Lies and Other Acts of Love Read online

  After a short ride in our handicap van, on our way down Edgartown’s enchanting Water Street on foot, Annabelle and I were chatting, pointing out which stores we planned to visit, which items in the windows appealed to us.

  I nearly fell right smack off the sidewalk when Dan, a few feet in front of us, pointed shakily and said, “Lynn, look!”

  I turned my head into the North Water Gallery and, in an instant, was transported from the sidewalk in Edgartown to the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. I was nineteen again, slightly uncomfortable in the outfit the modeling contest had provided, feeling as though, farm girl that I was, I was wearing a costume, ready to take center stage at that Broadway show they gave me tickets to.

  As the first bite of key lime tart melted off my fork onto my tongue, the sweet and sour fighting for position on my taste buds, I noticed that the noise from the guests was beginning to overshadow the lively songs of the orchestra.

  When people began to shuffle in their seats and then, overwhelmingly, rush out the door, the alarm bells finally went off in my head. Was it a fire? A gunman in the restaurant? A mobster in our midst? I too rose from my seat and headed toward the lobby, trying to discern what was happening. Through the rumble of voices, over the din of the orchestra, I made out something distinct. “The war is over!” a man’s voice cried. “It’s over! We’ve won!”

  My sister will come home, was my very first thought. The breath caught in my throat and, in the rush of the excitement, feeling as though my feet had left the ground, I let the crowd carry me along. To say that Times Square might as well have been Mars is an understatement. The lights, the buildings, the throngs of people everywhere you looked . . . For a girl who had known more cows than humans in her lifetime, it was startlingly wonderful, the rush of a lifetime. There I was, all alone, my chaperone having gotten lost in the crowd, looking up, up, up, marveling at the buildings around me, at the sheer energy of this place.

  People were dancing, singing, throwing their hats. I didn’t know what to do, all alone in a brand-new place. So I simply marveled, memorizing every detail. Even then I knew that, one day, my grandchildren would ask me, Where were you when the war was over?

  And this unfathomably glamorous story is what I would get to tell them.

  I felt that familiar ache in my heart, that soft pitter-pat that reminded me that I hadn’t found the love that I would create those grandkids with yet. In the midst of my marveling, out of nowhere, a soldier, dressed to the nines in his whites, grabbed my arm, spun me into him, dipped me and planted a kiss on me that quieted the deafening noise.

  “What’s that photo, Lovey?” Annabelle asked, bringing me back into the moment.

  We walked through the doors of the gallery and, as the woman dusting frames came over and asked, “May I help you?” I laughed as Dan said, “Yes. I’d like to buy this photo for my girlfriend here.”

  “Wait,” Annabelle said, peering at the photo. “That’s not you, is it, Lovey?”

  I put my hand to the frame around the photo, the nurse in her uniform, the soldier in his, caught up in the kind of kiss that can only come from a moment of complete freedom. I shook my head. That photo of that couple’s kiss might have changed the world. But my kiss that day changed mine.

  “Oh, Dan,” I scolded. “I can’t imagine what that photo costs.”

  “I said I’m getting it for you, and I am,” Dan said. He reached up to take my hand and put it to his lips.

  We might as well have been back in Times Square for the rush it gave me to get a glimpse of my husband’s old demeanor, his attitude, the way my pleasure mattered over all else. I almost expected him to get up out of the wheelchair and walk to the counter to pay. The momentary thought that I had decided not to fly private in order to save money crossed my mind. The girls can sell this photo later for whatever he pays for it now, I thought.

  I looked at the photo again and there I was, back in Times Square, breathless and shocked. I was trying to organize the fragments of my brain into one solid piece, scold this complete stranger for taking liberties with a woman he’d never met in the middle of all these people, for heaven’s sake. But, in reality, I wasn’t angry at all. My heart was racing out of my polka-dot dress, and I thought that, maybe, just maybe, in the most dramatic fashion, I had somehow stumbled right smack into the lips of a man I would be with forever.

