Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Partly, too, it came from my mother. My father was the breadwinner and provider, but that didn’t mean she lacked for power. Dinner was at seven, for example. Sharp. If he was down in the basement fiddling with radios, and didn’t hear when she called from the top of the stairs at five minutes till, too bad. We’d sit and eat anyhow, in a terrible silence that Frank and I would lie low under, like cows waiting out a thunderstorm under a tree—feeling bad for Daddy and what was waiting for him once he realized the time. We’d hear his tread on the stairs, see his sheepish face peek around the corner, and my mother would greet him with a visage of ice.

  Oh, the pleas for mercy we’d hear that night. Frank and I would wolf down our food and rush our dishes into the kitchen, while Daddy tried to regain Mother’s good graces. All she would do was point at her ear so he knew where to aim his apology. Say what you will about the severity of basic training, that woman would have made an excellent drill instructor.

  The thing about my punctuality rules with the boys is that they worked. Holding myself high made them line right up. But the first time Charlie Fish was tardy, it was that night of the snowstorm, and he’d been drenched. With my mother drying him off, there’d been no chance for me to set the ground rules. The next time, he was even later.

  “Oooh,” I fumed, pacing as the minutes passed. “If he stands me up, I will fry that boy.”

  “It’s wartime,” my mother replied, not bothering to look up from the crossword puzzle she was doing in pen. “Boys are not in charge of their schedules anymore. Why don’t you practice your scales?”

  I sat at the piano sure enough, but all het up. After a clumsy start, I began running through the majors and minors in every key. It did help to pass the time, and my mood softened as I worked up and down the notes, but I resented her anyhow for being right.

  When Charlie finally arrived, it was a solid hour past our arranged time. “I had a last-minute meeting,” he explained, nose running and breathless. “It couldn’t wait.”

  To his credit, he’d brought flowers, no easy thing in wintry Chicago. I put them in a vase, then went ahead and had dinner with him anyhow. I might be self-important, but I wasn’t the kind of girl to stay home and pout. Charlie found a Polish place with steamed-up windows and amazing sausages. Pretty soon he had me laughing about what the clues would be in my mother’s ideal crossword puzzle. Seven-letter word for proper gentleman? Yesmaam. Twelve letter word for heaven? Cleankitchen. I forgot all about that hour of fretting.

  Date by date, I grew accustomed to his tardiness. Always ready on time, just in case, I adjusted my rules to accommodate his unpredictable schedule. I’d sit with my mother while she puffed away on one cigarette after another, triple the amount she’d smoked before Daddy left, reading a gossip magazine or helping her with the occasional crossword clue. If Charlie was late, I’d let him buss me on the cheek and out we’d go without a fuss. Somehow he wore me down.

  But Valentine’s Day is different. Particularly in your nineteenth year, when events having to do with romance begin to matter in new ways. By then I’d stopped dating other boys, unless it was in a big group for the movies or some such. No one was getting smooches from me either. That had stopped on Christmas Eve, thank you very much. I hadn’t exactly announced these things, because I didn’t want Charlie making assumptions. But we were close enough in our conversations that by February he must have known. Granted, I pecked that sailor from Indiana home on an eight-day leave, the one who was such a dazzling dance partner. But when our lips touched, I thought of Charlie. Like a beach ball with the nozzle left open, all the fun went out of it.

  Whether I admitted it or not, out loud or in my secret heart, Charlie had become my fella. The skinny math kid. It didn’t feel like I was settling, though, for all my airs. More like choosing something out of the ordinary. My girlfriends might not have understood, except Greta, who wanted us all to have serious fellas. Frank would have squinted one eye at me and said, “Really?” My mother revealed as much of her opinions as a sphinx. Not one word for or against. That was as out of character as if she’d come down to breakfast one morning having grown wings.

