The Violets of March (12 page)

Will and Rose joined us on a blanket that Elliot had spread out on the beach. We drank beer and ate clams out of tin bowls and reveled in the beauty of the crisp, star-filled night.

Elliot reached into his dark green knapsack and pulled out his camera, fiddling with the flash for a second before gesturing at me to look up. “I don’t want to ever forget the way you look tonight,” he said, making one, then two, then three snaps with his finger. Elliot was never more than a few feet away from his camera. He could capture a scene in black and white with such poignancy that it almost made you weak.

Looking back, I wish I had prevented Elliot from leaving that night. I wish I could have made time stand still. But shortly before ten p.m., he turned to me and said, “I have to go to Seattle tonight. There’s some business I have to attend to. Can I see you tomorrow night?”

I didn’t want him to go, but I nodded and kissed him. “I love you,” I said, lingering in the moment a few seconds longer before he stood up, brushed the sand off his legs, and began walking to the ferry dock, whistling, as he always did.

The next morning, Frances, Rose, and I caught an early ferry to Seattle to do some shopping. Rose wanted to go to Frederick & Nelson to get a dress she’d seen in the latest issue of “Vogue.” Frances needed new shoes. I was just happy to get off the island. I liked being in the city. I must have told Elliot a hundred times how I dreamed of a big apartment downtown with windows overlooking the sound. I’d paint the walls mauve, and the drapes would be cream with little sashes holding them back from the windows, just like in the magazines.

And then, walking out onto the sidewalk on Marion Street in front of the Landon Park Hotel—a big brick building with two enormous columns in front—was Elliot. He was with someone, but it wasn’t until the traffic cleared a few seconds later that I could see whom. She was blond and tall, nearly as tall as Elliot. I watched as he wrapped his arms around her in an embrace that lasted an eternity. I was close enough to hear their conversation—well, just bits and pieces of it, but that’s all I needed to hear.

“Here’s the key to the apartment,” the woman said, handing him something, which he immediately put in his pocket.

He winked at her, which sent a chill through my body. I knew that wink. “Will I see you tonight?” he asked.

The noise of a passing truck muffled her response. Then he helped her into a cab and waved as it drove away.

“Will I see you tonight?” My mind suddenly turned to a novel I’d read years prior. Never before had a heroine in a book spoken to me in the way Jane had in “Years of Grace.”

My eyes widened.
Years of Grace
! I shook my head in wonderment before turning back to the page.

The fact that Jane, married to Stephen, had pined for another man, going so far as to let herself feel the passions of love, a certain betrayal of her marriage vows, prompted my mother to call the book “rubbish.” I told her it had won the Pulitzer Prize and that my high school English literature teacher had recommended it to me, but it was no use. Novels like these, she said, were filled with fanciful, dangerous ideas for a young woman, so I was forced to keep it hidden under my mattress.

As I stood there on the sidewalk that day, it all came rushing back: Jane’s story, now so painfully intertwined with mine. There was tenderness in Elliot’s voice when he spoke to this woman. I thought of the ties that bind us together, the vows we make, and break. If Jane could give her hand to Stephen and still love another, Elliot could give his word to me and still pine for someone else. It was possible. It seemed poetic in the story—Jane’s love for Andre, and for Jimmy, a midlife love—but now, seeing it played out before my eyes, as an outsider, it only felt wrong. Could one not love one person for eternity? Could one not keep his or her promise? Elliot could have any woman he wanted, and until that moment, I’d believed he wanted only me. I’d never been so wrong.

The letter. I remembered the perplexing letter Jane had received from Andre years after their declaration of love. It was all in the story, all tragically detailed. He had broken her heart with his decision to go to Italy instead of returning to Chicago for her. It is why she agreed to marry Stephen, an action that forever changed the trajectory of their lives. It is why she wrote him that cold, blunt letter shortly before the war broke out, snuffing out any further possibility of their love, even if that love still smoldered in her heart for years to come. “When you killed things,” Jane had said, responding with decisiveness to Andre’s actions, “you killed them quickly.” And I knew, at that moment, what needed to be done.

Rose and Frances stood by me in silence, each holding one of my arms, to steady me or to prevent me from darting across the street, or both. But I broke free from their grasp and ran, without caring if I’d be hit, across the street to where Elliot was standing in front of a newspaper vending machine.

