Part 24 (1/2)

”Oh, wonderful!” he said, with an enthusiasm I would come to appreciate in him. ”Was your boyfriend Catholic?” he asked.

”Yes, but not devout,” I said. An understatement if ever there was one.

”It was doomed from the start, then,” he said. ”The gal I broke up with last year was a Methodist. My parents wouldn't even talk to her. I should have known it wouldn't work. The values are just too different, you know?”

I nodded, although I didn't really know at all.

”She was...fast, if you know what I mean,” he said. ”I found out she'd had...you know, relations relations, with the boy she'd dated before me, and I felt sick thinking about it.”

I knew right then that I would be starting this relations.h.i.+p off with a lie. I would never let Charles know the truth about Ross and me. Only a few of my girlfriends knew about Ross, so it would be a relatively easy secret to keep. I thought, though, that I'd better bring my ancestry out in the open before things went any further.

”I'm half Italian,” I said.

”I thought so.” He touched my hair. ”You have that rich Italian hair and those big, dark eyes.” It didn't seem to bother him at all.

Charles and I attended ma.s.s the following day and I saw my religion in a new light. I felt the peace that came over him inside the church. The smell of incense, the ritualistic standing and kneeling, the haunting Latin chanting, and the taste of the host on my tongue struck me like never before. I thanked G.o.d for giving me what felt like a second chance.

When we left the church and were back in my car, Charles turned to me. ”Are you all right?” he asked.

I nodded, wondering how he had known the impact that service had had on me. ”I've never been to ma.s.s with a...” I started to say boyfriend, but it seemed too soon to give him that label. ”With a date before,” I finished.

”You never went with your last boyfriend?” he asked.

I shook my head.

”I understand,” he said with a smile. ”That's why it would never have worked out with my old girlfriend and with your old boyfriend. They would have been twiddling their thumbs in there, anxious to get it over with.”

We fell in love quickly. I think I was in love with him that first night outside the fraternity house. My relations.h.i.+p with Ross was becoming clearer to me: It had been based on the physical and the illicit and little more. This was so different. Charles met my parents, who instantly adored him and even attended ma.s.s with us the first weekend he visited. Charles and my father were New York Yankee fans, and they occasionally attended games together at Yankee Stadium, while my mother would marvel that I'd found such a wonderful man.

”I've been worried about you,” she said, her Italian accent flavoring the words.

”Why?” I'd asked her, surprised.

”You always flit from one boy to the other,” she said. ”Never settled on any one of them. It worried me.”

”You didn't have to worry,” I said to her with a smile. ”I was waiting for the right one to come along.”

My relations.h.i.+p with Charles was entirely chaste. His kisses were pa.s.sionate, but if his hands wandered toward my b.r.e.a.s.t.s or my thighs, he would pull back in apology. I craved more, and I found the craving exciting. I felt guilty for the lie of omission I was engaged in. He thought I was a virgin, and there was no reason to tell him anything different. The lie was so thorough that even I began to think of myself as virginal.

On Easter Sunday, 1943, Charles asked me to marry him. Of course, I accepted, but as summer grew near and my parents spoke of having him stay with us at the sh.o.r.e, I became increasingly nervous. The rule between Ross and I that we would be lovers during the summers was unwritten and even unspoken, but it existed nevertheless, and I feared his reaction when I showed up with Charles. I hoped it would be clear to him that I needed to put an end to our illicit relations.h.i.+p, and I prayed he did nothing that might arouse Charles's suspicions. I was in for a surprise.

Charles and I followed my parents' car as we drove down the sh.o.r.e, and when we pulled into the driveway of the bungalow, I could see that two cars were already present in front of the Chapmans' house. My heart pounded as we unloaded the car and walked into our musty-smelling house. When I opened the French doors leading to the porch with its panoramic view of the ca.n.a.l, Charles gasped.

”It's wonderful!” he said, walking across the porch and unlatching the screen door to step outside.

