Time After Time

by Lisa Grunwald

  “Look at your pa!” Joe remembered his mother shouting once. “Look at him! Don’t you apes realize what’s happened to him? Do you think he lost that leg in a game?”

  * * *

  —

  Finn never told Joe what people he had bribed or what lies he’d had to tell in order to enlist. Soon enough, Joe would learn that there were lots of guys who fudged or forged their information, claiming to be older, younger, healthier, or less essential to their jobs or families than they actually were. Especially if you were known by your local draft board—either directly or through family and friends—rules could be bent and already had been. Joe suspected that Finn had asked one of Damian’s old VFW buddies to help grease the wheels, but Finn told Joe it would be best if he stayed in the dark about it.

  “People are going to notice you’re not here, Finny,” Joe said when Finn came down to the terminal to show him his enlistment card. “They are going to ask me where you went.”

  “And you’ll be able to tell them I got in, but you don’t know how. All you need to know is that if something happens to me, the army will know how to find Faye.”

  Joe looked at his older brother, both envious and proud.

  “I guess Pa would have been buying you a drink right about now,” he said.

  “Something stopping you?” Finn asked.

  They went to the Junction and drank. With a flourish, as if he were putting a winning hand down in a game of gin rummy, Finn dealt his enlistment card onto the pockmarked bar top. Joe picked up the card. Name, address, date of birth, marital status, blood type, religion, date of enlistment, signature, rank, serial number. As far as the army knew, Finnegan Reynolds was twenty-six, married, and had no children.

  “You’re going to have to practice saying how old you are, Finny.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  “And what year you were born. You’re not that bright, you know.”

  Finn laughed, took the card back from Joe, and carefully returned it to his wallet.

  Joe motioned the bartender for another round. When their glasses were refilled, Joe lifted his to Finn. “Here’s to you finally getting that hair mowed,” he said.

  They toasted their father, their mother, their childhood, Mike, Alice, and Faye.

  “And here’s to Nora,” Finn said, “and all the other women of your sweaty dreams.”

  “Not a dream,” Joe said, and then whispered, “She came back, Finny. She’s here.”

  Finn looked over his shoulder. “She’s where?”

  “Here. In the Biltmore Hotel.”

  Finn downed the rest of his drink in one motion and placed his glass emphatically on the bar. He said, “Joe. Talk some sense.”

  So, just as he had with Nora, Joe explained Manhattanhenge, the coincidence of Nora’s death, and the way the special sunrise seemed to bring her back to life.

  Finn took Joe’s glass and drained what was left of it too.

  “And I want you to meet her before you go,” Joe said.

  “Nora,” Finn said. “The ghost.” He started to smile.

  “Remember, Finny,” Joe said, before his brother could get another word out. “This is a No-Matter-What.”

  The smile left Finn’s lips immediately. “Honor bound,” he said.

  “I know it’s weird. I know it’s crazy,” Joe said.

  “You know Faye would go out of her mind if she thought you’d thrown all those great girls over for a—”

  “A spirit,” Joe said. “Or call her a ghost. I don’t care what you call her. But sure, Faye would go nuts. Which is why I’ll kill you if you breathe a word of it to her.”

  “Jesus.”

  “A No-Matter-What. Will you do it?” Joe asked. “Will you meet her before you go?”

  “Jesus, Joey.”

  But he promised he would.

  “Before you go?”

  “Before I go.”

  4

  OH, BUDDY

  1942

  “He’s a lot like me,” Joe said to Nora.

  “No one’s like you,” she answered.

  It was a Tuesday morning in April—the Tuesday of Finn’s departure for basic training—and Nora had taken Joe along to one of the high-class shops on the Biltmore’s third floor. She’d said she was determined to find something lovely to wear for meeting Finn.

  “No,” Joe said, “what I mean is, he’s not fancy. He won’t care a hoot what you’re wearing.”

  “I’ll care,” she said.

  She was whisking the dresses along a rack with dazzling speed and certainty, each hanger making a confident jangle and click as she slid it from right to left. After only a few racks, she stopped and promptly pulled out a dark-green dress. Folding the hanger back, she held the dress up to her shoulders and turned to face Joe.

  “What do you think?” she asked him.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  “You’d say that about anything.”

  “Can’t blame me for that,” he said. “What do you want me to do, lie?”

  In the four months that she and Joe had used Floating Keys for a succession of free rooms at the Biltmore, Nora had learned how to be frugal with her own money and with Joe’s. She had made frequent use of the Lost and Found, where Mr. Brennan—who softened like warm tar whenever Nora stopped by—helped her find basic items and, with uncharacteristic gallantry, never once asked why she needed them.

  A purchased dress, never worn, was therefore a rediscovered joy, and Nora turned toward the mirror now, holding the dress in front of her.

  “It needs something,” she said.

  “Something like what?”

  “I don’t know. Something to give it a little sparkle.”

  Joe watched as Nora’s eyes expertly roamed the store and brightened as she strode toward a rack of belts. She held a number of them against the dress in turn, tilting her head slightly, just as Joe had seen her do when she’d assessed anything she was making—from an arrangement of pillows on the couch to the petals on the daisies in a charcoal sketch.

