Maria

Maria

Chapter One

Fran

The Hamptons, New York

1959

By September of 1959, Fran can spot the hopefuls from a mile away. Usually, they’re men with manuscripts tucked away in their bags, working the room until some industry notable asks to see what they have. But tonight it’s a woman in a low-cut dress. She’s Monroe to Fran’s Hepburn, the perfect hourglass with four-inch heels and overbleached hair.

“You seeing this?” Eva asks from her deck chair, using her wineglass to point to the window. The darkness frames an interesting scene inside the house: the famous lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein, standing next to the piano singing while Fran’s boyfriend, Jack, plays, the two of them entertaining the crowd by composing funny limericks on the spot. Marilyn’s look-alike has squeezed onto the piano bench, and while she’s laughing at Hammerstein, her eyes are for Jack.

“It always seems to be someone, doesn’t it?” Fran asks. She leans back and inhales the salty air of the Hamptons. It reminds her of home and she wants to drink it all in: the beach, the chatter, the breezy wraparound porch.

Eva leans forward and raises her brows. “You really aren’t bothered by them, are you?”

Fran laughs. “Why? It’s not like Jack can help these girls in any way.”

“And what makes you think all they want is help?” In the light of the porch, Eva’s face looks angelic, haloed by perfect honey-blond curls. For the last four years she’s been cast as one young ingenue after another on Broadway, and she’ll probably still be playing them ten years from now. Whereas Fran’s mother says that someone with her coloring—brown hair, blue eyes, and freckled cheeks—will be a prune by twenty-five if she won’t keep out of the sun.

They both watch as Marilyn scoots over on the bench until her thigh is brushing Jack’s and Eva lets out a disapproving, “Hmmm. Peter avoids girls like that,” she warns. And to make a point, she looks across the room to where her beau is standing in a circle of men. He’s the tallest of the bunch, with loose brown curls he never slicks back and a giant smile. As usual, it looks like he’s doing all the talking while the other guys laugh.

Now Fran takes a sip of her wine and shrugs, unconcerned about what’s happening inside. “Guess I should be thankful she’s not Jack’s type.”

But Eva lowers her glass. “Franny, easy is everyone’s type.”

Fran’s not sure about that. Still, she’s secretly pleased when Hammerstein takes Jack’s place at the piano and Jack starts to sing. Three years ago, he’d been the most intelligent student in her seminar on James Joyce, with deep, intense eyes and an answer for everything. She’d pegged him as the snobby East Coast boarding-school type, and while she hadn’t been wrong, she’d been surprised to find him singing at the campus bar one evening, part of a college a capella group. After their first set the group fanned out across the bar asking for requests, and after a long sip of her Old Milwaukee, Fran had offered a suggestion.

“How about ‘Mona Lisa’?”

Jack’s dark eyes had lit up. “You mean, Nat King Cole?”

Fran had smiled. “Who else?”

The group was good, their baritone voices mimicking the bass notes of Cole’s piano, and for a few minutes Fran was transported back to Norfolk, where her father was probably still listening to Cole belting out this same tune on their old phonograph.

When the group had finished, Jack returned to Fran’s table to ask if he could buy her a drink. They spent the next three hours talking. She discovered he was the son of some hotshot politician. And he found out she was the daughter of Frank Connelly, the man who’d made the one-stop-shop grocery chain famous.

“So it was your dad who was responsible for putting all those butchers out of business,” he’d teased.

Fran had taken another sip of her beer and shrugged. “Actually, it was me.” Then she told him about the idea she’d had to build a grocery store with both a butcher and a bakery inside. Why go to three stores when you could shop at one? she’d asked her father. And he’d trusted her enough to try it out.

Jack had fixed her in his gaze, lost in the idea that she’d been the one behind this revolutionary change. And Fran recognizes it as the same look he’s wearing now while he improvs near the piano as the same one he’d had then: like a man completely transported by the moment.

Jack continues to sing until Hammerstein is finished, then everyone claps wildly and they both take a bow. A moment later Jack and Hammerstein appear together on the porch and the blonde is back to making her rounds.

“Fantastic,” Eva says, fluttering her fake lashes as she approaches the two men.

“Well, thank you, Miss LaRoche. That’s very kind.” Hammerstein smiles, and Fran doubts that anyone would ever pick him out as someone who owns Broadway. He’s a funny-looking man, with a great big face, broad shoulders, and strong arms. He looks like the sort who would carve meat instead of words for a living. He casts around for his wife, and as soon he spots her, the broad shoulders relax. “Well, fellas, you know the old saying . . .”

Early to bed, early to rise. Everyone else at the party will stay until one or two in the morning. But Jack, Peter, and the rest of Hammerstein’s assistants are filing out the door, trying to look cheerful about abandoning the fun at nine o’clock. And it’s not because it’s Tuesday. Hammerstein’s wife once told Fran that he never stayed later than ten o’clock at any party. And, of course, what’s good for the goose is good for his staff.

Jack slings his arm over Fran’s shoulders and pulls her to his side. At twenty-three he feels as solid as he did when he was crew captain back at the University of Virginia. “Ready?”

She settles into his embrace, enjoying his light touch in the buttery warmth of the evening air. She had been right to go with the cap-sleeve sheath instead of the blue cardigan and skirt. The sweater would have been too warm, even with the breeze. Walking with Jack back to their car, their shoes crunching over the gravel, Fran thinks of how, when they first began dating, she’d been learning to drive and Jack had offered to help. He’d been the only student on campus with a convertible, and later, when she learned what it had cost, she took it as a sign of devotion that he’d been willing to teach her in a car that was worth more than her grandfather’s house.

Fran slides onto the cool leather of the passenger seat, waiting for Eva and Peter to join them. Rolling down her window, she breathes in the last of the salty air. Jack seems quiet. They normally exchange gossip from the evening, but his eyes are pinched shut and she assumes he’s thinking about the work he’ll need to do for the new musical. It’s supposed to be something sweet and pastoral. A true love story straight out of the hills of Austria. So it surprises her when he opens his eyes and asks, “You catch that blonde tonight?”

Fran doesn’t miss a beat. “The one with the dress?”

“That was Freddie’s girl.”

“Really.” Freddie is a quiet guy from the office. “I didn’t think he had it in him.”

Normally, Jack would laugh, but his mind is somewhere else. “I couldn’t believe Hammerstein on that piano tonight. I mean, sixty-four years old and still on fire. That’s the kind of staying power I want someday, Fran.”

This is different and Fran tries to make out where it’s coming from.

“I just can’t stop thinking about the new musical,” he admits. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write like that.” But as Eva and Peter reach the car, Jack’s stream of self-doubt is forced to take a break and he bangs his fist against the wheel. “I left my jacket inside.” He jogs back to the house as the car fills up with laughter.

“You should have seen him,” Peter says, and Fran turns around. Peter has ditched his jacket and his shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows. “He was doing an Elizabeth Taylor impression.”

“Oh, be serious,” Eva says, fishing through her pocketbook.

“What? It was great.”

“It was juvenile,” Eva rules, pulling out a fancy gold cigarette case and snapping it open.

Peter shrugs. “Well, he had everyone in stitches.”

Eva lights up a cigarette and takes a long drag. “I’m just glad he’s not working with you again.” She exhales and the first tendrils of smoke curl toward Fran’s window. “So, what are you boys doing at the office nowadays?”

Peter fans the smoke away from his face. “A new play.”

“I had a copy on my desk and was tempted to read it,” Fran admits.