  I looked down at my shoes and said, “I don’t know how you people do things up here, but where I come from, we certainly don’t kiss total strangers in public.”

  I heard a gasp, and I looked up to hear Dan say, “Lynn?”

  I put my hand over my mouth and laughed. “Dan?”

  He wrapped me in a hug and kissed me again, this time with even more intention.

  “What are the chances?” he asked. “How on earth are you?” He paused. “Because you look like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  I could feel the golden glow emanating from my pores, a type of glee I didn’t even know I could feel seeping out of every organ.

  My Dan was back.

  It was precisely the same thought I had standing in that art gallery that day, him chattering on with the owner.

  “I’m lost here, Lovey,” Annabelle said.

  “I’m so sorry, darling. The picture isn’t of us, but that’s precisely how D-daddy and I got together. He kissed me in Times Square when the war was over.”

  “Wait. I thought you two grew up together.”

  Dan interjected, “In the rush of the celebration, I kissed the first woman I saw. And when I pulled away, it was her, that beautiful girl that I had carried in my heart since the day I waved good-bye to her out of the window of my daddy’s Chevrolet.”

  I could see tears standing in Annabelle’s eyes. I knew that those tears weren’t from the heartwarming story; they were from having a man she loved like fury talking to her again. “When you know, you know, right?”

  I nodded. “I knew when I was still that girl in pigtails. But coming back together like that, running into each other out of random chance and complete coincidence practically a world away from where we grew up . . . We knew it had to mean something.”

  Dan smiled up at me, and, in his face, I still saw a remnant of the boy I had fallen for a lifetime ago. Even the nurse pushing his wheelchair laughed as he said to Annabelle, “Don’t believe a word she says. I would never, ever leave something as wonderful as being with my Lynn to chance.”

  As the woman behind the counter wrapped my photograph in brown paper, I glanced at it one last time. The utter shock and awe of that day, the freedom, the relief. The war was over. Dan was home. We were safe. I was having an experience a country girl like me never even dreamed of. Nothing had touched it until now, until, if for only a moment, my love had come back to me. Standing in the store that day, we may not have been kissing, lighting fireworks and making babies. But, all the same, holding his hand, knowing that he was the same man he’d always been to me, was totally exhilarating. And, even though I knew it’d hurt like hellfire tomorrow, I let myself think, like I always did: Maybe this time he’s back for good.

  Annabelle

  Exactly What He Wants

  Lovey and D-daddy had a secret that kept them happily married for a lifetime: They made a deal that whoever left the other had to take the five daughters with them. It’s hard to imagine it now, looking at my little Lovey. It’s hard to think that, within her frail body, she would have had the strength and stamina for five children, cooking three meals a day, mounds of laundry, ironing a fresh shirt for her husband every minute and touching up five little church dresses every Sunday morning. Even with a parade of help, Lovey’s life, while privileged, seemed like an awful lot of drudgery.

  D-daddy might have been the one that went to work every day, rose through the ranks of the financial ladder. But Lovey was the one that held the family together. She was his walking stick, the ex
tra hundred-dollar bill in his back pocket for emergencies. Her love for D-daddy was the thing that gave him the confidence to take the big risks that mostly paid off in their life together.

  “It was two dollars,” Lovey said, staring over the water, her coffee steaming in response to the unseasonably chilly September morning.

  “What was, Lovey?” I asked, wrapping my arm around her thin shoulder and taking in the harbor. It was perhaps the thing I loved most about Martha’s Vineyard. You knew that the money was all around you, but you couldn’t quite spot where. Billionaire chiefs of industry captained twenty-five-year-old Boston Whalers, and hundred-millionaire heiresses walked amongst the crowd in fisherman sweaters and plain gold wedding bands. It was like Lovey always said: “When you have it, you don’t need to flaunt it.”

  “Our marriage license,” she said, smiling.

