RUBY
May 1943
Ruby sat across from Mary in a heavily paneled, dank restaurant near Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Oh but they were a heartbreakingly long way from Sconset. It was enough to make a girl weep.
“What do you mean you won’t go with me?” Ruby said as she shifted anxiously in her seat.
Never mind the throb of sorrow that forever pulsed through Ruby, her entire body ached after traveling a wicked mile (or five hundred) from Boston to DC in a train stuffed with servicemen. All of them rattling toward other cities and states, new futures heretofore unknown.
Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourselves into? Ruby had wanted to scream at them. Your good looks and bravado will turn to junk once Uncle Sam gets ahold of you!
Just as she’d predicted, just as she’d feared when Topper and Sam announced their support of the war.
Oh, God, Topper. It’d been eight months since he died and the mere thought of him stung like a fresh cut. To think, the last time Ruby saw him was at Mother’s funeral, when she was still pregnant, when faith didn’t seem like something from a children’s book. Almost a year out and the devastation of the losses still hung on Ruby like a heavy cloak. Now, this matter with Sam.
“I’m sorry,” Mary said now, in the paneled DC haunt. “I wish I could help, but it’s not a possibility.”
“Mary. Please. I’m begging. I’ve never asked anything of you before.”
Ruby hated the desperation in her voice, but desperate she was.
“I’m rather busy,” her sister-in-law said simply, though it was not simple, this bad business they now found themselves in. “I can’t take a whole day off from work to visit another hospital.”
“You told me you go to Portsmouth all the time!”
“Yes. To provide medical aid and for training. Not on ill-advised jaunts that could land me in a bundle of trouble.”
“Sam is in the hospital,” Ruby said, enunciating each syllable. “A naval hospital. My husband is injured and you, the closest person in my life aside from Daddy and Sam himself, you can’t come with me to see him?”
Ruby’s cheeks burned. She thought surely—surely!—as Mary was a nurse, she would take this trip. Ruby should’ve gone with her first instinct, which was to ask Hattie. But in that regard she didn’t want to receive four letters saying Hattie would come, followed by a telegram saying that she couldn’t. Just as she had last summer. Just as she had for Topper’s funeral. Ruby’d had a beast of a time forgiving her for that.
“There are others who need me more,” Mary said.
“And what about me?” Ruby asked, loud enough to cause some bluster.
The people nearby cast them curious looks.
“Don’t I need you?”
“Ruby, I can’t. Not in my current position. I haven’t even received my full qualification yet. Think of how it’d come across.”
“We’re family,” Ruby said. “You and I, we’re both Youngs, don’t you see? We’re supposed to help each other, especially now with Mother and Topper gone.”
“I’m sorry.…” she said for the fourth time, or the fifth.
And Mary was sorry, truly. Though this was exactly zero consolation to Ruby.
“What you’re doing”—Ruby snuffled—“or not doing. It’s just … it’s simply indefensible. If P.J. were here, he’d insist you help.”
“P.J.?” Mary said, blinking like she was trying to remember the beat of some tune not heard in years.
“Yes. Your husband. Do you remember him? Because honestly sometimes it seems like you don’t.”
Mary shook her head. She looked at Ruby with downcast, sorrowful eyes.
“P.J. would agree with my decision,” Mary said resolutely, as if she’d consulted him directly. “Once again, I’m sorry. I truly am. And it was nice to see you. The dinner is my treat.”
She reached for her handbag.
“Some treat,” Ruby steamed, her sadness morphed to fury.
Such quick changes were frequent phenomena these days, her emotions a real mystery prize of sentiment. Ruby never knew what might come up next.
“Ruby, don’t be cross,” Mary implored.
“Don’t be cross? Sorry, sister, I don’t see how I could feel any other way.”
Seventy-five minutes. A full hour-plus of niceties and how-do-you-dos, not to mention a wretched meal of what they called steak but was canned meat. They couldn’t even have coffee at the end. When Ruby asked for a cup, the waitress glared at her like she’d requested a sack of nylons. Had Ruby anticipated this outcome, she would’ve skipped Washington altogether and rode straight on through to Portsmouth, directly to Sam’s bedside.
“I can’t put myself in that situation,” Mary said as she handed some bills to the waiter. “It just cannot be done.”
“A nurse can’t attend to a war-injured man? A naval lieutenant who’s battled it out in the South Pacific for nearly a year? I don’t know how they’re training you in Washington, but it sounds like you might need a repeat course.”
“I refuse to take offense,” Mary said, “as your emotions are running high.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“But as far as ‘war-injured,’ that is a matter of interpretation.”
