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46

Bess

1942

I drove Gram’s truck to my parents’ house in Edgartown the next morning. I’d finally figured it out. There was only one way for us all to go on.

I parked out front along the fence. “The prettiest house in Edgartown,” they called it. It may have been—a former sea captain’s home Mother inherited from her parents, with its perfectly proportioned, white-painted clapboard facade. It was set back from the road just far enough, a riot of blooms at the fence. But the idea that anyone even judged which house was the prettiest, in that town so full of astonishingly handsome homes, spoke volumes. It was so important to be the best.

I hurried through the black-painted front door into the living room. While the exterior of Mother’s house was certainly lovely, the inside was a true Lydia Stanhope work of art and the envy of every person at the club with any taste. She’d had good architectural bones to work with, the original wide-planked floors and soundproof walls insulated with horsehair. She’d been wise to use the classic colonial fireplace to set the tone for the décor—traditional, but not too George Washington—the sofa and club chairs slipcovered in chintz for a restrained yet modern effect, the too-casual-for-a-coaster-but-you-probably-should-use-one-anyway side tables arranged just so. Her decorators had taken a tea cart about the rooms and stripped them of most of the personal and decorative objects Mother once set about the place. On the mantel they left only a wedding picture of Mother holding a bouquet of cascading roses, the single blight on the otherwise carefully arranged colonial charm.

I called up the front stairs for Mother and, hearing no reply, walked through the enormous kitchen, with its English stove, two refrigerators, and miles of marble counters. What would Gram Smith think of that room? Probably prefer her own humble galley—pre-fire, at least.

I hurried on into Mother’s glass-walled flower-arranging room, my steps echoing on the pillowed Belgian bluestone floor. Where was she? I wanted to get the whole thing over with before I lost my nerve. Just a whiff of rose triggered my pregnancy nausea, and I fanned my face with a nearby garden brochure. The morning sickness was the least of my problems, not that I had told the Smiths. I wore trousers to conceal my swollen ankles and could barely breathe some days. Dr. Von Prague had been right about the diagnosis. I would need to start following his advice if I wanted a healthy baby.

Mother’s gardener, a kind man built like the Great Buddha of Kamakura, waved to me from the side yard. “She’s out in the back garden.”

“No, she isn’t.” Mother came into the room, wearing a pink dress and stacked heels, her hair pulled back in a bow that would have been better on a schoolgirl. She carried her myrtle-wood garden trug, with its pile of subjugated roses, like a purse, looped over one skinny arm.

She glanced at me. “You look dreadful.”

My poor mother, incapable of a pleasant greeting.

“Hello, Mother.”

She stepped to the porcelain garden sink. “I’m assuming you’re ready to come home. Is that why you’re here?”

Despite her usual disdainful manner, I could tell she was happy to see me, probably hoping my return would quell the rumors in town. Or maybe she really did miss me. “I just want to talk.”

She set her trug on the counter. “What’s left for you on that farm, anyway, now that Tom is dead?”

“You could’ve come to the funeral.” I tried to keep my voice from wavering. “It’s been really hard.”

She turned to me. “I’m sorry, dear. I would have, but I had a longstanding appointment.”

I was too hollowed out to be anything but honest. “You and Father would never have accepted Tom, would you? Unless I’d met him at the club and he was wearing white tennis flannels and sopping up the highballs.”

Mother brushed off the counter. “Are you hungry? Deirdre can fix you something. An omelet, perhaps. With Swiss cheese. Your favorite.”

Was it my imagination, or did she look much older now, her face more gaunt? Perhaps my moving out had affected her more than I knew.

“No, thank you, Mother.”

“Deirdre!” Mother called out toward the kitchen. “I don’t know where she goes half the time.” She lifted a rose from the trug and snipped the stem. “They tell me her name means ‘sorrowful’ in Irish, and I think she feels it necessary to act in a manner befitting her name.”

“Maybe because you make her sleep in the attic and it’s two hundred degrees up there.”

“The Irish don’t feel the heat as we do. But she can toast you some of that bread with raisins that she made, which your father won’t eat. Just be careful with the butter. You’ll regret overeating once the baby comes. I had a terrible time getting the weight off after I had you.”

“I want to talk about the Smiths, Mother.”

“I guess you’re now chained to those people for life, Bess Ann. I suppose Cadence told you that I made her a proposition.”

“What? No. She never mentioned it. Probably didn’t want to worry me.” I paused, listening to the water from the sprinkler hit the side of the house. “I have a proposition for you, Mother.”

She snipped another stem. “I’m listening.”

I drew a deep breath and forced myself to say the words. “I’ll come back if you help them.”

Mother set down the snippers and looked at me. “For good this time? To Boston?”

I rubbed my wet palms down my trouser legs and nodded.

