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Cadence

1942

W innie offered to drive us home and we climbed into her Italian sports car, Bess in the minuscule back seat and me in the front, so low to the ground. Though it was dark, Winnie wore her signature sunglasses. Halfway to the farm she stopped, put the convertible top down, and we flew through the night, stars flung across the sky.

Winnie drove as I knew she would, fast and decisively, even with only the car’s parking lights to guide us, due to blackout regulations. Her gold bangles jingled as she downshifted. I breathed in her exotic perfume as we rode shoulder to shoulder, the scent of spicy jasmine and sea spray in her tousled hair. At that pace she’d get us there in record time, and I willed her to slow down so I could keep feeling the cool wind on my skin after the heat of the USO hall. Winnie was on her way to a party at the Gay Head cliffs home of a friend who was hosting a Dutch cheese heir and his family.

“They’ll probably all want to get naked and cover themselves with clay,” Winnie said, over the sound of the engine. “I’d invite you, but they’re doing a silent retreat.”

I tried to keep my hair back. “No problem, Mrs. Winthrop.”

“Winnie, please. We’re not at the beach club anymore.” She sent me a sidelong glance. “You were a no-show at the yacht club. Something better came up?”

“I’m so sorry, Winnie, but Mr. Wespi had me stay at work. I called and they said you’d left.”

“The girls were disappointed not to meet you, after I’d talked you up so much.”

“She was heartbroken, believe me,” Bess said from the back seat.

I felt our little book in my pocket and considered showing it to Winnie. Would she think it sophomoric, a grade school art project cobbled together?

“I’d like to show you a book our book club made for the troops,” I said.

“Well?” Winnie shifted. “Don’t hold me in suspense.”

I slid it out of my pocket and pinched the pages closed to keep it from blowing away. “It’s a full-length book, just easier to carry.”

She snuck a glance at it. “I love it. Show it to the girls. They’ve been here a week now, and we’re reconvening at the yacht club for a last hurrah before we go back to New York. Cocktails, day after tomorrow. Hopefully you can make it this time.”

“Yes. I will definitely be there.” I turned to Bess, and we soaked in the joy of it. A second chance.

Winnie stopped at the head of our road, and Bess and I unfolded ourselves from the car. “Let’s say five o’clock?” Winnie asked.

“I’ll be there with bells on,” I added, one of Gram’s favorite expressions, and cringed at my own words. Why did I always sound so corny around Winnie?

Winnie asked me to grab four stems of lilies from the farm-stand flower buckets, presumably as a silent gift for the Dutch cheese heir, handed me a five-dollar bill for the cashbox, and zoomed off.

Bess and I stood and watched her taillights fade into the darkness. “How does she drive at night with sunglasses on?” Bess asked. “And I don’t think she’s heard about Victory Speed.”

“I don’t know, but I’ll make it this time. I’ll sleep on the club doorstep if I have to.”

—

The next morning Bess woke me, clutching her belly in pain.

“I don’t think it’s appendicitis,” Gram said. “Wrong side for that.”

Gram liked to think she was a doctor. But she’d probably learned the little she knew about appendicitis from the children’s book Madeline, so I drove Bess to the Stanhope family’s doctor’s office in Edgartown, posthaste.

We were wary, entering town, and on the lookout for Bess’s mother. Bess had been living with us at the farm for almost a year, estranged from her wealthy parents after she fell in love with my brother Tom. I had been delivering some bluefish paté to the Stanhope house when I worked at the A&P, and Bess answered the door. We became fast friends, and once I brought her to the cottage and introduced them, Tom fell hard for her and she for him. It wasn’t long before those two were inseparable, and one day Bess just never went home.

Mrs. Stanhope did everything she could to get her only child to come back, but Bess wouldn’t budge. She said she’d rather live with us, scraping to get by, than return to her difficult mother, and Gram welcomed her as one of her own.

Dr. Von Prague’s office was located behind his home, a neat Cape Cod–style house on Peases Point Way. By the time we got there, the pain had dissipated somewhat, and I helped Bess out of the truck. Gram’s old Ford with the rusty running boards and bald tires seemed so out of place at Von Prague’s house, with its white picket fence and powder-pink shutters, the sun shining off the crushed-oyster-shell driveway.

“Is he expensive?” I asked. We didn’t have a family doctor, just hoped for the best about most ailments or took Gram to the hospital to her heart doctor.

Bess shook her head. “The nurse will put the charge on my mother’s account. Their accountant pays the bills. She’ll never see it.”

Bess was short of breath by the time we walked up the stairs to his office over the garage, and I stayed with her in the exam room as the doctor entered. He glanced at us both with cold pale-blue eyes and said, “We don’t allow guests in our exam rooms.” He had hair as white as bleached whalebone and a bedside manner to match.

Bess took my hand. “I don’t go anywhere without Cadence.”

He washed his hands in the sink, took Bess’s recent medical history, and then gently probed her belly with his fingers. “When did you complete your last menses?”

“Maybe April some time,” she said.

He looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Bess Stanhope. You don’t keep a calendar?”

“No, actually. I live on a farm now.”

“With the Smith boy?”

Bess looked at me. “ Tom. Cadence’s brother. I suppose everyone here knows.”

“Your mother mentions it now and then.”

“Of course she does,” Bess said.

The doctor stepped to the sink and washed his hands again. “Looks like we’re having a New Year’s baby.”

