Chapter 12
Summer 1953
Early July, we go to Newport, my mother’s house at Hammersmith Farm, a Victorian enchantment perched on the hill above the bay. Egyptian-tiled gardens, lily ponds, stone walkways. A guest cottage and boathouse closer to the shore.
Just months from now, we will be married at St. Mary’s Church. Afterward, an outdoor reception on the Hammersmith lawn. More than eight hundred guests, it will take two hours to work through the receiving line. We will be photographed. My dress with its fifty yards of ivory silk taffeta, portrait neckline, bouffant skirt. I wanted something sleeker, more ionic-column, and I won’t be able to escape the sense that I look like a lampshade. After an alfresco lunch, as the Meyer Davis band plays, Jack and I will have our first dance, to “I Married an Angel.” In a toast, Jack will explain he had to marry me to remove me from the fourth estate so I wouldn’t write anything to scuttle his career. I will riposte that while, yes, it’s true that I gave up my position at the Times Herald, I plan to write a novel. As a wife with no job and time on my hands, I see no reason why that can’t be done.
That day in July, Jack’s mother, Rose, is meeting us at Hammersmith. She and my mother will discuss plans for our wedding.
“They don’t really need us for that, do they?” Jack asks. We are in the deck room. I took him over to the stables earlier to see the horses. He got wheezed up, and now we’re just lying around in the heat, the windows thrown open, the breeze off the sea fresh and cool.
“Let me guess, Jack,” I say. “You want to send the mothers off to lunch while we go tear around in a car.”
“Better a car than a horse.”
We laugh and, laughing, he starts to cough, as my mother walks in to say that his mother has arrived and it’s time to drive over to the beach for lunch and then a swim. We keep laughing, and Jack is coughing, and we try to catch our breath. We’re sprawled across each other. My mother stands in the doorway, surveying us, her mouth a stern line.
“Say, Mrs. Auchincloss,” Jack says, standing up from the couch, “how about Jackie and I take our swim before lunch?”
“It’s almost one already,” my mother says. “We should have lunch first.”
“Well, I worry we might get cramps if we swim after lunch. But you and my mother could order lunch for us. Jackie and I could take a quick swim and get back before the food comes.”
My mother gives a little frown. “I suppose we could do it that way.”
Then his mother is there, and we are all walking out to the car. We fall behind them.
“You knew she wouldn’t want to switch the order,” I say.
“That’s why I threw in the bit about cramps.”
“I love that she’s a little afraid of you, Jack.”
“I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think she approves.”
“Of us?”
“Of me.”
I feel something inside me catch. He might be right. I don’t want him to feel that way.
“That’s not it,” I say. “She can’t push you around, and she’s not used to that.”
We climb into the backseat of the car, the mothers in front. Their heads kerchief-wrapped, a collar of pearls around each pale neck. We’re like two bad kids laughing and joking in the back while the mothers talk about plans for the rehearsal dinner, brunches and luncheons and flowers. A tent in case of rain. September, my mother remarks, can be so fickle. Rose asks if my mother has given thought to bridesmaids’ dresses. If not, she has an excellent dressmaker she’d recommend.
“I have a girl,” my mother says smoothly. The white heat of the sun bores through the glass.
“Jack, open your window, please,” I say.
“This window here?”
“Yes.” I smile. “Yours.”
He gives a push at the handle, glances at me, that puzzled look. “It doesn’t seem to work.”
“Of course it works.”
He tries again.
“That’s the wrong way,” I say. “Clockwise. No, I mean counterclockwise.”
“I’ve tried both ways. It won’t budge.”
I lean across him, grip the window handle, and start to crank it down.
“What are you two up to back there?” my mother says.
“I was having trouble with the window, Mrs. Auchincloss.”
“Call me Janet.”
“Janet. The handle seems tricky. Jackie’s helping me figure it out.” His hands are underneath me, touching me, the window halfway down; his fingers run along my waist, my ribs, the edge of my breast, and the salt wind blows through the window, that cooler sweet summer air—bright and hard and fast off the sea. The car turns onto Ocean Drive, and we are falling over each other in the backseat, laughing and trying to stifle it but not trying too hard, and there is only silence, tight-lipped and prim, from the front. My mother’s cool dagger eyes in the rearview.
At the beach club, we spill out. I grab my bag and towel.
“A hamburger for me, please,” I say.
“A club sandwich,” says Jack. “Chowder too, if they have it. Thank you, Janet.”
We race past the steps that lead up to the veranda and down to the shore. We drop our clothes in a pile. The water is cold.
“Dive in,” I say.
“You first.”
I look at him for a moment, then ask.