Tiny Little Thing: Secrets, scandal and forbidden love

“No, thanks. You go on ahead.” I rise from the rug and roll Percy’s silky ear around my fingers.

On his way to the door, Frank pauses to drop another kiss on my cheek, and for some reason—related perhaps to the photograph sitting in my drawer, related perhaps to the key in Frank’s suitcase, related perhaps to my sister or his grandmother or our lost baby or God knows—I clutch at the hand Frank places on my shoulder.

He tilts his head. “Everything all right, darling?”

There is no possibility, no universe existing in which I could tell him the truth. At my side, Percy lowers himself to the floor and thumps his tail against the rug, staring at the two of us as if a miraculous biscuit might drop from someone’s fingers at any moment.

I finger my pearls and smile serenely. “Perfectly fine, Frank. Drinks at six. Don’t forget.”

The smile Frank returns me is white and sure and minty fresh. He picks up my other hand and kisses it.

“As if I could.”

Caspian, 1964

He avoided Boylan’s the next day, and the next. On the third day, he arrived at nine thirty, ordered coffee, and left at nine forty-five, feeling sick. He spent the day photographing bums near Long Wharf, and in the evening he picked up a girl at a bar and went back to her place in Charlestown. She poured them both shots of Jägermeister and unbuttoned his shirt. Outside the window, a neon sign flashed pink and blue on his skin. “Wow. Is that a scar?” she said, touching his shoulder, and he looked down at her false eyelashes, her smudged lips, her breasts sagging casually out of her brassiere, and he set down the glass untouched and walked out of the apartment.

He was no saint, God knew. But he wasn’t going to screw a girl in cold blood, not right there in the middle of peacetime Boston.

On the fourth day, he visited his grandmother in Brookline, in her handsome brick house that smelled of lilies and polish.

“It’s about time.” She offered him a thin-skinned cheek. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

“A while ago.” He kissed her and walked to the window. The street outside was lined with quiet trees and sunshine. It was the last day of the heat wave, so the weatherman said, and the last day was always the worst. The warmth shimmered upward from the pavement to wilt the new green leaves. A sleek black Cadillac cruised past, but his grandmother’s sash windows were so well made he didn’t even hear it. Or maybe his hearing was going. Too much noise.

“You and your early hours. I suppose you learned that in the army.”

“I was always an early riser, Granny.” He turned to her. She sat in her usual chintz chair near the bookcase, powdered and immaculate in a flamingo-colored dress that matched the flowers in the upholstery behind her.

“That’s your father’s blood, I suppose. Your mother always slept until noon.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Trust me.” She reached for the bell on the small chinoiserie table next to the chair and rang it, a single ding. Granny wasn’t one for wallowing in grief, even for her oldest daughter. “What brings you out to see your old granny today?”

“No reason, except I’ll be shipping out on another tour soon.”

Her lip curled. “Why on earth?”

“Because I’m a soldier, Granny. It’s what I do.”

“There are plenty of other things you could do. Oh! Hetty. There you are. A tray of coffee for my grandson. He’s already eaten, but you might bring a little cake to sweeten him up.”

Right. As if he was the one who needed sweetening.

He waited until Hetty disappeared back through the living room doorway. “Like what, Granny? What can I do?”

“Oh, you know. Like your uncle’s firm. Or law school. I would say medicine, but you’re probably too old for all that song and dance, and anyway we already have a doctor in the family.”

“Anything but the army, in other words?” He leaned against the bookcase and crossed his arms. “Anything but following in my father’s footsteps?”

“I didn’t say that. Eisenhower was in the army, after all.”

“Give it a rest, Granny. You can’t stamp greatness on all our brows.”

“I didn’t say anything about greatness.”

“Poor Granny. It’s written all over your smile. But blood will out, you know. I tried all that in college, and look what happened.” He spread his hands. “You’ll just have to take me as you find me, I guess. Every family needs a black sheep. Gives us character. The press loves it, don’t they? Imagine the breathless TV feature, when Frank wins the nomination for president.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re not a black sheep. Look at you.” She jabbed an impatient gesture at his reclining body, his sturdy legs crossed at the ankles. “I just worry about you, that’s all. Off on the other side of the word. Siam, of all places.”

