All Good Women

by Valerie Miner

  ‘Maybe not to focus, but how about a little background music.’ Moira drank the last of her lager and reached for the pitcher to pour refills.

  Wanda put her hand over her glass and asked Ann what she meant.

  ‘Only that we’re interested in our own careers,’ Ann said.

  ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t have families,’ Wanda answered quickly.

  ‘No, just that we’re not about to drop fruit yet,’ winked Moira.

  ‘I mean,’ Ann’s voice was calm, precise, ‘that we’re committed to working in the world as well as to having families — you with your journalism, Teddy at the Emporium, Moira in the movies.’ Ann raised her glass. ‘And me, knock wood, with Julius Caesar in Rome.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ laughed Teddy. ‘Some of the girls at Tracey said straight away that they were studying to be secretaries of the lawyers they were gonna marry.’

  Well, Ann was right, Wanda decided in her diary. They did have a special perspective, wanting lives of their own.

  Acknowledging this now, Wanda felt torn between Roy and the girls. Ridiculous notion. They had made no pact. They weren’t a convent or a coven. However, she had never imagined she would lead the exodus. Moira had seemed most likely to wear the first white gown. Teddy, of course, would be the last to leave. She would be the most hurt and the most understanding about Wanda wanting to get married. Wanda shook herself out of the reverie. Why was she so bothered? This was completely unnatural. She should be ecstatic that she had found someone to love and all she could feel was guilty.

  ‘Boy, that must be some cheese.’ Roy’s nervous voice roused her. ‘What’s it laced with? Opium?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, conscious again that she could not answer him. Looking at his long, masculine legs and staunch shoulders, she did feel ‘sorry’, as if she had landed on a strange planet. Who was this? A man. An other. How could they share lives? She would miss the common sensibility she had known with the girls. She had lived in a house of soft flesh and dulcet tones, save the occasional screech from Moira. She had grown accustomed to a light tread on the stairway and to the slight irony — or was it iron-like — odor of the bathroom during their monthly period, for it all came simultaneously from them, the discharge of unnecessary cargo from private wombs. She recollected the quiet swish of their nightgowns as they gathered in the kitchen on weekend mornings. She smelled their face cream and lipstick and perfume. She experienced all these sensations with a startling feeling of loss. What sounds and smells and textures would this ‘other’ being bring to her life? When you were married were you still a whole female or did you become half of a whole that was different, unrecognizable from your past and from your deepest visions of the future?

  Wanda cleared her throat. ‘No, not opium, just memories.’

  ‘Better than hallucinations.’ He smiled, too, trying for the light-heartedness of a few moments before.

  Wanda watched the concern on his face. She wanted to protect him. She resisted an irrational anger about the need to translate. Wouldn’t another woman have understood? What did it matter? ‘Memories of the house,’ she said finally. ‘Of how we met each other. It’s still hard to piece together. Hard to take apart.’

  ‘OK, OK, I was just wondering.’ His eyes were shadowed now and she felt him moving away, perhaps toward doubt about her stiffness and distance.

  She imagined herself a mermaid, longing after a shimmering fish as he moved from the sunny depths towards tangles of seaweed and faraway caves. Unwilling to leave the sweet air she breathed, unwilling to let him go too far into the ocean. Unwilling to lose him; unwilling to lose herself. Panicked at the impossibility of mutuality. Wanda broke the spell. ‘Would you pass the coleslaw please?’

  He laughed.

  She laughed. Gradually, the acid in her stomach dissolved and she could feel lunch being digested. Roy talked about his admiration for Howard. Wanda agreed. ‘Too generous for his own good.’ They all loved him for it. Yet Wanda found herself, on this day of disloyalty, comparing Howard to Roy. As much as she agreed about her brother’s qualities, she thought he lacked ambition. There he was, everyone’s nice guy, the life of the party, with no direction of his own. In comparison, Roy had plans and, if they sometimes worried her, they also excited her. Howard had grown into all Papa was not — reliable, predictable and, for that, a little boring. Sometimes Wanda thought Roy was a cross between Papa’s adventuresomeness and Howard’s security. How much of this was Roy and how much was her fantasy?