  I hardly noticed. I was busy getting excited about Valentine’s. The Monday before, Charlie had stopped in at the store like he used to before his work got so busy. He brought a deli sandwich for me, roast beef on rye with tomatoes and Thousand Island dressing. Nothing for himself, though, he couldn’t stay. While I ate, he explained that his assignment was changing again, he was sorry not to have been around more, and he wanted to make it up to me. So: Six o’clock sharp on Valentine’s Day. We’d go out for a fancy dinner. We’d hold hands the whole time.

  “I promise,” he said, and to the young girl I once was, those two words were more delicious than any sandwich ever. I answered that I would dress to the nines for him. And secretly told myself that I would kiss him every chance I got.

  Charlie rushed in at almost seven thirty. He had no flowers, because the store closed before he could get there. He wore his usual work clothes, drab as a sidewalk, because he didn’t want to run back to the dorms to change and then arrive even later. He claimed he’d bought some chocolate for me, but that was in the dorms too.

  Charlie looked pale, like a person kept too long inside. There was perspiration on his brow, though it was mid-February. He wrung his hands and apologized and asked if we could sort it all out on the way to the restaurant before we lost our reservation.

  I took a page from my mother. I mean, I was wearing my best blue dress, which I had altered for the occasion. Also I was good enough to get into a conservatory. Also he had promised. So I held myself tall and aloof, and tapped one finger against my ear.

  But that backfired, because he leaned close and said, “Brenda I am as sorry as I could be,” and he was still breathing hard from running, which I felt in my ear like an electric charge, down my neck about to my toes. I shivered from it.

  If my mother saw, she hid it well. Her nose was buried in a new book, about a boy in Boston who was an apprentice at Paul Revere’s silversmith shop. All she did was lower the book and say, “Charlie, how nice to see you. I hope you and Brenda have a fine evening.” Then back up with the book, a ribbon of cigarette smoke rising from behind it.

  I put on my coat and the gloves Charlie had given me, haughty as a duchess, and waited by the front door so he could open it for me.

  “Oh, right,” Charlie said, doing just that, but the moment of hesitation would cost him, oh yes. That, as I breezed past him, was my decided plan.

  I gave him the same treatment on the walk to the restaurant. Sure enough, they’d seated someone at our table. Seeing my annoyance, and Charlie’s desperation, the maître d’ had mercy and squeezed us into another spot. But the space was too small, and back by the kitchen doors—which swung every fifteen seconds the whole meal as waiters rushed in and out. Plus the place smelled like pea soup.

  “How was your day, Brenda?”

  “Don’t even start,” I snapped. Which was foolish, because it left so little room for peacemaking conversation. My Valentine’s Day was ruined, but not beyond repair.

  I wanted oysters, but they’d run out. I ordered soup.

  “That’s all you want?” Charlie said. “Soup?”

  “Minestrone is very good for you,” I answered, smug as a bishop. Which killed another sally at conversation. I was making everything worse.

  In a way, that exchange revealed our relationship in miniature: Charlie’s good intentions and my overinflated sense of myself. It would harm that night, and it would taint our future. Eventually, when I learned how far he surpassed me in the things that really matter, only then would I become the person I ought to have been from the start. I don’t want only to live that night over again, I want to change the whole beginning. I should have been humble, I should have been kind. Instead I sat with arms crossed and a pout on my face. Some jack-o’-lanterns are more becoming.

  Charlie tried again. “Brenda, I know I messe
d up, because of my work duties—”

  “You made me a promise, Charlie Fish.” I was forgiving as a steel beam.

  “—but you look terrific tonight,” he persisted. “That dress flatters your figure beautifully.”

  “I know,” I said. “I myself sewed the waist in.”

  Oh, if I could reach back through time, I would give that girl such a shake. There was a war on, and this sweet boy was part of it whether he wanted to be or not. Yet all she could think about was herself, and how he had inconvenienced her. She will have only one first Valentine’s Day with Charlie Fish. Wouldn’t she want to make it unforgettably sweet?

  Instead I made a big show of unfolding my napkin, and raising it high, almost above my head, before dropping it in my lap. I don’t know what that was supposed to signify, but something about deep annoyance, I suppose.

