind had drifted to Walter, as it so often did. The second son had been Sarah’s favorite. He was kind and handsome and whip-smart. Walter committed but one error in life, a first mistake that would also be his last. Late one night, with too much hooch diluting his blood, Walter Young drove a carful of girls into a tree a quarter mile from the Dartmouth campus. The girls survived but Walter did not.
It’d been five years and the family hardly talked about the middle brother anymore. But Ruby still saw Walter, every once in a while, lingering between her parents. Usually, though, his ghost stayed in Boston. No one brought thoughts of him into summer.
“Nantucket is the best,” Ruby said, aspiring to keep her mother’s spirits high. “I can’t imagine life without Cliff House.”
Mother smiled, though her eyes continued to tear.
“It’s everything I dreamed of when I asked your father to build it.” Mother’s tears were streams now, the puddles moved on. “And you know what? It keeps getting better. Because next year we’ll stand in this very spot, together. And the year after we’ll stand again. Soon there will be babies in our home and at this parade, clutching American flags in their chubby precious hands.”
Mother sighed and Daddy wrapped one arm around her.
“Sometimes I think the world is so scary and hopeless,” Mother said. “And getting worse by the day. But when our family is together in Sconset, it makes me believe that in the end, everything will turn out precisely as it should.”
* * *
“Well, here they are. Everyone please put your hands together for the Ladies’ Doubles Champions of the Nantucket Yacht Club.”
Topper clapped wildly and took a deep bow. He kissed Ruby’s hand, followed by Hattie’s, then whipped out his Rolleiflex. As Topper set his camera down, Ruby saw his eyes dawdle on Hattie, as well they should. She was a one-hundred-percent-certified knockout in a silk ivory dress with ruffles cascading toward the floor.
“Champs,” Hattie said with a grin. Her nose was slightly sunburned. “That’s us. But, shhhh, don’t tell the rag mags. We don’t want to get mobbed by the press or our hordes of adoring fans.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Topper flung the camera over his shoulder and placed a hand over his heart.
“And as for you, little brother,” Ruby said. “You cut a dashing figure. I’m glad to see it’s not all snips and snails and puppy-dog tails with you.”
“Thank you, Madame.”
He took another bow, and then flipped the tails of his tuxedo as if they were feathers.
“I can gin up okay.”
Ruby exhaled, only just then realizing she’d been holding her breath. Gee whiz, Topper sure looked and sounded loads better than the last time they’d all been in that ballroom together. Ruby thanked her lucky stars.
“Alas my countenance could never match that of a one Miss Rutter or a Missus Packard,” he said. “You two dames have already stolen the show and it hasn’t even begun.”
“You snake charmer, you,” Ruby said. “Speaking of Packards, where’d my husband run off to?”
“He’s chatting with the valet. I lost interest and wandered off to find you.”
He reached into his coat.
“Care for a cig, Miss Rutter?” He extended an engraved silver case in her direction. “I picked up some Gauloises on your recommendation.”
“Glad I could spread the good word.” Hattie snagged one. “I admire a man who takes my advice.”
Philip Junior and Mary strolled up then, looking agreeable if not both slightly put out. He was acceptably dapper and she was elegant, for an old stodge anyhow. It was amazing how half a decade could turn a pretty, white-gloved deb into an ordinary Boston low-heeler. Then again, Mary’s heels had never been that high, even when she wore the gloves. But Ruby had to give it to her. Mary did look mighty swell that night, years shaved off her in a jiff.
“Holy Moses!” Ruby said, and gave her sister-in-law a squeeze. It was easier to have compassion toward Mary after a few swigs of gin. “That’s some dress. Gorge as can be. Would you call that a wisteria blue?”
Maybe the gal had a bit of the va-va-voom in her yet.
“Er, um, I’m not sure,” Mary said, straightening her skirt. “I suppose you’d know better than I.”
“Hello, Ruby,” P.J. said, and gave his sister a tin-man embrace.
He nodded toward Hattie, a bob of acknowledgment.
“Hello there,” he said.
“You really are a hot numbah,” Hattie said to Mary, and took a suck on her cigarette. “Simply de-vine. Thank God they haven’t rationed our good fabrics like over in Europe.”
“Not yet,” Topper said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“And how.”
Hattie took another drag and Topper slipped her a wink of appreciation, a gesture caught by Ruby alone. She beamed at the two of them.
“Hey now,” Topper said. “Whaddya say we shake a leg and head outside? The water carnival and sky parade are due to start.”
“Three parades in one day.” Hattie shook her head and laughed. “And a tennis competition. This is some kind of town. Buzz off, ya stupid war!”
“Well, actually,” Ruby said. “The sky parade is in lieu of the traditional fireworks in respect for…”
“T’hell with all of it!” Hattie prattled on. “We don’t need any of that wretched business marring our sweet island.”