  Joe loved the way she made things beautiful, but today, as she chose a shiny black belt, he was also touched by the effort she was making for his brother.

  With just a half hour left, Nora told Joe she’d see them both at Alva’s, and, shopping bag in hand, she went back up to their room to change.

  * * *

  —

  A product of Turtle Bay Gardens, Elsie Lansing, and the fashion-crazed 1920s, Nora had been, like practically every girl she’d known at Barnard or in Paris, consumed during her life with questions of appearance: the length of her hair and her dresses, the fullness of her eyebrows, whether or not to use rouge. Nora remembered how much all that had mattered to her. But when she spent time in front of a mirror now, what concerned her had nothing to do with vanity: If anything, it was the opposite. While most women might check their mirrors nervously for unwanted changes, Nora longed to find them. A blemish here, a wrinkle there—even the smallest alteration—would have made her feel more normal: closer to Joe, closer to everyone alive. Joe woke up every morning with such a heavy beard that it looked as if someone had come during the night to draw it on with the rough stub of an oil pastel.

  In her more than four months here, Nora realized that her hair hadn’t grown. Her nails hadn’t grown. She’d never had her time of the month. She hadn’t lost or gained any weight. The few little scrapes or bruises she’d gotten had healed in hours, not days. Each week, behind a closed bathroom door, she had smoothed her bangs down over her forehead with a wet comb, hoping to find that they had reached below her eyebrows. In Paris, she was always trimming her bangs or asking Margaret to do so. Here, they remained exactly the same length, and Nora was starting to think she might as well have been a statue, unaffected by the passage of time. Had Joe notice
d yet? He hadn’t said anything about it, but looking at her unchanged face in the mirror, she shuddered at the evidence that even as she and Joe might grow closer, the gap between their ages was only going to widen.

  Joe would age. She would not.

  * * *

  —

  Finn walked into the restaurant carrying the small duffel bag that Joe recognized as Damian’s dusty World War I issue.

  “For good luck?” Joe asked as Finn took a seat in the booth across from him.

  “What, the bag? You mean because Pa made it back?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Nah. It was the only bag I could find in the house besides the kids’ camp bags. When did we ever go anywhere?”

  “I never did,” Joe said. “You had a honeymoon.”

  “Ancient history,” Finn said. “Anyway, I think Faye borrowed her ma’s suitcase for that.”

  Joe had never owned a suitcase, though he had been surrounded for most of his life by people carrying them around like little billboards. During the past decade, the decade of the Depression, Joe had spent any free time he had either helping Damian, playing handyman for the house, or babysitting Finn’s kids. Joe’s only trips beyond Manhattan or Queens had been on the Harlem or Hudson lines—just a few stops up—to salute some conductor’s work anniversary or toast a retirement. Those celebrations, by tradition, had always been confined to the train cars themselves. Whatever other travels Joe had taken had been in his imagination, inspired by the routes in New York Central fliers or by images in newspapers, magazines, and newsreels.

  “So?” Finn said. “Where’s Nora?”

  “She’ll be here any minute.”

  Finn nodded and picked up a menu. “You buying?” he asked.

  “No, Finny, I’m sending you off to fight in a war, but I’m making you buy me lunch first.”

  “Sounds like you.”

  Alva came over, poured them coffee, and took their orders. Finn grasped the cream-colored diner mug with his left hand, clinking his wedding ring against its handle. After a sip, he squinted at Joe.

  “Where is she?” he asked again, just as Joe stood up to greet her. She looked dazzling in the new dress, which in fact did sparkle a little more because of the shiny belt.

  Finn watched warily as Nora slid into the booth beside Joe.

  “I got us some pancakes,” Joe told her. “I thought we’d share.”

  Finn kept staring at Nora.

  “Yes. I’m Nora,” she finally said, which broke the tension and made them all laugh. She extended her hand, and Finn took it in his, startled by its warmth and seemingly hypnotized by its solidity. He glanced back and forth between it and Nora’s face.

  “Finn, say something,” said Joe. “You’re being rude.”

  Finn dropped Nora’s hand and shook his head slightly. “Well,” he said a bit helplessly, “I’ll say this, Joe. She sure is a looker.”

  Nora ignored the awkwardness. “That’s so kind of you,” she said in what Joe thought of as her best society voice. Then it was her turn to stare. “But you, Finn. Joe never told me how much you two look alike.”

  “Wait, Nora,” Joe said, “those are fighting words.”

  Neither of them seemed to hear him.

  “Your nose,” Nora said. “It’s got that same slope.”

  “Irish nose,” Joe said. “A dime a dozen.”

  “And your mouth, it’s kind of crooked, the same as Joe’s,” Nora continued. “And your hair—”

  “Stop right there,” Joe said. “Finn’s hair is like a push broom.”

