Preview of The Girls in Navy Blue by Alix Rickloff
Preview of The Girls in Navy Blue by Alix Rickloff
June 1968
“A fifty-year-old mystery is back in the news after a World War I era dog tag was found washed up near Virginia Beach. Sources within the local police department have linked it to a seaman declared missing . . .”
Peggy turned down the Buick’s radio as she made her way off the Virginia interstate and into Ocean View, checking her directions against the foldout map she’d picked up at the Esso station just outside Norfolk. She passed a golf course and a marina. A beachside park where teens played basketball. A library. A grocery store. She rolled the window down and let the breeze off the Chesapeake Bay dry the sweat itching the back of her neck and sticking her legs to the car’s leather seats.
She’d barely known her great-aunt Blanche, the black sheep of the family, but her surprise bequest couldn’t have come at a better time. Peggy needed a bolt-hole. A place to lick her wounds and start over. A place free of painful memories. Where better than a quiet seaside cottage far from the madness of New York?
Her friends had told her she was crazy to move so far away from everyone and everything she knew, but that was exactly the appeal. How could she come to terms with her grief and her loss when it lay in wait to trip her around every familiar corner? They worried she’d be lonely. How could she explain that was what she wanted; it took so much effort to pretend for the sake of other people. Here she could wallow if she wanted, with no one made uncomfortable.
Besides, it was only temporary, until she got her feet under her. Then, as the lawyer advised, she could sell the cottage. There was always a market for waterfront property.
She turned off a wide avenue into a neighborhood of sandy yards, tall scraggly pines, and brightly painted houses; some long and low with windows open to catch the bay breezes or perched high on pilings with porches and balconies and slamming screen doors. In one yard a group of children played volleyball. In another, a Sinatra look-alike in plaid Bermuda shorts and a straw sun hat stood watch over a charcoal grill. Peggy made another turn. A few cyclists passed, bells jangling and baskets heaped with damp sandy towels and empty soda bottles. A family made its way home, sandals scuffing, the child whining and red with heat and sun.
It was a nice neighborhood. The kind of neighborhood Peggy might have chosen for herself. Chaz would have hated it; the provincial small-town feel, the distance from any city he considered culturally significant. Not to mention the fact that it was crawling with military and their families. Chaz considered himself a pacifist, the war in Vietnam just the government’s latest misguided attempt at imperial opportunism. It wasn’t that she disagreed with him. About the war, or anything else, for that matter. But did he have to be so right all the time? Couldn’t he leave a little room for doubt now and again?
Maybe if they’d stayed together, all their subtle differences would have expanded into chasms. Maybe it was better they’d collapsed now rather than twenty-five years on. Maybe someday she’d convince herself it was for the best. Right now, missing him still took her breath away.
She shook off her low spirits. This was her fresh start. Her clean slate. She would put New York—and all that went with it—firmly behind her. “She’s Leaving Home” from the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s album came on the radio. Was it a sign she’d made the right decision? She turned it up and pulled onto Bayside Avenue, checking house numbers as she went.
Slowing the car, she glanced at the address she’d scribbled on the back of an envelope. Please let that be a seven and not a two. Please let her house be the pretty Cape Cod two doors down with the striped beach towels flapping on a line and not this overgrown wreck of weathered cedar shingles with the rickety railings and peeling paint. Shoving the car into park, she squeezed her eyes shut, gripping the steering wheel in sweaty palms, clenching her jaw, holding her breath.
So much for an easy sell.
Once upon a time, it must have been lovely. Two stories with a cute dormer window overlooking the front door and a wraparound porch with lots of curlicue woodwork and gingerbread lattice. But that was a long time ago. Now weeds crept along the warped porch floor and twined their way up around the chimney, the dormer window was covered with film and cobwebs, and the screens on the porch were torn. Dead leaves clustered in the corners and caught in the legs of a rusted metal glider.
She left her bags at the front door and followed the sagging porch around to the back of the house where steps descended into a little fenced yard that opened directly onto the beach. She shaded her eyes as she gazed over a low stretch of dunes to the steel gray chop of the bay beyond. So different from their tiny basement apartment in Queens, the clank and bang of trash trucks outside the grilled window, the wail of sirens from the nearby firehouse.
