The Engagements Read online

  She lived with a roommate in a rented apartment on Beacon Hill and began teaching third grade. Evelyn loved her pupils; they were bright and boisterous and they made her laugh. They made her want children of her own with an intensity she had never experienced. She and Nathaniel intended to marry, though he told her he couldn’t propose until he was worthy of her: “If I went to New York now and asked your father’s permission, he’d shout me all the way back to Massachusetts.”

  Despite the fact that her mother said teaching was a noble vocation, her parents were alarmed. They thought she ought to come home and move back into their house until she found someone suitable to marry. And they thought that while Boston girls might try to make their way in Manhattan, there was no earthly reason for a New Yorker to settle in Boston. Her decision to attend Wellesley instead of Barnard or Sarah Lawrence had been acceptable only because two of her cousins were already in attendance, and it was assumed that they would keep an eye on her.

  Her father sent her money each month, concerned about the way she was living. But Evelyn put the money in a drawer, determined never to spend it. She would survive on her own, as Nathaniel did.

  The first year after college was strange and sometimes scary, but she was pleased to remain away from home and close to him. With Nathaniel drawing a salary, they were able to go out two or three times a week. Not usually anything fancy—maybe a movie or coffee during the week, and dinner and dancing on Saturdays. He told her once that he worried he’d never be able to give her the kind of life she had grown up with: servants and chauffeurs and all that. She told him she didn’t want that life anyway. She liked to cook him dinner: roast beef with carrots and potatoes, a pound cake for dessert. When she did this, it felt almost illicit: as far as she knew, her own mother had never cooked a meal. Her parents would say such things were beneath her. But Evelyn liked the idea of living a simpler life, being a teacher, a mother, a wife. She saw in Nathaniel all the things she could ever ask for in a man.

  He brought her little presents whenever they met: a single daisy, or a tiny box of chocolates from the sweet shop near his office in Faneuil Hall. He read to her at night before he went home, as she dozed on the sofa after dinner.

  In the fall, Nathaniel started Harvard Law School. She imagined a proposal might come any day.

  But then the stock market crashed, and all around them people they knew were suddenly out of work. They heard of old college pals who were barely making ends meet, and read in the newspaper about former businessmen selling apples in the streets of New York. The children Evelyn taught were poor even in the best of times. Now, half her class vanished, their parents needing every last family member at home, earning money any way they could. Those who remained were struggling. Their school was lucky enough to be under the supervision of the Boston School Committee, which received hot lunches from the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. In most schools in the country there was no free lunch, and hungry children fought to pay attention and stay awake in class. But as Evelyn watched her pupils, she saw that hardly any of them ate the food provided. Instead, they wrapped it up and placed it in their book satchels. When she asked why, one of the more outspoken boys said, “It’s dinner for our families, miss.”

  She told the principal what she had learned. He just shrugged and said, “They all do it, it’s sad.”

  After that, she used the money her father sent each week to make sure her children were fed during the day. She mostly bought items that she could stretch a bit—peanut butter and bologna and apples and bread. But once in a while, she’d roast a chicken, something with a bit more sustenance.

  All through the fall, she and Nathaniel thanked God that the troubles hadn’t come to their doorstep. At Thanksgiving, Gerald came to Boston to visit his parents, and she cooked at her apartment on the Saturday night. The three of them laughed and gabbed, like old times. But one evening the following week, Nathaniel’s father didn’t return home after work. Days later, they learned that he had been fired after thirty years in the steel mills. Hearing the news, he threw himself off a bridge, into the icy waters below.

  Nathaniel decided to leave law school until he could get his mother and sisters back on their feet. Gerald loaned him what Nathaniel called an embarrassing sum of money, without his having to ask, but Nathaniel was too proud to take it, and sent it directly back.

  He went home to Pennsylvania for two months. Evelyn accompanied him to his father’s funeral and then returned to Boston alone. It was the saddest period she had ever spent, and she understood with great clarity that she never wished to spend a day apart from him again. He sent her love letters, and she fell asleep at night clutching them in her hand. The months that followed were grim. To get through them, they often reminded one another that this was the most difficult thing they would ever have to endure.