  Cool winds drew from nowhere, so they packed up the rest of lunch. She worried that she had been too distracted, but he seemed caught in his own thoughts now. Over the last few months, they had developed a companionable silence, as Teddy called it. Wanda noticed that only the red rind remained from the cheese, so they must have eaten quite a substantial meal.

  Briskly, they walked back to the park entrance. The breeze haunted her with that chill which had crept between them on the shore. Just before the grove of eucalyptus, he took her hand. A flare coursed through her chest and stomach. The doubts faded. Jitters, of course she would have jitters about anything as serious as marriage. Surely she would miss her friends. That was normal. It was all very normal. Suddenly she became talkative.

  They walked along purposefully and didn’t even approach the topic of marriage. Concerned that her chatter might be overwhelming, she became silent. He, too, remained silent. Then, fearing that she seemed aloof, she moved closer and took his arm. He drew near, seemingly content in the silence. When they reached the tram stop, her jaw was set. She was convinced that the time for proposals was past.

  Climbing aboard the streetcar, Wanda was filled with disbelief and mortification. She sat down next to the window and stared blankly at the passing city. Had she imagined his attraction? Had vanity misled her? Did he lose his courage? Had she scared him when she became aphasic on the beach? Disoriented, as if a summer afternoon had just turned to snow, Wanda reconstructed her life. She would take the journalism course at night, finish the freelance article about abandoned children, stay in the house with her good friends. She and Roy could continue to date, but if nothing developed there were, as Uncle Fumio was fond of saying, ‘plenty of fish in the sea’.

  ‘Wanda?’

  Startled, she focused on the scene outside the window. They were half-way home. Then, turning to Roy, she became aware of her right hand in his tight grasp.

  ‘Something wrong?’ he inquired gently.

  ‘No, and with you?’ she responded more brusquely than she intended.

  ‘No.’ He shrugged. But she saw the sweat beading along his temple.

  ‘Do you think we could have dinner tonight?’ He quickened his pace as if she might decline before he finished the sentence, ‘because there’s something important I want to ask you.’

  His eyes were full. She was at once drenched in all the emotions from the park — fear, pleasure, panic, arousal, unqualified hope.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, willing him to hear the entirety of her meaning.

  ‘Could you wear that blue and white dress?’ He smiled at his own presumptuousness.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes.’ She tried to sound calm. ‘I’m glad you like that one.’

  He left her at the door with a kiss on her cheek.

  Wanda was shocked by the darkness of the living room. Adjusting to the light, she was further alarmed to find her three friends huddling around the radio, eyes transfixed by the dial as if it were a Ouija board. The jingle for Lux soap stung through the evening air. What was going on?

  They all noticed her at once.

  ‘Oh, Wanda,’ Moira called mournfully.

  ‘It’s just terrible,’ Ann apologized.

  A score of emotions, thoughts, impressions avalanched against Wanda’s lungs before she could breathe a word of question. Was one of the family hurt? Could they see marriage
written across her face? Had they lost the lease? What was going on?

  Teddy was the first to recognize her confusion. She stood and put an arm around Wanda’s shoulders. ‘They bombed Pearl Harbor this morning.’

  ‘Who … ?’ Wanda leaned back against the elephant couch.

  ‘The Japanese,’ said Moira, taking Wanda’s hand, ‘they bombed Pearl Harbor.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’ asked Ann, walking towards her. ‘This morning.’

  Chapter Nine

  Spring 1942, San Francisco

  BURMA-CHINA ROUTE SEVERED

  BRITISH TROOPS LAND IN MADAGASCAR

  US SURRENDERS ON MINDANAO

  RAF MASS BOMBING OF COLOGNE

  MOIRA PULLED HER COAT closer and tried to concentrate on her letter to Wanda. It seemed silly to write to her friend when she was interned only a few miles from home. But it was hard to visit the camp and she knew Wanda appreciated as much contact with the outside world as possible. Ridiculous, horrifying, enraging, she didn’t know the right word. She still couldn’t believe that the government had driven Mr Nakatani to suicide, that they had carted away the rest of the family, that so much had happened this winter and spring.

