‘Oh, I don’t know, honey. I like Teddy. She’s a real brick; everybody says so. Loyal, loving to you. God knows we all wish we had someone like that in our lives. Maybe I’m a little jealous. But I don’t completely understand it. I mean my sister Abby has been that way all her life, a real tomboy, never dated. But you were the Belle of North Beach. You had men standing in line. And you loved every moment of it. Are you sure about Teddy? Does she “satisfy” you?’
Moira looked out at the street. The sun hit an old window of a semi-detached house, making rainbows in the watery panes. She thought of Mother’s crystal pendant, lost for a minute in the colors. She sighed and turned to Vivian. ‘You just finished listing her sterling qualities.’
‘I’m not asking about character. I’m talking flesh and blood.’ Vivian glanced sideways. ‘Honey, you want this person for the rest of your days?’
‘Why not?’ Moira turned back. ‘We love each other. We have fun together. I haven’t been this happy in years, maybe not ever before.’
‘Well, then, what about the kid?’
‘What about her?’ Moira held Tess closer. What had got into Vivian? Moira wanted to stop this conversation right here. It was as if Vivian were voicing all her fears about this new life and her courage to handle it. ‘Tess will be a heck of a lot happier than I was as a child.’
‘Don’t you think she needs her father?’
‘Her father?!’ Moira’s voice rang. ‘And just how would you suggest I retrieve her father? Who knows where Randy is? When he returns, if he returns, who knows what he will think of Tess? And what other man would take us on? We’re both very lucky to have Teddy. Besides I love her. We have a home.’ Moira dug into her breast pocket for a handkerchief and blew her nose.
Vivian patted her leg. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe it’s not hearing from Rick for so long. Somehow it’s unnerving that you don’t worry about Randy. Maybe that’s it.’
‘But you’re married to Rick. And I-I-I have a home with Teddy now.’
‘Maybe I just envy you your tranquility.’
Moira regarded Vivian through red, wet eyes. ‘Me, tranquil?’
The two women laughed together. Vivian pulled over in front of a red brick house which functioned as a family home by night and a private nursery by day. It seemed ages until they boarded the ferry to Richmond and reached the yard.
Vivian managed to find a parking spot close to the fence. While they were collecting their gear, Moira tried to shake her anxiety about Tess.
‘So are you still happy with the flanging? I mean you don’t regret not going into chipping and burning?’
‘You’re kidding?’ Vivian slung her purse over her shoulder and slammed the car door. ‘You wouldn’t catch me wearing all that gear. Safety boots and heavy gloves are enough for me. I feel like a snow woman as it is.’
Moira nodded, not really listening, eager to fill the time until the gate when she could part from Vivian. She regretted that they had already made a plan for lunch. It would be hard to forget the morning’s conversation. Finally they got to the plate shop, a big building running the width of the shipyard. Moira raised her hand.
‘See you at lunch.’ Vivian smiled and walked on.
Moira nodded to Cliff and Samantha before going into the corner to pull on her heavy leathers and hood and thick gloves. Now, with the hot spell over, this gear was more bearable.
The shipyard folks were different from people at the office. Easier somehow. You didn’t have to talk unless you wanted. Maybe that had to do with the concentration their work took. As a receptionist she was always on the alert to please, to say the right things. But here the job took you to another world, where words were not so important. Your focus had to be steady and clear. Moira had been extra careful with the torch since Tess was born. Today she would be working alone, although Cliff and Samantha remained in the same room. The morning passed quickly.
She almost missed the lunch whistle. She would have kept working if Cliff hadn’t walked up and waved his hat in her face. Pulling out the earplugs, she looked up quizzically.
‘I’ve heared of whistle-to-whistle workers, ladybug, but this is overdoing it.’
‘Oh,’ she smiled. ‘It’s the foam rubber. Much better than cotton. Can’t hear a thing. Thanks, Cliff. Guess I am hungry.’
