Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  Now, they were quiet. Below them, a newer city bus came squealing to a stop, and two young women got out. They crossed toward the hotel. The bus pulled away, and turned down Pennsylvania. In the distance there was music, probably from a car radio. The old man cleared his throat. “She looks good. Your mother does. She looks very good.”

  The boy let this stand.

  His father sighed. “I want to explain something to you, but I don’t know quite how to start.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “People—people do things when they’re scared. They do things—and when a whole country gets scared, things—things happen…” He stopped. “The bomb put such a scare into us, Walter. We had used it. We knew. We had an unhappy knowledge about what it could do. And this got us all on some level down deep. The whole country.” Again, he stopped. “Well. Your mother thinks I’ve come here to settle something. I haven’t. But I want you to understand me.”

  The brightness and shapeliness of the Capitol had grown insubstantial in the falling summer haze. Above it all was a bonecolored half-moon and strips of luminous cloud. The stars were bright, a vivacious milky glow fading into the distant sparkle of the skyline. Traffic went by, and from somewhere came the unreal wail of a siren. It died, and the traffic sounds seemed muted slightly, still backed by the strains of music in the distance. A couple walked past on the sidewalk below, arm in arm, talking softly. Colored people. They faltered momentarily over an uneven place in the sidewalk, then laughed, and the man put his hand in the middle of the woman’s back as they reached the curb. She wore a corsage. He swung his arms at his sides, proud and confident of himself, walking toward the Willard. Their voices were soon gone, and the boy and his father were alone again.

  “I always liked it, living here. I felt lucky. It’s strange to see it now, after all these years.”

  The boy waited.

  “When I finally left for overseas in 1943, your grandfather said one thing to me. I had gone into the street in front of the house, loading up this old ’37 Ford—a friend of mine was carting me off to report for duty. We were going to Baltimore, I remember, to Fort Holabird. I stood in the street and waved good-bye, and my father came down off the porch and out to where I was standing. He walked up to me and stuck his finger in my chest and said, ‘Do your duty.’ And then he said, ‘And write your mother.’ Nothing else. Those words exactly. He turned around and went back up to the house and in, and it wasn’t until later that I realized what it must’ve cost him to do that, and that what he wanted was for me to write him, as well.”

  “I wish I could’ve known him,” the boy said.

  But the old man was thinking about something else, already speaking again. “The only thing I asked for, through the whole mess of that war, was that I be allowed to come home and start a family. That’s what I prayed for.” He shook his head as if with frustration. “I did some things when I was a young man, see. Back in the thirties. When a man’s young and idealistic, as I was—just a kid. Well.” He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, looking down. It was as if he had checked himself. “It’s water under the bridge now. Too much water under the bridge. We can’t ask for time back, can we?”

  There was nothing Marshall could think of to tell him.

  “Your mother and I—you know, it was best at the time that she stay here, with you. In fact, for quite a while there I couldn’t afford to send for her anyway. And then—well, it was just too late. And you know, I never married again, either. Never got to where I was comfortable with anyone else, really.”

  “Mom, too,” the boy said.

  “I wish I could’ve been here for you, son. I’m proud of the way you turned out.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Did your mother ever—she hasn’t talked about me, then?”

  “Not much, sir. Just that you were—you weren’t coming home. I was so young. I just seemed to grow into knowing it.”

  “Well, that’s all understandable.”

  The truth was that she would not talk about him at all, nor would she permit others to do so, even if it was to commiserate with her for having been left alone that way, with a small child and no money or job or hope of a job. Over the years, there had been several instances of her anger at people for talking about it, wanting to name what had been done to her. She told her son that it was as if they required it of her, this kind of talk, but finally, it was no one’s business but hers.

  “You know,” his father went on, “we were all very upset and exhilarated and scared during those first days of the war. The whole country was. The war had started for us and we weren’t ready for it. The first two months of my training was with a stick for a rifle. We were afraid and we were ill-equipped and we were paranoid. Remember that. And when the war was over, we got even more paranoid—because of the thing we finally did to win it, and because we could see how terrible it was, and what it might do in the wrong hands—it’s the central frightening thing in the world now, and when you look at the faces of people, I believe you can still see the effects of it.” He paused, then nodded as though acceding to something in himself. Then he took the cane and shifted a little, moving away from the statue. The boy followed, reached for his arm, and then thought better of it. They moved to the edge of the low stairs down to the sidewalk and the street. “It’s understandable, that paranoia. Remember that. We all had it. A bad mistake—but understandable. Nobody’d ever had a thing of that magnitude to think about before. It was the first time in all of human history—this frightening and awful thing—a weapon that could put an end to everyone. Could—stop history, and take away any hope of a future. You have to see it that way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Whatever happens—whatever anyone does or says, Walter, remember that you and I stood here and looked at this city, and I told you something of how it was.”

  “I understand,” Walter Marshall said, not quite understanding at all. “Here.” He offered his arm.

  “I’m fine. I can walk.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The old man stopped and fixed him with a look. “And don’t believe everything you hear, son. This country is a beautiful idea, a great idea—but men fail their ideas all the time and you can’t believe everything you hear.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, help me get over to the car. I’m getting tired.”