“No siree!” Topper said, joining in. “I personally would rather think about lights on a boat than Stalin’s scorched-earth policy. Come; let’s find a place in line. A bad spot would be the true tragedy.”
He took Hattie’s hand and led her outside. Ruby’s heart lifted as if the hand was hers. Though they were bantering about the stupid war, they were clearly enjoying the party, and each other.
“Shall we go, darling?” P.J. asked, petting Mary’s slender arm. “We don’t want to get a sucker’s seat and miss the show.”
“Very well,” Mary said with a sigh. “Are you coming, Ruby?”
“Ummm…”
Ruby glanced toward the door, surprised to be suddenly frowning.
“Actually,” she said, “I’ll wait for Sam. We’ll be out in a minute.”
“Fine.” Mary sighed again. “But don’t ask us to save you a spot.”
* * *
The water carnival was no joke.
Every boat at the club was decked out in red, white, and blue mini-lights. A band played from a flotilla in the harbor while searchlights bounced between the land and sky. Colored flares lined the shores.
“Golly, what a scene!” Ruby cried, leaning more tightly against Sam.
He stood behind her, arms secured around her waist. Every once in a while, he nuzzled her neck and hair.
“Get a load of all the people!” Ruby said. “They’re dancing everywhere!”
“It’s a scene and a half,” Sam agreed.
With a smile on her face, Ruby picked through the crowd with her eyes. Surely somewhere in the middle of the festivities were Hattie and Topper. She grinned wider just to think of it.
“Oh, Sammy.”
Ruby spun around to face him, tucking both arms beneath his.
“Isn’t this night the tops? The laughter, the lights, the air itself. I’ll never be able to breathe enough of it in.”
She looked up at her husband, expectantly, but Sam didn’t answer right away. And in that flicker Ruby noticed his eyes. They were glassy, on another plane. Just like Mother’s when she was thinking of Walter. Ruby’s stomach dropped.
“Sammy?”
“The night’s grand, baby. Simply grand.”
He pulled her snug and rested his chin atop her head.
“You’re a light in this life, Rubes,” he said, his voice vibrating against her cheek. “There’s not a soul like you in all of Massachusetts. All of the world, I’d venture.”
With a happy little shudder, Ruby tried to catch his eyes.
“Tonight,” she said. “I’m thinking … tonight seems so filled with magic. So perfect and ripe. Perhaps now it all comes together.”
“What comes together?” Sam asked, crinkling his forehead.
“Tonight’s the ideal night to make a baby.”
Ruby blinked and at once Sam’s eyes went from glassy to full-out wet. Though Ruby’s peepers were plenty damp themselves, she understood at once that his tears were a different type.
“What is it?” she said, trying not to snivel. “You seem … sad.… Something’s wrong. Please don’t rain on my parade.” Ruby pointed to the harbor and then to the sky. “Either one of them!”
“Parades.” Sam shook his head. “That’s the whole problem, Rubes. Here we are acting jolly and carefree and an ocean away … Your brother is right.”
“Last I remember, you two weren’t exactly meeting minds on the topic. Lord almighty, can we avoid the war business for one night? One measly night?”
He gave a watery little smirk.
“Avoid the war?” he said. “An ironic request given it’s Independence Day.”
“Har har, very funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Samuel Packard.” Ruby drew him close, pulling his body flush with hers. “You can go back to fussing about Nazism tomorrow. For tonight, let’s focus on children, and the nifty time we can have making them.”
Ruby wanted a baby, a miraculous creation that was hers and Sam’s alone. But there was more to her wish. A little nugget would render Sam 3-A: a man with a dependent and therefore draft-deferred. Ruby had been studying that damned chart since it came into effect days before. She was downright bedeviled with noodling out where each person she loved might fall.
“Whaddya say?” Ruby gave him a nudge. “Do we have a deal, sport?”
Sam chuckled dryly. A searchlight passed over his dark and handsome face, and Ruby felt a kick to her heart. Just like her Smith pals used to say, he was movie-star gorgeous, one hundred percent.
“Sam?” Ruby said, tentatively.
“I’d love to have babies,” he said, returning his gaze to hers. “I’d love ten of them!”
“Well, now that sounds excessive. We’re not Catholic.”
“But we can’t start a family yet. It’s a scary world and I don’t want to bring an innocent babe into it. Things must settle down first.”
“Settle down?! That could take years!”
“That it could,” he agreed.
“I want to start our lives now. Why must we wait for the outcome of some skirmish in Europe?”
“Ruby, I want a family. I do. But…”
Sam’s words petered out and his entire body slumped. He looked like he was carrying a heavy load that only he could see.