‘Then get a move on, girl.’ Vivian leaned against the doorframe. ‘It’s not as if we have a two martini lunch.’
As they walked out into the yard, Moira blinked at the intensity of the sun. Such a different light from her torch. When she was working, she enjoyed the flame’s brilliance and her own controlled sense of power. Out here the sun illuminated everything equally, recklessly lending energy to ships and people and buildings. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and was conscious of weakness in her knees. ‘Let’s go over by the railing there, in the shade.’
Vivian nodded. So many people milling around. Such a difference from minutes before when everyone was disciplined to assignments from the inner bottom to the high steel rails. Moira felt dizzier than she had during pregnancy. Maybe her period was coming. She tried to concentrate on things outside herself as they walked and she considered how many more women worked in the yard now than when she first arrived. It was great to see hardhats with ‘Barbie’ and ‘Gina’ and ‘Marie’ and ‘Maxine’. A lot more old people were also working, which allowed able-bodied men to join the service. As the sign on the latrine read, ‘Be a worker. Free a worker.’ She even saw one or two men who looked like they might have been wounded during the last war. Certainly there were a lot of Negroes. Dawn had told Teddy that thousands of colored women had left farms in the South to come to California for gold mine jobs. It helped Moira picture what home was like if they considered this a gold mine.
‘You OK?’ Vivian asked as they reached the fence. ‘You’re awful quiet.’
‘A little tired,’ Moira mumbled. ‘And hungry.’ She opened the baloney sandwich which Teddy had made this morning. What the hell did Vivian want after ripping apart her entire universe on the way to work?
Vivian bit into a carrot and shook her head. ‘You know Cliff’s family came to Richmond in the early 1900s and there were only a handful of houses. They say that at the beginning of the war there were 20,000 people here and now there are ten times that many.’
Moira nodded, conscious that Vivian was trying to be conciliatory. Ah, times were hard on everyone. Vivian was just taking out her worries on her. Moira had probably returned the favor a hundred times.
Vivian unlaced her boot. ‘No, better not. I’ll never get back into it.’
Moira bit her apple. ‘How does the change from Liberties to transports seem to be affecting your crew?’ She noticed the stiffness in her voice.
‘Well, Miss Plushbottom, I haven’t taken a comprehensive survey, but …’
They both laughed.
‘Truce?’ asked Moira.
‘Friend, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to butt in.’
‘Truce,’ Moira said more abruptly than she intended. ‘And when are you coming over to the house for supper? You and Dorothy. Let’s make it soon, OK?’
‘Love it. You set the night.’
But Moira was distracted watching a crane swing a huge unit over by the plate shop. What were they doing with that thing, she wondered. The spectre of it swinging in mid-air, and the huge hole it would pound in the earth if the crane operator were an inch off, filled her with panic. Sometimes she felt as if she were living on the edge of the world.
Moira relaxed back on the elephant couch, feeding Tess her bottle and savoring the smell of Teddy’s meatloaf. Would they eat as much meatloaf when Wanda and Ann came home? When Wanda and Ann came home — how much of that fantasy did she buy any more? Surely not as much as Teddy although they all wrote about the house ‘returning to normal’ after the war. Teddy’s letters wer
e full of plans about developing the garden and painting the house. Ann’s letters seemed to nod in casual support. But Wanda hadn’t shown much enthusiasm for anything since Howard died. Well, if they all did return, no doubt the menu would change. She tried to forget the conversation with Vivian and to concentrate on Tess.
The child seemed to feel completely secure in her arms. Did she think Moira had been a mother all her life? Would she ever see herself as a mother? Tess sucked greedily on the bottle. Moira wished she could breastfeed. But Mother warned that it created dependence. Besides, she had to keep up with the job. Mother always won the arguments, if indirectly.
