The Bungalow (2 page)

And then, in an instant, he was gone.

I sighed and looked at my watch, scolding myself.
Half past three.
I must have dozed off while reading. Again. Spontaneous sleepiness was the curse of the elderly. I sat up in my lounge chair, a bit embarrassed, and retrieved the novel I’d been reading before the exhaustion hit. It had fallen from my hands to the ground, spine side up, its pages fanned out in disgrace.

Jennifer walked out onto the terrace. A truck barreled by on the street, further disturbing the peace. “Oh, there you are,” she said, smiling at me with her eyes, smoky brown, like her grandfather’s. She wore jeans and a black sweater with a light green belt around her slim waist. Her blond hair, cut to her chin, reflected the sun’s rays. Jennifer didn’t know how beautiful she was.

“Hi, honey,” I said, reaching my hand out to her. I looked around the terrace at the pale blue pansies in their simple terra-cotta pots. They were pretty enough, peeking their heads out of the dirt like shy, repentant children who’d been caught playing in the mud. The view of Lake Washington and the Seattle skyline in the distance was beautiful, yes, but cold and stiff, like a painting in a dentist’s office. I frowned. How had I come to live here, in this tiny apartment with its stark white walls and a telephone in the bathroom with a red emergency call button beside the toilet?

“I found something,” Jennifer said, her voice prying me from my thoughts, “in the recycle bin.”

I smoothed my white, wispy hair. “What is it, dear?”

“A letter,” she said. “It must have gotten mixed in with the junk mail.”

I attempted to stifle a yawn, but it came anyway. “Just leave it on the table. I’ll look at it later.” I walked inside and sat down on the sofa, turning my gaze away from the kitchen to the reflection in the window.
An old lady.
I saw her every day, this woman, but her reflection never ceased to surprise me.
When did I become her?
My hands traced the wrinkles on my face.

Jennifer sat down next to me. “Has your day been any better than mine?” In her last year of graduate school at the University of Washington, she had chosen an unusual subject for a class-assigned article: an obscure work of art on campus. Donated in 1964 by an anonymous artist, the bronze sculpture of a young couple had a placard that read simply,
Pride and Promises
. Transfixed by the sculpture, Jennifer hoped to profile the artist and learn the story behind the work, yet an entire quarter’s worth of research had turned up very little.

“Any luck with your research today, dear?”

“Nada,” she said, frowning. “It’s frustrating. I’ve worked so hard to find answers.” She shook her head and shrugged. “I hate to admit it, but I think the trail’s gone cold.”

I knew something about being haunted by art. Jennifer didn’t know it, but I’d spent the majority of my life searching in vain for a painting that I’d held in my hands a very long time ago. My heart ached to see it again, and yet after a lifetime of working with art dealers and collectors, the canvas eluded me.

“I know it’s hard to let go, honey,” I said delicately, knowing how important the project was to her. I tucked my hand in hers. “Some stories aren’t meant to be told.”

Jennifer nodded. “You may be right, Grandma,” she said with a sigh. “But I’m not ready to let it go. Not yet. The inscription on the placard—it all has to mean something. And the box, the one that the man in the statue holds in his hands, it’s locked, and the people in the archives don’t have record of a key, which means”—she paused and smiled hopefully—“there may be something inside.”

“Well, I admire your spirit, sweetheart,” I said, clutching the gold chain around my neck, the one that held the locket I’d worn and kept safe for so many years. Only one other soul knew what was tucked inside beyond the protective guard of the clasp.

Jennifer walked back to the table. “Now, don’t forget this letter,” she said, holding up an envelope. “Look at this gorgeous stamp. It’s from”—she paused, reading the postmark—“
Tahiti
.”

My heart rate quickened as I looked up, squinting to see the letter in Jennifer’s hands.

“Grandma,
who
do you know in Tahiti?”

“Let me see it,” I said, inching closer.

I scanned the simple white envelope, damp from its brush with a milk carton and speckled with crimson dots from last night’s cabernet. No, I did not recognize the handwriting, or the return address.
Who would be writing me from Tahiti? And why? Why now?

