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 mass 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 relationship 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 mass 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 relationship with Charles was entirely chaste. His kisses were passionate, but if his hands wandered toward my breasts 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 shore, 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 relationship, 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 shore, 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 canal, 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 canal. 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.
“Hello, 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 pushing 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 blushing furiously. I couldn’t get a handle on my feelings. I loved Charles, of that I was certain, so it was ridiculous that my
