Nora shook her head, looking down, feeling trapped. She knew that Faye was in agony, but she was also being a bully. She studied Faye’s hands, which were red and dry. She was still wearing her wedding band, and a man’s watch with a clouded face that Nora assumed was an old one of Finn’s.
“You don’t know him the way I know him,” Faye said.
“Why is that important?” Nora asked.
“You probably think you make him happy,” Faye said.
“I do make him happy.”
“I’m sure you do. In some ways.”
She didn’t say it meanly. Their eyes connected for the first time—both of them loving him, both of them wanting him.
“We need him right now. His family. We’re depending on him right now. But he keeps having to spend time with you.”
“He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.”
“Nora,” Faye said softly, and hearing the softness was as surprising to Nora as hearing her own name. “Here’s what I know. God wanted Joey to stay stateside and not go to war. Joey feels bad he couldn’t do his duty. And now God wants him to take care of his family. And that’s what he has to do. So whatever you’re doing with him or for him, it’s only tying him up in knots, and it’s time for you to stop.”
* * *
—
After Faye left, Nora’s trip back to the Biltmore room was slow and sad. She made the rounds of both the Main Concourse and the lower level. She spent fifteen or twenty minutes in one of the velvet rocking chairs in the ladies’ lounge, just thinking. She sat for another ten minutes on one of the wooden benches in the waiting room, remembering how she and Joe had been here when they’d kissed for the first time. In one of the passageways, she ran her fingers lovingly along the majestic brass grille that covered a heating vent but was itself a work of art. For a while, she even watched Bill Keogh announcing the arrivals and departures. And then she stared up at the ceiling with its impossible, glorious, blue-green sky. She knew what she had to do.
At the Lost and Found, she traded five minutes of small talk with Mr. B. for a few fresh storage boxes. Up in the art school, she chose her two favorite canvases, wrapped them in brown paper, then took everything back to the Biltmore room. Packing up was easy. Nora and Joe had changed rooms every month or so, and she’d gotten used to traveling light—not that she owned much to begin with. It was strange to remember her trip home from Paris, the trunks she’d left for William to collect from the dock that winter night so long ago. She shuddered a little, wondering how long it had taken for Elsie to open them, what she had done with the clothing, whether she’d kept any of the drawings.
Nora packed up shirts and sweaters; dresses and skirts; shoes, hats, gloves, coat—all her clothes, new and borrowed. In a separate box she organized her books, sketchpads, pencils, and charcoals. Down in the hotel basement, she discarded her flapper dress—as well as other items that by now were torn or stained with paint. Back upstairs, she rolled her charm bracelet off her wrist, tucked it back into her old clutch along with all the cash she had, and left it on the dresser for Joe.
It wasn’t until she had run out of tasks that she started to cry, circling the room helplessly, knowing that he might return at any moment.
Finally, nose red, she sat down at the desk and picked up a pen to write.
October 10, 1943
My dearest Joe:
I’m writing you this because I don’t want you to spend even a minute looking for me or wondering why I’m leaving. I’m leaving because you have to be with your family now, because Faye and those kids need you to be their rock. It’s what Finn would have expected of you, and these last weeks have shown me that, even if you don’t want to admit it, it’s what you expect of yourself.
I know you’ll be so mad at first, and you’ll think I had no right to go without telling you. But I know that as mad as you are, it’s going to be better this way. Not just better for Faye and the kids, but most of all, better for you. You can’t keep trying to divide your heart between two homes.
I love you, Joe. And I know you love me.
Obviously, there is no way to know if I’ll be back, or when. So please, please, live your life. It won’t matter if that life ends up being in Queens or Grand Central or anywhere in the world.
Wherever you are, you’ll know I love you.
Your
Nora
She left the letter on the dresser, took the elevator down to the lobby, and marched out into the street. If it had been a Manhattanhenge evening, would she have walked into the sunset to die? She was glad not to have to make that choice tonight. She was heading instead for the in-between. She knew her limit was 850 feet, and, crying, she made it three blocks, no more. Then, after a moment of looking back and a last ache of longing for Joe, she flickered out.
PART FIVE
1
SURRENDER
1945
On August 14, at 7:03 in the evening, the news began to glide across the zipper on the Times building in Manhattan:
TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER
Within minutes, more than two million people jammed the streets from Times Square to Grand Central Terminal, their joy and disbelief mingling with their shouts, songs, and prayers. Flags and servicemen’s hats flew up; confetti, streamers, paper cups, and strips of newspaper fluttered down. Before an hour had passed, Broadway’s usually flat charcoal pavement had been turned into a rippling paper sea.
Joe was at the Y on his way down to dinner when he heard the car horns honking. On the ground floor, he saw the men running out to join the crowds, and he followed them. He wasn’t aware of having an actual destination until he had pushed his way into the terminal, through the concourse, and down to the subway platform, where people were standing fifteen deep. Joe managed to squeeze past the cops just before they started blocking the entrances so no one would get pushed onto the tracks. He had to get to Queens.