I could see people in the Chapmans' yard, although I could not tell who they were, and I felt unprepared to walk into the yard with Charles if Ross was there. I'd wanted a chance to talk to Ross alone first. But with Charles already walking outside, I had little choice but to follow him.

”When will your father get the boat?” Charles asked, motioning at the dock as we walked toward the ca.n.a.l. The wooden bulkheads were in place by then, but it would be years before there would be a chain-link fence to mar our view.

”He'll pick it up tomorrow, probably,” I said, my eyes on the Chapmans' yard. Two figures stood in the far corner: Ross and a woman. I should have been pleased that he, too, would be preoccupied with a guest, but instead, a breath-stealing jealousy sprang up in my chest.

”Looks like you share your backyard.” Charles nodded toward the twosome.

Ross had his arm around the woman, but as he turned and saw us, his arm fell quickly from her shoulders. He was just as uncomfortable as I was, I thought.

”h.e.l.lo, Maria!” he called. He put his hand on the woman's elbow to turn her toward us. In his other hand, he held a cigar.

”Hi, Ross,” I said.

He said something I couldn't hear to the woman, and they began walking in our direction. I felt Charles's hand on my back, lightly pus.h.i.+ng me forward until the four of us met in the middle of the yard.

Ross looked wonderful, a little trimmer than the year before. I had trouble meeting his eyes. The delicious, woody scent of his cigar surrounded us.

”This is Joan Rockefeller,” he said. ”Joan, this is my neighbor, Maria Foley. And this is...?” He raised his eyebrows in Charles's direction.

”Charles Bauer,” I volunteered. ”This is Ross Chapman.”

The two men shook hands while I studied Joan. She was a blond stunner. Huge blue eyes, carefully coiffed hair, a dress that hugged a very slender frame.

”Any relation to the New York Rockefellers?” Charles asked the question I was thinking. How much was this girl worth?

”I'm about a fifty-first cousin, thrice removed.” Joan laughed. Then she turned to me. ”Ross said that your family and his have been summertime neighbors since you were small.” Her highpitched voice was almost childlike.

”That's right,” I said.

”Maria taught me how to dance,” Ross said.

”Oh, you did a wonderful job.” Joan nodded at me with a smile.

”And Ross taught me how to play tennis,” I said.

I thought of all the other things Ross had taught me that had nothing to do with tennis and felt myself blus.h.i.+ng furiously. I couldn't get a handle on my feelings. I loved Charles, of that I was certain, so it was ridiculous that my chest ached at seeing Ross with another woman. She would be the sort of girl his parents wanted for him. A Rockefeller, no less. I wondered if he felt jealous at seeing me with Charles. He didn't seem to. He was smiling easily, touching Joan's arm in an intimate way and I knew that she she was the one receiving his fiery lovemaking these days. was the one receiving his fiery lovemaking these days.

We put Charles in the attic, which now contained two double beds and four twins, ready for the cousins and other company who would arrive during the summer. There was no privacy up there, which was not a problem as long as Charles was the only inhabitant, but the week before my cousins were due to arrive, he made a suggestion.

”What if I hung a system of wires up there,” he said over breakfast one morning. He pulled a fountain pen from his s.h.i.+rt pocket and drew on the back of a paper napkin. ”Then we could hang curtains from the wires, so that there would be four cubbyholes around the beds, leaving this middle area open.”

”That's a fine idea,” my father said.

”I can make the curtains,” my mother suggested, and I offered to help.

”And one other thing,” Charles said. He held his hands up in apology. ”I hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries here, but what about adding a toilet and sink up there? I'd be happy to do it. My father taught me carpentry and plumbing.”

”Where would it go?” My mother stared at the napkin and its crisscrossed lines.

”I could build it right above the downstairs bathroom to make it easy to do the plumbing. It would be very small, of course, but then your guests wouldn't have to climb down those stairs in the middle of the night. And we wouldn't have to put a door on it. Just hang another curtain for privacy.”