  Again, they didn’t seem to hear. All this time, Joe had been imagining how amazed Finn would be to find that Nora was real. He hadn’t figured on Nora’s amazement. For the first time, she was encountering the evidence—not stories, memories, or reports on some visit, errand, or phone call—of Joe’s life beyond Grand Central. Joe had expected Finn to grill Nora in an attempt to confirm or dismiss her story. But whether it was because Finn had simply chosen to believe, or because—more likely, Joe thought—Finn’s mind was focused on leaving, it was Nora who asked most of the questions: How old were Mike and Alice now? What had Joe been like as a kid? How and when had Finn met Faye? Where had they gone on their honeymoon?

  Nora’s continuing existence in Grand Central was uncertain at best; Finn was about to leave for who knew how long. And yet, through the whole conversation, Joe felt that he was the one who was least present. Only when they stood up to go did the two of them seem to remember that he was there at all. And they left him to pay the bill.

  Passing the entrance to Alva’s together, Finn said to Nora: “Just one question.”

  “Just one?”

  “I know he’s got it bad for you. He’s walking on air. But what do you think is going to happen?”

  Nora looked back toward Joe and then at Finn.

  “I don’t know, Finn,” she finally said. “But whatever happens, it’ll happen to both of us.”

  * * *

  —

  The terminal had grown busier than ever since the U.S. had entered the war. Additional ticket booths took up space in the concourse. Increased numbers of travelers made navigation harder than usual. The whole place seemed in shadow: The walls, which had already been brown from decades of cigarette smoke, were darker now with the windows blacked out and the mural covering the east windows. The room that to Joe had so often seemed to be all sky now seemed to be all earth.

  Standing by the ramp that led to the Kissing Room, Nora hugged Finn goodbye, wished him good luck, and gracefully left the brothers alone. Gamely, they walked through the crowds in the concourse, where friends and family members were forming little clusters around their young men, hands reaching in to touch them, arms like spokes on wheels.

  Finn had insisted that Faye stay home. He didn’t want tears or scenes. “A no-waterworks goodbye,” he had ordered.

  Now he threw one question after another at Joe: How did he know that Nora had really died? Didn’t she have any family or friends? If it was Manhattanhenge that had brought her here, then what was it that kept her here? Could he actually, um, do everything with her that he’d do with a real woman? And finally: Was Joe really in love with someone who couldn’t make a home with him? Joe answered as many of the questions as he could but was reminded how much more the feelings mattered than the facts.

  They had reached the track platform for Finn’s train, and Joe changed the subject back to Finn.

  “How did the kids take it?” he asked.

  “Troupers. You shoulda seen Mike, actually,” Finn said. “He stood up and saluted me.”

  “And Alice?”

  “She cried. I guess I knew that would happen. But I gave Mike the ‘man of the house now’ talk. And I told him not to torture Alice.”

  Saying the name of his little girl brought out the pain in Finn’s eyes, but he spent the next few minutes giving Joe distracting if unnecessary instructions about how to help Faye take care of the house. By the time his train was ready to leave, he had talked to Joe about everything from the furnace to the attic. It wasn’t until Finn actually hopped across the little space between the platform and the car that Joe felt the first shudder, the first hint, of loss.

  Like the dozens of other civilians standing on the platform, Joe was unable to turn away until the tunnel had swallowed the train, and its sound had faded. He had a crazy impulse to follow, to shout—some part of him, the heart of him, traveling down the tracks, the little brother running to keep up with the older one. The fact that for the next few weeks Finn would still be stateside at basic training did nothing to keep Joe from feeling the panic in his chest.

  A few yards away, a young mother with stocky legs and a chubby toddler in her arms tucked her head into the little boy’s neck, trying to wipe her tears on his collar. “Oh, Buddy. Oh, Buddy,” sh
e said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh, Buddy.”

  For a moment her sad eyes met Joe’s, and her distress turned to embarrassment: a grown woman seeking comfort in the crook of her little boy’s neck. Joe smiled at her with as much reassurance as he could muster, and then, walking up the track ramp, across the concourse, and down to the local level, he waited for the subway that would take him out to Queens.

  * * *

  —

  Back in their hotel room, Nora carefully stepped out of her new green dress and hung it in the closet beside Joe’s work shirts and trousers and her own few blouses and skirts. Then she leaned into the closet, her hands clasping the wooden pole. She put her cheek against the collar of one of Joe’s shirts. It had shaken her to see him with Finn. It had never been clearer to her that he had a life beyond his job and whatever hotel room she shared with him.

  Still in her slip and stockings, she settled onto the couch and picked up the morning’s paper. The war in Europe filled the pages with headlines about bombings and troop movements, photographs of tanks and generals, maps of places she’d never heard of: Tobruk, Salonika, Rostock. Nora turned the pages slowly, and eventually—the way shards of blue can overtake a gray sky—these images and stories were brightened by the glimpses of the everyday life she still felt she needed to study: an ad for men’s shoes, another for women’s dresses; reviews of books, restaurants, and plays. A small item about Mussolini looked inconsequential next to an enormous ad for a hat called the Ferris-Wheel Milan. Two different Italys, Nora thought. With the kind of pang she would have felt if she were still living in the youthful who-cares moment of 1925, she realized she would never see Rome. In the next moment, back in the present, she had to wonder what would be left of Europe when the war was over. And finally, war notwithstanding, if Joe would ever get to go there.