I could almost see the elephant tromping in our direction from the patio, plopping down in the garden on top of the tomato plants.
“So—” my mother rested her coffee cup on the arm of the chair and folded her hands in her lap “—let’s decide if Shannon’s party should be a surprise or not.”
Lucy
1962
I
remembered something.
I’m not sure what stirred the memory. Maybe it was Mom mentioning Mr. Chapman. Maybe it was that, before she managed to close the photograph album with those fumbling, anxious fingers, I’d gotten a good look at one of the old pictures. It had been taken from the water and was of our bungalow standing next to the Chapmans’, the small houses bookended by our two docks. As I pulled weeds late into the morning, the sun hot on my arms, the memory came back to me in bits and pieces until it was fully formed.
When I was a child, my mother was obsessed with me learning to swim. An excellent swimmer herself, it worried her to have any of us unsafe around the water. I
wanted
to learn how
to swim. I honestly did, but there was some fear in me that just wouldn’t let it happen. At the bay, I would stand shivering in knee-high water, terrified of…what? Crabs biting my toes? The sucking pull of the sand in the bottom of the bay? Drowning? I am not sure now, and I’m not sure I could have said even then what terrified me, but I could not go in. In the winter, Mom would take me to the Y, where she would hook me up with a male teacher who was known for getting even the most recalcitrant kids into the water. But I could outlast anyone in the game of “come on in, honey,” and after two years of trying, that teacher gave up on me. Everyone gave up on me, except for Mom.
One day during the summer of 1962, Mom thought up a new plan for teaching me to swim. I had just gotten my first violin—a silly, lightweight, off-white plastic thing from the five-anddime—and all I really wanted to do was sit on our screened porch and practice playing the simple songs in the music book that came with it. But Mom was insistent.
“I have a feeling today is the day!” she said, with her usual enthusiasm. She stood in front of me in a black-and-white polkadot, skirted bathing suit, the child-size orange life preserver in her hands. “I really do,” she said. “And I asked Mr. and Mrs. Chapman if we could use their dock because it has a slope you can walk down to get into the water. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”
I looked through the screen toward the Chapmans’ dock. I could see the top of their motorboat jutting above the bulkhead.
“Their boat is in there,” I said.
“Yes, but it’s a double-wide dock,” my mother said. “Plenty of room for both you and the boat.”
I don’t remember what prompted me to set my violin down and let her buckle me into the life preserver. I don’t know if I sighed with resignation as I followed her out the porch door, or if I felt some hope that, this time, I might actually do it. I might actually learn how to swim. For whatever reason, I walked with her across our yard and the Chapmans’. I remember kind of skating with my bare feet across the sand. I had walked that way in the Chapmans’ yard ever since stepping on a prickly holly leaf from one of the bushes that grew in their front yard. I was determined to swish any leaves away from my feet before they could hurt me.
The Chapmans’ dock was very wide, and Ned had moved their boat to one side so that there was still plenty of room for my swimming lesson. The entire male contingent of the Chapman family was there, plus Ned’s friend, Bruno. Ned and Bruno were cleaning the interior of the boat with rags and a bottle of blue detergent, and “Sherry” was playing on a transistor radio that rested on the bulkhead. Ned was as tan as his black-haired friend, and it was the first time that I realized that some blondes could tan every bit as well as people with darker hair. I liked that Ned was there, since he was a lifeguard. It made me feel a tiny bit more secure.
Skinny Ethan stood in the water to encourage me, and Mr. Chapman leaned against a tree near their dock, watching us approach the concrete incline.
“Are you ready to learn how to swim today, Lucy?” Mr. Chapman asked me.
“Maybe,” I said, my eyes on the water.
My mother held my hand as we walked onto the slope. It was not what I’d expected; I could barely see the concrete for the
slimy green growth covering it. I was afraid of slipping, and I clung tightly to my mother’s hand.
I stepped into the water up to my ankles.
“That’s good,” my mother said. “It’s not too cold. Isn’t it nice?”
I nodded, concentrating on the dark water in the dock. You couldn’t see what was below the surface. I’d watched Julie net a zillion crabs in our dock and I knew this one would be just as full of them. Through the ankle-deep water, I could see that my toes were exposed and vulnerable.
“I need to go get my flip-flops,” I said.
“Why?” my mother asked.
