Chapter Thirteen
Haven Point, Maine
JULIA
Sometimes they swapped breakfast and dinner.
They called them “Fastbreak” and “Rennid.” (They knew that these are different methods of backward-ing the words, but they did not think it mattered.
The sort of person who insists on “Tsafkaerb” over “Fastbreak” just for consistency’s sake is hardly likely to swap meals in the first place.)
FROM LIBERTY ISLAND, BY MISS CRANE
As she and Louisa arrived at Union Station in Washington, Julia was surprised at the feeling of pleasant anticipation that snuck up on her.
Neither she nor Louisa had been to Maine since America entered the war.
Father and William had been deeply involved in war financing, so Julia’s family had spent less time on Haven Point, and on top of travel challenges, Julia and Louisa had their own war work.
Then, last summer, Morgan’s school term went long to make up for time lost during the influenza epidemic.
In truth, Julia had been glad of the excuses. She had come to view her once beloved summer refuge with a vague sense of shame. Haven Point was so resistant to change and modern ideas, so cut off from the real world—a “citadel,” to use Mina’s word from all those years ago.
But while Louisa would never admit it, Julia suspected that she missed Haven Point.
The ghastly summer heat in Washington was hard on her, and while she would be welcome regardless, she’d never go without Julia.
A few months ago, when Julia casually mentioned that they should go to Maine this summer, Louisa’s eyes lit up, confirming Julia’s suspicion.
Julia received what she felt was another auspicious sign when she and Louisa went to the dining car for lunch, and a girl at the next table was reading Liberty Island.
The girl’s mother, evidently noticing the look Julia and Louisa exchanged, said, “Terrible, I know, letting her read at the table, but she won’t put it down.”
Louisa hastened to correct the misunderstanding. “Oh, no. Whatever makes the time go!” She gestured to Julia. “We only smiled at each other because her aunt wrote that book.”
At this, the girl finally looked up. “She did?”
“Yes, and Lucy was based on her,” Louisa said proudly.
Julia smiled and added her usual qualification: “Very loosely based.”
They spent a pleasant hour with the girl and her mother.
Julia had not shaken the feeling that the books, like Haven Point itself, were a bit of a relic, and she would never feel quite the same pride in them that she once had.
Louisa, whose appreciation for Liberty Island was unimpeded by any ambivalence, answered most of the little girl’s endless questions.
Julia found there was something contagious in Louisa’s enthusiasm as she described some of their real-life adventures, and as the train chugged north, Julia’s own enthusiasm for their visit increased.
The trip could be made in a day, but with changing trains in New York and Boston, it was a very long day.
They stayed over at a boardinghouse near South Station, run by Mrs. Keane, an old friend of Louisa’s late grandmother, whom both Louisa and Julia adored.
(Julia, in fact, had long expressed a wish to swap out Grandmother Lillian for Mrs. Keane.)
After a good night’s sleep, they set off again, and by the afternoon, they were sitting on the back porch of Fourwinds with Mother, looking out at the water, which sparkled under a clear sky, and reveling in the cool air.
Julia’s heart was softened further when her nephews returned from the beach with their nurse.
“Aunt Julia! Aunt Louisa!” Daniel said, as he burst onto the back porch, full of chatter about his sailing proficiency and the big fish he caught off the rocks.
At six, Daniel looked like a little William, handsome and large for his age, but he acted like a little Julia—boisterous and talkative, with no hidden depths.
Oliver, nearly five, was almost as tall as his brother, but leaner, with his mother’s big brown eyes, fringed with long lashes.
His greeting was less exuberant, but he followed it up by climbing on the wicker love seat and snuggling next to Julia, his head on her shoulder as if she were his oldest and dearest friend.
“A sad state of affairs that I was flattered by the attention of my four-year-old nephew,” Julia said later, as she and Louisa changed for dinner.
“Are you kidding? That was a conquest! I was jealous,” Louisa replied.
The dinner table looked lovely, decorated with pale red garden phlox in glass vases, and candles that flickered in the gentle breeze that came in through the open windows.
Julia took in the familiar smell of salt and sea air—such a sturdy scent!