  Here she was waiting for her mother in this drafty Oakland train station. Well, if the train were any later, she could post the letter from Oakland, that might lend it an exotic flavor. Four o’clock. The rosary for Uncle Willie was scheduled for five o’clock. What if they were late? Was everyone going out for a meal afterward? She should have asked Aunt Evie, but she didn’t want to bother her with train schedules when her husband had just died. Well, Mother had no call to blame her.

  Moira reread her letter to Wanda.

  … So Uncle Willie died in an RAF crash. Poor Aunt Evie begged him not to enlist, told him that he was too old. But he had kept his British citizenship, well, you know this story because he enlisted shortly after we moved into the house together. When she got the telegram last week, Aunt Evie was calm and organized. But she fell apart the next day. And Mother is coming to see if she can set things in order. Aunt Flora and Uncle Benny are coming from Portland.

  It’s so strange, how personally this war has affected me. I thought this was all history or politics or something abstract until you were dragged away. And now Uncle Willie dying. What’s next? I’m petrified about Randy. Frankly, I think he’s a little scared too because he hasn’t made up his mind where to enlist. And Daniel is already on his way to Europe. Uncle Willie’s crash made me worry about …

  ‘The train from Los Angeles has arrived at Track Six. The train from Los Angeles has arrived at Track Six.’

  Moira stuffed Wanda’s letter into her purse and snapped to her feet. She hurried over to the crowd of people waiting and was breathing almost normally by the time she spotted Mother’s purple hat. Moira was filled with a longing for this striking woman. Tall, big bosomed, impeccably groomed. Moira had always hoped to grow into such elegant grace. She had enjoyed watching this face until it became set with disappointment. Moira knew she should shout and wave, but she wanted to watch for another moment.

  ‘Dear!’ Mother smiled. ‘Over here!’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’ Moira held her voice from the quaver which would creep in soon enough. She waved the rose she had been carrying, hoping it hadn’t wilted too much in the last two hours.

  ‘Lovely, dear.’ She accepted the flower and surveyed her daughter quickly.

  ‘Let me take the bags. Randy’s car is right out here. I got a great parking space.’ Moira tried to relax, but she was afraid to stop talking.

  ‘Sorry you had to wait so long, dear.’ She smelled the rose and sighed with fatigue.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t bad.’ Moira was so relieved she lost her grip on the bags. ‘I was writing a letter to Wanda.’

  ‘Wanda …’ Mother began. ‘Yes, Wanda.’ She stared at the rose. ‘A nice girl. Too bad about her people.’

  Did Mother mean too bad her family was locked up or too bad the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor? Or both? Well, now was not the time for political argument. No doubt opportunity would arise during the next few days.

  The church was cold and musty, but the pews had been polished recently and the aisles were spotless. Moira peered through the dim light and found Aunt Evie kneeling near the aisle in the front pew. The prayers echoed Sodality Wednesdays, when Moira and her school friends recruited reluctant classmates from recess to pray the rosary. She also thought of her own private prayers to the Blessed Virgin. Now Moira encouraged her mother toward the front pew, but she insisted on remaining inconspicuously at the back. They joined the others murmuring the ‘Our Father’, ‘Glory Be’, and ten ‘Hail Marys’.

  It had been years since Moira said a rosary, yet it came back to her with amazing ease. She was fond of these familiar prayers, remembering the refuge they once had promised. Faith, hope and charity. The cross, the anchor and the heart. The greatest of these is love, He said. A good thing, too, Moira thought now, because she had lost the cross and the anchor. Blasphemy made her nervous with Mother kneeling nearby, so she tried to concentrate. ‘ … Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou …’ She could almost smell the starch of Sister Gregory’s habit. How safe she felt as a child, enveloped by the odors of incense and stale holy water and Sister Gregory’s very faint sweat. She never mentioned this last scent to anyone, but she found it reassuring that Sister Gregory had a body under the habit. It meant there was hope for Moira. One day she would find something to contain her, to make her appropriate in the sight of God.