“You’re not going to enlist, are you?” Ruby said, breath clambering around her chest. “Sam, you can’t. I know you want to help, and your heart is the biggest thing going, but only a crazy person would enlist. Someone who is well and truly bonkers.”
“Nearly twenty million men registered for the draft last year,” he said. “So it’s not that crazy. Now we all have to register, Ruby. Every last one of us.”
“Then register! But wait to be called. You don’t go over there until they ask you to. Oh, God!” Ruby threw her head back. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you? You want to leave me for a fight.”
“Ruby.” Sam clamped his hands around hers. “I don’t want to leave, but it feels as though I should. Like a calling.”
“Then go over already,” Ruby said with a sniff.
“It’s not that simple. There’s you, of course.”
“Of course.” Ruby sniffed again and rolled her eyes.
“And to be honest … to be absolutely frank … I’m not sure I have it in me to fight. I’m afraid I’m not man enough.”
Ruby remained silent because, really, what could she say?
She didn’t agree—Sam was the best man she’d ever known—but Ruby was hardly compelled to convince him that he was combat-ready.
So without a word, Ruby embraced her husband and then turned back around just as the first plane appeared. A second joined it. Soon birds and animals and fish began fluttering down onto the boats, restaurants, and the merry people twirling in the streets. It was literally raining good cheer but all Ruby could think was, Damn, that’ll be a wreck to clean up.
* * *
“Don’t let the cat out of the bag just yet,” Mary said, an unaccustomed punch to her step as the three women walked down the road toward Sconset Casino.
It was late morning. The fog still hung round the shore; the briny air was damp and dense.
“What cat is this?” Ruby asked, cinching her coat.
“I’ve secured Gracie Fields for the August fund-raiser!”
“Gracie Fields, the actress?” Hattie said. “She’s fab. I saw her once in Paris and twice in London. The poor woman has cervical cancer and she’s hauling herself all the way out to Sconset? Good gravy, Mary. That’s quite the coup. The Red Cross should be payin’ ya by the hour.”
“Yes, well, thank you,” Mary said, as buoyed as she’d ever been. “I have truly put my full heart into the Grey Ladies but I’m not doing it for money or even recognition.”
“Obviously you’re not doing it for the money,” Hattie said with a snort. “A Bostonian never does. You know what they say, wholesale charity and retail penury. It’s not a Back Bay soirée unless you’re raising money for something whilst not spending a pretty penny on yourself.”
“And what do you know of it?” Mary carped.
“Oh, I know plenty. My stepmom is just your type. Swear to beetles, she’s chomping at the bit for rations to go into effect. Government-ordered austerity. She’s way ahead of the game with her decades of practice.”
They walked a few more yards in silence. Ruby wondered if she should step in the middle of the back-and-forth but decided to keep her feet clean.
“I’m curious,” Mary said with a cut to her voice. “What is it you’re doing here, in Nantucket? Your family is from Boston, but you’re from, where exactly?”
“Beats me,” Hattie said with a shrug. “For a while, I would’ve told you Europe, but that’s the stuff of yesteryear, courtesy of that pesky Hitler turd. Now I’m stuck at Pop’s house. I guess I’m not from anywhere at the moment. Just hangin’ round, seeing what’s what. Getting conned into setups with handsome young Harvard men.”
“Five dates!” Ruby chirped. “But who’s counting?”
“I think someone is, but it’s not me or Topper.”
As Hattie playfully elbowed Ruby’s side, Mary stopped dead in her tracks, the gravel rolling beneath her Robeez sandals.
“So let me get this straight,” she said, eyes burrowing into Hattie’s face. “You’re just … idling?”
“That’s the long and short of it, I suppose. Listen, sometimes a gal’s gotta idle.”
“Hear, hear,” Ruby said.
“But surely you have somewhere to be when the summer ends,” Mary pressed. “No one stays on the island save the fishermen and Quakers. You don’t have a job, I presume.”
“I did, at a magazine in Paris. But they canceled my contract.”
Hattie chucked her cigarette into the road and reached for another, only to find she was all tapped out. She whipped out a packet of Wrigley’s.
“Want one?”
She passed a stick Ruby’s way.
“I don’t understand,” Mary said.
“Geez, back off,” Ruby said. “Before this Bundles for Britain deal you weren’t exactly lighting the world on fire with your industry.”
“Aw, sweet Rubes,” Hattie said with a cluck. “Always coming to my defense. I don’t mind the question. Honestly, Mary, I haven’t a clue what I’ll do next. Ain’t it grand? So many options to consider. Now.” She clomped one foot on the ground. “Shall we proceed? The badminton fund-raiser’s not gonna run itself.”
She linked arms with Ruby, and even with old Mare, and together the girls continued down the road.