—and the background music of the waves at low tide, crashing against the rocks below.
William and Pauline finally came downstairs. They sat. And thus commenced one of the least comfortable meals of Julia’s life, the strain palpable enough to overpower every pleasant sensation.
It took little time to identify William as the source of the tension.
Julia wished Father had not been away on business.
He would have kept the conversation going, at least, even if it was only to talk about golf or sailing or stocks.
Mother, reigning queen of domestic harmony, tried to smooth things over, but her attempts were too tepid to make a difference.
“The sunset was lovely,” she ventured.
“Yes, it was,” Pauline said, then added, with almost apologetic tentativeness, “Did … did you see it, William?”
William did not look up from his consommé. “No.”
An awkward pause followed, the first of many. With his prized self-command, Julia knew William would never physically harm his wife, but his coldness was cruel enough, and she felt a ball of fury form inside her.
And I looked forward to this? In recent years, Julia had rarely seen Pauline and William together—only at Christmas, when any unpleasant undercurrents were hidden by the busyness of the season.
Pauline brought the boys to visit her family in Virginia once or twice a year, though, so Julia had actually seen more of them than anyone in her immediate family.
It was jarring to note the difference between Pauline tonight and the version of her that Julia encountered when she called on the Powells in Alexandria.
Pauline’s family no longer had to take in boarders, and two of her brothers fought in France, but their home was still always full to bursting.
Julia would sit in the parlor with Pauline, Mrs. Powell, and some complement of friends, relations, and visitors.
Pauline invariably had a child on her lap, her own or someone else’s, and usually one or more crawling around the legs of her chair.
They might as well have been in the middle of one of those busy traffic rotaries that so flummoxed drivers, but the happy chaos did nothing to stem the flow of conversation, mostly in pleasing Virginia accents.
Pauline was small and delicate, but in the bosom of her family, she did not appear vulnerable. Tonight, however, her eyes were cast down and shadowed. She seemed shaky and fragile.
William finally broke the awkward quiet, but unfortunately with a contentious subject.
“I saw that Delaware voted against suffrage.”
“Yes,” Julia replied. She knew he was baiting her.
Congress’s passage of the suffrage amendment last year had set off a long march through the states for the thirty-six needed for ratification.
They had been stuck at thirty-five for ages.
As William surely knew, it was a terrible blow when Delaware voted no.
“If it doesn’t pass, you’ll have that friend of yours, Miss Ellis, and her ilk to blame.”
“Oh? Why is that?” Though Julia aimed for a bored tone, she could feel her irritation getting the better of her.
“Getting themselves thrown in jail, and then that appalling tour around the country. Despicable, attention-seeking behavior.”
“To whose behavior are you referring—police who arrested the suffragists, supposedly for obstructing traffic, when they did no such thing? Or perhaps you are referring to the warden who force-fed them?”
“You can’t tell me you approved of their comparing the president to the kaiser, our enemy, during wartime. Wilson himself said his support for suffrage was despite their actions, not because of them.”
Julia and Louisa had continued to help with the suffrage effort whenever they could, without regard for which faction of the movement was involved, but William seemed to believe that any support of the National Woman’s Party marked one as a radical, beyond the pale.
“They kept the issue alive. You’re insane if you think that did not help.”
Mina was indeed one of the formerly imprisoned suffragists who participated in the “Prison Special” train tour. They visited cities all across the country and spoke of their treatment in jail. Mina enjoyed the attention, of course, but attention was precisely what was needed.
“I suppose you support socialists now, too.”
No. I hate them. Rational or not, Julia considered them at least partially responsible for the demise of her relationship with Pelham, which had ended in April with a devastating letter.
“I would appreciate it if you would refrain from arguing at the dinner table,” Mother said, in that restrained tone that Julia found infuriating.
“Well, why don’t you tell us what you think, Mother?”
“I have said I support suffrage,” she replied with a hint of impatience.
It had taken Julia ages to drag that much out of her mother.
For years, when Julia spoke of her suffrage work, Mother invariably replied with a trite remark: I gather you have met inspiring people or That must have been exciting.
What Julia never heard was I am glad you are engaged in this battle. We need it.