Endless Summer, page 10
Win laughs uncomfortably and takes a breath to respond, but Vivian whispers, “She’s high as a kite, Win.”
“I can hear you,” Rhonda says, now addressing Vivian. Eleanor has to admit, she’s impressed. Vivian is fearsome to one and all, and especially, Eleanor would assume, to someone as disenfranchised as Rhonda. But Rhonda is giving Vivian her full ferocity. Maybe that’s easier to do when you have nothing to lose. One can’t fall farther than the floor. “I’m standing right here, Vivian.”
“But not for long,” Vivian says. She signals to Frederick, who has sensed trouble and is posted nearby. “Frederick, please ask our driver to deliver Miss Fiorello home immediately.”
Before Eleanor can think better of it, she says, “But Mr. Frost can stay, can’t he, Mother?”
“Of course!” Vivian says, and the miraculous happens: her face lights up with a natural smile. Whether this is because Vivian relishes the act of separating Rhonda from her date or because Vivian senses her daughter’s utter captivation by Billy Frost, Eleanor doesn’t know, nor does she care. She takes Billy Frost by the hand and leads him into the ballroom.
Later that night, after procuring a glass of champagne for herself and a Jameson, neat, for Billy; after snatching up the last Ritz cracker with salmon mousse from the tray; after sitting next to Billy for a dinner of prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, and peas; after dancing with him to over a dozen songs, including “At Last,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” which Billy croons in Eleanor’s ear, immediately making it “their” song, Eleanor and Billy leave the party in Billy’s car, a Plymouth Valiant convertible, the vinyl top of which is not quite flush, so that even when Billy cranks the heat, there is still a blast of chilly air leaking into the passenger side.
Does Eleanor care? No!
“Where do you live?” Billy asks. “Around here?”
“Here? Brookline?” Eleanor says. “No.” She lives with her parents on Pinckney Street on Beacon Hill in one of the houses that face Louisburg Square. They have a key to the garden, although the novelty of that wore off years ago. Eleanor and Flossie have been trained never to reveal their exact address. This started in June of 1962 when Eleanor was sixteen and the Boston Strangler was on the loose. The whole city had been in a panic, but Vivian doubly so because Win was a bank president, and one of Vivian’s most frightening childhood memories had been of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping in 1932. “I live in the city, but let’s not go there.”
“Okay, where to, then?” Billy asks. “My place? I have an apartment in Dorchester.”
Eleanor closes her eyes. An apartment in Dorchester—those four words would fell Vivian Roxie like a tree. As much as Eleanor pretends not to care what Vivian thinks, she can’t, under any circumstances, spend the night in an apartment in Dorchester.
But then Eleanor gets an idea.
She directs Billy onto Pine Manor’s campus. The college is deserted but technically open because there are a handful of students who live too far away to leave for Christmas break—Washington State, Mexico City, Jordan—and another handful who are willfully staying on campus to avoid or annoy their families. All of the women on Eleanor’s floor are gone, however. Her roommate, Ann-Lane, is safely in Memphis.
Once in the dorm room, Eleanor wonders what she’s really prepared for. All she wanted was a warm, quiet place to talk.
The first thing Billy notices is her sewing machine.
“Is this yours?” he asks. “You sew?”
She nods, suddenly shy. “I want to be a fashion designer.” She plucks the velvet of her bodice. “I made this dress.”
“You did not.”
“I did.”
“Come here,” Billy says. He takes his overcoat off and lays it across Ann-Lane’s bed, but he leaves his blazer on, like a gentleman. Eleanor walks over to him and raises her face.
He pulls the red ribbon at her neck. “It’s like opening a present,” he says. He kisses the hollow at the base of her throat.
Just like that, Eleanor is in love. She suspects it’s a condition from which she will never recover.
William O’Shaughnessy Frost. O’Shaughnessy is his mother’s maiden name. He’s Irish Catholic, grew up in the Mission Hill section of Boston, attended Boston Latin.
Eleanor silently celebrates. Her mother can’t argue with Boston Latin.