Bess and I exchanged a look, mouths agape. Tom’s baby.

“How wonderful,” Bess said, with a wide smile. “It’s what I’ve always wanted. We talked about a baby. Tom will be so happy.”

I embraced Bess. “No wonder you’ve been so tired.”

Bess was right. Tom would be the happiest man in the world, and Briar, Gram, and I would be right there with him. A child to raise in a home full of love.

“I need to write to Tommy today. Will you help me, Cadence?”

I nodded, eyes blurred with tears. Tom would be a marvelous father. And Bess a doting, loving mother. “He’ll want every detail.”

I didn’t want to ruin the happy moment, but it was hard not to think about Bess’s mother and the specter of whatever unpleasant business she would bring down on us all when she heard the news.

“How long have your ankles been swollen like this?” the doctor asked.

Bess looked at me. “I don’t know, a few days.”

He took Bess’s blood pressure and then removed his glasses. “Is the father willing to make an honest woman of you?”

“ Honest? ” I asked.

The doctor barely glanced at me.

“Tom left for active duty last week,” Bess said, her voice shaky.

I held her hand tighter. Just hearing those words made it more real.

Dr. Von Prague scribbled something on his clipboard. “Your blood pressure is much higher than I’d like, and the edema in the legs is troubling. The abdominal pain may be early contractions, so I would consider going back home for a while, on bed rest, until the birth.”

Bess shook her head. “That won’t be happening.”

He took the stethoscope from around his neck. “Sounds like a wedding won’t be happening, either, at least not anytime soon. This is a high-risk pregnancy, Bess, and you can’t be stuck on a remote farm, an unwed mother. You’ll need funds for specialists. Live-in nursing care when you come home. Not to mention decent maternity clothes.”

“The Smiths take good care of me.”

“I’m willing to bet you’re anemic,” he said. “How are you eating?”

Bess glanced at me. “Fine.”

I had to admit he had a point. While Gram tried her hardest to provide good meals, we hadn’t had red meat in recent memory and, though we lived on a farm, ate mostly potatoes and corn. And with Bess out of commission now, unable to help farm the crops as usual, we’d have even less.

He washed his hands again. “Frankly, I find it disgraceful that a serviceman would leave you this way. It speaks to his character.”

I could barely see straight, hearing him criticize my good brother.

“Tommy didn’t know,” Bess said. “It’s my fault as much as his.”

I tried to keep my voice steady. “How can you criticize a young man who’s risking his life for this country?”

“I protect my patients, Miss Smith.”

“Well, he’s off protecting our country.”

The doctor dried his hands and turned to Bess. “I’ll see you back here in two weeks for more tests. In the meantime, my nurse will give you some vitamin tablets, and I want you toes up and no lifting. Call the office immediately if you have any spotting.”

“Please keep this confidential, Doctor. I need some time before I tell my parents.”

“You won’t be able to keep it from them much longer, obviously.”

Bess got dressed, and we waited at the nurse’s station for her tablets. When the nurse asked about payment, Bess suggested that she charge the Stanhopes’ account.

“I called when you got here,” the nurse said. “Your mother refused.”

Bess waved that thought away. “Just tell her I’ll pay her back.”

“Tell her yourself,” a familiar voice behind us said, and we turned to find Lydia Stanhope standing there, dressed in a white boucle suit and pearls.

“ Mother. ” Bess stiffened, and my whole body went cold.

I took Bess’s arm and we hurried out of the office, down the stairs, but Mrs. Stanhope followed.

“What a way to find out your only daughter is about to ruin the family name—a phone call from a receptionist. I was in the middle of a club meeting and had to run out and leave them all there in the living room.”

“Then go back to them,” Bess said over her shoulder.

Mrs. Stanhope rushed after us. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. I don’t know how I’ll tell your father.” She called after me. “So you’re Tom’s sister who introduced them?”

I kept walking. “I am.”

“Word at the club is that Bess Ann and your brother had their first date at the town dump, shooting rats. I suppose you arranged that, too?”

Bess and I passed Mrs. Stanhope’s black Cadillac idling in the courtyard, her beefy gardener at the wheel. We tried to make a break for Gram’s truck, but Mrs. Stanhope grabbed Bess by the wrist. “You’re coming home.”

Bess wrested herself away. “Let me go, Mother.”

“It was one thing playing farm girl, even starting to sound like them, dropping your r ’s. But now this ?”

“ This is a baby, Mother. I’m as surprised as you are but never happier.”

“How can you do this to us? We’ve given you everything. Brillantmont. The clothes. And now to hear this is a high-risk pregnancy. You’ll need specialists.”

Bess walked off toward Gram’s truck, oyster shells crunching beneath her feet. “I don’t need your money.”

“It will kill your father and me both. But I suppose that’s why you’re doing all this.”

“Is he back from Newport, there with his niece? Seems like every man has a niece in Newport these days.”

Bess and I got in the truck.

“I won’t let you ruin the Stanhope name, Bess Ann,” Mrs. Stanhope called to us as we pulled out of the driveway. Only then did we finally breathe.

Bess checked behind us as we drove off toward home. “She means it, you know.”

“A baby, Bess. Don’t let her steal the joy. We need to write Tom straightaway and tell the others soon, too. Briar will be over the moon. Gram, too.”

Bess just folded her arms across her belly. “You don’t know my mother, Cade. She’ll never let this happen.”