“You think so, do you? Well, all I know is that my Sam was sent off one way, and is currently in another state altogether. He had a physical and was deemed fit to serve. So if his health is compromised it can only be due to this war.”
Mary gave a partial shrug and crammed the change into her coin purse.
“I despise that you’re in this predicament,” she said. “But I have no choice. Shall we go?”
“Fine,” Ruby said, and stood. “I suppose good manners dictate that I thank you for my meal but I’m quite lacking in gratitude.”
“I understand and was pleased to share a meal with you nonetheless.”
Ruby was agog. The nerve! Mary snubbing her and acting gracious at the same time. Pick a doggone personality and get on with it already.
“Good night, Mary,” Ruby said, trying to sound secure, assured, outright unbreakable despite all the cracks.
No, Ruby would not collapse. She would get through this. They would get through this. Her love for Sam would bolster her, toughen her once more.
The U.S. Needs Us Strong.
“I’ll see you again one day,” Ruby said, flip as a coin. “Presumably.”
She turned to leave.
“Are you sure you really want to go?” Mary called out when Ruby was halfway across the room.
Ruby spun back around, even as her good sense told her to forge ahead.
“Beg pardon?” she said.
“What you might see and hear…” Mary shook her head as Ruby stepped closer. “I’ve visited that hospital. That ward. The very floor Sam is on.”
“Well, bully for you.”
Of course, Ruby already knew this. It was the first thing Mary said when Ruby called with the news, when she described Sam’s condition, hoping for a sympathetic ear and some explanation as to his prognosis. Mary provided neither the ear nor the would-be nurse’s impression of Sam.
“I’m only trying to tell you,” Mary said, “that seeing him could change the way you view things.”
“How I view things?” Ruby said with a snort. “My dear, how I ‘view things’ changes by the week. One year ago I had a mom, and a little brother, and a baby on the way. Nothing could change the way I view the world more than losing all of that.”
Mary frowned.
“I know,” she said in a whisper. “It’s just…” Mary exhaled. “Sam is ill. Remember that, even if he looks the same to you.”
May 10, 1943
Dear Hattie,
I saw your article in the Herald Tribune. It was fab! A real gumshoe piece. I didn’t know the black market for food in New York City had grown so large. You must’ve spent scads of time chasing down the details. I suppose it’s good the Yanks don’t play baseball year-round!
Well, my friend, I write to you from the Hay-Adams hotel in good old Washington town. The city’s a swampy pit just as promised, and the hotel (and the restaurants and people) a tad stuffy for my tastes. But there’s a sense here, knowledge that, nearby, decisions are being made that will change the world.
Speaking of changing worlds, tomorrow I will venture down to the naval hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia, where Sam is recuperating, another victim of war, though compared to others he is in decent shape. That’s what I tell myself. As I mentioned the other day, his injuries aren’t life-threatening. Whether they are naval career–threatening I cannot begin to speculate. Mary was no help there, surprise, surprise. It’s up to me to find out for myself.
Golly I’d love to see you on the ride back to Boston. Might you have a free night to step out and do the town? It’s been a long time since I’ve had a bit of fun. Send a telegram to my attention at the Hay-Adams and let me know what you think.
Well, my friend, time to hit the percales and get some shut-eye. I trust you are well. I think of you often, always with great fondness, particularly in these dark times.
Your friend,
Ruby Packard
* * *
Ruby woke up the next morning a stitch before dawn.
It took several minutes to make out where she was. The Hay-Adams, a reservation made by Daddy so that Ruby could bypass some dreadful women’s hotel like the Grace Dodge or, God forbid, the YWCA. She ran darn Cliff House without a man involved. Ruby could certainly manage an average-size bedsit.
Ruby surveyed the clothes she brought, a couple of one-piecers, and some two-piecers, before settling on a lilac rayon and wool jersey dress with sash. After securing her hair into an omelet fold, Ruby applied a light dusting of makeup and then put on a small, trim hat. She swooped up her fingertip coat and hoofed it out onto Sixteenth Street, but not before posting a letter to Hattie to be mailed out that day.
The journey used up the entire morning and a good chunk of afternoon, too. Ruby brought a book to keep her occupied—Mrs. Parkington—plus some magazines recommended by Hattie. In the end she only read a sentence or two in favor of staring out at Virginia’s green countryside.
They rumbled up to the Norfolk station at 2:05 p.m. Ruby hailed a taxi and rode the short distance to the hospital. She read they’d doubled, or even tripled, the facility in the past eighteen months, but did not expect the sprawling, white hospital before her. Everything suddenly felt more serious.