Mother was less critical now that Moira had accomplished at least one expected task: she had produced a beautiful grandchild, if not at the proper time. Now the weekly phone calls were easier because they shared an interest. Moira learned to sort out Mother’s helpful advice from her special obsessions. The sweetest moment of Mother’s visit was when she declared that Moira looked just like this as a child, rosy and animated. Eventually the visit did become a strain. What would they have done without Teddy’s peacemaking charm?
Moira rocked Tess and considered that it hadn’t always been hard to be her mother’s daughter. There had been wonderful weekends shopping and walking on the beach. Mother could never get her fill of those warm shores after the dour mists of Scotland. Moira remembered one long afternoon when the two of them walked miles in Long Beach. Daddy was fishing with his friends so she and Mother took the opportunity to hike along the shore as far as time would allow. Further. Almost lost in the dark, Moira felt more exhilaration than fear. She and Mother matched footprints in the mucky sand. At one point, they even held hands and skipped, Mother singing in her inimitably creaky voice, ‘A Roamin’ in the Gloamin’.
In fact, Moira reflected now, the two of them got along fairly well until Moira started high school. This was an important period, Mother reminded her, a time to study, to make the right friends. If only she, herself, hadn’t quit school in grade six, she could have made something of her life. Home became more and more fraught. Sister Lawrence lectured about ‘normal adolescence’. But Moira knew something else was happening, something to do with the whole family.
Early in the mornings when she was supposed to be sleeping, she could hear her parents arguing on the couch in the living room. Mother complained about Daddy’s refusal to put himself forward at the factory. Daddy said he liked the men at work and he wasn’t interested in becoming foreman. Gradually the fights cooled down. Her parents said little to each other for days at a time. Moira knew Mother’s ambitions had shifted to her.
Tess stretched away from the bottle, whimpering. Moira flapped a diaper over her left shoulder and burped her baby. As she carried Tess upstairs she considered that she had no designs on Tess’s life. Not yet. She didn’t care what the girl did as long as she was happy. Was that any different from what Mother always wanted for her? Perhaps the difference was that Moira knew she had to maintain a future for herself.
‘Urrrph’. Tess burped again and wiggled. Moira felt warm liquid filling the diaper and smiled to herself as she set Tess down on the changing table. How simple this part was. How easy to feed and burp and wash. She prayed she could keep up as the dance became more complex.
‘Soup’s on, Moi,’ Teddy called from the foot of the stairs.
‘I’ll be right down,’ Moira shouted over her shoulder as she placed Tess in the crib. She tucked in the pink and white blanket, which Teddy’s Mom had knitted, and kissed Tess on the forehead. The child turned to the side and stared at the wall with a thin smile of satisfaction. Moira wondered how long Tess’s sweet temperament would last. Everybody said two would be a terrible age. But then Tess might surprise her. Why was she always peering over the edge for pain? Why couldn’t she simply accept the moment? Wasn’t that what she was lecturing Vivian about this morning?
‘Smells good.’ Moira walked into the kitchen. ‘And baked potato!’
Teddy kissed Moira on the cheek.
Moira collected her thoughts. ‘Candles too. Must be a celebration.’
‘Well.’ Teddy spoke slowly, as she always did when she was trying to do one thing and talk about another. ‘Hang on till I get this supper on the table and I’ll tell you.’
Moira admired the steaming meatloaf, the salad, the potatoes oozing in oleomargarine and leaned back in her chair. It had been a tough day — that hard conversation with Vivian, the sweat of the plate shop, Tess’s needs. Yes, she was going to enjoy this meal.
Teddy sat down with a plop. ‘Ohhhh, long day, eh?’
Moira gave her a hand. Teddy kissed it and said, ‘Well, the bond drive is a success. Mr Whitney called me in this afternoon and said we made 5,000 over the goal.’
‘Terrific, honey.’ Moira raised her water glass. ‘A toast to the queen of the home front!’
Teddy clinked her glass and took a long gulp. Moira dug into the food, aware only after several moments that Teddy was neither eating nor drinking.
‘Hey, pal, what’s going on? Where are you? Supper’s getting cold.’