  It was such a rare treat to hear Lovey talk about the past. She was so determined that her life would be over once she sank back and let the tide of her memories wash over her. I could almost picture them drowning her, stealing her last breath. I knew, without her having to say it, that she was terrified that D-daddy would outlive her. And, on this trip, I was almost as convinced as she was that maybe he could emerge from that semi-catatonic state in which he had been living the last three years, his brain revived and refreshed like a flower after the rain.

  “Did you know that I paid for our marriage license?” she asked.

  I shook my head and smiled. “I didn’t have a clue.”

  “Dan only had a hundred-dollar bill and they couldn’t break it. So I paid for the first thing we bought as a couple.”

  As she looked out over the water, I could tell that she was back in that day, seeing D-daddy, flustered, I’m sure, an ounce of that temper flaring, her soothing it instantly and him responding with that jovial laugh that had been my favorite thing about him.

  Lovey looked back at me. “It was the best investment I ever made. For two dollars, I got a husband, five daughters and someone to take care of me for the rest of my life.”

  We both laughed. My phone rang. I looked at the screen, held it up and said, “Speaking of.”

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Hi, TL.”

  I could tell instantly by his tone that something was off. “Everything okay?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s fine,” he said briskly. “Just missing you. Y’all having fun?”

  I held Lovey’s hand and smiled. “Oh, we’re having a blast. It’s chilly here but so, so beautiful. I’m sorry you couldn’t come.”

  And I meant it. After being together nonstop for more than a year, getting into bed alone, no one snuggling me, no one’s breath on my back, felt isolating and terribly lonely. I looked over at Lovey, thinking for the first time how she must have felt getting back into bed those first few nights with no one beside her, and I squeezed her hand again.

  “Well, duty calls,” Ben said.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I could tell that something was amiss. He obviously wasn’t in a rush to tell me, and I wasn’t in a rush to pull it out of him while Lovey and I were having such a good morning. I spotted Kelly the nurse out of the corner of my eye, pushing D-daddy down the waterfront toward us, that semi-aware look like the world was a mystery that he was trying to solve.

  “D-daddy is up and ready, so we’re going to go get some breakfast,” I said. “But call me later.” I paused. “And, hey. Cheer up. If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

  I thought of Lovey again, of the way she always supported D-daddy and made it easy to reach for those far-off dreams. A little pinprick of guilt, a bee sting after the initial shock, ran through me as I thought of how easily I let Ben give up that life on the road he loved, singing and traveling. It had been his decision to go back home, but, in that moment, I got the feeling that I should have fought him on it, encouraged him to do what he truly loved.

  “I’m missing you like I didn’t know I could,” Ben said. “I just needed to hear your voice. I’m feeling much better. I love you all of it.”

  I smiled. “I love you all of it.”

  I put my phone back in my pocket, resisted the urge to check it again when it beeped, and gave D-daddy a kiss on the cheek, tightening the scarf around his neck, afraid that the wind would blow right through the body that age and infirmity had made so frail and bony.

  “We were actually thinking of walking back to the Harbor View for breakfast, if that suits,” Lovey said to D-daddy.

  I watched her face, studying the tight lines of perseverance around her lips, the stony yet hopeful look in her eye that said she would never quit fighting, she would never give up hope. And, when D-daddy, as was the norm, didn’t respond, that slight purse in her lips, that nearly unidentifiable shift in her eyelid, was the only thing that gave away her disappointment. As quickly as D-daddy had been there last night, he was gone today.

  “I just don’t understand it,” Lovey said. “I can’t figure out what brings him back like that and why he fades away again so quickly.”

  I shook my head trying to think of something to cheer Lovey up. I reached into my jacket pocket, my eyes widening at what I saw.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said out loud.

  “What?”

  “Guess who just texted me.”

  “Ben?”

  “Holden.”

  “Holden?”

  I shook my head, and, as irritated as I was by the contents of his message, I was happy to see that conspiratorial gleam in Lovey’s eye.