“Vietnam.”

“At least you’re fighting Communists.”

“Someone’s got to do it.”

The door opened. Hetty sidled through, her long uniformed back warped under the weight of the coffee tray. He uncrossed his legs and pushed away from the wall to take it from her. He couldn’t stand the sight of it, never could—domestic servants lugging damned massive loads of coffee and cake for his convenience. At least in his father’s various accommodations, the trays were carried by sturdy young soldiers who were happy to be hauling coffee instead of grenades. A subtle difference, maybe, but one he could live with.

“Thank you, Hetty. What about this photography business of yours?” She waved him aside and poured him a cup of coffee with her own hands.

“It’s not a business. It’s a hobby. Not all that respectable, either, but surely I don’t need to tell you that?”

“It’s an art, Franklin says. Just like painting.”

“It’s not just like painting. But I guess there’s an art to it. You can say that to your friends, anyway, if it helps.” He took the coffee cup and resumed his position against the bookcase.

“Don’t you ever sit, young man?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“I guess that’s your trouble in a nutshell.”

He grinned and drank his coffee.

She made a grandmotherly harrumph, the kind of patronizing noise she’d probably sworn at age twenty—and he’d seen her pictures at age twenty, some rip-roaring New York party, Edith Wharton she wasn’t—that she would never, ever make. “You and that smile of yours. What about girls? I suppose you have a girl or two stringing along behind you, as usual.”

“Not really. I’m only back for a few weeks, remember?”

“That’s never stopped the men in this family before.” A smug smile from old Granny.

“And you’re proud of that?”

“Men should be men, girls should be girls. How God meant us.”

He shook his head. The cup rested in his palm, reminding him of Jane Doe’s curving elbow. “There is a girl, I guess.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized she was the reason he came here to lily-scented Brookline that hot May morning, to its chintz upholstery and its shepherdess coffee service, to Granny herself, unchanged since his childhood.

Jane Doe. What to do with her. What to do with himself.

“What’s her name?” asked Granny.

He grinned again. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly spoken to her.”

“Hardly spoken to her?”

“I think she’s engaged.”

“Engaged, or married?”

“Engaged, I think. I didn’t see a band. Anyway, she doesn’t seem married.”

“Well, if she’s only engaged, there’s nothing to worry about.” Granny stirred in another spoonful of sugar. The silver tinkled expensively against the Meissen. “What kind of girl is she?”

“The nice kind.”

“Good family?”

“I told you, I don’t know her name.”

“Find out.”

“Hell, Granny, I—”

“Language, Caspian.”

He set down the coffee and strode back to the window. “Why the hell did I come here, anyway? I don’t know.”

“Don’t blaspheme. You can use whatever foul words you like in that … that platoon of yours, but you will not take the Lord’s name in vain in my house.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now. To answer your question. Why did you come here? You came here to ask my advice, of course.”

“And what’s your advice, Granny?” he asked the window, the empty street outside, the identical white-trimmed Georgian pile of bricks staring back at him.

The silver clinked. Granny, cutting herself a slice of cake, placing it on a delicate shepherdess plate, taking a bite. “I am amazed, Caspian, so amazed and perplexed by the way your generation makes these things so unnecessarily complicated. The fact is, you only have one question to ask yourself, one question to answer before you do a single first thing.”

“Which is?”

“Do you want her for a wife or for a good time?”

The postman appeared suddenly, between a pair of trees on the opposite side of the street, wearing short pants and looking as if he might drop dead.

Caspian fingered the edge of the chintz curtain and considered the words good time, and the effortless way Granny spoke them. What the hell did Granny know about a good-time girl? Not that he wanted to know. Jesus. “There’s no in between?”

A short pause, thick with disapproval. “No.”

“All right. Then what?”

“Well, it depends. If you want a good time, you walk up to her, introduce yourself, and ask her to dinner.”

“Easy enough. And the other?”

Granny set down her plate. The house around them lay as still as outdoors, lifeless, empty now of the eight children she’d raised, the husband at his office downtown, if by office you meant mistress’s apartment. She was the lone survivor, the last man standing in the Brookline past. The floorboards vibrated beneath the carpet as she rose to her feet and walked toward him, at the same dragging tempo as the postman across the street.