“Because of the crabs.”
“The crabs have better things to do than munch on your toes,” Bruno said. He was kneeling on the bow of the boat cleaning the windshield. He was wearing his swimming trunks and nothing else, and I had never seen a body like his before. Even his muscles had muscles.
“Use my flip-flops,” Ethan called from the water. He pointed to the sand behind us where his flip-flops had been carelessly kicked off, one of them resting on the other. I scrambled back up the slope and put them on. They were too big, but they would have to do.
“Look, Lucy!” Ethan said, when I’d returned to the ankledeep water and the safety of my mother’s hand. He was standing at the bottom of the slope, or so I assumed. I couldn’t really see. “It’s only up to my waist here.” He held his arms out above the water. I could see every one of his ribs.
“Let’s take one more step,” my mother said. “Just one step at a time.”
I wanted to give her something, and so I did it. I took a baby step down the slope and shivered as the cool water inched halfway up my calf. My teeth were starting to chatter. I could barely make out my toes now, and I kept hopping from foot to foot to keep the crabs away. The flip-flops were not enough to make me feel secure. I should have worn my sneakers.
“It’s easier if you get in all at once, Lucy,” Ned said. He was the expert and I knew he was right, but I just couldn’t do it.
“One more,” my mother said, and I held my breath and took another step forward. The water lapped at my knees, and my teeth were chattering so loudly now that I was sure everyone could hear them. My arms were covered with gooseflesh.
“That’s great, Lucy!” Ethan said. “Keep coming.” He was patting the surface of the water like someone might pat the cushion of a sofa to encourage a friend to sit next to them.
“Are there crabs by your feet?” I asked him.
“No!” he said. “The crabs are afraid of you. They see your feet and run away.”
That did not reassure me. I wanted to hear that there were no crabs at all.
“What if they don’t see my feet until it’s too late? Then they’ll bite me.”
“You’re being a big baby, Lucy,” Bruno said from his perch on the bow.
“Leave her alone, Bruno,” Ned said.
“How do you stay so patient with her, Maria?” Mr. Chapman asked.
My mother looked up at him. “Haven’t you ever been afraid of anything, Ross?” she asked.
“Not like that,” he said, and I felt like a freak in a circus.
“I don’t want to do this, Mom,” I said. “Can we go home?”
“Please, Lucy.” My mother sounded as though she was begging me. I wanted to please her, but I was shivering all over. I didn’t think I could take another step.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t,”
Finally she gave up. She looked at Ethan. “Thanks for helping, Ethan,” she said.
“Sure,” Ethan said. He took a couple of steps backward into the deeper water and began treading. Why could he go into water that deep and I couldn’t? Why was I the only one to feel such fear?
My mother and I climbed back up the slope and I felt relieved to be on level ground again. I unbuckled the life preserver and kicked off Ethan’s flip-flops.
We had taken a couple of steps in the direction of our bungalow when I suddenly felt myself being lifted up and tossed into the air, the life preserver flying off my arms. I may have screamed; I don’t know. I do remember my mother shouting “Ross!” as I fell. I saw the bulkhead whip by in front of my eyes, and then I was in the deepest part of the Chapmans’ dock. I shot beneath the water’s surface, flailing my arms in the green, blurry, underwater world. I could hear voices, muted shouts. Then I broke through the surface of the water, gasping for breath, my mother holding me up, her dark wavy hair wet around her face.
“You’re okay, darling,” she said to me, her hands firm and secure on my rib cage.
I was sobbing. I pressed my head to her shoulder.
“Why’d you do that, Dad?” I heard Ethan ask.
“It’s the best way to get over a fear,” Mr. Chapman was say
ing. “Just jump right in. See, Lucy?You were in the deep end and you didn’t drown.You bobbed right up to the surface.” His voice was kind, but I was never going to go near him again.
My mother half carried me back to the slope, where she set me down and took my arm, walking me up the slimy green surface, and I saw then that she, too, was crying. At the top of the slope she let go of my arm, marched over to Mr. Chapman and smacked him hard on his shoulder.
“How dare you!” she said.
Mr. Chapman rubbed his arm where she’d hit him. “If you took her to a psychiatrist—which might not be a bad idea—he’d recommend you do what I just did,” he said.
