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Number 9, the taller one, the curly-haired one, looks up at that exact instant, as if he’s heard her words. The two of them are perhaps fifty yards away, and the bright autumn sun strikes their heads in a wash of clear gold.
Nick Greenwald, I repeat in my head. Where have I heard that name before?
His face is hard, etched from the same brickwork as the stadium itself, and his eyes are narrowed and sharp, overhung by a pair of fiercely gathered eyebrows. There is something so intense, so fulminant, about his expression, like a man from another age.
A vibration crackles up my spine, a charge of electricity.
“Yes,” I say. “Very handsome.”
“His eyes are so blue, almost like mine. He’s such a darling. Remember how he chased my hat into the water last summer, Lily?”
“Who’s that one? The one he’s talking to?”
“Oh, Nick? Just the quarterback.”
“What’s a quarterback?”
“Nothing, really. Stands there and hands the ball to Graham. Graham’s the star. He’s scored eight touchdowns this year. He can run through anybody.” Graham looks up, following Nick’s gaze, and Budgie stands up and waves her arm.
Neither responds. Graham turns to Nick and says something. Nick is carrying a football, tossing it absently from one enormous hand to the other.
“I guess they’re looking somewhere else,” says Budgie, and she sits down, frowning. She taps her fingers against her knee and leans close to the boy next to her. “You couldn’t be a darling and spare a girl another nibble, could you?”
“Have as much as you like,” he says, and holds out the Hershey bar to her. She breaks off a square with her long fingers.
“Are they friends?” I ask.
“Who? Nick and Graham? I guess. Good friends. They room together, I think.” She stops and turns to me. Her breath is sweet from the chocolate, almost syrupy. “Why, Lily! What are you thinking, you sly thing?”
“Nothing. Just curious.”
Her hand covers her mouth. “Nick? Nick Greenwald ? Really?”
“I just … he looks interesting, that’s all. It’s nothing.” My skin heats, all over.
“Nothing’s nothing with you, honey. I know that look in your eye, and you can stop right now.”
“What look?” I fiddle with the belt of my cardigan. “And what do you mean, stop right now?”
“Oh, Lily, honey. Do I have to spell it out?”
“Spell what out?”
“I know he’s handsome, but …” She trails off, in an embarrassed way, but her eyes glitter in her magnolia face.
“But what?”
“You’re putting me on, right?”
I peer into her face for some clue to her meaning. Budgie has a knack for that, for savoring nuances that whoosh straight over my unruly head. Perhaps Nick Greenwald has some unspeakable chronic disease. Perhaps he has a girl already, not that Budgie would see any previous engagement as an obstacle.
Not that I care, of course. Not that my mind has jumped ahead that far. I like his face, that’s all.
“Putting you on?” I say, hedging.
“Lily, honey.” Budgie shakes her head, places her hand atop my knee, and drops her voice to a delighted whisper in my ear: “Honey, he’s a J-E-W.” She says the last syllable with exaggerated precision, like ewe.
A cheer passes through the crowd, gaining strength. In front of us, people are beginning to stand up and holler. The bench feels hard as stone beneath my legs.
I look back down at the two men on the sideline, at Nick Greenwald. He’s turned his eagle eyes to the action on the field, watching intently, and his profile cuts a clean gold line against a background of closely shaved grass.
Budgie’s tone, delivering this piece of information, was that of a parent speaking to a particularly obtuse child. Budgie, hearing the name Greenwald, knows without thinking that it’s a Jewish name, that some invisible line separates her future from his. Budgie regards my ignorance of these important matters with incredulity.
Not that I’m entirely ignorant. I know some Jewish girls at college. They’re like everyone else, nice and friendly and clever to varying degrees. They tend to keep to themselves, except for one or two who strain with painful effort to ingratiate themselves with girls like Budgie. I used to wonder what they did on Christmas Day, when everything was closed. Did they mark the occasion at all, or was it just another day to them? What did they think of all the trees for sale, all the presents, all the Nativity scenes filling the nooks and crannies? Did they regard our quaint customs with amusement?
Of course, I never dared to ask.
Budgie, on the other hand, is attuned to every minute vibration in the universe around her, every wobble of an alien planet. She continues, confidently: “Not that you’d see it at first glance. His mother was one of the Nicholson girls, such a lovely family, very fair, but her father lost everything in the panic, not the last one, obviously, the one before the war, and she ended up marrying Nick’s father. You look mystified, honey. What, didn’t you know all this? You must get out more.”