  ‘ … the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,’ Mother whispered.

  Moira looked at her mother looking at Aunt Evie. Mother’s face was creased with wary concern. How had the two of them survived sisterhood, Moira wondered. It must have been hard for Mother growing up with all those kids, under the helm of powerful Aunt Evie. Mother watched as Aunt Flora put an arm around Aunt Evie.

  ‘ … now and at the hour of our death. Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed is …’

  Moira had always thought of the rosary as a carousel she could get on at any moment. It didn’t matter if you missed a couple of turns. It would always come around again.

  ‘Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’

  World without end. Moira saw Aunt Evie compose herself and turn toward the aisle. Mother stood. Moira made the sign of the cross, as reflexively as saying good-bye at the end of a phone call. She stood as well. Aunt Evie was just a pew away before she caught sight of them.

  ‘Jenny,’ she gasped and reached for her sister. ‘Wee Jenny, you made it.’

  Moira watched the two tall women hug, watched Mother stiffen and then relax in her sister’s arms, the sister she was supposed to be comforting. Wee Jenny, Moira thought, and started to cry for Uncle Willie and Aunt Evie and for wee Jenny and for Wanda and for Randy. She stood there, holding her mouth and crying until she heard someone clear her throat. It was tired and tense Mother, wee Jenny gone altogether.

  Moira tried not to be anxious as she brought Mother home on Friday afternoon. After all, she could hardly stay alone now that Aunt Evie had gone up to Portland for a rest with Aunt Flora. And Mother had stayed an extra day in Northern California to spend time with Moira.

  ‘The glass bowl. How nice to see it on the mantelpiece.’ Mother spoke rapidly and Moira knew she was nervous. ‘My, you’ve done well with this living room.’

  ‘Your chamber’s up this way, Mother. Let me get you settled and then we’ll fix a cup of tea.’

  ‘You do know how to treat a guest, Moira.’

  Moira thought how Mother always turned formal when she was uncomfortable. She noticed her own comparative ease, showing Mother around her territory.

 
Ann entered from the kitchen. ‘Welcome, Mrs Finlayson, how nice to see you again.’

  ‘It’s mutual, Ann. And haven’t you changed quite a bit with your pretty new hair style.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ann flushed.

  ‘So will you be joining us for dinner?’

  ‘No thank you, Mrs Finlayson. I’m going to Shabbas — Synagogue — this evening.’

  Mrs Finlayson looked at her closely. ‘Oh, yes, you’re Jewish, aren’t you dear?’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ Moira interrupted. ‘Ann goes to Synagogue every week like you — we — go to Mass.’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked irritated, whether with her daughter, herself, or even Ann, Moira couldn’t tell.

  ‘I hope to see you in the morning?’

  ‘Yes, Ann dear, I hope so too.’

  Moira led Mother upstairs to her room, which she had been preparing all week. Just as they reached the landing, Teddy emerged.

  ‘Hi there, Mrs Finlayson, how nice to have you visiting us.’ She gave Moira’s mother a hug. The woman held herself straight, so Teddy drew apart, still smiling. ‘We’ve been looking forward to seeing you.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ Mrs Finlayson answered. ‘I hope you’ll be able to join us for dinner tonight. I’m taking Moira and her young man to what I understand is a very good restaurant.’

  ‘Oh, no thanks, Ma’am. I’m going off to my family tonight. It’s Jolene’s — that’s my younger sister — Jolene’s birthday tonight.’

  ‘How nice that you’re in such close touch with your family. It must be a real comfort to your mother.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’ Teddy considered Moira. ‘Well, now, I reckon I’d better let you get settled.’

  ‘Very nice to see you, Teddy.’

  Moira clenched her teeth. What happened to wee Jenny?

  Randy rang the bell with his usual flair and Moira rushed to greet him before Mother descended.

  He was handsome in his new blue suit. His hair was a little on the longish side and she wondered what Mother would think. Then she stopped herself. She was twenty-two years old.