Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Charlie wore his Christmas overcoat with a loose suit under it. He dragged two duffel bags in behind him. It struck me as a little pathetic, that everything he owned could fit in two dull green canvas bags. The war diminished everyone.

  “A feed wagon?” He removed his hat. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” my mother said, skipping down the stairs. “Brenda said officially nothing. Nice to see you, Charlie.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Dubie. Super dress, too, Brenda.”

  “It’s an old one actually,” I demurred.

  My mother put her hand on my arm. “Thank you, Charlie, I’m glad you like it.” Then that hand gave me a nudge.

  I sighed, rolling my eyes. “Thank you, Charlie—”

  “And you’re glad I like it?” He grinned and gave me the quickest little wink.

  What a perfect way to appease my mother without taking her side against me. “Something like that, yes.”

  There was a honking from the street, and we peered out as one. “Already?” My mother checked her watch. “I called for a cab at eleven.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being early,” Charlie said. “So I can buy a snack at the station.”

  I laughed. “My mother thought of that. Though you may need a wheelbarrow.”

  “Go,” she said to him. “And, Brenda, you fetch the basket.”

  In the kitchen, an idea occurred to me. I could write Charlie a note, some simple thing for him to find late in his trip, when he’d eaten down into the stack of sandwiches. I grabbed paper and sat at the table, but my brain went blank. What could I say that wasn’t too corny, didn’t give my dignity away, stoked his desire, preserved my virtue, and brought him safely home?

  Maybe if I’d thought of it sooner, if I’d had an hour to make up something perfect, I might have done something that bold. Today I wish I had confessed everything, made promises for the whole future, because I was heartsore and he wasn’t even gone yet. But I knew myself too little to be so frank, to have such nerve. Instead I tapped the pencil eraser against my teeth, hoping for inspiration, until my mother barged into the room.

  “Sitting here? The taxi’s waiting and you’re actually sitting here?”

  “Sorry.” I stood, grabbing the basket, and left that paper on the table. I can still picture it today. Charlie, my imagination wishes it could write, and fold, and tuck deep inside, I will miss you so. Instead, for all time, that sheet is blank.

  We had a nice little chaos, the three of us, loading everything into the taxi. It was a gray March day, a slow melt under way. My mother gave directions so the cab took us the long route, along Lake Shore Drive. But the lake’s ice was softening, the water a gunmetal gray. The snowbanks were crusty, too, with black gravel from winter traffic.

  “Mother,” I said, “it’s not exactly gorgeous this time of year.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Who knows when Charlie will next see a decent body of water?”

  He stared out the window. “I have no idea.”

  After that we rode in silence. Charlie managed a bit of song, humming so quietly at first I thought it was coming from outside the car. I could have said something, to warm him in the time ahead. But my mother’s presence stifled me, I was self-conscious. As the road curved and traffic swept past, I sat in the middle and felt like a human knot.

  “. . . though I suppose dampness makes it feel colder,” my mother said out of the blue, in one of those conversations that started in her mind long before she gave it voice.

  “It does,” Charlie agreed, affable as ever. I was going to miss that boy.

  “Turn here,” she instructed the cabbie. We’d reached the river, a white plate of ice with a melted blue-green sluice down its middle, and swung left onto Wacker Drive, toward the Randolph Street Bridge. The only longer route we could have taken was if we went home and started over again. Still, we arrived at Union Station too soon. I’d been there once before, when an older cousin married a well-to-do lawyer from Oak Park. They held the reception in one of the side halls. I’d been ten, a flower girl in a pink dress, giddy with the glamour of it all.

  This time it was a Friday, and the station was strictly business: men in suits and fedoras who carried briefcases, women in low square heels that made a hammering sound on the pavement, soldiers swaggering here and there. Everyone knew what they were doing and where they were going. Meanwhile, Charlie strained to hoist his duffels out of the trunk, a strap going over each shoulder, and by the way he leaned I could tell one bag was much heavier than the other.