It was a beautiful summer day. A few sunbathers congregated under colorful umbrellas, the scents of suntan oil and charcoal mixing with the briny tang of the sea. Farther down the beach, bathers waded in the low rollers. A transistor radio blared The Turtles’ “Happy Together.”
Chaz used to sing that one in the shower. Peggy caught herself humming it under her breath.
They’d been happy once. Before the baby. Before the accident.
Or had their happiness been a mirage from the beginning, and she’d been too thick to notice?
The old familiar ache moved from her chest into her temples. This time she didn’t have the strength to push it away.
Back at the front door, she fumbled with her bags and the keys while an old man walking his dog watched her from across the street. He chewed on a toothpick while the dog sniffed at a hydrant.
She half expected, half hoped the key wouldn’t turn, and she’d have to give up and check into a motel. But then what? Go back to the city with her tail between her legs? Admit she’d been a fool for pretending she could put the pain of the past months behind her? Face all the pitying looks and sympathetic glances that made her want to scream?
The door swung open, and the hot summer scents of outside gave way to must and damp and a house shut up for too long. Great-Aunt Blanche had passed away four months ago, but the place looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. Light from the French doors at the back poured into a high-ceilinged room cluttered with dusty, old-fashioned furniture. Old flyers, magazines, and advertising mailers pushed through the mail slot, littered a frayed entry rug. To her right, off the kitchen, stairs rose to a landing then up to the second floor.
Upstairs, she found three small bedrooms and a bath. The largest bedroom at the back of the house must have been her aunt’s, the furniture handsome despite being layered in dust. Peggy closed the door and inspected the two smaller rooms at the front of the house. The first contained a twin bed, a plain chest of drawers, and a nightstand with lamp. A sewing machine was set up in the second room along with a basket of fabric scraps, a rainbow of thread spools, old dress patterns by Butterick and Simplicity. A cork board hung on one wall, faded magazine photos of models in evening dresses, fashionable day wear, cocktail dresses, trouser sets, all pinned beside swatches of fabric, lists of supplies, a few scrawled notes.
Peggy dumped her bags in the bedroom that looked out over the front porch. The dormer created a small alcove that reminded her of the little reading nook she’d fixed up for herself back home. No, this was her home now. She’d have to make the best of it as she’d had to make the best of so many things over the last months.
Downstairs, she scooped up the clutter of mail on the front carpet. Leaving it on the kitchen table, she found a kettle and a mug and—miracle of miracles—a box of teabags. The lawyer had been good as his word, and there was gas for the stove and electricity humming the squat pink refrigerator.
Taking her mug and the mail, she unlatched the French doors, letting the breeze push through the house. The warmth and the monotonous purr of the waves settled along her bones as she peeled out of her sneakers and curled up on the creaky old porch glider to sort through the mail.
A flyer for a PTA carnival. A notice from a local insurance company. Catalogues from this past Christmas showing Santa and holly and families gathered around great sparkling trees. She’d received this same catalogue. She’d loved looking through it, mooning over all the pages of baby clothes and little toys and decorations for nurseries. Had it only been six months ago?
She dropped the wrinkled catalogue and grabbed up a postcard. The caption on the photo of the gray turreted castle read Richmond City Hall. On the back, a looping feminine scrawl, the words mashed almost corner to corner.
Nov. 1918
Blanche,
Everything was settled as you requested. I’m on a train pulling out of a little country station. The carriage is packed with returning soldiers. Do you remember our long-ago lunch at Broomers? In your uniform, you looked just like the poster girl staring out at me from the Woolworths window. Join the Navy! Do your bit for the war effort! I never thought I’d admit to missing my navy serge and that unflattering hat, but, in this company, I’d feel far less conspicuous than I do in my ill-fitting civilian clothes.
Viv
A sudden wind slammed one of the doors against the house and sent a cold shiver up Peggy’s spine. Someone was watching her. She looked up to see the old man across the street staring at her house, his eyes narrowed, his lined face pinched with emotion. After a moment, he turned and walked away, but the crawly feeling along her skin remained.
She glanced once again at the postcard, but this time her gaze settled on the date scrawled at the top corner by the stamp.
November 1918.
That was fifty years ago.
Preview of The Girls in Navy Blue by Alix Rickloff
