“You’ve met before?” Ruby asked.
“Once, at the café in Liberal. Adjoining counter stools,” he explained, giving no further details of our conversation, for which I was grateful.
“It’s nice to see you again, too.”
Paul clapped his hands together expectantly and said, “So, are we going to stand out here all day or go in and carve that delicious-smelling bird? I’m starving!”
Dinner was delicious, and Morgan’s family couldn’t have been nicer. It was the first time I’d ever sat down and shared a meal with a family, a real family.
Every head was still and bowed as Paul gave a simple, beautiful prayer of thanks. After he finished, everyone dug in, piling plates high with turkey, dressing, potatoes, green beans, and creamed onions, giving frequent and well-deserved compliments to the cooks, Ruby, Grandma Clare, and Eva, between bites.
“Well, it was Ruby did most of it,” Grandma Clare said. “Eva and I lent a hand, but Ruby is the real cook in the family. Best in the county. Ruby, remember back when you were a little girl? You didn’t have any more business being in the kitchen than a pig has in the henhouse. Remember when you made that pie for your daddy and you added salt in place of the sugar?”
Eva came to her friend’s defense, saying Clare ought not to bring up that story after all these years, though she smiled broadly as she spoke, obviously still amused by the memory. “Besides, Mama, everybody has heard that story a million times.”
“Georgia hasn’t,” said Grandma Clare.
“True enough,” Ruby piped in good-naturedly. “So, just for the record, Georgia, I did make an apple pie with salt instead of sugar when I was eight years old. It took my daddy twenty minutes to make sure everybody in town heard the story and twenty years for me to live it down.” Ruby laughed, asked Pete if he wanted more potatoes, and passed him the bowl.
“Well, honey,” Pete said and patted Ruby’s hand as she held out the bowl of potatoes, “it don’t matter to me what kind of a cook you were when you were eight. All I know is I’d walk in from town through a tornado for one of your dinners now.” This one speech was at least twice as long as anything Pete had said all evening. He looked in Ruby’s eyes after he finished, and she blushed.
“Here! Here!” Paul lifted his water glass in a toast to Ruby and then addressed himself to Pete. “I’d snap her up quick if I were you, Pete. If any of the other fellows in town get a taste of Ruby’s fried chicken, she’ll be off the market.”
Pete swallowed hard and reached up to loosen his necktie, which appeared to be bothering him. “Truth is,” he said, clearing his throat, “I already have. Proposed to Ruby last night, and she said yes. So, Pastor, if you’ll say the service, we’d like to be married in the spring.” Pete was beaming as he spoke, but no one could really hear him because as soon as he uttered the word “proposed” the family was on their feet, hugging Ruby, slapping Pete on the back, and shouting congratulations to them both.
“That’s great, Aunt Ruby!”
“Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Wonderful news!”
“Do you have a date in mind?”
Ruby, whose face and eyes were shining, took over where Pete left off, and Pete, who clearly wasn’t much of a talker, seemed happy to let her do so. “I didn’t want to say anything until we were all together. We don’t really have a specific date in mind, just sometime in the spring, after Pete gets settled in his new business. Mr. Cheevers asked him to come in as a partner at the filling station,” Ruby reported with pride. “He and Pete are going to add on an extra garage with a lift so they can take in more repair work. Pete’s a real good mechanic. Mr. Cheevers is going to let us live rent-free in that little two-bedroom house he owns just down the street from the station, the one with the red roof, and let us buy that and the station from him, gradual, once the business starts to make some money. Eventually, Pete will own the whole thing!”
Eva’s eyes were glistening with joyful tears, clearly delighted for Ruby’s happiness, but she seemed taken aback by this last announcement. “You mean, you’re going to move out?”
Ruby bit her lip, searching for words, but Paul came to the rescue. “It’s less than five miles from here to town. You and Ruby can see each other every day. The caboose would be a little small for the two of them, don’t you think?” He patted his wife’s arm encouragingly. Eva pressed her lip together in a tight smile and nodded.