Train after train came, each one packed and raucous. It took nearly two hours for Joe to press his way into a subway car, and it had to be ninety degrees inside, and people were jammed against each other, smelling of booze, beer, and sweat. But no one minded a damn bit. At one point the subway car shuddered to a stop, and in the startled moment of quiet, someone started singing “Auld Lang Syne.” Even as the train restarted, dozens of reverent voices joined in:
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind…
What was the last thing Finn had thought? What was the last thing Finn had seen? And why couldn’t some magical trick of nature have brought him back to life too? The bodies around Joe were so close that he couldn’t actually raise a hand to wipe the tears from his face.
In Queens, someone had hanged Hirohito in effigy from a lamppost. The taverns Joe passed had dragged their jukeboxes out into the street, so every few blocks, Joe encountered groups of people jitterbugging to a different tune.
Faye greeted Joe at the door with the hug of a lifetime. They both seemed to find it hard to let go.
He felt her tears against his neck. “Oh Joey!” she said. “He’s not going to have to go!”
Joe looked over her shoulder to see Mike, frozen on the staircase, caught painfully between relief and regret. The kid had longed to be a hero, and Joe knew he should try to console him. But standing there solemnly, in a short-sleeved white shirt and dark pants, Mike looked more than ever like a young Finn, and by instinct all Joe really wanted to do was make him laugh and keep him safe. Stepping inside the house, Joe reached up the stairs to shake Mike’s hand.
“Tonight,” he said, “we’ll drink Old Crow together and toast your pa.”
That coaxed a faint smile.
Alice, now thirteen, came running through the front door and had almost reached the kitchen before she noticed Joe.
“Where’ve you been?” Joe asked her. He doubted he would ever get used to this flighty, teenage version of his niece, let alone to the freedoms Faye granted her. He could still see the little-girl softness beneath the angles that were starting to shape her face, but now she was nearly as tall as Faye.
“Up the street,” she said, slightly out of breath. She smoothed her crimson skirt with one hand and tried to straighten her blouse with the other. “It’s so wonderful! Everyone’s out dancing! I just came in to ask Ma if I can stay out!”
“Not unless Mike goes with you,” Faye said.
“Aw, Ma,” they said in unison, then simultaneously turned to Joe, wordlessly seeking a different verdict.
“Maybe let her go for an hour?” Joe asked Faye.
“The two of you, or neither,” Faye said. “That’s my final offer.”
They were out the door a few minutes later.
“You know,” Joe said, “there’s nothing to stop them from going their separate ways once they’re out there.”
“Of course they will,” Faye said. “But I wanted to make sure they both got out of here.”
Together they walked into the kitchen.
“What’s to eat?” Joe asked, settling at the table.
“I almost gave up on you,” she said.
“I would have called,” Joe said, “but it’s a nuthouse out there.”
“What’s in your hair?” she asked him.
“What?”
“All this garbage.”
Joe bent over and shook his head. Faye ruffled his hair, and bits of paper spilled onto the black-and-white-checked floor.
Faye bent over to pick one up. “Is this a gum wrapper?” she asked.
“Probably,” Joe said with a laugh. “People were making confetti out of anything they could find.”
Faye opened the refrigerator. “I’ve got tuna salad, American cheese, a little leftover meatloaf, some Victory Garden carrots, and a whole lot of beer.”
“Beer,” Joe said. Faye handed him two bottles. “And some of everything else,” he added.
He was ravenous. “Lord, but you know your way around a meatloaf,” he said, clinking bottles with Faye.
They polished off three bottles of beer each in no time at all, toasting every few minutes. “To Finn, the best brother.” “To Finn, the best husband.” “To Finn, the best father.” “To the kids.” “The men.” “Roosevelt.” “Truman.”
“To you, Joe,” Faye said, “for getting me through.”
“And the same to you,” Joe said.
* * *
—
That was what had happened. They had gotten each other through. In those first months after Finn’s death, Joe had practically lived in Queens, helping Faye with the house, the bills, the army paperwork—even the groceries and the gutters. Faye had been endlessly grateful to him, but the truth was that Joe wouldn’t have known how to mourn Finn without being able to help his family.
When Joe discovered Nora’s goodbye letter, he had been furious at first. He had reread it so many times that its words had become as fixed in his mind as the Pledge of Allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer. He had moved back to the Y just days afterward, bitterly taking all Nora’s things with him. He had stashed her paintings in his closet and stacked her boxes in a corner. Sometimes he had loved the reminders of her, and sometimes he had resented them. Even outside his room, though they had been everywhere: the Whispering Gallery, Alva’s, the Biltmore, the east balcony, the north balcony, the gold clock itself. The terminal, which had once been his, had at some point become theirs. One night he had balled up her letter and thrown it into the fire at the Y. Eventually, though, he had come to feel that what Nora had written to him was right. It had been a relief, as she had suggested, not to try to divide his heart between two homes.
Joe had gone to church with the family on Sundays and knelt beside Alice when, at eleven, she had her first communion. He had eaten Faye’s meatloaf and casseroles at the old house weekly, encouraged her to speak up for a raise, and—when Mike announced that he’d decided to train as a cop—reminded her that Finn hadn’t been any older when he’d joined the force. Joe felt for Faye, left with a war widow’s pension and the boxes of Finn’s clothes that she still claimed to be saving for Mike. Joe sensed that she just couldn’t let the things go. She was thirty-nine. Everything about her—from her once-youthful body to the look in her eyes—had gone flat.
