“M
rs. Valentine? Billie?” His voice comes to me, swims to me through the forest, where I have sat down on the rope swing suspended from underneath the tree house. It could be a voice from another time, another place. It could be only the wind. I look up and see a large man standing with a two-by-four under his arm. He is smiling, reaching out his free hand to help me up. “I’m Devin,” he says. “Effie’s husband.”
“Oh, hello!” I say, embarrassed he’s caught me indulging in such strange reverie.
“Effie tells me you used to come here back in the fifties and sixties?”
“I did,” I say. “We stayed here in the summers.”
“Has it changed much?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, laughing, and then shake my head. “Actually, no. Not much at all.”
He is out of the blinding sunlight now, so I can see the features of his face. He sets the board down and stands with his hands in his pockets to keep them from the cold. He is twice little Effie’s size. He is African American, with dark skin. Gussy told me that his sister, who came here as a Fresh Air kid in the nineties, drowned in this lake, that he and Effie met when he was renting that little house down the road. He’s an artist. And despite the size of his hands, he makes intricate little shadow boxes. She has sent me newspaper clippings from the exhibits he’s had. I noticed several of them in the camp when we first came in.
I remember being surprised when Gussy told me they were getting married, amazed at how easy it was for them. If Effie had grown up when I did, she wouldn’t have been safe falling in love with him. Sometimes it didn’t seem possible that two living women’s experiences of the world could be so very different, as if we didn’t share the same planet at all. It struck me as particularly ironic that Vermont was one of the first places to permit gay marriages. There is even a bed-and-breakfast just outside of Quimby that caters exclusively to gay men and women. The old farmhouse that Eva had always dreamed of buying, the one perched at the top of a hill with a 360-degree view of the valley below, now hosts weddings exclusively for gay couples. The crumbling red barn has been repaired and painted with a colorful rainbow on one side. I can’t help but feel angry sometimes, cheated and bitter and resentful. If Eva and I had simply been born later, born into
this
version of the world rather than our own, we might be together still. None of what happened would have happened. She might still be alive.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Devin asks, reaching for my hand. His skin is warm and strong, as I accept his hand and he pulls me out of the swing.
I nod, reassuring myself more than him. “Just a little tired from the trip still.”
“Would you like to go up into the tree house?” he asks. “I can help you, if you’d like.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’d love that.”
And then his little girls are running toward us, their voices like tinkling bells. And as they scurry up the ladder, their father guiding them away from the rotten boards in the deck, I study them: these gorgeous girls with their coffee skin and dark curls, with Effie’s blue eyes. How could anyone ever have seen this union as anything but perfect? It makes my throat swell, close shut. There are no words for this feeling.
D
uring the day Frankie and I pretended that everything was normal. Both of us were at a loss as to how to proceed, and so we did what we had always done. On Monday morning, Frankie even kissed me on the cheek as he always did, smelling strongly of cologne. He’d showered at least a half dozen times over the weekend, as if he could somehow scour away these new revelations. We were like robots, going through our usual routines. I made breakfast that morning, pancakes, and I combed through the tangles in Mouse’s hair. I helped Chessy find her lost shoe. Frankie did not speak to me. And when they were all finally gone again in the morning, I collapsed onto my sofa and wept into my hands. I barely heard the phone ring.
Eva didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. We didn’t need words anymore to understand each other. She simply cried on the other end of the line.
“Eva,” I said, trying hard to soothe her, like a hurt child. Like a wounded animal. “Eva.”
At night Frankie and I fought. In hushed whispers and hisses. I imagine now what it must have sounded like to the children as they tried to sleep in their beds. I can almost picture Chessy, with her ear pressed to the floor, trying to decipher the words we murmured to each other across the kitchen table. I could cry when I think of Mouse curled up in her bed, clutching her Betsy Wetsy doll, trying
not
to hear.
Frankie drank, as Frankie always drank. And we went around in circles. Around and around. There was nothing I could say that could take away what had happened, was still happening between Eva and me. And there was nothing Frankie could say that could change how I felt. He accused. He pleaded. He berated and belittled and begged. And then, every night, when I thought I might not be able to take another minute, he gave up: resignation in his tired eyes and heavy sighs. When he disappeared, defeated, up the stairs, I put on my coat and walked.
I walked alone now, Eva a prisoner in her house. But I walked in her memory. I walked to remember: each crack in the sidewalk, each tree branch, each moon a vivid monument to what we had. And to what, I feared, we had lost. Every night an elegy.
And with each night, as the world grew colder and winter crept in, I began to fear the worst. As the rest of the world prepared for the holiday season, I prepared for whatever would come next. This terrible limbo, this purgatory of waiting to see what Ted would do, to Eva, to me, was like waiting for lightning. The storm was raging, and I was just waiting for the strike. Counting between claps of thunder, listening to the steady rumble and downpour.
