Chloe (25 page)

“That doesn’t help.” She’d never again have the nerve to confront Roarke like this. It was truly over. Chloe’s frustrated mind brought up the proprietary look in Miss Edna Talbot’s face. Chloe wanted to use it in some way to slash Roarke, to pay him back for his snide remark about Drake. She resisted the urge. Only Kitty mattered now. Not lost love or lost hope. Just survival.

On the Maryland shore, late August 1929

S
unshine shimmered on the white sand and blue ocean. Chloe stared out to the open sea as gulls squawked overhead and down the beach. Kitty and Jamie were with her. Something was nagging at her mind, had been nagging for some time, as if she’d forgotten to do some task. The restless sensation had grown stronger day by day. What did it mean? Was it having Kitty with her? Or was it having Jamie finally, after all the years, staying under the same roof as she?

This morning, Kitty waded nearby at the edge of the surf, now and then picking up shells and washing them in the water. Jamie shadowed her and Chloe trailed them both. Chloe had buried herself under a wide-brimmed straw hat tied securely to her head with a vivid green-silk scarf. The wind played with its ends. She wore a pale-green cotton summer dress. Her only concession to the beach were her bare hands and feet.

Kitty, on the other hand, wore a royal blue bathing suit with a thin, red-striped cotton shirt covering her shoulders so she wouldn’t burn. Sporting a peeling, sunburned nose, Jamie wore black swimming trunks and a white knit-cotton shirt. Nearly eleven, he was at that awkward age—all legs and arms—waiting to fill out. His head bent, he picked up shells and showed them to Kitty. Chloe felt like the grandmother along for the vacation with her daughter and grandson. But merely the sight of Kitty alive and walking on the white sand filled Chloe’s cup. Her friend had kept her promise and hadn’t left her.

Upon Kitty’s release from the hospital, Chloe had insisted that she come home to D.C. with her. When summer had made the city unbearable, they’d escaped to the seaside together. They’d decided to bring Jamie along. In only a few visits to the orphan’s home with Chloe, Kitty had fallen in love with the boy. Chloe felt shamed that she had never brought him before. But then she’d never been able to bring Bette. Mother didn’t like the beach—too sandy. Still, Kitty’s health had remained delicate and her spirits low. And Kitty had received several phone calls from a man. But she hadn’t revealed who he was or why she became moody or weepy after each call.

“Look, Chloe.” Kitty pointed downward “Another starfish.”

Chloe nodded. Then she noticed farther up the beach a familiar blond man approaching them. She waved to him. “Drake!”

Drake had rented a nearby cottage, forgoing his own place on Martha’s Vineyard. Since the night Kitty nearly died, when Chloe had failed to reconnect with Roarke, Chloe had given up being aloof with Drake. She wasn’t going to have the life she’d wanted, she’d realized, so what was wrong with marrying Drake? Even if she didn’t love him, he was a good friend and companion.
I could do a lot worse.
Still, she kept this to herself, not completely sure of her feelings.

“Come down to my place,” he invited as soon as he was within calling distance. “Some friends have stopped for lunch. Come as you are. This is the beach, after all.” Chloe nodded and started toward him.

“Do we have to have lunch with him again?” Kitty grumbled.

“Why not?” Chloe paused in front of her friend. “It will be an excellent lunch in amusing company.”

“I don’t know what you see in the man,” Kitty muttered. “He’s too Republican for me.”

Chloe merely shrugged. For some reason, Kitty and Drake mixed like oil and water. She wondered if part of Kitty’s reticence toward Drake had something to do with her mysterious male friend.
Who is the man who calls you, Kitty?

Jamie looked back and forth between the two of them, troubled. Chloe smoothed back his wind-ruffled black hair and smiled into his serious face. “Miss Kitty and I aren’t arguing. Don’t worry.”

The boy still looked concerned, but he nodded. Then he looked to Kitty as if for direction. Chloe pressed down the jealousy of being supplanted in Jamie’s heart by Kitty. That was being small. It was just that when Jamie was with her, she didn’t feel quite so unhappy. Did he do the same for Kitty?

Jamie was nearly the same age as her daughter and he hadn’t been adopted and probably wouldn’t be. She’d made sure he had what he needed so far and as he got older, she’d see to his education. But she wasn’t even an adequate mother to her own child. Why harm Jamie by adopting him? Bringing him into her family wouldn’t be doing him any favor.

Shaking off the sadness that thinking always brought, she started off toward Drake, who waited ahead for them. Kitty grumbled indistinctly for a few more moments but followed along with Jamie dogging her heels.