  They were finally engaged at Christmas, 1931, with plans to marry in front of one hundred people at her parents’ home in New York the following May. Evelyn was elated at the thought of being Mrs. Nathaniel Davis at last. She knew all girls must feel this way about their engagements, but she wondered if perhaps it was more pronounced for her, since they had been through so much darkness together these past few years. Now, finally, there would be joy.

  To celebrate, they met Gerald at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid the first week of February. He looked ten years older, even though it had only been two since Evelyn had seen him last. He brought along a chippie he was going with named Fran, with short red hair and tight clothing. Evelyn asked Nathaniel if he thought Gerald was serious about her, and Nathaniel replied, “When has Gerald ever been serious about anything?”

  Indeed, on the very first night, he made a toast. “To my dear friends, Nat and Evie. Embarking on marriage at last! I read recently that John Watson predicts that in fifty years’ time there will be no such thing as marriage.”

  “Who’s John Watson?” the chippie asked.

  “He’s a renowned child psychologist, and apparently an expert on the topic of matrimony to boot. Now me personally, I’m with him. Let’s do away with the whole messy business. It’s usually such a disappointment when all is said and done.”

  Evelyn felt uncomfortable, shifting in her chair, until Gerald concluded, “But if anyone can be the exception to the rule, it’s you two.”

  They stayed in a beautiful lodge with a fireplace in every room, which Gerald called a camp. It looked like a hotel, but was a private residence owned by his aunt and uncle. Evelyn loved it there. She could have spent the entire week reading on the window seat in the parlor, looking out at the pine trees in the distance. But the boys wouldn’t stand for that—these were the first Winter Olympics ever held in America, and they wanted to be sure to see every last bit of them.

  Gerald seemed to be perpetually drinking from a flask of bourbon he kept strapped to his boot. In college, they had all enjoyed their cocktails, but not like this. Gerald appeared to be drunk from the first moment she saw him each morning until the second they all parted ways for bed. He wanted the rest of them to be just as bad as he was—he tipped his flask into poor Fran’s drink every time she opened a bottle of pop or poured a cup of coffee. “Come on, have some giggle water. It’s more fun this way, baby.”

  Nathaniel said he was concerned, but he didn’t want to put a damper on their trip. He would write Gerald about it after they returned home.

  The weather was unseasonably warm that week, which threatened the chances of the bobsled event, and also the skating. But on the last day, they saw Sonja Henie glide across the ice with such grace that you could almost convince yourself it was easy. Though women’s skating was a noncompetitive event, the arena was packed to the gills, and standing-room-only tickets went for five dollars apiece. Gerald had gotten them seats in the very first row.

  “The better to see Sonja’s gams,” he said, and then, looking at Fran, who seemed genuinely annoyed, “Aww baby, you know yours are the only gams for me.”

  Evelyn
had read in the paper that morning that the Organization of American Housewives had urged the female figure skaters to wear the old-fashioned long skirts, to avoid unnecessary wear and tear on the morals of the males who will witness the figure skating exhibitions. But the female skaters declared that they would not do this unless the sprinters of the summer program agreed to run in Oregon boots and the swimmers to swim in Mother Hubbards.

  The article concluded, However, for the benefit of any husbands of any of the ladies of the Organization of American Housewives who may happen to attend the winter games, it should be noted that there are still some harness shops in the Adirondack villages where they can obtain horse blinkers.

  She laughed, and pointed the page out to Fran. “Maybe we should invest in some of these for Mr. Wonderful.”

  Before they parted ways at the end of the trip, as the boys were packing up the cars, she overheard Nathaniel ask, “So, do you see any potential with her?”

  “Nah,” Gerald said. “It’s just a bit of fun.”

  “Haven’t you had enough fun? You’re an old man now. I want you to find someone who’ll take care of you. I want to see you settled down.”

  “That’s easy to say when you’ve got a girl like Evie,” Gerald said. “I don’t think you realize how rare she is.”