‘Yes.’ Teddy smiled absently. ‘You’re right. It was just sort of a peculiar day at work.’
‘What do you mean? Weren’t you Miss Emporium?’
‘That’s sort of the problem.’
‘What do you mean?’ Moira set down her fork and observed her friend carefully.
‘That wasn’t all Mr Whitney said.’
Moira waited. Still, she wasn’t used to Teddy’s long silences. What to do while she waited to finish sentences? She had tried pointing out these lapses and this only flustered Teddy and made her speak more slowly. Sometimes Moira silently counted. Sometimes she recited poetry. Lately, she had avoided filling in the gaps because, when she did this, she was caught in her own thoughts by the time Teddy did get back to her sentence. Now she took a long drink of water.
‘Well, he asked if I had a fellow.’
Moira choked.
Teddy stared, waiting for her friend to laugh.
Finally Moira did smile, ‘Wha, what did you say?’
‘I was too flabbergasted to be smart.’ Teddy blushed. ‘I just told him the truth. I said I didn’t have a fellow.’
‘Oh, no. Then what?’
‘He invited me to the movies with him on Saturday.’
‘Yes?’
‘I told him the truth, that I had plans — remember Dawn and Sandra are coming to supper. And then my mind started to heat up, thinking of excuses to leave the office. But you know me, never fast enough. Mr Whitney comes over and puts his arm around my shoulder, real friendly like, and says, “Another time then?’”
‘And?’
‘Well, I decided to remain calm. I said, “Sure, I could bring along my friend Moira. We like going to the movies.’”
‘And he said?’
‘You might have guessed. He said, “What does she look like? I could find a date for her, too.”’ Teddy grinned.
Moira giggled; then grew serious.
‘Oh, Teddy, how can we laugh at this. It could mean trouble for you. You could even get fired. You might even wind up as Mrs Whitney.’
‘Aw. Anyway, I thought up a good story for next time. I’ll tell him I had a close friend who just died in the war. Now he’s got to respect a girl’s grief. I just wish I didn’t have to lie. I just wish I could walk down Market Street with you hand in hand. All this deception — it’s humiliating.’
‘Yes,’ Moira nodded. She stared at the back window, at the two spots of candle light shining against the blackness, like car headlights funneling down a deserted road.
‘But I do have some good news.’ Teddy’s eyes brightened as she pulled out an envelope. ‘A thick letter from our friend in Arizona.’
She began to read.
Dear Teddy and Moira,
Thanks for the letters
and packages …
The big story in camp is the government release, of course. It has only taken them three years to determine that we’re not responsible for Pearl Harbor. Well, I shouldn’t say too much in case I jinx it. We’ll be on our way to California as soon as we settle things here.
I got a letter from Roy last week which I’m still puzzling over. He says he’s thinking about going to optometry school. Something about lenses of one sort being as good as lenses of another sort. Of course he thinks that there will be more financial security as an eye doctor than as a freelance photographer. He feels loaded now with responsibilities to my family and to his own parents.
Ann sounds like she’s getting more serious about Reuben. What do you know about that? I wonder if she’ll stay in London …
Thanks for the pictures of Tess. She’s a doll. What I’d like now is some pictures of you two. God, I wonder how this war has transformed us all …
Teddy finished reading the letter and closed her eyes. ‘I can’t believe she’ll be coming home.’
‘Now, don’t get too excited.’ Moira wanted to add that there was no telling what Wanda would consider home when she returned to San Francisco.
‘Might as well hope,’ sighed Teddy.
‘So what’s on for the rest of the evening?’ asked Moira. ‘Radio any good?’
Teddy moved her knee against Moira’s. ‘I was thinking we might retire. Might go to bed and see what we find there.’
‘What a fine idea,’ Moira smiled, taking her hand. ‘We’ll leave the dishes to the maid — or the morning — whichever comes first.’
All Good Women Page 33