A convoluted pathway of interlocking buildings and corridors led Ruby to Sam’s ward. The place was crowded, busy, teeming with staff knocking this way and that. She didn’t encounter many patients, thank God, when winding her way to the guy in charge, of Sam’s health at least.
“Hello there,” Ruby said brightly to a young nurse manning a desk.
She was a doll, this one, and so were the others. Mary was going to fit into this nursing gig about as well as a rotten tooth in a gleaming set of chompers.
“My name is Ruby Packard,” she said as the girl smiled prettily. “I’m here to visit my husband, who’s recuperating on this ward. His name is Sam Packard. Lieutenant Packard, that is.”
Ruby didn’t know if wives showed up at that hospital, as a rule. Daddy had pulled a few strings, turned a few levers, promised a few golf balls, to get Ruby so quickly on the books. Was she a common sight? Or would they be a-twitter about her presence the second she turned her back? Ruby found she didn’t expressly care.
“Right-o!” the girl said, and stood with a burst. “The doctor is expecting you. Let me see if he’s ready.”
The nurse rapped on the door behind her, then poked her head inside, looking quite like the back end of an ostrich. Ruby tried to avoid staring directly into her tail, but the room was dang small.
“Yes, ma’am,” the nurse said, her whole person returned to the room. “He can see you now.” She cocked her head to the left. “Good luck, honey. Just so ya know, a lot of them recover. And you might be the perfect cure.”
* * *
Ruby sat blinking at the man, trying not to seem befuddled by his words. She went to Smith for cripe’s sake, even took a biology class or two. A far cry from medical school but she was no dope even though she felt like one then.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” the man asked again, this doctor with the round spectacles and thinning hair.
“The psychoneurosis…” Ruby started, concentrating as she tried to decipher the word, the first she’d heard it. “The war caused it?”
“It’s possible,” the doctor replied. “However, often we find it’s been there all along.”
“All along?” Ruby said with the hint of a scoff. “Doctor, I’m sure you’re a very smart man, and the folks at this facility quite well trained, but I’ve known Sam my entire life. We’re married. I’d know if that sort of thing was … lurking around.”
“You’d be surprised. In general, the psychoneurosis is a by-product of the underlying condition. In the unique environment of the armed forces, men with such predilections will sometimes develop psychosomatic disorders and work themselves into states of acute anxiety. This causes the psychoneurosis, and the resultant behaviors.”
“So then how do these people—”
These people. Other people. But not Sam. That was not her husband. It was, as the good doctor said, a “by-product.” Something to be fixed.
“How do these people get accepted?” Ruby asked. “Into the service? The exam sounded quite thorough.”
“It is. The problem is that many deny their abnormalities to induction examiners because they imagine the rigors of the environment can turn them around. Others plain haven’t acknowledged the truth.”
“Oh,” Ruby said lamely.
“In this case, based on extensive questioning and analysis, we believe your husband stretched the truth when entering the service.”
“You think he lied?” Ruby said, unsure whether she wanted to cry or scream or both.
Strong, she reminded herself. Your love for Sam will keep you strong.
“He’s never exhibited the slightest indication,” Ruby told the doctor. “And I’ve known him since we were children.”
“Yes, you mentioned that,” he said. “Perhaps we’re wrong and it’s a temporary lapse.”
“I’m sure that’s all…”
“I have to level with you, Mrs. Packard. A year ago, he’d have been sent his papers by now. A blue discharge, as it’s known. Not honorable, not dishonorable. But the lack of specificity is its own black mark. As I’m sure you’re aware, all employers ask to see military service records.”
“I’m not worried about Sam’s employment prospects.”
“Hmmm.” The doctor simpered as he looked her up and down. “I suppose not. The point is, he’s in a fortunate position because if we determine it’s an aberration, your husband can stay in the navy. A year ago it would’ve been an immediate discharge and even a stint at the brig. But we don’t have the luxury of squandering any borderline men who might prove fixable.”
“Borderline!”
“There simply aren’t enough to go around.”
“So I should pray he’s cured,” Ruby said, jaw tightening. “In hopes that you’ll be able to send him back out to fight? Another body to the war?”
“That’s the short of it.”
The doctor walloped his hands together and stood.
“Well, my dear, are you ready to see your husband?” he asked. “The good news is that a pretty wife is often a very reliable salve. Here. Follow me.”
* * *
Mary was right, the wench.
Sam looked as he always had. A little thinner, and tanner, but given the horrors one could see in a military hospital, Sam might as well have been starring in a cigarette ad. He was handsomer than ever.
“My Sam,” Ruby said, her hands cupping his face as tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh Sam, what have they done to you?”
“I’m sorry, Ruby, my love,” he said through his own tears.