  They made their slow progress down to the street, got into the car, and the boy drove his father back to the motel on the other side of the river, where they had a beer together, though Marshall was only seventeen. His father didn’t speak of the past again during his stay. And then he was gone. And the young man knew he would never see him again.

  He took the bus to work. Again, Alice wasn’t there. She called him at midday to ask if he would come to the hospital that afternoon for a visit with Minnie. Stephen and a couple of the others were planning to stop by. She was working on smoothing things over with her father, who had begun to soften, considering the seriousness of Minnie’s condition. He had even visited Minnie again last evening. That alone was an admission of a kind.

  “Are you sure Minnie wouldn’t mind my visiting?”

  “I’m sure, Walter. I wouldn’t ask if there was a problem.”

  When Mr. Wolfschmidt let him go, it was well past five o’clock. The bus into Arlington was packed, and he had to stand, pitching back and forth with the motion of it, in a tight crowd of older men, all of them in long overcoats and wearing hats. The day was mild, with the threat of rain—a gray, featureless sky fading quickly toward a starless night. When he arrived at the hospital room, Stephen and Diane were already there. Minnie lay with her hands folded on her big chest, eyes shut peacefully, while they stood around the bed. Alice kissed him on the mouth, and to his astonishment, Stephen walked over and hugged him. The gesture made him feel as though he had come home from a long journey.

  Marshall said, “How’s Minnie?” taking off his coat.

  “Resting,” said Ali
ce.

  Diane offered to shake hands across the bed. Marshall did so. “We just got here,” she said. Her eyebrow pencil made two perfect arches above the natural line of her brows, and her round cheeks were too heavily rouged. Her hand felt cool and small and dry, and when Marshall let go of it she smiled and touched it to the lobe of her ear.

  The room was very small and severe, painted a flat white, with one smudged, narrow window, below which stood a radiator covered with a metal hood. The radiator clanked with the rising steam. Somewhere behind the walls water ran through pipes. There was a painting on the wall opposite the window of a line of very slender, pale girls performing ballet exercises. On the table next to the bed were two glasses and a pitcher of water, a Bible, a pair of steel-framed spectacles, and a box of Kleenex.

  Alice reached over, picked up Minnie’s smooth, brown hand, and held it.

  For a long time no one said anything, and there was only the slow, soft sound of Minnie’s breathing.

  “She used to hold my hand like this,” Alice said, low. “When I was little and had a nightmare. I had a lot of nightmares one year and she’d sit up with me. Hours. I was nine years old. She’d stay the whole night, watching with me until the sun came up and it was light and I could sleep. We’d hear Daddy snoring down the hall. Sometimes I’d fall asleep, and when I’d wake up she’d still be there, still holding my hand.”

  “I didn’t know her until Miss Eva introduced us,” Stephen said. He turned to Marshall. “I was interviewing Miss Eva for my high school newspaper, and Minnie was there, watching over her.”

  “She watched over everyone,” Alice said. Her voice broke on the last word. Stephen paused, ran one hand over his mouth. She swallowed, seemed to struggle with herself briefly, then said, “She was something on Saturday, wasn’t she?”

  “I was so proud of us all.” Diane looked at each of them in turn, smiling.

  “I felt—happy,” Marshall said. “I was more happy than afraid—some of the time, anyway.”

  “Yes,” Stephen said kindly. “That, too. It’s like that, isn’t it.”

  And Minnie opened her eyes. “Stephen.” Her voice came in a whisper.

  “I’m right here, Miss Minnie.”

  “You got work to do.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why ain’t you doin’ it?”

  “It’s not going anywhere, Minnie. It’ll be there when I go pick it up again.”

  “You gone pick up your cross,” Minnie said with a small smile. Her teeth were extraordinarily straight and white.

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “Amen.”

  “I done carried mine,” she said. “Aftah years a turning away and hiding.”

  “The Lord provides and understands in his mysterious ways.”

  “Amen. I believe in my bruthuh man.”

  “Praise Jesus,” Stephen said.

  She looked at Alice. “Girl.”

  “Yes, Minnie.”

  “Where’s my kiss?”

  Alice bent down and touched her lips to the wide cheek. Minnie closed her eyes, sighed, then opened them again.

  “Where’s Mistuh Patrick?”

  “He’ll be here in a little while,” Alice said. “Minnie, when’re you coming back home with us?”

  Minnie smiled, and when she spoke it was with an inflection almost like singing. “Ho-o-m-e,” she said, drawing the word out slightly. “Mmm-hmm.”

  “The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with you. That it’s up to you. All you have to do is get up and walk out of here.”

  “Child,” Minnie said, patting Alice’s wrist.

  “It’s true,” said Alice. “Stephen, tell her it’s true.”

  “That’s what they say,” Stephen said.

  Minnie looked at Marshall now, and for a brief moment there was something like anger in her features. It took a beat for him to realize that she was struggling to recall his face. He nearly backed away. “Why, you’re that nice young man,” she said at last.

  “He came to see you,” Alice said. “We’re going to be married.”

  “Yes,” Minnie said, “I remembuh, na.”

