The Bungalow: A Novel Read online

  “Dad found them,” she said, eyeing my face cautiously. “He was going through some old boxes and these were tucked inside. He asked me to return them to you.”

  My heart swelled with anticipation as I flipped to the next photograph, of Kitty, my childhood friend, sitting on an overturned canoe on the beach, her feet kicked out like a movie star’s. Kitty could have been a movie star. I felt the familiar pain in my heart when I thought of my old friend, pain that time hadn’t healed.

  There were several more in the stack, many of them scenes of the beach, the mountains, lush with flora, but when I reached the last photograph, I froze. Westry. My Westry. There he was with the top button of his uniform undone, his head tilted slightly to the right with the bungalow’s woven palm wall in the background. Our bungalow. I may have taken thousands of photographs in my life, and so many of them were forgotten, but not this one. I remembered everything about the snapshot, the way the air had smelled that evening—of seawater and freesia, blooming in the moonlight. I could recall the feeling I had in my heart, too, when my eyes met his through the lens, and then there was what happened in the moments that followed.

  “You loved him, didn’t you, Grandma?” Jennifer’s voice was so sweet, so disarming, that I felt my resolve weaken.

  “I did,” I said.

  “Do you think of him now?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I have always thought of him.”

  Jennifer’s eyes widened. “Grandma, what happened in Tahiti? What happened with this man? And the letter—why did it affect you in the way it did?” She paused, and reached for my hand. “Please tell me.”

  I nodded. What would be the harm in telling her? I was an old woman. There wouldn’t be many consequences now, and if there were, I could weather them. And how I longed to set these secrets free, to send them flying like bats from a dusty attic. I ran my finger along the gold chain of my locket, and nodded. “All right, dear,” I said. “But I must warn you, don’t expect a fairy tale.”

  Jennifer sat down in the chair beside me. “Good,” she said, smiling. “I’ve never liked fairy tales.”

  “And there are dark parts,” I said, doubting my decision.

  She nodded. “But is there a happy ending?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Jennifer gave me a confused look.

  I held the photo of Westry up to the light. “The story isn’t over yet.”

  Chapter 1

  August 1942

  “Kitty Morgan, you did not just say that!” I set my goblet of mint iced tea down with enough force to crack the glass. Mother would be happy to know that I hadn’t spoiled her set of Venetian crystal.

  “I most certainly did,” she said, smirking victoriously. Kitty, with her heart-shaped face and that head full of wiry, untamable blond ringlets springing out of the hairpins she’d been so meticulous about fastening, hardly provoked anger. But on this subject I held my ground.

  “Mr. Gelfman is a married man,” I said in my most disapproving voice.

  “James,” she said, elongating his first name for dramatic effect, “is impossibly unhappy. Did you know that his wife disappears for weeks at a time? She doesn’t even tell him where she’s going. She cares more about the cats than she does him.”

  I sighed, leaning back into the wooden bench swing that hung from the enormous walnut tree in my parents’ backyard garden. Kitty sat beside me then, just as she had when we were in grade school. I looked up at the tree overhead, its leaves tinged with a touch of yellow, hinting that autumn was imminent. Why must things change? It seemed like only yesterday that Kitty and I were two schoolgirls, walking home arm in arm, setting our books down on the kitchen table and making a dash to the swing, where we’d tell secrets until dinnertime. Now, at twenty-one, we were two grown women on the verge of, well, something—not that either of us could predict what.

  “Kitty,” I said, turning to face her. “Don’t you understand?”

  “Understand what?” She looked like a rose petal, sitting there in her dress brimming with pink ruffles, with those wild curls that were getting even more unruly in the late-afternoon humidity. I wanted to protect her from Mr. Gelfman, or any other man she intended upon falling in love with, for none would be good enough for my best friend—certainly not the married ones.

  I cleared my throat. Does she not know Mr. Gelfman’s reputation? Certainly she remembered the hordes of girls who had flaunted themselves at him in high school, where he had been Lakeside’s most dashing teacher. Every girl in English Lit had hoped to make eye contact with him as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee?” crossed his lips. That was all girlish fun, I contended. But had Kitty forgotten about the incident five years ago with Kathleen Mansfield? How could she forget? Kathleen—shy, big breasted, terribly dim-witted—had fallen under Mr. Gelfman’s spell. She hovered near the teachers’ lounge at lunch, and waited for him after school. Everybody wondered about them, especially when one of our girlfriends spotted Kathleen in the park with Mr. Gelfman after dusk. Then, suddenly, Kathleen stopped coming to school. Her older brother said she’d gone to live with her grandmother in Iowa. We all knew the reason why.

  I crossed my arms. “Kitty, men like Mr. Gelfman have only one objective, and I think we both know what that is.”

  Kitty’s cheeks flushed to a deeper shade of pink. “Anne Calloway! How dare you suggest that James would be anything but—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” I said. “It’s just that I love you. You’re my best friend, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  Kitty kicked her legs despondently as we swung for a few minutes in silence. I reached into the pocket of my dress and privately clutched the letter nestled inside. I’d picked it up at the post office earlier that day and was eager to sneak away to my bedroom to read it. It was from Norah, a friend from nursing school who’d been writing me weekly accounts from the South Pacific, where she’d been serving in the Army Nurse Corps. She and Kitty, both hot-tempered, had a falling out in our final term together, so I chose not to bring up the letters with Kitty. Besides, I couldn’t let on to her how much Norah’s tales of the war and the tropics had captivated me. They read like the pages of a novel—so much so that a part of me dreamt of taking my newly minted nursing degree and joining her there, escaping life at home and the decisions that awaited. And yet, I knew it was just a fanciful idea, a daydream. After all, I could help with the war efforts at home, by volunteering at the civic center or collecting tin cans and assisting with conservation projects. I shook my head at the thought of traipsing off to a war zone in the tropics mere weeks before my wedding. I sighed, grateful I hadn’t uttered a word of it to Kitty.

  “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 plat
ter. 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.