His college was in Amherst, and Eleanor gets ready to marshal a parade until she realizes he means UMass, and in any case, he dropped out after two years when he decided he didn’t want to be an engineer after all. He now attends trade school in Southie. In eighteen months, he will be a licensed electrician.
Trade school, Eleanor thinks. She imagines Vivian pursing her lips.
“Family?” Eleanor asks. They are lying naked under the sheet, wool blanket, and Amish quilt on Eleanor’s bed. She did not, however, sacrifice her virginity. She wanted to, but Billy said she was too fine a girl and they should wait until they knew each other better.
Billy’s father is a doctor, a general practitioner on Mission Hill. His mother is a librarian, a slave to the card catalog. The physician father will meet Vivian’s standards, although a hospital position would have been better. But what will Vivian think of a mother who works? Vivian sits on the ladies’ auxiliary committee for the Boston Public Library, so she might consider being a librarian noble work in the name of literacy for the masses or she might consider a woman who gets paid for finding call numbers and locating microfiche a travesty.
There are no siblings. Apparently, Billy had had a complicated birth.
An only child is preferable to a squawking Irish household of twelve, Eleanor supposes, although she herself has always longed for a bigger family—brothers, more sisters. Not, however, an adopted sister such as Rhonda.
“How do you know my cousin?” Eleanor asks. This is the answer she dreads the most.
“I was a chum of Frank Paley,” Billy says. “We were altar boys together at the basilica. He introduced me to Rhonda, then told me to look out for her while he was overseas. I saw her again at his funeral, and last week out of the blue she called me up and invited me to the party. She was afraid to go by herself, she said. I went partly as a favor to her but more as a favor to my old buddy Frank, may he rest in peace.”
“So you don’t… like her?” Eleanor says. “The two of you aren’t… you haven’t…”
“No,” Billy says, kissing Eleanor’s left eyelid. “And no,” he says, kissing her right eyelid.
She feels it again, the heart swell. She had worried that Billy held back in bed because he was in love with Rhonda. But he barely knows her! He was a childhood friend of Frank Paley’s! Eleanor wonders if Billy knows any magic tricks. His eyes are a magic trick all their own.
Billy Frost, Eleanor decides, is on the edge of suitable. She breathes in deeply, then exhales. She is ready to live on the edge. It’s what she’s been waiting for, she realizes.
“It’s amazing that a girl as beautiful as you doesn’t already have a boyfriend,” Billy says.
Eleanor manages to suppress a spurt of nervous laughter. She has completely forgotten about Glen Bingham and his franchise project!
“Not so amazing,” she says.
They are to be married June 22 on the “flat of the hill,” at the Church of the Advent, where everyone in the Roxie family has been baptized, confirmed, married, and memorialized for nearly a century. Eleanor will be attended by her Pine Manor roommate, Ann-Lane Crenshaw, and Flossie will be a junior bridesmaid.
But before this is set in stone, there is a discussion about Eleanor asking cousin Rhonda to be an attendant.
Win Roxie says, “Would you consider it?”
Vivian stands in silence at Win’s side. On this rare occasion, Eleanor’s eyes seek out her mother’s. There is no way Vivian wants Rhonda at the altar with her daughter.
“I’d rather not,” Eleanor says—diplomatically, she thinks.
“Technically, she is the one who introduced you to Billy,” Win says. “I think it would be a nice gesture to ask.”
“If it were only a gesture, that would be one thing,” Eleanor says. “But what if she says yes? I can’t have Rhonda all strung out on drugs, tripping on LSD or high on PCP at my wedding.”
“I have taken measures to neutralize Rhonda,” Win says. “Set her on the straight and narrow.”
Vivian flinches almost imperceptibly. Clearly, this is the first she’s heard of these “measures.” There is more than one way to be unfaithful, Eleanor realizes.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Eleanor says. “I won’t do it.”
This is a gamble. Win is, of course, footing the bill for the nuptials and the honeymoon to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. But if he gives her an ultimatum—ask Rhonda or the wedding is off—then Eleanor will elope. Billy would prefer that, she’s certain.
Win nods, accepting defeat. “All right,” he says.
