Marvin had never known that, on their wedding day, Boop had stood outside Zaide’s office, dressed in her finery. She’d overheard Marvin and Zaide discussing something—or rather, someone. Her!
“She’ll be a proper wife and mother, but she must be able to come here whenever she wants.” Zaide’s voice was deep but soft. Of her two grandparents, he wasn’t the serious one, but her welfare was serious business, even when she’d disappointed him. Then she’d heard the slap she’d imagined was the handshake that had sealed her fate.
“Yes, sir,” Marvin had said, sounding resolute and like a man. A husband.
“After the wedding I’ll talk to your father about that promotion he promised you. Maybe I can help to speed things along. And Yetta and I will help out with the house. Make sure it’s what Betty will like, where she can feel at home. All you have to do is keep your end of the bargain. All your ends.”
In that moment, and in the wedding that followed, Boop had set aside the detail that her marriage was not just her agreement with Marvin but a transaction between him and her grandparents. She’d turned and headed toward the kitchen, pivoted, and then walked past the office again, feigning ignorance as Zaide opened the door, none the wiser that his granddaughter knew he had built her an escape hatch from her suburban bungalow.
Someone tapped on her bedroom door. Boop didn’t want to talk about the memories that had stirred because of one measly flyer. It’s not like she had anything to do with the pageant now. She could avoid the topic at home and at the nail salon. Heck, she’d been evading the topic for almost seventy years.
She opened the door.
“We should talk,” Georgia said. She and Doris stepped inside.
They sat on Boop’s bed. Their younger selves would have plopped and bounced and waited for tales of a date or a dance. Tonight, they sat gingerly. Doris wrung her hands.
“I didn’t realize Marvin didn’t let you talk about the pageant,” she said.
Boop widened her eyes at Georgia.
“What?” Georgia asked. “Doris wanted to know why you were so flustered by the new pageant when Natalie mentioned it. I told her that Marvin forbade you to talk about it.”
“He didn’t forbid me. I agreed not to mention it because it bothered him. We focused on what happened after that day, not before,” Boop said.
“But it was so important to you,” Doris said. “Didn’t that make it important to him?”
“He didn’t want to be reminded of when we weren’t together, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize. I thought you were so happy it just didn’t matter anymore and that’s why you didn’t mention it. You’d won a better prize! You got married!”
Doris had a knack for forgetting unpleasant details.
“It was the right thing to do at the time,” Georgia said. “But I guess times change.”
“How about if I set out lunch on the porch?” Doris stood and walked toward the bedroom door. “And whatever you want to talk about is okay with us.”
Georgia stayed seated on the bed.
“Thanks, that all sounds great,” Boop said.
After Doris left the bedroom, Boop waited until the sound of footsteps on the stairs faded to a patter across the wood floor and then disappeared. She turned to Georgia.
“He didn’t make me do anything,” Boop said. “I agreed to be quiet. But Marvin’s gone. Maybe it’s time my family knew the whole story.”
“After all this time, you’re going to go against his wishes?”
“I’m tired of hiding a part of my life. That day of the pageant made me who I am—or at least who I was. It shaped my marriage. It’s part of me, even now. God forbid I die tomorrow: Shouldn’t my family know the whole truth, or at least as much as I know?”
“I always thought it was better for you to forget about it all, but that’s the point, isn’t it? You’ve never forgotten.”
“No, I haven’t.” Boop wouldn’t discount her life with Marvin, but it was time to acknowledge she had been someone before she’d become Boop Peck. She had been Betty Stern—a smart and sassy girl. A bathing beauty.
“It’s not just your family, you know. Your manicurist is mighty curious about the last Miss South Haven. I don’t think she’ll stop digging until she finds answers,” Georgia said.
“She’s going to be too busy organizing the pageant and wrangling all those contestants to worry about what happened in the past.”
That night Boop found her tackle box right where she’d left it, sloppily stowed where anyone could have found it, had they been looking. She removed the box again, and like her heart, it felt too small to hold everything inside, so she set it on the bed in case it burst.
Her nightgown buttoned to her neck and fleece slippers on her feet even though it was June, Boop lost her resolve to open the box and backed away. Was it really time to unlatch the past? To touch it instead of just talk about it? She’d always considered herself brave, but when the act of bravery included baring her heart, she hesitated. Boop skittered around the bedroom, rearranging empty, decorative perfume bottles on her dresser top, grazing her hand along the top of the rocking chair that had belonged to a great-grandmother she’d never met. She fluffed the sheer curtains, and faint particles scattered into the air like fairy dust. The sky was blue and black and speckled with stars, reminding her of a navy Swiss dot pinafore she’d worn as a girl, back when her future was open, her possibilities endless.
Boop looked at the box and imagined the world it represented. Was she the only one who held these memories dear? Had Abe told anyone about their summer, about her?
Boop scoffed at her own vanity.
If Abe still had all of his faculties as he aged, he wouldn’t be thinking about the girl from South Haven. She gasped
