Beatriz Williams - Tiny Little Thing - Secrets, scandal and forbidden love

He shuts the wardrobe door and turns to me. “Are you sure you won’t come out on the water?”

“No, thanks. You go on ahead.” I rise from the rug and roll Percy’s silky ear around my fingers.

On his way to the door, Frank pauses to drop another kiss on my cheek, and for some reason—related perhaps to the photograph sitting in my drawer, related perhaps to the key in Frank’s suitcase, related perhaps to my sister or his grandmother or our lost baby or God knows—I clutch at the hand Frank places on my shoulder.

He tilts his head. “Everything all right, darling?”

There is no possibility, no universe existing in which I could tell him the truth. At my side, Percy lowers himself to the floor and thumps his tail against the rug, staring at the two of us as if a miraculous biscuit might drop from someone’s fingers at any moment.

I finger my pearls and smile serenely. “Perfectly fine, Frank. Drinks at six. Don’t forget.”

The smile Frank returns me is white and sure and minty fresh. He picks up my other hand and kisses it.

“As if I could.”

He avoided Boylan’s the next day, and the next. On the third day, he arrived at nine thirty, ordered coffee, and left at nine forty-five, feeling sick. He spent the day photographing bums near Long Wharf, and in the evening he picked up a girl at a bar and went back to her place in Charlestown. She poured them both shots of Jägermeister and unbuttoned his shirt. Outside the window, a neon sign flashed pink and blue on his skin. “Wow. Is that a scar?” she said, touching his shoulder, and he looked down at her false eyelashes, her smudged lips, her breasts sagging casually out of her brassiere, and he set down the glass untouched and walked out of the apartment.

He was no saint, God knew. But he wasn’t going to screw a girl in cold blood, not right there in the middle of peacetime Boston.

On the fourth day, he visited his grandmother in Brookline, in her handsome brick house that smelled of lilies and polish.

“It’s about time.” She offered him a thin-skinned cheek. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

“A while ago.” He kissed her and walked to the window. The street outside was lined with quiet trees and sunshine. It was the last day of the heat wave, so the weatherman said, and the last day was always the worst. The warmth shimmered upward from the pavement to wilt the new green leaves. A sleek black Cadillac cruised past, but his grandmother’s sash windows were so well made he didn’t even hear it. Or maybe his hearing was going. Too much noise.

“You and your early hours. I suppose you learned that in the army.”

“I was always an early riser, Granny.” He turned to her. She sat in her usual chintz chair near the bookcase, powdered and immaculate in a flamingo-colored dress that matched the flowers in the upholstery behind her.

“That’s your father’s blood, I suppose. Your mother always slept until noon.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Trust me.” She reached for the bell on the small chinoiserie table next to the chair and rang it, a single ding. Granny wasn’t one for wallowing in grief, even for her oldest daughter. “What brings you out to see your old granny today?”

“No reason, except I’ll be shipping out on another tour soon.”

Her lip curled. “Why on earth?”

“Because I’m a soldier, Granny. It’s what I do.”

“There are plenty of other things you could do. Oh! Hetty. There you are. A tray of coffee for my grandson. He’s already eaten, but you might bring a little cake to sweeten him up.”

Right. As if he was the one who needed sweetening.

He waited until Hetty disappeared back through the living room doorway. “Like what, Granny? What can I do?”

“Oh, you know. Like your uncle’s firm. Or law school. I would say medicine, but you’re probably too old for all that song and dance, and anyway we already have a doctor in the family.”

“Anything but the army, in other words?” He leaned against the bookcase and crossed his arms. “Anything but following in my father’s footsteps?”

“I didn’t say that. Eisenhower was in the army, after all.”

“Give it a rest, Granny. You can’t stamp greatness on all our brows.”

“I didn’t say anything about greatness.”

“Poor Granny. It’s written all over your smile. But blood will out, you know. I tried all that in college, and look what happened.” He spread his hands. “You’ll just have to take me as you find me, I guess. Every family needs a black sheep. Gives us character. The press loves it, don’t they? Imagine the breathless TV feature, when Frank wins the nomination for president.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re not a black sheep. Look at you.” She jabbed an impatient gesture at his reclining body, his sturdy legs crossed at the ankles. “I just worry about you, that’s all. Off on the other side of the word. Siam, of all places.”

“Vietnam.”

“At least you’re fighting Communists.”

“Someone’s got to do it.”

The door opened. Hetty sidled through, her long uniformed back warped under the weight of the coffee tray. He uncrossed his legs and pushed away from the wall to take it from her. He couldn’t stand the sight of it, never could—domestic servants lugging damned massive loads of coffee and cake for his convenience. At least in his father’s various accommodations, the trays were carried by sturdy young soldiers who were happy to be hauling coffee instead of grenades. A subtle difference, maybe, but one he could live with.

“Thank you, Hetty. What about this photography business of yours?” She waved him aside and poured him a cup of coffee with her own hands.

“It’s not a business. It’s a hobby. Not all that respectable, either, but surely I don’t need to tell you that?”

“It’s an art, Franklin says. Just like painting.”

“It’s not just like painting. But I guess there’s an art to it. You can say that to your friends, anyway, if it helps.” He took the coffee cup and resumed his position against the bookcase.

“Don’t you ever sit, young man?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“I guess that’s your trouble in a nutshell.”

He grinned and drank his coffee.

She made a grandmotherly harrumph , the kind of patronizing noise she’d probably sworn at age twenty—and he’d seen her pictures at age twenty, some rip-roaring New York party, Edith Wharton she wasn’t—that she would never, ever make. “You and that smile of yours. What about girls? I suppose you have a girl or two stringing along behind you, as usual.”

“Not really. I’m only back for a few weeks, remember?”

“That’s never stopped the men in this family before.” A smug smile from old Granny.

“And you’re proud of that?”

“Men should be men, girls should be girls. How God meant us.”

He shook his head. The cup rested in his palm, reminding him of Jane Doe’s curving elbow. “There is a girl, I guess.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized she was the reason he came here to lily-scented Brookline that hot May morning, to its chintz upholstery and its shepherdess coffee service, to Granny herself, unchanged since his childhood.

Jane Doe. What to do with her. What to do with himself.

“What’s her name?” asked Granny.

He grinned again. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly spoken to her.”

“Hardly spoken to her?”

“I think she’s engaged.”

“Engaged, or married?”

“Engaged, I think. I didn’t see a band. Anyway, she doesn’t seem married.”

“Well, if she’s only engaged, there’s nothing to worry about.” Granny stirred in another spoonful of sugar. The silver tinkled expensively against the Meissen. “What kind of girl is she?”