My mother grabbed my hand. “She’s not your daughter!” she said, starting toward our house with me. I had never seen her so angry. I could feel her fury in my fingers where she was squeezing them. She called back over her shoulder, “Don’t you
ever
lay a hand on one of my children again!”
At home, even
I
knew I was milking the traumatic event for all it was worth. Grandma clucked over me, helping me change out of my wet bathing suit while I bemoaned the terrible treatment I’d received at the hands of our neighbor. She rubbed me all over with talcum powder from her special pink tin of Cashmere Bouquet, then dressed me in my favorite green baby-doll pajamas. I could hear my mother complaining to my grandfather about what had happened and Grandpop’s soothing voice in response. I was allowed to stay up late, playing my plastic violin, and Julie was forced to go to bed at the same time as me, so that I would be able to fall asleep without nightmares about the rag-that-looked-like-a-head stuck in the wires on the attic ceiling.
When I was nine, I jumped into my neighbor’s pool and began to swim. I’d had so many lessons that I knew the mechanics by heart. All I needed was the practice—and the courage that came from surviving one of the worst things life had to offer: the death of my sister.
Maria
1927-1939
I
t was funny how when you neared the end of your life, you could find yourself thinking about its beginning. I was only five when my parents and I spent our first summer at the bungalow. The canal was brand-new back then, only having been completed the year before. There were very few houses in Bay Head Shores at the time, and everyone already knew one another, so I think it was particularly difficult for my mother to make friends at first. Rosa Foley was an oddity, with her exotic dark looks and Italian accent, but my father was so very American that he was able to make inroads for us with the other families and their children and I quickly had several playmates.
When I was eight, nine-year-old Ross Chapman moved in next door and became my best friend. We’d fish together in the
canal and swim together at the beach. He taught me how to play tennis when I was eleven and I taught him how to dance when I was twelve. The Chapmans lived in Princeton during the rest of the year, while we lived in Westfield, so Ross and I never saw each other or even exchanged letters during those months. Come summer, though, we’d pick up right where we left off.
The summer I was fourteen, I started viewing Ross differently. He’d grown tall and lanky in a very handsome way. I’d started that adolescent yearning for a boyfriend, and although he and I were still just pals, I fantasized about him being more than that. He was on my mind even during the school year, and when talking with my Westfield girlfriends, I would refer to him as my boyfriend. My friends were envious, thinking I had a luscious summer love. I knew Ross would probably clobber me with his tennis racket if he knew how I talked about him. I was still just the girl next door to him.
When my daughters were growing up, they liked to date one steady boy at a time, but things were different when I was a young teen. My friends and I did everything as a group. “Maria’s gang” was how my father referred to us. At the shore, my “gang” consisted of about twelve youngsters. Many of us had boats, and we’d cruise between the bay and the river with ease.
The summer Ross was sixteen, he showed up at the shore with a Ford Phaeton convertible. Oh, my, the fun we had with that car! Of course, it was only meant for four people, but we managed to squeeze six or seven of us into it, some of the kids standing on the running board, hanging on for dear life. We were wild—not by today’s standards, of course, but we thought we were pretty crazy. Everything felt so safe back then. No one I knew ever got hurt in a car crash. No one drowned in the
ocean. And certainly, no one was murdered. Our placid lives would all change in a few years, with the stock-market crash and the Second World War, but our teenage years were easy and fun filled.
Once several of us could drive, we started hanging out at Jenkinson’s Pavilion on the boardwalk. We nearly lived there, dancing to live music in the evening, swimming in the huge saltwater pool during the day, and basking for hours on end in the sun. It was a wonder I never got skin cancer, but I had my mother’s Mediterranean skin and I guessed that saved me.
My dark looks, however, came with a price.
The summer I was seventeen, the intensity of my attraction to Ross had deepened to the point of obsession. Not only was he handsome, he was brilliant as well, getting straight A’s in his private high school and being accepted to Princeton for the fall, where he would follow in his father’s footsteps by studying law. It seemed, though, that we would never be more than friends. Ross would often give me a ride to parties and other get-togethers, and on the way home, we would talk about who we were attracted to, who we would like to go out with.
You
, I wanted to say.
It’s you I want to go out with.