  Charlie looked exhausted and dewy-eyed. He kept trying like a champion anyhow, offering me a bite of his steak (I refused), asking for a taste of my soup (I declined). He talked about the movies coming out that weekend, and which ones we might enjoy.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, shaking too much salt into the soup. “Maybe.”

  The meal was eternal. At some point my knight accepted defeat, hurrying through his food, saying thank you but no, we did not want to hear about the special Valentine’s Day dessert, paying the check as quickly as he could. We trudged home in silence, the wind bitter at our backs. He didn’t do his usual humming, though often as not that would result in both of us singing as we skipped down the sidewalks. Maybe he didn’t want to risk it, and have that nice habit ruined by my temper. When we reached the front steps, Charlie said he was sorry but he couldn’t come in. He had early duty again, and it was a long walk back to the dorms.

  “Well.” I held out my gloved hand, determined that this was the last I would see of that tedious Charlie Fish. Really, what had I been thinking to have spent so much time with him? “This will go down in history as my worst Valentine’s Day ever.”

  Charlie took my hand, but he did not shake it. He held it between both of his. “Mine too,” he said. “I wish I could have made it all better.”

  His face looked so crestfallen, I couldn’t help myself. I leaned in, lips to his sweet lips, two seconds and no more. I told myself to consider it a kiss good-bye. Then I ran up the steps, leaving Charlie Fish out there in the cold.

  10.

  The moment he and Santangelo returned from lunch, Charlie knew something was different. When he’d left there were papers on his desk, facedown as usual, and now they were gone. Charlie’s gait slowed. His can of pencils was empty. The in-box too.

  Charlie slumped down into his seat. “Damn.”

  “What is it?” Santangelo asked, peering over. “Oh.”

  “Yup.”

  “Rough business, Fish.”

  Charlie opened one drawer, confirmed that it was empty, and did not bother with the others. Santangelo saw, and backed away to his desk.

  “Yes, better get busy,” Charlie said. “No point in both of us joining the army.”

  “Fish.” Cohen stood in the doorway with a cardboard box that Charlie suspected held the former contents of his desk. “You’re wanted. Double-time.”

  Santangelo bent over his papers, but he whispered as Charlie hurried past, “Good luck.”

  Professor Simmons’s secretary was typing with a pencil between her teeth when Cohen led Charlie in. She pointed at a chair. Before Charlie could sit, Cohen placed the box there, then gave him a pat on the back.

  “You weren’t all bad,” he allowed. “Compared with some others. See you after the war.”

  Charlie swallowed hard, too nervous to reply. Cohen vanished down the hall and the secretary returned to her typing. Over the thwack of the keys he could hear his uncle in the inner office, talking. First the disaster with Brenda, and now this. And what about the problem he’d nearly solved before lunch? Who would do it now?

  Simmons put the phone down, and instantly his secretary called out, “He’s here.”

  “Good, good.”

  Charlie had taken only one step forward when his uncle charged out of the office, trademark smile on his face. “There’s my fine young fellow.” He slowed by the secretary’s desk. “Get me Enrico on the phone. I’ll be back in five.”

  The woman turned to a Rolodex, took the pencil from her mouth, and used the eraser to flip through the cards.

  “Come along, Charlie. No time to waste.”

  Charlie gestured toward the cardboard box. “Should I bring—”

  “You won’t be needing that.” He strode off, Charlie scrambling in his wake.

  The math team occupied the top floor of a three-story building. Now he followed the professor down four flights, to the basement. He did not need anyone to explain what this meant in the department’s hierarchy.

  The glass door of one room let out a strange bluish glow, and Simmons knocked before entering. Charlie followed close behind, but not before noticing a hand-painted sign on the door: Beasley’s Dungeon. A man at a workbench was bent over something, a kind of strange pen in his hand. The room smelled of heat and old shoes.

  “I have a new one for you, Beasley,” Simmons said in his most affable voice.

  Goggles on his face, Beasley did not look up. “Shall I shoot myself now, and save us all the headache?”

