“I miss…” I gently pushed his hand away. “I miss things I have no right to miss,” I said.

Ross glanced toward my house. “Where are your parents?” he asked.

“Out,” I said.

He stood up and held out his hand. “Come with me,” he said.

I stood up, not stopping to think, and took his hand, which was smoother than Charles’s, the skin softer, cooler. I had almost forgotten the feel of it. We walked through my small yard, then along the path between our two houses and past the bedroom window through which I used to escape to meet him. We continued down my short, packed-sand driveway and only then did I admit to myself where we were headed. I felt the cool orange dirt beneath my feet as we crossed the narrow road, and then we were on the white, moonlit sand of the blueberry lot.

“We shouldn’t do this, Ross,” I said.

He didn’t reply, and I didn’t let go of his hand. I could feel my heartbeat—or perhaps I was feeling his—where our hands were pressed together. The delicious sense of doing something forbidden and daring propelled us, as it always had, and soon he was pulling me down inside the half circle of blueberry bushes. He plucked a few of the berries from one of the bushes and held them to my lips. I took them in, rolling them around in my mouth before biting into them. I would never again be able to taste blueberries without feeling the rising tide of guilty pleasure.

He lay me back in the sand, then leaned over to kiss me. Briefly I thought of Charles, of how the feral hunger I felt in my body at that moment was something he had never experienced from me. I returned Ross’s kisses as I unbuttoned his shirt. He took off my blouse, my shorts, my bra, my panties, leaving me nude and aching with desire for him. I felt the moonlight reflect off my skin as he sat back on his heels to look at me.

“I’ve missed your beautiful body,” he said. He leaned over to run his tongue across my nipple. “Joan has a boy’s body,” he said. “Even when she was pregnant, she had no breasts to speak of.”

The words were his mistake. At the mention of Joan, my body went cold. I could not do this to her. I could not do it to Charles.

Ross pressed his thigh between my legs to spread them apart, and I gripped his thigh with mine to stop him.

“Let’s not do this, Ross,” I said.

“Don’t be crazy,” he said. Somehow, he’d managed to get both his legs between mine. I felt the pressure of his penis against my pubic bone.

“Ross, I mean it,” I said, trying to squirm out from beneath him. “I don’t want to do this.”

He drew back slightly, letting his penis find its mark. No matter how desperately I wanted to keep him from entering my body, the earlier hunger I’d felt had left me wet and vulnerable, and he slipped inside me effortlessly. Furious, I pushed down on his shoulders. I bit his collarbone and dug my fingernails into his back. My attempts to stop him only seemed to increase his ardor, and he thrusted harder and deeper, his breath ragged in my ear. I started to cry, my body going limp, my own breath coming out in small gasps.

“Please, Ross,” I begged. “Please stop.”

He finished quickly, and for that much I was grateful. He pulled out of me, then rolled onto his back, and I sprang to my knees as I searched the sand for my underwear.

He caught my arm as I picked up my bra. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Don’t get dressed yet.”

I stared down at him, incredulous. “I told you to stop,” I said.

“I didn’t think you meant it,” he said.

I swatted his chest with my bra. “I did mean it. You forced yourself on me.”

“Maria,” he said. “Come on. You were an animal. Just like you used to be.”

“I was trying to fight you off.” My voice broke.

“If you really wanted to fight me off, you could have.”

“You’re a thousand times stronger than I am,” I said.

“I don’t remember any objections when I kissed you,” he said. “Or when I undressed you.”

He was right, and I was so filled with shame that I wished I could rewind the night back to the moment I spotted him from my porch. I would have chosen differently if I’d taken two seconds to think about Charles and Joan—and the little baby, Ned.

I put on my brassiere while he watched.

“Let me do that for you,” he said, when I struggled with the hooks.

I stood up, nearly leaping away from him as I tossed my blouse on over my unfastened bra.

“Are you really upset?” He sounded perplexed.

“Yes!” I said. “I’m extremely upset.”

I pulled on my shorts; I could not find my panties.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting up. He reached for my ankle and missed. “I’m very sorry, Maria,” he said. “Honestly.”

