“Stuart,” Gussie said, tucking a piece of hair that had escaped the cap behind her ear, “if Florence hadn’t died, would you have married her?”
The question felt like a kick between the shoulder blades. Stuart pictured the brunt force of her remark knocking him off the stand and into the hard-packed sand three feet below.
“That’s a big question for so small a girl.”
“I’ll be eight soon.”
“I guess that’s true.” How could he explain his relationship with Florence in terms a little girl—even one as precocious as Gussie—might understand? That there had been days when his wanting had felt like an open wound that needed to be tended to immediately, and other days it had felt like a bone he could bury in the backyard, something to come back to when Florence was ready, if she would ever be ready.
“Did you love her?” Gussie asked.
“I did but it wasn’t that simple.”
“Why not?”
It was a good question. Why hadn’t it been that simple?
“Well, for one thing, I’m not Jewish.”
“Does that matter?”
Stuart turned to look at her. “It shouldn’t but it does.”
“What are you?”
“Nothing. Maybe Protestant? I don’t really know anymore.”
“So Jews can’t marry Protestants?”
“I think Jews prefer to marry Jews.”
Gussie squeezed her lips together and her chin began to quiver. Worried she might cry, Stuart scurried to fix what he’d said. “I don’t know that that was it, though. I was also her coach.”
Another poor excuse. He wasn’t nearly as noble as all that. If Florence had given Stuart even a small sign, during one of those early morning practices, he would have been tempted to make love to her, right there in the bilge of the boat. But she had never given him the slightest indication she was interested.
“Are coaches not allowed to get married?”
Stuart laughed. “No, they are.” When Florence returned from France, he had imagined that he might tell her how he felt and see if she felt the same way. If the revelation changed the dynamic of their friendship, then that would have been something he had to live with.
“I made you something,” Gussie said, reaching into the pocket of her sundress.
She withdrew a small rock and handed it to him.
Stuart turned it over. On one side she had painted two miniature sea horses.
“How lovely, Gus. Thank you.”
“I wanted to ask”—her voice suddenly a whisper—“if you might marry me?”
By six o’clock that evening, when Robert and Stuart lowered their lifeguard stand into the sand, secured their boat, and headed toward the beach tent, the sky had not yet opened up but the storm clouds had settled squarely over the Boardwalk. As they approached the tent, Stuart convinced himself that Anna likely wouldn’t be there. Who could blame her? Any minute, it was going to pour.
Stuart put away his rescue can and the pair of oars he and Robert had taken that morning.
“Can I help with anything?”
He whipped around to find Anna standing a few feet behind him, the shoulder strap of her bathing suit peeking out from the neckline of her cotton dress. A pale pink cardigan hung from her shoulders.
“Good! You came. I was worried the storm would keep you away.”
