“Chi Chi, we have to go,” Sheila reminded her. “The driver has to have the car back by two.”
“I’m on my way.” Chi Chi wrapped the shawl her mother had given her around herself. She picked up her purse.
“Hey, where are you going?” Tony followed her to the door.
“I have to get back.”
“No, you don’t.”
“The driver has to get the car back.”
“I didn’t come all this way to sing and dance. I came all this way to see you. I’ll take you home.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Hey, what’s going on here?” Tony said quietly.
“I have to get back.”
“And I said I’ll take you. Cheech, everything changed tonight. Give the girls your stuff. I’m in the Packard out front.”
* * *
Tony waited outside the Canteen on the street. It was late, and the air had turned cold as it does in Los Angeles after midnight in December. It might as well be Vermont, Tony thought, as he put the collar of his trench coat up against the breeze. He took the last drag off his cigarette as Chi Chi gave the charts to Sheila. The girls had a conversation. Sheila looked over at Tony and the Packard, then back at Chi Chi. Tony made a praying-hands gesture to Sheila that only she could see. It worked. Chi Chi came across the street and joined him.
“Where’d you get this buggy?” Chi Chi asked Tony as he held the door and she climbed into the Packard.
“I wish it were mine,” he said through the passenger window.
“I do too.”
Tony came around and jumped into the driver’s seat. “It’s a loaner.” He started the car.
“You must know some ritzy people.”
“You only need to know one.” Tony smiled. “Is it necessary for you to sit all the way over there? It’s like I’m in California and you’re in Ohio.”
“I like Ohio.”
“I think you’d like California better.”
Chi Chi scooted closer to him. “What is going on here?”
“Nothing.”
“Something happened to you on that submarine.”
“Something happened to you on that dance floor.”
“I got an excuse. I got carried away,” she said as she spun the beads on her pearl bracelet.
“You asked me and I’m going to tell you. A lot happened on the sub. I read your letters.”
“I was trying to cheer you up.”
“You did. And I came to rely on them. I needed to hear from you. I waited for the mail. When a new one arrived, I’d go back and read all the previous letters in order. It was like I was starving and you had the only food that could possibly fill me up.”
“It’s not like I’m Dorothy Parker.”
“You’re better because you’re talking to me.”
“I’m sure you get lots of letters from lots of girls.”
“Not any I want to read.”
“But you get them.”
“You know, I have pals who talk about their lives before the war. And they talk about the world as though it were perfect, as if they were happy and fulfilled and then this war came along and ruined it.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I hate the war. It’s an awful thing, maybe the worst situation a person could find himself in. But sometimes I think my life didn’t begin until I got on that submarine. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try.”
“I never had a chance to think like I do in the Navy. It’s not like there’s more time. I just use it more wisely. How about you?”
“Everything changed, and everybody. I never had anxiety before the war, and now I worry about everything.” Her voice broke.
“Are you crying?” Tony asked. “Because if you are, I want to pull over and get a good look. I’ve never seen you cry. Ever.”
Chi Chi fished her handkerchief out of her purse. “I’m not going to cry so keep driving.”
“You sure?”
“I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” She dabbed her eyes.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to me either.”
“Okay.”
“But it’s not up to me.”
“I know. Are you hungry? I’m really hungry.”
“You’re the only girl I know that could eat Thanksgiving dinner between sets and after a show.”
“What do you want from me? I’m Italian.”
“I don’t think any place is open.”
“Let’s find a place and sit outside until they open for breakfast.”
“Do you mean it?”
“When does the Packard turn back into a pumpkin?”
“Noon tomorrow.”
“So we have time.”
Chi Chi placed her head on Tony’s shoulder, as he put his arm around her. The highway unspooled before them like a gray velvet ribbon. Tony Arma almost felt too grateful to pray. He had a girl to love that he could talk to, a true friend. He had a full tank of gas in a car he had coveted since he was a boy. He had everything but time, but if he had that, he would be pressing his luck.
* * *
The moon hung over the Pacific Ocean under a filmy cloud like a veil of chiffon as Chi Chi and Tony walked along the beach in San Diego.
“Do you remember when you were a kid, and two days seemed like a hundred years?” Tony asked her.
“Sure.”
“How long did the past forty-eight hours seem to you?”
“Like ten minutes.”
“Five, to me. That’s how long it took you to eat that stack of pancakes.”
“I won’t apologize.” Chi Chi kissed his hand.
“How’s your family? Your mom and sisters?”
“Barbara and Charlie are good. Baby Nancy is teething. Worse than a puppy, my sister says. My mother is busy, having fun with the baby. Lucille is serious about the Communale boy.”
“Good for her. So the Donatelli girls are all settled. Except for one.”
“I’m holding my own. Writing songs. Touring. Forty dollars a week, room and board included. In show business, that’s settled!”
Tony picked up a seashell. He gave it to her.