“Yes, of course. You’re right. It’s not that far. The most important thing is that you and Pete are happy together,” Eva said and gave Ruby another squeeze, “and I know you will be.”
Ruby smiled at her friend gratefully. “Well, if we do half as well as you and Paul, we’ll be happier than about ninety-nine percent of the population.”
“Good heavens!” Grandma Clare croaked. “Will you two stop that? We’re supposed to be celebrating, and you’re both about ready to burst into tears. Morgan,” she commanded, “run into my room, would you please? In the bottom drawer of my dresser, under my blue sweater, you’ll find a bottle of sherry. Bring that in here, and let’s have a toast to Pete and Ruby.”
Eva was shocked. “Mama, you’ve got a bottle of liquor hidden in your bedroom?”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Eva. It’s not like I’ve been drinking on the sly. You know I don’t hold with that, but this is a special occasion. Pete’s been coming around here for months, so I bought a little bottle just in case there was cause for celebration. I couldn’t very well ask you or Paul to do it.”
Paul let out a single hearty bark of a laugh. “The minister or his wife being seen buying spirits? In Dillon? Goodness, no! The gossip-mongers would certainly have a field day with that.”
After the toast, everyone helped clear the table, then we took our desserts into the front room. Paul turned on the radio, looking for some music, but Grandma Clare said she wanted to listen to Abbott and Costello, so he put that on instead. Grandma Clare pulled her chair close so she could hear and then promptly dozed off. Ruby sat close to Pete on the sofa as they flipped through a copy of Life magazine. When Morgan went outside to get some more wood for the fire, Eva asked if I’d like to see her quilting room.
One whole wall was lined with shelves. Each shelf held yards and yards of different fabrics, grouped by color and shades, graduating from lights to darks, an eye-pleasing rainbow of cloth. Several of Eva’s creations were mounted on the remaining walls: scenes of prairies, woodlands, seascapes, and mountaintops, with literally hundreds of tiny blocks of fabric, joined like myriads of tile fragments in a fantastic mosaic, creating the shapes and shadows that formed the images. Near the window, where it could catch the morning light, sat a long wooden quilting frame. The quilt stretched between the bars showed a large, stately oak tree blooming a glory of leaves, each slightly different in color and shape, with the lighter colored leaves dominating one area, giving the impression of afternoon sunlight filtering through the branches. Only half of the leaves had been quilted, outlined in hundreds of tiny, perfectly even stitches. That, I could see, was the final touch that made all the difference, turning the carefully sewn bits of fabric from a pretty picture into something much more, a reality you could step into, wrap yourself up in, full of life and depth and textures, a vision that invited your touch.
“Oh! They’re beautiful!” I breathed. “Morgan told me about your quilts and how wonderful they are! But I never imagined anything so lovely. And they are all so different. Have you been to all these places?”
Eva laughed. “Oh no! We did go to San Diego to see Morgan, so I saw the ocean then, but mostly I’ve just got a good imagination.”
“They are just amazing! I can’t even begin to imagine how you do it.”
“Well, I’ve had years of practice,” she said, modestly. “It takes time and patience, of course, but it really isn’t as hard as you’d think. Would you like to try it?”
And before I could answer, she had limped her way to the fabric-fill
ed shelves, pulling out several shades of green and cream-colored cloth she thought would make a pretty nine-patch block. “You can make this one, and if you enjoy it, make more until you have enough for a quilt, or you can just do the one and make it into a pillow.
“You see how many I have.” She smiled as she pointed to a chair in the corner that was indeed piled with a small mountain of throw pillows. “Those are all projects I started that didn’t turn out quite like I’d pictured. After all that work, I might as well get something out of it. Anyway, they make nice gifts.”