I remain silent, watching the field, watching the two men on the sidelines. Some frenzy of activity is taking place, green shirts running off the field and green shirts running on. Graham and Nick Greenwald strap on their helmets and dash into the lines of uniforms assembling on the grass. Nick runs with elastic grace, keeps his long legs under perfect control.
Budgie removes her hand from my knee. “You think I’m horrible, don’t you?”
“I think you sound like my mother.”
“I don’t mean it like that. You know I don’t. I’m not a bigot, Lily. I have several Jewish friends.” She sounds a little petulant. I’ve never seen Budgie petulant.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re thinking it.” She tosses her head. “Fine. I’m sure he’ll come along to dinner tonight. You can meet him for yourself. He’s nice enough. Have some fun, have a few kicks.”
“What makes you think I’m interested?”
“Well, why not? You’re in desperate need of a few kicks, honey. I’ll bet he could show you a good time.” She leans in to my ear. “Just don’t bring him home to your mother, if you know what I mean.”
“What are you girls whispering about?” It’s the boy on Budgie’s right, the Hershey boy, giving her arm a shove.
“We’ll never tell,” says Budgie. She stands up and pulls me with her. “Now, watch this, Lily. It’s our turn. When the play starts, Nick’s going to give the ball to Graham. Watch Graham. Number twenty-two. He’ll blast right through them, you’ll see. He’s like a locomotive, that’s what the papers say.”
Budgie begins to clap her hands, and so do I, sharp slaps like a metronome. I’m watching the field, all right, but not Graham. My eyes are trained on the white number 9 in the middle of the line of green jerseys. He stands right behind the fellow in the center, with his head raised. He’s shouting something, and I can hear his sharp bark all the way up here, ten rows deep in cheering spectators.
Just like that, the men burst free. Nick Greenwald pedals backward from the line, with the ball in his hands, and I wait for Graham to run up, wait for Nick to hand the ball to Graham, the way Budgie said he would.
But Graham doesn’t run up.
Nick hovers there for an instant, examining the territory ahead, his feet performing a graceful dance on the ragged turf, and then his arm draws back, snaps forward, and the ball shoots from his fingertips to soar in a true and beautiful arc above the heads of the other players and down the length of the field.
I strain on my toes, lifted by the roar of the crowd around me as I follow the path of the ball. On and on it goes, a small brown missile, while the field runs green and white in a river of men, flowing down to meet it.
Somewhere at the far end of that river, a pair of hands reaches up and snatches the ball from the sky.
The crash of noise is instantaneous.
“He’s got it! He’s got it!” yells the boy on Budgie’s other side, flinging the rest of his Hershey bar into the air.
“Did you see that!” shouts someone behind me.
The Dartmouth man flies forward with the ball tucked under his arm, into the white-striped rectangle at the end of the field, and we are hugging one another, screaming, hats coming loose, roasted nuts spilling from their paper bags. A cannon fires, and the band kicks off with brassy enthusiasm.
“Wasn’t that terrific!” I yell, into Budgie’s ear. The noise around us rings so intensely, I can hardly hear myself.
“Terrific!”
My heart smacks against my ribs in rhythm with the band. Every vessel of my body sings with joy. I turn back to the stadium floor, holding the brim of my hat against the bright sun, and look for Nick Greenwald and his astonishing arm.
At first, I can’t find him. The urgent flow and eddy of men on the field has died into stagnation. A group of green jerseys gathers together, one by one, near the original line of play, as if drawn by a magnet. I search for the white number 9, but in the jumble of digits it’s nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps he’s already gone back to the benches. That hard profile does not suggest a celebratory nature.
Someone, there in that crowd of Dartmouth jerseys, lifts his arm and waves to the sideline.
Two men dash out, dressed in white. One is carrying a black leather bag.
“Oh, no,” says the boy on Budgie’s right. “Someone’s hurt.”
Budgie wrings her hands together. “Oh, I hope it’s not Graham. Someone find Graham. Oh, I can’t look.” She turns her face into the shoulder of my cardigan.
I put my arm around her and stare at the throng of football players. Every head is down, shaking, sorrowful. The huddle parts to accept the white-clothed men, and I catch a glimpse of the fellow lying on the field.
“There he is! I see his number!” shouts the Hershey boy. “Twenty-two, right there next to the man down. He’s all right, Budgie.”
“Oh, thank God,” says Budgie.
I stand on my toes, but I can’t see well enough over the heads before me. I push away Budgie’s head, climb on the bench, and rise back onto the balls of my feet.
