The Beach at Summerly Quotes

“Then he speaks, still staring. “George Bernard Shaw used to say you shouldn’t wrestle with a pig, because you’ll get dirty—” “—and the pig likes it.” “Exactly,” he says. “Exactly.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Mr. Armstrong was a salesman for the Eastman Kodak Company and the story goes that Mrs. Armstrong discovered he had a whole nother family in Des Moines, Iowa, which was both shocking and logical, when you thought about it, trains being as slow as they were, and men being as weak.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“When I was about twelve or thirteen, the Peabodys had a party just like this one—just like any of their parties, I guess. They are social creatures, the Families. They like to gather amongst their kind for luncheons or cocktails or dinners or bridge, any excuse will do. Because they generally prefer their dogs to their children, the three of us Winthrops used to sneak away and join Amory and Shep to watch the grown-ups at play the way you watched animals at a zoo, from the banister if the party were indoors, and if it were out on the terrace, we’d hide among the rocks. I remember the smell of perfume and cigarettes, how the women wore these colorful gowns, how their hair frizzled from their hairdos in the salt air, how they dangled their cocktail glasses between their fingers and smoked their cigarettes, stained with lipstick. I used to practice with rolled-up paper squares in the mirror at home.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“By the time we finished the soup and washed the dishes, Pop still hadn’t arrived back from the main house. Susana wanted to make up some excuse to go visit Mrs. Rainsford, bring her a neighborly food hamper or something, but I insisted it could wait for another day. Mrs. Rainsford would be getting the kids their supper right now, getting them bathed and in bed, and she wouldn’t appreciate neighbors stopping by with their hampers of curiosity.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“On a nice sunny day at the end of May, the Wednesday before Memorial Day,”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Yes. He worked for the British consulate in Bern. He offered to marry me and support the children, have me evacuated to England. The practicalities of life were solved, which was a relief. Once you have children, the practicalities are all that really count. Especially in wartime. But I still didn’t know what had happened to Jurgis. He’d simply vanished. When the war ended, I thought he’d turn up. Like magic. He was like that. I imagined he would simply walk through the door one afternoon and set down his pack and call my name and carry me to bed. I asked Nathaniel to help me—he was in Germany, you remember, with the occupation force in Berlin. He was wonderful. Combed all the prisoner of war lists and put out the word at the displaced person camps, everything he could think of. Dear boy. But we never heard a word. Not a clue. Disappeared. Like so many. Into thin air. Or the mud of some battlefield, more likely.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“When Susana and I moved to Wellesley seven and a half years ago, just in time for the start of term, we got this bungalow for a steal.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“the summer, the man who loved me, the Emilia that was.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Personally, I think he’s just miffed because I won’t tell him about what happened before I moved to Wellesley. Why should I? I don’t speak to anybody about what happened that summer, about what I lost. Even Susana knows better than to speak his name.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Sumner Fox rang me up after class today.” She almost spits out the cigarette. “Fox? Our Sumner Fox?” “Is there another one?” “So what for did he call you?” “He wants me to come to prison and talk to our mutual friend.” “Our mutual friend?” “You know.” “Talk to Mrs. Rainsford? Our Mrs. Rainsford?” “I wouldn’t exactly call her our Mrs. Rainsford, dear. Not in public. People might get the wrong idea.” Susana drags thoughtfully on her cigarette. “Why does Fox want you to talk to Olive Rainsford?” “He wouldn’t say. She wants to speak to me, that’s all. It is apparently of the utmost urgency, according to Fox.” “Well,” Susana says. “Well what?” “Well, it’s about time, I guess.” “What do you mean, it’s about time?” “Honey,” she says soothingly, “any shrink could tell you that it would do you a world of good to sit down with that woman and—well, get some answers.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“He came into the bookstore the Christmas before last to buy a present for his ex-mother-in-law. The Serenity Bookshop, right here in Wellesley, Mass.—ever heard of it? It’s a nice cozy spot packed with armchairs and atmosphere. We keep some dirty novels in the back for people with real imagination. Susana opened it when she moved up here with me seven and a half years ago. She had to do something, and she didn’t want to start college, like me. So she started a bookstore instead.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“My kid sister’s a terrific cook. I’m going to miss her terribly when she gets married in June. When I try to picture the aftermath—Susana and Harvey on their honeymoon in Key West, me and Lizbit sitting around the living room in our underwear—I get this sinister feeling of bleakness and hunger. I can only hope Lizbit takes over the cooking.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Emilia Winthrop, I growl.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Does she not understand how these details hurt? Does she think they’ll make me feel better? Now she wants to tell me that Tom Donnelly’s crew is fixing up the place again so the Peabodys can return for the summer season like old times. What am I supposed to think about that? Am I supposed to want to join them? Well, now I’ve done it. You see what I mean? You open your mind a crack, just a crack to allow a single dumb word like Summerly into the party, and the rest of that thought shoves through uninvited and eats up all the canapés.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“We’re all tired, I guess. The world knocks us around.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“but how do you fall apart without making a noise?”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“spend a lot less time putting things away where they belong, she liked to say, than I’d waste running around trying to find them later.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“If you live by the sea, you learn to notice how the water tugs you in the direction it wants to go, and God help you if you wish to travel against it.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Love, you silly thing.” She clinked her glass against mine. “Love comes first of all. Grief is only possible if you love.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Don’t you think there are certain people who speak to your soul? Who inhabit you.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“You can’t be satisfied with what somebody else decides you’re allowed to have.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Listen to me. You should always expect payment for your work. A woman’s time is just as valuable as a man’s.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“The territory of childhood remained between us. That landscape mapped in my head was mapped in his head, too. He’d carried it with him to Europe and back, how about that.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Looking back, everything was so obvious. Sometimes I want to shake that girl on the beach that night, it was so obvious. But then everything looks inevitable in hindsight.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“A giant new world gaping before me, packed with possibility and also with a dread I couldn’t name, waiting for me to step inside.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“I close my eyes and try to throw a party in my head, but nobody comes. Just the past.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“But he conceded that democracy also required the freedom of the press to make asses of themselves, so what could you do?”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“Always a good idea to have a lawyer in the family, don’t you think? Just in case?”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly

“That’s it, honey, just sink yourself into the past, so you don’t have to spend so much time in the awful present.”
― Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly