Summer House (3 page)

1943

“
Please. Son.
Are you marrying this girl because you have to?”

“For God’s sake, Mother!” Herb’s voice was low but angry
.

Anne had just that moment paused at the head of the stairs with her hand on the banister as she bent to smooth her stockings, checking that the seam was exactly in the middle, because, from all Herb had told her, his mother would notice that sort of thing. Would care. Her footsteps had been muffled by Persian carpets
when she walked from the guest bedroom at the far end of the back wing—Mrs. Wheelwright had sequestered her as far from Herb’s bedroom as possible—so she was standing in shadow at the top of the stairs when she heard their voices.

“We understand, son. We’re grown-ups here.” His father’s words were lightened by a boys-all-together tone. “With the war, and you shipping out so soon, this—this
urgency
—is only natural.”

“But marriage, surely, is not necessary.” Charity Wheelwright moderated her voice. Anne had to hold her breath and strain to hear.

“I don’t know how the two of you can speak this way!” Herb was angry and hurt. “I explained in my letter to you. I love Anne, and I want to spend my life with her.”

Anne’s heart knocked in her chest so fiercely she could scarcely breathe. It was a pitiful and demeaning act, eavesdropping in the shadows like this, but she could not move away; she was impaled by her own fascination like a butterfly pinned to a board.

Now Norman Wheelwright was offering his son a drink: Scotch, the excellent single malt he seldom brought out, but nothing was too good for his son. The family’s words seemed to blur as they moved toward the far end of the living room. Should she go down now? Anne wondered, She had to go down sometime. She couldn’t hide up here for the rest of her life. What could she do to warn them of her approach? Clear her throat loudly when she reached the bottom of the stairs? Something bristled inside her at the thought. Why should
she
protect
them
from embarrassment? Her future in-laws did not seem to have taken any measures to secure privacy for this conversation, to shelter Anne from their disdain. They’d left the door open from the living room to the hall. They hadn’t even waited until evening was over and Anne tucked away in bed to assail Herb with their fears. Anne had scarcely said more than hello. She doubted that Herb had even had a chance to unpack; his parents were rushing at him as if Anne had set him on fire and they had to smother the flames.

This was not completely unexpected. Herb had described his
parents in all their haughty snobbery to Anne—he had made fun of them, really—at first. After Anne accepted his proposal, he discussed his family members and their elevated regard for their station in life more seriously. The Wheelwrights were bankers. They had lived in Massachusetts since the late 1700s, and they had always been careful to marry within a small select group whom Herb’s mother, Charity, called Our Kind. Herb’s mother was a Folger by birth.
Her
mother had been a Cabot. Herb’s father’s mother had been a Saltonstall.

“But I’m not some hick with straw in my teeth!” Anne had protested.

“Of course not. I never meant to imply that you were!” Herb had pulled Anne close, caressing her as if she were some kind of little beast with its fur on edge.

Anne wriggled against his embrace. “And if you want to talk about
money
,
my family could buy and sell your—”

Herb brought his mouth to hers so she could feel his lips move; his words puffed against her as he said, “But we don’t. Want to talk about money.
It’s not done.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Anne shoved him away. Sitting up on the edge of the sofa, she pushed her hair back from her face. They were in the small Back Bay apartment Anne rented with her best friend, Gail. Gail had gone out with her own beau this evening but would be back any moment. Anne didn’t want to get caught with her dress all rumpled and twisted, even though as soon as Herb left, she and Gail would curl up on the sofa with a warm mug of Postum and tell each other every detail of their evenings, giggling and snickering at the ways of men.

Anne and Gail were both from the Midwest, Anne from Kansas City, Gail from Chicago. They’d met at Radcliffe, where they were majoring in English, and they’d become best friends at once. Anne had intended to go home and teach high school English, but her father, who owned large stockyards in Kansas City, persuaded her to stay in the East for the duration of the war, to lend her considerable energy and organizational know-how as a secretary in the office of the Stangarone Freight Company, the Boston-based shipping
company responsible for loading the food products and supplies onto the Liberty Ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in convoys, escorted by U.S. destroyers, carrying necessary goods to the troops. The army, desperate for vessels, couldn’t build cargo ships fast enough and had commandeered the use of just about anything that would float. The office in Stangarone’s shipyard warehouse was always chaotic, frenzied with paperwork, phone calls, and telegrams as they liaised with governmental directives. Anne loved it. It made her feel she was doing her part for the war effort.

Gail was an energetic, plump little bumblebee of a woman, full of laughter and eager to see new sights, but she missed the wide open spaces of the Midwest and planned to return home when the war was over. She wanted to raise quarter horses and have lots of children, but she hadn’t yet chosen a husband, and she wouldn’t, not now.
I’m not going to marry some guy and then lose him to the war
,
she declared, and Anne admired the way Gail believed she could control her own destiny.

Anne’s destiny was set the moment she looked into Herb Wheelwright’s eyes.