  “Minnie, you wouldn’t want to miss my wedding, would you?”

  “Oh, how we used to talk about that.”

  “Remember?” Alice said.

  The old eyes closed, and Minnie seemed to sleep. They waited for a few minutes, listening again to the quiet sound of her breathing. “Ah been waiting for that gret gittin’ up moanin’,” she said sleepily. “Praise his name.”

  Again, she was quiet. The minutes passed. No one said anything. Alice sniffled once, and Stephen put his hand on her shoulder, lightly, then took it away. When a doctor came to examine Minnie, they all walked together out to the nurses’ station.

  “That’s the way she’s been,” Alice said. “Going on six days.”

  “She wakes up,” Stephen said, “seems herself. But then she’s gone again, and they can’t find a thing wrong with her.”

  “Maybe they’re not looking hard enough,” Diane said.

  “They’ve been very kind,” said Stephen.

  Alice said, “My father wouldn’t let them be anything else.”

  A moment later, Diane said, “Stephen’s going south, to join up with Dr. King’s people.”

  “I plan to ask if they’ll let me work for him,” Stephen said.

  “Tell Minnie,” Alice said. “Oh, and I would love to go with you.”

  Marshall was ashamed to find himself seeing this as an opening; he almost urged Alice to go. He looked at Stephen, with his large, moist eyes and pitted cheeks, and felt somehow duplicitous, as though he had already cheated these friends. And they were friends. He thought of his mother’s chiding about what he had confessed, and felt newly embarrassed by it: There were no expressions with which to confess the sins of prevarication and falseness he had committed in the last hour alone.

  He walked with Alice to the entrance of Minnie’s room. Minnie lay asleep, just as before, perfectly at peace, as still as a work of sculpture. The doctor, a very short, stocky man who wore an expensive suit under the white lab coat, was standing at the foot of the bed and writing something on a pad. His oxblood shoes were well polished, and shone in the light. He had thick, stubby fingers, and there was some sort of hitch in his breathing, as though he were about to cough or clear his throat. The smell of tobacco was all over him.

  “Well?” Alice said to him.

  “Nothing very specific to report, I’m afraid. And no change. Suppose we just try to consider the sleep as being restorative. This is a form of exhaustion, apparently. When she’s ready to come out of it…” he trailed off.

  “Is her heartbeat—”

  “Everything seems normal enough. Look, I know I’ve said this, but it’s—it really is hard to tell sometimes with the elderly. You have to allow for a few things.”

  When the doctor had gone, she put her head on Marshall’s shoulder. “I’m so worried about her.”

  “I know.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Thanks for coming by.”

  “I wish there was something I could do,” he told her.

  Then Stephen and Diane were there, and they shook hands with him. This time an embrace seemed too much, though he would have liked one. He asked their forgiveness for having to leave, using the excuse of his mother being alone, and took himself on down the lonely corridor. Alice called after him, and then hurried to catch up. “I’ll walk you out.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  She seemed puzzled. “Of course I do.”

  In the little bus stand out front, she threw her arms around him and kissed him on the mouth. It was a long, distressing kiss. “Oh, how can we wait,” she said, finally breaking away. He saw the pulsing in her neck, and felt the heat in her bones, pressing her to him and looking beyond her at the tall, dark building with its warm lights in the windows.

  “Alice,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” she said. “It’
s all my fault.” She stepped back, crossing her arms as if to ward off the chill. “Will you call me?”

  “Yes,” he told her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  And he repeated the phrase.

  She rushed back at him, pressed herself against him, but the kiss was just a brushing of her lips on his. “’Bye.”

  “’Bye,” he said.

  And she was running across the space between the building and this bus stand. “Call me,” she yelled over her shoulder.

  The bus was pulling in. She waved from the big entrance of the building and, looking back as he climbed onto the bus, he returned the wave.

  Chapter 16

  Through the rest of the week, and into the next, Minnie wavered between waking and sleeping, and Alice was at her side for most of it. She took vacation days from work, and Sunday, against her father’s wishes, spent the night in Minnie’s hospital room. But Alice’s father had begun spending time there, too, as it began to seem apparent to everyone, including even the doctors now, that Minnie was dying. They could find nothing physically wrong with her. All her vital signs and all the tests showed her to be quite normal, even rather robust for a woman of her heavy build who was past seventy. But she remained in the hospital bed, from which she was evidently unable to move, and where Patrick Kane had said she would be suffered to remain as long as this was so, no matter what the tests showed, and no matter what the cost. She lay there, breathing shallowly, eyes closed, drifting in and out of sleep, and everyone was simply waiting for the end.

  Marshall saw Albert at the school, informed him of this, and Albert wept. “I’m not very strong just now,” he said. He went on to say that Emma had moved in with him, and was proving to be more trouble than he had anticipated. Her aunt Patty had disowned her, in a rage, for flaunting the family’s strict religious beliefs: Emma was living in sin. “And she won’t let me near her. Not until we are married. So I have all the disapproval and anger and shame of an illicit affair without any of the pleasure of one. I know that doesn’t sound like me. Sometimes I get a little tired of being so damn nice all the time to everybody.”