Drake kissed Chloe’s cheek and also ruffled Jamie’s hair. “Hey, kid, find any sand dollars?”

“No, sir.” Jamie looked down shyly.

“Well, then we’ll have to find you a substitute.” Drake reached into his pocket and handed Jamie a silver dollar.

Jamie’s mouth rounded. Holding out his sand-dusted hand, he showed it to Chloe. “Wow! A whole silver dollar.”

Chloe chuckled. “You must thank Mr. Drake.”

“A whole dollar.” Jamie’s large gray eyes widened. “Thank you, Mr. Drake. Thanks!” He turned to show the coin to Kitty.

“Buying more influence or just impressing Chloe?” Kitty taunted Drake.

Drake acted as if he hadn’t heard her and took Chloe’s arm, walking her toward his cottage and its wide screened-in seaside porch. “You always dress just as you ought, and beautifully.”

“Oh, yes,” Kitty piped up from the rear, “Chloe’s always had style. She always looks good on the outside.”

Chloe couldn’t think why Kitty suddenly sounded bitter. Was it only because of Drake, or her own private troubles? “Thank you, Kitty,” she replied as blandly as she could, not wanting to upset Jamie with any more verbal sparring.

“And I apologize for not taking note of your charms, Miss Kitty,” Drake mocked her without a backward glance. “You’ve always been the quintessential perky brunette and a type much admired, I believe.”

“Perky was attractive when I was twenty-five,” Kitty said bitterly, “but will it still be when I’m thirty, next year?”

“Kitty,” Chloe said with a forced laugh, “such strange things come out of your mouth sometimes.”
What’s wrong, Kitty?

“Chloe,
you’ve
already fulfilled your primary purpose in life,” Kitty retorted. “You’ve given your mother a grandchild. My mother called last night to ask me
once more
when I was going to
get married
and start giving
her
grandchildren.”

Kitty’s words sparked Chloe’s irritation, but she merely passed it off. If Kitty only knew . . . Chloe stared up at the cloudless blue sky. “Why didn’t you tell her that that was Roarke’s job?” Little pins stuck into Chloe’s heart at her own comment, and Edna Talbot’s determined face flashed in her mind.

“I did, but it didn’t do me any good.”

Drake chuckled. “Lots of men like perky brunettes, Kitty. Why don’t you snag one and make your mother happy?”

“I don’t intend to marry. And no one intends to marry me.”

Chloe tried to think of what could possibly have brought out this declaration. She glanced back at Kitty, trying to read her face.

Gleeful shouts of welcome interrupted their conversation, announcing Drake’s visitors had made themselves comfortable on the porch. Furnished with white wicker and green-and-white-striped cushions and a large jute rug on the white narrow planked floor, it was picture perfect for the beach. The two well-dressed couples ensconced there already had cocktails in their hands. Through the introductions, Chloe put a smile on her face and clung to Drake’s arm. The two men, who identified themselves as Cal and Jimmy, Chloe knew were sons of millionaires like Drake, and one of the women, Terry, was the daughter of a prominent Democrat senator. The other woman, named Katherine, looked and behaved as if she’d been on the stage. Gossip had it that Cal was keeping her in a style she wanted to become accustomed to.

Chloe greeted them with false enthusiasm. For some reason, today she felt unequal to playing her usual role of carefree flapper. She felt weighed down. Her restlessness intensified. She suppressed the urge to run away down the beach.

“Where’s your white hood, Drake?” Terry sang out as she waved a newspaper in her hand.

Drake grimaced. “Another lynching?”

“No, a white mob of two thousand burned a Negro alive in Mississippi,” Jimmy reported blandly. “Accused of raping a white woman.”

Chloe shut her eyes and her mind to this horrifying image. No wonder she hadn’t been reading the newspaper. Life at the beach seemed incompatible with keeping up with the daily news. All the news that year had been bad—gangsters gunning each other down in Chicago, the stock market experiencing jitters, now another racial killing in Mississippi. Who needed to read about such dreadful things?

“Oh, let’s not discuss anything dreary,” she begged as she settled herself into a cushioned wicker chair and crossed her legs. Her head ached with . . . what? A restiveness, an unhappiness she couldn’t shrug off. There was a general round of loud agreement to this.

“Yes, what would forty thousand Ku Klux Klan members marching in Washington just a few years ago have to do with us?” Kitty asked sarcastically, flinging out her hands, dropping into a chair, and curling up like a cat. “We’re the elite. We don’t need to be concerned that the KKK lynches innocent people white and black all over the South, do we?”