The next thing I knew, I was sitting at a scarred wooden worktable with Eva beside me, showing me how to hold a well-sharpened pencil at a sideways angle to trace a perfectly even line around a wooden template onto the green cloth. She was a patient teacher, kind and quick to praise, and motherly. How lucky Morgan had been to grow up in this wonderful family, at the knee of this caring, gentle woman, a mother so different from my own.
“My papa made these templates for me, years ago. I’ve got squares, triangles, diamonds; just about any shape you can think of in any size you’d ever need.” Just then, Morgan poked his head in the door.
“There you are! I wondered what happened to you two. Better watch out for her, Georgia, or next thing you know you’ll be buying yards and yards of fabric without the first idea what you plan to do with it, and you’ll have so many pillows on your bed there won’t be room for you to get in.” He came up behind Eva’s chair and leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
Eva reached her hand up and patted him affectionately on the cheek before shooing him off. “Now just go away for a little while, Morgan. I want Georgia to get started on this one block before you have to take her home. Don’t worry. I’ll give your girl back in a little while.”
Your girl.
While Morgan drove, I held on to the paper sack filled with leftover turkey, dressing, and pie that Ruby and Grandma Clare had pressed on me, along with the unsewn pieces of the quilt block Morgan’s mother said I could finish later, and thought about Morgan and his family and about what his mother had said, turning it over and over in my mind.
They were such a lovely family, like the families I’d seen in magazine advertisements, Norman Rockwell illustrations of families, healthy and clean-living, happily joined around the dinner table exchanging stories of the day, glad to be in each other’s company, pure and pious and wonderfully normal—nothing like my family, assuming the word even applied to what Delia and I made up. Yet, when Eva had shooed Morgan away, saying I was his girl, he’d laughed and left the room whistling.
Morgan was whistling still as he drove. Feeling my eyes on him, he turned to me and smiled again, beaming sunlight. And my heart ached inside me because now I knew for certain what, before, I had only suspected: I could never be Morgan Glennon’s girl.
At my front door, I dodged his good-night kiss, turning my head quickly and thanking him for inviting me, my hand outstretched for a platonic farewell. He shook my hand, looking a bit confused, hurt even, but it was better this way. Better a small hurt now than to let things go on and risk the possibility of breaking his heart and the certainty of breaking my own. From now on, I resolved, our relationship would be strictly professional; it was for the best.
I shut the door, leaving Morgan to climb down the creaking wooden staircase to the waiting Packard as I snapped on the light switch and took a long look around my tiny apartment—rented room, rented furniture, not a picture on the walls, not a single object that spoke of permanence or intent, the room of someone who was running from something, a fugitive.
Well, I thought, maybe that’s what I am. How did that happen?
For the first time, I actually welcomed the prospect of leaving this place. All I had to do was get through the next three weeks and then head ... ? I’d been on the verge of thinking Head home, but I didn’t know where home was. I never really had. Come December 20th, where was I to go?
I sighed, took a step toward the kitchen table with the intent of unloading the bag of leftovers, but felt something under my foot. It was an envelope. The landlady must have left it. I bent down to pick it up and noticed Delia’s familiar, curlicue script on the outside. On the inside, I found a printed invitation with an ink smear on “i” in the word cordially, as if the cards had been made up quickly and mailed before they were dry.
You are cordially invited to the wedding of
Cordelia Carter Boudreaux
And
Colonel Nathan Bedford Prescott III
December 24, 1944
St. Margaret’s Chapel
Reception to follow at the bride’s home
And a note quickly dashed in Delia’s own hand.
Georgia Darling,
Be my Maid of Honor?
Love,
Delia
40
Morgan
Liberal, Kansas—December 20, 1944
In my mind, I had resolved that when we said good-bye that day, the last, formal step in the handoff of responsibilities from Georgia to myself, I would simply shake her hand, say it had been nice to work with her, and walk away, proving I could be “professional,” too.
