The Bungalow (3 page)

“You’re just jealous,” Kitty finally said, still smug.

“Nonsense,” I retorted, pushing Norah’s letter deeper into my pocket. The sun, high in the summer sky, caught the diamond ring on my left hand, producing a brilliant sparkle, as arresting as a lighthouse’s beacon on a dark night, reminding me of the unavoidable fact that I was engaged. Bought and paid for. “I’m marrying Gerard in less than a month,” I said. “And I couldn’t be happier.”

Kitty frowned. “Don’t you want to do something else with your life before you”—she paused as if the next few words would be very difficult, very displeasing to say—“before you become Mrs. Gerard Godfrey?”

I shook my head in protest. “Marriage, my dear, is not suicide.”

Kitty looked away from me, her gaze burrowing into a rosebush in the garden. “It might as well be,” she murmured under her breath.

I sighed, leaning back into the swing.

“Sorry,” she whispered, turning back to me. “I just want you to be happy.”

I reached for her hand. “But I will be, Kitty. I wish you’d see that.”

I heard footsteps on the lawn and looked up to find Maxine, our housekeeper, approaching, tray in hand. In heels, she walked steadily across the lawn, requiring only a single hand to bear a laden silver platter. Papa had called her graceful once, and she was. She practically floated.

“May I fetch you girls anything?” Maxine asked in her beautiful, heavily accented voice. Her appearance had changed very little since I was a girl. She was petite, with soft features, great big sparkling green eyes, and cheeks that smelled of vanilla. Her hair, now graying slightly, was pulled back into a tidy chignon, never a strand out of place. She wore a white apron, always clean and freshly starched to a remarkable stiffness, cinched tightly around her small waist. Lots of families in the neighborhood had servants, but we were the only household that employed a
French
housekeeper, a fact Mother was quick to point out at bridge parties.

“We’re fine, Maxine, thank you,” I said, weaving my arm through hers.

“There is something,” Kitty said conspiratorially. “You can convince Anne not to marry Gerard. She doesn’t love him.”

“Is this true, Antoinette?” Maxine asked. I was five years old the day she came to work in our home, and after a quick once-over, she said declaratively, “You do not have the face of an Anne. I shall call you Antoinette.” I had felt very fancy.

“Of course it’s not true,” I said quickly. “Kitty is just in one of her
moods
.” I gave her a sideways glance of disapproval. “I’m the luckiest girl in Seattle. I’m marrying Gerard Godfrey.”

And I
was
lucky. Gerard was tall and impossibly handsome, with his strong jaw and dark brown hair and eyes to match. He was quite wealthy, too, not that it mattered to me. Mother, on the other hand, frequently reminded me that at twenty-seven he enjoyed the distinction of being the youngest vice president at First Marine Bank, a title that meant he would come into a fortune when he took over for his father. You’d have to be a foolish woman to turn down a proposal from Gerard Godfrey, and when he asked for my hand, under this very walnut tree, I nodded without a moment’s hesitation.

Mother had been giddy upon hearing the news. She and Mrs. Godfrey had planned the union since I was in infancy, of course. Calloways would marry Godfreys. It was as natural as coffee and cream.

Maxine picked up a pitcher of iced tea and refilled our goblets. “Antoinette,” she said slowly, “have I ever told you the story of my sister, Jeanette?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t even know you had a sister.” I realized that there were many things I didn’t know about Maxine.

“Yes,” she said quietly, looking thoughtful. “She loved a boy, a peasant boy from Lyon. They were madly in love. But our father and mother pushed her toward another man, a man who made a decent wage in the factories. So she parted with her farm boy and married the factory worker.”

“How heartbreaking,” I said. “Did she ever see him again?”

“No,” she replied. “And she was miserable.”

I sat up and smoothed my dress, blue crepe with a delicate belt on the bodice that was just a trifle too tight. Mother had brought it home from one of her European shopping trips. She had a habit of buying clothing too small for me. “Well, that’s very sad, and I’m sorry for Jeanette. But this does not have any application to my life. You see, I
love
Gerard. There is no one else.”