She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he managed not to flinch.

“Now, don’t you know that, Caspian? You walk up, introduce yourself, and ask her to dinner.”

Tiny, 1966

At half past five o’clock, I push open the bottom sash of the bedroom window and prop my torso into the hot salt-laden air to look for my husband.

The beach is crammed with Hardcastle scions of all ages, running about the sand in skimpy swimsuits. Or frolicking: yes, that’s the word. A cluster of younger ones ply their shovels on a massive sand castle, assisted by a father or two; the younger teenagers are chasing one another, boys versus girls, testing out all those mysterious new frissons under the guise of play. Hadn’t I done that, between thirteen and sixteen, when the Schuylers summered on Long Island? I probably had. Or maybe my sisters had, and I’d watched from under my umbrella, reading a book, safe from freckles and sunburn and hormonal adolescent boys. Saving myself for greater things, or so I told myself, because that’s what Mums wanted for me. Greater things than untried pimply scions.

A cigarette trails from my fingers—another reason for opening the window—and I inhale quickly, in case anyone happens to be looking up.

Of the seven living Hardcastle children, six are here today with their spouses, and fully thirteen of Frank’s cousins have joined them in the pretty shingle and clapboard houses that make up the property. A compound, the magazines like to call it, as if it’s an armed camp, and the Hardcastles a diplomatic entity of their own. I know all their names. It’s part of my job. You’re the lady of the house now, Granny Hardcastle said, when we joined them on the Cape for the first time as a married couple. It was August, a week after we’d returned from our honeymoon, and boiling hot. Granny had moved out of the master suite while we were gone. You’re the lady of the house now, she told me, over drinks upon our arrival, and I thought I detected a note of triumph in her voice.

At the time, I’d also thought I must be mistaken.

You’re in charge, she went on. Do things exactly as you like. I won’t stick my nose in, I promise, unless you need a little help from time to time.

I spot Frank, tucking up the boat in the shelter of the breakwater, a couple of hundred yards down the shore. At least I assume it’s Frank; the boat is certainly his, the biggest one, the tallest mast. At one point he meant to train seriously for the America’s Cup. I don’t know what became of that one. Too much career in the way, I suppose, too much serious business to get on with. There are two of them, Frank and someone else, tying the Sweet Christina up to her buoy. No use calling for him, at this distance.

I draw in a last smoke, crush out the cigarette on the windowsill, and check my watch. Five thirty-five, and no one’s getting ready for drinks. Everyone’s out enjoying the beach, the sun, the sand. Below me, Pepper reclines on a beach chair, bikini glowing, head scarf fluttering, every inch of her slathered in oil. Pepper has olive skin, so she can do things like that; she can bare her shapely coconut-oiled limbs to the sun and come out golden. She’s not hiding her cigarette, either: it’s out there in plain sight of men, women, and children. Along with a thermos of whatever.

Everybody’s having a sun-swept good time.

Well, good for them. That’s what the Cape is for, isn’t it? That’s why the Hardcastles bought this place, back in the early twenties, when beach houses were becoming all the rage. Why they keep it. Why they gather together here, year after year, eating the same lobster rolls and baking under the same sweaty sun.

Just before I duck back into the bedroom, a primal human instinct turns my head to the left, and I catch sight of a face staring up from the sand.

For an instant, my heart crashes. Giddy. Terrified. Caught.

But it’s only Tom. Constance’s husband, Tom, a doctoral student in folk studies—whatever that was—at Tufts and now at leisure for the whole lazy length of the summer, with nothing to do but collect his trust fund check, tweak his thesis, and get Constance pregnant again. He sits in the dunes near the house, smoking and disgruntled, and that disgruntled face just so happens to be observing me as if I’m the very folk whereof he studies. He’s probably seen my unfastened dress. He’s probably seen the cigarette. He’ll probably tattle on me to Constance.

Little weasel.

I smile and wave. He salutes me with his cigarette.

I withdraw and pretzel myself before the mirror to wiggle up the zipper on my own. (A snug bodice, miniature sleeves just off the shoulder: really, where was a husband when you needed him? Oh, of course: tying up his yacht.) I swipe on my lipstick, blot, and swipe again. My hair isn’t quite right; I suppose I need a cut. So hard to remember these things, out here on the Cape. It’s too late for curlers. I wind the ends around my fingers, hold, release. Repeat. Fluff. The room lies silent around me. Even Percy has dozed quietly off.