  “Grouchy,” Simmons stage-whispered, “but an excellent teacher.”

  “I am not a teacher,” Beasley said, concentrating on his work. “I am an expert. There’s a difference.”

  They waited until Beasley sat back. As methodically as a machine, he wiped the strange pen on a sponge that hissed from the contact, placed the pen on a stand, and covered it with a welding mask. Spinning on the stool to face them, Beasley removed his goggles and donned thick black glasses. He resembled an annoyed bird, narrow and beakish, with the glasses perched low on his nose, as if they were about to fall off. “What failure have you brought me this time?”

  “This is Fish,” Simmons said, “the smart fellow from upstairs I told you about.”

  “Has he soldered before?”

  “Total novice. I mentioned that earlier.”

  Beasley grimaced. “I was hoping you’d been joking.”

  Simmons laughed. “Always the dreamer.” He checked his watch. “I have a call.”

  “You do know I am being asked to produce more down here, not less, right?”

  Charlie was astonished at Beasley’s blatant disrespect for the department chair, but he marveled more that his uncle allowed it. In fact his trademark smile was undiminished. Maybe it was about more than warmth, maybe there was resolve too.

  “I’m counting on you to teach him so he increases production from this lab.”

  Beasley pursed his lips. “I am not a teacher.” He pouted on his stool, then touched his glasses upward, though they continued to hang every bit as precariously on the end of his nose. Charlie thought they were somewhere between aristocratic and comical. “Look, I’ll give him the basics, all right? Safety rules, some circuits. But you can’t expect me to do my job if I’m spending half my time babysitting.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” Charlie spoke up at last.

  “It talks?” Beasley snorted. “You are so uninformed, swaddling infant, you don’t even know what you need.”

  “Try, Charlie.” Simmons gave his elbow a friendly squeeze. “Try not to punch him in the jaw.”

  And he hurried off to take his call.

  As the door closed, Beasley stood—though to Charlie it seemed more as if the man were unfolding himself, long limbs straightening until he stood six and a half feet tall. His wrists were long and knuckles large, and he had a giant Adam’s apple. Charlie thought of a bird with an extended bill, perhaps a crane of some kind. More than anything, though, he felt an impulse to reach forward, to push those glasses up the bird’s beak before they fell off.

  “Wait,” Beasley said, switching off the light that Simm
ons had left on. He crooked a finger in Charlie’s direction. “Follow.” He moved with a strange, large-jointed walk, and Charlie thought: not crane, stork.

  “This is your station.” He pointed at a desk that was cluttered with wires and electronic components. “Notice that it is at the opposite extreme of the room from mine. Notice that you work with your back to me. This is deliberate, to minimize chatter and interruptions.”

  Charlie picked up one of the components, a strip of stiff wire with a yellow lump of ceramic material in the middle. “What will I be doing here?”

  “You’re unacquainted with this project? What kind of imbecile are you?”

  “You know, I am about at the end of taking insults from you. A guy two minutes into a new assignment can reasonably expect—”

  “Oh no, you’re not.” Beasley wagged a finger. “Your days of being insulted by me are only beginning. You are more likely to fail here than anywhere else in this building.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know one thing about me.”

  “Oh?” Beasley snatched the component from Charlie and pointed its wire at him. “Charles Fish. Brought straight from Harvard, where you were majoring in math and on track to graduate at eighteen—a fact you keep so quiet, not even your dorm buddies know. You also sang in the university choir, which makes you as pathetic a creature as I can imagine.”

  “How in the world did you—”

  “Finally, you are the nephew of John Simmons, metallurgy boss, and owner of the phoniest smile this side of Lake Michigan.” He tossed the yellow component back on the desk. “Right so far?”

  “You have one hell of a nerve.”

  “Fish, your uncle’s influence ends at that doorway. In a dungeon, the guard serves the prisoner’s sentence right along with him. In a dungeon, the guard is king. And I am not here to win a war, I’m here to avoid having to kill anyone.”

  “Really?” Charlie stepped back. “On that, actually, we agree.”