Maine (29 page)

It was ten to eight when they finally rolled in, drunk as skunks and towed by a couple of strangers. Alice’s brothers were big, dark, strapping men. The pair behind them looked like scarecrows in comparison—rather short and spindly, with hair the color of red-tinged straw. They barely filled out their uniforms.

“There she is!” her brother Paul hollered, far too loud. Even in the din, a few people turned to stare.

“You’re late,” she hissed, when the boys got close enough. “I’ve been waiting here forever.”

“Oh, now, don’t be dramatic,” Paul said. “We’re only a few minutes behind schedule, and believe me, you wouldn’t have wanted to see us before we had a drink. Tim was in tears!” He laughed raucously, and the other boys joined him.

It hit her then, as it sometimes did, that her brothers had already been to war and would soon have to return, like so many other young men in the room. There was news all the time of boys you had grown up with, dead and gone. Yet they still got upset over football games, and dressed up to go dancing. Life didn’t stop for anything.

One of the scarecrows extended a hand. “Daniel Kelleher,” he said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Is he handsome?
she had asked her brother Timmy at Thanksgiving dinner, and he had scoffed before saying,
He looks like Clark Gable, okay?

She realized now that her brother had been joking.

“Can I get you a drink?” the scarecrow asked. Alice requested a gin and tonic with lime.

He made his way up to the bar and she grabbed Timmy’s sleeve.

“How could you?” she hissed.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“He’s a dud!”

“Quit being such a snob. Give him a chance, will ya?”

Daniel returned a few minutes later with a glass of clear liquid on ice.

“They were fresh out of limes,” he said. “Or should that be ‘out of fresh limes’?”

Alice hated him at once. She took the glass from his hand and turned toward the others to let all of them—especially Daniel—know that she wasn’t interested.

“These boys of ours are a bunch of real sore losers, Alice,” Daniel said with a laugh. She narrowed her eyes. He meant his own brother, too, but she certainly didn’t appreciate his referring to her brothers that way.

“Never underestimate the power of the Crusaders,” he went on, beaming. “Fifty-five to twelve, how does that feel, fellas? I bet it smarts, huh?”

“There’s such a thing as an ungraceful winner, too, you know,” Alice said. She gulped down the gin.

“Uh-oh,” Timmy said. “Pay her no attention, Daniel. She’s just sore with us.”

“No, no, she’s right,” Daniel said with a grin. “Very ungentlemanly of me.”

“Well, I owe you a drink, I guess,” Timmy said.

“You owe me more than that, but we can discuss it when your sister’s not around,” Daniel chuckled.

Alice emptied her glass. “Timothy, another G and T,” she said. “You certainly owe me a drink too.”

Timmy went to the bar and the other boys started talking about football.

Daniel turned to her. “So, your brothers tell me you work in a law firm. That must be exciting.”

“Not really.”

“Aww, come on. I think if it were my job I’d want to read all the files for the juicy scandals. Who’s suing who and all that.”

She cocked her head. She had never thought of that. It wasn’t a half-bad idea.

“I’m saving up to go to Paris when the war is over,” she said, which was almost the truth. “I’m going to be a painter someday. Well, at least I want to.”

“It’s good to have a daydream,” he said. “That’s what my mother always told us.”

She wanted to tell him this wasn’t a stupid
daydream
, that someone had paid her for her work, but he kept talking: “I’ve been working as a trainer in the gun mount on my ship for six months. It gets dull sometimes, you know? Before that, I worked as a junior executive at an insurance company, and yes, it was as boring as it sounds. I’ll have to go back to it someday. But I want to hit like Ted Williams. That’s what I fantasize about to get me through. I’m always getting in trouble on the ship for my ghost batting.” He assumed the batter’s position and swung an imaginary bat, right there in the middle of the club. “Say, did you hear about Ted Williams’s brother? He’s a drifter type, I guess, no good. Anyway, poor Ted buys a big brand-new house, fills it up with nice furnishings. And this brother of his comes to the house one day, backs a truck up to the front door, and steals all the furniture. He even took the washing machine! He sold every last thing.”