Professional. It was a word I’d come to despise in the weeks since Thanksgiving, when, after what I’d thought had been a really great evening, Georgia resumed her distant, frosty demeanor just when I’d thought the ice had started to thaw. Every time I tried to ask her what had happened, or if I’d done something to offend her, she just looked at me and said in a flat voice, as though repeating a line she’d memorized from a play, “Nothing happened, Morgan. It was kind of you and your family to include me in your holiday celebrations, but I think it is best if we keep our relationship strictly professional.”
And that was it. She wouldn’t budge. No matter how hard I pushed or what I said, that was her answer—aloof, rehearsed, and humiliating. My initial confusion and hurt turned quickly to frustration and anger. Eventually, I decided that if that’s the way she wanted it, fine. It wasn’t like she was the only woman on the face of the earth. I’d get over her. Of course, it’d be a lot easier to do that if I didn’t have to see her every day. I was looking forward to December 20th even more than Christmas.
As I said, the handoff was really a formality. I’d been teaching all Georgia’s former students on my own for the last week and she’d really just been an observer, but we’d decided to meet about thirty minutes after my last class of the day, so she could give me the key to the room and her final student evaluations. I hadn’t slept well the night before, so after I dismissed class, I headed over to the office to grab myself a cup of coffee. When I walked in I saw Colonel Hemingway talking to Georgia, whose packed suitcase was sitting next to her feet. Hemingway, was smiling as he spoke, obviously giving Georgia a hard time and looking like he was thoroughly enjoying himself.
“Well, I’m sorry, Mrs. Welles, but as of today, you are no longer on the Army Air Corps payroll, therefore the Army Air Corps is under no obligation to provide transportation for you, not across town and most certainly not to Chicago.” Hemingway had a self-satisfied smirk on his face that he tried, unsuccessfully, to mask as he said, “I’m sorry for your troubles, but you should have planned ahead. There is simply nothing I can do for you.”
“Sir,” Georgia said, glaring daggers at Hemingway but keeping her voice low, “the army brought me to Liberal. Isn’t it the army’s responsibility to transport me back from Liberal? If I were a soldier who had finished his tour of duty, wouldn’t the army send me home? You aren’t going to tell me that Washington is planning on leaving all those boys stationed in Germany, or the Philippines, or Armpit, Alabama, stranded once the war is over, are you?”
Hemingway smiled indulgently. “Certainly not, but you’ve hit upon precisely my point. Those soldiers are soldiers. Something you, my dear, never were and never will be. So I’m afraid you’ll have to arrange for your own ride home, Mrs. Welles. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Still smirking, he turned triu
mphantly on his heel and walked out.
Georgia’s shoulders drooped. “Great,” she muttered to herself, sounding more tired and defeated than angry. “That’s just great. Now what am I going to do?”
I was still sore at Georgia, but nobody deserved to be treated like that. “Georgia? Are you all right?” The sound of my voice startled her.
“Oh. Hi, Morgan. I’m fine. I’m just stuck, that’s all. It seems that because the WASP was never militarized, the government feels no compunction to help get me home now that their need for my services has ended.” Her sarcastic tone bubbled into frustration, and she shouted, “It’s an airfield, for gosh sakes! How hard could it be for them to put me on the next plane that’s headed toward Chicago?” She shook her head and sighed. “Well, I’m sure I’m not alone in this. As we speak, there are probably hundreds of stranded WASP who just received the same lecture and are trying to figure out what they do now.”
“Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
“Yeah,” she said with a wry smile, “How about Chicago?” That was one of the things I loved about Georgia; she always kept her sense of humor.
“Well, I was thinking more along the lines of the nearest train station.”
She shook her head. “We’re five days from Christmas; there aren’t any seats available to Chicago, not on the train, not even on the bus. I checked. And my sister ...” She put her hand to her eyes, rubbing them like she had a headache coming on, “I mean, my mother is getting married on Christmas Eve, and I’m supposed to stand up for her. There’s no way I’ll make it now. I guess I’ll have to telephone and say I won’t be there in time.”
On Wings Of The Morning Page 31
