“He’s quite good,” Ada said.
I had forgotten she was there. And was suddenly embarrassed. These felt so intimate, and not because I was in a bikini in most of them.
“He is,” I said quietly.
The next shots were from Atlantic City. He had captured both the diving horses and my reaction of wonder to them. Me on the Ferris wheel, the lights of the city blurred beneath us. And one of the two of us, when he had handed his camera off to another couple with a camera, trading picture for picture. “A handsome couple,” Ada observed.
I couldn’t disagree.
I flipped to the next one, desperate for more, only to find that it was Ada and Lillian who had caught his attention. They sat under their umbrella, engrossed in conversation, their bodies angled toward each other under the yards of fabric and shade. The next was the same, but they were smiling at each other. And a third was a close-up of just their hands, Ada’s on top of Lillian’s.
“I think these three are for you,” I said, offering them to her.
“I believe so,” she said. “But why our hands? Mine look so old.”
It was true. She could pass for younger everywhere else. But hands never lied. Mine still had the dimpled knuckles of someone who had never done a day’s honest labor. But Ada’s were spotted and worn, with pronounced knuckles and veins. It was a reminder that, as much as she claimed she wasn’t going anywhere, nothing lasted forever. And it made me double down on my determination that I was staying with her when the fall came.
Unfortunately, the second piece of mail made that plan much more complicated.
My mother’s weekly letter arrived a day late, on Friday instead of Thursday. I’d wondered aloud if everything was all right at home when the postman didn’t have her letter, but Ada said she was sure it would arrive the following day. It did, and I opened it, sitting on the sofa in the den to read, hoping against hope that my father had decided against college.
Dearest,
Wonderful news! Your father has sent in your tuition payment. It’s taken most of the summer, but he recognizes that you made a mistake and that you will be your best, diligent, and obedient self when you return （so see that you are, please）。 There will be no more talk of the rabbi’s son either—his parents say he’s met someone. We’re hoping he’ll announce an engagement by the High Holy Days and then that scandal will be forgotten. The holidays are late this year, so I really think it will be blown over by Rosh Hashanah, and we can all start our new year with a clean slate as intended.
We’ll be wiring you money to return next week—you can take the train right from Atlantic City and bypass Philadelphia entirely. Ada will send any of your belongings you may have left in Oxford Circle when she returns after Labor Day. And that will give us time to go shopping for your school wardrobe and your books.
I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay with Ada. I know she’s wonderful, but I’ve missed you. And the condition to this all is that you’ll be living with us during the year, not the dormitory. So that’s a blessing in disguise, as I’ll get more time with you.
With love,
Mama
My chest was heaving by the time I finished reading. Next week! I couldn’t leave next week! I had another two and a half weeks at the shore. I couldn’t go back to that prison of a house. And what would happen when it came out that I was the girl Dan was seeing but there would be no engagement? They would hound me day and night until I wanted nothing to do with him. And how long would it be before they wore me down, and I ended up stirring a pot of something inedible at the stove, nose in a book, my own writing festering in a drawer while I bore child after child?
No.
I wasn’t going back.
Not even if they came here themselves and dragged me by my hair.
“Bad news, I take it?” Ada asked from the doorway.
I jumped. I hadn’t realized she was there.
“Mama says I’m supposed to go home next week,” I said flatly.
“I see.”
“Ada, you—you’ll let me stay, won’t you?”
Ada came into the room and sat opposite me. “It’s not that simple,” she said. “If they agree to allow you to stay with me, you’re welcome to. But I can’t keep you here if they say no.”
“Why not? I’m twenty. Can’t I just stay?”
“You’re going to need to talk to your father. There’s only so much your mother can do.”
I studied her. Her face was too bland. She knew something I didn’t. “What did Mama say to you?”
Her lips flattened into a line. “It wasn’t your mother.”
“Daddy? You talked to Daddy?” She nodded, and I felt my stomach drop. The conversation hadn’t gone well. That much was obvious.
“If I can convince him—”
“If you can, you can stay. But he was firm with me that I was not a permanent solution.”
“But why? He doesn’t want me there. I’m just trouble and a disgrace.”
She took my hand. “Because that’s what he sees me as. He knows why your mother came to me all those years ago. And the fact that I never married—well, he doesn’t want my life for you.”
I leaned away from her, aghast. “He said that?”
She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “He said I should understand that, in my line of work. I think he thought that was why you were coming for the summer. And the fact that I didn’t make a match for you . . . He’s not all too pleased with the way you’ve spent your summer.”
“How much does he know?”
“Only what you’ve told your mother. And that you’re as far from being engaged as you were when you left New York.”
It made sense. If he had even an inkling about Freddy, he would have dragged me back by my hair.
But he had apparently sent me here to find an appropriate husband, a mission in which I had failed miserably and instead spent my summer sunning myself and working on a novel, which he would view as more wasteful than my afternoons on the beach. Reading was fine, but a woman’s place was in the home as a wife and mother—even if she burned the roast.
I swore softly, assuming Ada would admonish me, but she surprised me, saying, “That’s just the word for it.”
“What do I do?” I asked her. She knew everything. She would know how to fix this.
But she shook her head. “You know your father better than I do. Appeal to him.” She rose and went to leave but stopped at the doorway. “I want you to know that I did try.”
There was a lump in my throat, preventing me from replying, so I nodded. Her head bobbed once in return, and then she left me in solitude to cry.
CHAPTER FIFTY
I was no closer to a solution when Dan arrived that evening. But with one look at my face, he took me into his arms. “What’s happened? Is it Ada? Is she—？”
Ada came down the stairs. “Ada is just fine,” she said. “Marilyn’s parents have summoned her home, and she doesn’t want to go.”
He pulled back to look at me, holding my face in his hands. “That’s all?”
I turned and ran up the stairs while he called after me. “Give her a little time,” I could hear Ada say before I shut my bedroom door and threw myself onto the bed.