She held the pink seashell in her hand and looked up at him. “Thanks, Saverio.”
“It’s just a shell.”
“But it’s beautiful, and you gave it to me.”
“Only you and my mother call me Saverio anymore.”
“I kind of like that. I remember you when.”
“Tony is a made-up character.”
“He’s just fine. But Saverio is the kid who couldn’t fit on a marquee. It’s important to remember when you couldn’t fit.”
Chi Chi and Tony walked along the edge of the water. “Why don’t we get married, Cheech?”
“You’re crazy,” she said softly.
“What kind of an answer is that?”
“Let’s not get married. It’s an answer.”
“I’m hurt.”
“You’ll get over it,” she assured him.
“How would you know?”
“You’re not thinking straight.”
“I’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“You’ve been submerged for months. Thoughts are different underwater.”
“I’m sincere.”
“It’s the war. Perfectly intelligent men and decent, smart women are getting hitched for no other reason than that they truly believe the world is going to blow up, and they don’t want to be alone when it happens.”
“You paint one bleak picture.”
“It gets worse. Think ahead. The war ends. The soldier comes home, he walks through the front door, and the wife that he married in a whirlwind twister of panic stands there, and they both think, What did we do?”
“I had no idea you were such a romantic.”
“One of us has to be realistic.”
“Are you sure you wrote all those love songs?”
“Most of the son
gs don’t last, and neither do the love affairs. We’ve been very smart to remain friends.”
“I don’t want to be friends. I want to be your husband. I’ve never asked anyone else to marry me.”
“Maybe you should have because I’m not right for you.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because you are not right for me.”
“How do you figure?”
“You go with too many girls.”
“They didn’t mean anything to me.”
Chi Chi considered this. “You know, when you talk like that, it’s worse. You sound like you’re using those ladies.”
“Maybe they’re using me.”
“That doesn’t make your part in it honorable in the least.”
“You’re such an angel.”
“Don’t drag me into your melodrama. Whenever you do—and by the way, you have—I have to provide the brokenhearted girls you’ve spurned with a shoulder and a handkerchief. You know how many Irish lace hankies I’ve given up for your cause? A few. And an embroidered one. It said ‘Bless You’ in cross-stitch. One of my favorites.”
“I’ll buy you another one.”
“That’s not the point. Some things in life can’t be replaced.”
“Like what?”
“Like a woman’s dignity.”
“I will always treat you with respect. Haven’t I always?”
“You have.”
“So count on it.”
Chi Chi was unswayed.
“You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you?” Tony said. “With Dick LaMarca.”
“Jim. And no, I’m not.”
“So what is it?”
“I believe in a proper engagement period.”
“But there’s a war on.”
“Doesn’t matter. Time gives a girl time to think. Rumination prevents many a heartache.”
“Don’t you already know what you feel? Haven’t you ruminated enough?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t need a proper engagement period.”
“You haven’t been thinking about me in the same way that I’ve been thinking about you.”
“I don’t know, Sav.”
“I misread the signs.”
“I wasn’t ever going to get married. And I’ve been asked plenty.”
“You’re making this worse.”
“I’ve been asked, but why wouldn’t I be? Do you think you’re the only one of us who has a little savoir faire? I’m a workhorse in a world of show ponies. But I’ve got pretty good features. You don’t see pins like these on every girl coming and going. I’m a lot of fun, but I’m serious when it’s called for. And an Italian boy is at an advantage because he has an Italian mother, so he knows he will have a good life with someone like me, so there’s very little risk in it—for you. For my part, marrying you would be nothing but risk.”
“I haven’t kept anything from you,” Tony said. “You know everything. You’ve been my confidante.”
“No wonder I’m exhausted.”
“Do you love me?”
Chi Chi thought about it. “What I know, I understand, and so I can love. But there is a lot about you I don’t know.”
“That’s the part we learn as the years go by.”
“Maybe. But you disappear.”
“You know exactly where I am. I’m a midshipman in the US Navy.”
“I don’t mean your geographical location. I mean you. You fall out of the moment. I saw it when you came to lunch for the first time in our backyard.”
“The day you were wearing a white two-piece swimsuit,” Tony recalled, whistling. “Okay, I whistled so you’d laugh.”
“I remember macaroni al fresco,” Chi Chi said. “We were all jabbering at the table, and you were engaged in the conversation, and in an instant, you were gone. You looked off into the distance and disappeared. It’s happened other times too. In a group, or sometimes when it was just the two of us. I used to think that you were done with a particular topic, but then I realized it was something else. It doesn’t happen when you’re working onstage. Only in life.”
“So you won’t marry me because I daydream?”
“No. I’m not going to marry you because . . . You don’t understand what commitment is. Marriage is about love, sure. But it’s about courage too. You’re over there in that submarine, and you’re scared. You know the worst could happen at any moment—so your proposal is a little about your fear of things ending, and coming home once the war is over, and being alone. There’s nothing like living with a bunch of men to sell a fellow on how great living with one woman could be. But I listened to my father, see, and he had one really good idea, and I’ve lived by it.”
