Authors: Paige Farmer
Nan took a seat in the passenger chair and spun around to CJ.
“What do you think?” she asked him breathlessly. “Isn’t this great?”
“The
greatest,
” CJ replied, eyes wide.
Charlie started the boat and backed it up expertly. He moved the liner slowly until they were safely away from the others moored around it. As he navigated into the channel, he began to pick up speed. They sailed under the Memorial Bridge, its rust spotted legs cradling the span high above their heads. The cars that traveled across it looked no bigger than CJ’s matchbox cars and as the bridge shrunk in the distance, Charlie opened the throttle and they entered the mouth of the river.
It was a spectacular afternoon, neither too warm nor too cold. Trees with their brightly colored leaves on the shoreline bordering both sides of the river contrasted beautifully against the cobalt sky. Water sprayed up slightly as Nan hung her arm over the side to feel it with her hand.
She turned around to look at CJ again and was amused by his attempt to see everything in the passing scenery all at once.
“This is cool,” CJ said to her with a trace of a smile.
“Very cool,” Nan replied as she settled in for the ride.
Once Charlie thought they’d found the perfect spot, he invited CJ to help him drop the anchor. When they were done, Charlie lifted the seat CJ had been sitting on, which doubled as a storage bin, and pulled out three fishing poles and a bait-box.
“What do you think of flounder?” he asked them. “I can show you how to cook it,” he told Nan.
“I
know
how to cook flounder,” she exclaimed, pretending to be offended.
“Oh…no…you know what I mean. I bet you cook it just fine!”
“Relax Charlie,” Nan said with a trace of a grin. “I’m just teasing.”
“I know,” Charlie replied, sounding a little flustered.
He helped them bait their lines and added the heavy lure that would drop their hook to the bottom where the fish lay flat against the floor of the cove. It didn’t take long for CJ to get the first bite, and as Nan cheered excitedly, Charlie set down his own line and ran to assist her little boy reel it in. She squealed as the fish came up and over the side of the boat, spastically flipping and flopping. She hopped up onto her seat to get away from it, drawing her knees to her chest. The boys laughed and when CJ held the wiggling thing up in front of her looking so proud and happy, she smiled in spite of her disgust.
After CJ’s successful catch, Nan and Charlie brought the food up onto the deck and together they made sandwiches. Easy conversation flowed between them and they reminisced about growing up in the neighborhood. Nan ate so much she thought she would bust by the time they were finished. She realized it was the first decent meal she’d had in days and it tasted absolutely delicious to her.
Waves rocked the boat gently in the warm afternoon sunshine and it wasn’t long before CJ began to doze off on the seat. As his eyes grew heavy, Nan walked over to him and stroked his cheek before kissing him lightly on the forehead. He smiled at her briefly before falling fully asleep and she couldn’t remember ever feeling so close to him.
“How about a glass of wine,” Charlie whispered from behind.
“Sure, that sounds good,” she replied and followed him down the narrow stairs to the galley.
It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the darker light below deck. Padded benches lined the wall on one side and the fridge, a small propane stove and a sink on the other. Nan took a seat while Charlie opened the bottle.
“Sorry about the stemware,” Charlie apologized, pulling two plastic cups out of a small cupboard over the refrigerator. “It seems that my seafaring friend is more the beer drinking type.”
“No worries. I still drink milk straight from the carton when I think no one is looking,” she joked.
Charlie smiled at her and poured them each a cup, handing one to Nan as he took a seat next to her.
“To the perfect picnic,” Nan said, raising her glass to him.
“To the perfect picnic,” Charlie repeated.
Looking up the stairs where CJ slept, he said:
“He’s an amazing kid, Nan.”
“Thank you. He
is
an amazing kid,” she replied emphatically.
“I hope this doesn’t feel weird,” Charlie started, “I mean, you can tell me to shut up if you want, but what happened with CJ’s father?”