  “Do you want to shift some things around?” I asked him.

  “I’ll fix it on the train,” he said. “Guess I don’t have much experience at packing.”

  His eyes roved over my face, like he was seeing me for the first time, and only had a second to take in my features. I felt Charlie’s attention keenly, like a too-bright light, and I had to turn away. My mother was checking the picnic basket, asking if he had his ticket yet. He patted his jacket pocket, and we set off for the Great Hall.

  They say the cathedrals of Europe were built with high ceilings in order to draw the faithful’s eyes toward God. I’m not sure how Chicago’s Union Station was intended to inspire people, but I sure felt the majesty of it. All the bustle, the soldiers striding by in uniformed groups, men lounging by the walls in a cloud of cigarette smoke, the shouts of porters and baggage men—all of these nonetheless dwarfed below the great, vaulted skylight, which I knew from an eighth-grade project was 115 feet over our heads. Sun streamed in the high windows at the far end, casting beams down on the wooden benches. Dirt and shoe scuffs on the white marble floor seemed mean and meager compared to the expanse of commerce and bustle. I felt a swell of affection for Chicago, my hometown and the only place I knew, and wished that Frank and my father were there.

  Beneath one of the arches, Charlie had stopped to read the track assignments. My mother stood between us for a moment, but seemed to realize it and stepped away.

  “Excuse me, but I need to visit the ladies’,” she said. “Charlie, I hope this is a great experience, and you help our country find victory and peace, all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He held out his hand for her to shake. “Thank you for all of the—”

  “There you go, ma’aming me again.” She pulled him close for a quick hug. “Take care of yourself, kiddo.”

  Then she was hooking the handles of the picnic basket over my arm, and leaning to speak in my ear. “I’ll be back in a bit. But Brenda? Don’t be afraid to feel things.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, jerking away.

  She had already started off. “I’ll meet you after, right here.”

  Amid the noise and chaos, we were alone. My stomach fluttered like I was about to cross a rush-hour highway. But I straightened my spine, boldness coming from somewhere inside me, and took a lapel of his coat in each hand. “Charlie” was all I could say.

  “Brenda,” he said, looking down at me. He cleared his throat as if about to give a speech. “You are the best thing that happened to me in this whole city.”

  “Well, I would hope so,” I snapped, my usual bluster. But he tilted his head to one side, and I knew to give him a break. “Sorry, go ahead.”

  “I’m not glad to be leaving. It might be exciting, maybe even important. But I will be thinking of you the whole time.” He looked directly into my eyes, though it caused him to blink again and again. “When this war is over, I would like your permission to come back here, and investigate how it feels for us to see each other again.”

  “Investigate? Did you say investigate?”

  He bobbed from side to side. “Go easy on me, Brenda. I’m new to fancy talk.”

  “Then speak to me in your regular talk.”

  “All right.” Charlie tilted his head back, eyes on the skylight. “Listen to this room for a second. Just listen to it.”

  I closed my eyes. At first it was all sensations, my hands on his lapels, the nearness of his
body.

  But then I calmed. There was a rushing sound of people and echoes. I heard the conversation of women passing by. The thrum of train engines like a bass note. Two men laughed over by the shoe shine stand. Someone yelled. A child’s shoes slapped the marble, chasing a cooing pigeon. I opened my eyes and Charlie was smiling at me.

  “It’s beautiful,” I murmured. “Who knew?”

  “Now imagine how fantastic an organ would sound in here. A huge, powerful one, hundreds of years old, like in some vast European cathedral.” He began to hum, some old hymn, low in my ear so no one else would hear, just for me.

  “Charlie.” I pushed and pulled on his lapels. “Who knows how long this war will last, and how it might change us? If you want to investigate, that would be okay with me.”

  “Really okay?”

  “Very okay.” I nodded. “Investigate away.”