I ran through the lot, kicking sand behind me, and I didn’t stop until I was in the bungalow. I sobbed as I heated water on the stove to bathe in. I wanted to clean any trace of Ross Chapman from my body. I changed into my robe, shook the sand out of my hair, then stood barefoot in the kitchen watching the water slowly warm up. I felt crazy. Insane. And I repeated over and over again, “I’m sorry, Charles, I’m sorry, Charles.”

I never really got over that night or forgave myself for it. Even at eighty-one years of age and with the knowledge that what happened could well be considered date rape, I would sometimes still wake myself up in the middle of the night, chanting that phrase of apology and guilt.

CHAPTER 36

Julie

1962

I knew the day everything went wrong. It was August fifth, a Sunday. It was also the day Marilyn Monroe died.

That morning after church, all of us except Isabel took our seats at the porch table, ready to dig in to our usual hearty Sunday breakfast.

“Isabel?” My mother leaned back from her chair so she could see into the living room. We would not be allowed to start in on the eggs and bacon and rolls and crumb cake until my older sister was at the table and grace had been said.

We heard Isabel’s bare feet skitter across the linoleum in the living room. She zipped onto the porch and sat down in the chair next to me.

“Marilyn Monroe is dead,” she announced, just as we all reached for one another’s hands to say grace.

“What?” My mother took Lucy’s hand in hers. “What are you talking about?”

“I just heard it on the radio,” Isabel said. “She killed herself.”

“Oh, what a shame,” my grandmother said.

My father made a sound of disgust. “It figures that she would die committing a sin, since that’s the way she lived,” he said.

“How did she kill herself?” I asked, curious.

“I don’t want to hear about it!” Lucy plastered her hands over her ears and hummed loudly as my sister started to answer.

“Not now, Isabel,” Grandma said. “Lucy doesn’t want to hear it.”

I knew little about Marilyn Monroe, only that she was blond and beautiful and extremely sexy. Men swooned over her and women envied her. Why would someone like that kill herself?

“Let’s say grace,” my father said, reaching for my hand on one side of him and my grandmother’s on the other. We bowed our heads, reciting the words by rote, and then settled down for some serious eating. My father was the chef on Sunday mornings and his scrambled eggs were always doctored with onions and peppers and tomatoes. Sunday breakfasts were one of my favorite times with my family.

“Tonight,” Grandma said as she cut her eggs with the side of her fork, “Grandpop and I want to take you girls to the boardwalk.”

I whooped with joy, but I wasn’t surprised when Izzy begged out.

“Thanks, Gram,” she said, “but I already have plans.”

“Will you come, too, Mom?” Lucy asked.

My mother poured herself a second cup of coffee. “No, honey,” she said. “I’ll stay home and catch up on housework.” It would be years before I realized how much my mother probably welcomed an occasional respite from having us all underfoot.

It wasn’t until halfway through the meal that the topic of Marilyn Monroe’s suicide came up again.

“Girls,” my father said, “there’s a lesson in Marilyn Monroe’s death.”

“Daddy.” Lucy set down her juice glass and looked at him indignantly. “We’re not supposed to talk about it now.”

“You’re not too young to know these things,” he said to her. He looked at me, then at Isabel. “She lived in sin in many, many ways. Not only didn’t she care about how she was hurting God, she didn’t care about how she hurt other people, either.”

“I don’t think she was that bad, Charles,” Grandpop said as he buttered his second hard roll.

“Look at the facts,” Daddy said. “She had affairs with married men. Many of them. She broke up marriages. She posed…without clothes on for calendars and magazines.”

“They found her nude,” Isabel added, and my father shook his head, as if to say See what I mean?

“Probably the worst thing she did was have abortions,” he said. “Several of them.”

I cringed. I’d been taught so well by my father. How could any woman take the life of her unborn child?

“What’s an abortion?” Lucy asked.

“You don’t need to know that.” My mother sent my father a look of exasperation above Lucy’s head.

“And many people believe that she’s been having an affair with President Kennedy,” my father added.

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” my grandmother said. “You’re filling these girls’ heads with rumors.”

“I believe it’s true,” Daddy said, tapping his fingertips on the rim of his coffee cup. “I’m sorry to say it, but I believe Jack Kennedy’s capable of breaking his marriage vows, and Marilyn Monroe was certainly capable of tempting him to do so. Nothing good could come of the sort of behavior she was known for.”