6. Townsend A Sacrament
JULY 19, 1935
I know my parents have all but given up on their twenty-nine-year-old son finding a wife. My mother told me as much last week in my childhood living room in Raleigh, rosary beads wrapped around her fingers, as they so often are. “Marriage is a sacrament, Townsend,” she pleaded. “How can you live a life where one of the sacraments is available to you and you just look the other way?”
I wanted to tell her that none of the family had gone through holy orders, nor did I see her jumping in line for last rites. And, also, I wasn’t looking the other way. I had worked hard through medical school and was now building my practice. I went on dates; I wanted to find a nice wife. But I wanted real love. I wanted fireworks. I hadn’t found that. “If you would just start coming to Mass with us, we know we could find you a nice Catholic girl,” she’d added. I had controlled my eye roll and agreed to come to Mass more often, thinking that if it were that easy, I would have found my wife already.
After my mother’s lecture, I drove the three hours to Beaufort from Raleigh to visit my grandparents for the weekend. I could have stayed with them, but with their nurses buzzing about, I felt it an imposition. So I decided to stay at the Atlantic Beach Hotel. It was right on the sand on the island dubbed “the summer capital of Tarheelia” and brimming with interesting people. The nearby Casino by the Sea was hosting Borring and Lazur, the famous dancing team from New York City’s Coconut Grove Club, and I didn’t want to miss their performance. So after a long morning with my grandparents, I felt it was time for all of us to have a well-deserved rest and headed down to the beach.
I set my towel down, feeling slightly uncomfortable about my first time bathing shirtless, as has become the style. I was a doctor; I was comfortable with other people’s nakedness. But my own? It seemed so superfluous. Still, as I looked around, seeing that all the other men were bathing shirtless too, I tried to convince myself it was fine. That was when something—or someone, rather—caught my eye.
A woman with shoulder-length blond curls, wearing a belted swimsuit with a blue-and-white-striped bottom, was laughing with an older woman as she flew a kite. She ran, waving to her companion, and the red diamond dipped and dove through the air as it trailed behind her. The sunlight radiated off her body, like it was shining for her, like it rose for her, like it was there simply to make her laugh. And I knew I wanted to make her laugh like that. Who was she? And how would I live without her now that I knew she was in the world?
I racked my brain for how to approach her—feeling nervous, as though I was a child of sixteen afraid to ask a girl to a dance. But the wind intervened on my behalf, as if nature in all her glory also felt that I should meet this effusive woman. Her kite lost wind, dipping and diving erratically before it landed, as luck would have it, directly at my feet.
She jogged toward me, still swathed in sunlight—it was following her, it seemed—looking like the picture of health. “I’m so sorry,” she said, laughing. “This kite seems to have a mind of its own.”
I picked it up quickly, not wanting to let the opportunity slip away. “I’ve never been much good at flying them,” I said, smiling.
She grinned. “Oh, I don’t believe that for a second. But if you insist you have trouble, I am happy to teach you.”
“That would be terrific.” I paused, seeing my chance. “But I would have to repay you in some way.” I pretended to consider the matter a great deal. “With a once-in-a-lifetime cabaret night at the casino, perhaps?”
She smirked, and I felt like my heart might rip at the seams. “What kind of lady would I be if I said yes to an invitation on such short notice?”
Her eyes gleamed.
“A fun one?”
She looked over her shoulder. “I’m with my aunt, but I appreciate the invitation. Maybe I’ll see you around. If I do, I can give you that kite lesson.”
I sat down on my towel, feeling dejected. See her around? How? I didn’t know where she was from, didn’t know her name. So that was that.
Later that afternoon, I made my way up the sand to my hotel. As I was fiddling with the key in the door, I heard a peal of laughter that I already knew would come to define my dreams for the future. She stopped when she saw me, that fair-haired woman, now alone. “What are you doing here?” she asked, the smile never leaving her face.
“This is my room,” I said casually.
She took a few more steps toward me and pointed to the room across the way. “Well, this is mine.”
“I feel it dangerous to go against what fate is so obviously attempting to tell us.”
That laugh. “I do have to admit this seems like a fortunate coincidence.”
“Or,” I said, “a message from the heavens.”
“It does seem cavalier to buck such an obvious message,” she teased. Then she sighed. “All right, then. I could accept, perhaps, a dinner request on short notice. My aunt is terribly fun and won’t mind. But you must never breathe a word of it to my mother.”
I put my hand up. “I, Townsend Saint James, do solemnly swear never to tell your mother.”
“Then I, Rebecca Bonner, accept.”
I smiled. “And it goes without saying that you also accept my invitation to go dancing at the casino afterward?”
She tossed her hair and slid the key into the lock on her door. “I guess we’ll see how dinner goes, won’t we?”
Later that night, by the time we were finished eating, there was no question that we would be going to the casino together. We practically couldn’t stop laughing. It was like we were long-lost best friends—but with an undeniable spark, that chemistry that has come to define literary love.
Borring and Lazur’s dancing positively wowed, and every song the orchestra played that night they played for Rebecca Bonner and Townsend Saint James. “Cheek to Cheek,” “Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed,” “Blue Moon.” And when the orchestra, dressed in their tuxedos, switched to “I’m in the Mood for Love,” I knew I held Rebecca too close. But she didn’t seem to mind.