Mother smiled and chose a vase from the shelf. “I suppose we can have your room at home aired out. You left so many old clothes in there it smells like a thrift shop.”

“I need a check for their bank in Vineyard Haven. I want to deposit it today. Gram needs hospital treatment.”

“Oh, Gram you call her now? You were barely civil to your own grandmother.”

“She used to hit me with her cane if I pushed my doll carriage over her grass.”

“She was a strong woman, that’s all.”

“Really, Mother?” I exhaled. This was harder than I’d imagined. “I want to give them five thousand dollars.”

Mother laughed. “I hope you’re joking, Bess Ann. They’ll probably just spend it on liquor.”

“I want to make sure they’re financially stable.”

“You know how it is with that sort. They don’t know the first thing about thrift. They’ll fritter it away in no time and be right back to squalor.”

“And they need some house repairs.”

“Of course they do, living in that place. It’s unsanitary, really.” Mother turned and considered me for a moment, as she kneaded Pond’s cold cream into her hands. “How do I know you won’t go running back there the minute the check clears?”

“I keep my word. I’ll need help with the baby—I’m sure you’ll want to get to know your grandchild. And I’d like to give birth in a hospital. This is all I have left of Tom, and I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Maybe it’s for the best, Bess dear. Now you can move on. Men are always a disappointment anyway.”

“I’m not moving on, Mother. I just want to help them. Please.”

“It’s unseemly to just hand someone that kind of money. It’s not the way we do things.”

“You and Father have never been particularly charitable.”

“Well, if you mean we don’t go around chiseling our names into buildings, you’d be correct.”

“Help them. No one will know. Just this one time, Mother.”

She eyed me and then looked at her roses. “I feel like all I do is write checks these days, for one thing or another. You know we had to replace the greenhouse floor? So many cracked tiles.”

“Will you agree to this or not?”

“Your father will have a fit if he finds out. But I could take it from my household budget—he never looks at that.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“I suppose.” Mother went to the living room for her purse and returned with her checkbook. “But only if you agree not to go back there, write, or contact those Smiths in any way.”

I swallowed hard. “I will. But I need one more night there. To gather my things.”

“Very well, then.” She wrote out the check and handed it to me. “I’ll send William with the car tomorrow evening at six, so you’ll be back well before seven. I want to catch the last boat.” She paused. “You’re finally doing something smart, Bess Ann, coming home to your real family.”

I didn’t reply, already halfway out the door, shattered, having just agreed to leave my Tommy’s house and the only real family I’d ever had.

That night I came home and tried to drift off, back to back with Cadence in the bed where I’d slept since Tom left, pale moonglow lighting the room. I felt her warmth against me, her breath slow and regular, such a good sleeper, as always. Scout lay curled up at my feet, and cool, almost-autumn air wafted through the curtainless window.

I would miss that perfect little American bedroom, with the pink cabbage-rose wallpaper Gram had gifted Cadence for her sixteenth birthday, the white milk-glass lamp on the bureau, Cadence’s pictures and postcards arranged around her mirror. A Paris postcard I’d found for her at a thrift store. A picture of Tom in the Tyche, squinting up at the camera. How handsome he was. Would our child be like him, hopefully have his charm? I felt a stab of longing for him but tried to think about books. The baby. What to pack the next day. Anything but him.

Our child moved inside me, and I set one palm on my belly. How marvelous it was to feel the baby turn. An elbow? Knee?

I leaned over to Cadence and gently shook her arm. “Cade. Sorry to wake you. But I think I’m going to go home to Boston for a while. To have the baby.”

Cadence turned, her lovely blue eyes full of sleep. “Why?”

“Mother found a doctor at Boston Lying-In who specializes in high-risk birth. It’s just what I need. They’ve pioneered obstetrics programs there. And Mother offered to pay for it all, so I thought it best to take her up on it. Better to be safe than sorry.” I hated lying to her.

She looked at me so trustingly. “I see.”

How could I have the baby without her by my side? Her brother’s child. It was such a cruel thing to take from them.

“You’re coming back, though, right?” she asked sleepily.

I nodded, fighting the tears. “Of course.”

She took my hand and we fell asleep together, my last night at Copper Pond Farm.

—

I woke the next morning and breathed in the scent of coffee someone must have made in our burned kitchen, then I remembered, with a sinking feeling.

I was going home.

Mother would be waiting for me, bags packed for Boston, to leave promptly at seven tonight. I had delivered the check. There was no going back now.

It would all be fine. I’d have the baby safely in Boston and return one day, when Mother forgot about the arrangement. Two, three years, maybe? Lydia Stanhope couldn’t stay angry about it forever. I tried to push it all away and enjoy my last day at the farm. Someday I would tell Cadence why I made my pact with the devil. But for the time being I would have to keep up the pretense. The most important thing was to get medical help for Gram and the house rebuilt so she could return. Tom would have wanted that. And I would be able to visit eventually, to show our child where their brave and talented father once lived and loved and fished. His legacy would never die.