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Jennifer said, hovering over me in anticipation.

My hands trembled a little as I turned the envelope over again and again, running my fingers along the exotic stamp, which depicted a Tahitian girl in a yellow dress. I swallowed hard, trying to purge the memories that were seeping into my mind like rising floodwater, but mere mental sandbags could not keep them out.

Then, powerless to resist, I opened the envelope with one swift tear.

I stared at the letter in my hands. Genevieve Thorpe. No, I did not know this woman.
A stranger.
And here she was, stirring up trouble. I shook my head.
Ignore it.
Too many years had passed. How could I go back to those days? How could I relive it all? I closed my eyes tightly, willing the memories away.
Yes, I could just ignore it.
It wasn’t a legal inquiry or a criminal investigation. I did not owe this woman, this
stranger
, anything. I could throw the envelope into the garbage can and be done with it. But then I remembered the last few lines of the letter. “If you ever plan to visit the island again, there is something of yours I found here, something you might like to see again.” My heart, already in poor condition, raced at the thought of it.
Visit the island again? Me? At my age?

“Grandma, are you all right?” Jennifer leaned in and wrapped her arm around my shoulder.

“I’m fine,” I said, composing myself.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head and tucked the letter safely inside the book of crossword puzzles on the coffee table.

Jennifer reached for her bag and began fumbling inside. She retrieved a large manila envelope, wrinkled and worn. “I want to show you something,” she said. “I was going to wait until later, but”—she took a deep breath—“I think it’s time.”

She handed me the envelope.

“What is this?”

“Look inside,” she said slowly.

I lifted the flap and pulled out a stack of black-and-white photos, instantly recognizing the one on top. “That’s me!” I cried, pointing to the young woman dressed in white nurse’s garb, with a coconut tree in the distance. Oh how I had marveled at the palms the first day I set foot on the island, almost seventy years ago. I looked up at Jennifer. “Where did you find these?”

“Dad found them,” she said, eyeing my face cautiously. “He was going through some old boxes and these were tucked inside. He asked me to return them to you.”

My heart swelled with anticipation as I flipped to the next photograph, of Kitty, my childhood friend, sitting on an overturned canoe on the beach, her feet kicked out like a movie star’s. Kitty
could
have been a movie star. I felt the familiar pain in my heart when I thought of my old friend, pain that time hadn’t healed.

There were several more in the stack, many of them scenes of the beach, the mountains, lush with flora, but when I reached the last photograph, I froze.
Westry. My Westry.
There he was with the top button of his uniform undone, his head tilted slightly to the right with the bungalow’s woven palm wall in the background.
Our bungalow.
I may have taken thousands of photographs in my life, and so many of them were forgotten, but not this one. I remembered everything about the snapshot, the way the air had smelled that evening—of seawater and freesia, blooming in the moonlight. I could recall the feeling I had in my heart, too, when my eyes met his through the lens, and then there was what happened in the moments that followed.

“You loved him, didn’t you, Grandma?” Jennifer’s voice was so sweet, so disarming, that I felt my resolve weaken.

“I did,” I said.

“Do you think of him now?”

I nodded. “Yes. I have always thought of him.”

Jennifer’s eyes widened. “Grandma, what happened in Tahiti? What happened with this man? And the letter—why did it affect you in the way it did?” She paused, and reached for my hand. “Please tell me.”

I nodded.
What would be the harm in telling her?
I was an old woman. There wouldn’t be many consequences now, and if there were, I could weather them. And how I longed to set these secrets free, to send them flying like bats from a dusty attic. I ran my finger along the gold chain of my locket, and nodded. “All right, dear,” I said. “But I must warn you, don’t expect a fairy tale.”

Jennifer sat down in the chair beside me. “Good,” she said, smiling. “I’ve never liked fairy tales.”

“And there are dark parts,” I said, doubting my decision.

She nodded. “But is there a happy ending?”

“I’m not sure.”