  We stood for a minute then. I was trying to memorize him, getting the last possible bit, like how you finish the water in your glass before you rise from the table. One more sip. A guy rushing past tapped Charlie on the shoulder.

  “Sorry, boss, but do you know what time it is?”

  “Can’t you see what you’re interrupting?” I snapped.

  Charlie checked his watch. “Five of noon.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  The man hurried off, and Charlie sighed. “My train leaves in twelve minutes.”

  I felt pressure in my throat, like I might choke. “I guess you’d better go.”

  He leaned forward and kissed me, slow and gentle, and I found myself grabbing the back of his head again, pulling him closer. In memory, I see us cinematically, as if from a camera on a high balcony: a skinny guy in a black overcoat bending to kiss a girl wearing a light blue hat—it probably happens there all the time, several times a day, but these two are so painfully young—while the world swirls around them on its sprint to a future no one can foresee, and yet somehow they make a kind of mooring, a fixed place around which, for that one moment, everything turns.

  Then we parted. Charlie looped the duffel straps over his shoulders, I handed him the picnic basket, he waddled off into the crowd. The basket brought his load closer to being in balance, but he continued to lean to one side as he made his wobbly way.

  I stood perfectly still, as though I were made of glass, until he was out of sight. Charlie was gone. Gone. The Great Hall’s wash of sound continued as though nothing had happened. If that room had an organ, I would have played something wounded and mighty. I glanced around and there she was, ten yards away, watching me like a guard.

  “Mother,” I said. She rushed forward, all of a parent’s care written on her face. But some deep well of venom surged inside me, and I snarled, “Eleven sandwiches? Eleven?”

  She stopped abruptly, as if I had slapped her. In the same instant her expression changed from affection to something else, not anger, but almost bewilderment. She shook her head. “Who in the world ever taught you to be so cruel?”

  I stammered, unable to muster a reply, while she turned on her heel and charged off to the taxi stand.

  “We will never see that picnic basket again,” I called after her. “And you know it.”

  She did not break stride, barging between two soldiers and disappearing in the crowd. I stood half a minute fuming, people passing intently on my left and right. Then there was nothing for me to do but follow her home.

  18.

  At long last the engine eased, the train snaked through several slow turns, and they chugged into Lamy, New Mexico. Charlie checked his watch: thirty-three hours since they had rattled out of Union Station.

  His skin had a sheen. His legs felt full of blood. His mouth tasted as sour as old milk.

  The train shuddered to a halt and a conductor bustled through the car, opening a door at the front. Charlie dragged his bags out to the station platform, setting them in the shade with the picnic basket on top. Only one passenger boarded the train, a white-haired man with a worn carpetbag. The whistle sounded twice, long and loud, which struck Charlie as extravagant for such a minor stop. The locomotive revved, bellowing smoke, and away the small train rolled: up the line, around a bend, continuing west.

  Charlie’s ears needed time to adjust to the quiet. He felt greasy, and numb with fatigue. A burro brayed. Two pigeons cooed and strutted past, reminding him of the doves in Union Station. The air smelled of dry earth.

  In that moment, he began the practice of writing Brenda a letter in his head, a habit that would soon become second nature. Eventually it would seem as if events had not occurred until he had told her.

  A hacking cough sounded as loud as if it were directed in his ear. He turned to see that his sleepy traveling companion had also descended at that stop. The boy had boarded at Charlie’s last layover, and as other passengers reached their stops, for the last five hours he and Charlie had been the only riders. Now he stood beside two suitcases, absently digging in his pockets. Little though Charlie’s experience was with such things, he thought this was the look of someone with a magnificent hangover.

  Charlie knew a ride to Santa Fe was supposed to be waiting for him when he arrived. But there was no car, and he did not know if his train had been early or late. Assuming his bags were safe, he wandered off.

  The views were not the green trees of New England. In all directions the land was barren, bland, and brown. A dog awakened in the middle of the road, lifting its head to sniff in Charlie’s direction, then lying back down without having bothered itself to bark. But there, on a rise above the town, stood a stone church, dignified and graceful.