  Soon after they got back to Boston, Nathaniel headed home to Pennsylvania for a short visit. He wanted Evelyn to go along, but she didn’t think she should leave her students.

  “We’ll go during my summer vacation, and we’ll stay a whole month,” she said. “It will be our honeymoon.”

  He smiled. “By then, we’ll be man and wife.”

  “Your mother can teach me how to make all your favorite meals.”

  “Anything you make is my favorite,” he said, and kissed her.

  He was gone for less than a week, but like a lovesick teenager Evelyn counted the days until his return. She busied herself with buying a new dress for their reunion and getting her hair styled at the beauty shop. He was due back Tuesday evening, and that day after school she bought steaks and all the ingredients for a gingerbread cake. As she stood in her narrow kitchen preparing dinner, Ozzie Nelson and his orchestra played “Dream a Little Dream of Me” on the record player, and she thought about everything that lay ahead—their wedding, at which she would wear her mother’s satin gown; the house they’d buy in Pennsylvania, with half a dozen children chasing butterflies on the lawn. She was almost twenty-five. Most of her friends already had a baby or two. They would have to start trying right away, once they were married. Her heart was so full that it almost ached. She could hardly wait for Nathaniel to walk through the door so she could throw her arms around his neck.

  When he hadn’t turned up by seven, she started to feel nervous. She had never known Nathaniel to be late. But she reminded herself that there might be congestion on the road. A year earlier, her father had spent nearly an hour at Christmas dinner complaining about the fact that New York City had installed traffic signals at busy intersections—they slowed everything down, he said, and made it impossible to get anywhere on time. She said a silent prayer that Nathaniel hadn’t gotten a flat tire or had trouble with the engine.

  By eight-thirty, she was pacing the kitchen in a panic. When the telephone rang just after eleven o’clock, she was sitting at the table shivering, as if she already knew what was to come.

  It was Nathaniel’s oldest sister at the other end of the line. The accident had happened in Framingham, less than an hour from home. A drunkard had crossed the median and driven head-on into his car. An ambulance had taken Nathaniel to Boston City Hospital. He was unconscious, and bleeding internally. No one could say if he would make it through the night.

  After she hung up, Evelyn sat very still and cried for a bit. But when she was done, she stood straight, wiping the tears from her eyes. She knew exactly what she must do. Her fiancé was in danger, but she would bring him through it. She went out into the frigid night air and hailed a taxi, forgetting her coat.

  Though she had prepared herself, the sight of Nathaniel lying in a hospital bed still came as a shock—it felt physical, an electric jolt that shot through her body. His eyes were closed, and his face was bloodied and broken, the lower half of it wrapped in gauze like a mummy. In the next bed, an elderly man with paper-thin skin was moaning. She tried to say hello to the man, but he stared past her, out the window, which faced nothing but a plain brick wall.

  Evelyn pulled a chair to Nathaniel’s side and spoke to him gaily, as if they were out on a marvelous dinner date. She told him about the cake she had baked, and demanded that he wake up to have a slice, or else her feelings would be hurt. She gently stroked his hand. It was the only visible part of him that was not altered, and she stared at its familiar parts—the long, elegant fingers, the dry spots around the knuckles, the crescents of dirt beneath the nails—until the rest of the room vanished.

  First thing in the morning, she called Gerald. He told her he would come right away, and though the propriety in her rose up to say no, she pushed it down, knowing that his presence would be a balm to her and Nathaniel both. As soon as he arrived, Nathaniel was moved to a spacious single room with a view of the tree-lined street below. Evelyn didn’t know what Gerald had said, or how much he had paid, but she was grateful.

  It wasn’t until two days later that she thought to call her own parents and tell them the news. Neither of them was home when she rang, and Evelyn was just as content to leave word with the housekeeper as she would have been to hear what they had to say. They had never brought her much comfort. She had learned to make it for herself, and of course to find solace in Nathaniel. She could not dream of a world without him in it.