As I finger my way around my head, the face in the mirror seems to be frowning in me. The way my mother—passing me by one evening on her way to someone’s party—warned me never to do, because my skin might freeze that way.

Wrinkles. The bitter enemy of a woman’s happiness.

Frank bursts through the door, smiling and wind whipped, at ten minutes to six, a moment too late to fasten my diamond and aquamarine necklace for me.

“Had a nice sail?” I say icily.

“The best. Cap joined me. Just like old times, when we were kids. Went all the way around the point and back. Record time, I’ll bet. Goddamn, that man can sail.” The highest possible praise. He blows straight past me to the bathroom.

“Even with one leg?” I call out.

“It worked for Bluebeard, didn’t it?” He laughs at his own joke.

I screw on the last earring and give the hair a last pat. “I’m needed downstairs. Can you manage by yourself?”

Frank walks out of the bathroom to rummage in his wardrobe. “Fine, fine.” His head pokes around the corner of the door. “Need help with your zipper or anything?”

My shoes sit next to the door, aquamarine satin to match my dress and jewelry, two-inch heels. I slip my feet into one and the other. The added height goes straight to my head.

“No,” I say. “I don’t need any help.”

On my way downstairs, I stop to check on Pepper.

“Come in,” she says in reply to my knock, and I push open the door to find her belting her robe over her body. I have the impression, based on nothing but instinct, that she’s been standing naked in front of the mirror in the corner. It’s something Pepper would do, admiring her figure, which (like that of our youngest sister Vivian) belongs to a different species of figures from mine: tall, curved like a violin, colored by the same honey varnish. It’s the kind of figure that inspires men to maddened adoration, especially when she drapes those violin curves as she usually does, in short tangerine dresses and heeled slippers.

All at once, I feel flat and pale and straight-hipped in my aquamarine satin, too small, insignificant. A prissed-up girl, instead of a woman: a rigid frigid little lady. What’s happened to me? My God.

“Aren’t you dressed yet?” I ask.

“I’ve just come in from the beach. So hard to leave. I haven’t lain out on a beach in ages.”

“All work and no play?”

“Oh, you know me.” She laughs. “It’s killing me, this crazy Washington life. It’s so lovely to be idle again. I know you’re used to it, but …” She turns away in the middle of an eloquent shrug and looks out the window.

“Not that idle.”

“A lady of leisure, just like Mums. I can’t tell you how jealous I am.” She stretches her arms above her head, right there before the window, not jealous at all. Nor in any hurry to dress herself for the party, apparently.

I cast a significant glance at my watch. “I’m on my way down, actually. Can I help you with anything? Zipper?”

She turns back.

“No, thanks. I can manage. There’s not much to zip, anyway.” Another low and throaty laugh, and then a sniff, incredulous. “Tiny! Have you been smoking?”

As she might say swinging.

I consider lying. “Just one,” I say, flicking a disdainful hand.

“Good Lord. I never thought I’d see the day. Poor thing. I guess this family of yours would drive anyone to debauchery. Don’t worry.” She zips her lips. “I won’t say a word to Mums. Is Major Gorgeous here yet?”

“Nobody’s here yet. We still have a few minutes.”

“You sound awfully cold, Tiny. Maybe you should sit out on the beach for a few minutes and warm up your blood. It works wonders, believe me.”

I gaze at my sister’s playful eyes, tilted alluringly at the corners. Her curving red mouth. The old Pepper, now that it’s just the two of us, alone in her room. Her claws, my skin. We do so much better when there are others around. Someone else’s family to distract us, someone else’s irreversible birth order: flawless first, naughty second, locked in timeless conflict.

At my silence, Pepper pulls the ends of her robe more closely together. “So. I saw your husband and the major out there on the water, sailing a boat. Did you get your après-midi after all? It must have been a quick one. Not that those aren’t sometimes the best.”

“Actually, I had another miscarriage eight days ago,” I say. “I don’t know if Mums told you. So, no. No après-midi for a few more weeks yet, unfortunately. Quick or not.”