The stadium is absolutely silent. The band has stopped playing, the public address has gone quiet.
“Well, who’s hurt, then?” demands Budgie.
The boy climbs on the seat next to me and jumps up once, twice. “I can just see … no, wait … oh, Jesus.”
“What? What?” I demand. I can’t see anything behind those two men in white, kneeling over the body on the field, leather bag gaping open.
“It’s Greenwald,” says the boy, climbing down. He swears under his breath. “There goes the game.”
2. (#ulink_9bdab4c1-a18a-5ba7-966c-3dff482e4122)
SEAVIEW, RHODE ISLAND May 1938 (#ulink_9bdab4c1-a18a-5ba7-966c-3dff482e4122)
Kiki was determined to learn to sail that summer, even though she was not quite six. “You learned when you were my age,” she pointed out, with the blunt logic of childhood.
“I had Daddy to teach me,” I said. “You only have me. And I haven’t sailed in years.”
“I’ll bet it’s like riding a bicycle. That’s what you told me, remember? You never forget how to ride a bicycle.”
“It’s nothing like riding a bicycle, and ladies don’t bet.”
She opened her mouth to tell me she was not a lady, but Aunt Julie, with her usual impeccable timing, plopped herself down on the blanket next to us and sighed at the crashing surf. “Summer at last! And after such a miserable spring. Lily, darling, you don’t have a cigarette, do you? I’m dying for a cigarette. Your mother’s as strict as goddamned Hitler.”
“You’ve never let it stop you before.” I rummaged in my basket and tossed a packet of Chesterfields and a silver lighter in her lap.
“I’m growing soft in my old age. Thanks, darling. You’re the best.”
“I thought summer started in June,” said Kiki.
“Summer starts when I say it starts, darling. Oh, that’s lovely.” She inhaled to the limit of her lungs, closed her eyes, and let the smoke slide from her lips in a thin and endless ribbon. The sun shone warm overhead, the first real stretch of heat since September, and Aunt Julie was wearing her red swimsuit with its daringly high-cut leg. She looked fabulous, all tanned from her recent trip to Bermuda (“with that new fellow of hers,” Mother said, in the disapproving growl of a sister nearly ten years older) and long-limbed as ever. She leaned back on her elbows and pointed her breasts at the cloudless sky.
“Mrs. Hubert says cigarettes are coffin nails,” said Kiki, drawing in the sand with her toe.
“Mrs. Hubert is an old biddy.” Aunt Julie took another drag. “My doctor recommends them. You can’t get healthier than that.”
Kiki stood up. “I want to play in the surf. I haven’t played in the surf in months. Years, possibly.”
“It’s too cold, sweetie,” I said. “The water hasn’t had a chance to warm up yet. You’ll freeze.”
“I want to go anyway.” She put her hands on her hips. She wore her new beach outfit, all ruffles and red polka dots, and with her dark hair and golden-olive skin and fierce expression she looked like a miniature polka-dotted Polynesian.
“Oh, let her play,” said Aunt Julie. “The young are sturdy.”
“Why don’t you build a sand castle instead, sweetie? You can go down to the ocean to collect water.” I picked up her bucket and held it out to her.
She looked at me, and then the bucket, considering.
“You build the best castles,” I said, shaking the bucket invitingly. “Show me what you’ve got.”
She took the bucket with a worldly sigh and started down the beach.
“You’re good with her,” said Aunt Julie, smoking luxuriously. “Better than me.”
“God did not intend you to raise children,” I said. “You have other uses.”
She laughed. “Ha! You’re right. I can gossip like nobody’s business. Say, speaking of which, did you hear Budgie’s opening up her parents’ old place this summer?”
A wave rose up from the ocean, stronger than the others. I watched it build and build, balancing atop itself, until it fell at last in a foaming white arc, from right to left. The crash hit my ears an instant later. I reached for Aunt Julie’s cigarette and stole a long and furtive drag, then figured What the hell and reached for the pack myself.
“They’re arriving next week, your mother says. He’ll come down on weekends, of course, but she’ll be here all summer.” Aunt Julie tilted her face upward and gave her hair a shake. It shone golden in the sun, without a single gray hair that I could detect. Mother insisted she dyed it, but no hair dye known to man could replicate that sun-kissed texture. It was as if God himself were abetting Aunt Julie in her chosen style of life.
Down at the shoreline, Kiki waited for the wave to wash up on the sand and dipped her bucket. The water swirled around her legs, making her jump and dance. She looked back at me, accusingly, and I shrugged my told-you-so shoulders.