“Ish kabibble,” a very debonair Cal barked and waved his drink at her. “Have a drink and take it easy.”

“Sorry,” Kitty snapped. “Bootleg liquor singed my liver and my drinking days are done.”

“Well, don’t take it out on the rest of us,” Katherine said, perching on the arm of Cal’s chair. “Hey, I’ve seen you.” The woman pointed at Kitty with sudden comprehension on her face. “You’re that female lawyer who represents most of the Negro actors and actresses in New York. No wonder the KKK gets under your skin.”

“The question is why doesn’t it get under your skin?” Kitty’s voice had turned mocking and subtly dangerous. The visitors shifted in their seats and glanced at each other covertly. Chloe stared at her bare feet on the jute rug—upset with Kitty, loathing herself.

“Kitty, it’s a free country,” Drake said. “The KKK disgusts me. And it can worry you if you like. It’s a free country. To each his own.”

“Chloe”—Kitty pinned her with her eyes—“why don’t we tell your friends about your living in Harlem and marching down Fifth Avenue with the NAACP in 1917?”

Chloe’s face burned scarlet. Anger flashed through her.
Kitty, you have no right to meddle in my life.
Still, for appearance’s sake, Chloe passed it off as nothing. “I can’t think that anyone here would be remotely interested.”

“You were a radical once?” Terry squealed with amusement. “Quentin Kimball’s daughter marching down Fifth Avenue with Negroes! I can’t wait to tell my father.”

Chloe gripped the arms of the wicker chair with her hands.
Kitty, you nearly killed yourself with your wild ways and you dare to stand in judgment of me?
She stared coolly at Terry and addressed her, “I don’t know why you think what I did is ludicrous. Or why it’s yours or anyone’s business.”

“Terry, you’re not amusing,” Drake ordered. “Cut it.”

Terry looked chagrined and pouted, but said no more. Chloe said nothing. She didn’t owe these people anything.

Kitty turned to Chloe and continued as if she’d not heard any interruptions, “You’re not the woman you were in 1917. But neither am I. I’ve been drifting too long.” Kitty pursed her lips. “I have to make a decision. I’ve put it off long enough.”

Cal started to say something, but Kitty cut him off. “Chloe, thanks for helping me get myself back this year. But now I think I’m ready to move on.” She stood up and offered Jamie her hand. “Come with me, kid. It’s time you had a family.”

Chloe looked at her friend in sudden shock. Was she serious?

Jamie took Kitty’s hand, looking confused. “Do we have to go back already? Can’t Miss Chloe come with us?”

Kitty led the child off the porch toward the beach. “She can come any time she wants to. Let’s go. I have a mother in need of a grandchild. Why shouldn’t it be you?”

Kitty was taking Jamie from her, but Chloe couldn’t seem to move. In dawning horror, she watched Kitty march away without a backward glance. Jamie kept stopping, pulling on Kitty’s hand, looking back longingly to Chloe, who could only sit there watching them leave. Finally, they were just two strangers far down the beach. A wave of sickening self-loathing crashed over Chloe.

Cal turned on the Victrola. The latest tune, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” poured out. Drake pulled Chloe to her feet and began dancing with her. He held her flush against him and pressed his cheek against hers. Chloe didn’t resist. Restlessness had become anguish. For once, she needed Drake and clung to him. Sobs kept trying to bubble up. The last remnant of her youthful hope had been ripped away. But why had Kitty done it? Was she just taking her own unhappiness out on Chloe? But even if Chloe deserved it, why had her oldest friend shot her point blank?

Chloe pressed herself closer to Drake. The moon had risen and shimmered on the waves lapping behind them. Both of them were barefoot in the sand. Drake had rolled up his white shirt sleeves and the cuffs of his gray Oxford bags. Chloe wore a thin shawl over one of her cotton summer dresses, trimmed with white eyelet. Its white skirt fluttered around her calves in the ocean breeze. Her bare toes dug in the cool wet sand as she rocked from her toes to her heels in time with a tune from a neighboring cottage. Raucous gulls still flew and hopped around in the sea foam. The waves lapped in an easy rhythm of their own. Chloe began to softly sing along with the melody on the breeze, “You Do Something to Me.”

Kitty and Jamie had left over a week ago and Chloe had spent every day since with Drake. Acquaintances had come and gone, barely noticed by Chloe. Her eyes and Drake’s had met often and it seemed that they shared a new understanding, a new intimacy. She’d come to the crossroads and she knew it. Kitty hadn’t died, but she’d bailed out of Chloe’s life, too. And she’d taken Jamie with her. The unkindest cut of all.