It was hard for me to listen to him say he liked Sally or Delores, when my longing for him was eating away at my insides. I played the game, too, though, telling him I had a crush on Fred Peters, the best-looking boy in our group. Ross only responded that he thought Fred was interested in me, too.
The change came when I was crowned queen of the Summertime Gala, an annual Point Pleasant event. It featured a small parade, and I rode on a little float pulled by a few of the boys from my gang, Ross and Fred included. I was dressed all in
white from head to toe and wore a crown. My envious girlfriends treated me coolly, but my fifteen minutes of fame seemed to alter Ross’s view of me.
He drove me home after the parade. He turned the car onto Shore Boulevard, but instead of continuing down the road to our houses, he pulled over and parked in front of the woods.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
He glanced at me, then smiled almost shyly. “I want to tell you something, Maria,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“You made a very beautiful queen,” he said. Ross had
never
said anything like that to me before. He’d never commented on my looks in all the years I’d known him.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I hope you don’t think this is silly of me,” he continued, “because I know we’ve always just been friends, but I thought about you over the winter. I thought about how swell it was going to be seeing you again this summer.”
“I thought about you, too,” I whispered.
“You did?”
I nodded.
“I went out with some girls in Princeton, you know, but I was thinking of you the whole time,” he said. “I’d look at pictures my parents had of you and me…you know, sailing and in our tennis clothes and…you know those pictures.”
I nodded again, my heart brimming with joy and gratitude. These were the words I had longed to hear from him and had heard only in my imagination—and in the lies I told my Westfield girlfriends.
“Today, when I saw how other men looked at you…” He
shook his head. “I knew I had to let you know how I feel. I couldn’t take the chance of letting you get away.” He took one of my hands in both of his. “I’m in love with you, Maria.”
I was sure that my smile lit up the car. I let go of his hand and reached out to hug him. “I’ve loved you for years,” I said, my lips against his ear.
He drew away from me, then leaned over to kiss me, so tenderly I barely felt it. He raised his hand to my breast, touching it through my silly white queen dress, sending a spark through my body.
“I want you.” He smoothed my thick hair behind my ear.
“I want you, too,” I said.
“Tonight,” he said, “let’s break away from the gang at Jenkinson’s. We can go out on the beach under the stars.” He lifted my hand and drew it to his lips, and I nodded.
“All right,” I said. I knew what I was saying, what I was agreeing to, and I knew it was a sin. But I didn’t care.
That night at Jenkinson’s, we danced, both with other people and with each other, trying not to be too obvious. Around nine o’clock, Ross and I stepped out onto the broad porch and down the stairs to the beach. We slipped off our shoes and our feet had barely touched the sand before we were kissing. We made love beneath the Jenkinson’s boardwalk, while the band played Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller songs almost directly above us. It was the first time for me, although I was sure it was not for him. I lost my virginity to Ross that night on the beach. I’d lost my heart to him years before.
Ross and I began going out separately from our gang of friends. He’d come to pick me up, and my parents, who had always liked him, were delighted at seeing us together. Of course,
they had no idea how far our relationship had gone. They invited him to dinner or to play cards with us, and I felt proud of how easily he slipped into my family. Our relationship, always based in friendship, became more sexual than I ever could have imagined. It was rare that one of our evenings together did not end with lovemaking, often in the sandy lot across from our bungalows, where a crescent of blueberry bushes provided the right amount of cover. It was not the sort of tender lovemaking I’d grown up imagining, but rather a hungry, animalistic devouring of each other. During daylight hours, when I would be helping my mother around the house, the memory of being with Ross the night before would make me suck in my breath with a sudden blaze of desire.
Ross and I rarely spoke about the fall, when he would be going to Princeton and I would study teaching at the New Jersey College for Women, but we
did
talk about the future.
“I’d rather you study art than education,” he said one night. I was lying in his arms, encircled by the protection of the blueberry bushes, my dress draped over my bare skin. Hanging on a chain around my neck was his high-school ring, which he’d given me the day before. I couldn’t stop myself from fingering it.
“What could I do with an art degree, though?” I asked him. “I’ve always wanted to teach.”
“That’s because you’ve been thinking you’ll have to earn a living to support yourself,” he said, kissing my nose. I heard the smile in his voice.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“Well, you know I’m not in a position to ask you to marry me now,” he said, “but if you and I
do
get married one day, you
won’t have to work. I wouldn’t
want
you to work. You would have plenty to do helping me entertain my law colleagues.”
