Page 77 of The Book of Summer

Cissy tries to make a shapely-woman sign with her hands, but both arms are still occupied with yoga props and vodka.

“Filled out,” Bess says with a snort. “That’s one way to put it.”

Her mom smiles then, wide and hardy, all telltale Cissy toothy.

“There’s nothing left for you back in the Bay,” she says.

“Except for my job, a new apartment, a cat…”

“You should make this a permanent change,” Cissy says, not hearing her at all.

Bess thinks of her fake novel, the one with the island practice and Nantucketer ailments and charming high school boyfriend brought back to life. She can stay here with Cissy, and eventually marry Evan. On weekends they’ll play a few rounds at Sankaty Head; attend Yacht Club balls at night. It’ll be sunshine and bicycles the rest of their days.

Except, of course, for all that fog perpetually hanging around.

“Oh, Cissy,” Bess says with a sigh, and wraps her mother in a hug. “Stay at Cliff House? If only that I could.”

31

The Book of Summer

Harriet E. Rutter

September 1, 1941

Cliff House Everlasting

That FDR is a real wet blanket, isn’t he?

“Yes, we are engaged on a grim and perilous task. Forces of insane violence have been let loose by Hitler upon this earth.”

Thanks, Frank. You’re a real sport. A sunshine sally, to the gills.

For Pete’s sake. As if we don’t know a war is coming. He didn’t have to tell us about it on Labor Day when we should be drinking and dancing and having a grand old time. Poor Ruby is already skulking about, pickled about this and that. Not that I blame her. She is the heart of this family, by and by. And soon all will go their separate ways. What next summer might bear, who the devil knows.

Well, dear Cliff House. This is Labor Day. A day we rest to celebrate all the non-resting from before. On the lawn, the last oysters are being shucked. A band plays near the bluff’s edge. By midnight, the grounds will be littered with toppled-over champagne glasses and discarded oyster forks. That’s how you’ll know the party is over.

Changes come tomorrow, just like FDR said. All I can hope is that they don’t come at us too fast. Is it too much to ask that we get to experience the sand of summer just a teensy bit more? Winter can be so damned long.

Until later (much, much later), I remain, yours truly,

Hattie R.

32

RUBY

September 1941

He swore he’d arrive in time for the Costume Ball, but by four o’clock it was clear that Daddy was a no-show and Mother would have to play Miner ’49er on her own.

Long after the party began, Ruby sat moping on the bench outside the Yacht Club, swathed as she was in iridescent green fabric, a makeshift torch on her lap. She, the Statue of Liberty, or the saddest monument there ever was, according to Sam. He was somewhere in the ballroom, done up as Ben Franklin, kite and all. He looked swell but Ruby didn’t give a fig about any of it.

She detested the rub of her own crummy attitude, it was like sand in a bathing costume but, dagnabbit, Ruby couldn’t shake it away. Everything was going to seed, with her family and in the world. How were they supposed to close up Cliff House now? Shuttering the home at summer’s end was like the bow atop a present to be opened later. Well, this present was a doggone mess and Ruby didn’t even understand why.

“Ya searchin’ for the woebegone dame?” she heard a voice say, one of the valets’. “She’s on that bench.”

Sure as sugar, he was talking about her. Ruby looked up to see her mother beating a hot path in her direction.