“No. No apologies allowed.”
“Did they tell you?” Sam asked, wincing as he spoke.
“Yes. But never mind all that. This war, it goofs up people’s heads. That’s what happened, isn’t it? The fighting? All those months at sea? It’s polluting your thoughts.”
Sam bowed his head, hesitating, taking a beat. At once Ruby realized the crunch he was in. The doctor said it himself. If this was a slip in character, a brief crack-up to be patched, that meant Sam could return to battle. The nightmare would begin anew.
But if it were a permanent affliction, he could go home.
“Incidentally, I don’t give a fig about blue discharges or marred service records or any of that garbage,” Ruby said. “If this ‘condition’ can send you home for good, then by God I’ll accept it, a thousand times over and multiply that by two.”
“No,” Sam said, eyes wide with alarm. “Don’t talk like that!”
Ruby glanced around. Silly girl. They were in a military hospital, for the love of jam. It was no place to admit one’s secret desire to scotch the service.
“Gotcha,” Ruby said with a wink and a nod—literal, that is. “I get it.”
Another wink.
Sam looked at her cross-eyed.
“No, Ruby, it’s not like that.” He sighed. “I want to go back. This joint. It’s making me bonkers.”
“Of course it is!”
It was a psycho ward, after all. Naturally, Ruby wasn’t eager to remind him.
“Who could blame you?” she said. “I’m jumpy and I’ve been here all of fifteen minutes.”
“There’s so much that was terrifying,” Sam said, speaking more to himself than to his wife. “Beyond words.”
Ruby nodded. Beyond words, except where it went into print. The papers covered the action, in excruciating detail, as much as they could give. For example, Ruby learned that last fall, U.S. naval forces had been creamed in the South Pacific. The Japs destroyed a dozen ships and took people hostage left and right. Sam’s own vessel was involved but they managed to keep it floating.
This was the abbreviated tale, pasted together by Daddy, a summarized kid’s version, if you please, as Ruby couldn’t bear to read the reports herself. She’d stick with Hattie’s black-market investigations and box scores for now. Let Daddy give her the need-to-know.
“Sweetheart,” Ruby said, and took both of Sam’s hands in hers. “It must’ve been horrific.”
“It was, but even so, I miss it.” Sam shook his head and bit back his tears. “Damn it, I miss the ship and the routine and the…”
He couldn’t finish, the tears now hot and angry in his eyes.
“I want to go back,” he said.
Ruby squinted at her husband. None of it seemed like a put-on, a ruse to keep the top brass happy. Ruby didn’t quite know what to make of the declaration, considering Sam’s state: in that bed and in that ward.
“It might sound off,” Sam went on. “But the most alive I’ve ever felt was on that ship.”
“I’ll try not to take that personally,” Ruby said, and attempted a terse chuckle. “And yes it does sound a little ‘off.’”
“What I mean is,” Sam said. “You see, I’ve never been filled with such drive and purpose, with such a deep sense of ‘this is where I’m meant to be.’ Don’t you have at least some pride in me because of it?”
Ruby dropped his hands and then picked them back up so as not to send the wrong message.
“I’m very proud of you,” she said. “But I’d rather you be home.”
“I don’t want to go home. Not yet. Please.” Sam stared at her, those rich brown peepers of his wet and imploring. “Tell me that you understand.”
“I’m … I’m not sure. I don’t know how to answer.”
“I want to go back.”
“You’ve made that very explicit,” Ruby said. “But how am I supposed to accept it? You going back to battle, this hospital, the events that led you here … You’ve asked me to understand but that’s asking a lot.”
“It is asking a lot. But Ruby, don’t think about here. Believe me. I won’t let that happen again. That … that was a onetime thing. A mistake. I promise, my love.”
Ruby found she was bobbing her head as he spoke.
“That’s my girl,” Sam said, snuffling. “I swear to you, I swear with everything that I have, everything I am, that I’ll never succumb to the vile urges that—”
“Sam, don’t.”
“Sometimes it’s easy to forget where you are,” he said, “when you’re on the other side of the world.”
Forget where he was? Didn’t Sam say it was the very spot he was meant to be? Ruby couldn’t help but think that none of this would’ve happened if she’d stayed pregnant, if she’d held on to that baby for the full ride. She was at least a little to blame.
“Well, Sam,” Ruby said, and cleared her throat.
She kissed him gently on the forehead and felt herself fortifying. The U.S. Needs Us Strong.
“If you truly want to stay in the navy,” she said, “then do what you need to. Just remember who’s waiting for you. Remember that together we still have a home.”