“Of course you love Gerard,” said Maxine, reaching down to pick up a napkin that had fallen on the grass. “You’ve grown up with the boy. He is like a brother to you.”

Brother.
The word had an eerie pulse to it, especially when used to describe the man I was going to marry. I shivered.

“Dear,” she continued, catching my eyes and smiling, “it is your life and your heart. And you say there is no one else, and that may be true. I’m simply saying that maybe you haven’t given yourself enough time to find him.”

“Him?”

“Your one true love,” she said simply. The four words rolled off her tongue in a natural, matter-of-fact way, implying that such deep, profound feeling was available to anyone who sought it, like a ripe plum dangling from a branch, ready for the picking.

I felt a chill come over me, which I blamed on the breeze that had just picked up, and shook my head. “I don’t believe in fairy tales, or in knights in shining armor. I believe that love is a choice. You meet someone. You like them. You decide to love them. It’s that simple.”

Kitty rolled her eyes. “How horribly
unromantic
,” she groaned.

“Maxine,” I said, “what about you? Were you ever in love?”

She ran a cloth along the side of the tea tray, wiping up the rings our goblets had left. “Yes,” she said, without looking up.

Blinded by curiosity, I didn’t stop to consider that maybe the memory of this man was painful for her. “Was he an American or a Frenchman? Why didn’t you marry him?”

Maxine didn’t answer right away, and I instantly regretted my line of questioning, but then she opened her mouth to speak. “I didn’t marry him because he was already married to someone else.”

We all looked up when we heard Papa’s footsteps on the terrace. Puffing on a cigar, he crossed the grass toward the three of us. “Hi, kid,” he said, smiling at me through his thick gray mustache. “I didn’t think you were coming home until Tuesday.”

I returned his smile. “Kitty talked me into taking an earlier train.”

I had finished my college courses at Portland State University in the spring, but Kitty and I had stayed on for an additional two months of training to obtain our nursing licenses. What we’d do with these credentials was of great concern to our parents. Heaven forbid we actually use them.

Gerard, on the other hand, found the whole business of being engaged to a trained nurse, in a word, amusing. Our mothers didn’t work, nor did any of the women we knew. He joked that the cost of hiring a driver to chaperone me to my hospital shifts would amount to more than any paycheck I’d ever make, and yet if donning the white cap and tending to the sick was what I wanted to do, he promised to support me.

In truth, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I’d chosen nursing because it stood in stark contrast to everything I’d grown to detest about the lives of the women I knew—Mother, who devoted herself to luncheons and the current state of ladies’ hemlines; and my school friends, who had spent months luxuriating in Paris or Venice upon high school graduation, with nary a worry, save finding a rich husband so they could perpetuate the lifestyles of their youth.

No, I didn’t fit that mold. Its confines stifled me. What spoke to me was nursing, in all of its gritty rawness. It promised to fulfill a part of me that had lain empty for the majority of my life, a part that longed to help others in a way that had nothing to do with money.

Maxine cleared her throat. “I was just leaving,” she said to Papa, picking up the tray with one fluid swoop. “Can I get you anything, Mr. Calloway?”

“No, Maxine,” he said. “I’m just fine. Thank you.” I liked the way he spoke to Maxine, always kind and gentle, never cross and hurried, which was the way of Mother.

She nodded and made her way across the emerald lawn, disappearing into the house.

Kitty looked up at Papa with concerned eyes. “Mr. Calloway?”

“Yes, Kitty?”

“I heard about another wave of men being drafted”—she gulped—“for the war. I read about it in the newspaper on the train. Do you know if any from Seattle have been notified?”

“It’s still very early, Kitty Cat,” he said, using the name he’d given Kitty when we were in grade school. “But the way things are progressing in Europe, I think we’ll see a great deal of men going off to fight. I just ran into Stephen Radcliffe in town and heard that the Larson twins are shipping out Thursday.”