Alice stared blankly. She wanted to go home.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I talk a lot when I’m nervous. May I say, you look beautiful.” He twisted his fingers around the cuffs of his sleeves. “Your brother said you were a looker, but, wow. How he ever saw fit to set a guy like me up with a girl like you, I’ll never know.”

My sentiments exactly
, she thought, though she smiled back.

When Timmy returned, she drank the second glass of gin down quickly, and then another. She began to feel warm and light, swaying in place to the music. She hadn’t had much to eat that day—she never did before a date—and she thought a bit tipsily that this Daniel wasn’t really the sort of guy you needed to starve yourself for, but maybe he wasn’t so bad.

He asked her to dance. It was a fast one, “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” even better than the Glenn Miller version on the radio. She was pleasantly surprised to find that Daniel wasn’t as clumsy as she might have imagined. He dipped her back and his big palm felt hot against her spine. He spun her and spun her until she began to feel dizzy. After a while, Alice grabbed his arm and said, “I need to sit down.”

He took her hand and led her off the floor. Her brothers were gone by then, off to the movies to forget the pain of what they had seen at Fenway Park. Alice couldn’t believe they would just up and leave her like that, but leave they had.

There were no empty seats at the bar. Daniel approached a bunch of men in air force uniforms clustered around the taps. He put a hand on one man’s arm.

“Hey, pal, do you mind giving up your seat to the lady?”

The young man jumped to his feet—he was tall, with jet-black hair and broad shoulders. She wished for a minute that Daniel Kelleher could somehow figure out a way to look like him.

“My pleasure,” he said as he stood up, and Alice wanted to grab him and say that she wasn’t with this guy, not really. She imagined how years later, they’d tell their friends the story of how they’d met while she was on some dreadful fix-up courtesy of her stupid brother, and then her real true love came along and offered up his chair.

But a moment later, the man was pulled off into the crowd. “Can I get you anything?” Daniel asked. “Another drink? A glass of water?”

She knew she ought to go for the water, or see if he’d like to sit down to dinner so she could get some food in her stomach, but Alice just said, “Another gin sounds swell.”

It was then, as he leaned forward to get the bartender’s attention, that Alice spotted her sister chatting with a beautifully dressed older woman. Mary’s cheeks were flushed, and she wore an emerald green gown that Alice had never seen before. Had she been wearing it under her coat when she left the house that morning? Or had Henry given it to her today?

Mary was laughing at something the woman had said. Alice thought her sister looked like a member of high society, no different from her companion. The sight made her feel uneasy. A moment later, Mary looked up and their eyes met. She kissed the woman on the cheek, gesturing toward Alice. They parted ways, and Mary began moving through the crowd as the band switched gears and started to play a soft, slow song, one of Alice’s favorites, “Moonlight Serenade.”

Halfway to where she stood, Mary pulled someone up from a table full of elegant men and women in fine attire: Henry. She whispered in his ear and he rose to his feet. They walked slowly toward the bar.

“There you are!” Mary said when she reached her side. She embraced Alice, and Daniel looked up in surprise. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where are the boys?”

“They went to the movies,” Alice said. “What are you doing here?”

“You told me to come. And it turned out some of Henry’s friends were here already. With a table, as luck would have it.” She looked toward Daniel expectantly.

“This is Timmy’s friend,” Alice said.

“Daniel Kelleher,” Daniel said, extending his arm and shaking Henry’s hand vigorously, like he was hammering a nail. “Pleased to meet you, uh—”

“Henry,” Henry said. “And this is Mary, of course.”

“My sister,” Alice said quickly.

“I’ve heard of you,” Mary said, without a hint of her old shyness.

“All good, I hope,” Daniel replied.

“Oh yes.” She turned to Alice and smiled. “Nice dress.”

“I know it’s yours, I—”

“No, really, it looks lovely on you,” Mary said. “Have it.”

The plain statement made Alice’s blood run hard and fast. How dare her sister speak to her that way, as if she were above her now? She tried to remember the Philippians—humility before all else.

Henry and Daniel leaned into a swarm of men trying to place their orders at the bar.

“I’m having a heck of a time of it,” Daniel said, and Henry simply signaled to a bartender in a tuxedo and said, “Charles, can you help us out?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Winslow,” he said.

Daniel turned pink.

“How’s it going?” Mary asked Alice when they were alone.