I pried the ring, the one Elliot had given me last month, with its enormous pear-shaped diamond nestled between two red rubies, off of my left hand. It was way too extravagant, and I had told him so, but he wanted me to have the best, he had said, even if it meant going into debt for the rest of his life, which I think is what he did. None of that mattered now, though, not after seeing him here with another woman and hearing him say those incriminating words.

“Hello, Elliot,” I said coldly, once I’d made my way to the other side of Marion Street.

He looked at once startled and at ease, as though he had everything and nothing to hide. My face felt hot. “How could you?”

A confused expression clouded his face, and then he shook his head. “No, no, you have the wrong impression,” he said. “She’s just a friend.”

“A friend?” I said. “So why did you lie and say you had business to attend to? This is clearly not business.”

Elliot looked at his feet. “She’s just an old friend, Esther,” he said. “I swear.”

I clutched my necklace tightly. It was just a little gold starfish that dangled from a simple chain. I’d won it at the street fair years ago, and it had become my good luck charm. I needed all the luck I could get then, because I knew he was lying. I had seen the way she looked at him, the flirtation in her mannerisms, the way they embraced. His hands had been low on her waist. She was more than a friend. Any fool could see that.

I regretted what I was about to do before I did it, but I proceeded just the same. I squeezed the ring in my hand into a tight fist and threw it as far as I could down the sidewalk. We both watched as it skipped along the pavement, until it sputtered and rolled—right into a storm drain.

“It’s over,” I said. “Please don’t ever speak to me again. I don’t think I could bear it.”

I saw Rose and Frances staring in horror from the other side of the street. It felt like a Herculean effort to walk back to them and away from Elliot. Because, you see, I knew I was walking away, forever, from our life together.

“Wait, Esther!” I could hear him shouting from across the street, through traffic. “Wait, let me explain! Don’t leave like this!”

But I told myself to keep walking. I had to. I just had to.

Chapter 7

I
read for another hour, unable to look away from the pages, even for ferry horns or beachcombers with barking dogs. True to her promise, Esther didn’t forgive Elliot. He wrote to her for months, but she tossed his letters, all of them, into the trash, never opening a single one. Rose married Will and moved to Seattle. Frances stayed on the island, where, to the dismay of Esther, she struck up an unlikely friendship with Elliot.

I looked at my watch, realizing that I’d been away longer than I’d anticipated. I tucked the diary into my bag and walked quickly back to Bee’s.

As I opened the door to the mudroom, I heard Bee’s footsteps approaching. “Oh good, you’re back,” she said, peering around the doorway as I stepped out of my sand-covered boots. “I don’t know how I managed to forget about tonight,” she continued. “It’s been on my calendar since last year.”

“What, Bee?”

“The clambake,” she said, without further explanation. She paused, looking suddenly thoughtful. “Can it be that you’ve never attended an island clambake?”

Aside from an occasional holiday visit, I’d only been to the island in the summer months. The nostalgia I felt wasn’t from personal memories but instead from Esther’s account of that magical night.

“No, but I’ve heard stories,” I said.

Bee looked giddy. “Now, let’s see,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You’ll need a warm coat. And we’ll pack blankets, and wine; must have wine. Evelyn’s meeting us there at six.”

The beach scene was exactly as Esther had described it. The campfires. The twinkle lights. The blankets spread out on the sand. The dance floor and the canopy of starry sky above.

Evelyn waved at us from the beach. Her sweater looked too light to protect her fragile skin from the cool wind, so I retrieved a blanket from Bee’s basket and wrapped it around her thin frame. “Thanks,” she said, a little dazed. “I was lost in memories.”

Bee gave me a wise look. “Her husband proposed to her here on this beach years ago, the night of the clambake,” she said.

I set the basket down. “You two sit down and be comfortable. I’ll take your meal orders.”

“Clams, with extra butter,” Bee said. “And corn bread.”

“Asparagus, and just lemon with my clams, dear,” Evelyn added.

I left them there together with their memories, and wandered toward the chow line, passing the dance floor, where a few shy teenage girls huddled in a corner, staring at the teenage boys congregating on the opposite side. A staring match ensued. And then, silencing the evening waves curling up on the shore, music began seeping through the speakers, Nat King Cole’s “When I Fall in Love.”