Just a silly game.
6
Before...
JUNE 1938
Wilson’s visit home was to be just for a week, not the entire summer term break.
Celine, when she heard the news, was not happy about this change in plans. It was lunchtime when she’d taken Wilson’s telephone call. I’d been asked to heat up and serve the leftover boeuf bourguignon that Alphonse had made for dinner the night before. Truman was already seated at the table with the day’s mail. I was filling their drinking glasses with lemonade while she talked with her son, and both Truman and I heard her end of the conversation. When the call ended, Celine slammed the telephone handset onto its base and then walked back into the dining room from the telephone table in the entryway.
“A friend asked him to spend the summer at his family’s house on Cape Cod,” Celine said, falsely sweet, as she took her chair. “The friend’s family has a mansion overlooking the water. The friend’s family has tennis courts and a putting green and a billiards room! The friend’s family has horses.”
“He’s not a child anymore, Celine,” Truman said. “He’s not always going to spend his summers with us.”
“But we made plans!” Celine grabbed the lemonade glass at her place setting. “We’re going to miss celebrating his birthday with him. He should’ve thought about that.”
“Let’s not begrudge him spending the summer at a house that sounds amazing. If we make him feel terrible about it, he won’t want to come home for Christmas.”
Celine glowered at Truman as though he’d crossed a line. Then she swung around to face me. “Is there something you wanted, Rosie?”
I realized I’d been standing as if glued to the spot because I had been looking forward to having Wilson home for the whole summer, too. I hadn’t understood how much until Celine announced he was only coming for a week. There had been a time, long ago when we were little, when Wilson had been my friend. I didn’t have any close friends anymore. I hadn’t for a while. I’d also realized I’d wanted Wilson to see that I had grown up and was no longer a child.
“No, Mrs. Calvert.” I spun around and headed back into the kitchen, letting the hinged door between the two rooms fall closed.
“I didnotmake him feel terrible about it,” Celine said, her voice gruff but controlled and clearly audible from the other side of the wooden door.
Truman didn’t say anything for a moment. “I can only tell you what it sounded like,” he finally replied. “It sounded like you were mad at him.”
“Well, I wasn’t. I was surprised. And disappointed. But I didn’t make him feelterrible, Truman.”
“Good. Glad to hear it.”
“You don’t have to use that tone.”
I grabbed my own lunch and headed for the back door and thepatio so as not to have to listen to them discuss this the way they were.
I wondered as I ate if Truman usually said as little as he did because it was nearly always easier. Celine was... opinionated. And she liked being in command. Of everything. When I took my dish back into the kitchen some minutes later, Truman was at the sink rinsing off his lunch plate.
“I can do that.” I moved to take the plate from him. Truman stayed where he was.
“Sorry you had to hear Celine and me... discussing things,” he said. “Is that why you decided to eat your lunch outside?”
“It’s all right.”
Truman reached for my dish. I hesitated and then handed it to him.
“I’m sorry Wilson won’t be home for the whole summer,” I said.
“I’m actually not. That probably sounds awful, but I’m not sorry he found something fun to do the last summer before he graduates. He’ll probably get a job next year in San Francisco or Seattle and we’ll be lucky if we get to see him even at the holidays. He has no interest in running a vineyard, and he knows Celine won’t let him anyway. I’m glad he’s going. It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“It... it does sound like a nice place.” I watched with surprise as Truman tossed soap flakes into the sink and began to fill it with hot water.
“Disappointments like this would be easier for Celine if we had been able to have other kids, but with Wilson being our only one, she tends to hold on a little too tight.” Truman lowered the lunch dishes into the soapy water.
“My mother wondered why you and Mrs. Calvert didn’t have more children.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Iwanted to snatch them back. Mommahadwondered why Wilson was the Calverts’ only child, but she would’ve been mortified to know I’d said so aloud. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Truman shrugged the apology away. “We wanted others. There was a time, many years ago, when Wilson was to have had a little brother, but Celine... we lost that baby. There were no others after that.”