The Scouts’ Thanksgiving play was to be the Friday before Thanksgiving week, in the school cafetorium right after lunch. We had been rehearsing in the basement for weeks, but ever since Halloween, only the Wilson girls had arrived, without Eva, for our weekly meetings. They came with excuses: Rose was sick, Eva was sick, busy, tired. What I knew was that Eva was afraid. I was afraid too.
On that Friday, I gathered the costumes, which I had completed sewing on my own, and made the one-mile walk to the school by myself, lugging a laundry bag full of props and costumes over my shoulder.
Hannah met me in the cafetorium, and we taped up the butcher paper backdrops Eva had painted: the
Mayflower,
the harvest scene. I thought of her hands, carefully, meticulously painting these scenes of plenty. I had watched her as she bent over the giant pieces of paper, conjuring the first Thanksgiving with nothing but a paintbrush and paint. She was a magician and I her captive audience. My eyes filled with tears, which I quickly blinked away.
“I heard the cancer came back,” Hannah said.
“What?”
“That’s why Eva’s been missing in action.”
“No,” I said. “She’s fine.”
“Well
you
would know, I suppose,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. And for the first time I considered what would happen if Hannah knew the truth about Eva and me. If our other friends and neighbors knew. I’d been so concerned with Frankie and Ted, with the logistics of how we could get away from them and be together, I had barely considered how we would actually survive in this world, this hostile place where there was no room for women like us. Where our deviation from the norm, our
deviance,
could get us sent off to a mental institution or prison even. Where our aberrations could get us
killed
.
“I’m just saying you two are so
close,
” Hannah said bitterly. “Thick as thieves.”
“Shut up, Hannah,” I said. Something I’d wanted to say for years. “And mind your own goddamned business for once.”
She looked stunned, her face turning the same shade of red as her dress.
“Well, well, it looks like someone’s having a bad day,” she said haughtily, putting her hands on her hips and pursing her lips.
I shook my head and ignored her, dragging one of the cafeteria tables to center stage to act as both Plymouth Rock and the first Thanksgiving table. Mr. McNally, the janitor, was sweeping up the lunch detritus, whistling Christmas carols. He waved to me, and I waved back, unloading my sack of costumes like Santa Claus.
Only the mothers would come for the play; all of the fathers were in the city working. They would arrive in chattering gaggles with their Instamatic cameras and flashbulbs. They would huddle together in metal folding chairs, beaming with pride and waving to their children onstage. I had never, in all the time the girls had been in school, felt like I belonged to this club. These other mothers so easy in their high heels and roles. They struck me as so
content
. None of them was as restless as I was. None of them seemed to question for even a moment the tedium and pointlessness of their lives.
“I think I might need to mimeograph some more programs,” Hannah said angrily. “Can you finish up?”
I nodded, grateful that she was leaving.
The Scouts were all released from their classrooms, and they rushed into the cafetorium in a flurry of nervous excitement. Alone, I fitted the girls with their bonnets, the boys with their hats or headdresses. I affixed paper buckles on their shoes. We ran through their lines once, and then we waited as the mothers filed in and took their seats, followed by the remaining students at the school.
I peered out at the crowd, looking for Eva, hoping just to catch a glimpse of her. She felt like a dream already, like some gossamer recollection. But she wasn’t out there, at least not sitting where I could see her.
When everyone was settled, I pulled the makeshift curtains open, and we were suddenly aboard the
Mayflower
. The children recited their lines, carefully articulating their words and projecting their voices, as we had told them to do. When the
Mayflower
arrived, I pulled the curtains and hurried onto the stage to change the backdrop and set the table. I returned to the wings and pulled the curtains open again.
When I heard the gasp, I feared that something had happened onstage; that the harvest backdrop had fallen down, that a child had fallen or bumped their head. But the gasp was followed by a high-pitched cry and then a thousand whispers, like bees buzzing. I looked out into the crowd, and the whole audience was moving, shifting. Leaning into each other, voices growing louder and louder, followed by more women crying out.
Just then, Mr. Prine, the principal, came running up to me, as the children froze, forgetting their words onstage, distracted by the commotion in the audience.
“It’s the president,” he said. “He’s been shot.”
I felt my heart bottom out. I couldn’t have heard him correctly. “What?”
“You need to stop the play,” he said.
I nodded, moving quickly to the stage, where the children looked at me, bewildered. I hustled them offstage. “There’s been an emergency,” I said, trying to be reassuring, but my vagueness created only more chaos.
“What happened?” whispered Francesca. “Is it Daddy?”
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Is there a fire?” Mouse asked, clinging to my pant leg.
“No, honey,” I said, leaning down to her and hugging her.
Mouse clung to me as Mr. Prine made his way to the stage and in his best principal voice announced that President Kennedy had been shot during a motorcade in Texas, that all children would be sent home from school immediately. The official announcement was followed by one collective gasp, and the children all began to cry.