“And what is it?”
“My dad said, ‘You must decide what is sacred to you. It’s different for every person. And, once you have the answer, you have to live in service to it. If you don’t, your life will be meaningless.’ ”
“That’s not a difficult question for me. It’s you. You are sacred to me. You’re the only woman I want to marry. And if you say no, I will never marry anyone else.”
Chi Chi looked at Saverio. He was so thin, his belt was on the last notch and it was loose. He was so skinny, the blue-green veins on his forehead stuck out like roads drawn on a map. The Navy had shaved his head, so the bountiful curls he’d once had were gone. But without his hair, she could really see him. She could almost see into his mind, through to the very essence of him. She felt a deep sympathy for him, that she had only felt for her father.
“Knock it off, Cheech. I’m not taking no for an answer. This is nuts! Make the deal. You get your engagement period, no matter how long you need. I’m shipping out, and you have your tour, and when I come home, you can take more time if you need it. Take twenty years, I don’t care. Big wedding, small. I don’t care. If you wait twenty years, that first tier of cousins will be dead, so you’re looking at small. No pavilion, you can squeeze the family into your backyard. Whatever you want, as long as you’re at the end of the aisle with a yes when the time comes.”
Chi Chi’s head spun. “I’m listening.”
“I believe that knowing you, in all your facets, will take time. We need more time. But I don’t need time to know that I love you above all others, and that the thought of living my life without you fills me with a kind of despair I can’t describe. You can’t live your life alone or with any other man because I can’t live without you. You’re my family.”
* * *
Family was the essence of Chi Chi Donatelli. The power of family unlocked her ambition, determination, and sense of self. It would always be the thing she held sacred. Mariano’s support of her talent had been so deeply intertwined with her own belief about her abilities that they were inseparable in her mind and heart. Family meant she was never alone, even on the road. Family meant that there was an impenetrable wall between her and trouble. Family meant that same wall could contain joy within it that only those she trusted and with whom she shared a history could know. So, if she became family to Tony, marriage was a sacrament she could enter without hesitation if she believed he felt the same.
“Take your time: I’d give you to the end of it if I could.” Tony meant it.
“Okay, Sav. Okay, okay, okay.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t surrender, you’re not just giving in, you really want to get married?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Tony reached into his pocket for a ring box. He knelt before her on the sand and opened it. A platinum ring, with a diamond pavé heart, rested in the fold of the midnight-blue velvet. The heart glittered, catching a glint of pink light from the moon.
“If it’s too flashy, I can take it back.”
Chi Chi’s eyes narrowed. “Hand it over.”
“Italian girls.” Saverio sighed as he stood and placed the ring on her finger.
“It’s the most exquisite ring I’ve ever seen.” C
hi Chi whispered the lyric A little gold and a diamond bright as she threw her arms around him and kissed him.
Saverio finished the line: Will make you mine in a gown of white.
“Good lyric,” Chi Chi said.
“Novelty song,” he teased.
“Humoresque,” she corrected him.
Tony held her; the scent of her skin was like the first day of summer. “Are you going to do that for the rest of my life?” he wanted to know. “Correct me?”
“Only when you’re wrong.” She kissed his hands. “Sav?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to be true?”
“Only always.”
* * *
Chi Chi sat up in the driver’s seat of the Packard steering carefully as she drove slowly down the streets of San Diego.
“I can’t be late.”
She squinted. “I might need glasses.”
“Now you tell me?”
“Pipe down. We’re almost there,” she said.
“We’ll make it to the base, but how are you getting back to that convent?”
The car lurched. “Like a kangaroo. I’ll drop the car and Sheila sent our driver to pick me up. I’ll be just fine.”
The headlights flashed on the sign on the chain-link fence of the Naval Repair Base, San Diego.
“We made it.” Chi Chi pumped the brakes until the car bucked to a final stop. She put it in park and turned off the car. “Still want a Packard?”
“She hummed along nicely until she didn’t. I think those brake linings might be stripped,” Tony guessed.
“I’ll tell the guys at the garage when I drop it off.” Chi Chi turned to Tony and lifted a gold chain with a medal from around her neck. She unhooked it and placed it around Tony’s neck, clicking the clasp shut. “This is a miraculous medal. It’s been blessed. No harm will come to you as long as you wear it.”
“No harm will come to me as long as you love me.”
Chi Chi kissed her fiancé tenderly. “When will you come home?”
“My next furlough should be in eight months. After that, who knows?”
“Unless the war ends.”
Tony smiled. “Say a prayer on that one.”
“Do you know where they’re sending you?”
“The bottom of the ocean looks the same wherever you go.”
“What’s it like?”
“Working on a sub is like the line at the Rouge. I try not to think too much. But when I do, I think about you.”
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