Jennifer gave me a confused look.

I held the photo of Westry up to the light. “The story isn’t over yet.”

August 1942

 

“K
itty Morgan, you did not just say that!” I set my goblet of mint iced tea down with enough force to crack the glass. Mother would be happy to know that I hadn’t spoiled her set of Venetian crystal.

“I most certainly did,” she said, smirking victoriously. Kitty, with her heart-shaped face and that head full of wiry, untamable blond ringlets springing out of the hairpins she’d been so meticulous about fastening, hardly provoked anger. But on this subject I held my ground.

“Mr. Gelfman is a
married
man,” I said in my most disapproving voice.

“James,” she said, elongating his first name for dramatic effect, “is impossibly unhappy. Did you know that his wife disappears for weeks at a time? She doesn’t even tell him where she’s going. She cares more about the cats than she does him.”

I sighed, leaning back into the wooden bench swing that hung from the enormous walnut tree in my parents’ backyard garden. Kitty sat beside me then, just as she had when we were in grade school. I looked up at the tree overhead, its leaves tinged with a touch of yellow, hinting that autumn was imminent.
Why must things change?
It seemed like only yesterday that Kitty and I were two schoolgirls, walking home arm in arm, setting our books down on the kitchen table and making a dash to the swing, where we’d tell secrets until dinnertime. Now, at twenty-one, we were two grown women on the verge of, well, something—not that either of us could predict what.

“Kitty,” I said, turning to face her. “Don’t you understand?”

“Understand what?” She looked like a rose petal, sitting there in her dress brimming with pink ruffles, with those wild curls that were getting even more unruly in the late-afternoon humidity. I wanted to protect her from Mr. Gelfman, or any other man she intended upon falling in love with, for none would be good enough for my best friend—certainly not the married ones.

I cleared my throat.
Does she not know Mr. Gelfman’s reputation?
Certainly she remembered the hordes of girls who had flaunted themselves at him in high school, where he had been Lakeside’s most dashing teacher. Every girl in English Lit had hoped to make eye contact with him as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee?” crossed his lips. That was all girlish fun, I contended. But had Kitty forgotten about the incident five years ago with Kathleen Mansfield? How could she forget? Kathleen—shy, big breasted, terribly dim-witted—had fallen under Mr. Gelfman’s spell. She hovered near the teachers’ lounge at lunch, and waited for him after school. Everybody wondered about them, especially when one of our girlfriends spotted Kathleen in the park with Mr. Gelfman after dusk. Then, suddenly, Kathleen stopped coming to school. Her older brother said she’d gone to live with her grandmother in Iowa. We all knew the reason why.

I crossed my arms. “Kitty, men like Mr. Gelfman have only one objective, and I think we both know what that is.”

Kitty’s cheeks flushed to a deeper shade of pink. “Anne Calloway! How dare you suggest that James would be anything but—”

“I’m not
suggesting
anything,” I said. “It’s just that I love you. You’re my best friend, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Kitty kicked her legs despondently as we swung for a few minutes in silence. I reached into the pocket of my dress and privately clutched the letter nestled inside. I’d picked it up at the post office earlier that day and was eager to sneak away to my bedroom to read it. It was from Norah, a friend from nursing school who’d been writing me weekly accounts from the South Pacific, where she’d been serving in the Army Nurse Corps. She and Kitty, both hot-tempered, had a falling out in our final term together, so I chose not to bring up the letters with Kitty. Besides, I couldn’t let on to her how much Norah’s tales of the war and the tropics had captivated me. They read like the pages of a novel—so much so that a part of me dreamt of taking my newly minted nursing degree and joining her there, escaping life at home and the decisions that awaited. And yet, I knew it was just a fanciful idea, a daydream. After all, I could help with the war efforts at home, by volunteering at the civic center or collecting tin cans and assisting with conservation projects. I shook my head at the thought of traipsing off to a war zone in the tropics mere weeks before my wedding. I sighed, grateful I hadn’t uttered a word of it to Kitty.