* * *
A heavy mist fell on Ruby as she booked it across Baxter Road. Once her feet hit the white-shelled drive, she turned and waved at Miss Mayhew. So nice of the girl to fetch her from the ferry landing. Miss Mayhew was a kind soul, not to mention sharp enough to understand that Ruby didn’t have options beyond the generosity of her former hired help.
Weekender bag dangling from her left arm, Ruby struggled to unlock the front door. It always jammed in this weather, dammit. Meanwhile, Ruby’s hair began to flatten as the rouge slid straight off her face. Not that her ’do and makeup weren’t already in a state. She’d been traveling for eons.
Once inside, Ruby tossed her bag onto the hall table and walked to the back of the home. She’d never fully closed it up last September. Good thing, too, as she spent four weeks of winter there, trying to survive her grief. Cliff House. It would save her every time.
In the kitchen, Ruby glanced outside to where the patio furniture was strewn about, looking sad and abandoned against the brightness of the flowers blooming in the yard. Mother had planted her garden with purpose: decking it out with bright pink clematis, plus rambler, portulaca, zinnias, and their island’s famous roses. In the old days, children cut flowers from their gardens and brought them to the flower stalls on Main Street to sell for ten cents a bunch. Ruby wondered if the tradition would ever resume, or if she and Topper would end up being the last children in that home.
How long did she plan to stay, precisely? An hour? A day? Ruby had her luggage, sure, but had worn most of her duds down south. To answer “how long,” Ruby needed to figure out what she was doing there in the first place.
Ruby canvassed the kitchen and its pantries. Everything was bare. She’d need food if she stayed on. As she pondered what she might pick up, Ruby’s eyes drifted toward the butler’s pantry. Something triggered inside of her.
With a turn in her stomach and a kick to the side, Ruby beelined it toward the famous Cliff House spiral stairs and took them two at a time, straight up into Topper’s bedroom. She launched the door open, heart thrashing in her chest. The room was untouched since his death, because of course it was. His death! Topper was dead! The sorrow clobbered Ruby all over again.
“Damn you, Topper,” she muttered, wiping her eyes. “You were supposed to be my brother forever.”
Would it always stay like this? Topper’s room? With its flags and trophies of boys waiting to make that play? Mother had boxed up Walter’s room lickety-split after he died, but who was going to deal with Topper? Ruby would never be fit for the task.
With a quick show of spit-shining a football trophy, not that there was a soul around to see, Ruby dropped to her knees and opened the bottom drawer of his desk.
The photographs were, no surprise, exactly where she’d left them. Ruby removed the stack and flicked past the ones of Hattie, two of Mother unawares, and on down to the bottom of the pile. And there they were, same as before. All those pretty boys.
This one, with eyelashes longer than the Nile, staring coyly at the lens.
That one, who Ruby suddenly realized was Nick Cabot himself. He was naked, or so it appeared as the frame showed only his bare torso, down to his hips, where his muscles were taut and defined and angled to some unspeakable place below.
There were others, too. One man’s behind. Two male bodies, entwined, their connection unmistakable, their faces obscured. All of them godlike creatures, perfect in body and in form. Maybe that’s all it was, an appreciation of art, courtesy of God.
Or was it the alternative, something Ruby never would’ve considered if not for Sam? It seemed preposterous what with the ladies and the swagger and the dash. Why, Ruby had seen Topper taking it to Hattie right downstairs. There was no definitive evidence formulating one conclusion or another. But there was a body of work, which sketched a certain picture.
The same picture, as it happened, the navy accused Sam of drawing. That of being queer. A sodomite.
“You’re fortunate there are family members in high places,” the doctor had said on Ruby’s way out the door.
“My father?” Ruby asked, confused.
Daddy knew about the hospital stay, but not the nitty-gritty. Her stomach went wonky at the thought.
“No. The other offender is the son of a vaunted southern senator. He wants the whole thing swept under the rug. Count yourself lucky.”
Counting luck hadn’t been in Ruby’s cards these days, so she hadn’t been sure what to make of the so-called advice.
Photos in hand, Ruby scrambled downstairs. She scrounged up a piece of stationery, plus one large envelope, and jotted out a note.
Hattie-
Sorry I couldn’t make a stop in New York. I stayed longer in Virginia than originally planned. Sam needed me. Anyhow, I found some beautiful photos of you—and a few others, too. Any idea what they mean? Give it to me straight.
Write soon.
Yours,
Ruby
She crammed them into the envelope, gave it a lick, and then, before she could think better of it, Ruby hustled outside and grabbed Topper’s old bike from the shed. She hopped atop and pedaled the one mile to the post office, able to dispatch the note seconds before the postman closed the gate.