Pepper’s arms uncross at last. Her tip-tilted eyes—the dark blue Schuyler eyes she shares with Vivian, except that hers are a shade or two lighter—go round with sympathy. “Oh, Tiny! Of course I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. What a bitch I am.”

I turn to the door. “It’s all right. Really.”

“My big fat mouth …”

“You have a lovely mouth, Pepper. I’m going downstairs now to make sure everything’s ready. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Tiny—”

I close the door carefully behind me.

Downstairs, everything is perfect, exactly as I left it three quarters of an hour ago. The vases are full of hyacinths—my first order, as lady of the compound, was nothing short of rebellion: I changed the house flower from lily to hyacinth, never mind the financial ruin when hyacinths were out of season—and the side tables are lined with coasters. All the windows and French doors have been thrown open, heedless of bugs, because the heat’s been building all day, hot layered on hot, and the Big House has no air-conditioning. Mrs. Crane and the two maids are busy in the kitchen, filling trays with Ritz crackers and crab dip. If this were a party for outside guests, I’d have hired a man from town, put him in a tuxedo, and had him pour drinks from the bar. But this is only family, and Frank and his father can do it themselves.

Frank’s father. He rises from his favorite chair in the library, immaculate in a white dinner jacket and black tie, his graying hair polished into silver. “Good evening, Tiny. You look marvelous, as always.”

I lean in for his kiss. “So do you, Mr. Hardcastle. Enjoying your last moment of peace?”

He holds up his cigar, his glass of Scotch. “Guilty as charged. Anybody here yet?”

“I think we’ll be running late. I stuck my head out the window at five thirty, and nobody was stirring from the beach.”

“It’s a hot day.”

“Yes, it is. At least it gives us a few moments to relax before everyone arrives.”

“Indeed. Can I get you a drink?” He moves to the cabinet.

“Yes, please. Vodka martini. Dry, olive.”

He moves competently about the bottles and shakers, mixing my martini. You might be wondering why Frank’s mother isn’t the lady of the house instead of me, organizing its dinner parties, decreeing the house flower, and you might suspect she’s passed away, though of course you’re too tactful to ask. Well, you’re wrong. In fact, the Hardcastles divorced when Frank was five or six, I can’t remember exactly, but it was a terrible scandal and crushed Mr. Hardcastle’s own political ambitions in a stroke. You can’t run for Senate if you’re divorced, after all, or at least you couldn’t back in the forties. The torch was quietly tossed across the generation to my husband. Oh, and the ex–Mrs. Hardcastle? I’ve never been told why they divorced, and her name isn’t spoken around the exquisite hyacinth air of the Big House. I’ve never even met her. She lives in New York. Frank visits her sometimes, in her exile, when he’s there on business.

There is a distant ring of the doorbell. The first guests. I glance up at the antique ormolu clock above the mantel. Five fifty-nine.

“Thank you.” I accept the martini from my father-in-law and turn to leave. “If you’ll excuse me. It looks like somebody in this family has a basic respect for punctuality, after all.”

I nearly reach the foyer before it occurs to me to wonder why a Hardcastle would bother to ring the doorbell of the Big House, and by that time it’s too late.

Caspian Harrison stands before me in his dress uniform, handing his hat to Mrs. Crane. He looks up at my entrance, my shocked halt, and all I can see is the scar above his left eyebrow, wrapping around the curve of his temple, which was somehow hidden on the television screen by the angle or the bright sunshine of the White House Rose Garden.

A few drops of vodka spill over the rim of the glass and onto my index finger.

“Major Harrison.” I lick away the spilled vodka and smile my best hostess smile. “Welcome home.”

Caspian, 1964

When Cap arrived at the coffee shop the next morning, nine thirty sharp, the place was jammed. Em rushed by with an armful of greasy plates.

“What gives?” he called after her.

“Who knows? There’s one booth left in the corner, if you move fast.”

He looked around and found it, the booth in the corner, and moved fast across the sweaty bacon-and-toast air to sling himself and his camera bag along one cushion. Em scooted over and set a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice on the table, almost without stopping. He drank the coffee first, hot and crisp. You had to hand it to Boylan’s. Best coffee in Back Bay, if you liked the kind of coffee you could stand your spoon in.