The dinner bell clanged from the front of the house. “Cadence! Bess! Come quick!” Briar called out.

Cadence and I scrambled out of bed, threw on our robes, and hurried to the front door, where Briar stood, dressed in her boys’ red tartan pajama set, pulling the bell cord.

“What is it?” Cadence asked.

“The Burbanks!” she exclaimed over the clang of the bell. “They’ve flowered!”

We all dressed for the job at hand: to dig those five hundred potatoes out of the ground and get them into the back of the truck for market. Cadence suggested that, given my condition, I should drive the truck from the barn to where they were harvesting and stay in it, out of the sun.

I watched as Cadence and Briar worked side by side, digging their spades into the rich loam. Tom would be happy his sisters had finally come together. Cadence would need Briar more than ever once I left.

“Think we can get a decent price today?” Cadence asked.

Briar nodded. “Broker said if we were the first crop to harvest, we’d get two dollars a pound from one of the markets.” She smiled. “That’s almost two hundred dollars.”

It was not exactly the fortune Tom had anticipated, but I was happy for them. It was a start. Chief Leo stopped by to check on news about Gram and promised to come back later and help.

As the sun climbed in the sky, we checked the back of the truck, barely a quarter filled with potatoes. Cadence leaned on her shovel. “We can’t get these all out of the ground in one day.”

All at once a car bumped down Copper Pond Road, passed the cottage, and parked, and people started up the hill. Billy Sullivan, the dump-shack guard. Then more cars came. Gram’s friends Effie Littlefield, Ethel Vincent, and Agnes Morris from church. Young Eddie Cottle and his friend came on foot. Fred Fisher was in his white T-shirt and suspenders.

“We were over at the Ag hall and heard Chief Leo say you needed help,” Billy said as he hurried toward them.

“Isn’t this just extraordinary?” I called out to Cadence. It was hard not to feel Tom’s presence in that field.

We worked the rest of the day, with half of Chilmark there pulling Tom’s little brown money bags out of the earth and Gram’s church ladies plying everyone with the Windfall Apple Cake that Gram always made. By the time the sun started to set, the truck was piled so high we had to tie it down with a tarp.

Cadence and I watched the truck rumble down the hill, with Billy driving and Briar in the passenger seat, off to Vineyard Haven to make the sale.

“Tom would be jumping for joy,” Cadence said.

“Guess who else is.” I took Cadence’s hand and pressed it against my apron front. “Wait a second—there it is.”

I felt the baby move against Cadence’s hand, and she shook her head. “I love this baby so much already. You need to get back here right after the birth.”

“You bet,” I said, as we walked toward the cottage.

“I’ll miss you,” she said. “Promise you’ll write?”

Mother would make sure that didn’t happen. “Not sure if I’ll be able to for a while. Busy with the baby and all.”

Cadence linked her arm in mine. “I expect daily letters.”

“I’ll try.”

We walked along in silence, listening to our helpers up on the hill saying their goodbyes.

“You know, Tom changed when he met you,” Cadence said. “He grew so much happier.”

I searched my pockets for a handkerchief. “I have to go before I turn into a mass of hideous sobs.”

As we approached the cottage, Mother’s black limousine pulled up and idled at the front door. I grabbed my bag from the house, accepted a never-ending hug from Cade and a kiss from Scout.

Cadence tucked a stray curl behind my ear, in the simple way Tom had always done. “I feel like you’re not telling me everything.”

Of course she knew I was withholding something.

I broke away and climbed into the back seat of the car, part of me happy I was finally getting it over with. I rolled down the window. “You won’t know me the next time you see me, dressed in a muumuu and pushing a baby carriage,” I said, sounding much too bright.

Cadence hurried into the cottage, came back to the car, and held her golden heart bracelet out to me through the window.

I shook my head. “You can’t give me this. Tom’s birthday gift to you?”

“I’ve seen how you look at it when I wear it. You should have it. You never got your ring. You need some sort of keepsake from him.”

I did love that bracelet. I let Cadence fasten it around my wrist and held it up for her to see. There was something about those golden hearts that made me feel happy.

As I watched Cadence standing there, arms wrapped across her chest, waiting for me to go, I almost sprang from the car and stayed. At least Gram would get her treatment. And the house would be repaired.

William glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “All set, Miss Stanhope?”

I took one last look at the sea view, the little cottage, the flowers at the fence. “Just drive, before I never leave,” I said, and we set off, bumping up the road.

“Isn’t this an extraordinary place?” I asked William.

“It certainly is, Miss Stanhope.”

I’d be back one day, I was sure. Home to Copper Pond Farm.