Page 42 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

An hour later, Virgie watched the sailboat dock, her husband and the girls tying up the boat to the pilings. They entered the kitchen to steaming plates of pancakes drowning in syrup and butter. Charlie, with his hair tucked into an FBI cap, greeted her with a tentative smile, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. “You look ravishing this morning,” he said.

His comment had succeeded in softening the tension pulsing through her, since no one looked ravishing in the morning, especially not with last night’s eye makeup caked on. “Oh, Charlie. Don’t try to charm your way back into my good graces.”

“Charm is all I have.” He encouraged Virgie to sit down, she’d done enough. He would get the girls anything else they needed. He would clean the dishes.

Aggie ate her pancake with island honey, watching her parents with interest. “Are you in trouble, Dad?”

“Daddy is always in trouble with Mommy.” Betsy thought she was being smart, and maybe she was, but Virgie made an impatient face at her anyway.

Virgie carried her coffee outside to the porch, the sun so bright she positioned her chair so it was fully in the shade of the striped awning. She knew Charlie would follow, and when he sat down, he commented on how busy the harbor seemed this summer.

“You seem rather busy this summer,” she said pointedly.

“It’s an election year, Virgie. It’s always busy. I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were coming here—it hurt, you know.” He pointed to the row of flowering potted plants on the patio, a mix of zinnias and geraniums. “I’ve been watering your houseplants. So far, everyone is doing okay.”

Virgie smiled at him from behind her coffee cup; to him, even plants were people that needed tending. “Thank you. I didn’t come hereto get away from you. I wish you’d visit us more. The girls want the same.”

Charlie tossed a few crumbs from his plate to a sparrow, the tiny bird pecking near his bare feet. “The other day I was in the Senate lunchroom with Byron and Jimmy, and Byron told a story about how his wife, you know Sara Edmonds, puts off her to-do list and gets nothing done in the house. I stuck up for her, Virgie. I said, ‘A wife doesn’t need to be managed.’?”

Virgie knew what he was doing. “That’s lovely, Charlie.”

“I want us to go back to Washington together on Sunday. We can all fit on Senator Miner’s plane.”

A motorboat punctured the quiet, racing in the direction of Nantucket Sound. When Virgie didn’t respond to his proposal, he changed the subject. “Betsy said she’s been playing with that boy again. James?”

That anything other than his campaign was on his mind surprised her. Virgie fiddled with the ruby charm on her bracelet. “They play nicely together. That was his mother helping in the kitchen last night. They’re really struggling, the kind of people you’d want to help if you met them.”

“We don’t need to give handouts to people to make up for their mistakes.” Charlie raised both eyebrows with a question after she shot him an incredulous look.

“That was you once, remember? The person that needed kindness.”

“It is your way to try to save people.”

“And what is wrong with that?”

It was one thing she knew about her husband. He liked to thinkthat he’d reinvented himself so completely that he’d never been that penniless orphan living without a family; that he’d never actually needed Virgie to prop him up. Sometimes she thought he believed he’d been born Senator Whiting of New York. Unless his darker moods took over. Then he was shadowed in doubt and depression; Virgie believed only she knew how much he overcompensated for a deeply held belief that he’d come from nothing and he was nothing, no matter how high his power climbed. It’s why she tolerated his bad behavior. He could be explained.

He threaded his fingers together. “And what about Aggie? She said you’ve been letting her go to Oak Bluffs to some other kid’s house. Another Black child?”

The couple had so much to hash out, and yet it was the girls’ friendships that was consuming him. “I’m not sure which part bothers you?”

Sometimes he still spoke like a divinity student, even-keeled and believing, no matter what words came to the pulpit. “We don’t even knowthese people, Virgie—there are plenty of other kids to play with.” Charlie cuffed his sleeves up, leaning his strong forearms onto the table. “I know you love the island. I do, too, and I’m sure they’re nice kids and no harm to their families, but I can’t have any controversy in the papers.”

“Controversy? Last I checked, most of your voters believed in Civil Rights, and it was you that helped pass the landmark legislation.” Did he seriously believe that the girls should only befriend fellow white summer kids from Boston, New York, and Washington? Was it a question of money—or was it race?

“Northerners believe in equal rights, Virg, but they still don’t want Blacks in their neighborhoods.” Charlie’s single dimple attempted to lighten the weight of his words. “It’s a hot-button issue, and I don’t need my girls photographed and testing people’s tolerance.”

“Charlie.” Breathless, she waited for his shame. Instead, he wrung his hands, tanned and strong, the hands of a woodworker, not a senator.

“I’ve told you this before. You’ve got to move the public in baby steps.”

She thought of India Knight’s prescient words. “You need to whisper and not yell.”

“Yes.” He seemed pleased, sitting back against the Adirondack chair. “And this boy, with Betsy. She’s developing into a young woman. We don’t need another Louisa situation…”

Charlie might as well have slapped her cheek. “Don’t you ever bring that up so callously. That is Louisa’s story to tell.”

His Adam’s apple slid up and down. “Virgie.” He tried to sound tender. This was the voice Charlie used when he greeted a veteran at Walter Reed or a woman who lost her family in a fire. “These girls. We can’t let them run free because you think it builds strength. Your parents didn’t do that with you. You lived with rules.”

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