  He strode off to it, as though that had been his destination all this time. So many hours spent sitting had dulled his muscles, Charlie thought, feeling his heart pound and his breath grow short as he climbed the hill.

  The church’s front doors were open, and from the wood’s weathered look he suspected that they had not been closed in years. He tiptoed in, though why he needed to be quiet he could not say. The pews were gone, save one against a wall. The window openings were empty, too, colored glass glinting here and there on the floor. A scent of rodents soured the air. There was no organ.

  To test the acoustics, Charlie sang a few lines of the “Ode to Joy.”

  Freude, schooner goetterfunkin

  Tochter aus Elysium

  Wir betreten feuertrunken

  Himmlische dein heiligtum

  Deine zauber binden wieder

  Was der mode schwert geteilt . . .

  His voice trailed off, knowing its roughness would have made Charlie’s college choir director growl in dismay. He dropped onto the pew, knuckling both eyes until he saw stars. Someone outside started honking a horn, blast after blast.

  “So annoying.” Charlie rose to see what the matter was, feeling light-headed from the motion, arriving at the doorway.

  “Come on,” a man in military green yelled from below. Standing beside a battered school bus painted the same green, he waved an arm. “Get a move on, bub.”

  Charlie remembered what his uncle had said: He would be treated like royalty. He would work with the smartest people in the world. His labors might one day be considered heroic.

  “Not quite,” he told the empty church. “Not yet, anyway.”

  And he shuffled his tired bones down through the dirt.

  The man who had waved him down turned out to be holding a rifle. Charlie went to fetch his bags. “Sorry to hold you up.”

  The guard shouldered his weapon. “Not a place to wander off, sir.”

  “Sorry,” Charlie said.

  “Nice picnic basket, though.”

  Charlie noticed the soldier was smiling. “I have sandwiches left. You hungry?”

  “Hell yes. Sir.”

  Charlie handed one over and stepped onto the bus. The dark-skinned driver greeted him in Spanish. Charlie nodded hello, noticing that the hungover man sat hangdog a few seats back.

  “Any chance you have another one in there? To sav
e a starving pilgrim?”

  Charlie opened the basket. “Help yourself. That last jar has coffee in it too.”

  “Angel of mercy.” The man grabbed two sandwiches, unwrapping one and taking almost half in a single bite. “Ham.” He spoke with his mouth full. “A benediction. I owe you my life.”

  Charlie took note of the other passengers—from the empty town they seemed to have materialized out of thin air, all of them Hispanic—as he hoisted the duffels overhead and sat behind the hungover man.

  “I guess we’re still some distance from our destination,” Charlie said to him.

  “Nineteen miles to Santa Fe, then a company car forty miles up to The Hill.”

  “Company car?”

  He finished chewing before answering. “You’ll see. Probably an old truck.”

  “You’ve been here before?” Charlie asked.

  “New as fresh paint. But the professor who hired me told me what to expect.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Same place as you.” The man turned the sandwich and bit the other side. He was making shapes. “Project Y.”

  “I’m sorry. What’s Project Y?”

  The man recoiled, then calmed. “A joke. Never mind.” He turned forward. “Thanks for the eats.”

  Suddenly an idea occurred to Charlie. What if Brenda had left him a note in that basket? Any kind of good wishes would be wonderful. He opened the top wide, pushing away the last sandwiches, the jars of water. There didn’t seem to be anything.

  But he wasn’t satisfied. He stared out the window. If the situation were reversed, he would certainly have left a note for her. He tore into the basket again, shoving things aside, digging everywhere, but there was nothing.

  He slumped back in his seat. Of course. Brenda was not the hidden-note type. Damn desire, though, he thought. He had been fine all this long way, and now his imagination had made him miserable.

  With a grinding of gears, the bus lurched forward. The driver slowed at a crossroads and the bus shook, a screech of metal on metal from the front.