I felt a tightness creep up in my chest. “Terry and Larry?”

Papa nodded solemnly.

The twins, a year younger than Kitty and me, were going off to war.
War.
It hardly seemed possible. Wasn’t it only yesterday that they were tugging at my pigtails in grade school? Terry was shy and had cheeks speckled with freckles. Larry, a bit taller and less freckled, was a born comedian. Both redheads, they were rarely seen apart. I wondered if they’d be allowed to stand next to each other on the battlefield. I closed my eyes as if to try to suppress the thought, but it lingered.
Battlefield.

Papa read my mind. “If you’re worried about Gerard shipping out, don’t,” he said.

Gerard was as strong and gallant as any man I knew, surely, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t imagine him anywhere but in a suit at the bank. And yet, as much as I wanted him spared from fighting, a secret part of me longed to see him in uniform, to see him stand for something other than dollars and cents.

“His family’s position in the community is too important,” he continued. “George Godfrey will see that he isn’t drafted.”

I hated the conflict brewing inside my heart—the fact that I took comfort in Gerard’s protected position and detested it at the same time. It wasn’t right that men from poor families had to fight a nation’s war while a privileged few dodged the draft for frivolous reasons. Sure, George Godfrey, a bank mogul now in failing health, was a former senator, and Gerard was the next in line to fulfill his duties at the bank. But even so, it was unsettling to imagine the Larson twins fighting in a European bunker in the dead of winter while Gerard rested comfortably in a heated office with a leather chair that swiveled.

Papa could read the anxiety in my eyes. “Don’t let it worry you. I hate to see you worry.”

Kitty stared at her hands in her lap. I wondered if she was thinking of Mr. Gelfman.
Will he join the war too?
He couldn’t be more than thirty-eight, surely young enough for combat. I sighed, wishing I could will the war to an end. The ill tidings of conflict hovered, creeping in and spoiling even the most perfect summer afternoon.

“Mother’s eating in the city tonight,” Papa said, glancing toward the house with a look of uncertainty that had all but disappeared by the time his eyes met mine. “Will I have the privilege of dining with you ladies this evening?”

Kitty shook her head. “I have an engagement,” she said vaguely.

“Sorry, Papa, I’m having dinner with Gerard.”

He nodded, suddenly looking sentimental. “Look at you two, all grown up, with big plans of your own. It seems like only a moment ago that you girls were out here with your dolls.”

Truth be told, I longed for those easy, uncomplicated days that revolved around paper dolls, dress-up, and tea parties on the terrace. I buttoned my sweater against the wind on my skin—winds of change.

“Let’s go inside,” I said, reaching for Kitty’s hand.

“OK,” she said sweetly. And just like that, we were Kitty and Anne again.

My eyes burned from the haze of cigarette smoke hovering like a low cloud over our table. The lights were dim in the Cabaña Club, the place everyone in Seattle went dancing on Saturday nights. I squinted, trying to make out the scene.

Kitty pushed a box wrapped in blue paper toward me. I eyed the gold ribbon. “What’s this?”

“Something for you,” she said, grinning.

I looked at her quizzically, and then at the box, and carefully untied the ribbon before peeling off the wrapping. I lifted the lid of a white jewelry box and pushed aside the cotton lining to reveal a sparkling object inside.

“Kitty?”

“It’s a pin,” she said. “A friendship pin. Remember those little rings we had as children?”

I nodded, unsure if the stinging in my eyes was from the smoke or the memories of simpler times.

“I thought we needed a grown-up version,” she said, pulling a lock of hair away from her shoulder to reveal a matching pin on her dress. “See? I have one too.”

I eyed the silver bauble, round and dotted with tiny blue stones that formed the shape of a rose. It glistened under the dim lights of the club. I flipped it over, where I found an engraving:
To Anne, with love, Kitty.