  “What on earth could he possibly have to say to you?”

  I read: “I love you, Ann, and I meant it when I said I was going to do everything I could to get you back. I’m working every day on becoming the man you deserve.”

  Lovey stopped in her tracks. “Annabelle, what are you going to do?”

  I laughed. “Do? I’m not going to do a thing. I’m married to the absolute love of my life. I’ve never, ever been happier. I’m going to ignore him and hope that eventually he’ll go away.”

  Lovey and I sat beside each other on the front porch of the Harbor View, in matching rocking chairs, admiring the view of the harbor and the lighthouse. I grinned to see the dozens of men, all in matching navy blue Vineyard Vines fleeces, the item from the conference goody bag that became crucial in that last-minute change of weather from warm to chilly. They were chattering loudly, importantly on their cell phones, opening cases and closing deals, in a way that you knew they wanted you to hear them and be impressed.

  There was a long silence while we both looked ahead again, all those matching sweatshirts peppering the lawn like sprinkles on a cupcake.

  I broke the silence, saying, “If Ben were here, he’d be sitting right beside us, holding my hand, playing his guitar, telling us something funny.” I pointed down toward the lawn. “But this. This would be life with Holden. I would be up here, trying to enjoy a cup of coffee, and he would be down there, talking a client down from a financial crisis.”

  Lovey smiled. “You may be right, darling, but here’s the thing to watch out for: It’s amazing how a man like Holden always seems, in the end, to get exactly what he wants.”

  Lovey

  My Best Friend’s Gumption

  September 1936

  “Unkempt hair is a reflection of poor parenting,” my momma was saying as she tied the red grosgrain ribbons in my pigtails. She was always trying to give me little pearls of wisdom here and there for when I grew up and had babies of my own. But I could hardly listen that morning I was so excited. All I could think was, Fifth grade, over and over again. I smiled at myself in the mirror, thinking of the comments from the other mothers in town.

  “Fifth grade really is the hardest year,” they had said.

  “Now you know,” Momma said, “fifth grade was tricky for Lib, so don’t be surprised.�
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  I smiled again. I absolutely adored school. The chalk, the blackboard, getting to be the teacher’s pet, the one who got to bang the erasers clean after school. I had never made less than perfect straight A’s, so fifth grade was going to be the challenge I was looking for.

  “I have bacon and eggs ready and waiting,” Momma said, smiling as she finished that last bow, satisfied that I looked perfect.

  She put her hand up to the string of pearls on her throat. They were her grandmother’s, a family heirloom, and one of the only things of value she had managed to hold on to when the Depression hit. Her wedding ring had gone, Daddy’s pocket watch, the extra car. But we had made it through.

  “As long as we can keep the house we’ll be okay,” Daddy had said over and over again. And we had.

  There had been a few presentless Christmases, and I didn’t care if I ever ate soup or grits again. But we had kept our home. And Daddy was so proud.

  Later, at the table, I asked, “Momma, do you think Katie Jo and I will be in the same class?”

  Momma rolled her eyes and exhaled. She didn’t like me being friends with Katie Jo, not one bit. She peered at me over her plate, and Daddy peeked over his newspaper and laughed. “Just you don’t start acting like her, Lynn.” His smile was warm but he added, “Now, I mean it.”

  Momma sighed again. “There’s only one class this year, so I’m sure you will be.”

  I had barely touched my eggs, but, all the same, I couldn’t contain my excitement anymore. I kissed Momma and Daddy and said, “Can’t wait to tell you about it!”

  I ran down the driveway, that nervous energy breaking out humidly on my forehead by the time I got to the end of the driveway and Katie Jo.

  She reached conspiratorially into the pocket of her jumper and smiled, handing me two pieces of hard candy.

  I gasped. “Momma would never let me eat candy so early in the morning.”

  Katie Jo shrugged and smiled. “But she’s not here.”