They met on a hot September evening at a party on Commonwealth Avenue given by the family of Hilyard Clayton, who had just finished officer training. Gail was dating a nearly cross-eyed reporter for the
Boston Globe
,
Quinn Probst, who’d gone to school with Hilyard, and Gail told Anne to come along, because the party was really one of those wartime crushes where anyone in uniform was welcome to a drink and pretty girls were welcome to two. Gail worked at the
Globe
as well, as a secretary, with no aspirations to be anything else. She just loved being where so much action was unfolding.

The Clayton house was enormous, with high ceilings, walls covered with oil paintings of disapproving ancestors, and a great many valuable, breakable, porcelain cachepots and vases set about on heavy furniture.

“I feel like I’m stepping into a book by Edith Wharton,” Anne said to Gail, as they stood in the front hall taking their bearings.

“More like Edgar Allan Poe,” Gail quipped.

Quinn took Gail’s hand and pulled her into the noisy crush of the party. Gail grabbed Anne’s hand and yanked her along. A bar was set up at the far end of the dining room, and waiters moved through the rooms with trays of drinks. Above the babble of the party, a record played a new Benny Goodman song, “Why Don’t You Do Right?”

Hilyard Clayton and many of his buddies were on leave for a month before shipping out to Arizona for special training. Because of this, his parents and the other older folk had thoughtfully gathered in the father’s den, leaving the larger living and dining rooms for the younger crowd, most of the men in uniform, most of the women adorned with deep red lipstick, all of them smoking Camels and Chesterfields. Smoke spiraled above their heads, drifting up to the crown molding, and to the elaborate plaster rosette around the chandelier sparkling over the dining room table.

Everyone was drunk or getting there; they were young, excited, sexy, and perhaps just a little bit scared. They all felt very much on the brink. Perhaps, that night, they missed the reassuring presence of the older ones. Perhaps it felt to the young people that the mature generation, their parents, were settled comfortably in the well-fortified inner sanctum, while they crowded at the front of a moving vessel, without guide or sage or leader. They did not articulate this. The party was noisy, raucous, explosive, but something was absent—or something unwanted was present. Anne couldn’t help but think, as she looked at the lanky men in their uniforms, leaning against the massive walnut sideboard laden with silver trays, chafing dishes, buckets, and bowls, that those inanimate objects, already heirlooms, might outlast the living heirs.

Somehow Gail and Quinn had gotten over to the other side of the room. Anne could hear Gail’s bubbling, irrepressible laughter, and she was ticked off at herself for being melancholy in the middle of a party. She was wearing a white dress with red polka dots
and round red earrings and high red heels, and she knew she was pretty enough, and several men stopped to chat her up, but she was out of sorts. She decided to go sit on the front steps and cool off.

She squeezed her way to the front hall, delicately balancing a pink gin. In the wide double doorway between the hall and the living room, a group of men was gathered in a rough noisy circle. In the middle, a short soldier with blazing red hair held a very pale blond waiter by his shirt collar. The soldier was shaking the waiter and yelling at him. It took Anne a moment to understand what he was saying. “Kraut! Damned Kraut! Get out of this house!” The crowd of men around him bellowed agreement.

The blond waiter held his hands up, protesting but not fighting, obviously trying not to exchange blows.

The waiter’s passivity seemed to irritate the soldier even more. “Well! What do you have to say for yourself, you miserable rat-eating Kraut?”

An officer, tall and wide-shouldered in his dress uniform, strode down the hall, shoved through the crowd, and grabbed the redhead. “Watkins!
He’s
Dutch and you’re
drunk!”
Wrapping an arm around the soldier’s neck, he manhandled him away from the waiter, dragging him through the crowd, down the hall, and out the open front door. The crowd, as much disappointed as relieved, muttered and laughed and went back to the bar for more drinks.

Anne went out to the front steps. The red-haired soldier was vomiting into the bushes. When he was through, the officer handed him a handkerchief.

“Thanks, Herb,” the soldier said.

“You should go home,” the officer told him. “Get some sleep.”

“Yeah, I should, but I’m not going to. When will I have another opportunity for free booze?” Watkins stumbled past Anne, up the stairs, and back into the hot crush of the party.

Anne leaned against the front door, looking at the officer named Herb. “How did you know that waiter was Dutch?”

The officer grinned. “I didn’t.”

She laughed in surprise and admiration.

He laughed, too, then added, “But you know, we’ve got a lot of people in this country whose parents came from Germany. Hell, one of my best friends is part German. Fortunately for him, he’s not as blond as that waiter.” He climbed up the steps until he was on the same level as Anne. He held out his hand. “Herb Wheelwright.” He was almost as blond as the waiter, with eyes as blue as the sea.

She smiled. “Anne Anderson.”

“Do I detect a southern accent?” He leaned against the opposite side of the doorway, reached in his pocket, brought out a cigarette case, and offered it to her.

“No, thanks, I never could get the hang of smoking. You’re half right about the accent. I’m from Kansas City.”

“And how did you manage to be in Boston on this fine evening?” Herb lifted out a cigarette and lit it.

“Well, I went to Radcliffe. Graduated a couple of years ago. My father thought I should stay here in Boston and work for Stangarone’s.”