Alice took a deep breath, trying to move past her bitter feelings.

“The date is clearly a flop,” she said with a conciliatory smile. “Thanks, boys.”

Mary lowered her voice and looked over her shoulder, making sure Daniel couldn’t hear. “He doesn’t seem so bad. You’re too hung up on looks.”

“So you admit he’s ugly.”

Mary smiled. “Shh! No! A bit dishwatery, maybe.”

“I’m not exactly in the market for dishwater.”

“Fair enough.” Mary smiled. “It’s true you two make a bit of an odd couple.”

“I told him I wanted to be an artist and he laughed.”

“What!”

“More or less. He’s probably right. It probably won’t ever happen.”

Mary shook her head. “Did you tell him you’ve sold a painting?”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Alice said, though she was grateful to her sister for thinking that just then.

“You look dynamite in that dress, by the way,” Mary said. “Better than I ever did.”

“Hush,” Alice said.

The men returned with the drinks, and Mary and Daniel started a conversation about the navy, specifically about Timmy’s lifelong obsession with playing pranks. According to Daniel, their brother had gotten socked in the face for shaving off a shipmate’s left eyebrow when the fella was passed out drunk.

“Why not both eyebrows?” Mary asked.

As Daniel began to respond, Henry gently grabbed Alice’s wrist to get her attention.

“Can I tell you a secret, kiddo?” he whispered into her ear.

“Sure,” she said.

“I’m a bit intoxicated,” he said.

“Me too,” she said. “Great secret.”

“No, no, that’s not it. The secret is that I’m going to ask your sister to marry me tomorrow at the beach. I’ve got the ring right here.” He tapped his breast pocket and gave her a wink. “Picked it up this afternoon before I met her at the theater. You’re the only person who knows other than my sister. My father wants me to head up a branch of the company down in New York for a year or two, so we’ll likely be moving there after the wedding.”

Alice forced out a smile and said that it was wonderful news. This was what she had wanted. But she felt herself filling up with anger—why should Mary have a love, a real love, and not her? Why should Mary be the one to go free and be a wealthy woman, living as she pleased, meeting all sorts of fascinating people? Alice had thought Henry would bring good fortune to them both, but perhaps that had been naïve. Here she was with the dud to end all duds, and there was Mary, living like Isabella Stewart Gardner herself, off to New York for a new adventure.

Alice knew her rage and her stubbornness often burst from nowhere, but knowing didn’t change it. A daydream, that’s what Daniel had said about her life. Maybe he was right. Alice felt like a fool.

“I’m going to ask your dad for his permission in the morning while you and Mary are at church, which I’m not terribly excited about,” Henry went on. “If you could try to keep her out a half hour longer than usual or so. Maybe go for breakfast.”

“Absolutely,” she said briskly. Then she turned to the others and said, “I have to go home now.”

“What? No! You two should come downstairs and have a round with us,” Mary said. “It’s not that late.”

“Sure!” Daniel said.

“No thank you,” Alice said.

“Oh, come on,” Mary said. “Let us buy you a drink.”

“You’re acting a bit big for your britches,” Alice hissed at her sister, echoing their father’s words of a few weeks earlier.

Mary frowned. “Am I?”

With that, Alice felt guilty. What had her sister done to her, really?

“Let’s go downstairs,” Mary said.

Down below was the Melody Lounge, a dim bar with booths along the wall, where Alice had allowed Martin McDonough to kiss her right out in the open one night over the summer, considering it her patriotic duty, since he would be heading to Germany the following day, though after a moment she had told him to stop.

Alice looked toward the table where Henry had been sitting. Naturally, her sister wouldn’t deign to introduce her to their sophisticated friends. She saw that once Mary was formally a part of that world, Alice herself would be invisible to her. New York was hours away. Why hadn’t Mary told her?

“I really can’t,” she said. “I’m going home now.”

“Oh, Alice!” Mary said.

Alice ignored her. She turned to Daniel. “Please get my coat.”

He looked crestfallen, but he did as she said.

She stood there with Mary and Henry in silence until he came back. Alice burned with embarrassment when Mary caught sight of her own mink hanging on Daniel’s arm, though neither of them said a word about it.