The girl squeezed Betty’s elbow. “You’re a doll. I’m Barbara. And I know you’re Betty. Who’s your honey?”
“Oh, he’s not—”
“Marv Peck, nice to meet you, Barbara. C’mon, Betty, we should be going.” He tapped her elbow. Marv lifted her powder-blue cardigan from her arm and swung it over her shoulders as they walked away from the fire and toward the lighthouse. How dared he behave like they were an item. She yanked the sweater and slung it back over her arm.
Despite her irritation, Betty jump-started the chitchat—the new beach chairs and umbrellas on the beach, the musical talent of the staff who sang after dinner, their favorite desserts (Marv’s was apple cake and Betty’s was blueberry pie). She remained polite, though she grew bored, aching for the moment they’d turn back to the crackling blaze and all that surrounded it.
Betty had changed out of a peach cotton sateen number and into green pedal pushers with a madras plaid blouse tied at her waist. Marv no longer wore a suit but casual tan slacks and a button-down shirt.
Two years earlier Betty had believed she and Marv might share interests beyond their memories of childhood games. Peck’s Popular Shoes was, for all intents and purposes, a fashion-oriented business. And if there was one thing Betty loved and respected aside from her grandparents, it was fashion. Betty had attempted to describe the latest spring and summer styles, but Marv had refused to talk about business.
“Why do you care so much about the shoe business?” Marv had asked.
“I know a lot about fashion and cosmetics,” she’d said. “And not just how to wear them. I’m going to be a fashion magazine writer and editor someday.” She’d been sure of this since the ninth grade, when she’d written a beauty column for her school paper: “Popular Looks for Today’s Girls.”
Marv had smirked. “Is that so?”
Betty had wanted to slap him. “It is!”
“By the time you graduate you’ll be twenty-two. All your friends will be married.”
“Good for them.”
“Don’t you want that? A husband, a house, children? All girls do.”
“Sure,” Betty had said. “Someday. I want an education. A career. A bank account. Independence. Then I’ll have more to offer my husband than just a pretty smile and a trousseau.”
“Just for the record, I think that’s all a fella wants.”
Not any fella of mine. Betty had turned around. “I’d like to go home.”
When Marv had asked Betty for a second “walk” the next day, she’d declined.
Yet here she was now, walking with Marv Peck.
“You’re a real beauty, Betty.”
Betty looked at Marv. She really looked at this young man who seemed to like her, though his actions and words were misguided. He stood about five-eleven. She knew this because he was just a trifle taller than Georgia. His shoulders were narrow and his shirt loose. In that moment she hoped he’d fill out. That’d help him look more manly, more mature, take up more space. She wondered how much authority he commanded at his father’s shoe stores. She liked to think he had another side to him, one that would attract the kind of girl he wanted, one with a smile and a trousseau, but without brains or ambition.
“I’d like us to remain friends this summer,” Betty said.
“Ouch. You really know how to hurt a guy.”
“I’m going to New York in September; there really isn’t a point to more than that.”
“For now.”
“No, Marv, not ‘for now.’ I’m going off to Barnard and I plan to stay in New York. I’m not coming back to South Haven.” No magazine jobs in Michigan. No Michigan for Betty. “My grandparents support me.” She would have stomped her foot but knew that was childish and would refute her point.
He smirked the way he had before. “Okay.”
Betty quickened her step, not easy to do in the sand. Marv caught up to her.
“I’m just teasing you, Betty. Don’t be so sensitive.”
“I don’t think it’s very nice to tease someone about her hopes and dreams. Do you know how hard I worked to be accepted to Barnard? How much my grandparents are sacrificing to send me away? You were rude. I said I wanted to be friends when I could have said ‘bug off.’” She was at once angry at Marv’s dismissal, yet horrified that he might be right, that she had no right to leave the cocoon of her family, to want anything more than she could find right here on the beach or back at home.
No. He was wrong. She could have it all. This is what she had been raised to believe, and Nannie and Zaide didn’t lie. Even her absent parents supported the decision, which, up until now, had been the only thing to make her question it.
In the distance Betty saw the glow of the bonfire.
“Actually, Marv, I’m going back, but you don’t need to walk with me. I’m quite capable on my own.”
Back with the group, Betty saw a few couples were wrapped around each other, slow-dancing in a way that would have made Betty blush, had she not been envious that they’d already found their summer sweethearts. They swayed side to side, even though the radio was gone. Other couples lay on beach blankets the way she once had with Robert Smith, except no one here seemed to be putting a stop to anything. They had wrapped the blankets up and over themselves, but still.
Marv had been a half pace behind her, and now stepped to her side. “Betty, wait,” he said.
He’d followed her. They were just a few feet from the safety of the group that was not necking or dancing.
Darn. She stopped and turned toward him, clasped her hands in front of her the way she did when she thought she might fidget inappropriately.
“Before you say anything,” Betty said, “I won’t tell my grandparents what you said. They like you, and I’m not going to be the one to change that.”
Marv tugged gently on her hands. “We can just be friends for now.”
“You’re not paying attention,”