Not only does Eleanor not want Rhonda as a bridesmaid, she doesn’t want to invite her to the wedding. But this, she knows, is pushing things too far. She considers sabotaging Rhonda’s invitation—dropping it through the sewer grate on West Cedar on her way to the Charles Street post office—but she worries she’ll be found out. What should concern her more than the invitation addressed to Rhonda is the one addressed to Win’s sister and Rhonda’s mother, Cressida. That envelope says simply Flandreau Santee Sioux Reservation, South Dakota.
It’s unlikely either Rhonda or Cressida will accept. If Rhonda does come, Eleanor imagines she will be there to make a scene. Rhonda might show up at the church in an attempt to steal Billy back, like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, which was, coincidentally, the movie Eleanor and Billy went to see on their first official date. Or Rhonda could create some other kind of kerfuffle. Eleanor imagines protest signs, cherry bombs, fire. She envisions Rhonda streaking naked through the church—anything to call attention to herself, her pain, her beloved killed by the Vietcong. Anything to discredit the establishment, the world of power and privilege that she has never had access to. There is no possibility that Rhonda is as rehabilitated as Win believes. She was too far gone to save. She was, Eleanor thinks, doomed from birth.
Rhonda’s invitation goes into the post with everyone else’s, and a week later her response card comes back: Miss Rhonda Fiorello will attend. No mention of a guest, which is worrisome; a date might serve as ballast or buoy.
There are many other things to worry about, however. There’s an iffy weather forecast for June 22, a fever that Flossie runs the week before the wedding, the failure of the church’s air-conditioning, and whether or not Vivian will be civil to Billy’s parents, Dr. James and Mrs. Tabitha Frost. (“Unusual name, Tabitha,” Vivian remarks. “Is that Jewish?”) Following the reception, photographs are to be taken in the Public Garden. Eleanor hears that a classmate of hers from Winsor and Pine Manor, Suzie Worth, is getting married at the Church of the Covenant in Back Bay and is planning on having her photos taken in the Public Garden at nearly the exact same time. Eleanor loathes Suzie Worth and has since ninth grade; this discovery causes Eleanor to dissolve into tears.
The one steadfast element amid all of the wedding planning is Eleanor’s groom. Billy offers Eleanor a handkerchief, kisses her tenderly, tells her that if the wedding planning is making her upset, they can hop on a Greyhound bus to Vegas. All that matters is their love.
It turns out Billy is right. Eleanor puts faith in the love part of the marriage and things start to go smoothly. Three days before the wedding, Dr. and Mrs. Frost are invited to the house on Pinckney Street for a cold supper. Dr. Frost is a charming man, older than Win by ten years and avuncular; he smokes a pipe and wears a fine watch—a gold Omega 1954—that Win admires. Mrs. Frost is quieter; her voice still holds a tinge of an Irish accent. She came to the country as a child, she says; her father was an editor at Little, Brown.
This gets Vivian’s attention. “The Little, Brown offices are right on Beacon Street,” she says.
“That’s right,” Tabitha Frost says. “I visited them with my father. He used to show me the manuscripts he was editing in red pencil. Back then, I thought books were born whole, but he taught me about editing, how he would try to tease the best writing out of the author. It’s a process, like anything else.”
Vivian nods, and Eleanor can tell she’s impressed.
Then Tabitha says, “Your daughters, Mrs. Roxie, are two of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“Oh, stop,” Vivian says. A blush creeps up her cheeks, and Eleanor notices the start of that most elusive of phenomena turning up Vivian’s lips.
There is bright sunshine and low humidity on June 22. The church’s air-conditioning works just fine. Flossie is the picture of good health, adorable with her blond curls and her blush-pink dress. Eleanor looks stunning in her gown (designed by Priscilla of Boston) and her veil. Her going-away suit is her own design—pencil skirt and bolero jacket in peach shantung silk. Once again, she told her mother she’d bought it at Filene’s, and once again, Vivian believed her, which seems to bode well for Eleanor’s future career.