But right now, with a beer in one hand, a pencil stuck in the bun on her head, and wisps of hair tattooing her neck, she looked at Joe with a vibrant smile, and he couldn’t recall the last time he had seen her this happy. Maybe the day she and Finn had gotten married, or maybe on the Sunday when they’d baptized Mike.
In all this time, grief had bound Joe and Faye together, even as it had kept them sheltered from other people. In their twosome, they had often been tempted to soothe their loneliness with sex, but they had always managed to pull back. Tonight, however, lubricated by booze, relief, and joy, they both seemed to be feeling something deeper than need or loneliness, and Joe had no interest in resisting it.
At around nine, he and Faye drained the last of their beers, put the bottles down, flashed each other a look, and leaned in. Her customary kiss had always been an invitation, her lips just parted, available. Tonight, finding Joe willing, her kiss had force and purpose. Trying not to separate, they stood up on either side of the table, stepped awkwardly beside it, and locked into a kiss that felt neither entirely right nor entirely wrong. They broke it off after a few minutes. Alice and Mike would be coming home soon, and Finn, in a sense, had never left. Even on this night of celebration, kissing was as far as Joe and Faye could comfortably go.
* * *
—
Joe slept that night for what seemed like the thousandth time on the living room couch, which smelled—not unpleasantly—of the sawdust that occasionally leaked from its cushions. There was no point in trying to get back to the Y. The festivities would still be going strong, and however strange it had been to kiss Faye, Joe was certain it would be even stranger if he seemed to be slinking away.
“Get the blankets for Uncle Joe,” Faye said around eleven, when Mike and Alice came home.
Uncle Joe, he thought as he rode the subway back to the city the next morning. Wasn’t that who he was supposed to be?
Throughout the rest of that summer and fall—through the formal surrender of Japan, the formation of the United Nations, the Tigers winning the World Series—Joe took turns being Steady Joe Reynolds at the terminal, Uncle Joe with Mike and Alice, and, for Faye, just Joey, every few weeks, when they had enough time to be alone.
They had gone no further than kissing and cuddling, but Joe no longer cared if he was betraying one person, two, or neither. Finn was dead. Nora had left, and who knew, who really knew, if she would ever come back? Though the servicemen’s lounge was slowly being dismantled, the windows were still blocked by tar.
* * *
—
In the first months after Japan’s surrender, most of the country was still rediscovering itself, peacetime only gradually becoming the trusted state of affairs. In the terminal, the hospital trains continued to come in, usually a dozen cars long, each of them completely filled. The cars had been configured with lower and upper sleeping berths, with lower and upper windows, so that all the patients could have light. But when the trains arrived, it was still miserable to see the wounded men peering out from their separate berths, finally home but looking so lost. There were war brides arriving almost daily too, women who’d crossed the Atlantic, often with babies, to board trains bound for homes they’d been promised by soldiers they hardly knew. In the continuing chaos of the terminal’s traffic, Joe’s dreams of travel were once again tethered to the Piano and to the railroad tracks.
Yet bit by bit, a new world was emerging
. The wartime rationing ended; the price controls were loosened. Women were dressed a bit better, with longer skirts, cinched waists, and shiny shoes, and the soldiers and sailors who hadn’t been wounded were camouflaged now by civilian clothes. Bright colors bloomed, making everything seem more blessed and triumphant.
“You know, Joe,” Faye said on Christmas Eve after the kids had gone up to bed. “We could go somewhere.”
“Somewhere like where?”
“Like, I don’t know. Like the Jersey Shore. Like Connecticut. Upstate New York. A weekend away, you know?”
He knew what she was asking for, and he had mixed feelings about it, but he said, “I’ll make the plans.”
“Good.”
“But what’ll we tell Mike and Alice?” he asked.
“We’ll tell them we’re going away for a weekend,” Faye said. “You think by now they haven’t figured things out?”
2
ONE NIGHT
1946
The newspapers were calling it “Victory Vacation Year,” and ads were showing up everywhere for resorts in Cuba, Bermuda, Florida, New Hampshire, and, closer to home, Atlantic City. Joe had promised Faye, with a hint of mystery, that he would plan their trip, but there were so many choices that he ended up with the most obvious one: Atlantic City. He had heard a lot about the place long before the war: the ocean, the boardwalk, the games, the girls. Atlantic City existed as one of the fixed destinations on Joe’s mental map of the country, one of the places he’d always imagined going. Studying the leisure ads in the Herald and the Times, he chose—in the end, just because he liked the name—a hotel called the President that was right on the boardwalk.
He made the reservations for a long weekend starting March 21: not so cold that they couldn’t walk on the beach, but not so warm that the best rooms would already be booked. For the occasion, he bought himself a couple of short-sleeved plaid shirts, a pair of gray twill trousers, and the first suitcase he’d ever owned. He allowed himself to get excited about it. Maybe, he thought as he made these purchases, they were the wardrobe of the life he was intended to start living.
Time After Time Page 28