I smiled to myself, snuggling closer to him. I could see my future in front of me.
Our
future. I pictured our elegant home in Princeton, our beautiful children—a boy and a girl. I could see myself in an exquisite hostess gown, welcoming our distinguished guests.
“We’ll see,” I said, because although the fantasy was delightful, my parents had instilled in me the satisfaction that could be gained from having a career of my own. I knew it would take me a while to let go of that dream.
Our friends had quickly realized we were a couple, despite our initial attempt to keep our relationship to ourselves. Once we were out in the open, the girls seemed to feel less threatened by me and they became my friends again. I’d missed them and I was glad.
One night, Ross and I were at Jenkinson’s with the whole gang. We were standing in line at the fresh orangeade stand, the boys telling jokes and the girls groaning in response. The orangeade vendor was Italian, his accent stronger than my mother’s but very similar. James, one of the boys in our gang, gave him a dollar bill to pay for a ten-cent orangeade. I was never sure exactly what happened, but James somehow tricked the vendor into giving him two dollars in change. I watched most of the boys and some of the girls in my gang snickering as we moved away from the orangeade stand. By the time we were out of earshot of the vendor, James was nearly doubled over with laughter.
“Can you believe that imbecile?” he asked us. “Stupid wop!” I looked quickly at Ross. He was grinning. His upturned lips,
his teeth, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes—those details would stay with me for the rest of the night. They were all I could see when I looked at him. I was half Italian. My mother was a full-blooded “wop.” Why couldn’t I tell him how much his mockery of the immigrant vendor hurt me? If he wondered why my lovemaking that night lacked its usual energy, he said nothing about it. I was waiting for him to ask me what was wrong. Then I would tell him about my sense of betrayal. But he never did ask, and I tried to push my sadness to someplace deep enough inside me that it would not rise up again.
A few days later, my mother found a forgotten bag of pine nuts in the pantry and she made a double batch of pignoli. She put a dozen of them on a plate and told me to take them over to the Chapmans’.
I crossed our backyards and knocked on our neighbors’ porch door. I knew Ross was playing golf with his father, but his mother was home, and she pulled open the screened door for me.
“Hello, Maria,” she said. “How is the queen of the gala today?”
“Fine, thank you, Mrs. Chapman,” I said, stepping onto the porch. In my younger years, I’d spent plenty of time in Ross’s house, but now it seemed we only got together at my house. I assumed Ross felt that my parents were warmer and more welcoming than his—which they certainly were. “Mother made an extra batch of pignoli for you,” I said, holding out the plate of cookies.
“How lovely of her!” she said. “Bring them into the kitchen.”
I walked into their kitchen and set the cookies on the table in the corner. When I looked up at her, she had lost her smile.
“Whose ring are you wearing?” she asked me.
My fingers flew to the ring hanging around my neck. Hadn’t Ross told her?
“It’s Ross’s,” I said.
I saw by her expression that Ross had
not
told her. She looked into my eyes, confused. “Why on earth would he give you his ring?” she asked.
What could I say except the truth? “We’re going steady.” I dropped my hand from the ring to my side, suddenly self-conscious.
“But…he has a girlfriend in Princeton,” she said.
I knew about Veronica, the girl his parents kept pushing him to go out with.
“Veronica’s not his girlfriend,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. I held out the ring as proof.
She turned away from me, ostensibly to put away a cup that had been resting on the counter. “I didn’t know that,” she said tightly. “I thought he was still interested in her.”
“Well,” I said, the sense of betrayal welling up in me again, “maybe you should talk to Ross about that.”
I went home, angry with Ross for not telling his parents, or at the very least, for not telling
me
that his parents didn’t know. I was helping Mother with the dusting when I heard the Chapmans’ car chug past our house on the dirt road. I walked out to our screened porch so that I might be able to hear their conversation if it was loud enough.
The yelling started quickly, but I couldn’t make out anything that was being said. I ached for Ross, wishing I could have said something to his mother that would have eased the barrage of fury being thrown his way. If only I had known he hadn’t told them about us, I could have pocketed the ring. In my naiveté, I thought they were angry that he had not told them he’d lost interest in Veronica or that he’d not told them that we were going
steady. The real content of their argument was something else altogether.