Eleanor doesn’t think of Rhonda at all until near the end of the service when Reverend Caruthers says, “If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else hereafter forever hold his peace.” The church is quiet. Eleanor scans the first few rows of the bride’s side, but she doesn’t see Rhonda, and the rest of the church is a swarm of faces, all of them beaming.
Eleanor and Billy are married.
They stand at the entrance to the Country Club to greet people as husband and wife. The guest list is much the same as it was for the Christmas party with the addition of Eleanor’s friends from Pine Manor and Billy’s friends from trade school, from UMass, from Boston Latin, from childhood—including his pal Ian, who lost his left leg in Vietnam at the Battle of Ia Drang. He labors up the front steps on crutches, but his countenance is bright.
Glen Bingham has come to the wedding, and as soon as Eleanor sees him, she introduces him to Miss Pitch, her father’s secretary. They head inside together, and Billy turns to Eleanor. “Matchmaking, are we?”
Eleanor doesn’t know what to say. She is so unimaginably happy that she wants everyone to feel as she does. She wants everyone to be in love.
The flow of guests has slowed to a trickle, and Eleanor is about to lead Billy inside for a glass of champagne—her mother will be watching—when she sees a young woman in a canary-yellow linen shift dress and a matching pillbox hat approaching. Eleanor’s eyes widen. “Rhonda!” she says.
“Sorry I missed the service,” Rhonda says. “I had to finish something for class.”
“Class?” Eleanor says. She can’t get over how different Rhonda looks. The dress is clean and pressed, the nude kitten heels are appropriate, and Rhonda has cut her hair to shoulder length. It flips up at the ends now, just like Marlo Thomas’s. She is wearing a pearl necklace and pearl earrings.
“I go to Katie Gibbs now,” Rhonda says.
“Good for you,” Billy says. He reaches out to embrace Rhonda, then Eleanor does the same, although she feels discombobulated, nearly duped, by Rhonda’s transformation. The real magician isn’t Frank Paley, she thinks—it’s Win. This is a better trick than pulling a dollar bill out of a lemon. Rhonda is presentable, nearly pretty!
Rhonda holds on to their hands and looks each of them squarely in the eye. “I am so happy for the two of you,” she says. “You are a stunning, dynamic couple. People in this country need something to believe in, and I know that everyone in attendance today believes in the two of you. You radiate more than love—you radiate hope.”
Hope, Eleanor thinks. She felt it in the church, all eyes on them. She felt the wedding guests’ faith and their optimism—despite the war raging in Southeast Asia, despite the killing of President Kennedy’s brother in California just a couple of weeks earlier. Some things are bigger than circumstance, bigger than history. Love is bigger. Resiliency is bigger.
Eleanor squeezes her cousin’s hand. “Thanks, Rhonda,” she says. “That means a whole lot coming from you.” She eyes Rhonda’s dress again and decides that although the dress is fine as it is, it would be even better with a belt, an obi belt, perhaps, like the Japanese geisha girls wear. Yes! Eleanor thinks. She will hunt down a matching shade of linen and make such a belt for Rhonda herself as soon as she gets home from her honeymoon.
She ushers her cousin forward and offers her new husband her arm. “Enough standing around,” she says. “Let’s get this new life of ours started.”
Frank Sinatra Drive
(Read with The Perfect Couple)
This is a previously unpublished extra chapter!
When I was growing up, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books. It was intriguing to me as a budding writer that in fiction, as in life, there are choices to be made—if you head in one direction, you will have a completely different outcome than if you head in another direction. “Frank Sinatra Drive” is an “alternative ending” to my novel The Perfect Couple, told from the point of view of Shooter Uxley. Shooter runs a company called A-List that sets up bucket-list trips and experiences for business executives. His job is to “work magic” and “make dreams come true.” And in this story, he decides to manipulate the circumstances of the Winbury wedding—choosing a different path from the one described in the book—in an attempt to create his own “happily ever after.” This story is set in Palm Springs, where I went on a short vacation the week after I turned in the first draft of The Perfect Couple. Palm Springs is a unique place and I found it a terrific inspiration for this piece. Good luck, Shooter. I hope it works out!