By the end of the night, strolling hand in hand on the boardwalk and eating ice cream, I knew I was in love. As someone who has often questioned whether he was in love, I now know that when one is actually in love, it is quite easy to recognize.
“What are you and your aunt doing in Atlantic Beach?” I asked.
“Celebrating my graduation from teaching school. I start my first job in the fall.”
I smiled. “Well, congratulations. That is quite an accomplishment.”
“Maybe. But I’m not so sure about it,” she said, licking her chocolate ice cream. “I like children fine but keeping up with so many of them seems difficult.” She paused. “Do you like practicing medicine?”
“I do,” I said. “I think I became a doctor to make my mother proud. But I’ve found that it suits me. I enjoy the challenge of finding out what’s wrong with someone and how to make them well. And Dr. Sweeney, who I’m working with, has taught me so much.”
She smiled. “And medicine has come so far. There’s so much more you can do for your patients than just a decade ago.”
I nodded. “That’s what excites me the most. What’s to come.”
“Soon we won’t have to get sick at all!” she trilled.
She was so exuberant I couldn’t bear to argue with her.
“And you like Raleigh?” she asked. “I’m excited to move there; it seems time to make a move to a bigger city with my friends. But I’m a little nervous too. I’ve been in Kinston all my life—and, well, here in the summers. But moving for this job feels a little frightening.”
“I like it well enough,” I said. “But I have this dream—” I cut myself off, wondering if it was too much to say, if confessing what I’d been thinking might scare her away. Because I was already very clear on the fact that wherever Becks was—we were on a nickname basis already—that’s where I wanted to be.
She stopped walking and sat down on a bench, the song of the ocean in front of us so peaceful and steady. “You can’t say you have a dream and not tell me about it.”
I sat down beside Becks. As I looked into her round eyes, I found myself saying, “It seems impractical, but my grandparents have made it clear that as the firstborn grandson, their house in Beaufort will be mine one day. It has always passed through the generations that way, since the seventeen hundreds. And, well, I’m not sure if there are enough full-time residents in this area for me to make a living, but I would love to move here and become the town doctor, spend my weekends fishing.”
Becks gasped. “That sounds simply marvelous.”
“It does?”
“Oh, yes. To spend your life where most people vacation? Why wouldn’t you?”
I shrugged. “I think it might get lonely.”
Becks took the last bite of her ice cream cone, wiped her mouth with her napkin, and did something I hadn’t expected in the least: She slipped her hand in mine. “With the right person, I don’t think it would be lonely in the least.”
Before I could respond, she hopped up off the bench, removed her shoes, and ran down to the water. I watched her, bathed in moonlight. My breath caught in my throat at the freedom of her. “Well, are you coming?” she called.
I took off my shoes and joined her, the water lapping at our ankles. I stepped closer. I didn’t want to come on too strong, but with the breeze blowing in her hair, the moonlight making her smile even more radiant, the smell of salt and sand enveloping us, all I wanted was to be closer to her.
“I have to see you again,” I said. “Tomorrow. The next day. All the days after that.”
The idea of being apart from her ever again was too much. Overcome with feeling, I put my hand on the nape of Becks’s warm neck, felt the soft strands of her hair beneath my fingers. I kissed the tip of her nose, then her cheek. When she didn’t pull away, I kissed her softly on the lips. When she wrapped her arms around my back, I swept her up in a kiss, which, to my delight, she returned heartily.
When I pulled away, jealous of any man who had ever kissed those lips before, she said, a glimmer in her eye, “I don’t know, Townsend. Tonight was fairly perfect. How could we possibly top watching a famous dance duo all the way from New York City?”
My mind raced to an article in the Beaufort News I’d seen earlier at my grandparents’, and I snapped my fingers. “Why, watching a man set a world record, that’s what.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah? And how do you suggest we do that?”
I smiled. “Charles Noe is going to drive twelve miles—from Noe Hardware to the beach—blindfolded in the new Ford V-8. He’s going to set a world record, and we can’t miss it!”
Becks shook her head. “Why on earth would a man do that?”
I had absolutely no idea. “Well, it’s the American thing to do. We don’t want another country to hold that world record now, do we?”
She smiled. “It sounds needlessly dangerous.” She shook her head again. “Well, all right. We shouldn’t miss history. We’ll go watch the fool man drive blindfolded.” She winked. “And then I’ll teach you how to fly that kite.”
She kissed me again and then, covering her mouth, said, “Look at me out here, a good Methodist minister’s daughter kissing a man for all the world to see.”
A tiny zip of fear ran through me as she said it, but before I could respond, she ran up the beach, waving over her shoulder, and turned in the direction of the hotel. She left me wanting more. And despite knowing that our religious differences will make things a challenge, I have a feeling she always, always will. There will never be enough of Becks Bonner for me.
I am writing my promise here, right now, so that it will live forever: I, Townsend Saint James, will love and protect Rebecca Bonner for all eternity. Tonight, I had the last first kiss of my life. I have to hope she feels the same way. Because we are meant to be together. I am certain. Now I just have to make her certain too. How hard could it possibly be?