Nan wasn’t surprised at Charlie’s question. She knew the topic would come up eventually and had been wracking her brain trying to figure out how to talk about it with him since the night before. Although the conversation was bound to be difficult, Nan wanted Charlie to know about Eddie and the circumstances around CJ’s paternity. And besides, there was a part of the story Nan was actually looking forward to sharing with him.
Nan first laid eyes on Eddie Sullivan just before Christmas, 1954. She was working a temporary job cashiering at JJ Newberry’s department store for the holiday season. It was hopping most of the time, sometimes preventing Nan from taking her break, but she never tired of working the register. She loved the feeling of the small round keys under the pads of her fingers and marveled at how a pull of the lever could calculate the total and change in a fraction of the time it would take her to in her head.
Her mother and Joe had been against the job, but she’d long since stopped caring about what they thought. She was nineteen and old enough to make her own decisions. She was tired of her mother advising her that she’d never find a decent husband if she didn’t put herself in the right places. Like the stuffy country club in Newcastle where Elsie and her new rich husband hung out? The one that didn’t let women on the golf course or black people on the property? Thanks, but no thanks Nan thought as she accepted her first meager paycheck.
It had only been a few months after Sam’s accident when Nan’s mother took the one and only job she’d ever have as a secretary at a law firm in town. Joe was a junior partner at the time and Nan remembered the utter shock she felt when her mother came home from work one afternoon a couple weeks after starting saying she had a date that evening. John, the last of her siblings still living at home, was working full time at the docks with Buddy and would be moving out of the house very soon. Arthur was enrolled in college full time and stayed on campus, so Nan was struggling to come to terms with the fact that only she and Elsie would be left living in the little house. What a joke on her
that
turned out to be.
Joe came to the door to fetch Elsie for their date that evening and Nan tried to keep the look of dismay off her face when the portly, well-dressed man with slicked back hair introduced himself. He gave Nan what she would come to dub his ‘grip ‘n grin’ handshake, a single pump and a flash of teeth, telling her she looked like her mother. Elsie sashayed down the stairs and out the door, returning home long after Nan had gone to bed. Less than a month later, Elsie invited Joe to dinner, along with Nan and her brothers. In the midst of stilted and stuttering conversation, their mother blew the lid off. She and Joe would be getting married in early November. Nan came to understand over the subsequent weeks that Joe’s firm was very successful and that money was about to have a profound impact on her world.
Despite looming winter, the renovations to the house began immediately upon Elsie and Joe’s return from their honeymoon. Before that year was out, the run down two-bedroom cape had been magically transformed into a four-bedroom, three bath expanded cape with a kitchen, dining room, den, sewing room and sunken living room on the first floor. Nan slept in her old room while the addition was being built on the back, and when it was finished she’d moved everything into the one facing the river.
Even the backyard had been reborn with dirt brought in to level it out and a new blanket of thick, Kentucky bluegrass. Flowerbeds replaced the large vegetable garden Elsie had always maintained and all kinds of granite and marble things were made part of the landscape. Every change to the house and the yard seemed to be part of a chain reaction leading from one to another, until Nan completely lost her sense of place.
In the midst of it all, Elsie had stepped into a new social circle that kept her busy each day with luncheons and her Pinochle club. Nan never knew what gaggle of her mother’s snotty friends she’d find sitting around the foreign living room when she got home from school each day. Most nights Joe and Elsie preferred to have dinner out, and though they usually invited Nan to go with them, she repeatedly cycled through a series of excuses for declining until they stopped asking.
Rebelling against the things she could not control, Nan began to change. Despite her anguish, still fresh after Sam’s death and her mother’s metamorphosis, Nan developed a quick sense of humor and dry, sharp wit. After a few drinks, Nan was the life of the party and gained a reputation as such. Although she was still pretty careful with boys, she had begun drinking with abandon. And despite Elsie and Joe’s insistence she not smoke in the house, she did in her room whenever she felt like it.
