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Cadence

1942

T he day after Bess left, I was getting ready to visit Gram at the hospital when the phone rang. I answered it to find Martha’s Vineyard National Bank on the line, saying that a check in the amount of five thousand dollars had been deposited into our account. I told the man he was mistaken, said my goodbyes, and hung up. Two attempts later he simply called into the phone, “Your money is here and will be credited to your account. The memo line reads, For Mass General, ” and he hung up.

That’s when I realized it was Bess. She’d somehow convinced her mother to help Gram. And then some. It was just like her to be that generous and thoughtful. But at what cost? If Lydia Stanhope was involved, Bess might never be back.

The phone rang again, and I answered it, ready to thank the bank man and apologize for hanging up on him, but he’d given up on me and was attending to more important bank matters, it seemed. Someone else was on the line.

“Get over here straightaway, Cadence. I think you know the address.”

—

It didn’t take me long to drive to Winnie’s house, out on West Chop, slowing only as I passed the Bayside Club, closed for the season, Mr. Wespi off at war. It was hard to picture him in combat, attacking the enemy, but passing there made me oddly nostalgic for the times Bess and I had served in the Bayside uniform.

Winnie was right about me knowing her address, since I’d often glided by her house on an ocean “tide ride” with Tom around the island. How fun those were, both of us floating on our backs in the sea, letting the current sweep us around that lovely peninsula of stately homes, doing my best to peek in and get at least a glimpse of how Winnie lived.

Hers was one of my favorites of the big old places along the shore, “the grande dames, ” Gram called them, with whole third-floor spaces for the maids. I drove Gram’s truck down a short road to the house, a massive gray-shingled place with the door flung wide. As I walked up the porch steps, I could see clear through the house to Vineyard Haven Harbor. What could Winnie possibly want? Had more ASEs arrived? Did she need more titles pulled from Gram’s cookie jar?

I knocked and then entered, since there was no bell, assuming Winnie and I were well enough acquainted to just walk in like that. I stepped into the living room, expecting to find it arranged in the traditional way those big houses were. I’d been inside one only once: After our parents died, Gram did housework for a rich Vineyard Haven lady, Mrs. Cooper, and she took Briar and me there. While the lady of the house was away, Gram made dinner and served it to us on Mrs. Cooper’s fine china. She allowed us to drink water from the crystal goblets and even let us press the button under the table with our foot to ring the servants’ bell in the kitchen. That house had been full of white wicker chairs and tables, with sterling-silver picture frames on every surface, as if Mrs. Cooper would forget who was in her family unless reminded.

I was happy to see there wasn’t a piece of white wicker to be found in Winnie’s house—and there wasn’t even a chair, for every inch of her living room was covered in what looked like East Indian saris, draped like a white circus tent from the ceiling and gently swaying in the breeze of the open doors beyond. The floor was covered in every sort of pillow, scattered around low tables. Pink velvet. Lime-green raw silk.

My knees grew weak when I saw the stacks of books arranged about the room, many of them current bestsellers.

“Cadence, my darling, come in.”

Winnie glided toward me, dressed in a flowing lemon-yellow caftan, hair slicked back, and gold hoops at her ears. She pulled me in for an embrace, the silk brushing my bare arms, her bracelets jangling, and I breathed in her exotic scent, at once spicy and sweet.

“I hope you got the telegram. We were all so sorry to hear about dear Tom.”

I thanked her for the telegram, and she ushered me in, poured some brown liquid into a glass, and handed it to me.

She poured herself some of the same. “Such a sad time for you. We sent a first edition of Emerson’s Essays to the Library of Congress in his honor.”

Tears stung my eyes. “That’s lovely, Winnie, thank you.”

Winnie pressed a small bottle into my hand and stepped off down the hallway, caftan fluttering behind her. I opened the lid to find it full of sky-blue capsules.

“What are these?” I called to her.

“Effective,” Winnie replied, from the butler’s pantry.

I set the bottle on a side table. “Thank you, Winnie, but I’m fine. I just try not to think about it.”

“Excellent. A skill you’ll need in the publishing world.”

I followed her into the butler’s pantry. “Did Mrs. Stanhope talk to you about me?” I braced myself.

“She did. Came by and tried to share her dreadful secret about you. I suggested she find a better use of her time and needlepoint a pillow, with some snippy Edith Wharton quote or a declaration of love for sauvignon blanc.”

“She told you I never got my diploma?”

Winnie brushed that thought away. “If stellar high school performance was a prerequisite for literary success, half the authors in the world would never have published. In France they prefer their authors self-taught, you know. Makes them more authentic. I myself barely made it through Radcliffe, and look where I am now. With a perfectly wonderful new position at Putnam.”

“Oh, Winnie! Congratulations.”

“That’s why I’ve asked you to drop everything and scurry over here, my dear. Celia persuaded some bigwig there that I’m just what they need to get them through the war. They want a colorful lineup of travel books and think I’m the one to do it, since I’ve been practically everywhere. I’m not sure if I should be flattered or terrified by the offer. I start next week. Since my ex-husband is gone for good—last seen in the Amazon, wearing only a gorget of pig’s teeth around his neck—Ifigured, why not?”

I sipped the brown liquor, which tasted like warm, liquid almonds going down. Everyone was leaving. Was it too much to hope that she might need me, as well? “The job sounds perfect for you.”

“For us, you mean,” Winnie said. “Of course you’re coming with me as my editorial assistant. I told them that I’d already offered it to you and that I certainly couldn’t do it without you, which is true.”

I could barely string a sentence together.

“They’d floated some cum laude Barnard girl with perfect paragraph-reading scores, but I nixed that, unless you’d like an assistant, as well. The first few months will be terribly dull, I’m afraid. I’ll be in Mexico City for the first book; Where the Coffee Comes From is the working title. What do you think? I’ll be supervising the pictures and will send the rough copy home to you, which you can dish up any way you like. I know it’s not fiction, but it’s only until the war’s end, and then we’ll get back to serious literature.”

“That—”

“So you can stay here on the island—in this house, if you want—tie up loose ends, and come to New York whenever you like. The pay isn’t anything to brag about, but it will get you started. Plus, you’ll get to travel like mad, if you like that sort of thing.” Winnie looked at me, rocks glass suspended in midair, perhaps mistaking my shocked look for reluctance. “I hope that’s suitable.”

I knocked back the rest of my drink and set the glass down. And prepared to give her my answer.