I gathered the Scouts together and held them; I didn’t know what else to do. And it was then, as I ushered them down the stage steps to deliver them to their mothers, that I saw Eva.
She was sitting in the very back row, Rose asleep in her arms. Her eyes were wide, stunned, but she sat still, paralyzed. Donna and Sally went running to her, followed by Johnny, who had been watching the play in the audience. Rose woke up and started to cry. And I didn’t care anymore. I went to her.
“Let’s take the children home,” I said.
She nodded, and together we gathered our children and began the long walk back to Beechtree Street. The sidewalks were crowded with other mothers and their children, a mass exodus from the school. As if there had been a bomb. As if the world were ending.
By the time we got back to my house and we were able to turn on the television, Walter Cronkite was explaining that JFK had just been confirmed dead. We watched, the children holding on to us in disbelief. Even Johnny, who was never still, sat motionless.
“I don’t know what to do,” Eva said.
I shook my head. I didn’t either. What do you do when the world is starting to crumble?
“Stay,” I said later as Eva gathered the children, finding their coats and hats and mittens. “Please.”
She shook her head. “It’s not safe.”
Nothing was safe. No one was safe. Not us, not even the President of the United States.
Frankie and Ted both came home early that night, but by the time their cars pulled up, Eva had already slipped away. Because, while all the rules of the universe seemed to be somehow suspended on this day, we knew that some things remained the same.
Over the next week, a collective pall fell over our household, over all of Hollyville, and, I suspect, over all of America. The melancholy I had been feeling since Halloween seemed to have spread, like a pox, across our community. I knew in my logical mind that the two tragedies were unrelated, but the shared grief over Kennedy’s assassination, the horror, was like a public expression of my most private thoughts. It was as though all of America were grieving with me.
But despite everything that had happened, to Jack Kennedy, to our nation, between Eva and me, Frankie insisted on carrying out our normal Thanksgiving tradition. Every year since Frankie and I bought the house in Hollyville, we had entertained his sisters and their families for Thanksgiving. It was a tradition I pleaded with him to break this year, but he’d insisted, swearing that if we canceled Thanksgiving they would know that something was wrong. He said that if I cared at all about the children, about our family, I would just pretend like everything was normal. His stubborn insistence struck me as desperate, childlike. However, I was in no position to argue. My sins had put me at his mercy. His will dictated nearly every breath I took. And truthfully, we all felt a bit untethered (by what had happened to the president, to our country, to our family), and I think this was his effort to restore at least a semblance of normalcy to the house.
And so on Wednesday morning, I was up (as expected) before the sun, making sweet potatoes and green bean casserole and mincemeat pies. While Frankie and the children slept, while the rest of the world slept, I made normal out of flour and sugar and salt.
Eva and I had not spoken since the twenty-second, not since we sat in shared horror and watched the rest of our world start to fall apart. I thought of her across the street, carrying out the same rituals as I was. We were like needles stuck in the deep grooves of this endless song.
Despite Frankie’s optimism and insistence, I knew that having Frankie’s family over, with nothing to do all day but to eat or drink, was a recipe for disaster. I imagined what the glossy picture might look like in my
Betty Crocker’s Cookbook
. Ingredients: 6 Italian siblings, 6 bottles of wine, 1 angry husband, and 1 enormous secret. Combine and you will have disaster even before dessert is served.
When we were first married, I loved these gatherings. Frankie’s family had been a novelty to me at the beginning: all that fabulous noise and commotion. My own family had been so reserved, so quiet. There were just the four of us: Gussy and me, our sullen father and taciturn mother. But the Valentine family was loud and funny. They swore and smoked and drank and drank and drank. While I never felt quite a part of this raucous party, I was always entertained and humored by them (though after the first few years, they stopped bothering with niceties, no longer on their best behavior).
Someone always wound up in tears at these gatherings; usually one of the sisters. And there was always an argument. Fists never flew, but insults did. By the end of most Thanksgivings, the dinner conversation had devolved into a swirling mess, and no one bothered speaking in English anymore. I always felt as though I’d been somehow transported back to Frankie’s childhood dinner table, where I was an unwelcome guest: one who didn’t speak the language or understand the customs.
There were so many cousins. While Frankie and I only had our girls, Frankie’s sisters had, collectively, a dozen or so kids. I could barely keep them apart. While Frankie only had sisters, they all seemed to have at least two or three boys. The girls were few and far between, much to Chessy and Mouse’s chagrin. The girls spent most of these holiday gatherings trying to keep the boys out of their rooms, which they ransacked and pillaged like pirates. It seemed that every year something of the girls’ got broken and Frankie was making idle promises to repair or replace whatever it might be (the cracked hand mirror, the snapped jewelry box ballerina, the decapitated Tammy doll).