By the time Nan took her job at JJ Newberry more than three years later, most of her friends had already married and gone on to have children of their own. Nan felt removed from that life and she hadn’t really enjoyed the few times she’d visited some of her high school chums. It seemed they were far too busy pulling children out of harm’s way to have a decent conversation over a cup of coffee before it got cold. As offensive as it was to Elsie and Joe, Nan’s job provided her with a chance to escape the changing world around her.
On one particular day at work, Nan returned from break and a line quickly formed at her register.
‘Jingle Bell Rock’
blared over the store’s speakers as she punched in numbers and pulled the slot machine like handle to tally purchases. She made change quickly, pleasantly wished shoppers a Merry Christmas as she bagged their wares and then sent them on their way.
Little more than half hour passed when three sailors dressed in blues, white caps on their heads that always reminded Nan of Origami sailboats, stepped into her line. Something about a uniform appealed to her, although then she would never have been able to say why. As the trio stood laughing and joking, waiting their turn, the one in the middle caught Nan’s attention. He stood out with his carrot red hair peeking from under his cap. His face was pleasant and boyish, and covered with freckles. As they got closer to Nan, he noticed her looking at him and smiled.
“Hi there, Nan,” he said.
This happened often, people greeting her by name, because of the great big tag with “Hi, My Name Is Nan” pinned to her chest. If he thought it would catch her off guard, he was wrong.
“Hello to you too,” she replied in a confident voice. She took the stuffed animal he held and turned it over looking for a price tag.
“Fair’s fair. You know my name…” Nan said trailing off, waiting for him to introduce himself.
“Private Edward James Sullivan, at your service,” he answered grandiosely, bowing slightly toward her. His two friends stood a few feet away wearing smirks.
“Well, Private Sullivan, you owe me sixty-nine cents.”
He pulled a wad of balled up dollar bills from his front pocket and unpeeled one for Nan.
“Have you been in Portsmouth long?” she asked. Nan was used to seeing sailors and Marines all over town and had heard many unsavory stories. They simply didn’t frighten her much.
“Nope. Just a few months,” he answered, seemingly pleased that she had asked. “I’m an Indiana boy.”
“How do you like New England?” she asked.
“Cold, cold, cold,” he replied hugging himself. “Great cuddling weather though,” he said, grinning lewdly. She rolled her eyes. Although he was a bit boorish she found him mildly interesting as well.
Nan wrapped the bear in green tissue paper and stuffed it into a small bag with ‘
JJ Newberry, Your Home for the Holidays’
written in script on the front. She handed Eddie his purchase, thanking him for his patronage and wished him well.
He took the bear from her, smiled, and handed it back.
“It’s for you,” he said. “Merry Christmas.”
Nan spotted the glimmer of mischievousness in his eyes and wondered for whom the bear was originally intended. She wasn’t stupid.
“Thank you,” she replied genially, deciding the bear’s former destination was irrelevant.
“What time do you get done?” Eddie asked.
“Five. Why?”
“So you can show me around the city of course! I’ll meet you back here then. What do you say?”
Something about his bravado intrigued Nan and she thought it might be fun, although in all honesty, she didn’t have very high expectations.
They went out that first night and had dinner but the air was frigid so their sightseeing was limited to whatever she pointed out as he drove her around in his car. Over the ensuing weeks, Nan came to know Eddie, and though she grew to like him well enough, she never found herself tipping over the edge into love. However, that didn’t end up affecting her willingness to hand him her virginity.
As Eddie lay panting on top of her in the dingy, ill-lit motel room he rented for them on New Year’s Eve, the clock ticked 12:01 a.m. Nan said a silent good bye to 1954 and hello to a brand new self. Even though Eddie was unable to find the condom he was sure he brought, they went ahead and did it anyway. It had hurt for a moment, but she couldn’t deny the pleasure she felt once the heavy pushing pain stopped. Nan’s eye caught her reflection in the mirror strategically mounted on the wall, and despite the good strumming feeling between her legs, the face she saw looking back at her was clearly bored. Eddie finished without bringing Nan to a climax, but to be fair, she never found herself close enough to care. He kissed the corner of her mouth quickly, rolled onto his back and was asleep in minutes.