  When Nathaniel’s mother and sisters came, Gerald insisted that they stay at his parents’ house in Wellesley. Every morning, he drove them to the hospital, and just before dinner he brought them home. He’d often return later, to be with Evelyn, who rarely went back to her apartment. He brought her warm food from his parents’ cook, and novels that his mother recommended. He told her to go home and rest for an afternoon, but she could not bring herself to leave Nathaniel. She wanted to be there the moment he woke up. Gerald sometimes stayed through the night with her. They played checkers and did jigsaw puzzles at three a.m., both of them making a point of including Nathaniel in the game, even though he remained unconscious: “Your lady here’s about to get creamed,” Gerald would say, and she’d reply, “Oh honey, don’t listen to him, he’s full of hot air.”

  She was happy he had come. The doctors wouldn’t say much to her or to Nathaniel’s mother, fearing that they were too fragile to hear the worst. But they would tell Gerald, and he passed the facts along to her without hesitation.

  Gerald read to Nathaniel from all the newspapers, telling him about Roosevelt’s campaign stops and Howard Hughes’s new gangster movie. He seemed to think he might entice Nathaniel back to life by letting him know all he was missing. Sometimes Evelyn thought that it just might work.

  It was through Gerald’s daily news updates that she learned that the infant son of Charles Lindbergh had been kidnapped from his crib at the family’s secluded mountaintop home in New Jersey, while Lindbergh and his wife were downstairs eating dinner. Lucky Lindy was the most famous man in the world. On the occasion of his first child’s birth two years back, newspapers all over the globe had printed stories—never had an infant gotten such attention. It was reported that the Lindberghs received more toys from well-wishers than they could manage to fit into their massive house. The child was now twenty months old, a cherub with chubby cheeks and blond curls, a deep dimple in the center of his chin.

  The baby’s nurse had discovered him missing. Right away, there were troubling clues: A window in the nursery left open. A makeshift ladder found below, and muddy footprints that went on for half a mile. At the edge of a wood, these were joined by a smaller set of prints, belonging to a woman. Where the footprints ended, it was believed that the pair had g
otten into a car. Highways were brought to a standstill as police searched every automobile. President Hoover met with the attorney general, and federal agencies were called in, as well as the entire police forces of New York and New Jersey. There was a demand for ransom left in the baby’s room, and the next day a penny postcard arrived, written in the same handwriting: “Baby safe. Instructions later. Act accordingly.”

  The newspapers ran photos of the beautiful boy lying in his bassinet, and cradled in the lap of his mother when he was only a month old. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, slight and pretty, wearing a short dress, her hair cropped up over her ears, staring adoringly at her only son. Evelyn became obsessed with every news item, every update, every rumor passed on by one of the nurses at the hospital, who knew someone who knew someone who had heard something interesting. Mrs. Lindbergh revealed to the hordes of motion-picture cameramen and newspapermen who had gathered outside her home that the baby had a cold. She told them what precisely he ate, in the hopes that the kidnappers would take good care. Colonel Lindbergh said he was willing to pay any ransom that was asked.

  It was reported that, like Evelyn, they did not sleep. Sitting in a chair by Nathaniel’s bed at dawn, she would imagine Anne Morrow, a girl about her age, pregnant with her second child, pacing the floors of her house, praying for her baby’s safe return. Somehow the two tragedies got linked in her head so that Evelyn was convinced if they could just find that child happy and bouncing in some old grandmother’s lap, then perhaps Nathaniel could get well, too.

  In May, she walked out of the hospital for air one bright morning to hear the newsboys hollering, “Baby dead!” Their voices were almost gleeful, for they knew the story would mean a good day’s pay. Evelyn had half a mind to buy up every last paper in Boston, just to silence them. Instead, she bought only one, and read it with shaking hands. The child had been found by a truck driver, facedown in a pile of leaves, five miles from home. He had a fractured skull, due to either blunt trauma or being thrown from a moving vehicle. The police speculated that the kidnappers probably had intended to return him, but that the baby’s loud cries had made them panic, and so they quickly decided to kill him instead. He had been dead for several weeks, even as they had continued to claim he was alive, still seeking their ransom and raising his poor family’s hopes. By the time the child was discovered, much of his face and body had been destroyed by wild animals.